I Know You (DI Emma Locke)

by Louise Mullins

  ‘How can you be stressed? I do everything!’ That’s how most of our arguments began.

  His reply caused my fists to clench at my sides. ‘I’m tired.’ He meant ‘depressed’ but he couldn’t impart the word he regarded as a character defect.

  One night in bed he revealed that during an extremely stressful day, he’d contemplated suicide.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked, reeling from a mix of shock, anger, and guilt. ‘How can I help you if you’re not honest with me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see it that way. I just felt so useless. I thought you’d be better off without me.’

  ‘Were you just thinking of ending your life or did you actually plan it?’

  ‘I drove to the bridge. I was going to jump off.’

  ‘Aeron, please don’t ever keep anything like that from me again.’ We stared at each other for a moment before he grabbed my forearm, pulled me on top of him and brought me down so that I rested my face against his solid chest. He stroked his fingers through my hair. ‘I won’t,’ he said.

  I was used to witnessing the extremes of one’s life: births, marriages, deaths, and all the ugliness in between. But when it came to my own husband, I felt helpless and so completely and utterly alone. He chose not to communicate his feelings with me. I had no one to talk to about mine. I couldn’t offload onto him the minor daily struggles I had to contend with in case the pressure of adding my own problems onto his tipped him over the edge.

  Some weeks later it appeared that he was returning to the loving husband and considerate father I knew and adored. Aeron and I returned to some semblance of normality, our relationship restored. But by then I’d fallen in love with another man.

  The day we came here, to The Lookout, I’d offered to buy Gareth a coffee in a shop that had just opened on the main road. I ordered a sandwich to take away and he followed me to my car instead of continuing along the pavement to his company’s address. I didn’t invite him to follow, he just hovered by the passenger door and I said I was going to sit in the sun in my favourite viewing spot to eat my lunch. He got in and sat down and I drove without a word passing between us. At The Lookout, I exited the car and walked around the vehicle to the wall where two benches were taken up by a couple of schoolboys and an Asian couple with a newborn baby asleep in his pushchair. I remembered when Brandon had looked the same. A shock of thick dark hair, tiny hands and feet, the unique scent that babies wear on their skin, dark inquisitive eyes, slowly lightening and changing colour by the day. How quickly he’d grown.

  I lit a cigarette and offered Gareth one. He took it and leaned towards me, pulling on it until it sparked from the embers of the one that I held between my lips. I watched him inhale and he said, ‘I haven’t been here in years.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged and smiled, and I felt my face warm.

  He was a man of few words and I struggled to shut up. After a fifteen-minute stretch down the hill towards the woods he stopped abruptly and raised his head, motioning to a red squirrel climbing the branches of a beechwood tree. We remained in awe, surrounded by the blossoming snowdrops and lilac flowers at our feet, a gentle spring breeze caressing my arms. I felt my face warm as he moved closer, put his hand on my shoulder and told me to watch. And there between two thick branches was a homing pigeon as white as a dove, feeding her young with a pink stringy worm. The nest void of a father. I swallowed my guilt so that it sat in my stomach like a lump of heavy metal. I was a mother. A wife. And I was acting as though I was not either of those things, had no responsibilities, was free to do as I pleased. And on some level, I wished I was.

  Aeron wasn’t in the least bit distrustful or possessive. While I saw a lot of my female companions Aeron had never shown any spite over the fact most of my close friendships were with the men I’d grown up or worked with. It had never been a problem. And yet there I was with a man I’d known a week, on an afternoon trip out of town smiling, laughing, joking, and flirting. Things I should have been doing with my husband who was seated in front of his work desk unaware of my infidelity.

  What was I doing mid-afternoon on my day off with a man I barely knew?

  ‘I should head back now.’

  He nodded, gave me a half-hearted smile, and we tread back to the car.

  I dropped him off on the corner of the road, choosing a parking space that made it difficult for the kitchen and bathroom fitters opposite the vehicle dealership to load up their lorry, so I’d have to hurry off. ‘See you.’

  ‘Take care.’ He left with an edge of reluctance and I felt ashamed for fooling him into thinking we could be more than friends. He was single, had a queue of women lined up hoping he’d ask them out on a date, and I was committed to a man who treated me kindly, who was ignorant to the fact I was considering having sex with someone else.

  I returned home, ate and smoked away the guilt, and tried to convince myself I’d done nothing wrong. That my feelings were an immature reaction to male attention. Gareth was a friend. Nothing would develop between us. He was a player, would get what he wanted from me then excuse any further advances once I’d fallen into his trap. It had happened before.

  All the great-looking lads back when I was a promiscuous twenty-something-year-old would get me into bed then leave me for someone much prettier. I was instigating a relationship with a man who wasn’t interested in furthering our discreet liaisons, nor raising two children who shared another man’s DNA. I was creating a problem to make myself feel better, to ignite some drama into my mundane existence.

  But our illicit meetings became regular; a ritual I’d take advantage of, knowing my husband commuted eighty miles to work and back each day and wouldn’t be around to notice my jaunts to The Lookout, my lengthy lunches seated inside another man’s car, or my disappearances to the Wetlands Wildlife Reserve.

  I had no interest in birds or traipsing the marshy reedbeds along the coastline of the Severn Estuary. No intrigue in the salt-flats. I wanted to escape, be someone else. Not the spontaneous person I’d drunk myself to become so I could fall into bed with the men of my choosing fifteen years previously. But a less responsible version of what I might have been had I not decided to get married, commit myself to a house purchase, clean others’ properties to cover the mortgage, or sire offspring.

  I don’t regret the path I chose, nor resent the life I have, I just wanted to add more to the list of items I’d achieved. I craved validation I suppose; that I was not just a wife and mother, a daughter or sister, and friend, but a sexual being too: a woman. And on some level, I guess the attention Gareth gave me made up for the lack of it I felt I received at home.

  I didn’t intend to manipulate Gareth, I didn’t voice any false promise of leaving Aeron to be with him permanently. Again, those expectations went unspoken. And in the process the light between us dimmed, the spark left unlit for too long fizzled out.

  I discovered he’d met someone through a Facebook post. I ‘followed’ him though we weren’t connected as ‘friends’. His privacy settings wouldn’t allow it. I wasn’t going to request permission to ‘add’ him. I didn’t want to come across as desperate. Though I was every woman he’d ever dated personified – needy and nurturing – I wanted to retain a nonchalant appearance.

  Truthfully, I was afraid of rejection. I didn’t want to hurt him, though I knew it was inevitable one of us would get hurt and it was a fifty per cent chance it wasn’t going to be me. I was also concerned I’d unconsciously display signs of my disloyalty and Aeron would pick up on it, start questioning me, begin second-guessing my behaviour, or read my mobile phone messages. I wanted nothing to rock the equilibrium. I was scared to start over despite knowing I could do it. Because I did love Aeron. He was good to me. How could I not?

  I turn the engine and kick the car into life to demist the windows. The blast of warm air reminding me of our summer, before the weight of what we were doing tugged us apart.

  There was no goodbye, no acknowled
gement of our parting. It was a steadily building distance, our trysts growing increasingly sporadic until we drifted so far from each other I felt too insecure to approach him. Likewise, he ceased contacting me, moved his girlfriend into his two-bedroom house, and whatever it was that we’d shared seemed too insignificant to disclose.

  The kiss was during our second visit to The Lookout. I’d stood and stared at the vastness of the foothills, the meadowland, and the endless clear blue sky. He stood beside me, in quiet contemplation. Then we turned at the same time, eyes locked, two feet of space between us, and he flicked his cigarette over the wall onto the grass. I tugged on mine, exhaled, tossed it down. It fell beside his, and I caught his smile as I turned towards him. Felt the butterflies take flight inside my stomach, fluttering upwards into my chest, and my hands began to tremble. He sensed a disturbance in the air, eyes settling on my faraway gaze, and instinctively we moved towards one another, linked by a common thread of desire to seal our union. I didn’t move, his jeans grazing against my leg, but I felt no reason to step back, turn away from the thing I knew would happen. He reached out as though he was about to touch me, but his palm fell flat against the top of the wall as though he was holding himself upright. He didn’t advance, didn’t speak, and I don’t think I breathed. But somehow our lips met, eyes wide with shock, then flickering with lust. He closed his first and kissed me firmly, his tongue teasing mine until I felt a flick and a plunge. Then I drew him close, held his waist, and felt one hand close around my hip, the other delicately tease my hair behind my ear.

  I didn’t want to be the first to pull away. I didn’t want to remind him we weren’t an official couple, that I had no intention of leaving my husband for him. It was just a kiss. Not a mistake, but an event. To be shelved and recalled when in the dark, listening to my husband snoring, pretending I hadn’t broken my internal promise to be loyal to him, always.

  I wasn’t religious but felt that what I’d done was a cardinal sin against my moral compass, the honour I’d placed on marriage and my commitment to succeed the obstacles that befell us during our time together which I had hoped would be for the duration of our lives. I had broken the solemn vow I’d made Aeron while looking in the mirror brushing my hair after our second date, lipstick smeared across my mouth, cheeks flushed with the heat of a new romance.

  I glance into my side mirror, at the eyes reflecting my dishonour.

  I respected Gareth, cared for him, and was thankful for the opportunity to share a part of his life. I also grieved his loss. Spent five minutes or more every evening locked inside the bathroom crying silently under the shower, knowing I’d never again get the chance to offer my heart to another man.

  I thought the experience would satisfy a part of me that yearned for freedom. And to an extent it did. But not for long. The familiar stirrings of a passion so raw and unwanted clawed at me from time to time. I began to look at other men in the same way I had once looked at Gareth, at my husband.

  I obsessed endlessly during the empty weeks between seeing Gareth again. With him gone I felt destitute, abandoned, and lost. And when it was over, I felt myself weakened from the effort of trying to retain a normal composure. I had suffered a loss I wasn’t allowed to grieve because it wasn’t supposed to have happened. I even questioned if it was real. That I hadn’t just imagined it. I suppose he must have felt the same way too, because although he seemed to have let me go, I caught him once or twice miles from where I expected he should be, as though he’d been driving around searching for me, intending to confront me. I was scared that if he did, I wouldn’t be able to resist. That’s why I pretended I hadn’t seen him, ignored the dejected look on his face, and continued driving, transporting myself from the possibility I could have an alternative future.

  That’s why I came here today, to confirm he hasn’t hunted me down. Isn’t planning on blackmailing me, doesn’t wish to declare his undying devotion in the hope of tearing me away from my uneventful marriage, two and a half years after our affair ended. The thought, once inviting, now an uncomfortable prospect. Because somewhere, deep within my subconscious I’m afraid the softly spoken gentleman I almost ran away with may have told someone about us and I often worry that one day word will somehow manage to reach Aeron.

  Though he rarely loses his temper and tends to react to difficult situations with calm efficiency and self-control, I imagine that learning of my infidelity would be enough to incite anger in such a passive man.

  *

  I return home greeted to a mound of post and a stench so strong that when collecting it from the floor, the envelopes slipping and squelching together in my hand, the pungency causes me to retch.

  Dog shit smears across a leaflet I can’t read, having been deposited through my letterbox before or after the postman had called.

  Someone knew I would find it. The same someone who’d chosen to replicate the act that had forced us from our home three years before?

  The same unknown person who’d keyed my car, bent the windscreen wipers into zigzags, and ripped the wing mirrors off it before slashing my tyres and tossing paint stripper across the bonnet?

  Having experienced a three-year reprieve, I thought that it was over. How wrong I’ve been.

  DI LOCKE

  Newport, Wales

  Being a parent is like amateur boxing. You think you know what might happen given any conceivable set of circumstances, but you’re always wrongfooted the moment you let your guard down.

  I met Johnno during a case I was working on with Avon and Somerset Constabulary. He was reporting on the crime. I was consulting with the CPS hoping to secure a conviction for the offender. We moved into a rented maisonette together six months later. Got married in Bristol Registry Office three months afterwards. And I legally adopted his son Jaxon two months ago. He’s sitting with his legs folded beneath him, lining up his cars in colour and size coordination and becoming increasingly frustrated with the placement of the big black truck, whose wheels keep sliding the vehicle backwards along the laminate floor that’s slightly uneven. I know better than to offer to help. Five minutes ago, the truck landed on my little toe and I had to bite my knuckles and let the tears fall in the privacy of the kitchen.

  When he smashes the cars across the floor with one flick of his foot and starts screaming, I fall to the floor and crawl towards him. I pull him back against me and hold him in the position the clinical psychologist taught me when I took him to his appointment. The consultant taught me some other useful tools for managing conflict as well but right at this moment, all he needs is solid physical comfort.

  Even if the neighbours didn’t know he was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, I’m positive they believe I’m throttling him sometimes. The yelling can go on for some time, but today his hot red face softens at the sight of his father, home early from a not so busy day traipsing the streets for a good enough story to propose to his boss at the Argus newspaper office.

  ‘Hey, Jaxon, would you like to help me put the shopping away?’

  ‘Why you make it go away, Dad?’ he sniffles.

  I can tell Johnno is tired when he doesn’t use basic vocabulary, another suggestion from Dr Hewlett.

  ‘Sorry, I meant put the food in the cupboards.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ And off he trots stiffly, Johnno following behind, his fingers criss-crossed white over purple palms from the strain of the heavy carrier bags weighing him down.

  I don’t ask if he wants me to lend a hand, instead returning to the living room. It’s easier to give Jaxon time to reacclimatise himself with his father, something that when not possible leads to tantrums an hour or two long.

  In some respects, Jaxon is the heavyweight no one wants to fight and me and Johnno are the title holders he continually tries to defeat. Which is probably why his mother could no longer cope with him and signed away her parental rights as soon as she could. She lives with her fiancé now in the upmarket area of Clifton. Runs her own fitness instructor training
business. Hasn’t paid a penny towards Jaxon’s upbringing nor bothered to adhere to the court granted access that Johnno was determined she should have.

  The moment I sit down my phone buzzes so hard my bottled water vibrates across the coffee table before toppling over and hitting the floor with a thud. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Emma, I know you’re not on call, but I wondered if you had a spare moment?’

  ‘What’s up, Chief?’

  ‘I’ve had a call from a PC in Newport. Says he has a hit and run with dangerous driving case to pass onto us. The woman’s reported the discovery of dog faeces through her letterbox today and the PC thinks it might be related. I thought you could take it.’

  ‘Sure. Send the reports over to me and I’ll read them tonight.’

  ‘Although it’s marked as non-urgent the vehicle incident is noted on the system as a deliberate threat to life. This recent development suggests to me that we have a stalking situation on our hands.’

  ‘A potential attempted murder? And I thought moving here to the laid-back, less populated ways of beautiful Wales would be all sunshine and flowers.’

  ‘Less of the sarcasm please, Locke.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  I shove my mobile phone into the pocket of my trousers, grab my bag, checking inside for my keys, and poke my head through the kitchen doorway to see Jaxon on his knees placing the grocery items carefully into the cupboard, the tin labels now all facing outward. Johnno looks up at me from the floor and his smile falls slightly. ‘Sorry babe, I’ve got to go into the station.’

  ‘Any idea how long you’ll be?’

  I shake my head just as Jaxon looks up from what he’s doing, face impassive. ‘I’ll call you when I know.’

  ‘I’ll put your dinner in the microwave.’ He smiles.

  ‘Thanks, babe.’

  ‘Stay safe.’

  I leave him with a kiss and bend to ruffle Jaxon’s hair. His hands instinctively reach up to straighten the thick dark locks that he refuses a barber anywhere near.