The Actuary's Wife

by K T Bowes

Alanya nodded. “Safe, maybe?” she pointed at the ceiling to indicate heaven and Emma moved her head in jerky agreement. A sickness began in the pit of her stomach at Alanya’s uncanny perception.

  “Izvinite,” Alanya said abruptly, focussing on Emma. “I make...vitamins for children. You don’t get disease, nyet? I make better, da. I not protect Nadia and boy from death so I do better wiz you.” She jabbed a crooked finger at Emma.

  Emma’s face paled and bile surged in her stomach at Alanya’s misconception that her poisons were vitamins, intended to keep her family safe. A sense of wretchedness pervaded her senses and she grabbed for Rohan’s hand, missing and seizing his thigh. A glance showed how pale his face was, an unnatural tremor reaching Emma through his leg. Alanya’s blue eyed stare fixed on Emma’s face, the manic flares coming and going on a strange loop in her head. “I just vant little girl to call me Mama,” she sighed, pointing her finger at Emma. “To make up for Nadia.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emma choked, her throat furring up so she couldn’t speak.

  Alanya cocked her delicate head and suddenly she was there, fully alert and present, blue eyes flashing with life and vigor. Emma inhaled and gripped Rohan’s thigh harder, her eyes wide and frightened. “I always loved you, child,” Alanya said, her voice soft and caressing. Emma waited for the backlash, the spiteful whip of her venomous tongue but it didn’t come. Her breaths came in frightened gasps as she looked sideways at her husband, digging her nails into his flesh. It was as though Rohan’s body remained but his essence stepped out, leaving a shell for Emma to cling to. When he turned to meet her eyes, his complexion was ashen and Emma knew. He remembered. She watched the snapshots of their childhood run through his brain in technicolour misery and saw him hide from it, battening down the hatches and seeking fact and logic to save him.

  “Is true,” Alanya whispered, exhaustion creeping into her voice and bowing her slight frame forwards. “I loved you as my own but you don’t say Mama to me.” She tapped her breast and smiled, her eyes sad but conscious, lucid and vital. She looked beautiful, the Russian damsel in distress Emma’s father loved. Emma craved the touch of gentle, maternal caresses, letting Alanya’s words of love heal her. ‘I loved you.’

  Emma’s lips parted and she felt her soul relent, releasing bitterness and pain in a whoosh of emotion. “You loved me?” she breathed, desperate to believe.

  Alanya nodded. “Da, Emma.” The Russian woman balled both hands together, her fingers writhing in a dance to the death as her eyes dimmed and her sanity ebbed.

  “Don’t go,” Emma gasped as Alanya receded before her. “Don’t go, Mama.”

  Chapter 45

  Emma made it to the final set of gates accompanied by the prison guard, who nodded Rohan through the gap first and jangled his keys wanting her to follow. “Miss?” he said, his eyes narrowing. “This way, please.”

  Emma peered down at her boots, their immobility seeming to startle her. Her brow furrowed and she looked at Rohan, opening her mouth to speak and panicking when nothing came out. The hands which covered her mouth shook and Rohan took a step towards her just in time. “Nyet, Emma, don’t do this, dorogaya. I shouldn’t have brought you. Emma, Emma?”

  The wretched woman slid down the smooth wall, landing on her bottom with her knees raised. Rohan managed to keep hold of her arms but overbalanced on his prosthetic leg and tumbled next to her in the corridor, wrapping his arms around Emma’s trembling body and trying to soothe her.

  “You can’t stay here, sir,” the guard said politely, activating an emergency switch on the wall and closing the gate.

  “I know, I know,” Rohan said, kissing his shaking wife’s temple. “I’m sorry.”

  The first sound Emma made was a sob, quickly followed by another. She felt detached from her body as though someone else sat on the clinical floor of a prison for the criminally insane and wept for Alanya. Rohan’s arms offered more security than the tiled floor or the thickly plastered walls and Emma sank into their safety as the sobs and groans came tumbling from her pink lips.

  “We need to move, sir.” The guard’s voice was authoritative, a supervisor summoned by the emergency switch. Rohan nodded and let go of Emma. He rolled to his side with difficulty and braced his prosthetic limb so he could kneel on the other knee and haul himself up. His trouser leg moved, exposing the metal shin of his false leg and the supervisor’s face changed. “Sorry, sir. Would you like a hand up?” His late offer caused Rohan’s jaw to clench as he reverted from the ‘dangerous guy with the unstable wife’ to ‘the disabled guy.’ He ignored the empty gesture and used his hands to push himself to a standing position.

  “Emma,” he said with softness in his voice. “Devotchka, come. Let’s go home.”

  His wife’s face tipped upwards, a salt river pouring down either side and she heaved a fractured breath. “She just wanted me to call her Mama,” she sobbed. “I only needed to say one word.”

  Rohan’s face softened and he shook his head. “No, Emma, no. None of it’s your fault. Think of our baby, Emma. Let’s go home.”

  Upright, Emma’s feet fumbled every step. Her body ached as though pushed from a moving vehicle and they cut a pitiful crowd, the limping Russian supporting his broken wife. One guard went in front, opening gates and nodding them through while the other brought up the rear and watched them leave.

  In the car, Emma dabbed her eyes with tissue from the glove box and Rohan kept his hand lightly on her thigh, staring blankly through the windscreen. He exhaled a slow breath and pushed his head against the seat. “Mikhail’s selfish wife broke her,” Emma whispered. “What she did broke her.”

  Rohan nodded. “I know, Em.” He swallowed, his own emotion near the surface and his resolve cracking. “How do I make it right? It’s too late for her and Sergei now. And I couldn’t ask her; the question was all planned out in my head but I couldn’t say it.”

  “Ask her what, Ro?” Emma pushed away her own emotions and dealt with the turmoil before her. “What did you want to ask, baby?” she sniffed.

  Rohan stared at the steering wheel, his head bowed and his face a mask of agony. “Who my father is,” he said. His chin wobbled as the striking Russian fought tears of his own, remaining strong for his wife and abandoning Alanya to the cruelty of fate.

  Chapter 46

  “Shall we begin?” the priest asked, straightening his stole and pushing his shoulders back as Rohan nodded. Emma glanced sideways at her husband in his black suit, the crisp white shirt sealed at the neck by a black tie. She reached out and clasped his clenched fist in her slender fingers and he released his hand and allowed her to comfort him.

  The priest tapped his microphone and began. “The death of our dear sister, Alanya Nadia Harrington was a shock to her family, but the silent passing into the hands of our Lord during her sleep, a blessing they are grateful for.” His eyes roved the empty church and Emma followed the direction of his brown irises as Rohan kept his head bowed, his eyes closed against the reality of his mother’s death. Sergei and Bella sat on the other side of Rohan, their faces ashen and their lips moving as they tried to follow the priest’s colloquial English. The journey into the small nave carrying the coffin was sombre. Sergei and Rohan each took a handle of the slender casket and the funeral directors provided the other four pairs of hands. Alanya entered the beautiful church flanked by strangers, the irony not lost on Emma.

  Emma chose the hymns and liaised with the priest as Rohan grew more distant with each passing day, dreading the finality of the funeral. St Di’s seemed wholly inappropriate as a funeral venue with the stain of Mikhail’s blood still a pale but present feature. The tiny Anglican Church on the border between Market Harborough and Little Bowden was the only one to welcome the body of a murderess, even one not yet convicted. Allaine looked after Bella’s baby and offered to meet Nicky from school, sparing the children the childish boredom of a silent confinement on behalf of a grandmother they never knew.

  “Let’s stand for ou
r first hymn, ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’.”

  Wood creaked as the tiny congregation stood, Sergei and Bella leaping to attention as Rohan hauled himself to his feet. Bella whispered something to her husband and he nodded and smiled at Emma, the language barrier proving an unforeseen problem. As the organ chimed into the silence, Emma heard only her voice singing the powerful words of redemption and love. Rohan remained tight lipped and head bowed next to her and Sergei and Bella stared at the words in a hymn book which Bella held upside down. Emma’s singing faltered until she realised the futility of leaning across and correcting them.

  “I’m sorry, it’s a private funeral; you can’t come in!” The funeral director’s voice echoed in the silence at the end of the hymn and everyone turned to look for the source of the commotion.

  “That’s why we’re here,” said a familiar voice and Emma sighed with relief. Sergei and Bella craned their necks behind them, but Rohan gnawed on his lower lip and didn’t take his gaze from the stone tiles between his feet.

  Freda rode her trusty scooter down the centre of the nave. Behind her trickled a slow moving queue of elderly men and women, neatly dressed for the occasion with trilby hats and an assortment of black veils and apparel. They filed in, filling the front of the church with their creaking bodies and wavering voices. Freda rode down the side aisle and parked next to the family’s pew, disgorging her tweed clad self into the seat next to Emma. “Thank you,” Emma said, sniffing and missing the opportunity to swipe at the escaped tear which plunged down her cheek. She yanked the collar of her dress higher to cover her healing wound.

  Rohan glanced sideways at Freda and offered a tiny smile, his eyes glazed over with a frightening numbness. The priest waited with his hands clasped as the shuffling army of pensioners seated themselves on the hard benches. Emma leaned towards Freda and kissed her on the cheek. “Why are they here?” she whispered. She peeked back at Rohan, finding him still lost in his silent reverie. “I thought they were scared of her.”

  Freda leaned towards Emma and whispered, her denied deafness making it louder than intended. “Funerals are to respect the living, dear, as well as the deceased. They loved your husband being at the apartments. In just a few days he called three ambulances, gave CPR in the lift and carried more shopping than you can imagine. He reversed cars in the underground garage and picked numerous residents off the floor.” She glanced over her shoulder at a woman wearing a blonde wig who waved back eagerly. Emma smiled at the woman and nodded as Freda continued. “Cissy woke up in the lift with your gorgeous husband’s lips over hers,” she snorted. “She thought she’d died and gone to heaven, although she was a little confused to find her teeth in her handbag.”

  Emma squashed the inappropriate mirth which bubbled inside her. Rohan licked his lips next to her and Emma reached for his hand, alarmed when he used it to pull her towards him, his face filled with terror. “I can’t do it,” he hissed. Reaching into his inside pocket he pulled out the tattered eulogy he’d agonised over. His fingers shook as he pushed it behind the pages of a worn bible in the back of the pew in front. He shook his head. “I can’t do it.”

  As the clamour around the church stopped, the priest spoke, thanking the new arrivals for their attendance. “And now I welcome Alanya’s son to speak,” he said, smiling and nodding in Rohan’s direction. There was an awful silence and Rohan worked his jaw and swallowed several times. The priest’s panicked eyes roved from Rohan to Sergei and back again and he raised his eyebrows at Emma.

  With great dignity, Emma stood, her rounded bump showing through the dark fabric of her fitted dress. She smiled at Freda and stepped along the pew, negotiating the abandoned scooter and walking towards the priest. The man hid his confusion well and indicated the lectern and microphone.

  Emma gathered herself and viewed the gathered crowd. “I’m speaking on behalf of my husband, Rohan,” she began, swallowing in the wrong place through nerves and forcing a pause. “Alanya was my stepmother from the age of six and it wasn’t a happy relationship. I took her at face value and that was my mistake. I only learned about Alanya’s sad history recently when I stopped to listen and kept my judgements to myself for once. She was a woman of many tragedies and I came to realise she was a product of circumstances outside her control. Losing two children through no fault of her own drove Alanya in a direction which fed a debilitating mental illness. All she ever wanted from me was to be loved and hear me call her Mama. By the time I humbled myself enough to say it, it ended up being the last word I spoke to her.” Emma glanced at Rohan and found his blue eyes fixed on her face with a look of painful intensity.

  “She loved her boys; nobody could ever doubt that. And they loved her, particularly Rohan. I hope when I come to the end of my life, I’ll have experienced the same loyalty, affection and steadfast love which Alanya could claim. She was in that respect a fortunate woman and I hope she knew it.” Emma looked at the priest and he released her from her duty with a smile.

  Rohan’s eyes followed Emma’s progress across the front of the church and back to her seat. As she slid into place he reached for her hand and dragged it across his stomach, clinging to it with both of his. His palms were clammy and an unnatural shiver wracked his body, making Emma concerned for his wellbeing. “Nearly over,” she whispered as they stood for the last hymn, squeezing his fingers. Rohan nodded.

  Alanya’s casket departed to a tune Emma hadn’t picked, carried by the funeral directors and the Russian brothers. As the hearse bore Rohan’s mother away to the crematorium, Freda’s army dispersed with hugs and kisses, accepting Emma’s thanks with embarrassed shakes of grey and white noble heads. They filed into waiting minibuses and raced back on scooters decorated with orange warning flags, leaving two lonely couples standing on the street.

  “I need coffee,” Emma sighed and Bella agreed with enthusiasm.

  “Cigarette,” Sergei stated, putting two fingers to his lips and making a dragging motion. Bella wrinkled her nose and slapped his arm.

  “Nyet!” she said in reprimand.

  “Rohan?” Emma asked, staring at her husband and he jumped, lost in his private world. “It’s a bit of a walk into town but shall we go for coffee?” His brow knitted and Emma regretted the selfishness of the question. “We don’t have to,” she said. “It’s ok.”

  Rohan shrugged and then nodded. “What about the pub,” he said. “I need vodka.” He reached for Emma and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him. “Ya lyublyu tebya, Emma Andreyev,” he whispered and kissed her temple.

  “I love you too,” she replied, smiling for him as though nothing else mattered.

  Chapter 47

  “Hello and good morning to you all out there, lovely Harborians. It’s a fine Spring Friday and everything in our town is finally quiet. I’m Brewer Bowden and you’re listening to your favourite local radio station. Today we have historian, Freda Ayers talking about her harrowing experience at St Di’s last Saturday. Hello, Freda.”

  “Hello, Brewer.”

  Emma buttered toast and sat at the kitchen table, smirking to herself as her friend played her final, damaging hand. The radio presenter’s jovial lilt bounced through the kitchen, highlighting the holiday mood.

  “So, Freda, you were the unlucky young lady who found the bodies in St Di’s last weekend. What can you tell our listeners about that?”

  “Ooh, it was shocking!” Freda intoned. “Blood and bodies everywhere...”

  “Er, thanks, Freda, we’ve been asked by Detective Barker not to go into specific details as the investigation’s still pending. Talk us through your movements on the fateful morning.”

  Emma heard Freda take an exaggerated sigh of annoyance and smirked as the presenter stripped the wind from the old lady’s copious sails. “Well, I bought the flowers from the Saturday market as usual. Orchids were cheap, so I grabbed a handful of those and scooted on down to the church. I struggle with my key because the church warden doesn’t do his job pr
operly and that front door’s heavy on its hinges. If we’ve asked him once, we’ve asked him a million times...”

  “Yes, thanks Freda, so you’re inside the church and as you described, the scene’s pretty horrific. We won’t go into that again but what were your first thoughts?”

  “Annoyance,” Freda said. “Yes, definitely annoyed.”

  “Annoyed?”

  Emma laughed out loud at the sound of a man who’d bitten off far more than he could chew.

  “Yes, young man, annoyed! That irritating Jameson boy died right in front of the steps to the altar. I needed to get up there. My friend, Edna always fills the vases with fresh water for me on a Friday lunchtime after her shift at the coffee shop. I can’t carry them, you see, not at ninety years of age. Adam Jameson lay right in front of where she stands them, silly boy. Did you know he’d bought the old folks’ home over at Farndon Fields and put them all on notice? He doubled the rents on their tiny rooms and the Ministry refused funding to those poor souls. The Council’s scrambling to find them somewhere else to go. That’s wicked at their time of life!”

  “No, I...”

  “You should do a story about that! I expect one of the old folks beat him to death with his walking frame; we get driven to it, you know. Nobody listens to the old people anymore. When I was a girl...”

  “That’s right, you were born and raised here, weren’t you?”

  Emma stopped licking the butter from her toast and held her breath, sensing Freda’s victory across the airwaves.

  “Yes, dear. You’re a Bowden aren’t you? I went to school with your grandfather. He was always telling tales and getting himself into trouble. Our teacher, Mr Jameson beat his sorry bum black and blue for the stories he made up; it’s probably where you get your journalistic tendencies from.”

  “Er...thanks, I think. So, you helped out at the school getting ready for the big celebration coming up, I hear? Tell the listeners about that.”