‘The police were here, honey.’
‘Mum let them in. They didn’t find anything though.’
‘What?’ I said again.
Millicent looked up at me and nodded guiltily. She hadn’t wanted me to find out this way.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘They didn’t tell me they had a warrant.’
‘Mum let them in anyway,’ said Max.
‘They were polite,’ said Millicent. ‘And it kind of felt like they could be not polite if I said they had to come back with a warrant.’
‘They didn’t have a warrant?’
She shook her head.
‘Is that bad, Dad?’ said Max.
That pleading look in Millicent’s eye.
‘No, Max, I think your mum probably made the right decision. She did exactly the right thing.’
Millicent looked surprised. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I mouthed back.
‘Why are you sorry, Dad? You didn’t do anything, did you?’
‘No, Max, I didn’t. But I’m sorry it happened when I wasn’t here.’
A wan smile from Millicent.
‘Mum made them put everything back. Especially my stuff. And she made them do my room first, so it was finished first. They were in the garden and everything. And they went through the bins even though I told them not to because they wouldn’t find anything there. Like, opening the bags and stuff. It was rank.’
‘I bet it was.’ I looked at Millicent. Did they? Her eyes told me they had found nothing. Weird, I thought, but I let it pass.
‘Mum said it smelled like the anus of Satan. Didn’t you, Mum?’
‘I may have whispered that to you, Max.’
‘And three of them looked in the loft. Not at the same time, though.’
Please tell me no.
‘They were there for ages on the ladder with torches – like one, and then the other one, and the other one – but they didn’t go in.’
‘They didn’t?’
‘Undisturbed dust,’ said Millicent.
‘Yeah,’ said Max. ‘Like if someone went in there you could see it but you couldn’t see it so no one did. I could hear them talking about it outside my door, even though it was closed and they were whispering.’
‘Seems strange,’ I said.
Unless they were looking for something very specific.
‘I know, right?’ said Max. ‘Except then Foxxa went and hid up there and you could see all her footprints, and she wouldn’t come down till they went. And then Mum had to give them her computer.’
I looked at Millicent, and she nodded, weary. She felt violated – I could see that – she was being strong for Max’s sake.
‘Yeah,’ she said neutrally, ‘they’re going to want to take a look at yours too, Alex.’
‘Mum said we’re going to fight this together. Because we’re a family.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do, Max. Family’s exactly what we are.’
My little tribe.
‘We’re going to fight.’
When Max was in bed I told Millicent about going for a drink with Rose.
‘Only because of the interrogation,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing more to it than that.’
‘OK,’ she said.
‘I guess I’m more susceptible than I thought,’ I said. ‘That detective: I swear, by the end of it, you want to confess to murder because she’s started being nice again.’
‘Psychology 101.’ She smiled, and I was taken aback by the look in her eye.
‘You almost want to be able to help,’ I said. ‘You feel as if you could confess, and everything would be just fine.’
‘Honey, that stuff works. That’s why it’s Psychology 101. It works even when you know why it works. Everyone is susceptible.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘Rose seemed to understand. So I went to the pub with her. I probably shouldn’t have.’ Still that patient look in Millicent’s eye. Why was she minded to forgive me? ‘There was just this weird momentary closeness between us.’
‘I get it, Alex. It’s OK.’
‘Just … Sorry, it’s just such a strange experience.’
‘It’s OK. You needed to be with someone who felt what you felt.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Thank you for understanding that. I didn’t know if you would.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, Alex, I understand your need to be understood.’
She led me up the stairs. We undressed and sat shyly on the edge of the bed, like guilty teenagers.
‘What?’ we kept saying to each other. ‘What?’
She had changed the sheets.
‘What?’
‘What?’
She got up and closed the curtains, sat a little nearer to me.
‘What?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Stop laughing at me, Millicent.’
‘Stop laughing at me.’ She mimed hiding her breasts and pubis. ‘It’s most intimidating.’
‘I’m not laughing at you.’
‘Me neither.’
‘What then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And move your hands.’
She stretched her arms away from her body.
‘You’re very beautiful, Millicent,’ I said. ‘The way your breasts frame your face, and your hair frames your breasts, and your arms frame your hair.’
‘Always with the framing devices,’ she said, laughing.
She leaned across and kissed me very deeply.
Then she drew away and looked me up and down.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What?’
‘Well, look at you, all hard.’
I kissed her, and she kissed me hungrily back, pressed her pubic bone into mine.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you more beautiful, Millicent,’ I said. I drew gently away from her, pushed myself down the bed, brought my head level with the tops of her thighs.
‘Really?’ she said.
‘Really.’
For a while I traced slow circles round her clitoris. My tongue’s very tip. This way. That way. This way again. For a while she lay still, as my tongue travelled first one way, then the other. The lightest of touches, barely there.
Time passed. The tension in her body built. Time stopped.
I held her on the brink of orgasm for as long as I could. When she tilted her hips up to meet me I drew away gently and waited, kissing the tops of her thighs, resting my cheek against the springy softness of those tiny dark hairs. When the tension in her body subsided I began again.
‘This isn’t fair, Alex,’ she said, her voice distant.
Never leave me, I thought. You must never leave me.
I held her in my arms and we dozed. When I woke she was looking down at me.
‘Hey.’
‘Hi,’ I said.
She laughed, ran her hand through her hair. ‘So this was a little unexpected. It’s not like either of us had a good day.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, this was not a good day.’
‘Kind of helps to remember why we’re together.’
‘You’re a great fuck.’ I arched upwards, made to kiss her. She put an arm on my chest and pushed me back down.
‘Don’t pretend that was just about sex, Alex. You know there’s more to it than that.’
‘And you know that I love you.’
‘Simplify, please.’
‘I love you.’
‘We worked together today, Alex. That’s who we are. This was what our marriage is.’
We lay for a while, hands in each other’s hair, face against face, watching each other in extreme close-up. The gold flecks in her dark eyes. The sadness in those eyes, though, even when she smiled. Always there, though I had not always known what it was. Even when we had been happiest together it had never really gone away.
‘Bryce was murdered, you know.’ I wished I could have found a kinder, gentler way to tell her.
>
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t believe that he was.’
‘She said they have proof, love. I’m so very sorry.’
She had loved Bryce, after all. No matter how she had hurt me, she deserved some consideration for that.
‘Alex,’ she said, ‘he was a little unstable. More than a little unstable. I can believe he would take his own life.’
‘But someone put a piece of metal in the plug. In place of the fuse. They showed me pictures.’
‘Believe me, Alex, it’s credible that he would do that.’
‘It sounded very credible when the detective told me,’ I said, lamely. ‘I’m explaining badly.’
I could see her weighing her thoughts.
‘OK, Alex,’ she said. ‘Here it is …’
She made as if to speak; it was as if the thought froze on her lips.
‘What is it, Millicent?’
‘Bryce had some dark days.’
‘He was a depressive?’
‘He lost a little girl too, Alex.’
‘What? What are you saying?’
‘Her name was Lana. She was a year old. She died. Viral meningitis.’
‘Wow,’ I said.
That made a horrible kind of sense.
‘His world fell apart. He lost everything, you know. His relationship with Lana’s mother broke down, and he lost his job, and he had to begin again from scratch. Like he almost ended up on the street.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I see.’
‘He went from nothing, to this …’ she nodded through the wall towards Bryce’s house ‘… in the space of three years.’
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘So,’ said Millicent, ‘I guess I’m wondering what your reaction is.’
Strangers with a common experience. A shared narrative of recovery. And a husband who was away a lot.
‘I can see how that would make him attractive to you.’
‘Please don’t be snitty, Alex. This was not an easy thing to talk about.’
‘I’m not being snitty. I can really see how that would make him attractive to you, Millicent.’ I took her hand, saw surprise in her eyes. ‘I mean, there’s a logic to this,’ I said, ‘isn’t there? And he was good to you.’ I was fighting back the tears now. ‘And people have affairs because something is missing in their lives. Don’t they?’
She nodded, uncertain, as if weighing her thoughts.
‘And I was missing from yours.’
‘Maybe so,’ she said, clutching my hand in both of hers.
‘He listened. I didn’t.’
She swallowed hard, and I could see that she too was trying not to cry. We sat there for a while, our hands knotted together.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He listened.’
‘I’m listening now,’ I said, ‘if it’s not too late.’
She said nothing. I cradled her to me. Five minutes later she was asleep.
At the dark of night I woke from a dream. A knife in my back, in a street very like ours. No Max. No Millicent. The more I tried to remember the dream, the more it slipped from me. Probably nothing.
That other thing: something the detective had said; or maybe Rose. Why hadn’t I told Millicent the other thing? I needed her to understand the other thing. I would tell her the other thing when she woke up. I would wake her and tell her now. Perhaps she already knew.
The neighbour didn’t own his house.
I lay, wanting to wake Millicent, wanting to tell her that. But as my thoughts cleared I realised that wasn’t the other thing at all. The other thing was gone. All I knew now was that the other thing had been worse. Much, much worse.
I think the other thing might have been about Millicent.
13
On Sunday morning I fetched the stepladder from the back garden. It was five and already light. If Millicent asked what I was doing, I had my excuse ready.
The ladder scraped the walls on the way up. If Max woke, if he asked me what I was doing, I would answer that I couldn’t sleep – that much was true – and that I was looking for photos that showed a gentler side of my father. I needed to be reminded of my father without his gun, my father without his army-issue leather belt. Max would understand that, I thought. Millicent would understand too. She knew about the beatings. She was the only person I had told.
The bulb glowed dully, pathetic in the windowless dark. The attic had lain undisturbed for years, the floor heaped with boxes and bags full of clothes. Only the cat had left her mark here, tripping teasingly about on the plasterboard floor as the police watched from the ladder, her pawprints a delicate grey-white in the grey-black of the dust.
I edged along the central beam. Above me the roof was high, though it raked so sharply down that I could touch it on both sides of me if I stretched out my hands. There was another beam above me, and I braced myself by pushing a hand hard up against it as I stepped carefully along the lower beam, careful not to step on to the plasterboard.
When I reached the middle of the room I made myself as tall as I could and curled my fingers around the upper beam. I found the envelope at once, well out of reach of Millicent or Max.
Inside the envelope was Caroline’s letter. The letter was very short. She asked me to stop contacting her. Her next step, she said, would be the law.
I had made the mistake of not believing her. And there was the non-molestation order, which had been served on me that summer by a man in motorcycle leathers. The man had held my arm while he explained the terms. I must cease and desist. I must not establish contact with Caroline in any one of eleven listed ways. I felt again the strange spike of shame that I had felt then. And yes, I ceased, and I desisted.
I memorised the name and address of the solicitor. Then I put the letter and the non-molestation order back into the envelope. I was about to put them into my pocket when I heard a faint sound on the landing. Not quite a footstep, but something – a presence. Max?
I looked down at my feet on the beam. I could not move quickly from where I was. Not without making a great deal of noise, not without risking a fall.
A new noise. A faint metallic shimmer. The stepladder. I thought of Rose and her bracelets. And again, there it was, that shimmer sound. Max – I was sure of it. I slipped the envelope back on top of the beam. Burning it would have to wait. I began to move slowly to where I was sure the family photos were, somewhere in a looming mound of boxes and files. Your granddad in happier times.
A faint scrabbling sound at the top of the ladder.
The cat stood at the hatch, looking in.
‘Foxxa, no.’ At the sound of my voice she looked towards me, eager in the half-light.
I kept my voice at a half-whisper. ‘Stay, Foxxa.’
The cat’s ears pricked. Ss, Ts and Xs, her favourite sounds. She hooked the end of her tail, ran out towards me along the beam. As I bent down to pick her up she jumped, stood for a while just out of reach, rubbing her head against a filthy wall.
‘I was looking for the cat.’
‘But how did she get up there, Alex?’
‘I don’t know.’
She spent five minutes sniffing at boxes, scent-marking their edges with the side of her head, always just beyond my grasp. Then she was satisfied, and joined me at the hatch, let me carry her down the stepladder, watched as I folded it, swearing under my breath. She walked one half-step ahead of me as I carried the ladder down our narrow wooden staircase, stopping to look up at me, as if daring me to fall over her, chirruping as she went. Then she stood, mewing by the back door, as I tried to open it while holding the ladder.
I put the ladder back in the garden. My white t-shirt and pants were covered in a thick, velvety powder. I took them off and put them into the washing machine in the lean-to. I stood naked in the garden, listening to birds and traffic. The cat sat washing in the sun, hind legs splayed. The day had barely started, and already it was too hot. I shut the back door and went upstairs to shower.
Then I went to my computer and l
ooked up Caroline’s solicitor. I wrote him a long mail in which I said that I had recently contacted Caroline directly; I acknowledged that this was unwise, and apologised. I said that I nonetheless needed to speak to Caroline about a matter of some importance. I hoped that she would forgive the intrusion. I would meet her anywhere – at his office if necessary – but I had to see her.
I stared at what I had written for ten minutes. It sounded desperate. I shortened it, and took out the offer to meet at her solicitor’s office. My reason for needing to meet her seemed weak, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. I added a line about having learned from the experience, and being grateful for his letter, despite the immediate pain it had brought me. Then I deleted the line about it bringing me pain, wrote that I had used the experience as an opportunity for growth, had turned my life around, was happily married now, with a son about to start secondary school.
I sent the mail before I could change my mind, then deleted it from my computer. I washed up and took out the rubbish. By the time Millicent and Max were up I had the downstairs of the house almost tidy; I had the door to the garden open, and breakfast on the table. Max fed pieces of bacon to the cat under the table and Millicent and I pretended not to notice.
I will explain about Caroline, when she contacts me. If she contacts me.
On Sunday evening as Millicent showered, I cooked a rare steak for her and a hamburger for Max, pushed a glass of Burgundy into her hand as she entered the kitchen. Max ate his hamburger in silence in front of the television. Millicent and I ate our steaks at the kitchen table, talking lightly about nothing that mattered.
Our truce was holding. There were moments where I was almost overcome by anger at what she had done. She had made a cuckold of me, and she had abandoned Max. But I understood a little better why she had done it. Bryce was a man who understood her pain. A morally unimpeachable man, who had rebuilt his life after a loss worse than ours. A man who had listened to her when her husband had not.
I thought I had been listening. Perhaps – I had to concede – perhaps after all I had not. Millicent had dealt me a bad hand, an unfair hand even. She had brought Bryce and the police crashing into my life. There had been no malice in it, though; she had been desperate. I would make the best play I could with the cards she had dealt me, and together as a couple we would move on. This was liveable, I thought. We were getting by.
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