The Loving Husband (13 page)

Karen paled, visibly. She put out a hand to Fran’s wrist. ‘Where was it?’ Fran just shook her head. ‘You look knackered,’ said Karen.

‘How’s Emme been?’ Fran looked at the clock. It was almost six.

‘Fine,’ said Karen, and she pushed her way inside in a gust of perfumed fur. ‘She’s been fine. I think…’ Shifting a bit so her back was to both the men. ‘She knows something’s going on. Of course.’ She was almost as tall as the men, and the metallic blue eyeliner glittered under the lights. Her eyes swept over them, and she reached for the kettle. ‘I think she doesn’t want to be told, not yet. I think you want to give her space.’

Fran looked up at the ceiling: there were small muffled sounds, where they were playing. ‘I’m not going to tell her before bed. It has to be right. It has to be the right time.’ She doesn’t need to know about the knife, out there among her treasures. Never.

‘Ali’ll have some input on that,’ said Gerard. ‘She’s got a lot of experience. Put you in touch with child bereavement experts.’

‘My dad was a policeman,’ Karen said as if he hadn’t spoken, her back still to the two policeman as she stood at the sink. She leaned to turn on the tap and went on, frowning, ‘He left us years back, I was only a scrap.’ It was hard to imagine Karen a scrap. ‘Died of drink and diabetes before he got to sixty.’ Her mouth set in a tidy line. ‘Now Mum’s doing the internet dating, new hair, new life, happy as Larry.’ She set the kettle down and clicked it on. When they turned back into the room, DS Gerard was in the doorway and Carswell, his face pale in the low grey light, was already outside.

‘We’ll leave you to it for the moment, then,’ said Gerard, looking at Karen, expressionless. ‘But we’ll be back before you know it.’ It sounded like a warning. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just leaving things as they are, for the moment? The study.’ He smiled, courteous. Karen was watching him levelly, but their eyes didn’t meet. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ said Gerard. ‘Is what I mean.’

‘Can’t stand them,’ said Karen, not bothering to wait till the door closed.

‘I’m sure they didn’t guess.’

Karen suppressed a smile, looking round the room. ‘Whyn’t you go and sit next door?’ she said. ‘I’ll bring us some tea. You have got a next door, haven’t you? Place this size?’ Fran got up, Ben asleep and heavy as a sandbag against her shoulder.

The sitting room was cold. Carefully she put Ben down on the sofa. It was days since she’d been in here. The ceiling was low, but when the fire was lit it was snug. She could hear Karen clattering in the kitchen, opening drawers, and she knelt to lay the fire. There was a neat stack of kindling: Nathan liked cutting it, and there as she bent over in the dark fireplace with Nathan in front of her, all around her, Nathan’s voice in her head, it crept in. The unanswered question,
What if
.

What if someone had been in the house? Not just the man in the field, waiting, not just in the yard. If he’d already been in, below her as she slept, moving through the house.

The two men had been talking in low voices as she came down the stairs with Ben. Something had changed, it had been there in their tone, what did they know? If Nathan hadn’t taken the knife out with him, then someone had been in to get it.

She could ask them when they got back: she could ask Ali Compton. That was what an FLO was for, wasn’t it? To tell her what the hell was going on.

Numbly she set a match to the kindling, she sat back, she found herself brushing at herself, her front, her sleeves, as if there was something stuck there, clinging to her.

The logs were dry, and by the time Karen came in the fire had taken.

She’d found a tray, laid it with a clean tea towel, a jug of milk, two mugs. One of them had the name of a flooring company on it, another one of Nathan’s freebies.

Karen sat beside Ben on the sofa: he stirred. Carefully Fran picked him up and settled him back on her knee on the armchair by the fire.

‘Harry’s dad used to hit me,’ said Karen, lifting the mug to her mouth. She was almost talking to herself, it seemed. Startled, Fran kept silent. ‘Well, I say used to, he did it the twice. Should’ve gone after the once, well, yeah.’ Her eyes settled on Fran, flat. ‘I took it all the way to court, baby under my arm, Mum in the gallery. He got a two-year suspended sentence.’

‘Nathan never…’ began Fran. ‘That’s not…’ but Karen was shaking her head.

‘All I mean is.’ She sipped the tea warily, even though she’d made it herself. ‘God almighty, I don’t know what I mean. There’s things you have to just … get sorted. You can do it, with or without. Maybe that’s what I mean. With or without the man.’ She was frowning. ‘And don’t take any rubbish from them.’ Karen jerked her head back towards the road, the policemen’s departing car. ‘Those men. Big kids.’ She was showing Fran the future:
On your guard
, she was saying.
Don’t trust anyone
, she was saying. She seemed to know what she was talking about.

‘Christ, though,’ she went on, setting the mug down so abruptly it spilled. ‘So. You found him? Went out there and … what? Middle of the bloody night and you’re out in the fen?’

Did they think it was her? Took the knife from her own kitchen? Buried it, pretended to find it?

Upstairs there was a rush of small feet, along the corridor, breathless chatter, then back again and a door closed, softly.

Fran didn’t quite trust the relief she felt then, of having someone there to talk to. Someone who wasn’t a police officer. ‘Well, I woke up and he was gone.’ She found herself telling Karen only what she’d told the police, after all.
I was asleep, he came in.
Karen sat back in the chair, hands around the mug, and nodded but Fran could see, at a certain point, a certain flatness to her expression that Karen knew, this wasn’t all of it.

As Fran skirted them, though, the facts – if they were facts, was a dream a fact? – stood their ground. The dream of another man standing close to her, the feel of his fingers through the fabric. Then the sex. She had to clear her throat mid-sentence at the memory, what she was saying was something like,
All I know is I’d been asleep at least an hour
but what she remembered was his hand on her waist from behind, just where it met the hip bone, the cold as he pushed the fabric up to expose her. His erection, pressing into her.

She held the mug tight, kept talking. When she’d finished –
I don’t know how long it took for the ambulance to arrive, it seemed a long time
– Karen waited a moment or two as if there must be more, then set her mug on the tray, leaning forward with both elbows on her knees.

‘So he never hit you or nothing?’ Fran was stunned. She felt Karen searching her face, unafraid. Was that what she thought? ‘Because I could’ve killed Danny, when he smacked me that time,’ and Karen’s head moved sideways just a fraction at the memory, as if in recoil. ‘Harry was in his car seat and he woke up with the noise. I could’ve just, if I’d had something in my hand, a knife, anything, I could’ve. Done it. No problem.’ She sat back again.

Fran could barely form the words. ‘No, never,’ she said, stiff with shame. ‘He never hit me.’

Other things, though: it came to her like a revelation. There had been times when a particular expression came over his face, saying no to something she suggested, or when he turned away from her in bed, when he simply failed to answer, when she had felt, How do I get out of this? If I wanted to get away, how would I even do it?
I could have killed him.
It was just something women said, wasn’t it?

Was that what the police thought? ‘Nathan wasn’t that kind of bloke. He wasn’t violent.’ She hesitated. ‘Not with me, not with the kids, no sign of it, ever. Never angry.’

Fran moved away from the thought of Nathan angry. ‘He was dead when I found him. There was a lot of blood.’ She swallowed, remembering how it had felt sticky, her hand under the kitchen tap as she waited. Blood on the telephone handset.
The knife.
‘He was very cold.’

Karen nodded. ‘You told me he was from around here,’ she said. ‘First conversation we had, you told me, months back.’

Had she? She didn’t remember.

‘Had he been back in touch, like with mates? I mean, that can be trouble. Place like this, bloke like him, buys a nice big house, wife and kids, he’s got it all.’ She fumbled in her bag, taking out a pack of cigarettes then putting it away again. ‘Comes back lording it, that’s how some of them will see it.’

Fran did remember, then. Early days, Emme’s term had just begun. Karen had been leaning in over the wrong side of the school fence and puffing on a Silk Cut, she had pink tips to her hair then. Leaves had been blowing around the playground in eddies. ‘You come from London?’ Karen had said to her, incredulous. ‘To a dump like this? What d’you do that for?’ And Fran had given her the story. Nostalgia, swimming in the river, feeding the ducks.

Karen had tilted her head and was eyeing her. ‘Things aren’t always how you left ’em, that’s all. People.’ She rolled her eyes towards the door. ‘So has he picked up again with anyone?’

‘I know Rob. No one else. And Rob’s not … he’s … a sweetheart.’ She went on. ‘They’d kept in touch, all this time.’ Karen barely nodded. ‘He was Nathan’s best man.’

She remembered a blur of suits and pastel dresses at their wedding, a bobbing feather in a hat. Rob had been staring at her and she had looked down and seen a button come undone on her shirt, which had been par for the course. Who else had been there? Who would she have to tell?

‘Look,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to, got to, I think I need to get some sleep now.’ As she stood she saw something, down the side of the armchair. No wonder she hadn’t been able to hear it: her mobile. No more Nathan to frown at her when she typed a message, or read one. Both hands full, she left it there. How long since she’d looked at it? A day.

Karen was already on her feet, not needing to be told twice, her face closed. ‘Harry?’ she shouted up the stairs, and there they were instantly, clattering down together, Emme peeping around from behind Harry when they got to the bottom.

It was bitterly cold on the doorstep. Karen looked up at the blue-grey cloud and said, ‘Snow, I heard, Sunday, to cap it all. Wouldn’t be surprised.’ She pulled the big coat tighter round her, her sharp red nose buried in the fur. ‘God almighty, that’s all we need.’

‘Thanks,’ she said quickly, and before she could stop herself she had Karen in an awkward half-hug, Ben briefly crushed between them, before she let go again almost instantly.

‘You get some sleep,’ said Karen, raising her eyebrows. ‘You and Emme both. And with a sharp tug on Harry’s hand she was round the corner and gone, before she could soften.

Upstairs Fran laid Ben down, still swaddled, his small dark face was set in a frown. He looked like Nathan. Emme had followed her up and stood there beside her with her hands on the cot’s bars, obediently silent.

As Fran straightened from the cot she hardly recognised her own smell: sweat and stress and twenty-four hours of weirdness and strangers in her house. When had she last washed? A bath before going to bed last night, it felt like days ago. She found herself wondering, would the police even allow her to shower? What if …
Don’t be stupid
. If they wanted evidence off her they would have asked by now.

Emme yawned. Fran stroked her small face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and Emme looked back up at her. A smudge of pizza on her chin, her school sweatshirt needed a wash. ‘Bath time,’ she said.

With Emme in her room having closed the door carefully on Fran to hide from her some mysterious project she and Harry had begun, Fran went into the bedroom, a tangle of dirty clothes in her arms.

It was this room that had sold the house to her: high-ceilinged, flooded with pale north light, she could remember walking into it with Nathan and stopping to look. The two long sash windows were set in alcoves with panelled shutters, although – she had soon found out – they were thick with layers of ancient paint and wouldn’t budge. Layers of wallpaper, faded pink, yellow garlands. The glass was thick and wavy with age, and if you stood at the right angle you could see the line of poplars, that had been in full leaf when they’d bought the place, the fields had been green and you could imagine, whoever this house had been built for two, three hundred years back, standing looking out to the horizon.

If you stood in the wrong place all you could see was the chicken barn. Nathan had turned vague whenever she asked about getting it taken down; first vague, then irritable. And so it stood there, a black silhouette in the darkening field, and Fran thought, that pig farmer will know someone to take it down. She wanted it gone.

The bed was unmade still. She didn’t even need to think when she’d last changed the sheets because it was always Saturday morning, two days ago. They looked grey, from where she stood.

Kneeling on the edge of the mattress Fran leaned across it, she put her face down on the sheets to breathe him in, the last of him, sooner or later all those microscopic traces of them, him and her together, would be gone, because that was what happened, you couldn’t slow it down. Like her own body though, it smelled strange, alien. And then before she could stop herself she was half across the bed, and tearing at it. In less than a minute it was all in a heap on the floor, sheets, pillowcases, duvet cover, the lot.

Marching the heap downstairs Fran stuffed it all into the washing machine, ninety degrees, pre-wash, leave nothing to chance. She made it again swiftly, so as not to think about what she was doing, the smell of clean sheets, that was all she wanted. This was her home.

She was in the shower when the police came back.

Emme was still behind the closed door of her room as she came out on the landing, Fran could hear her in there, talking in her version of a teacher’s voice to someone imagined or a stuffed toy, perched on the bed.

It had been when she turned from the door that she heard their voices in the kitchen, and within minutes she was dressed. At the bottom of the stairs she looked into the kitchen, nodded and went calmly into the sitting room. It was still there, her phone down the side of the armchair. The battery was completely dead. She pocketed it and then walked back into the kitchen. She felt clean, at last.