The Loving Husband

by Christobel Kent

  She swallowed. ‘Emme?’

  ‘Is it about Daddy?’ said Emme, solemn, not moving, and Fran took a deep breath.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, then quickly, thinking, Don’t tell her any more, mustn’t frighten her, ‘Just stay up there. Please. I won’t be long.’

  She walked past Gerard in the kitchen, quickly; she didn’t want him to see how afraid she was. She was at the door and turning the handle, dizzy with panic but still moving, and then DS Gerard was behind her in the yard. She kept on, one foot behind the other, and then they were past the shed and the horizon yawned. The huge sky was streaked across with the remains of rain cloud, tinged pink towards the east: this was what Nathan had wanted. The big skies, his kingdom. The pale tent gleamed at its centre; a man in a white hooded boiler suit straightened from what looked like a toolbox to look at them. Another suited figure emerged from the tent to stand beside him.

  She must have staggered because the horizon tipped and then Gerard was next to her, with his hand tight on her arm. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. She wanted to shake him off but the pressure on her arm steadied her, and she stood stiffly. She couldn’t look at the white tent but wherever she looked it sat at the edge of her vision. ‘This can wait,’ Gerard said. ‘We can come back with the FLO later, the weather’s going to hold.’

  Fran stared at him. ‘No,’ she said, clenched. She looked towards the poplars and for a second she thought he was there, standing motionless between the leafless trees. She froze.

  ‘See something?’ asked Gerard, quickly. The row of bare trees. No one there.

  ‘No,’ she said, with a gasp, ‘no, I … nothing.’ She began to walk stiffly across the yellow grass, soaked with last night’s rain. The sound of run-off trickling in the ditches in her ears, under the distant hum of traffic they couldn’t see. The chicken barn’s roof had a dull sheen, and the field under its stubble was wet, sticky: she heard Gerard make a sound of disgust, lifting a shoe clogged with mud.

  ‘The pub.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘He’d been to the pub, he came home. The Queen’s Head. Maybe someone there … maybe something happened. Maybe someone followed him home.’

  ‘You did tell us,’ said Gerard, and she thought his eyes slid away from her. ‘We’ll go through it again at the station.’ He gestured ahead. ‘One thing at a time.’

  Her heart pounding, she worked her way round, walking away from the men along the ditch to the place where there was a plank set over it. The road was beyond them, perhaps half a mile away, the row of trees – she fixed her eyes on them as she walked, watching. The same road that other car had been travelling on, the car whose headlights had swept the flat land at some time after two in the morning. That morning: it seemed to her not just longer ago but in a different life.

  One foot then the other and there, where it was dark behind her eyes, the figures moved in the landscape, two a.m. Nathan walked out across the field to the ditch, someone followed him – or waited for him. She thought of the blood, the front of his body soaked, blood congealing sticky on her hands as she pulled at his deadweight.

  She stopped, trying to subdue the shivering that rose inside her and failing, looked from the tent to the road, gauging angles, distance.

  ‘There.’ She pointed and Gerard was kneeling in the mud, he was looking.

  ‘Right,’ he said, interested at last. ‘Yes.’

  When they got back to the kitchen DS Gerard had asked her if she’d be all right to take Emme to school on her own. ‘Ed can come with you,’ he said, shifting as she fed Emme’s arms into the sleeves of her coat at the table.

  Out in the black field, standing beside him, she had heard his breath catch and accelerate as he peered down between his knees into the clogged stubble. ‘Well,’ he said, a hand up to shade his eyes, ‘you’re sure this would be where you saw him?’ A pause, the hand shifting a little so she caught a glimpse of his face, wary. ‘And definitely a man, right? A male?’

  How could she be sure? The whole night ballooned in her head like a nightmare: none of it seemed real. ‘I think so,’ was all she had managed, as she had knelt beside him to see.

  Emme had been waiting for them, solemn, in the kitchen.

  Gerard seemed uneasy around Emme: she was quiet. ‘I’ll be OK,’ Fran told him. ‘I’ll be quick.’ And she had almost run round the side of the house pulling Emme, to give her no chance to stop and turn and look.

  They hurried, out of the village and along the wet road under the big sky, towards the school. It was on the edge of the next village, no more than a low-lying cluster of buildings and a copse. Leaning into the wet wind Fran held Emme’s hand tight, tugging her onwards, past puddles, past roadkill, a bird no more than a smear of feathers. In the buggy Ben was too startled by their jolting pace to protest.

  Fran kept up breathless conversation with Emme as they went, so as not to think, answering questions she’d usually let drift: Yes, no, cows could sleep standing up, it would be fish fingers for supper, babies learned to walk when they were one.

  Where’s the hospital? stopped her in her tracks. ‘In town. Not far.’ Holding her breath for the next question, the question she would have to give a real answer to: What’s in that tent? What were you looking at, what was that man picking up? But Emme went quiet then, and then they were in the playground, and Fran was pushing the wooden gate open, scanning the women milling at the school door, the children perched on the climbing frame.

  Beyond the school building the line of the horizon was visible and the stretch of an unkempt field, its grass yellow from wintering. High in the sky over it a speck vibrated against the white sky, a lone sparrowhawk hovering on the lookout. She watched it, tense for when it would dive; she felt Emme lean close against her.

  It had been Nathan who had first pointed a bird of prey out to her, and once she knew, they seemed on his radar all the time. She’d seen his head turn in the car to register them sitting on fence poles as they passed, the distinctive curve of the beaked head, the low-folded tail feathers, the perfect poised balance. Emme tugged, reaching to point now as out in the field it swooped, plummeting straight down into the shaggy grass. Fran put an arm across her shoulders because she knew too, Nathan had taught her the names. Birds of prey. Sparrowhawk, red kite, marsh harrier.

  Searching the faces, Fran didn’t know if it was her imagination but as the other mothers filed in it seemed to her there were more whispers, more glances than usual. It wasn’t until Karen shoved the gate open ahead of her with a bang, though, and shouted, that Fran knew who she’d been waiting for. ‘Harry! Just wait a bit, Jesus,’ Karen yelled. Her son, a small, scruffy boy with a sharp little red nose, had run in ahead of her and was already talking busily into Emme’s face, interrogating her about some character from a cartoon or computer game.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Fran, as Karen arrived behind him. She could see straight away that she knew.

  When they’d asked, is there anyone you can call, the thought of Karen had fluttered briefly, a spark of hope. But it had been three in the morning, and they hardly knew each other, not really.

  At the end of Emme’s first week at school Fran had lost track of her in the playground and it had been Karen who’d spotted her wandering and brought her back, unasked. ‘Always worst-case scenario, isn’t it?’ she’d said, and Fran could have hugged her. ‘Tell me about it. Under a car or abducted. Funny that.’

  She came to a stop in front of Fran now, standing between her and the others, like a guard. Karen was a big woman and slightly dishevelled but she always put on her face, lip gloss, blue eyeliner to go with dark blue eyes, mascara meticulously applied, starry in the grey playground. It was why the other mothers whispered about her, not with her, making a show of herself and not caring either.

  Karen was a single mother, Fran thought. She’d heard Harry asking, wheedling for a visit to his dad. Dad always takes me to Kentucky. Fried Chicken, she guessed. Not the racetrack. This morning in the cold Karen had her son’s sh
arp red nose.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said quickly, regarding Fran with level kindness, and with that look she felt it bubbling up inside her.

  ‘No,’ Fran said, keeping it together, just. ‘I…’ She felt herself staring hard, straight ahead so as not to lose it. ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘It was you found him?’ said Karen in an undertone, and Fran stared.

  ‘How did you know?’ she whispered. And Karen just turned her head a fraction, towards the others. ‘Do they all know?’

  Karen shrugged. ‘Or think they do.’

  ‘How?’ Fran said, her voice strained.

  ‘Oh, love,’ said Karen, sorrowful. ‘Human nature, isn’t it? You’re in the sticks, now. Nothing better to do out here than poke about in other people’s misery.’ She pulled her coat tighter around herself, frowning hard at something.

  ‘She doesn’t,’ said Fran, nodding towards Emme. ‘She doesn’t know, I mean. I haven’t … I haven’t…’ And as her voice cracked Karen was there right next to her, her round warm shoulder pressed against Fran’s.

  ‘All right,’ she said, firm. ‘It’s all right, darling.’

  A bell rang and she could see the tall teacher who held it seeking someone out among them.

  Eyes in the back of her head, Karen said, ‘Ignore her,’ and she bent to zip Harry’s fleece. She gave him a little push and he headed for the queues forming at the school door.

  Emme hesitated, looking up from one of them to the other.

  ‘You want me to have her, after school?’ said Karen, putting out a hand to pat Emme’s shoulder, and obediently Emme fixed on her, listening. ‘You fancy that, Emme? Pizza for tea.’ Emme turned to Fran, pleading, wide-eyed and silent.

  And Fran found herself nodding, just to see her smile. Watching her run, schoolbag flying, to catch Harry at the door she told herself, It’ll come soon enough.

  ‘I’ll let them know in the school office if you like,’ said Karen.

  ‘Really?’ She felt stupidly grateful, not to have to go in there. ‘Thank you.’ Karen flapped a gloved hand. ‘You’ll tell me? If there’s anything, if she’s…’

  Karen nodded. ‘Come for her whenever.’

  At the gate Fran turned, and Karen was still standing there, watching her, and for just a second she caught a look, sharp and thoughtful, a wondering look. Then Karen was moving off, towards the school door, and in the buggy Ben twisted to look up at her, straining. As Fran set her hand on the gate and the empty road home beckoned, she could feel it, still there somewhere under her ribs, a hard tight knot of fear.

  As she knelt beside him in the field Gerard had fished a pen from a breast pocket and flipped the sodden scrap on to it from out of the wet stubble. With his other hand he had pulled a clear plastic bag from his jacket’s side pocket.

  She had still not even been sure what it was they were looking at, she had been able to hear her own breath, raw in her throat as she leaned in. ‘What?’ she said.

  He had his forearms on his knees and the bag held up between them, a finger and thumb at each corner. ‘God knows,’ he said, guarded, keeping her at bay. ‘It could be just random.’

  She couldn’t make it out at first. Something knotted, brownish. Tan-coloured, familiar and not familiar. A colour she never wore: a pair of women’s tights.

  Chapter Seven

  The police car was still there when she got back from school, but there was no one inside it. A van was parked next to it and out in the field beyond the barn she could see them taking down the pale nylon tent. She pushed Ben inside, asleep in the buggy. The kitchen was empty.

  A horrible feeling sat in her belly, made of the knowledge that she was on her own. That she’d never wake up next to him again, the sight of her cold kitchen, the house that needed work, the children who needed to understand where he’d gone. Disbelief. How?

  The blood on the wall jumped at her: a man in a white boiler suit had come in last night and photographed it, hadn’t he? Did that mean she could clean it off? Looking at it Fran remembered something. She left Ben in the buggy and lifted the receiver, she dialled her mobile number, and listened. It would be on silent because that’s how she kept it but if it was in the room she would hear it vibrate. She heard nothing. She pushed the door into the corridor open a crack and listened. She thought she heard it, that tiny buzz, she strained to narrow it down, hall, sitting room, upstairs … but then the answerphone cut in and the sound was gone.

  It was there. She’d find it, then she’d call people. Then.

  She set her back against the wall and dialled again, Nathan’s number. She closed her eyes, waiting for his voice, steeling herself. But that wasn’t what came: The number you have dialled is not available. She hung up. Try again. The list was there on the wall beside her: Doctor, Dad – Nathan’s dad – Nathan, School, Dentist, Rob Work, Rob.

  Was it only last night? Only hours ago but time seemed to have stretched: it felt as though she’d travelled miles in her sleep. How far could he have got, the man in the field? He could have got to the next county, he could have got to Scotland. But he’d waited, and watched. He didn’t want to go anywhere.

  She dialled. It rang and rang and rang. She imagined Rob in the lab, stooped over his slides, with his red teenager’s knuckles. She almost hung up then he answered, out of breath. And suddenly she couldn’t speak.

  ‘Nathan?’ he said. ‘Nathan?’

  Their number would be in his phone, under Nathan. Of course. So the police couldn’t have spoken to him yet.

  She found her voice. ‘No, Rob. It’s me.’

  ‘Fran? Sorry, I was … the phone was in some zip compartment in my backpack, I couldn’t get to it. I thought he … I thought you were going to ring off.’

  ‘Backpack?’ she said, momentarily derailed. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Outward bound course,’ he said, shyly, and dimly she remembered something, he’d wanted Nathan to go. ‘In Wales. Well, not so much of a course, just me walking. You can tell Nathan he’s not missing anything. There’s cloud cover down to the ground.’

  ‘No…’ She couldn’t even start to say it. ‘Nathan … He’s … Nathan’s…’

  ‘Fran,’ he said, his voice rising, ‘Fran, what is it? What’s wrong?’

  Then she could only hear his breathing on the other end of the line, growing ragged, as she told him. She stopped talking, she squeezed her eyes shut, she didn’t want to hear, or see.

  ‘Nathan’s dead? He’s dead?’ He sounded lost, bewildered. ‘He was supposed to be here. I asked him to come months ago, he said he was too busy.’ His voice rose.

  ‘The police want to talk to you,’ said Fran, feeling a creeping anxiety, that this was going to make someone angry, but suddenly it seemed important that she be the one to break the news, whatever DS Gerard said. This was Rob: this was his best friend. ‘They’ll try and call. They keep asking. Who he knew. Did anyone … Who would want to do this to him, outside our house, in the middle of the night? Rob?’ She heard only dull silence. ‘But Nathan? Did Nathan have…’ She searched for the word, but it didn’t seem right. ‘Was there anyone … did he have enemies? People … back here, was there anyone…’ She heard a kind of gasp, as if he’d sat down abruptly.

  ‘No,’ he said, then, desperate. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. He said – the last time I saw him – work seemed to be getting him down, that was all.’ Pleading. ‘But that couldn’t … work couldn’t—’ He broke off. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Fran told him. ‘No, I shouldn’t … I should have let the police talk to you first, I just didn’t want it to be…’ and she heard her voice break. ‘Oh, Rob. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m coming back down. This fucking mountain.’ It was the first time she’d heard Rob swear. ‘Why didn’t he come? I’ve got to walk out of here, I’m on my own. I’ll see if I can get a lift off, I’ve got some battery left on the phone but the signal’s not good. Are you all right, Fran? Are they making sure
you’re all right? You’re on your own with the kids.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Fran, stupid tears coming to her eyes. ‘They might call you. I’m sorry. The police might call.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Rob. ‘Just tell them – I’m coming back. I’ll be there—’ He broke off. ‘Shit, shit. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  And the line went dead.

  Slowly, she hung up. Ben lay sleeping in the buggy, pale and still, and she leaned her head back against the wall.

  The thin light was coming through the window over the sink, showing up the dirt. Fran walked towards it, thinking. She dipped a cloth in the washing up bowl and wiped one pane, then the next. Reached for a tea towel to dry them off but on the second one she stopped and leaned closer. There was something, not on the inside. She put the tea towel down and went to the door, outside into the yard. Where, where. She looked, searched. There.

  A nick in the thick glass. Fran put her finger to it and felt the sides of it. She leaned up closer and saw it quite clearly, tiny and almost perfectly round, as though something small and round had struck the thick glass from outside, and felt triumph, yes, only then as quickly the white flash of terror, like a flare illuminating the scene, the yard, the dark yard.

  He’d waited for her to find Nathan but he hadn’t gone, not then. He’d waited until she was inside and then he’d come, softly across the field, right up to the house. As she had stood there under the kitchen striplighting, holding on to the phone with her back to the window he’d been watching her.

  Fran was stiff and cold; she rubbed both arms fiercely. All this from a tiny fleck in the window pane, a blemish. She looked around for the pebble he’d have thrown but the yard was littered with them, it was half gravel. She looked across at the men beyond the barn, in the field: they’d been in the yard, too, peering inside the dilapidated shed. Could she have shown them handfuls of dirt and stones, to fingerprint or whatever they did? They’d have thought she was nuts. She turned and went inside.