The Old You

by Louise Voss

  But then, to have never met Ed was unthinkable.

  ‘So, Waitsey. Tell me everything.’

  I’d forgotten how intense his gaze was. ‘I’m not Waitsey anymore, for starters. You almost gave me a heart attack, calling me that! You know I moved up to Hampton?’

  Adrian took a sip of his cappuccino. The sight of him licking froth off his top lip made me shiver, although whether with lust, or fear that my old life and my new had collided like this, I wasn’t sure. I could almost smell the chlorine from our first encounter. That had involved coffee, too.

  ‘I did not know that. You disappeared off the face of the Earth! I wanted to get in touch but couldn’t find any trace of you. Which made me proud – you’d obviously done well. So, fill me in…’

  His eyes flicked to my wedding ring. ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Eight years now. And what about you – are you divorced?’

  He nodded. ‘A few years back. I left the job, too.’

  ‘No! Really? Why? You weren’t far off retirement!’

  Adrian pursed his mouth, making his chin scrunch into a walnut. I remembered that expression from when something had displeased him. ‘Ach, it was a right-old shit-show. Got stitched up by someone who’d been gunning for me from day one.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Poor Adrian – to be in the job that long and then to have had to leave, presumably without his pension? He’d have been devastated.

  ‘That’s life. I’m over it now. What about you, things going well?’

  I nodded, then remembered Ed’s phone call that morning, and changed the nod to a shake. ‘Well. They were. Everything was great, up until a few months ago.’ I took a too-big swig of my black coffee and felt the skin on the roof of my mouth shrivel and corrugate. ‘Ow, shit.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Apart from burning your tongue.’

  I sighed. Did I want to get into it? I did, but I was feeling sufficiently tired and fragile that there was a risk I’d start crying – and I definitely didn’t want to do that. Perhaps I was perimenopausal? Great. Something else to worry about.

  ‘Oh, nothing major. As you say, just life.’

  We talked for another ten minutes or so, just chit-chat about his niece, his work as a freelance security consultant, the move he made to Ewell after his divorce. Safe stuff. Adrian didn’t push me into talking further about ‘life’, nor did I quiz him on why he’d undergone those major life changes.

  In fact, I didn’t ask him anything about his family. I didn’t want him to ask me any reciprocal questions; questions which might have led him to work out what I’d done when I left.

  Plus, all those years later it still made me feel guilty, that I’d been having sex with him when his wife and son thought he was working late.

  Not that I owed her anything, the ex-Mrs McLoughlin – if I’d ever known her first name, I couldn’t remember it now – but I prided myself on being a feminist, and doing the dirty with someone else’s husband didn’t exactly elevate me to the higher echelons of the sisterhood … I’d never stopped feeling ashamed about that.

  Why, then, was I wondering if he was with anyone now?

  16

  2006

  ‘Your round, Waitsey!’

  Weller barged back into the pub, stinking of cigarette smoke. He tousled my hair hard as he pushed past me to his seat, and I had to smooth down the resulting bird’s nest. He always did it and it always got on my nerves. He was the sort of guy who would intentionally tilt picture frames crooked just to annoy people. Mussing up my usually dead-straight hair was done on the same principle.

  ‘This smoking ban is doing my fucking head in,’ he said, flopping his bulk back on the bench into which we were both squeezed. ‘Ridiculous, having to go and stand in the street like a leper every time I want to light up!’

  ‘Give up, then, Wells. It’s bad for you. What are you having?’ I shouted, draining my pint and getting up to join the crush at the bar. I took off my cardigan and tied it round my waist, something I’d been holding out on doing for as long as possible because I was only wearing a small, tight vest-top underneath, but it was baking hot in there.

  ‘Another pint of Badger, there’s a good girl.’ Weller, predictably, stared at my chest as he handed me his empty glass.

  It was Friday, monthly karaoke night at The Bell, and a tradition with my colleagues from the station. As I stood in a four-deep queue at the bar, I pondered the point that I didn’t particularly like any of them all that much – with the exception of my friend Sal, who I adored, and sometimes wished he were single. Sadly, he had a girlfriend so beautiful that my inferiority complex developed its own inferiority complex whenever I saw her. They – my colleagues – were good enough fun to hang out with, but after spending the entire, often stressful, week with them in the office, I wondered why I chose to continue to keep their company on my own time as well.

  Although if I didn’t, I’d most likely be on my own. Adrian was never available at the weekends – that was strictly family time for him. Which begged the question, if weekends were family time, and weekdays were work time, when was his Waitsey Time?

  His expression, not mine.

  Waitsey Time, it seemed, was a few snatched hours here and there when he could pretend to be working late and, twice, a blissful naughty night away under the guise of a policing conference in London.

  We had our local meet-ups in his recently deceased Mum’s terraced cottage, which was actually right across the car park from the pub I was in now. If I turned and looked out of the mullioned-glass windows I would see its little hobbity front door. We had to make sure we never met there on Karaoke Fridays at The Bell. That would give our colleagues something to talk about over their pints. I sometimes woke up in a cold sweat at the thought that Weller could be out on the pavement greedily inhaling his seventeenth Malboro Red of the evening and would spot Adrian – DCI McCloughlin to him, or Cluffers behind his back – unlocking the little wooden front door and crouching down so he didn’t bang his head on the lintel as he admitted the pair of us inside for a night of passion on the swirly, dusty carpets amongst his dead mother’s horse brasses and sentimental paintings of Victorian children.

  Not that Weller would see any of that. He would just see me, lowly PC Waites, being ushered inside for an illicit rogering by the boss. And then he’d spread the word around the station as fast as he possibly could, and my career would be down the pan in minutes. It was an unbearable thought, when being in the police was all I’d ever wanted – but even so, I found it impossible to resist Adrian’s advances.

  Also, if I didn’t join my colleagues on a Friday night, I’d get even more snide comments about my private life. Just because I didn’t have a spouse and kids like everyone else did, I had to run the gamut of speculation as to whether I was gay, in a secret relationship (true, but they didn’t know that) or just a commitmentphobe. I wasn’t a moose – so Weller had magnanimously informed me the other week while staring at my tits again – so there must be some reason I didn’t have a bloke, given that I was pushing forty.

  ‘I’m thirty-six. That’s not even close to pushing forty,’ I’d informed him.

  I really, really didn’t want anyone to know what the reason actually was.

  Truth was, I was ashamed of being a mistress. It went against all my ingrained principles and my mum and dad would have been ashamed of me too, had they been around to find out. I regularly hoped they weren’t looking down on me and wondering where it all went wrong.

  All these thoughts made me gloomy, and being gloomy made me drink more. When I was finally served, I ordered my own pint first and was three quarters of the way down it before I even carried the drinks precariously back to the others.

  ‘Finally, Waitsey, we’re dying of thirst here!’ Weller grabbed his Badger off the tray as I was putting it down, and took a long swallow, which he followed up with a large belch.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ I lifted up m
y sheet of hair, to try and get some air circulating on the back of my neck. ‘It’s so bloody hot in here. Are we really staying for the karaoke? I might call it a night actually, I’m knackered.’

  ‘No chance,’ said Sal, giving me a side hug and poking his sharp chin into the hollow of my clavicle. ‘It’s only nine-thirty! You can’t leave yet. You promised you’d do Islands in the Stream with me and I can’t hold a tune in a bucket without you.’

  Salim Palekar, thirty-three, eyelashes like a chimney sweep’s brush, shiny black hair like a seal’s and cute, skinny little legs. He may not have been able to sing in tune, but he was, apparently, an amazing violin player – grade eight, he once told me, which I thought was really cool. Why were the nice ones never single?

  A question that answered itself, if you thought about it.

  I sighed, pushing him fondly away. ‘Where’s Gemma tonight? She’s got a much better voice than me.’

  ‘Out with the girls. She doesn’t like hanging out with us lot of a Friday.’

  ‘Can’t say I blame her,’ I said, watching Weller screw a forefinger into his ear and then inspect it.

  ‘She likes you, though,’ Sal commented, and I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or slightly depressed that Sal’s gorgeous girlfriend clearly saw me as no threat whatsoever.

  ‘So, what about it then?’ He jerked his head towards the small stage on the other side of the bar, where the barman was setting up an amp and TV screen.

  ‘All right,’ I grumbled. ‘I’ll do it, and then I’m going. Things to do, people to see…’

  An appointment with a steaming bath and a good thriller, hopefully. My landlady Nicky was usually out on a Friday night and I hardly ever got to have her house to myself. It was a minuscule two-up two-down with a staircase in the middle so narrow that there wasn’t enough room to squeeze past another person on it, and I always felt in the way whenever she was there. When I lay in bed I could reach out and touch both bedroom walls simultaneously. But it was near the station, and Nicky and I got on pretty well.

  It was embarrassing to be living in a rented box room at my age. I’d told myself it was only temporary, that I’d find somewhere better – but that had been almost two years ago. If I was honest with myself, I was hoping Adrian would leave his wife and he and I could set up home together, but that was looking less and less likely.

  Weller nudged me. ‘Check it out – didn’t we arrest that little scrote last month?’

  He was pointing at a weaselly teenager snogging a girl in a bodycon dress against the pub wall. I shrugged. ‘Probably. There have been so many, haven’t there, Weller? An endless conveyor belt of losers and druggies. Doesn’t it get you down?’

  Weller rubbed his hand over his crew cut. He was a big guy, and even his skull seemed to move plumply under his fingers.

  ‘Nah. All part of the job, isn’t it?’

  The booze was making me philosophical now. ‘But it’s so boring. All these low-lifes and their petty crime.’

  ‘I love it. I could nick ‘em till the cows come home.’

  ‘Yeah, and then I have to interview them. Don’t tell me that’s not as boring as hell.’

  That was my life at the moment, desk-bound, five weeks into a three-month stint of interviewing shoplifters and wife beaters in windowless interview rooms and then spending endless hours writing up the results. It felt like a right anti-climax after what had been such a promising start to the year – I had taken down a robber single-handedly as he fled the minimart whose till he’d just raided, felling him with a well-placed taekwondo kick that sent him flying into a wall. I thought for sure I would get a promotion. But I’d been sent off to write up interviews instead. I was pissed off and impatient, even though I knew that it was an expected part of my career progression, and the promotion had been hinted at as something that I might expect in the future. I couldn’t wait.

  ‘I want something to really get my teeth into.’

  Weller leaned towards me, a glint in his grey, puffy eyes. ‘What – other than the boss, you mean?’

  I’d been in the act of draining my pint, and his words made me rear back against the padded bench in shock, the glass knocking against my teeth and the dregs spilling down my top. ‘What the fuck do you mean by that?’

  I glared at him, my nose so close to his that I could see all his open pores. ‘Seriously, Weller, that’s bang out of order. You don’t know what you’re talking about. As if I’d even go there!’

  ‘Steady on, Weller, that’s how rumours start,’ Sal chipped in, looking nervously at me in a way that made me think, Shit, they know.

  Surely they couldn’t. My face grew hot at the thought. What if everyone knew?

  ‘There’s nothing going on between me and Cluffers,’ I insisted, using the nickname he hated whilst putting on my best innocent face. ‘I don’t remotely fancy him, he’s far too old! And far too married.’

  Weller narrowed his eyes at me. ‘We all know he’s got a bit of a soft spot for you, though, Waitsey.’

  ‘So? That’s hardly the same as me having a rampant bloody affair, is it?!’ I injected a laugh into my voice, but sweat was trickling a light finger down my spine. ‘Anyway, before you accuse me of shagging the entire station just because I’m not married with two point four kids, I think I shall love you and leave you. Although not in that way, you understand…’

  They laughed, but Sal looked uncomfortable. Not half as uncomfortable as I felt, mind you. ‘Sorry about Islands in the Stream, Sal, maybe next time, eh?’

  I hugged him briefly – not Weller, he could go screw himself – and pushed my way out of the crowded pub into the cooler evening air, not bothering to say goodbye to the rest of them on the next table.

  Adrian’s mum’s cottage stood stolidly across the car park, its windows dark, and I felt a pang of sorrow that I couldn’t simply stroll over there, unlock the door with my own key, and let myself in to find Adrian waiting for me with that slightly crooked smile I found utterly irresistible.

  Instead I walked home through the town centre, out to the ring road, under the pigeon-shit-splattered railway bridge and towards the landmark metal hulk of deserted gasworks, in the shadow of which crouched Nicky’s little house.

  I sent Adrian a text, to his ‘secret’ phone, but he didn’t reply. Feeling paranoid and unloved, I stripped, hosed the sweat and beer off my body under a cool shower – I couldn’t be bothered to have a bath – and climbed into my ridiculously narrow bed, where I lay like a board, hands by my sides, head whirling slightly from one pint too many.

  Was this how my life was going to be forever? I checked my phone for a final time – still no reply – then gazed at the framed photo on my bedside table: me saluting the camera on passing-out day, delighted in my pristine new uniform, so many possibilities ahead. It made me smile and, without fail, feel proud.

  Fuck Adrian. What was I doing, wasting my life waiting around for him to grant me a few brief moments of pleasure? I was worth more than that. I wanted a husband, kids, people to call my own.

  I vowed to end it with him next week. Get a transfer, if necessary. There was so much more I wanted to do, while I waited for my babies. I could apply to join the Armed Response Group. I was fit enough to pass the ‘bleep test’, the multi-stage fitness test you had to crack before the ARG would consider you. And they had so few female applicants that I was sure I’d stand as good a chance as any.

  I fell asleep imagining how great it would be to carry a Glock – but how much greater to sniff the sweet milky scent of my own child’s soft baby hair.

  17

  First thing on Monday morning, I emailed and asked for a meeting with Adrian, but without telling him why. I hadn’t seen or heard from him all weekend and with every passing hour of silence my mind became more firmly made up. I was worth more than this.

  There were no interviews that morning, and I was up to date with the transcription of the others, so I had nothing to do except drink bad coffee and li
sten to my colleagues discussing how rubbish and inaccurate the latest police procedural drama on BBC Two was. Adrian emailed me back, very formally, saying I could come to his office at eleven.

  At one minute to eleven, I straightened my tunic, smoothed my skirt over my thighs and knocked on his door. ‘Come in,’ he said gravely and my heart hitched in my chest, much to my irritation.

  ‘Good morning, boss.’ I kept my voice as neutral as I could.

  ‘Morning. Have a seat.’ He gave me the secret smile he reserved for when nobody else was around.

  I sat down, trying not to look at the photo of Adrian, his wife and their son, mouths wide, roaring with white-knuckled delight down a log flume. His son, Kit, was the sort of boy who would probably grow into his looks one day but who at the moment was going through a podgy, unfortunate phase. He clearly took after Adrian, as the wife was – I grudgingly admitted – quite pretty.

  I could never quite figure out why I found Adrian so irresistible. Bald and round-faced, if you saw him from the neck up you’d assume that he was overweight, but he was snake-hipped and lean. It was all about the charisma. As soon as he opened his mouth, I felt myself grow tingly with desire. Something about the way he talked made me smile and want to listen to him all day.