by Judy Astley
‘What will he do with that flat of his?’ Monica continued. ‘Keep it on?’
‘To instal a mistress in for afternoon fun?’ Nina teased. ‘No, he’d only rented it. He’s brought all his studio equipment back, and that battered old sofa. Everything else he bought has gone into storage for now, till we decide just what to do with it.’
‘Graham could do with a new bed,’ Monica told her with a very intense look. ‘I’m going to have to buy a hat, to go with that blue suit we got in Harrods. He and Jennifer are about to name the day.’
Many months later, Nina thought again about Megan and wondered how she was coping. She thought of her living alone with Sam and Sophie and her fast-growing twins, and wondering how on earth she was going to tell them, when they asked, that their father wasn’t around for the birth because he was locked away on remand. Some people joked about prison, called it being a guest of Her Majesty. For what Paul had been doing there wouldn’t be any element of being a guest about it.
The first time Paul had been caught, years before, during Megan’s pregnancy with Sam, there’d been a fine and a mention in the local paper and a swift, embarrassed change of area for living in. It didn’t seem likely that Megan would play the understanding wife this time, not now there would be a prison term to live down and the realization that her husband had actually committed real sex crimes, not some joky little misdemeanour that had simply got a bit out of hand. Now number 26 was up for sale again, but then so was number 23.
Nina and Joe were taking their last Sunday walk on the Common. Neither of them would miss it. They would still see Henry. He and posh Penelope, who had got together in the post-arrest excitement and discovered a shared taste for gossip, the Post-Impressionists and good Burgundy, had promised to be frequent visitors and to keep them supplied with decent wines and delicacies that London people always assume simply aren’t to be found beyond the M25. Down in Dorset there would be the long empty beach to walk on and Genghis, at last, would be able to run free. Emily, on her postcard from Ayers Rock, had simply said she didn’t mind where they moved to as long as absolutely nothing of hers got thrown away in the packing except her copy of Man-Date.
Lucy was holding Genghis’s lead, skipping ahead. Another Sunday afternoon, another arm-wrenching run for the dog with Lucy imagining she had control. Her chilled breath billowed under the trees as she ran and panted, shrieking and laughing at the dog and telling him, hopelessly, to slow down.
‘Look how free she thinks she is. No sense of danger. That must be bliss,’ Nina was saying to Joe. ‘Emily might never have that again. No woman does, not really. Wherever we go, there’s always that back of the mind feeling about someone like Paul, stalking and creeping and watching.’
‘Men get that too, you know,’ he told her. ‘We don’t all go through life feeling like Superman. If we’re not scared for ourselves, there’s always someone we care about.’
Nina looked down into the pram Joe was pushing. Their new baby, milk-full and secure, was sleeping. ‘The sleep of the innocent,’ Monica had said when she’d first seen him at the hospital. Nina, in a postnatal mental blur, hadn’t been listening properly and had misheard it as the slaughter of the innocents. Her eyes had filled with new-mother easy tears and she’d crushed her new son to her in automatic protection. Later, she thought carefully about that, analysing her reaction. She’d have felt the same about the girls. She had done at the time, when they were that tiny, she was certain. It really wasn’t that this one was a boy. The girls had been just as treasured and adored and had turned out fine. You didn’t get them for long, that was the trouble. She would bring this boy up the same way as the girls, she was sure of it. Really, she was absolutely sure.
Chapter Twenty
Graham was out on the Common again early in the evening, long after the wintry sun had disappeared. It was chill and bleak, the stiff, freezing branches of the trees motionless as if the slightest stir would snap them and give them pain like broken bones. Soon it would be time to go back. The women would worry. They would be making supper, busy together in their kitchen harmony. Monica still, after all these months, would be telling Jennifer just how much chilli was right for him and double-checking that the parsnips had been put in the oven at the right time to roast with the potatoes. They didn’t mind him sloping off out, as long as he told them more or less where he was going and when he’d be back.
‘Men do that,’ Jennifer had conceded, as soon as they were back from the San Francisco honeymoon (Edwards air base in time for the open day and then Miramar – sitting at the end of the runway watching the F-18s, pretending to be Tom Cruise). ‘I know they like to go to the pub.’ Sometimes he drank a can of lager he’d brought out with him just so she could imagine that was where he’d been. Occasionally he even lit a cigarette and let it burn down, wafting smoke over his clothes so he’d smell of lounge bar. If it made them happy.
The scuffling in the dry frozen undergrowth startled him from his musings. It was too small to be a mammal, too early in the year to be a bird fallen from a nest. He went to investigate, treading fearfully across the crackling twigs. It was a thrush, broken winged and terrified, limping and dragging beneath the trees. He picked it up, gently in his soft gloves. He could kill it, should kill it and put it out of its misery. The thought both sickened and attracted him. Killing it would be power, would be doing something about it. He didn’t get many opportunities for positive action, not on his own. The little bird squawked in his hand and its eyes were full of panic.
Carefully, he put it back on the ground. There would be starving foxes later, or an owl. He would leave it. Nature was cruel enough – she didn’t need any help from him.
THE END