The Flavours of Love

by Dorothy Koomson

  In the distance, I hear it. What I’ve been waiting for, the high, insistent, persistent whine of the approaching police sirens. As they draw closer, the sound definitely coming towards us, I throw open the kitchen door and flick on the light, momentarily dazzling myself with the brightness bouncing off the white surfaces and white floor. The figure at the back door is small, slender, disguised a little by the mottled glass. The person freezes for a second before they snap to their senses, drop what’s in their hands, and then run off into the darkness of our garden.

  I’m petrified, frozen where I stand. I know who it is that has targeted us in this way.

  The night around our house is now a circus of sirens and blue flashing lights and car doors being opened and slammed shut. There’s a loud, momentarily terrifying knock on the door, above the crackle of radios giving directions.

  I can’t move. I stand on the stain in my kitchen, staring at the place where Audra, the woman who murdered Joel, was attempting to break into our home.

  XXIV

  ‘I’m sorry we’ve had to meet again under these circumstances, Mrs Mackleroy,’ the he one from all that time ago says.

  ‘It’s almost worth it to hear you say my name right first time,’ I reply.

  The others, still in pyjamas, wrapped in layers of terror, are all in the living room together, huddled up on the sofa with Aunty Betty as the centrepiece the children cling to. It should be me, I want to be doing that right now, but I need to be here, giving a statement. I have to do this away from the children because I do not want to add to this horror, give any type of shape to their nightmares.

  The he one manages a weak smile while he keeps an eye on his colleagues who march in and out of the kitchen, dragging mud through from where they have been on the lawn, in the flowerbeds, in the vegetable patch, apparently searching for clues. The world outside is brightening; day approaches without thought for what people like us have been through in the darker hours. None of us are going anywhere this morning – I’ll have to take another day off work.

  ‘Are you able to tell us anything?’ the he one asks. He’s a detective now, and an altered man. Maybe as part of his new role he has been on sensitivity training courses, or maybe he’s been told off by a few more victims of crime, or maybe he’s simply grown up. Whichever it is, his manner is different, genuinely gentle instead of aggressive and bullying in a quiet voice.

  I tell him what I know and he confirms what I thought – that the person was trying keys – by holding up in a plastic evidence bag well over fifty keys (not only deadbolt ones, but Yale ones, too) all slotted onto a keyring the size of a saucer.

  ‘Do you think whoever it was regularly takes a bunch of keys to randomly try to break into someone’s house?’ I ask.

  ‘To be honest, I haven’t ever heard of that,’ he admits. ‘What I have heard of, though, is someone who has the keys to a house but can’t remember which key it is, taking the lot with them with the intention of trying them all until one fits.’

  He’s only being honest, but that reply releases a shower of ice that starts at my neck and pools at the base of my spine. I didn’t change the locks after Joel died. I eventually had his keys returned to me along with his wallet and mobile and clothes he wore that day, but I didn’t change the locks. It didn’t occur to me to do so, nor did it occur to me to even check that all his keys were there. I had a bunch of keys and they were simply keys, nothing unusual or worthy of note beyond being his.

  ‘Do you have any idea who it might be? Did you change the locks when you moved in, for example?’

  ‘Yes, it was one of the first things we did.’ I pause. ‘I didn’t change them after Joel …’

  ‘Oh, right. I don’t suppose you would. I’m sure I wouldn’t think it necessary myself if I thought I’d got the keys back. I wouldn’t notice, really, if they were all there.’

  ‘I’m going to have to change all the locks,’ I say tiredly.

  ‘Get some window locks fitted as well, on both floors.’

  ‘You think that’s necessary?’ Are you saying we’re in real danger even though you don’t know about the letters and Phoebe’s secret about that day?

  ‘It’s the minimum people should have, I think,’ he says, gently.

  ‘It never ends, does it?’ I say to myself but out loud, so he thinks I’m talking to him.

  ‘Mrs Mackleroy, I’m sorry we didn’t catch the person who killed your husband. I often think about the case, and get the file out to see if there’s anything we might have missed. That’s why I came here tonight when I heard it was your name and address.’

  He is a different person. I can probably trust him now. I can probably get the letters out, tell him about Phoebe, explain why I couldn’t come forward before. He would probably understand. Then I think of Phoebe.

  My tall, willowy daughter who loves to wear her hair in bunches and spends her time consumed by her phone or whizzing through her homework. She is in a state of constant, unrelenting fear at the moment. I know because when I first got pregnant I felt the same, and I’d been trying for a baby with the man I wanted to marry. She is too unstable to go through police questioning right now. No matter how gentle or patient, she will clam up and will retreat into herself like she did in the time after that day. If she was further along the decision-making process, if she didn’t act as if she constantly hated me, if I knew I had Fynn around as back-up, I could tell the he one everything, I could give them the information that might lead to them catching her and making her explain what happened, why she did it, if he asked for his children before he died.

  Those are the scales I’m constantly trying to balance. One the one side of the scale, I would have the answers to those questions, I would see Joel’s murderer put in prison. On the other side of the scale I have my daughter’s well-being.

  ‘If you remember anything, Mrs Mackleroy, or think of something, you can always call me at the station.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘We’ve got a bit more to do here, then we’ll get out of your hair.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’ I stand and go to the living room to join my family.

  XXV

  ‘Let me guess, the Abominable Snowman pitched up in your fridge this morning and you need to wait in to get the freezer door fixed?’ Kevin says nastily.

  ‘No, Kevin, someone tried to break into our house last night and the police only left an hour ago and none of us have had any sleep.’

  He sighs. The depth of his concern reaches a sigh. ‘I’ve got into work and worked a full day every day this week, Saffron, do you know why?’ he asks.

  Because you have a wife who does everything for you including your ironing and, I suspect, wiping your bottom so you have nothing else to worry about? ‘No, Kevin, I don’t.’

  ‘I am committed to my work, Saffron, that’s why. Your attendance record over the last fortnight has made me question your commitment.’

  ‘Has it?’ I reply.

  ‘We’ve got the Mallory and Chilton end-of-year debriefing today. You’re meant to be briefing me and Edgar on the meeting, now you’re telling me you can’t because of another drama in your life. Why wouldn’t I question your commitment?’

  ‘Technically, Kevin, I should have nothing to do with this meeting,’ I say, pleasantly, placidly, like Joel would. ‘I’m not top-level staff and I’m not even supposed to have seen half of the files I have. You could get into a lot of trouble for even showing me that stuff let alone having me do all the actual reports when, with my title, I wasn’t allowed to sign the mandatory confidentiality agreement before we took this job.

  ‘It’s not my fault Edgar still can’t do his job. And it’s not my fault that someone terrified the life out of my family last night by trying to break in.’

  He contemplates what I have subtly told him – that if he pushes me, I will squeal about him violating company policy by having a junior look after top client accounts – and eventually says, ‘Where are the files?
’

  ‘On your desk, like I told you last night before I left. The presentations are all printed out, the slides are all on the stick on your desk, the room is booked with refreshments as well. It’s all sorted. So, good luck. I hope it goes well.’

  ‘You’d better be in tomorrow,’ he says and hangs up.

  Odious, weasel-faced toad, I think as I wander out into the corridor from the living room. Everyone else is asleep upstairs, my list of jobs before I can even contemplate sitting down are: waiting on the locksmith the he one recommended; calling work; and calling the children’s schools.

  I stop and stare when I step out into the corridor.

  On the brown coir mat behind the door is a long, rectangular cream envelope addressed to:

  Saffron Mackleroy

  Wednesday, 24 April

  (For today)

  Don’t call the police again, please.

  Don’t call the police again and I won’t come into your house again. Is that a deal?

  I hope you haven’t done anything silly like tell them about me or show them the letters? I suspect if you had, they would have come for me by now. Although I’m not where they’d think to find me.

  Don’t call the police again. You really didn’t have to do that. It’s like I explained, I find it hard sometimes that I have nothing of his, that I missed out on so much by not being able to be a part of laying him to rest. I simply wanted to be in a place where he often was. Where he used to spend a lot of his time. He told me that he did most of the cooking. Did you do most of the eating, then? (Sorry, that was just our little joke we had.)

  Don’t be upset by this: but I can’t imagine him with someone like you, sometimes. You don’t seem his type.

  Listen, I only wanted to be in his kitchen for a few seconds. Maybe touch a couple of the things he touched. It’s not like I would have come upstairs and watched you while you slept. It’s not like I would have done anything to you.

  Really, don’t call the police again. If they come looking for me, they won’t find me but I will know and I will make sure you pay before I disappear for ever.

  I’m not threatening you, far from it. I AM saying that you can’t be everywhere at once. Will it be you, Phoebe, Zane or your lovely mother? She’s at home all day, isn’t she? I’d hate for anything awful to happen to her.

  Don’t call the police again and we’ll both be happy, we’ll both feel safe.

  A

  XXVI

  They arrive at the same time but from different directions, probably for the same reason – to find out why my children weren’t at school today.

  With Imogen I can understand: she won’t have been told by the school why Zane wasn’t in, but Mr Bromsgrove, I’m sure they would have told. Maybe that’s why he’s here: he is concerned after hearing what happened in the baldest of terms – there was an attempted break-in and we were all up half the night – so had to check we were all still in one piece.

  The other three slept until gone three-thirty and then were grumpy, hungry and subdued. I made them pizza and allowed them to eat in the living room with the television off as they all argued about what to watch. (Which defeated the point of eating in the living room but none of us were willing to brave the kitchen.) Now, they are all in their rooms, steeling themselves for the night ahead in case it happens again. I want to tell them that it won’t happen again, that I’m not going to call the police, that I can’t take that risk with any of them. It’s wrong, of course, to rely upon the word of a killer, but for now, that’s all I can do.

  I watch Imogen and Lewis do the ‘After you’, ‘No after you’ dance at the gate, until Lewis says something that makes Imogen lower her head and giggle in that way she does when she’s flirting with someone. I watch them because I’ve been standing here all day, looking out the window, trying to work out where Audra is watching me from, how she can know so much about us. I’m sure she saw the locksmith/security man arrive and worked out by the amount of time they spent here that I’d changed the locks – minimum – and was having other bolts and locks installed, too. I’d love to have CCTV and burglar alarms fitted, to put bars on the windows and doors, but that would scare my family. It wouldn’t make them feel safe, it would simply underline the fact we are vulnerable, that I believe it’s going to happen again.

  Imogen sashays up the steps, trying to impress Lewis with the sway of her body that she keeps trim by only eating a set number of calories a day and exercising, except when she’s doing the latest diet and trying to convince me and anyone who’ll listen it’s the answer to all our problems. (I never engage in such conversations because that way madness lies.) Lewis, to his credit, doesn’t watch her as she hopes he will, he turns his back and remains on the bottom step, until Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! sounds at my door. Even if I hadn’t seen her, I would know it was her from the knock – she always slips that extra tap in.

  ‘Hello.’ I turn on the smile, try not to let her know anything is wrong before she has got over the doorstep.

  ‘Hi, Saffy!’ she trills. ‘Just thought I’d drop by and see if everything is all right since Zane wasn’t at school today! And, look! I bumped into Mr Bromsgrove, Phoebe’s teacher!’

  They both enter the house and I usher them into the living room; I’m not ready to share the kitchen right now. I’ve spent most of the day avoiding it unless necessary.

  ‘It’s nice of you both to come over,’ I say. ‘I mean, it’s not as if there’s been an invention where you can stay in your nice cosy house and still contact me or anything. That slacker Alexander Graham Bell needs to get a move on, we could really use something like that nowadays.’ My sarcasm is unnecessary, but it niggles a little that neither of them thought that calling might be better.

  ‘Ah, yes, should have called instead,’ Lewis says. ‘Sorry, I heard what happened and I wanted to check you were all OK. Stupid of me to not call.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ Imogen asks, overtly put out that she’s the last in the loop.

  ‘We’re all fine. I want to reassure you of that. We’re all fine. Someone tried to break in last night,’ I say. ‘We’re all fine. The police came along and scared them away. We’re all fine.’ I repeat that because I know she’s going to say:

  ‘OH MY GOD! That’s awful! I’ve always been so worried about you not having a man around the house and it’s all come true.’ Her body is trembling and anyone would think it was her house that had been broken into, her that’d spent the whole day having the locks changed and security ‘upgraded’ instead of her simply being a drama queen of the highest order.

  ‘We’re fine, Imogen,’ I repeat. ‘We’re all fine. Tired, but fine.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Lewis mouths at me.

  ‘I’d imagine so,’ she says. ‘Oh, Sweetheart, you must be so scared.’

  ‘I’m not, actually. Just tired.’

  ‘That’ll be the shock talking,’ she says to Lewis.

  And there it is, that realisation that he is male. He is young. He isn’t wearing a wedding ring. It dawns in her eyes first, then overtakes the smile on her face. She knows exactly what to do next. Exactly what I need.

  ‘I actually came over to invite you to dinner Friday night, Saffy,’ she says. She revolves slowly and dangerously towards Lewis. ‘Why don’t you come as well, Mr Bromsgrove? It’ll be lovely to spend some adult time with Saffy and I can quiz you about the secondary schools in Brighton and Hove. If you don’t mind, of course.’

  ‘I haven’t said I can make it, yet,’ I mention as a by-the-way.

  ‘Of course you can make it!’ she says with a wave of her hand. ‘What else would you be doing on a Friday night?’

  ‘Staying home with my traumatised children.’

  ‘You won’t be out late. And besides, I think it’d do Phoebe some good for you to show her that you trust her to look after her little brother – especially after the trouble at the school the other day?’ The last part of her sentence is directed at Lewis, to see if he’ll te
ll her what she needs to know. She receives a blank expression from him. ‘So, Mr Bromsgrove, will you come?’

  ‘If Mrs Mackleroy can make it, then I’m sure I can.’

  ‘Perfect! Eight-thirty at my house! Saffy has the address!’

  ‘I haven’t said I can make it,’ I remind her as she pulls her small, pink leather handbag onto her shoulder.

  ‘Of course you can make it.’ She is excellent at dismissing me. Excellent. In two steps she is beside Lewis, within a second she has hooked her arm through his, scaring the life out of him. His alarmed eyes frantically seek out mine. You should have called, I want to say to him. ‘Mr Bromsgrove, would you mind awfully walking me to my car? I’m a bit nervous now I know what’s happened to Saffy.’

  ‘Erm, yes, of course. I’m glad you’re all OK, Mrs Mackleroy,’ he says.

  ‘Call her Saffy, everyone else does,’ Imogen says.

  Actually, almost no one does, I want to say, but don’t bother.

  What she is doing, by forcing him to walk her to her car, is to put me in a lose–lose situation. I can’t persuade him right now to let me cancel dinner tomorrow night, so to do so I’ll have to call him later. Which would be fine with her because we’d be talking on the phone in the later hours. And, by the time I ring him anyway, she will have given him the ‘Saffy doesn’t get out much, I think an adult meal with the four of us – my husband, Ray, will join us of course – will do her some good, don’t you? After everything poor Saffy has been through, and after this latest trauma, don’t you think she deserves some fun?’ And she knows Lewis, by turning up tonight, isn’t the sort of bastard who’d disagree with her. By the time I get Lewis on the phone, Imogen will have convinced him that allowing me to cancel Friday night’s dinner would make him as heinous a person as the one who killed my husband.