The Actuary's Wife

by K T Bowes

  “Thank you, devotchka,” he whispered and bowed his head to knit their icy lips. Every facet of her husband was intoxicating and Emma sighed into the kiss, wanting to be consumed in their intimate meeting of souls. Rohan pulled back first with a ragged inhale and cleared his throat, amusement in his tortured eyes. “I need you,” he whispered. “I’ll come and see you tonight.”

  Emma bit her lip and her brown eyes flashed like coals, betraying her craving. She nodded. “Ok.”

  Rohan turned to leave. “Emma, tell Dolan about your gardener. Ray Barker lives on his son’s sofa so he might like accommodation. Make sure Dolan knows he’s a policeman’s father. It won’t make him leave but he’ll at least stay out of your way.”

  Emma heard her husband’s low chuckle as he walked down the street, his limp barely detectable. He blew on his hands and thrust them deep in his pockets, pulling his jacket tight across his neat backside. Emma admired his physique, excited about their tryst later.

  The sleek black car slid from the Commons Car Park behind him and pulled over. A man with Oriental features slipped from the rear and closed the door with a quiet click. He gave the driver a barely imperceptible nod, thrust his hands in his pockets and blended into the growing crowd of mothers pushing prams to fetch older children from school. He weaved in and out of the group heading for St Joseph’s school and kept his eyes fixed on Rohan’s back, matching his pace once he was free of buggies, women and grizzling babies.

  “No!” Emma hissed, panicking. In the shelter of the doorway she fumbled in her pocket for the red mobile phone. She texted the only number in her contacts list and pressed to send. Rohan made no sign he’d received the text, strolling up the street towards town. ‘A Chinese man is following you,’ the message declared.

  Rohan’s body kept walking, his back straight and his hands jammed in his pockets. Emma fretted and considered running after him. She planned scenarios where she pushed the man into the busy afternoon traffic or caught him up and screamed her head off as though he’d done something to her. “Just wing it!” she told herself, launching off the porch steps and into the throng of bodies.

  Her phone throbbed in her pocket and she stopped, a pram and a toddler cannoning into her legs. Emma extracted herself from the mess and took refuge in a jeweller shop, eyeing gold necklaces and letting her heart rate settle. Her hand shook as she pulled the phone from her pocket and unlocked it, reading the text twice before it made sense. ‘I know. It’s fine.’

  “How did he do that?” Emma said aloud, her eyes wide.

  “Pardon?” the shop assistant answered in confusion.

  “Nothing, sorry,” Emma said, embarrassed. “Just a text.” She peered at the necklaces to cover her nerves and felt the phone vibrate again. She read the next text and her face broke into a smile. ‘Ear piece and voice text, baby. Don’t worry about me. I love you.’

  She glanced up to find the assistant smiling at her. “I’d like a necklace,” Emma said with confidence. “It needs to be strong enough to keep a ring close to my heart without breaking and fit under my blouse out of sight.”

  Chapter 25

  “Just wait here for me, Nicky? Don’t come in please.”

  Nicky pouted and watched Emma disappear through the half door leading into the storage area. “What are you doin’ in there, Mummy? Why are you grunting?”

  Emma walked over the first part of the flooring, crouching to avoid the roof joists above her head. She daren’t look upwards, knowing she’d encounter spiders of all shapes and sizes and didn’t want to scream and scare her son. “It’s small in here,” she called back. “I have to bend and it’s making me nauseous.”

  “I’m small, I can help!” he shouted back with enthusiasm.

  “No!” Emma said, loud enough for him to hear. “I need you to guard the door. Mr Dalton might not realise we’re in here and lock it. Then we’ll be stuck up here until tomorrow.”

  “Ooh, fun!” The child’s imagination saw it from a different perspective and Emma rolled her eyes, any sense of amusement evading her. The celebration committee’s decision to continue with the event despite the evidence, made Emma nervous enough to contemplate a rescue of the plaque.

  At the end of the false flooring, a puzzle of wooden joists stretched out before her, the single bulb near the door hardly stretching its light beyond Emma’s feet. “Oh, great!” she sighed.

  Wishing she’d thought to bring a torch, Emma stared at the dark space ahead. She estimated the distance to the void above her office, remembering the sound of Sam moving overhead when he hid the plaque. Emma stepped from joist to joist, holding onto the wood crisscrossing overhead, for balance.

  “Ok, Mummy?” came Nicky’s voice, sounding distant and muffled.

  “Yep!” Emma called back, hoping he remained in the library where she left him.

  “Mum!” he shouted again, an edge of fear in his voice. Emma sighed, guessing he could no longer hear her.

  “It’s pointless shouting!” she muttered, sweating from her exertions. She paused for breath, aware of the fragile ceiling boards either side of the joists. One slip and she could plunge herself into a room below. Noticing the open cold water tank which serviced the staff toilets ahead, Emma dropped to her knees and crawled across the next long joist, desperate to finish her mission and get to safety. She groaned as a splinter stung the soft skin of her left knee. Rubbing at the sore spot, she almost overbalanced and panicked, feeling more shards enter her fingers as she gripped and waited, expecting to fall.

  “I can’t do this,” she wailed, but sheer bloody-mindedness drove her. Self-motivation comprising a continuous rant about Clarissa Jameson-Arden meant Emma finally reached the water tank, sitting cross legged on the only suitable patch of floor boards sharing her small space with four dead cockroaches and a mouse trap. “What now?” she hissed, catching her breath and detaching a multitude of cobwebs from her face and hair.

  Without her crawling figure blocking it, the dim light reached further and Emma peered around the water tank. It seemed the perfect place to hide something. She crawled around, searching with her fingers, jumping and squealing as a mousetrap activated and almost caught her thumb.

  “Mummy!” Nicky’s voice became a whimper, sounding like he stood at the end of the boards, peering into the darkness. “I can’t see you,” he wailed. “You’ve disapparated.”

  Emma groaned. “I told you to stay in the library by the door to the computers.”

  “What, Mummy?”

  “Stay there, Nicky!” Emma shouted, seeing his delicate features in shadow. “I’m fine. Two more minutes. Guard the door!” She watched him turn and plod back to the doorway with reluctant, slow moving feet.

  Emma crawled around the water tank like a child playing hide and seek, finding nothing but dust and fluffy pink insulation. “No wonder it’s so bloody cold downstairs,” she grumbled. “There’s not enough fibre glass up here.” The pathetic swathes of of pink filler drifted like light snow, barely filling the loft against the chill penetrating from beyond the slate tiles above. Emma felt her way along the side of the tank, reaching into the space between its condensating bulk and the eaves, wide enough only for her arm. She inhaled a mouthful of dust in excitement as her fingers closed around a cloth and she lifted it to her face. The patterned tea towel was still recognisable despite the filth covering it but as Emma held it up, she knew the weight of the plaque was absent. She felt around on the joist and the ceiling board next to it, baffled when her hands returned empty.

  “No!” she groaned. Dragging the tea towel with her, she traversed the water tank and searched the other three sides again. Nothing. Emma back tracked, covering the ceiling over her office and beyond, searching by touch, desperate for her fingers to find the cold brass beneath them and disappointed with every questing reach.

  Nicky’s concerned face stared back at her from the edge of the boards as Emma heaved herself to a crouch and balanced. “I’m scared for you, Mummy.” His voic
e held tears and Emma measured her tired breaths and nodded, remembering he couldn’t see her properly.

  “I’m fine, baby. I’m nearly there.” She stepped her way across the narrow wooden struts, relieved to feel the boards under the soles of her boots.

  “What’s that?” Nicky pointed at the tea towel. “Is that your special hidden thing?” he asked, tears still in his voice.

  “No, it’s gone, baby.” Exhaustion consumed Emma’s body and she brushed at the mess on her skirt and blouse. “I need a shower.”

  Nicky pressed his face into her stomach and Emma kissed the top of his head. “I can’t touch you, baby. My hands are filthy.”

  “I don’t care.” Nicky wrapped his hands around her waist and sought comfort in her nearness. When he coughed they both laughed. “You stink of old stuff!” he said and wrinkled his nose.

  Emma closed the door to the storeroom and examined herself in the fluorescent lighting of the library. Nicky let out a hoot of laughter. “You’ve got grey hair, Mummy,” he giggled and Emma detached cobwebs from her hair with a groan. The school was silent as they crept from the mezzanine floor, careful on the stairs to the ground level. The cleaners buzzed around the junior classrooms with their vacuums and Emma left through the playground door, scooting across the concrete and using the park gate.

  “Don’t you have the car?” Nicky asked as they ran through the park and Emma stopped.

  “Oh, yeah. Well done, Nicky!”

  They took a circuitous route to the staff car park and Emma settled into the driver’s seat with a sigh. She threw the incriminating tea towel on the floor at Nicky’s feet as he climbed onto his booster seat and clipped himself in. The dark felt eerie and Emma activated the central locking and drove home, feeling confused and upset. She took a long, hot shower in her ensuite and pitched her ruined stockings into the dustbin, emerging to find Christopher Dolan sitting on her bed. “Bloody hell! Don’t you ever knock?” she shrieked.

  He shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. “No.”

  Emma clutched the towel closer to her body and felt her soaking hair drip between her shoulder blades.

  “So, where’s all the blood from, Emma?”

  Her lips parted as she stared down in alarm, seeing the towel speckled with red. Her heart gave a skip of fear until she saw how her hands increased the mess on the towel and turned them over. “I cut my hands and knees,” she said, feeling faint with relief. “It’s not the baby.” A heady faintness overwhelmed her and she sat down, clutching one of the bed posts in her left hand. “I feel sick.”

  With a grunt, Christopher rose and went into the ensuite. Emma watched his body disappear into the cloud of steam through a haze of nausea. He emerged with a glass of cold water and pressed it to her lips. “Drink,” he said with uncharacteristic softness. “Let me look at yer knees.” He parted the towel to reveal a series of gashes and scrapes. “This looks nasty, Em. Where’d ya go?”

  “In the attic at work,” she said between gulps. “I crawled along the joists.”

  “You could’ve fallen.” The reprimand was clear and Emma pursed her lips.

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Still bloody irresponsible!” he chided and Emma looked away.

  “You need to leave. Nicky might come in.”

  “At least let me dig the splinters out,” Christopher said, looking up at her with his intoxicating brown eyes. Emma nodded and pointed to a drawer in the dressing table, which he raided without care. She hissed and complained for the next five minutes while he relieved her flesh of shards of wood and sizeable splinters which had gouged her knees and palms. Then he cleaned the areas with fresh water and cotton wool. “You’re a worry, woman!” he said finally, sitting back on his haunches. “What was so important?”

  “An artifact that changed everything,” she sighed. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “You need an early night,” Christopher said, his tone soothing. Emma glared at him with suspicion and he laughed. “No, seriously ya do.”

  “I’ll feed Nicky and then maybe he’ll come in here with me,” she replied, gazing at the empty grate and wrinkling her nose.

  “I’ll light the fire,” Christopher offered. “You feed your son and yourself!” He left the room, allowing Emma to pull clean pyjamas on, after raiding the first aid kit Rohan kept in his top drawer. She needed four large plasters to cover her weeping knees and another two on each hand. In the kitchen she discovered her son using the toaster whilst standing on a chair.

  “I’m makin’ you tea, Mummy,” he said with enthusiasm and Emma cringed.

  “Thanks, baby, but it makes me nervous to see you playing with electrical things.”

  “I always used the toaster at Fat Brian’s,” he said with a smile. “But we didn’t always put toast in it.”

  Emma opened her mouth to ask the inevitable question and then closed it again. “Don’t you want something more substantial than toast?” she asked instead and her son shook his head.

  “Na. It reminds me of when we were poor and we shared a slice. But now it’s a happy memory because I can have six.”

  Emma stared in horror at the toast mountain next to him. “Nicky! Stop! I hope you’re going to eat all that!”

  “Yep!” he assured her, clambering down and seizing the knife and margarine.

  Emma shook her head and sat in the seat next to him, accepting the nearest slice adulterated by a glob of slippery yellow stuff. Farrell snuggled next to her leg, resting his head on her thigh and sighing. “You’ve been feeding the dog at the table, haven’t you?” she said and Nicky squeezed his face and looked guilty.

  “He said he was very bored today.”

  “Nicky!” Emma’s eyes widened in annoyance. “He ran around the garden all day!”

  “Ah, yeah.” Nicky winced. “But he misses me.”

  “He’s perfectly happy. He’s got the whole grounds to run around in. Don’t feed him rubbish, please.”

  The dog’s black tail thumped on the tiles and Emma rolled her eyes at him, knowing he’d been prowling with Christopher Dolan. The red clay on his legs said they’d been as far as the boundary.

  “Mum? Do you think there’s secret passages in this house?”

  Emma’s eyes widened and she choked on the piece of toast in her mouth. “I never thought about it. Why do you ask?” Rohan’s statement about the blueprints of the house came back to her. The main house predated William the Conqueror’s invasion of Britain in 1066 so it was highly probable.

  Nicky swallowed his mouthful and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “The other night when you ran upstairs to put our electric blankets on before bedtime, Farrell kept looking at the wall and wagging his tail. He did his smiling thing with his face, like this.” Nicky pushed his face into his mother’s, beaming like a maniac and allowing her a close up of the margarine on his cheeks and chin.

  “Lovely,” she said, frowning. “I know the smile. Sometimes animals do silly things; I wouldn’t worry.”

  “But do you think there are some?” Nicky pressed. “Like on the television. Can we find them?”

  “There won’t be,” Emma reassured him, standing up to grab a cloth for his face. “After you’ve eaten, would you like to have a hot shower in my bathroom and snuggle with me for a while? We can do homework in bed.”

  “Ok, but I’ll sleep in my bed tonight if you don’t think you’ll be scared. What about Farrell?” Nicky pointed a slice of toast towards the dog who obligingly lurched for it, devouring the bread in a single gulp.

  “No!” Emma replied and glared at the dog. Farrell slunk away with his tail curled between his glossy thighs and Emma narrowed her eyes. Secret passages. And she bet the Russian and the Irishman were using them.

  Chapter 26

  “That is so hot!” Rohan moaned, slipping the fragile straps of the silky nightdress off Emma’s shoulder.

  “The nightie or the necklace?” Emma giggled.

  “Both,” Rohan breathed.
His fingers caressed the gold links nestled over Emma’s breast, the ring resting close to her nipple. “I’ll never get this image out of my head now.” He kissed the supple flesh, feeling it bounce under his lips and groaned. The ring clinked against his teeth and he gathered it into his mouth and then used his tongue to place it over the other breast. With a tug, the shimmery nightdress material slid to Emma’s stomach, leaving her exposed to his ministrations. His breath was hot on her neck and his kisses insistent, broken only when he sat up to part with his trousers and shirt.

  The metal shin of his prosthetic leg shone in the flickering firelight and Rohan uncoupled it from his knee. He left the sock over his stump, rolling backwards and hauling himself up the bed towards Emma. She looked into his eyes as he settled over her, tracing his lips with soft fingers. “This was my honeymoon nightie,” she whispered, indicating the wine coloured silk with a crooked finger. “Do you remember?”

  Rohan nodded, his eyes narrowed and sultry. “I remember everything.”

  “Every time you tried to slip it off me, I was so scared I giggled,” Emma whispered. “And then I cried because I thought I’d disappointed you.”

  Rohan shook his head and kissed the end of her nose. “I was frightened,” he admitted, his Russian accent lacing his speech in the darkness. “Terrified I wouldn’t be enough for you.”

  “You were,” Emma said. “But you’re getting better with practice.”

  Rohan snuffed and bit the soft skin on her neck, following a line to her breast. “You’re not still scared, are you?” Emma asked.

  Rohan inhaled and sighed. “Yes, Emma; I’m still terrified.”

  Emma ran her lips along the underside of his jaw, feeling him tremble above her. “Why?”

  “I have a stump where there was a leg and a body so scarred I hardly recognise it. I’m not the same man; not the excited nineteen year old with a new wife and a world of sensuosity to explore. I’m damaged goods, Em. One day you might want a man with two legs and no scars and I’ll have to live with it.”