The Actuary

by K T Bowes

  Chapter 19

  Emma slept fitfully and woke before Nicky. She crept from the bed and sneaked into the hallway, cursing the creaking floorboards in the darkness. The open space felt cool on her naked thighs and she let out a gasp of fear as her feet contacted something soft.

  “Sorry, sorry.” Rohan’s voice was a frantic whisper as he stopped her falling, placing his palms on her stomach. Emma pushed herself back upright using his broad shoulders and stalked to her bedroom, shoving the door closed behind her. When she emerged from her ensuite bathroom having got rid of the uncomfortable ache in her bladder, Rohan sat on her bed in his pyjama bottoms and socks. His head hung miserably and his eyes were red rimmed and tired.

  “Oh, sod off, Rohan!” Emma bit, tiredness staining her nature and making her spiteful. He clutched a sleeping bag in his hand, a khaki coloured swathe of squashy material which draped over the bed and touched the floor boards. “You seriously slept on the hall floor outside Nicky’s bedroom?” Her voice held scorn.

  Rohan shrugged. “I finished the name tags.”

  “You laid out there all night to tell me that?”

  “No.” Rohan narrowed his eyes and pouted. Emma struggled not to find him adorable, sitting on her bed, his chest bare and his blonde hair tousled. “I didn’t put it past you to do a runner. You did it once before.”

  Emma’s eyes flashed and she rounded on him, trying to keep her voice from a shout. “Are you for real? Were you not listening to me last night? Your mother’s evil and she tried to force me to get rid of my son. I don’t want her near me or him. We’re leaving today!”

  “Please don’t.” Rohan stood up and Emma saw his difficulty with the action. When he took a step forward, he winced, his legs tangled in the sleeping bag. Emma looked at his eyes in the eerie light and they shone from his face in an agony of wordless pleading. Up close in the light from the small hall lamp, Rohan’s muscular chest was a myriad of wounds across his torso of varying length and ugliness. In the dull light they looked red and shadowed. A huge tattoo depicted a cross on his right arm.  “Please don’t take him away from me, Em. I don’t want to lose either of you, not again.”

  Emma exhaled loudly in frustration and shivered in the breath of the cold morning. She heard the central heating kick in, pumping hot water through the radiators which clicked and clanked around the house, accompanied by the familiar whooshing sound. “What’s the time?” she asked, mentally calculating her escape.

  “Five,” Rohan answered, the mechanical timetable of the house meaning he didn’t need to check the sports watch on his wrist. He reached out and touched her arm. “Get into bed for a minute. You’re freezing.”

  Emma looked behind him at the soft pillows and duvet, a final shudder driving her into its comfort. She shifted across to the window side as far away from Rohan as possible, realising her mistake when he got in next to her. But he didn’t touch her and she ached with an internal agony she didn’t understand.

  “Talk to me?” he begged. “Explain. I won’t say anything, I promise. I’ll just listen.”

  Emma let out a scoffing sound and her face if he could have seen it, was a mask of bitterness. “Really, Ro? So this one time, you’ll listen to me? That’ll be a first. You’ve never listened to anyone in your life. That’s been the whole problem.” She lay still in the darkness and heard the sound of Rohan running his hands through his hair and scratching his scalp in his classic stress tell. Nicky did it too and Emma’s inner self squeezed harder on her heart until she wanted to gasp out loud.

  “Please?” he pleaded.

  Emma waited a few minutes, ordering her thoughts and allowing the painful memories to surface. Her voice wobbled with the effort of releasing them, when she finally began. “Anton said the man your mother organised was a Ukrainian butcher who performed back street abortions to order. We left straight away. He drove me to Aberystwyth and took me to Lucya, your father’s mother.” Emma heard Rohan exhale and waited, but he kept his promise and said nothing. “Lucya was with me in the hospital when Nicky was born, during my first term in sixth form. She looked after him while I went to classes and helped me in every way possible. It was a good school and allowed me to come and go as I needed. I did well there, despite everything. Anton smuggled things from Alanya’s house so I could start again - my birth certificate, passport, results and certificates from my old school. He visited often but found it hard to carry on the pretence with you and I could see how much it cost him. He tried so hard to prove your mother killed both our fathers but he never could. There was something else he wouldn’t talk to me about; another death which upset him and he made me promise never to let Alanya see Nicky. He was certain she used some kind of poison but she was too clever and covered her tracks. I did a three year degree at the university in the town and worked part time in a cafe to supplement our benefits. I got a job at the National Library of Wales and worked there for four months in the summer before Nicky started school. I received a call from his playschool one afternoon to say Lucya hadn’t arrive to collect him.” Emma stopped and gulped painfully.

  “I picked him up and rushed home and...she lay in the hallway in her shoes and coat with her handbag still over her arm.” Emma hiccoughed through the tears, seeing the heart breaking vision in the secret compartment of her mind where she kept her worst memories. “She looked so peaceful. In her hand were cookies in a little pot for Nicky; his favourite chocolate ones. She said the energy helped him walk home and she’d baked them that morning. I was too late to help her and it was worse...even worse than you leaving me when I needed you most.” Emma’s hands shook and writhed on the mattress and she bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. She felt the warm sensation of Rohan’s fingers covering hers and was grateful. Still he said nothing.

  “I had no-one then and a son to raise. I should have stayed because I had a job, but council workers turned up a few days after the funeral. The council owned Lucya’s house and had no idea we lived there with her. Her death ended the lease and they wanted to renovate it and put another family in, so I was homeless. They gave us a week to get out. I felt so shocked. I grew to love Aberystwyth but suddenly everywhere I turned, I saw her smiling face and it became like a noose around my neck. I had nobody to mind Nicky for me in the holidays and I couldn’t think straight. I wish now I’d gone to my employer and asked for time off, found somewhere else to live and asked for help. But I didn’t. Anton was lovely. He stuck around after the funeral and tried to convince me to stay in Wales. When I wouldn’t listen, he drove Nicky and me to Lincoln and rented a cottage for a few weeks. I got the job at the school and secured the council house. I let him think I was sorted, but when he saw the house and the estate and...Fat Brian...he went crazy. He tried to give me money but I wouldn’t take it so he visited us every few months. I suspect he paid people on the estate to make sure Nicky and I were ok. We settled into a routine and I was safe there. Until Susan’s wedding...”

  Emma heard Rohan rustle in the sheets next to her, digesting his private agony. He sighed. “I had no idea. I wrote you so many letters from Afghanistan; all my hopes and dreams. I organised a married quarter for us on camp and had this image of you feeling excited about moving into our own house. I never heard from you and then I...there was an explosion and I was injured. I have this memory of calling for you over and over. The army kept telling me they couldn’t find you. When I got back to the UK, I asked for you and Mum turned up instead. She said you’d run away with some other guy. At first I refused to believe her, but as time went on and you didn’t come I had to accept it. I was devastated. Still am really.” His voice was low and laden with misery.

  “Do you think she read the letters?” Emma asked, squeezing his fingers in fear. “She’ll know we got married and she’ll guess that Nicky...”

  “Hey, don’t worry.” Rohan turned onto his side and put his other arm across Emma’s stomach. “Anton gave them all back to me at the hospital, unopened. I was furious at him becau
se I thought he took them out of jealousy. I shouted at him and he handed me a piece of paper and said I had to find you. I figured it was your address. The alarms sounded on his monitors and the doctors shooed me out of the room. We never got to talk about any of it. He died later that night and I never got to say sorry.” Rohan gulped and Emma closed her eyes in the darkness, sensing the waves of pain reaching out towards her. “I’ve been such an idiot.”

  “Did you know Anton was gay?” Emma asked and felt Rohan nod by the vibration on the bed.

  “Yeah. I actually found that more believable than the thought of Mama being a serial killer.” He snuffed, but not in humour. “If you were both so sure, why did you never go to the cops?”

  “Anton tried. I’ve got the case number somewhere. There was no evidence and certainly not enough to start exhuming bodies and doing extra post-mortems. He was convinced she did it and that’s why he stayed away from her all these years.” Emma sat up in bed with a gasp. “You don’t think she killed Anton, do you?”

  “No, Em! Not unless she’s worked out a way of giving people bowel cancer without them realising. I’m not sure what to think about all this.”

  “Oh. Ok, sorry, but you must understand why Nicky’s not safe around her now. Or you.” Emma shifted down in the bed and shivered.

  They were quiet for what felt like ages. Then Rohan spoke. “Em?”

  She shifted on her side to see his face expression by the orange glow coming through the window. He let go of her fingers and held both arms out. “Can I hold you, please?” His voice sounded too small for a man over six feet tall and her maternalism overrode any other resistant thought process. Emma inched slowly across the bed, her cold hands contacting Rohan’s firm stomach first as she edged towards him. Emma sank her head into his armpit, overwhelmed by the comforting familiarity of his smell, the same deodorant and the same musky-Rohan-scent. The old army sleeping bag had left the faint institutional tinge on his skin and it was exactly as Emma remembered with the ache of fondness. Devilment made her run her fingers over his taut muscles and she felt him tighten underneath her and groan. “Rohan?” she whispered, her breath tickling his pectoral muscle under her lips. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you got hurt. Nobody told me.”

  “It’s fine,” he replied softly in the darkness.

  “Rohan?” Emma’s voice came again, a hushed confidence. “Anton registered Nicky’s birth for me. I was really unwell afterwards. I was young and I lost a lot of blood. He signed as the child’s father and I was so mad. He said he was only trying to help.” She felt Rohan’s body deflate underneath her and didn’t know when to leave things alone; her one defining flaw. She let her fingers wander over his stomach to the line of hair disappearing into his pants, playing around the waistband. “Ro?” she whispered and leaned up on one elbow.

  Rohan turned towards her and dragged her into him. “Emma, shut up!” he hissed, crushing her lips with his. His hand in the small of her back felt good and she arched into him, yanking her knickers down under the covers. Emma pushed herself on top of Rohan’s firm body and heard the bed groan underneath them as she took control, kissing her husband and reminding herself who she really was. Gone were the two fumbling teenagers in a secret marriage bed as Emma ran her hands through Rohan’s hair, her breasts pressed hard into his chest. She heard him take quick breaths through his nose as her tongue danced with his and she felt his hardness against her hip, his cotton pyjama pants bruising her skin. Rohan put one hand firmly behind Emma’s head and the other stroked the soft flesh of her bare bottom as she kissed him with maniacal force.

  “Mummy?” Nicky’s voice cut into the darkness from the hallway, drifting through the closed bedroom door. “I’m lost!”

  Emma froze in horror, her heart plummeting from its soaring high. She pushed with trembling hands off Rohan’s body and ran to the door on shaking legs, pulling it open at the same time as yanking her tee shirt down around her bum. “Hey baby, what’s the matter?”

  “I waked up and you was gone. I couldn’t remember the way and I need the toilet.”

  “It’s here, Nick, come on. I’ll take you.” Emma glanced over her shoulder as she led her son in the opposite direction from her bedroom, down onto the split level landing and then up the next flight of stairs to the bathroom.

  “Wait for me?” he pleaded as Emma agreed and sank onto the cold wooden stairs, listening to the bathroom sounds inside.

  “Flush!” she reminded him as she heard the tap running and the soap falling into the basin. The belated wooshing of water congratulated her on her prompting.

  “Can I get a shower!” Nicky called happily. “I’m waked up now.”

  “Well, I’m not sitting here all morning!” Emma called back grumpily. “I’ll turn the hall light on and I’m sure you’ll be fine now you’re properly awake.”

  “Fanks Mum!” came the reply as the shower spurted to life.

  Emma laid her head back against the wall and groaned. She jumped as Rohan’s strong hand appeared in her peripheral vision and she took hold of it, letting him pull her to her feet. The stairs made her higher than him by a head and he pulled her in close to him, winding her hand behind his neck. He buried his face in her breasts and turned his head sideways, gripping her around the waist. “Please stay, Em?” he whispered. “I’ll do whatever it takes. She won’t come near you or my son again. I’ll make sure of it.” Rohan tipped his head back and Emma watched the coloured prisms from the stained glass window to his right, speckle his face with pretty shades of sunlight as the day began. She felt the tracksuit pants he had hastily donned, tickling the skin on her thighs and enjoyed the feeling of his strong body wrapped around hers. Emma rested her chin on his shoulder and ran her hands up the back of his hair, feeling him shiver under her touch.

  “How can you ban your own mother from your house and your life? It won’t work.”

  Rohan gripped Emma’s forearms and pushed her upright, staring into her eyes with fearful intensity. “Just watch me!” he told her. He reached up and placed a burning kiss on her lips which left them feeling swollen. He flicked his tongue into her mouth just enough to leave her wanting more and then let go, striding down the stairs in front of her. Emma heard a happy bark from the kitchen as Farrell cranked up his anticipation levels to seriously excited in the kitchen. She smiled and shook her head.

  “Are you going to London again today?” she called after him, trying to control her raging hormones.

  Rohan nodded. “Just for the day. I’m back later.”

  “Hurry up, Nicky!” Emma warned, her voice betraying her emotional turmoil. “Don’t use all the hot water.”