‘I met him at his office, on the Sandpiper. I took his hard drive. I said goodbye. Then I drove back here, to wait.’ He turned his head to the line of poplars. ‘I didn’t know what for, not then. He didn’t come back and didn’t come back and then I couldn’t stop myself. I went to your kitchen door and it was open, I came inside, in your house.’ A long ragged breath escaped him. ‘I had to be so quiet. I just wanted to be in there, in the house with you. I wouldn’t have come up, I wouldn’t have touched you. And then I saw the knife.’ She thought of it, in her jar among the spatulas and wooden spoons, innocent things. ‘And I took it. I didn’t even know what…’ he sobbed. ‘Then I heard the car and I ran out, I hid here in the barn.’ His breath came in gulps. ‘I didn’t know if I’d do it. I didn’t know if I’d have the guts.’
‘It wasn’t the first time you’d waited out there,’ she said, quiet, and he nodded.
‘Every time I came to watch, he’d do it. I sometimes wondered if he knew I was there, if he was pissing on his land just to show me. One day, I would say to myself. One day.’ And his voice wandered, frightened.
She thought of him standing there, a terrified kid with a condom in his pocket and Nathan, bold as brass, invincible. And then the kid had a knife in his hand. Now Rob was talking, his voice going lower and lower. ‘And then after. After. After. I just wanted to be … I needed to be close to you. I thought that would make it all right. I wanted to know, what it was like. To be in your bed. With you. To be touching you.’
The words broke from her, desperate. ‘It’s all right, Rob.’ Hopeless. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No,’ he said and his voice was raw, dangerous. ‘It isn’t.’ And he pulled away from her and ran, deeper into the barn, to where the rope hung. He was too quick for her: the darkness drew him in and raised him up over her head but she lunged, she caught him. The box overturned, she felt a jerk and thought, no, but then something slithered, came undone and he went slack in her arms, they lay entwined on the filthy floor with the stink of the chicken barn on them.
When they came she was still holding him. He lay in her arms like something dead, something run over and left by the side of the road, but he was alive, and she held on. Ali Compton held her from behind and she said it too, ‘It’s all right, Fran.’
All she could do was shake her head.
Afterword
Several months later
The big kitchen was full of light. It had a wide bay window where Ali was standing, looking at the grey-green sea, wave-tops whipped up in the wind. A row of mugs hung along the dresser and Fran was at the table behind a computer: the back of the screen facing Ali was plastered with smiley stickers.
Somewhere down there Karen and Miranda were sitting on the beach with three children, throwing chips into the air for the seagulls. You couldn’t just see the sea, you could smell it, salty and clean. Ali wondered what it would be like to live here. If Mum would like it. She turned back into the room. ‘Nice place,’ she said.
There’d been another kitchen, a room full of crap and chaos when Ali had burst in out of the darkness, bringing mud and snow with her and had seen Karen and Miranda on either side of the table. They’d both looked at her, and all three of them had known, in that instant, that Fran was in trouble.
It had been from the window of her bedroom that they’d seen it, though they didn’t know at that stage what it was. Movement in the blackness, the plane of a face catching the light.
And without waiting to be sure Ali had been so fast on the steep stairwell and out of there it was like being back on the track, hundred-metre sprint.
Gerard and Carswell had turned up an hour later, with Nick Jason shivering in the back seat of the vehicle. Gerard’s face telling her everything she needed to know: blank, shit-scared and knackered. She might have felt sorry for him if he’d been a whole entire human being, instead of just the arsehole.
Now Fran looked up at Ali from what she was writing, thoughtful. ‘Yeah,’ she said, absently, ‘it’s another world, isn’t it?’ She still had nightmares, Ali knew that. But when she looked like this, she wondered if she’d even have recognised Fran Hall as the same woman.
‘So what’s she say?’ Ali asked, coming back to the table. The email Fran had just opened was from the woman who’d been sitting in the front row of the press conference, glaring at Gerard. An ambitious local journalist who had nonetheless left it a respectful three days after the trial – at which Rob had pleaded guilty to Nathan’s murder – before asking Fran for her story.
‘She says,’ and Fran leaned back in the chair, pushing the computer away, ‘she says, she’ll take it on, even if the police refuse to release the hard drive of Nathan’s computer. Rob’s said he’ll talk to her.’ Her face pale. ‘Karen’s going to talk to her too.’
Karen Humphries, Johns as was. She’d admitted she’d called Nathan Hall the night he died. Tough as old boots, Karen Johns. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she’d said, more than once since. ‘Once I was sure it was him, once I got his number off your kitchen wall. He told me to fuck off. He was so sure he could keep me quiet. If he hadn’t died I’d have had him.’
Now Fran wasn’t crowing, not even smiling, she was too focused, thought Ali, she was going to make it work. ‘Miranda’s not going anywhere either, so Emme and Ben know they’ve got a family, even if they never really had a dad.’
And then there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and a key in the lock and before Ali could even turn her head Fran was out of her seat, she was running, she was flying across the big bright room. They came through the door all talking at once and bringing fresh air with them, but Fran was meeting them low down, she was kneeling to her daughter and Ali saw the girl’s arms, little Emme’s arms, snaking around her mother’s back to hold her, tight.
‘You’re home,’ said Fran, muffled at first then clearer as she raised her head from Emme’s. ‘You’re home.’
The Loving Husband Page 33