The Loving Husband

by Christobel Kent

  Ed Carswell was watching her from across the room. In the ante-room no one had said anything more about her having an affair, not even a meaningful look. Gerard had just lobbed that in, it seemed to her, and now they were sitting back and waiting, they were watching for her reaction. They hadn’t told her she was a suspect, but they were watching her. Was that what this press conference was about?

  Or was she losing it, imagining things? Nathan had used that word, paranoid, when she said she thought the women in the playground stared at her.

  Last night, on the floor of the downstairs toilet after they’d gone, she had sat against the wall in the dark, her own eyes squeezed shut to block it out, that tiny little scrap of packaging and all it meant, a line that ran unwavering from a one-night stand and a man unwrapping a condom on his unmade bed to here and now, the bright lights and all these people staring. And she had held herself so still, she could feel the hair rising on her scalp, she could feel her flesh crawl, but if she made one movement where would it end? She would start to tear at herself, wherever he had been, her back, between her thighs.

  If they knew she’d ripped the sheets off the bed and stuffed them in the washing machine. Destroyed evidence. Fran felt sweat bead on her forehead under the lights.

  ‘So if anyone out there knows anything, anything at all,’ she said, her lips numb, her voice dull and emotionless, ‘about my husband’s death, could they, could they…’ and Fran turned to Gerard, and he was standing up, reading out the number of the helpline.

  She’d come, there in the underwater dark as she dreamed of a man on a beach. How could she explain to them that was why she’d swept the sheets into a ball on the bed, she had lain her face on them and breathed in the smell of it, mysterious and pungent, she had put her arms around the sheets and hugged them against her. Had she known, deep down, somehow, had she known it wasn’t Nathan? Had she been thinking so hard of someone else that she had brought him to her bed, and then in a panic wanted to remove all trace? All they would see was, she had destroyed the evidence.

  I didn’t know, Fran wanted to say, eyes down at the table. I wasn’t thinking straight. Just say nothing, she told herself. Don’t even explain to them that what they were calling an affair had been a one-night stand. That she had hated every minute of it.

  Of course, she thought, there were no stains, were there? That was what the condom had been for. He had been careful not to leave any evidence. And now Gerard was inviting questions from the audience and there was movement among them, a settling of bums on seats, someone leaned forward.

  ‘Is it true you found your husband’s body yourself?’ The man in the cagoule, his head taller than the others’. A murmur went around the room.

  ‘Yes,’ Fran said faintly and she understood, they wanted a story. Open season.

  ‘Mrs Hall.’ The woman in the front row was getting to her feet now with her hand raised. ‘Might your husband’s death have had anything to do with his work, is that a possibility? What was your husband’s business, Mrs Hall?’

  A good-looking, hard-edged woman, her eyes moved from Fran to Gerard and back again. Fran said, helpless, ‘My husband was in the building trade.’ She felt the panic rise then, knowing that they could ask anything, anything at all, and she would have to answer, but she pushed on blindly. ‘I don’t know what reason anyone could have had to hurt him, I—’

  And then miraculously Gerard was standing again with both hands out, saying something, and it was all over, people were getting to their feet, turning to chat to each other as if this was all normal. Fran stayed seated, frozen as they moved to and fro, not raising her eyes when there was a burst of laughter. When she did finally get up there was no sign of the man in the cagoule or the woman who’d asked about Nathan’s work.

  There was a separate exit for her to leave through, while the press filed out on the other side of the room. Ali Compton was right outside the door with Ben, just like she’d promised.

  Ali had watched it on a monitor, walking up and down with the baby on her shoulder, groaning inwardly. ‘Christ,’ she even hissed and Derek had looked at her in surprise; she’d shaken her head impatiently.

  Fran Hall looked scared to death. She also looked like she was hiding something. ‘Talk to me,’ muttered Ali into the baby’s little warm neck.

  Doug Gerard had been like a dog with two dicks all morning, full of it. Craddock had been in a video conference from eight a.m. and had had Gerard upstairs for a private briefing the minute he walked through the door.

  On the monitor Fran was white as a sheet, she looked like she might actually keel over: this was what Gerard had wanted. People to look up at the screen and say, Who’s that, then? What’s she done? Then, I’ve seen her somewhere.

  They’d done a job on her, all right. Laurel and Hardy. The last thing she was going to do was talk to them.

  Ali was at the door when Fran came through it. Fran grabbed the baby like she was drowning.

  ‘You eating properly?’ asked Ali. ‘Honest to God, Fran. Mrs Hall. You can’t take care of those kids if you aren’t taking care of yourself.’ Fran Hall stared back at her, her eyes all pupils, staring, and Ali tried again. ‘Won’t you think about getting out of that house at least?’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘The temporary places, they’re not all bad. Some of them are nice. You need looking after. You need some space.’

  Fran Hall was shaking her head. ‘I’m fine. Nerves. All those people.’ She seemed to have trouble getting the words out. ‘It’s my home. You don’t understand. Our home. He’s not taking it away from me.’

  ‘He?’ But Fran Hall was tugging the car seat out of her hand.

  ‘I’m coming back with you, at least,’ said Ali.

  ‘No,’ said Fran Hall, sharp, and Ali let the car seat go. ‘No.’

  And then she was walking away and Gerard was there, at Ali’s shoulder. ‘Giving you trouble, is she? Losing your touch, DC Compton.’

  Of course they knew, what was she thinking of? Of course someone would have seen her talking to him at the party, someone else would have known who he was, he might have told – and she saw the connections spread like fire.

  And how did it jump the void, get to the police? Now they must know, then, at the magazine, that Nathan was dead. The police must have been there. And Jo hadn’t taken her call. What had the police said to her?

  At the last minute Fran stamped on the brake and behind her Ben wailed in protest: a red light. She just hadn’t seen it.

  A stream of traffic passed in front of her on Oakenham’s grimy ring road, beyond it a scattering of squat Victorian cottages and then the horizon. She engaged gear and they left the town behind them.

  Unless someone around here had been spreading rumours. Villages were like that, weren’t they, you only had to exchange a word with a man in the street and it was adultery.

  The landscape emptied, the big glaring sky flooded the windscreen. Ben was asleep again. She turned into the lane on the edge of the village and pulled up outside Karen’s bungalow.

  Bundled in her padded winter coat and jeans, Emme was in Karen’s back garden – Fran could see her through the wide sliding glass doors. They were in the living room, a wide low room crowded with furniture, knick-knacks ranged on the mantelpiece and on shelves in two alcoves either side of a coal-effect fire, very tidy. Very warm.

  There had been photographs hung all down the dim narrow corridor that led to the sun room on the back of the house. Studio portraits, school shots, Harry, Karen, grandparents at the back. Two girls with neatly brushed hair, side by side.

  ‘She wanted to go out there,’ said Karen. ‘I told her it was too cold.’

  Emme was intent on something, running to and fro from the frosted flower bed to a big glazed pot on the patio, depositing, returning.

  ‘You all right?’ said Karen, and hearing a note of rough apology Fran turned and nodded. She saw the TV remote on the coffee table.

  ‘You saw it, then?’ she said. �
��The press conference.’

  Karen sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to get narky with you. It’s horrible, all this, him dead and coppers in and out of the house.’

  Fran was so close to the window her face almost touched it. The sky was low and dark, she looked for snow but nothing was falling yet.

  ‘I’d be like you,’ said Karen to her back. ‘Not doing what they want you to do, crying for the cameras.’ She frowned. ‘I’d be, it’s my house, I’m not moving. I’d be, come and get me. Just try it.’

  Fran turned quickly and caught Karen’s defiant look. ‘Funny,’ she said. ‘That’s it. That’s what … it feels like. I don’t think they understand that though. The police.’

  ‘That’ll be because they’re thick as planks, the lot of them,’ said Karen gently, and she laid a hand on Fran’s shoulder.

  ‘They’re funny with me,’ Fran said, on the edge of tears at the gesture. ‘I don’t know why.’

  Karen made a small snorting sound. ‘They’re men first, police officers after. They’re men, you’re a skirt. Have they tried anything on?’

  Fran thought of Carswell saying Nice legs, but she shook her head.

  ‘Huh,’ said Karen, sceptical. ‘Well, you tell me if they do. You tell someone if they do.’

  ‘I think,’ said Fran slowly, ‘it’s something to do with the time of death. With me being so sure it was later because … I thought I heard him come in.’ She could tell Karen. That’s who she could tell. But there was something about the hard, beady look in Karen’s eye that made her falter. ‘He was dead by then. I thought he came in around midnight, but he couldn’t have.’

  Karen held her gaze a long moment.

  ‘They think I did it.’ It came out, just like that, but Karen didn’t seem surprised: she just waited, alert.

  ‘They think I’m not frightened.’ Outside, Emme was crouching on the grass beside the pond, looking at something beyond it, although all Fran could see was the hedge. Her head bobbed, looking back at the house, then she stood up, and carefully began to pick her way around the pond.

  ‘I am frightened, though,’ said Fran, watching.

  Karen studied her, arms folded across her front.

  ‘He was still there when I found Nathan. When I came back inside, when I was on the phone to the emergency services, he was out there. He threw a stone at the window.’ And despite the heat she felt cold, as she said it.

  ‘Did you know him?’ said Karen, and Fran stared.

  ‘Know him? You mean did I recognise him? I didn’t see his face.’

  ‘Look,’ said Karen, arms still folded, ‘I just want to help. You understand?’

  ‘I didn’t know him,’ said Fran, and she felt panic. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with this, Karen.’ She sat, her head in her hands. ‘That’s why they did the press conference, isn’t it? They think everyone will know. They want people to phone in and say things about me, not about Nathan.’

  ‘Could be.’ Karen sat down next to Fran on the sofa. It was some kind of dark patterned velvet, hard to keep clean, Fran found herself thinking, staring down between her hands, but it was clean, like everything in this house, like nothing in hers. Warily Karen put an arm around her shoulders and she felt a quick warm pressure, then it was gone.

  ‘You want to be careful. Tough doesn’t sort everything. I should know.’

  ‘I’m not even tough,’ said Fran. ‘I just … don’t know what else to do.’ She removed her face from her hands quickly, remembering Emme, but she wasn’t looking. ‘Someone left a box of chocolates in my kitchen,’ she said slowly, staring straight ahead.

  ‘Chocolates.’ Karen sat back with an abrupt, surprised laugh. ‘Well, who’s complaining? Valentine’s coming up.’ Her voice was wry, on the edge of bitter. ‘Maybe he … maybe your husband—’

  ‘They weren’t there before,’ said Fran quickly, because in that moment she was sure. ‘They weren’t there when he left for the pub. And the police are saying … they think he never even came back inside the house. He was … killed before he got home.’ Karen didn’t seem to hear how quickly she stopped talking, then.

  The gilt-edged box. Years since Nathan had bought them for her. ‘The kind of chocolates a bloke would give you to impress you,’ she said. ‘Or if he was in the doghouse. If he had something to make up for.’

  Like sex you hadn’t asked for. And suddenly she felt it again, the prickle of her skin, the urge to scrape and scratch at herself and she had to shift forwards on the sofa in case she had to make a break for the door. Outside, Emme was standing at the hedge with her back to them, almost set inside it, like a small statue.

  ‘So where do you think they came from?’ asked Karen, frowning, fierce. ‘The chocs. He weren’t … your Nathan. Had he been messing around? Playing away?’ She was gearing up for outrage.

  Fran almost laughed, she felt it turn into a sob. She swallowed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I told you, the box wasn’t there when he left for the pub.’ She looked down into her hands. ‘And Nathan wasn’t that kind of man.’ Almost whispering.

  ‘They’re all the same kind of man, love. One way or another.’

  But the sofa shifted suddenly and then Karen was on her feet. ‘Hold up,’ she said, because Emme was running towards them, she was stumbling in her haste. Her face was blank and white.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Just take it slowly,’ Ali Compton was saying. It was already almost dark beyond the bedroom window and Fran was rocking in the twilight, side to side, the phone clamped under one ear and both arms around Ben.

  He had finally stopped, abruptly, with a last shuddering gasp as if a battery had expired. It had been more than crying: for hours after they came back inside the dark cold house he had shrieked and writhed and if she hadn’t seen something like it before in Emme as a baby, colic they’d called it which hadn’t seemed sufficient explanation, it would have looked like demonic possession. Emme had fled through the door and upstairs to her room with her hands over her ears.

  ‘She said what, exactly?’ Ali Compton’s voice was soft but alert. There was a hum of conversation behind her. Men’s voices.

  ‘She said she saw the bad man,’ said Fran. ‘She said she saw him through the hedge at Karen’s house.’

  All she had said at the time, white-faced as she tumbled through the big glazed windows, was that she wanted to go home now. ‘Home now, Mummy, please.’ Looking fearfully at Karen. And leaning down to get Emme’s bag from beside a polished table, confronted with another row of those family pictures at eye level, suddenly Fran needed to get out too.

  When she went up after Emme, back in the house, something was against the door on the inside when she tried to open it.

  ‘Please, sweetheart,’ she said, pushing harder, and the door gave an inch, so she could see Emme’s jeans through the crack, her small body crouched against it. ‘Tell me what it is, Emme,’ she said, keeping her voice low. ‘Tell me what frightened you.’

  It wasn’t fair on them. She had to get them out. She didn’t know where to go.

  Downstairs where she’d left him strapped into his seat Ben’s crying had had something mechanical about it, regular as a metronome, unrelenting. She set her ear to the door. ‘Emme?’

  Silence. Then, ‘Did you lock all the doors, Mummy?’ Emme’s voice was strained, high. ‘Did he follow us? He was outside, Mummy. The bad man was outside.’

  ‘What did she say he – this bad man – was doing?’ Ali Compton’s voice was gentle. ‘Did she describe him?’ What she’d said, straight away, was Let me come over and Fran had almost weakened and given in, at the thought of another woman padding peaceful through the corridors, keeping watch. ‘We’ll be all right,’ she had said.

  She needed to be able to listen, was the only way she could explain it. Listen at the doors, listen to the house, listen for someone waiting under the barn’s high roof, in the fields, in the yard, outside the door, without the police in the way. If she could only eliminate all ex
traneous noise she’d hear him coming.

  You’re losing it, said another voice in her head, dry, sceptical. The voice sounded like Nathan’s. Christ, he’d said after finding her one night tearful over the bathtub, Emme writhing in her arms all slippery, don’t tell me you’re losing it. Post-natal’s all I need.

  In the dark bedroom Fran swayed with the sleeping Ben in her arms, unable to stop. She had tried to offer him the breast but he’d reared back, hysterical. She made herself breathe. Stop it. Stop it. She had to think clearly, if they were going to survive this.

  ‘She said he was sitting on the ground,’ she told Ali Compton. ‘On the side of the road.’ It had taken half an hour of coaxing to get that much out of Emme: she’d had to bring Ben up and pace with him, talking over his howls. ‘I think…’ She hesitated. ‘She and Nathan saw a man in a playground, a long time ago, she called him the bad man. I think it’s the same man. I think … I think Nathan may have known him.’

  One of the fluorescent tubes in the kitchen had blown; it had gone as they came through the door from Karen’s. The pop and sudden alteration in the light as it blew was what had sent Emme fleeing upstairs but Fran had forgotten until she walked back into the room. The kitchen looked starker, its proportions somehow lopsided in the thinner, greyer light, one wall in shadow.

  A big man like a giant, with crazy hair. He had wet on his trousers.

  She crossed to the side, to the drawer that Rob had painstakingly refilled with his big raw hands, his shaking hands … and slowly she opened it.

  The photograph was there on the top. The three young men in trousers pulled up too high, shirts too big. Rob on the left, half out of the frame, his face blurred by some quick movement but in a funny way that was how she knew it was him, that dodging motion. Nathan was on the other side sitting up on the fence with his knees apart and hands holding on, poised as if he was about to spring off.