by T. M. Logan
The pay phone rang, tinny and loud in the enclosed booth.
Then a second time.
For a few seconds, I was completely frozen.
What?
It rang a third time, the digital display showing the last cell phone number I had called.
But the last number was—
Ben was calling me back.
52
I picked up the phone before it could ring again and held it silently to my ear, listening as hard as I could. Background noises. The sound of someone breathing. Faint traffic noise, wind blowing, a siren, distant and almost inaudible. He was taking the call outside, in the open air, maybe in the street or in a parking lot. We were connected at either end of this electronic silence, but separated in every other way possible. We might be a thousand miles away from each other. Or a few meters away.
He could be watching me right now.
“Hello?” I said quietly, pitching my voice low.
The silence stretched out further. Five seconds. Ten. I was about to speak again, but held back. Don’t show your hand.
A click, and the line went dead. Instantly, I regretted my silence.
“Don’t hang up,” I said to the dial tone. “You bastard, don’t hang up!”
I smashed the phone back into its cradle. In the distance, a siren sounded, and I had a sudden irrational sense that I’d heard it moments before, down the phone line. It felt like we were close, in the same neighborhood. As if Ben was nearby.
So close.
The sound of teenagers sniggering reached me from outside the booth, one of the lanky youths impatiently tapping a pound coin on the glass. I ignored him and rang the number straight back, using the last coins I had. This time it rang six times and went to a computerized voice asking me to leave a message. Instinct told me not to. I hung up.
There was still one number left on the list. It was the most puzzling of all: the escort agency. But all my coins were used up. My wallet was empty. There was an ATM down the street, but then the lanky teenager would claim this one remaining phone booth. And I couldn’t stop now.
Screw it. I took my cell phone out and dialed the last number, with only the germ of an idea of what I might say. It rang four times and went to voice mail, a woman’s voice, husky and deep. Hello, you’re through to VIP Escort Services. You’re just one chat away from the most sensational night of your life. Leave your number and we promise to call you right back.
I hung up, not wanting to leave my name on their answering machine.
The last number I dialed wasn’t on the list and hadn’t been on the secret phone in Mel’s handbag, but that didn’t matter—I’d known it by heart for years. I knew it better than my own.
* * *
I sat on a bench in Regent’s Park, hands in my pockets against the cold, watching the joggers as they circled the lake. The water was gray and choppy with the autumn wind, a cluster of tired-looking rowboats tied up and covered for winter next to the café.
It was here, in a rowboat on a scorching July day, that I had asked Mel to marry me. Pulled the oars in, mustered my courage, and gone down on one knee with the ring. She had been so surprised that she stood up and nearly tipped us both into the water, but I had held on to her and steadied her, sat her down, watched as she pushed the ring onto her finger, smiling, laughing with delight, the small diamond flashing in the sunlight.
Ten years ago.
I stood up as she approached, watching her walk quickly up the path, hands deep in the pockets of her long winter coat. Her face was pale and drawn. She looked exhausted.
We hugged awkwardly.
“You OK?” she breathed.
“Fine. Thanks for skipping your meeting.”
“It’s fine. I sent Andrea instead.” Her office was only a five-minute walk away from Regent’s Park. “What’s going on? What did you want to talk about?”
“Let’s sit down for a minute.”
We sat, and she put her handbag down between us, the wonderful soft scent of her perfume surrounding us both.
“What is it?” There was a wariness in her voice, a reticence, as if she were getting ready to apologize again but didn’t yet know what for. “Is it Ben? Has he called you?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“I called him. I’ve spent half an hour this morning making phone calls.”
“To Ben? What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
She looked confused.
“OK. I don’t … Should I know what you’re talking about, Joe? Who have you been phoning?”
In answer, I picked up her handbag, unzipped it, and reached inside. Under normal circumstances, she would have slapped my hand playfully away, told me off for being nosy. But not today. Today she just looked sad and defeated, and too guilt-ridden to try to stop me. So I rummaged through the contents, feeling for the cut in the inner lining.
I couldn’t feel the secret phone.
It was gone. She’d taken it out, moved it. She was going to deny it.
No. My hand closed around something flat and solid. It was there.
I fished it out and put it on the bench between us, saying nothing. Mel looked at the little cell phone, and her shoulders slumped. She couldn’t meet my eyes.
“Oh, Joe. Darling. No. That isn’t…” She shook her head, trailing off.
“Just one question, Mel.”
“OK.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“And remember what I said on Sunday about packing those two suitcases with your stuff if I think you’re lying.”
She bit her wobbling bottom lip. Nodded once.
“No lies,” I said.
“No lies,” she repeated.
“Are you still in contact with Ben? Is it still going on, even now? Is this the phone you’re using to call him on?”
“No,” she said.
“Look at me.”
She did, the first tears starting from her beautiful brown eyes. “It was,” she said, her voice catching on a sob. “While I was seeing him, but not anymore. I forgot it was there in my bag. Should have taken it out, smashed it, thrown it away. Stupid.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“Do you swear on your life?”
“Yes.”
“On our son’s life?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Not even a half second of hesitation. “Please, Joe. I swear. It was only while we were … while it was going on. Ben bought it for me when we first started seeing each other. If you’ve ever believed anything I’ve said to you, believe this: it’s finished between me and him. Finished. I’m so sorry that it ever started.”
“So you haven’t used the phone since the weekend?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it on Sunday?”
She shrugged, sniffing. “I don’t know, I thought … I’d told you everything. Everything important. I was going to draw a line under my mistake, a line under everything, and I just forgot it was in there with all the other crap I have in my handbag.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “How did you even find it?”
“Checked your bag last night when we got back. I was angry, confused, couldn’t believe we’d been so close to Ben and still missed him.”
“You thought I warned him off.”
“Yes, I did, actually.”
“Oh, Joe, I promise you, swear to you, I didn’t warn him.” She paused, desperation in her eyes. “You do believe me, don’t you?”
I looked at her for a long moment, trying to decide whether I was ready for my marriage to be over. Ready to lose my wife, my best friend.
It felt as if we had already crossed that line. That I had already lost her.
I ignored her question.
“I want you to call him again.”
53
She looked startled, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
>
“You want me to call Ben? Now?”
“Now.” I handed her the phone.
“I’m not even sure it’ll have any charge left. It’s been off for quite a few days.”
“Give it a try.”
She turned it on and put in her passcode, the one I’d guessed last night. The screen came to life, showing the battery was at 18 percent. She selected the address book, picked Ben’s cell phone number, her finger hovering over the green Call icon.
“Are you sure?” she said.
I nodded. “And put it on speakerphone.”
She hit Call and selected the speaker option.
Two rings, then it was picked up. I thought I could hear the same faint background noises, traffic noises, steady breathing, that I had heard in the phone booth an hour ago.
Mel looked at me, eyebrows raised in a question. I nodded again.
“Ben?” she said into the phone. “Are you there?”
No answer. But a rustling noise, a click.
“Ben? Talk to me. Please.”
Another click, and the line went dead. Mel breathed out a big sigh.
“Try again,” I said.
Six rings this time. No pickup. It clicked into voice mail, the automated Stepford Wives voice asking us to leave a message. Mel left a brief one asking Ben to call her back and hung up.
“What now?” she said.
I slipped the little Samsung phone into my jacket pocket. “I’m going to keep this for the time being.”
“OK. Maybe you should give it to the police or something? It might help them to find Ben.”
“Good idea.”
“I’m sorry, Joe. So sorry.”
I gestured toward the lake, a painful lump in my throat.
“Remember when I took you out on that rowboat, ten years ago?”
“Of course,” she said in a soft voice.
“You nearly tipped us both into the water.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Thought you were going to jump out and swim for it before I could—”
“Joe.” She said it abruptly, cutting me off. Her face was paler than ever.
“Yes?”
She looked away from me, and I thought she was going to cry again. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God.”
“What is it, Mel?”
She shook her head and said nothing.
“Mel,” I said again. “What is it?”
She paused for the longest time, gathering herself, gathering her strength. Seeming to come to a decision.
Finally, she said, “I need to tell you something.”
“OK.”
“Something important.”
“OK,” I said again, the now familiar feeling of creeping dread worming its way into my stomach.
She closed her eyes. Swallowed. Took another deep breath. “Joe, I should have said this before, right back at the beginning. I wish I had.”
My cell phone chimed loudly. A text.
Call me ASAP re: police
1:29 P.M. Peter Larssen
“Who’s that?” Mel asked.
“The lawyer. Something about the police. It can wait.”
“No, you should call him. Go on.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
I dialed his number and got the busy signal. Hung up, tried again. Same result. Put the phone back in my pocket.
“Sorry. I interrupted you.”
She looked away from me. A moment ago, it seemed she was about to open up, but now the shutters had come down, and her face seemed closed somehow.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“You said it was important.”
She stared out over the gray water of the lake, not looking at me. “Joe, do you think I’m like my mum?”
“You have her eyes.”
“Sometimes I think however much we try to avoid walking the same path as our parents, we always end up repeating their mistakes. One way or another.”
“You’re not your mum. We all have to find our own way in life.”
She stood up, wrapping her coat more tightly around her.
“I should be getting back to the office.”
I stood too, and she moved as if to hug me again, then thought better of it and settled for a peck on the cheek.
“See you later,” I said, more out of habit than anything else.
She nodded and turned away. I watched as she walked quickly back up the path, until it curved away behind a stand of trees and she was out of sight.
54
William and I went to the candy store on the way home from school. Buying him candy usually cheered me up. Then the park for a quick go around the swings, slides, and climbing frames. While my son played, I called Adam’s number. I needed to talk to a friend, someone who knew me. Someone who had stuck up for me in the past. He was a smart guy, and I needed his take on everything that was going on.
His cell phone rang three times and went to voice mail. Second time it rang only once before Adam’s recorded voice kicked in. I left a message asking him to call me.
William and I made our weekly visit to the library next, where I had been trying—without success so far—to get him interested in books other than those he was reading at school. We went along the shelf on the ages five-to-seven bookcase, me pulling books half-out and testing the titles on him.
“The Tiger Who Came to Tea?”
“Got.”
“One Hundred and One Fairy Tales?”
“No.”
“Mr. Grumpy?”
“Had that one at school.”
“Well, what would you like?” I asked.
“’Spicable Me.”
“That’s a film, matey.”
“Can we get the film, then?”
“They don’t do films here, just books.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but I knew he’d get more out of one good book than ten DVDs.
“Why?”
“It’s a library.”
He frowned as if this was a ridiculous answer. “Lucas has ’Spicable Me.”
I was about to tell him why a good book was better than Despicable Me any day, when my phone rang in my pocket, vibrating against my thigh. A library assistant gave me a stern look as I took my phone out and checked the display, thinking it would be Adam calling me back. But it wasn’t.
“Joe?” It was Mel, tension in her voice.
We had not spoken since lunchtime at Regent’s Park, but now she sounded stressed again.
“Hi,” I said quietly. “You OK?”
“The police are here. They want to talk to you.”
I suddenly remembered Larssen’s text from earlier. Shit. I’d forgotten to call him back again.
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
I put my hand out to William. Obediently, he put his small hand in mine, and we walked quickly out of the library, past a sign on the wall that said, “Cellphone–Free Zone.”
“They took their time,” I said. “I called them yesterday.”
“You called them?”
“Yes. To report the break-in.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We had a break-in yesterday, someone came into the house. Not someone: Ben.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” She sounded frightened.
“I was going to tell you, when the time was right. But I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“Well, I’m pretty fucking close to freaking out now, Joe! The house is full of police!”
Her voice was edged with panic, close to hysteria.
“OK, OK,” I said. “Try to calm down. How many police are there?”
“A lot. A dozen, maybe more. They’re going through everything.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Looking for what?”
“They won’t tell me. They’re taking things away.”
“What things?”
“Our things.”
; “All right, I’m leaving now. Be home in ten minutes.”
William climbed up into his car seat in the back of my Hyundai.
“Can I eat my Haribos, Daddy?” he said, holding the packet up.
“No. Yes. Just have half, OK?”
“How many’s half?”
“Just don’t eat them all, Wills.”
We pulled out onto the High Street, a numbness in my chest.
I felt like I was going to be blindsided again.
Not this time. This time I’ll be ready.
I slotted the cell phone into its hands-free cradle and rang Peter Larssen, leaving a message to call me urgently.
Mel had not been exaggerating about the police—they were all over the place. Milling about in the front garden in white coveralls, a couple of them examining Mel’s car, a steady stream going in and out of the open front door like worker ants. A flatbed was parked at the curb ramp laid down to the street ready for a car to be taken away. William was wide-eyed as I unstrapped him from the car seat. He took it all in, mouth slightly open.
I held out my hand, but he didn’t move.
“Police,” he said quietly. “Police are here.”
“Come on, Wills. Let’s go inside.”
“Why are police at my house?”
“They’re looking after Mummy,” I said.
He still wouldn’t get out of his seat. “Who are the white men?”
I didn’t know who he meant for a moment, then he gestured toward one of the scene-of-crime officers in white coveralls.
“They’re police too, matey. Come on.”
I lifted him out of the car seat and set him down on the pavement. As we walked up the drive to my front door, a scene-of-crime woman emerged wearing full protective gear, including gloves, face mask, and plastic overshoes, as if she were coming out of a serial killer’s house. She had something under her arm, wrapped in a clear plastic Ziploc bag.