When I Wasn't Watching

by Kelly, Michelle

  It was a blow that never came. Ethan had laid his hand over hers, looked into her eyes, given her that charming smile that only later did she come to distrust, and asked, as if it were the most obvious thing for him to say; ‘So when can I meet him?’ That had sealed the deal for her – her heart belonged to Ethan, and had continued to do so until the loss of Jack broke it beyond all repair.

  The affairs had started before Jack’s death, but she had turned a blind eye with a dogged determination, still putting all her energy into being that perfect middle-class housewife. She had even taken classes – baking, embroidery, interior design, anything to break away from the teenage mother, council estate stigma. Had swapped listening to the rocky, grungy music she liked and embraced Ethan’s love of soul and jazz instead. Hung and simpered prettily on his arm when he took her out with his medical school friends and later work colleagues, and tried not to wish she could hook up with her old friends and go to a downtown bar, drink cheap shots and fall into a taxi in the small hours. Her identity became slowly eroded and, though it shamed her to admit it, sometimes in the darkest corners of her soul she wished she didn’t have Ricky as a constant reminder that she didn’t quite measure up, could never fully fit the mould.

  Jack had changed everything. A second chance at motherhood, and a way of bringing them all – Lucy, Ethan and Ricky and their parents – together as one cohesive family unit. She had been happy to leave any trace of the old Lucy behind, seeing a new self in the reflection of her baby’s eyes. Finally, everything seemed to come together. The crippling fear that Ethan was going to abandon her for one of his dalliances left her. If there was any evidence of his affairs in those precious few years of Jack’s life then he either became better at concealing it or the rose-tinted glasses of maternal bliss kept her from seeing it.

  After Jack died, she had stopped caring. Any genuine passion she still had for Ethan had died along with their son. Over the years since he had left her she hadn’t given him much thought, other than a low-level resentment that he had never made any effort to keep in touch with Ricky, who after all had viewed him as a father figure, had played football with him in the garden and gone fishing with him at weekends and generally saw his stepfather as a staple in his life. They had even seemed to grow closer for a while after Jack’s death, pulling together in the face of Lucy’s increasing emotional distance. Until Ethan’s next affair had come along and this one had proven to be his last. He had upped and left her and Ricky as if it wasn’t a decision that even required much thought.

  Perhaps it hadn’t. Perhaps, after Jack’s death, that initial all-encompassing burning love they had felt for one another had also gasped out its last breath, leaving only a void between them. Ethan, for whom infidelity seemed to come as naturally as air, had simply turned to the only solace he had left.

  He looked like he needed solace now, staring down at Lucy with a look in his eyes she could only describe as raw. Longing for comfort. Not what she was expecting after their confrontation in the car. At the memory of it she felt her palm burn, stinging with the memory of her slap. Did skin have its own memory? Lucy wondered idly. If she concentrated, would her body remember his touch? Then she thought of Matt in her bed last night and wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

  ‘I’m sorry about the other day,’ she said at once, warding off any reprimand before it came, but Ethan shook his head.

  ‘Don’t apologise. I was out of order, speaking to you like that. God knows, I can hardly blame you for seeking companionship at a time like this.’

  Lucy nodded, shut the door behind him and then stood facing him, rather than moving to one side to allow him access to the house. As contrite as he seemed, his coming here seemed out of place somehow, and over the last week or so Lucy had learned not to expect that people would always speak or behave in the way you expected them to. Least of all herself.

  ‘So, are you still seeing him?’

  ‘I’m not sure I ever was. Not that it’s really any of your business.’

  Ethan looked uncomfortable. He had shaved today, and his clothes were once again immaculate, but the faint air of desperation that seemed to be clinging around him lately remained.

  ‘Why are you here Ethan?’

  ‘Have you been crying?’ He ignored her question, leaning in to her and noticing the puffiness of her lids from her earlier bout of tears.

  ‘It upset me, the boy in the news.’

  ‘Do you think it’s him? Prince?’

  Lucy didn’t speak, but bit her lip and nodded. Ethan sucked his breath in and briefly buried his head in his hands, then dragged them down over his face as if he could somehow remould his appearance. Make everything new. Finally, Lucy ushered him into the lounge. They sat on the same couch, their knees nearly touching.

  ‘We should have supported each other through this,’ Ethan said, and she wondered if he was only talking about the last week or the last eight years. ‘I’ve let you down,’ he went on, and Lucy looked at him in surprise. An admission of guilt, after all this time?

  ‘It’s the past, Ethan, there’s nothing to be done about any of it. Jack, us…it’s all over.’

  ‘What about this, now, with this other boy?’

  ‘Matt will find him,’ Lucy said, surprising herself at this sudden confidence in Matt, particularly now that she had decided to call a halt to the growing attraction between them. She trusted Matt, she realised, on an innate level that had never applied to her feelings for Ethan even at the height of their relationship. Perhaps that was down to his profession – people always trusted cops didn’t they, unless they themselves were criminals – but she knew it went deeper than that. Ethan was a surgeon, after all, patients put their lives in his hands every day, yet Lucy had never felt that level of certainty with him, not even back when she had still thought he would be faithful to her.

  Ethan ignored her comment. ‘It’s really made me think, Lucy, all of this. It’s brought it all back, Prince getting released and now this, his kidnapping another boy. God, I hope they string the bastard up this time.’

  ‘Wrong country,’ Lucy said, ‘and if only it were that easy. But I don’t see what we can do for each other now. I don’t want to sit and reminisce about Jack. I can’t,’ she added, thinking about the keepsake box upstairs. All emotion had been wrung out of her today already.

  ‘That’s not what I meant, not really. Do you ever think we made a mistake?’

  She felt taken aback, unable to comprehend at first what he meant. When she realised, it was with a flicker of annoyance.

  ‘You left me – us – remember?’

  ‘You were gone from me. It was like living with a shell. I was grieving too you know, but you thought you were the only one. You locked me out, and I needed you. She was just a substitute.’

  Lucy had no idea what to say to that, so she said nothing. Once she would have welcomed this admission from him, but she was tired now and drained and it just didn’t seem to matter any more. She had the childish urge to climb into his lap and lay her head on his shoulder, and was mentally telling herself to get a grip, so that she nearly missed his next words.

  ‘She still is.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘A substitute. For you. She reminded me of you, when I first met you, although of course I know now she’s nothing like you. I felt like I was grieving my wife as well as my son, and what can I say,’ he shrugged as though admitting to a weakness as insignificant as being scared of insects, ‘I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty face.’

  ‘As excuses go, that’s pretty pathetic,’ she said, ‘but it doesn’t matter now. I’m over it. I forgive you, if that’s what you need to hear.’

  ‘I missed you, in the beginning,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘I wanted to come back, but I knew you wouldn’t let me. And that Ricky would just hate me. I still miss you.’

  He inched closer to her, so that she could feel his breath warm on her cheek and Lucy understood why he was he
re. Not for comfort, or even to apologise, but for a much more urgent need than that. She had been right about his motives for confronting her about Matt – he was jealous.

  When he leaned over and kissed her she didn’t stop him, although she didn’t at first respond either. His lips brushed hers, a smooth, practised move, confident in his ability to seduce. His arm went around her waist, his other hand stroking her cheek where his breath had just been. Moves she remembered. Skin, it seemed, did have a memory all of its own because, though this situation felt alien and wrong to her mind her body responded to him as if it had only been yesterday they had last touched. She felt herself turning into him, her lips opening under his, as if they had a will of their own.

  Familiar, and yet not. His kiss grew more urgent and his hands went to her ribcage, tugging at her top. A slow burn started in her groin and spread across the top of her thighs, so that she parted them, allowing his hand to slide between them. This wasn’t the routine love making that had become habit in the years after marriage but the frenzied meeting of bodies from those first, giddy days of being young and in love and still expecting that life would give them a happy ending. Or at least, a happy right now, but back then there had been no sense of an ending, only of an endless present.

  He pulled her on top of him so that she was straddling him, her skirt around her waist, her thighs each side of his. His hands, then mouth went to her breasts, and this time something jarred in her mind, because her body was remembering not Ethan, not years before, but last night, and in an instant she felt her desire start to cool. Because Ethan’s touch, no matter how familiar, didn’t ignite her in the same way as Matt’s. Any intimacy between them now could only be the reprise of old memories.

  Catching her breath she pushed Ethan away roughly and stood, up, facing away from him, to rearrange her clothes. Ethan looked pained, and reached for her, but she shied away from him.

  ‘Is this because of that copper?’ he said, almost spitting the word ‘copper’. His face had gone tight with anger and rejection and Lucy felt sorry for him, and ashamed of herself.

  ‘No,’ she lied, because it wasn’t the entire reason, ‘it’s just not right. You’re married, Ethan.’ She was amazed how easily infidelity seemed to come to this man, and felt a moment’s disgust that she had been instrumental in helping him cheat on yet another wife.

  ‘Perhaps you should go,’ she said, her voice soft, not meeting his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, though she wondered what she was apologising for. It would have been easy, so easy, to have sex with Ethan and forget about everything for a while, but it would only be a while. Then all her problems would still be there, only with an extra helping of guilt.

  Ethan pushed past her and let himself out without speaking or looking back at her, though he slammed the door deliberately. Lucy went to it, watched him go out of the tiny circle of glass that remained unfrosted and served as a peep hole. Only when he was gone did she lay her forehead against the glass, relishing its coolness on her skin. She wondered where Matt was, what he was doing, and wished for the hundredth time that the obstacles that stood in their way didn’t seem so insurmountable.

  Matt thought about Lucy all afternoon. Even though the Armstrong boy was first and foremost in his mind, Lucy remained in the background, sometimes, if he let his guard down for a second, leaping into the forefront of his awareness. Two images of her were juxtaposed in his memories – the memory of her naked and slick with sweat in his arms, pinned under his thighs, and the look she had given him at lunch. Almost accusing, with a ragged pain underneath it that he wanted to soothe, but knew he had no way of doing so. Even if he found Benjamin Armstrong safe and sound, and Prince turned out to have nothing to do with any of it, he doubted they could just pick up where they had left off in the early hours of this morning. It had been flawed from the beginning. Matt had never expected to be contemplating relationship advice from his superior, but it seemed that Dailey was right. The very thing that had brought them together – Jack’s murder – was the very thing that would prevent them being together. Perhaps he had been looking for some kind of redemption in her arms, who knew? He wasn’t a psychologist. All he did know was that far from his presence helping to heal her wounds, it was only serving to rub salt in them.

  Those thoughts were fresh in his mind when he went home for a quick shower and shave before the appeal on Midland News. The answer machine message that greeted him didn’t come as a surprise, and he understood perfectly why she had needed to say this, in spite of everything that was going on. Or perhaps because of what was going on.

  But that didn’t make him feel any better. Matt sat on the edge of his couch and played Lucy’s message three times, as if it would change with the replaying, or he had misheard her and the intention behind her words. Then he swore. Loudly. Before pulling the phone out of the wall in temper and balling his hands into fists by his sides. He had known her for just a few days, made love to her twice, so by his own rules it was no big deal, and it certainly shouldn’t feel like an iron-fisted punch in the kidneys. Yet it did. His break up with Carla, after three years, had been mostly a relief; this felt like someone cutting off his oxygen supply. No matter how much he tried to tell himself it didn’t matter as he drove back to the station, he knew it did, very much so, and that after this case was over, regardless of the outcome, he would grieve for his aborted attempt at forging a connection with Lucy.

  He was deep in thought when Scott came towards him, obviously bursting to speak, and the detective in Matt came back to the fore.

  ‘News?’

  ‘Not on the boy, or not exactly, but the mother has made a statement against the father. Accused him of domestic abuse.’

  Matt’s mouth formed an ‘oh’ of surprise. After the information the FLO had uncovered, the knowledge that David Armstrong beat his wife was hardly a shock, but the fact that his wife had chosen this moment to press charges was more than a little unusual. Still, shock did funny things to people.

  ‘Did she say if he’s ever touched the kid?’

  ‘No, said he’s a devoted father, if a little too authoritarian. But she did say Ben witnessed his dad pulling her around by the hair last week, said he wet the bed for two nights in a row afterwards.’

  Matt shook his head, sifting through the new possibilities this information opened up.

  ‘Why is she telling us this now? Does she think he had something to do with it?’

  Scott shrugged.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to think he’s hurt the boy. WPC Kaur said she tried to question her about the old allegations against husband, while he’s busy rehearsing his appeal, and she just broke down and admitted he’s been abusing her. I doubt she planned to reveal it. But it does cast a different light on things. Think the kid ran away?’

  ‘He’s a bit young for that; if anything I would think witnessing that would make him more clingy to his mother. But it raises new possibilities. I need to talk to her; is she still in with Kaur?’

  Scott nodded. Matt went into the largest and nicest of the interview rooms, where Mrs Armstrong sat nursing a cup of tea while WPC Kaur spoke to her in low, soothing tones. The FLO looked up and smiled at Matt as he came in, but Mrs Armstrong didn’t acknowledge his presence. He sat next to her, trying to seem as non-intimidating as possible. Scott was much better at this stuff.

  ‘Mrs Armstrong? I’ve just got a few questions, in light of the allegations against your husband, if you could just give me a few minutes?’

  She nodded. The earlier hysterics had been replaced by a quiet despair that was even harder to witness.

  ‘I think you’re very brave,’ Matt said, and realised he meant it, ‘to come forward at a time like this.’ The woman smiled weakly at that, but there was an edge of bitterness to her smile.

  ‘Call me Lydia, please. I’m not brave, inspector, I just can’t take any more. The thought of going home with him, while Ben is still missing, and it being just me and him…’

  �
��You’re scared he’ll attack you,’ Matt finished for her. Lydia nodded, twisting the cup round in her hands.

  ‘He blames me, you see. For not watching Ben properly. But I never thought he wouldn’t be safe, you know? I only took my eyes off him for a few minutes. I’ve left him for longer before, not too long, but sometimes…’ She put her head down. Matt leaned in impatiently, then sat back as the FLO gave him a warning shake of the head that he knew meant Don’t push her. But as sorry as Matt felt for the woman, it was Ben he needed to know about.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, trying for sympathetic encouragement but still sounding frustrated. Kaur rolled her eyes.

  ‘When David gets in from work, he can be quite moody. A bit aggressive, you know? He likes to rant at me, if he’s had a bad day. So if the weather’s good, I usually send Ben in the garden to play while I’m making tea, just while David unwinds a bit.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Maybe twenty minutes at most? But I keep an eye on him through the window, of course. I just don’t know how anyone could take him, and so quickly.’

  Matt’s brow creased as he pondered how this could fit in. Instinct told him it was significant, but his rational mind was struggling to make the connection. If someone had been watching the family and noticed this semi-routine…but then, Ben had been taken in the morning.

  ‘You’re certain Ben couldn’t unlock the gate by himself?’ The gate had been wide open when Response had arrived after Lydia’s stricken phone call.

  ‘Positive,’ she said, then drew in a deep breath. ‘So he’s been taken, hasn’t he? Someone’s got my baby.’ The last word turned into a wail. Matt left her in the care of the FLO and hurried to find Scott.