by TM Logan
‘No,’ I said. ‘Put it on loudspeaker.’
She touched the screen again and the tinny metallic ringing filled the bedroom as the call went through. I watched Mel’s face as it rang. She seemed drained, exhausted. But also relieved, as if she was glad to have finally got all of it off her chest.
The call connected and she sat up a little straighter on the bed, holding her head up a little higher. In the stillness of our bedroom, I heard a male voice answer.
‘Hello?’
It was him.
25
‘Ben?’ Mel said, her voice tight.
There was a pause.
‘Yeah?’ He sounded instantly impatient, or angry. Or both.
I moved a little closer so I could hear better.
‘It’s Melissa.’
Melissa, not Mel. She was Melissa to him, then.
A pause on the other end of the line. One beat, two. I thought I heard an intake of breath.
‘What do you want?’
‘Ben, I’ve got Joe with me. He’s here with me now. I’ve told him everything. And I’ve told him it’s over between you and me, it can’t carry on. Like I said the other night –’
There was a click from the other end of the line and her phone beeped.
‘Ben?’ Mel said, leaning a bit nearer to the mobile.
She checked the display.
‘He hung up,’ she said, a flicker of sadness in her voice.
‘Try him again.’
She redialled, and it rang just once before going to voicemail.
This time she hung up before dialling again. It rang six times before the voicemail message started.
‘This is Ben Delaney. Leave a message.’
Mel looked at me, as if to ask the question.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Ben,’ she started, hesitating over her words, ‘I just need you to know that . . . I can’t see you any more. Like I told you. Beth knows, she came to the Stratford today and caused a hell of a scene. She’s in a bad way, I’m worried about her.’
A bit late for that, I thought darkly.
‘Anyway,’ Mel continued, ‘Joe knows everything. I’ve told him all of it. Please don’t call me again, just . . . send me a text so I know you’ve got this message.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘Goodbye, Ben.’
She looked up at me, and I nodded. She ended the call and silence filled our bedroom.
I looked back at her, wondering how we had come to this. Wondering if I’d ever really known her at all. She couldn’t look me in the eye. Eventually I turned and looked out of the window again, out onto the street.
‘Do you think he’ll come here?’ I said. ‘To the house?’
‘Honestly? I have no idea. He’s a bit unpredictable when he’s angry or upset. I really don’t know what he’ll do.’
‘Well if you see him before I do, you call the police. OK? No messing about. And I’ll do the same.’
There was shouting coming from downstairs, muffled through the bedroom door.
‘Daddy! Daddy!’
I took the stairs two at a time and found William on the back of the sofa doing a headstand, propped against the wall with his feet halfway to the ceiling. His face was flushed red. The sofa itself was covered with dozens of cars.
‘Daddy! Look! I’m going upside down!’
In spite of everything I smiled, glad of the distraction. Today had turned into the worst day of my life – worse than when my parents split up, or the day I wrecked my sporting career – but my son still had the ability to make me smile, with his four-year-old craziness.
‘That’s good, Wills, now why don’t you come down for a minute and get back to normal.’
‘I am normal.’
‘The normal way up, I mean. So you don’t get dizzy.’
‘Don’t feel dizzy.’
‘Come on, matey. You’re very red in the face.’
I picked him up carefully and put him back on the sofa, right side up. He sat for a minute and got his breath back, his cheeks still flushed.
‘Do you want to play a game?’ I said. Anything to take my mind off Mel, and what I was supposed to do next.
‘What game?’
‘Footie in the garden?’
He thought for a moment.
‘Is everyone cross with Mummy?’
‘What do you mean, Wills?’
‘Alice’s Mummy is cross with her. You’re cross with her.’
‘No I’m not, Wills.’
‘You shouted at her.’
‘You heard that?’
He nodded solemnly.
‘You were mean to her.’
‘I did shout. I was just a little bit upset.’
‘What about?’
‘It’s gone now, it’s nothing.’
He rolled a car across the sofa.
‘Why were you mean to her?’
‘It’s grown-up stuff, Wills. We were both a bit mean to each other, but we’re OK now.’
He began lining the cars up on one of the sofa cushions.
‘Are you sad, Daddy?’
The question stopped me in my tracks. I swallowed painfully, tears springing to my eyes, and turned away so that William wouldn’t see.
What a godawful mess we have made, your mother and me.
‘No, matey. I’m fine.’ I gestured towards the back garden, wiping my eyes quickly. ‘Do you want to play football, then?’
We went outside into the late afternoon drizzle, a net at each end of the garden, kicking his sponge ball until it was sodden and heavy with water. Before long William’s jeans were streaked with mud and wet grass and his coat was slick with rain. But it didn’t seem to bother him as he ran round, and kicked, and rolled over on the ground calling for penalties.
I let the tears come then, glad of the rain to disguise them.
Mel came out in a raincoat and stood by the back door, the hood pulled over her head. We looked at each other and for a moment I thought she was going to come and talk to me. She took a step towards me, faltered when she saw the look on my face.
I turned away. I didn’t want to talk.
She sat down on the swing seat instead and stared straight ahead, fresh tears on her cheeks. She felt like a stranger, like someone else’s wife. It was as if I standing outside someone else’s house in a different street, a different city, where I didn’t belong and never had. For the first time in years, I didn’t know what the future held – only that it held less hope than when I’d woken up this morning.
Mel had only ever talked about being unfaithful once. Truth or dare at the blurry tail end of a house party, before we were even engaged. A game of ‘stand up if you’ve ever’. The game played by drunken adults who had played spin the bottle when they were teenagers. As in ‘Stand up if you’ve ever . . . kissed a girl (aimed at the girls).’ ‘Stand up if you’ve ever had sex at work.’ ‘Stand up if you’ve ever been unfaithful.’ That last one had got her on her feet, swaying slightly and grinning a charmingly plastered grin in the middle of the room. She’d admitted to a single infidelity. But insisted it didn’t count, because it happened when she was still at school. Fifth form. I had asked her later, in the taxi home, but she’d just smiled and kissed me and said it was a long time ago. I’d forgotten about it. Until now.
William was winning our football game 9–8 when my mobile buzzed in my pocket.
I dug the phone out of my jeans and held a hand up to stop play. He ran straight past me and scored into the empty net.
‘Ten!’ he shouted, a smear of mud on his chin. ‘I’m first to ten! I win!’
‘Good game,’ I said.
‘First to fifteen?’ he said hopefully, blinking up at me.
Shielding my phone from the rain, I looked at the screen. It showed the text message icon in the notifications bar. I clicked on it, checking over my shoulder to see if Mel had noticed. She was still sitting on the swing seat, looking at our son, a desolately sad look on her face.
&
nbsp; The message was from Ben.
You want to know the truth big fella? Let’s meet. There’s something I need to show you.
3.25 p.m. Ben mob
Raindrops spotted the phone’s screen, distorting the words.
Let’s meet.
26
I kept my distance from Mel for the rest of the day. Seeing her, hearing her voice, gave me a pain in my chest like there was a boulder pressing on my ribcage. I didn’t know what to say to her, what was supposed to happen next. We were in uncharted territory: my marriage was a shipwreck and I had been washed up on some strange shore where I didn’t speak the language. There was anger too, but mostly a plunging sadness, a sense that much had been lost between us that might never be regained.
Mel put William in the bath after we came in from football, and then made his tea. I shut myself in the study with a bottle of red wine and thought further about the invitation from Ben.
There’s something I need to show you.
But what? And why now? Not to apologise, surely. That was not his style at all.
It could be a trap. Maybe he was going to finish what he’d started on Thursday, with a shotgun to even the odds. Mel had been taken away from him and he couldn’t deal with it, he thought I had threatened to hurt her if she didn’t end their relationship; God alone knew what kind of man he thought I was. Perhaps he thought he had to protect Mel from me, teach me a lesson. I had learned things about Ben in the last forty-eight hours that I would never have suspected, and had to be ready for him if he turned violent again.
It still begged the question: what did he have that he needed to show me?
I booted up the PC and refilled my glass as the computer whirred into life.
Ben had texted a map of the meeting place: a close-up picture of a page from a London A–Z, lots of green space, the A4140 going through the middle of it, Kingsbury HA9, Barn Hill, Fryent Country Park.
Bridge in the park near the open-air theatre. 10 a.m. tomorrow.
Fryent Country Park wasn’t too far away. A few miles north-west, near the bottom of the M1, but still in London. Ben did his triathlon training there, something about being able to run and run without bumping into anyone you knew when you were red-faced and pouring sweat like you were going to have a heart attack. I guessed he knew it pretty well. The satellite image on Google Earth showed an open-air stage by a lake in the southern part of the park. It looked fairly isolated on the map, plenty of trees and no houses nearby. It was an interesting choice. If he had wanted to meet in public, with lots of witnesses and bystanders, he could have chosen one of a thousand other places. But instead he had chosen a big country park with plenty of trees and uneven ground where – at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning – we might not see another soul.
The phone buzzed in my hand. Another text.
Come alone
5.31 p.m. Ben mob
I stared at his latest message for a moment before returning to the Google Earth image. Come alone. It hadn’t occurred to me to do anything else, but I would need to take precautions. Get there early and check the place out. Tell Mel where I was going, too? I couldn’t bring myself to confide in her, not yet. She had kept the truth from me for months, and it was better that she didn’t know her ex-lover was asking to meet. No one at school could know either, because meeting him on a Monday morning meant taking a sickie from work. Nor could Adam, because I knew he’d advise me against the meeting, but it was something that I had to do. Should I take a weapon, in case Ben kicked off? Bad idea. Really bad.
There was a much better option.
I found the business card with PC Khan’s name on it and dialled the number. It went through to a duty sergeant and I explained who I was, asking that a message to be passed on to the demand management inspector as soon as possible in the morning, telling them where and when Ben had asked to meet. I asked – if it was possible – for an officer to meet me at the entrance to the country park so they could see Ben for themselves. See that he wasn’t missing any more. Put an end to this charade.
The printer clicked and hummed as it printed a map of the park. Paths, tracks, a lake, a car park, a road running through the middle of it all. I drank the last of the red wine and just sat there in the chair for a few minutes, wondering whether meeting Ben at the park might turn out to be a mistake. Or my best chance to close things out, draw a line under what had happened, and start putting my family back together. There was only one way to find out. In any case, there were some things I wanted to say to him: to look him in the eye and tell him that Mel was mine and I was hers, and nothing would ever change that. To tell him she was human, she’d made a mistake, and now we would put it behind us and start again. Part of me – maybe a big part – also thought briefly about hurting him, punishing him for what he’d tried to do to my family. He had forfeited his right to a fair fight.
I didn’t notice the webcam until I was about to shut the computer down. The red light glowed next to its tiny digital eye, looking back at me from its perch on top of the monitor. The camera’s red light only lit up when it was in use. When there was someone at the other end, the webcam’s view displayed on their computer screen.
Someone was watching me.
MONDAY
27
Mel left for work at 7.10 a.m., as usual. We had not spoken last night or this morning. As soon as she shut the front door behind her I rang school, leaving a message for the head of year to tell him I was sick in bed with food poisoning and would not be able to make it in today.
Waiting in line with William in the school playground, I turned and caught one of the mums staring at me with a mixture of pity and curiosity. Her face rang a bell somehow but she quickly looked away, saying something to the woman next to her. Then I realised why: she had been two tables away from us in the Stratford Arms yesterday and had witnessed the confrontation with Beth.
Get used to this. People will find out, that’s just the way life works. So be it. I could handle that.
The rendezvous wasn’t due to happen until ten and there were still only three other cars in the small parking area at Fryent Country Park by the time I pulled in, just after nine. One of them was a white Aston Martin DB9, registration W1NB1G.
Damn. He beat me to it.
I parked at the end of the row and sat for a moment, peering at his car, looking for movement behind the tinted glass. My phone chimed with a text message.
I’m so sorry, Joe. Please forgive me. Love you xxx
9.03 a.m. Mel mob
Reading the words gave me a painful ache in my chest again. I put the phone back in my pocket without replying and waited another minute to see if Ben was still in his car. It would be better to do it here in the car park near the road, whatever it was he wanted to show me. This was nearer to an escape route, nearer to houses and people and witnesses, rather than some tucked-away part of the park. And I wanted, suddenly, to get it over with.
There was no movement from the Aston Martin. I got out of my car and walked over to where Ben was parked, trying not to walk too fast or too casually, just calm and controlled and taking everything in my stride. I peered into the sports car’s window. A large Costa coffee was in the cup holder, and there was a pile of clothes on the back seat. Almost like he’d emptied them out of a bag to make space for something else. To make space for what?
‘One of his guns was gone.’
I stared at the pile of clothes for a long moment, then switched on the GPS on my phone, checked the map, and set off up a long, winding track that led over a small rise and into a stand of trees. It was a crisp October morning and the birds were making plenty of noise high in the branches, but I saw no one as I tramped up the path, keeping my eyes peeled and my hands out of my pockets, ready to react if necessary. The trees thinned out on one side then disappeared and a small lake took their place. Low autumn sunlight slanted through the trees at my back.
Footsteps behind me. A young woman in a Lycra running top and shorts, jogging with
headphones on. She passed by and on up the path without meeting my eye.
The stones on the path clicked beneath my feet, and the open-air theatre came into view across the lake. It looked out of place, a grey concrete amphitheatre in this oasis of green trees and blue water. My pulse was picking up. Show yourself, then. I thought about what I would say to Ben. What do you say to a man who’s been sleeping with your wife? Maybe he still thought Mel would come back to him?
He wouldn’t leave here with any doubts on that score.
The path circled almost all the way round one side of the lake, the bridge coming closer and closer. There didn’t seem to be anyone around but that didn’t mean there was no one there. Trees and bushes stood close to each end, and the open-air theatre itself looked like it offered places to hide.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I snatched it out. A text from Ben.
Are you alone?
9.14 a.m. Ben mob
There was no one about except an old woman walking a dog beside the side of the lake, maybe a hundred metres from me. I studied her for a minute. She gave no indication of even being aware I was there.
I hit reply.
Yes
9.15 a.m. Me
I walked up onto the bridge, feeling exposed as I got to the centre. It had a shallow incline and a waist-high stone parapet. On a different day, it would be nice to come here with William. A different day, a different month, a different year maybe.
Turning 360 degrees, I tried to get my bearings. It was a fair way from the car park, which was invisible on the far side of the trees. Apart from the jogger and the dog walker, I had seen no one. I leaned on the bridge’s stone parapet and looked out across the water of the lake, stirred into small choppy waves by a fresh autumn breeze from the north. The sky was starting to cloud over, and what had been a clear, sunny October day was now threatening to turn darker. My eyes came to rest for a second time on the open-air stage on the other side of the bridge, its walls and angles seeming to offer a natural hiding place.