The Loving Husband

by Christobel Kent

  He was skinnier, very skinny, but still she recognised him immediately, the dark arch of his eyebrows, the angle of his jaw, his mouth. Fran had never thought about a man’s looks too much, it was something else that caught you usually – a combination of cleverness and intensity and charm, to do with how much he wanted you – but with Nathan you couldn’t ignore the looks. It occurred to her now that he knew it, too. The looks had taken him a long way. Was that what Jo had against him? For the first time Fran wondered about that speed-dating evening where Jo said she’d found him. It hadn’t worked, that was what Jo had said, meaning they hadn’t fancied each other. Or he hadn’t fancied her? But she’d ended up asking him for dinner anyway because how could you not? Looking like that.

  In the faded colours of the photograph the three figures shifted as she looked at them, between boys and men. In the middle was the one she didn’t know: in the middle was Bez.

  He leaned back, lordly, the tallest of them, an elbow hooked behind him over the top of the fence, a shirt open at the neck, a great bush of red-gold hair. She could even see the tiny sharp jut of his Adam’s apple above the collar. He was lazy, at ease, as if he could reach out and take anything he wanted. One of his hands was lifted to shade his eyes, and half his face was hidden.

  Behind her on the table her phone blipped, receiving a message.

  Carefully, Fran settled the drawer’s contents and closed it again but the photograph was still out, propped on the side.

  DS Gerard had given her a card too, with his number on. She stood still, looking around the room, and her eye fell on the wall-mounted telephone, where she’d wedged it.

  ‘You have to communicate with all of us, though,’ Ali Compton had said before she hung up, something formal and weary in her voice. ‘Like it or not, Doug Gerard is in charge of the investigation. And he’s a good detective. He’s on your side.’

  She dialled, looking at the list Nathan had pinned to the wall as it rang. His handwriting. Doctor, Dad, Nathan, School, Dentist, Rob. Rob.

  On her side? It didn’t feel like it. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Ali Compton had said at last, patient, tired. ‘I wish you’d let me come. I wish you’d talk to me.’ Then when she hadn’t said anything, a sigh. ‘Lock the doors. Put the panic button where you can get to it.’

  She was ready to hang up when he answered.

  Tell Gerard everything, her wildest suspicions, her fears. She should tell him about the bad man, that the bad man was Bez, that he’d met up with Nathan in a playground months ago and Nathan hadn’t wanted to tell her. She should say, I think my husband had a secret life, that has something to do with the big-bellied man in construction called Julian and that started all those years ago, in that squat with those boys, she should say, and while you’re at it, what about the man who sold us this house? The creepy farmer whose wife left him and no one seems to care where she went.

  She should say, the man who killed my husband came into my bed and fucked me, he put his mark on me and he is watching me, he is stalking me, he is leaving chocolates for me in my own kitchen. Someone wants me, and he is going to come back for me.

  ‘Yes?’

  Doug Gerard’s voice was rough and gravelly, something loose about it, something intimate. She looked at the clock: it was eight o’clock. It sounded like he was in the pub and a couple of pints in; for a second she felt like a disgruntled wife or a jealous girlfriend, and with a quick tiny flash of anger from nowhere she thought, Fuck you.

  ‘It’s Fran Hall,’ she said, stiff. ‘I just wanted to let you know. We won’t be here tomorrow.’

  And only then, the phone in her hand, did she scroll down and read the message. She knew the number by heart but her phone didn’t. I’ve got to see you, it said. Her lips moved.

  She moved her thumb across the screen to the little box in the corner that said Delete.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Friday

  The dawn was still a line at the horizon when they turned south. In the back seat Ben and Emme were asleep.

  Fran had watched the road from the tall window of the spare room for a long five minutes concealed in the dark, before hurrying Emme out, Ben in the baby seat.

  If someone had stopped her. Who are you running away from?

  From the police, the men coming into her kitchen without knocking, sitting her in front of all those strangers with their cameras and their questions. Who are you scared of? Of Ali Compton, looking at her, kind Ali Compton, worried Ali Compton saying, Talk to me. If Fran opened her mouth to talk about that, though, what would come out?

  But most of all she was running away from him. Scared of him. Because he hadn’t stayed outside, he hadn’t just thrown stones at her window, he hadn’t just watched, from between the poplars in the dark. He’d come inside. Inside her house. Into her bedroom with the change clinking in his pockets. Inside her.

  And he’d be back, she knew that now beyond a doubt, looking down on her terror from high overhead. A territorial thing: he thought she was his, now.

  If the police had known where she was going, and were following her, they would wonder why Fran took the route she did, left on the main road and not right to the motorway, doubling back to Oakenham and skirting it on the ring road. The odd light was coming on in the small dim houses, people stirring, but Rob’s was dark. His car wasn’t on the drive. She rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. She rang it again; peering through the letter box she saw a drift of mail on the mat in the dark. Before she flipped the letter box shut with a clatter she caught a stale whiff, of things going off, unemptied bins.

  Fighting the traffic she found her way into London: side streets, a ramp, a car park and a ticket barrier, down and then, in the warm subterranean concrete gloom she came to a halt, handbrake on, ignition off. Here. Gently she set her cheek to rest on the steering wheel, arms up either side, and breathed out.

  A blessed muffled quiet lasted less than a minute and then from the back Emme said. ‘Are we escaped, Mummy?’ Then, ‘I want a wee.’

  She didn’t know what she’d have done if Ken on the magazine’s reception hadn’t recognised her. In the foyer she had felt as out of place as a traveller selling heather with Ben on her hip and Emme wiping ketchup on her sweatshirt. Ken had lifted the phone and asked for Jo.

  And then they were outside and in the garden square that lay two streets across, Jo’s hand firm on her elbow, propelling her through the iron gates, and Emme half-running to keep up. ‘Jesus, Fran.’ Jo sat abruptly on a bench, making space for her. Emme walked to the edge of the grass and stood there solemnly, watching a pigeon attacking a crisp packet. ‘Jesus. What the hell? What happened?’

  ‘I … he … I just…’ And Fran didn’t know even how to start, it choked her. ‘I don’t know what happened. I just found him…’ and then it was coming up inside her, unstoppable, she blurted it out. ‘You didn’t call,’ she said, and she could hear her voice shaking. ‘You knew. You knew. But you didn’t call me?’

  Jo blinked, flushed, then said, terse, ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. I should have sent a message, I should have…’ She stopped, wincing: she’d never been great at backing down, over anything. She looked tense, shadows under her eyes as if she hadn’t been sleeping.

  ‘I needed you,’ said Fran. ‘I needed someone. And you think this is somehow my fault, that I got myself into this? Or is it his fault, is it Nathan’s fault he’s dead?’ She jerked her head up and stared, furious, into the sky where an airliner was banking and tracking off to the west, then back down. ‘I got pregnant. I wanted the baby, I did what he asked. If it was a mistake, it was a mistake, all right, it was a mess – but this? Does it make this my fault?’

  And then as Jo stared, abruptly Fran ran out of anger. ‘Did you read it online?’ Fran said. ‘Or did the police…’ She faltered, thinking of Ken and the heads turning in the lobby, recovered herself. ‘Did they turn up here? Who did they talk to?’ She flicked an eye to the climbing frame where Emme was perched, sol
emnly, with her back to them, very still.

  Leaning back against the low back of the old wooden bench, Jo pulled her hands out of her pockets and shoved them under her arms, leaning forward. ‘They called.’

  ‘You told them I’d had an affair,’ said Fran, blunt.

  Jo set her jaw. ‘Have you had an affair?’ Her voice was cold.

  ‘What did you say to them?’ Fran was quiet.

  Jo flushed, furious. ‘I said we had lost touch, mainly because I didn’t like him, I didn’t like the way he treated you. There was something … They asked me if I knew him as Alan or Nathan Hall. I mean, don’t you think that was weird?’

  ‘No, people do that.’ She breathed out. ‘You didn’t tell them.’

  ‘No,’ said Jo. ‘Did you?’ Not giving an inch.

  ‘I didn’t…’ Fran shook her head, ‘I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want it to have happened.’

  Jo sat down again beside her, hard, her shoulders hunched in the coat. ‘I did wonder,’ she said, ‘if you’d done it. I kind of…’ She sighed.

  ‘You wished I had?’ said Fran bitterly. ‘What, a blow for female empowerment? Bit late for that, once I’d had his kids. Why did you hate him so much? Was it that you…’ She hesitated, a fraction too long, and Jo pounced.

  ‘You thought I wanted him? Him, the babies, the big farmhouse and all the rest of it? No way. No. Fucking. Way.’ So why? But before Fran could ask it Jo pulled her hands out from under her arms and she saw a ring. Jo held the hand out, defiant.

  ‘The same guy? The … builder?’

  ‘You remembered,’ said Jo, frowning. ‘He’s a nice man. It’s not marriage I objected to.’ And she leaned forwards, elbows on her knees, earnest. She looked down at Ben in Fran’s arms, then up into her face. ‘It wasn’t the deal, it was him. It was Nathan, or Alan, or whoever the fuck he is. Was.’

  ‘All right,’ Fran said urgently. ‘It was him. But what about him?’

  ‘I need a coffee,’ said Jo, standing. ‘Christ, I need a drink. There’s a stall over the other side. Remember that?’

  Fran stood up, working Ben into the sling as he slept. She did remember. Jo looked weary: she looked almost soft. ‘Him. How many times did I wish I’d never laid eyes on him, let alone invited him over that night? I thought he’d take your mind off Nick, is all.’ She shook her head. ‘He really did a number on you, though, didn’t he? Pulled out all the stops. They say they can spot vulnerability from a hundred yards, they can see it from behind, in the way you walk. Guys like that. They find the weak spot and they go straight there. It’s why he didn’t bother with me.’ She let out a short laugh. ‘No weak spots.’

  ‘Jo,’ said Fran, hearing a far-off bell sound in her head, an alarm. ‘He’s the one that’s dead, remember. You’re talking like he was a psychopath.’

  ‘He was a fucking dinosaur. Shutting you up out there. Carine said he’d told you you didn’t need a new computer. Wouldn’t let you use the car.’

  ‘Carine?’ She felt the wind knocked out of her, a kind of joy that she hadn’t disappeared after all, all that time she’d thought she was on her own. ‘You talked about us?’

  But Jo didn’t seem to hear. ‘He was never your type,’ she said, frowning into the distance as if trying to understand something. ‘That’s what I don’t get. You always liked the full-on boys, the ones who liked to show you off, to see you having fun.’

  ‘Nick was, he was…’ She stopped.

  ‘At least Nick fancied you,’ said Jo, blunt.

  A silence. The little wheeled stall was in full view and Emme waiting for them there, staring from them to a row of drink cans, but they slowed, stopped.

  ‘Nick was crazy about you,’ Jo went on. ‘He’d have done anything for you. The way he used to look at you.’

  If she closed her eyes and let it, it would all come back. Those long nights sitting at the back of a dark club, men coming up and sitting next to her, people who knew Nick. ‘He wanted to marry you,’ said Jo.

  Nick coming in late at night, euphoric over something. The money. The flat he bought, neon light sculptures, sound decks. A ring.

  ‘You don’t know everything about Nick,’ Fran said, quiet.

  ‘So tell me.’ They were at the little trolley and Jo was buying them coffees, a carton of juice for Emme, who clutched it and ran off again, towards a neglected climbing frame where more pigeons were scratching.

  Jo crumpled the tiny paper cup and dropped it into an overflowing bin. She brought out a packet of cigarettes and shook one out, reached for a lighter. She took a long drag. ‘What about you, Franny?’ she said, blowing out the smoke. It drifted and curled up between the London trees. ‘You think I don’t listen? If I don’t know anything about Nick, it’s because you never told me.’

  Fran stared. When she’d walked out on Nick it was like she’d stepped out of the rubble of an explosion, deafened. She couldn’t have turned round and looked to see what had happened, she might just crumble into dust. But the world had changed, since then. She’d found out that worse things happen. Much worse.

  She held Jo’s direct gaze, returned it.

  Another night, a different club, edgy, classy, brick-walled, industrial fittings and in the middle of it, the old Fran. Frankie, he always called her. Their last night. Hours before, he had been propped on the bed, watching her get ready. ‘I might invest in it,’ he said, casually. ‘I’ve seen them queue round the block till three in the morning, to get in. The VIP area’s always packed out.’

  ‘It was some deal he was doing,’ she told Jo, who pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat. ‘Nick. Buying into a new club, or that was what he said it was. He was doing a lot of drugs.’ Jo nodded, without comment. ‘You knew?’

  Jo shrugged, uncomfortable. ‘That’s his world,’ she said. ‘They all do drugs, don’t they?’ She reached for a cigarette and lit it, blowing out a blue plume of smoke into the cold air.

  ‘It was his world, then,’ said Fran and Jo narrowed her eyes in the smoke, sceptical. ‘Believe it or not, I didn’t know, or I turned a blind eye. I was naive, not that that’s an excuse. I was stupid.’ She frowned. ‘Anyway. That night, that last night. There was another guy, the man who wanted to go into partnership with him. Him and his wife, or whatever, at the bar.’ She stopped, weary.

  At the club she’d begun to dance; Nick would be over in ten minutes, half an hour, he always joined her in the end. The club was crowded but he was on her radar: he was standing at the bar with a couple and watching her. The other man was stocky and older, there was a blonde woman with him and her hair shone gold under the light behind the bar.

  Then something had changed, Nick frowning, Nick laughing, incredulous. The smaller man nodded in her direction and the blonde left, threading through the dance floor to Fran, she said something and Fran leaned down to hear. ‘It’s business,’ she was saying. When Fran had looked up, frowning, the two men had gone from the bar.

  ‘What?’ said Jo, impatient. ‘Partnership? And?’

  ‘I was part of the deal. The other guy wanted to sleep with me. Do you know what? Now I think, sometimes, might it even have been just a joke, and I went off on one.’ She meditated, taken back there a second, a time so remote it might have happened to someone else. She shrugged. ‘No,’ she said at last, ‘it wasn’t a joke. And Nick … well. Let’s just say he didn’t react to the request the way I’d have liked him to.’

  ‘You mean, he didn’t deck the guy,’ said Jo, and when Fran smiled then it felt like she hadn’t smiled in months.

  ‘No,’ she said drily. ‘He asked me if I’d consider it.’

  The cigarette had burned down to a stub between Jo’s fingers; she frowned down at it.

  ‘Your turn,’ said Fran, and Jo looked up, wary. ‘You tell me, because there’s something, isn’t there?’ Jo hugged herself in the cold, her face closed. ‘Something you’re not telling me. About Nathan.’

  Jo was staring over her shoulder and Fra
n turned to check that Emme wasn’t within earshot, turning in a circle, the pigeons, the empty climbing frame, a gang of students moving off arm in arm, there was a man head down on his bench.

  ‘Where Emme?’ she said. ‘Where’s Emme?’

  Jo was turning, looking, her face was white and drawn – and then from around a low clump of trees she came, like a bullet, head down and barrelling into Fran’s midriff. Mummy Mummy Mummy heard Fran, the words hot and muffled against her, and she felt Emme’s arms flung around her, holding on tight.

  Emme tipped her head back and Fran looked down at her, saw her eyes still wide and searching her face. ‘I thought I’d lost you, Mummy,’ she said. ‘I thought you were lost.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said to Jo, as the relief flooded her, she could deal with it. Whatever it was.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was dark again already, as they drove north.

  It felt to Fran now that these days had gone on for ever, that there’d never been a summer except in her imagination. That this might be the future, these cold dark brief days when no sooner had the sun inched its way above the tree tops than it started the slide back to the horizon. Off to the west a fine crack of lemon-coloured light lay between huge dark banks of cloud, and on the radio they were issuing weather warnings.

  In the back Emme lay asleep in the detritus of a takeaway meal, too worn out from cold and terror to take pleasure in the lights and novelty and plastic freebies of a drive-in fast-food joint. It had allowed Fran to change Ben’s nappy and feed him but even as she pulled in to the bright booth she had realised that Emme would be thinking not that she was getting a treat, but that her daddy would never have allowed this.

  Jo had turned to them at the big revolving doors. ‘Listen,’ she’d said urgently then. ‘The flat’s tiny, I don’t know about schools and stuff but…’ and she’d caught her breath, as pale as if the blood had been drained out of her, ‘stay with me. Don’t go back there.’