by TL Dyer
‘Hey.’
‘How are you? Listen, I’m sorry about the messages. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean—’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Only, after the weekend. I don’t want you to think—’ That it didn’t mean anything. That I’m that sort of man.
My throat is caving in on itself, and I should have eaten before I had a drink. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have sent the text.
‘Look, Steve, it was really nice and everything.’
I run my fingers back and forth over my forehead, skin hot, vision losing focus.
‘And in other circumstances...’
I bring the hand down to cover my eyes.
‘Steve?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I do like you. And I can’t thank you enough for Sunday—’
‘No. No need.’
That’s what we’re here for.
Silence tears a hole in the conversation, and I should say something, but I don’t know what. That my dog died. That my son’s been smoking which he got from me. I yelled at him, and Ange got mad at me, like she’s mad at me for everything, but I’m so exhausted I don’t have the energy to please her. Oh, and I went to see Simons, the man I thought was Anna’s lover, except turns out he wasn’t, turns out I got Anna completely wrong. In fact, we all did. And you know what else? I was this close to deleting messages from her phone like she asked me to, texts from her pot dealer and the man she was stalking; I almost deleted those because it was Anna’s last wish, and she’d begged me to honour it for her. But it’s okay because the job stopped me in time, stopped me from thinking for myself. The thing is, though, I can’t help wondering what other things I might have been mistaken about over the years, whether I should even be doing this job, do I even deserve it. And if not this, then what, what else am I supposed to do?
Or maybe I’ll just jump right in and tell her that lately there’s something wrong and I don’t know what the fuck it is, or what it means, but I can’t always catch my breath, it gets stuck in my chest and my heart beats so hard and so fast, and when it happens in the middle of a call-out it frightens the living shit out of me because what if I fail, what if I freeze, what if I can’t move, can’t do anything? I’m an officer, doing nothing isn’t an option. I’m an officer, for fuck’s sake.
‘Steve?’
Her voice is soft, like it was the other day with her hands holding my head after I’d hurt her, and it’s enough for my eyes to cool beneath my closed lids.
‘This is not about you, Steve. You understand that, don’t you? It’s just that it’s not fair. Not to your wife. And not to me. I couldn’t let you... I won’t...’
You won’t be the other woman.
‘Of course not. I wouldn’t expect that.’
So what did I expect? From this woman who’s already been crapped on by at least one other person in her life, and lonely as she might be, deserves better than that. Better than a man who used his fists and his words to control her, and better than a middle-aged married idiot who leaned on her too hard just so she’d make him feel better about himself. Was there much difference between the two, really? It was all taking, wasn’t it? Selfishly taking.
‘I’m not what you need, Steve.’
I drag my eyes open, stare at the wall across from me and the hundreds of tiny holes that together make up a loose circle around the space where Dan’s dart board used to hang.
‘You deserve better,’ I say, followed by a silence that goes on so long I wonder if she’s still there. But then she says, ‘So do you.’
I peer up at the ceiling, to where the steel garage door hangs over my head, its metal support struts forming a cross right above me.
‘Tricia?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Take care, alright?’
I lose it on the last word, but I don’t know if she hears or what her reply is, because I’m already hanging up and tossing the phone to the box at my feet.
I never saw Dad cry. Not even when Mum died. And so I didn’t cry either, not once I was past a certain age. Maybe that was hard to start with, I don’t remember, but it got easier. Everything does the more you do it. And it seemed like the right thing to do, a requirement even. What use are tears in this line of work? Professionalism doesn’t come with emotion, it comes with a clear head, authority, knowing your job inside out and carrying it out as best you can. In turn, professionalism fosters a level of respect from your peers and colleagues that reinforces that confidence in your abilities, reaffirms your position and your worth. Emotion – no matter what they say these days – would tear all that down in a heartbeat.
My fingers curl around the neck of a bottle on the floor, and I launch it so hard across the room that when it hits the wall with force, tiny shards of glass come back to land at my feet.
Chapter 35
The next few shifts are a blur. I do what I need to, and the rest of the time keep my head down. Each time I book off, I get home, straight up the stairs under the shower, and when I sit down to eat, most nights without Ange who’s taken on overtime at the building society, I can’t even remember what it is I’ve done all day. When I do see Ange, the words we speak to each other are perfunctory, about the bins or what we need from the shop. She hasn’t mentioned the bruise on my cheek, she’ll think I got it at work. Dan clocks it, but he doesn’t ask about it either. The removal of tension that the silence brings suits us all to begin with. But after I’ve worked my last shift and am once again eating alone, I know something has to change.
Ange texts when I’m halfway through the rice and tinned chicken curry I’ve thrown together, meal for one, seeing as Dan’s not here. She says she’s going straight out after work, and my first thought is, what does that mean – where is she going, and who with, and if I asked would she lie? I scrape the rest of the dinner into the food caddy and grab a bottle from the fridge. Later I watch a Bruce Willis film I’ve seen a hundred times, thinking if Dan were here we could have made a man’s night of it. I could have split him a beer, shown him there’s more to his old man than the uniform and the rules. I sit through the film from start to finish, without really seeing it. By eleven, I exchange beer for a neat Jameson Irish, and after the third, it turns in my stomach and I run to the downstairs toilet to throw the drink and the curry back up. I rest my forehead on the cool cistern in the dark room and for the first time in a long time wish Ange was here. I tap out a text telling her I miss her. Then realise it’s the same thing I said to Tricia, and hold down the delete button to get rid of it.
After the drink, I sleep flat out. So flat out that I don’t hear her come in or hear her leave again the next morning. But I find her note on the kitchen counter saying she’ll be back later tonight and we need to talk. I brew a strong coffee and sit re-reading her message, something sparking inside me that I cling to, something that might be a way out of all this.
Once I’ve got rid of the niggling headache from last night’s drink, I change into old clothes, drive to the DIY store for two tubs of fence paint and some brushes, and return home to make a start. The sun when it peeks through the clouds is warm on my neck, so that by the time I’m done and have washed everything up and I sit outside on the patio in the shade with a brew, sunburn prickles along my skin. Something occurs to me and I pick up my phone and send a text to Ange. Her reply doesn’t come until after an hour later, but when it does, it’s to agree with me. She says she’ll be home by six, and I make the call before going upstairs to wash, shave and dig out some half decent clothes.
*
The restaurant is not one we’ve been to before, though it’s been on the High Street for years. Thai food isn’t usually our thing; or at least, trying new things hasn’t been ‘our thing’, not for a while. It used to be. But somewhere along the line, after Dan was born, or maybe before that, we slipped into a comfort that seemed just as good, if not better, than adventure and newness. There was enough adventure at work, I didn’t need it at home too. F
amiliar was better, what we knew, what we liked, what we could expect. But I suppose familiar has a shelf life just like everything else.
Ange sits across from me, sipping from a glass of gin and tonic and poking at her food. She’s prodded it so much that the waiter has been over twice to check if everything’s okay with her meal. Her smile is broad when she tells him yes, but when he goes, the smile goes with him. I catch the five-foot-some-odd impresario glance over his shoulder at Ange, and realise the food’s not the only reason he keeps returning to our table.
She looks beautiful. Her hair rests in large chestnut waves over the shoulders of the pine-green silk blouse, top buttons undone. Laying open against her tanned skin is the simple gold chain given to her by Freddie and Lisa for her fortieth birthday. It catches the light from the candle on the table whenever she moves, the Dalstons with us even now when it’s supposed to be just the two of us.
‘Go somewhere nice today?’ I ask, in an effort to get the conversation started. But for her it’s a signal to stop eating, and she lays down her cutlery, foregoing food for gin.
‘Just shopping,’ she says, returning the glass to the table. When she looks up, it’s as if she’s challenging me. To question her lie, maybe.
I bite back my disappointment so I can smile and nod, avoid getting this thing off on the wrong foot. Given what I’ve done, I owe her that at least, the space for her to keep some things to herself. Pushing my empty plate aside, I sip from the tonic water and root about for something to say, a place to start. It’s never been so difficult.
‘Heard from the estate agents?’ I ask.
She dabs at her mouth with a napkin. Taking her time. Not looking at me. She lays the napkin beside her plate and glances at the tables around us, before bringing her attention back to ours.
‘Steve—’
‘Wait.’
The waiter returns with an ‘excuse me’ and a smile that’s getting cockier by the minute. He takes my plate before gesturing to Ange’s.
‘Yes, I’m done, thank you,’ she says.
He steps to her side of the table, his eyes on her and not the food she’s failed to finish.
‘I hope there wasn’t a problem with your meal, madam.’
‘No, of course not. It’s wonderful. It’s just I had a big lunch. I’m so sorry.’ She laughs, charming the pants of him. He hasn’t blinked once yet.
‘Is there anything else I can get for you?’
‘No, I’m fine, but thank you.’
‘The dessert menu maybe?’
‘Not right now.’
‘Another drink?’
‘No, really, I’m good.’
‘Well, if you change your mind, my name’s Kiet. If you call—’
‘Thank you, Kiet,’ I say, loud enough to break whatever spell he’s under and remind him my wife hasn’t come to this restaurant alone. ‘We’re fine.’
Dark brown eyes glance my way, hard at first, but only until he buries it under customer service and a sickly smile.
‘Of course, sir. My apologies.’
I watch him cross the room and shoulder his way in through the door to the kitchen.
‘Arrogant prick,’ I mutter.
‘You didn’t have to be rude.’
‘He’s just lost two new customers for the family business.’
I down the tonic water in one like it’s a shot of something stronger, and scan the room for someone to call for the bill.
‘Steve, there are things we need to talk about.’
My eyes come back to the table, to where Ange is looking at me as if she’s already apologising, and now I’m not so sure I’m ready for this yet.
‘You look incredible, by the way.’
‘Steve—’
‘No, I mean it. Half the room’s staring at you.’ She glances to her right out of a self-conscious instinct. ‘That’s why Kiev couldn’t keep his beady eyes off you.’
‘Kiet,’ she says, and then can’t help herself, her lips tip into a smile and she giggles.
‘Well, whatever his name is. The man’s clearly been seduced by your charms,’ I say, with a teasing glance to her cleavage. But her laughter’s already fading.
‘Nice that someone is,’ she says, her tone and expression weighted enough to tell me there’s something she hopes for from me, something more than flattery and which might even change the course of the evening. Except I don’t know what the hell it is.
‘Don’t be daft,’ I say, reaching for my glass before realising it’s empty. Across the room, Kiev has returned and is trying his luck at a table of four females, one of whom puts her hand on his arm as they laugh. ‘You seduced me the minute you took your slippers off, Ange.’
‘Really?’
Kiet gets called away from his fan club by someone in a white apron at the door to the kitchen. Once he’s gone, touchy-feely woman picks up the menu and fans herself with it while they giggle some more.
‘Steve...’
‘Yeah, really,’ I say, turning back.
Ange looks at me for a long while, her expression impossible to read, before she waves to the passing waitress.
‘I can’t do this here,’ she says, pushing her arms into the sleeves of her jacket.
When the bill comes, I pay it and we leave the restaurant. We walk to the car in silence, and once we’re inside with the doors closed and the engine on, I try to speak, but she cuts me off, tells me to take her home. So that’s what I do. But the further down the road we get, the emptier I feel, and whatever great idea I thought I had earlier about us meeting on neutral ground, doing something different together, has already missed its mark. By the time I pull up outside the driveway, my chest is tight. She gets out, and I watch her walk up the drive in her best clothes and heels, go in through the front door and slam it, and for the first time I have no clue what it is I should do now. But when I follow after her a short while later, she’s standing just inside the door, leaning against the stair post with her hands tucked behind her. Waiting.
We both stand there in silence, until still without knowing what it is I should do, my feet move, crossing the space between us until we’re close enough that she has to look up at me, and close enough that her breath hits my chin. Her diamond studded earrings glimmer through her hair and I reach up to release a strand that’s got caught around one of them. Fine hairs cover the skin below her ear lobe, beauty spots speckle her neck and collarbone. Hooking the edge of her blouse, I peel it back until I find the birthmark below her shoulder, the one shaped like a rugby ball. I trace over it with my fingers, lay my palm flat against her skin. Her chest rises and falls with her breath. And when I lift my head only an inch, her lips are right there.
When we kiss, her taste is the one I know, so is the tilt of her head, the way I move my mouth over hers, fitting together same as we’ve always done. And maybe that’s fine, it’s like that for a reason. It means we know each other, we understand each other, we know where we stand, where the boundaries are, we don’t have to hurt anyone or worry about saying it wrong or getting it wrong. We don’t have to fix each other.
Her nails scratch over my neck as we kiss deeper. I press myself closer, hands feeling the warmth of her skin through the satin blouse, the shape of her waist, her hips and thighs, my fingers curling into the fabric of her skirt so it rises. She breaks the kiss to gasp, and I take hold of the other side of the skirt, bunching it up in the same way.
‘Steve.’
I duck my head to her neck, lips pressing against her skin.
‘Steve.’
Her hands grip my shoulders and she shifts her hips. My lips are down to her chest, where her cleavage starts and her skin softens.
‘Steve, stop.’
‘What?’ I whisper, working my way up the other side of her neck, the skirt up to the tops of her thighs now, where I reach around and pull her against me.
‘Steve, stop!’ She nudges my shoulders hard enough that I let go.
‘What? What is it?’<
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Her palm goes up between us, but she can’t look me in the eye.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, moving away to give her space as she straightens her clothes. Her hand wipes over her mouth, and there’s a tremor in her fingers that scares me. ‘Ange please. This is nice. I thought you wanted...’
She peers up at me, and through mist-filled eyes that are trying to be firm, she shakes her head. I’ve no idea what that means, but I back away until I’m up against the front door, the PVC hard against my spine. My heart’s racing, my breath too, but for all the wrong reasons now.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Okay, let’s talk. We can open a bottle of wine and... Ange.’
She’s walking down the hall and stopping at the cupboard under the stairs. She opens it, reaches in and pulls out a suitcase, which she drops by the wall, going back in a second time and bringing out another case.
‘What are you doing?’
All my efforts to calm myself are failing as my heart slams in my chest. I’m moving down the hallway after her, but I don’t know how, because it feels like the blood is draining from me.
‘Ange, what are you—’
‘Who’s Tricia, Steve?’
I stop, an instinctive reaction that makes anything else I say now irrelevant. Ange tugs up a humourless smile, a mocking one, one that says, Don’t even bother. She goes back under the stairs to pull out the large black luggage bag, heavy enough that when she drops it to the floor, I feel the vibration through the floorboards under my feet.
‘It doesn’t matter who she is. I swear, Ange, it doesn’t matter.’
But neither do my words matter, because she closes the door under the stairs and hooks the black bag over her shoulder, pulls up the handles on the cases.
‘Ange, please. We haven’t even talked about this. I thought we were going to talk? What are you doing?’
‘What does it fucking look like?’
Her eyes are clear of tears now and blazing with a hatred I’ve never seen there before. And it’s directed at me.
‘Don’t.’