Touching the Dark

by Jane A. Adams

  “That,” Simon said stubbornly, “that was different. And I know that this was Jack.”

  Impatiently he got up and began to pace back and forth across the narrow room. He could barely manage three steps each way, being forced to curtail his final stride. It seemed to frustrate him even more. Angrily, he drew back his fist and drove it straight into the far wall.

  “Everything all right in there?” The custody sergeant sounded concerned.

  “It’s fine” Alec told him. “Our young friend just letting off some steam.”

  He waited until the man’s footsteps trailed away and then called to Simon. “Simon, sit down. Talk to me. What really happened between the two of you?”

  “I blew it Alec.” He turned around and Alec was shocked to see the tears coursing down Simon’s face. “I really blew it. Best thing that ever happened in my life and I fucked it up.”

  “How. What did you do?”

  “I went round there today and I confronted her about Jack. Told her what I thought, that she just used Jack as an excuse to run when anyone got too close. I told her how I felt. That I wanted her back, that I’d get her whatever help she needed. That we could see a counsellor and she just laughed in my face.”

  “So you took the man’s way out and went off to get drunk.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Simon shouted

  “No, it never is. There’s always some justification, isn’t there. Some reason you can give yourself to make it seem like you’re less the complete idiot and more the aggrieved party. What excuse did you use, Simon? It seems to me you’re as guilty of using this Jack as a defence as you accuse Tally of being.”

  For a moment or two Alec wondered if Simon would be stupid enough to throw the punch he had prepared. The arm swung back as it had when Simon had belted the wall, but then the moment passed and he let his arm fall limply at his side.

  “I slept with someone else,” he said finally, his voice flat, almost toneless.

  “And she found out?”

  “I was down in London...with a friend. I mean, I’d only just met Pat Sullivan but...” He sighed and lifted his hands to scrub at his face as though that would make the whole thing go away. Then he sat down next to Alec, side on so that he would not have to see his face.

  “I was down in London. I’d been seeing Tally for just over three months and things were getting serious. At least, I thought they were. But there were things about her that she wouldn’t tell me. Stupid things, like Jack. Who he was. Why he was so goddammed important and this...Alec you’ve got to understand, I’d never been in love before, not in love like this, and I was jealous, I suppose.

  “Anyway, we’d met these girls, friends of Pat’s and gone out with them then back to his flat. Claire, she’s nice. Easy to get along with and well, things got kind of intense. I called Tally. I thought, if I could talk to her then everything would be all right. I called her, it was something like half three, nearly four in the morning. Maybe later. And he answered the phone.”

  “This Jack?”

  “Yes. This Jack.”

  “And so, to get your own back, you slept with Claire?”

  “It wasn’t that simple. I was drunk. I was being stupid.” He paused and lifted his head to look at Alec. “Yes,” he admitted. “I slept with Claire. And then later, just so I could rub in how mad I was about her seeing Jack, I told her about it.”

  “Nice one Simon,” Alec commented. “God, but do you know how to screw up big time.” He thought about it for a minute and then asked. “Did she say why Jack had been there?”

  Simon laughed harshly. “Why the hell do you think he was there? She said he was an old friend. She said, he’d just come round to see her. I told her, what kind of a friend visits at that time of the morning, she just said well, I’d phoned her at that time so what was the difference?” He was on his feet again, anger building to its previous level. Alec noted that the knuckles of his right hand were bleeding from where he’d struck the wall.

  “Simon, I like you a whole lot, but frankly you’ve behaved like a right wanker. I hate to say this to you old son, but it seems to me that you and Miss Tally Palmer are two of a kind and probably deserve one another.”

  Alec got to his feet and, startled at the realisation that he was going to leave Simon grabbed him by the arm.

  “You’re not going?”

  “Oh yes I am. The police surgeon will be here later on to check you out. You’ll sleep here tonight and if no one wants to press charges, probably be free to go some time tomorrow. If you’re very lucky, I’ll get your mother to bring you some clean clothes.”

  “You’re going to tell them?”

  “Oh yes, I’m going to tell them. Simon, they’re good people. They’ve been worrying themselves stupid over you and this girl. I think they deserve for me to tell them rather than have them read about it in your own newspaper.”

  “Newspaper?” He looked stricken. Clearly, the idea that this might have further repercussions had only just occurred.

  “Next time, Simon. Try to think it through first,” Alec rapped on the cell door and called the sergeant to let him out. “Journalist assaults arresting officer would make a damned good headline, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh God.” Simon sank back onto the bunk and the look of shock on his face almost made Alec pity him enough to offer reassurance. Almost, but not quite. Simon was quite sober now and had a big chunk of reality to chew over. Alec left him to it.

  “Bit hard on him, weren’t you?” The custody sergeant asked as they left the cell block. “Timm’s knows it were as much his fault he got clobbered as it were the lad’s. He’ll not be pressing charges.”

  “I know that,” Alec said. “I’ll let you tell him later, but meantime I want him to think how close he’s come to screwing up. If he’s the Simon Emmet I know it’ll do him the world of good to be pulled up short and if you think I’m hard, you just wait till his mother has a go. Gentle as a lamb until she’s roused, then she’d take on Tyson and come out winner. He’s been a fool and he knows it and it’s not like he’s some daft teenager. He’s old enough to know better. Anyone but Timms as arresting officer and like as not he would be facing an assault charge.”

  “True enough,” the sergeant agreed. “We’ll leave it ’til morning then, to let him know he’s off the hook.”

  “Right,” Alec stretched wearily. “I’m off to get some sleep. Take care of him for me.”

  The custody sergeant laughed. “Like he were my own,” he said.

  *

  Alone, Simon went back to his brooding, but this time the content of his thoughts had shifted. Alec was right; he did realize just how close he’d come to ballsing the whole thing up. In danger of losing the career he’d worked so hard for as well as the woman he knew he still loved.

  He recalled the row they had when he’d come back from London. He’d gone straight to her flat, hung around, half expected, half hoping that Jack would be there. Been more than half afraid that he would...

  Then in the argument that followed, and he could hear himself now, making those accusations, calling her all kinds of whore just because he believed she had slept with Jack and because it eased his conscience for having done the very thing that he accused her of.

  “She didn’t deserve that,” he whispered to himself. Alec was right, he’d behaved like...He couldn’t find the words for it. Disgust sobered him like nothing else.

  But he’d stayed angry with her. His sense of injustice building through the week as she’d failed to get in touch – Simon refusing to make the first move- until that following weekend when he’d taken himself back down to London and seen Claire. They’d gone out together and then wandered back to her flat. Tally had chosen then to try to reconcile their relationship. To make that first move that Simon with his stubborn pride had been unable or unwilling to do.

  She called Simon on his mobile and told him that she had to talk to him, could he please come round.

  He was
at that moment in Claire’s bed with other things on his mind. Claire, realising whom it was that demanded Simon’s time was far from impressed.

  “Get rid of her,” she hissed. “Christ sake Simon, can’t she just leave you alone?”

  “This isn’t a good time Tally and I’m not home right now.”

  “When will you be home? Simon, I’ve got to talk to you. I need to explain. To try and explain about Jack.”

  “Jack.” Simon sighed. “It’s always about Jack. Tally, don’t you see that was the problem? It was Jack, all the time. Not you and me but you and me and a third party.”

  “I know what that’s like,” Claire muttered in the background.

  Simon grimaced. “Look, Tally, this is not a good time. I’ll call you, soon as I’m back and maybe we can meet for coffee or something.” He tried to ignore the daggers that Claire was shooting with her eyes. “I really do have to go.”

  “I want to tell you about Jack,” Tally said softly. “I want to talk about Jack and about what happened. I really need to Simon.”

  Claire had enough at that point and snatched the phone from him, breaking the connection and throwing it to the bottom of the bed.

  “Decide, Simon. Her or me. I won’t play second fiddle.”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  “Isn’t it?” She lay back against the pillows and glared at him. Her full breasts flattened slightly against her body, the nipples were hard, surrounded by large aureoles of darkest pink.

  She moved slightly, parting heavy, muscular thighs and Simon groaned, pushing Tally from his mind as he reached for Claire.

  She held him off, strong hands grasping his arms and keeping him at a distance. “Decide,” she demanded. Then she let him go and he pulled her to him, sliding inside her as hard and as far as he could get, but it was Tally who filled his mind.

  *

  Tally stared at the silent phone unable to believe that Simon had hung up on her. He had evidently not been alone.

  Outside it is still raining. It was heavy enough to flood the window like an external curtain, blurring the lights of the city and hiding the sky. She found herself thinking about the last time she saw her father alive. The rain that day had been like this, a translucent curtain that almost blocked her view, separating her from her father as he scrabbled for the belongings that her mother had hurled at him. She sat for almost an hour staring out of the window, watching the water pour down the glass and cascade from the windowsill before falling three stories to the ground. Then she called Simon again. He took a long time to answer and each time her phone timed out and went to his answering service she redialled. Finally he gave in and answered her though he was obviously not pleased.

  She spoke before he had the chance to say a word.

  “Jack is Zechariah. I helped him come back. After the funeral he came to me and asked if I could help him and I couldn’t say no, could I, so I did it. I brought Jack here again.”

  This time it was Tally that broke contact and it was Simon who was left, staring at the phone and now, all these weeks after, Simon still did not understand what she had meant but something in her words had filled him with a cold feeling like dread that he could not fully explain. A feeling he could not shake off, even now.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The morning after Simon’s arrest Naomi was due to work at the local advice centre. She had done this twice a week for almost a year. It enabled her to go on using her knowledge of the law and the people skills she had acquired as a police officer. In addition, on what she saw as a rather selfish but invaluable level, gave her back some notion of control. Naomi had grown used to being in a position of responsibility. To have to make decisions and act upon those decisions. Working at the advice centre and being able to point people with problems in the right direction was satisfying and boosted her self-esteem. It sometimes bothered people to be helped by a blind woman but for the most part it was a positive thing. It both distracted them and broke the ice and often people seemed to find it easier to talk to someone who could not see their faces. It added to their feeling of anonymity or confidentiality, Naomi thought, odd though that might seem. Now, after eleven months of working at the centre she found that some people asked for her on the basis that if she had helped with one problem, she must surely have the solution to the next, an impression that Naomi wasn’t always sure she wanted to cultivate.

  It was just before twelve when a colleague came into Naomi’s broom cupboard of an office and told her she had a “repeat customer”. Shirley, an ex-practitioner of family law who now worked as a volunteer had been at the centre only a little longer than Naomi and the two had become good friends often sharing evenings out.

  “The client says he’s been to you before,” Shirley told her, “though I can’t say I remember him.” Shirley often ran the front desk, taking details as people came in and assigning them to advisors she thought could be most useful. She had a prodigious memory for faces and a pretty good one as regards names. “He’s quite insistent he wants to see you, been waiting all morning.”

  Naomi’s ears pricked up at Shirley’s tone. A long career dealing with domestic problems had sharpened her an instincts and Naomi had come to trust her colleagues intuition. “Something wrong with him?”

  “Um, don’t know. Can’t place it but he feels wrong. Won’t give any details either, didn’t even want to give his name.”

  “That’s not so unusual,” Naomi mused. “What’s he like?”

  “Like someone you’d remember. Tall, dark hair long on the collar and with curls most women would die for. Thirtyish, I guess. Says his name’s Jack Chalmers.”

  Naomi reacted to the name and Shirley spotted it. “You know him?”

  “No, but we’ve met. He’s involved in something else. A friend with problems.”

  “You want me to tell him you can’t see him? Fred’s on, we can hand him over, no trouble.”

  “No,” Naomi shook her head, curiosity getting the better of caution. Her reaction was one of surprise, she told herself. Surprise and too much notice taken of Shirley’s natural caution. “I’ll see him, but I can’t for the life of me think why he’d want to see me.”

  “Well, if you’re sure. I’ll be just outside. Press the button if you’re the slightest bit worried.”

  Naomi nodded. “Will do.” Panic buttons had been installed in every room since a rather nasty incident just before Naomi’s time when a drunk with a knife had slightly injured one of the volunteers. Naomi could not recall one incident since when they had been used. She smiled. “Does he look like an axe murderer?”

  “No,” Shirley admitted and Naomi could hear the smile in her voice. “Quite the opposite, but they’re always the worst kind, aren’t they?”

  She heard Jack enter. He closed the door and crossed the room towards her before he spoke.

  “Won’t you sit down?” Naomi asked indicating the chair on the opposite side of her table.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She heard him pull out the chair, dragging it lightly across the uncarpeted floor. It scraped and then creaked as he settled his weight into it.

  “How can I help you? Mr Chalmers.”

  “Jack, please,” he said. “After all, we have been introduced.”

  “Jack then. How can I help you, Jack?”

  He leaned forward and she felt the table shift slightly as he laid his arms on the edge of it. “It’s a delicate matter,” he told her. “You can probably guess why I’m here. It’s about your friend Simon and my friend Tally.”

  Naomi leaned back in her seat and frowned. “Jack, this is an advice centre. It’s for people with problems. Debts, difficult neighbours. Court actions they don’t know how to deal with. It isn’t for things like this.”

  “I see,” he said quietly. He seemed to consider her words and then he asked, “If I came to you wanting a divorce, what would you do?”

  “I’d make sure you understood the legal practicalities, talk t
o you about mediation and probably book you an appointment with a counsellor, if that was what you wanted.”

  “And if it wasn’t what I wanted?”

  “Then I’d do my best to find out what you did want...or need and address those issues.”

  “Then that’s what I want you to do now. Address my issues, if that’s the way you’d like to put it. Simon and Tally are going through a messy divorce. I’m an interested friend. You’re an interested friend. How can we help to make this better?”

  “I’m not sure I understand the question,” she told him. “Or, for that matter, what your part in this is.”

  “I told you, I’m trying to help a friend.”

  “Then why come to me?”

  “Because my friend, Tally, is being hurt by your friend, Simon. My job, my part in this is to make things better for Tally. Your part in this, as I see it, is to make certain that your friend Simon, stays the hell out of her life.”

  Naomi’s frown deepened.

  “Don’t screw up your forehead like that,” Jack said softly. “You have a nice face, good skin. Bone structure that will last. It would be a shame to spoil it.”

  “Are you threatening me, Jack?”

  He laughed. A brief, harsh sound that startled both Naomi and Napoleon lying at her feet. “Threat?” he said. “I’m just giving good advice. No woman wants a wrinkled forehead.”

  Naomi took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The threat had been there, she was sure of it, but he was right, nothing he had said could be construed as anything other than an almost flirtatious observation...had it been made by other than Jack and in a place other than here.

  “Look, Jack” she began again, surprised and annoyed by the ease with which he had knocked her off balance. “Simon and Tally are both adults. Simon knows it’s over, he’s just having a hard time handling it and I’d guess so is Tally. What they both need is a little time and a lot of patience. What I don’t think they need is friends with the best of intentions scurrying around behind their backs trying to do what the friends might think is best.”