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Authors: Emma Kavanagh

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The Affair (3 page)

BOOK: The Affair
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‘Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this …’

‘Isn’t that my line?’ asked Del. I could hear the grin in his voice. I called him as soon as I got into the office, reasoning to myself that the boy wasn’t a source, that I wasn’t betraying confidences, because no one had told me anything.

‘I think you should have a look at Toby.’

‘Okay,’ said Del slowly. ‘Who the hell is Toby?’

‘Two doors down from the Myricks, on the left. His mother is Wendy. I just … there’s something weird about that kid.’

‘You know I can’t arrest him for being weird, right?’

‘Yeah, more’s the pity. But there’s something else. I have no proof of this, but the thing is, I’ve got a feeling that he’s Morris Myricks’ son.’

There was a long silence on the line. ‘Interesting.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Leave it with me, okay?’

I ease the car up the hill, can feel the engine straining. There is a crowd ahead, people already beginning to gather, even though I am early. I park up a little way away and walk the remaining distance, pulling my jacket tight around me. It’s hard to make out faces now in the darkness, just ill-defined silhouettes, flickering shadows. People are talking in low tones and I can’t help but listen. I am, after all, a journalist. I get paid to be nosy.

‘Awful they ’aven’t got anyone yet. Just awful.’

‘Well, it’s Harddymaes, isn’t it? Police don’t give a shit.’

‘Look, there she is. Wonder she can show her face, after everything.’

My heart starts to beat a little faster, and I follow the women’s gaze, knowing all too well what I’ll see. Wendy. Once again alone, her arms wrapped tight around her, as if that way she can save herself from the slings and arrows.

One of the women leans away from the pack, her voice carrying on the night air. ‘Oi! Why don’t you get out of it, eh? Slag!’

I can see Wendy, her face briefly crumble, before she pulls it back, ordering her expression. She doesn’t look at them, just stares straight ahead towards the house where her lover died. I don’t know if I can see the tears or if it’s just that I imagine them, but I can’t help myself. I duck past the group, their conversation peppered now with words like ‘mistress’ and ‘slut’, and make my way to Wendy’s side.

‘You okay?’ I ask her that a lot, I’m starting to realise.

She starts, as if stunned that anyone would speak to her, looks at me. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘It’s me. Look, I’m sorry about what happened before. I … I really had thought I’d told you.’

She stares for a moment, then shrugs. ‘Don’t matter. It’s done now.’ She falls silent, then, ‘You heard that, I suppose?’

I weigh up my answers, briefly consider lying. ‘Yes. You and Morris were …’

She doesn’t look at me, just nods.

‘And Toby?’

‘Yes. Toby’s his son.’

It had taken less than a day for Del to call me back. ‘No good, Charlie. The boy’s got an alibi.’

‘You’re shitting me?’

‘Nope, good one, too.’

‘What’s that?’

‘He got arrested for drunk and disorderly on the Kingsway. Spent the night in the cells. No way it could have been him.’

‘Thing is,’ Wendy goes on, ‘what people around here don’t understand: Morris and me, we go way back. Long before him and Sian. He was …’ Her head drops. ‘He was my first. I was his. Then Sian came along and, well, he dumped me, see. Left me for her. Only you could tell he was never really happy. Not properly, like. So we just kind of carried on. After they got married even. I just couldn’t … I never could seem to let him go, see. Then, of course, I got pregnant.’ She looks down at her hands. ‘I thought he’d leave her then. I really did. Not that I did it on purpose, mind, cos I didn’t. But once it happened, I thought it would change things – you know, that we’d be a family.’

‘But that didn’t happen.’

‘No. He talked about it. Especially when Toby was born. But you know how it is, time passes and nothing changes and, well, you just get on with it, don’t you?’

‘Did Sian know?’

Tears spill down Wendy’s cheeks. ‘I don’t know. I think … I think maybe she did. The thing is … you think that it’s a secret. That it’s just between the two of you. But people see things, even when you think they don’t. People around here – most of them seem to have figured it out. They don’t like me. They don’t like what I’ve done. What Morris has done. They don’t say anything to my face, but I can see it when they look at me, and I hear things, them talking when they think I’m not around. “That hussy in number nine.” That’s what they call me. And Sian … I don’t know. Over the last couple of years things have changed between us. She’s started to be odd. Distant, you know? I mean, I know this sounds weird, but we used to get on. We were, well, friends almost.’

‘But you think she suspected?’

‘I think so. Just things she said. Nothing obvious, like, but sometimes I would catch her looking at me and I would think: you know, don’t you? Then she started drinking at the barbecue, and I mean, she drank a lot – more than I’d ever seen her have before – and she started picking, you know, having a go at Morris. You see,’ Wendy says, ‘he was going to leave Sian. And he meant it this time, he really did. He was miserable. He told me that. He wanted out, wanted to be with me, with Toby. We were going to get away from here, the three of us. He said it would have to be somewhere lovely, that I deserved that. After all, I had waited so long.’ Wendy turns away then, stares out over the sea of candles, starlight in a darkened sky. ‘I know what you’re thinking about me. I know how it looks. But the thing is, you’ve got to understand, I loved him. I always have.’

Her face crumples, the weight of her loss hitting her afresh, and she leans forward, tears glassy on her cheeks. I feel useless. Worse than useless. Standing beside this woman and thinking that, even though the life she has settled for has been a half-life at best, still it was hers and, no matter what I thought or what anyone else would think, she loved Morris. And now he is dead.

I look out across the darkened street, try to count the candles. It is an impossible job. There are far too many. Then, as my courage rises and my gaze jolts back to Wendy, I notice something in the candlelight. The necklace. It has slipped forward, so that it rests now just above the zip of her inadequate fleece. From the end of it hangs a band – a gold circle, wide and scuffed.

And I think back to my conversation with Del. ‘Yeah, I thought that Toby was looking like a goer, too. I don’t know.’ Del sighed heavily. ‘Starting to look more and more like it was Morris. Neighbours all say they’d been rowing that night, that things had been shaky with them for a while. And if Sian knew about his other woman … things could have got out of hand. It’s just …’

‘What?’

‘No, well, the only thing that’s weird – Morris’s wedding ring. He always wore it. It’s in every picture we can find of him; friends, neighbours, they all say he had it on at the barbecue …’

‘And?’

‘Well, it’s missing. No sign of it anywhere.’

My heartbeat quickens. I stare at Wendy. From across the crowd I hear a tinny cough as someone fires up a microphone, voices dropping away, heads turning towards the sound. But I don’t turn. I can’t, because all I can see is the wedding ring that Wendy wears around her neck.

She looks at me, dabs at the tears with a handkerchief. Then she gives me a little smile. ‘Thing is – what I keep telling myself is – he probably wouldn’t have left her anyway. I mean, he’d said that about a thousand times before. And there’s only so much you can put up with. Isn’t there?’ She turns then, towards the sound of the microphone, and her voice drops so low I can barely hear it. ‘They said he was stabbed in the heart.’ Her hand moves, grips the chain around her neck and, in a swift movement, tucks it back inside her jacket. ‘I know what that feels like.’

Read on for the first chapter of
Hidden
Emma Kavanagh’s brilliant new book
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1
Charlie: Sunday 31 August, 10.33 a.m.

I CAN SMELL
the blood. It is all that I can smell. It coats my nostrils, my lungs, it stains the inside of my throat. It is on me. It covers my hands, has turned my white blouse crimson, and I do not know how much of it is mine, how much comes from the dead.

The bodies litter the hospital lobby like autumn leaves blown inside on a gusty day. There are so many of them, the floor has vanished beneath them. Now, everywhere I look I see the casualties lying at uneven angles. The coffee shop, the one that was so busy just moments ago, before the world ended, now stands empty. Round metal tables have tumbled to their sides, tubular chairs overturned and scattered. Those who could run, did. A bullet has pierced the sandwich display, sending finger-cracks racing along the glass. From somewhere beyond sight comes the smell of burning bread, a toasting sandwich abandoned in the exodus. Beyond that, the automatic main doors to the hospital stand open, bringing inside a gust of warm wind. I look at the doors, study them without seeing, obliquely wonder why it is that they do not close. They should have closed, shouldn’t they?

That is when I see the security guard. Ernie is stretched out on his back, a plastic coffee cup still clutched in his hand, the coffee seeping out to form a pool that mingles with the blood. His head is pressed against the right-hand door, and it would seem that he slept, but for the hole where his face should be. His cowlick, the one that he laughed at, the one that he complained his wife hated, is stained a red so dark that it is almost black.

I look away, trying to breathe, trying not to panic. Look down at Aden. He is lying on the ground beside me, has curled inwards around me, so that his chin brushes against my knee. I am holding Aden’s hand, so tight that it seems it must be hurting him, although he never murmurs. He has not opened his eyes, his lips are slack. Blood leaches through the dark of his uniform, puddling on the floor, into my skirt. I press my other hand against the hole in his shoulder, feeling warm blood ooze between my fingers. And I pray. I don’t remember the last time I prayed, but today I pray. Please God, let him live.

My hearing is beginning to repair. The yawning silence ebbing away, sounds beginning to creep back in. Of course, as soon as they do, I wish they would go away again. Because now I can hear the whimpers. I don’t know where they are coming from. I had thought I was the only one left alive in this hell. I’m not sure, but then I think the whimpers are coming from me. Behind that, carried in on the breeze, I hear what I first think is screaming. I wonder distantly what it is that is making the outside world tear itself apart, when the worst that can happen is here, where we are. But then the sound solidifies and I realise I am hearing sirens and that the cavalry are coming.

I look up, think to shout for help. And that is when I see her. Imogen looks different. The way she is wearing her hair, I haven’t seen it like that before. But then, what does it matter how her hair looks, now that she is dead?

Imogen lies spreadeagled at the edge of the lobby. Looks as if she is making snow angels in the heart of winter. But instead of snow she is surrounded by blood that was once hers. She has tumbled backwards, blown there by the gunshot to her chest. Copper-red hair falls across her eyes, a single strand snaking its way across her chin, trapping itself in the gloss pink of her Cupid’s-bow lips. Her mobile phone lies in her wide-open hand. For a moment it seems that she can see me, her gaze fixed on me, pleading. But there is nothing there. Her overlarge green eyes are vacant.

I stare at Imogen, and stare, and my brain seems to be standing on quaking ground, because now I recognise her, now I don’t. And then I think that it must be the sheen of death on her. This is why she looks so alien to me. So other.

A feeling is rising through me, and I think it must be panic. I fight against it, push it down. There is only me. There is only me amongst them all. I cannot let go.

Okay, Charlie. Take it slowly. My father always said that the only way to climb a mountain is one step at a time. So I focus on my breathing again, slowing it. I know that my lungs are pumping, my heart is beating like a drum, and I am absurdly angry with them both, willing them to calm the hell down. I cling to Aden’s hand, so tightly that it seems his skin has become a part of mine, and I breathe in, holding a blood-stained breath in my lungs, and think that I am at the bottom of the pool, and there is nothing more to it than that. Just an easy dive, down into the piercing blue deep. And any second now I will skim the bottom, then I will turn, arching my body up towards the light. And then I will break the surface. And this time the air will be clean. Bloodless.

I remember the doors, swooshing open onto the still August air. The sun on the linoleum. The barrel of the gun. The shape it made as it faced me. The endless darkness hidden inside. The certain knowledge that I was going to die. Then Aden. That look, from me to him and back again. Then the gun, swinging around, finding him.

Then a voice, low-sounding of whisky and darkness, breaks into my reverie. ‘You okay?’

I start and release a sound, one that I have never heard from myself before, a kind of a cross between a yelp and a sob. Aden’s face is creased in pain. Eyes open, so slowly. He lies there for a minute, as if he cannot believe that he is alive.

I wait for him to look at me. At least I give him that, before I throw myself at him. I can feel his breath on my cheek, hear his heart beating on mine. I’m dimly aware this is unlikely to help his wounds, but I cannot seem to stop myself, and after a second, as he presumably works at convincing himself that he isn’t dead, I feel his arm wrapping itself around me, pulling me in tighter.

‘You’re alive.’ His voice is rough, low.

‘You too.’ He smells of soap and gunpowder.

‘How bad?’

I know what he’s asking. I know what he wants me to do. But I stay, cradled against him, until I absolutely, completely have to move. Then, with my one good arm, I push myself up. His shoulder is bleeding. The wound looks ragged, terrifying even, and I have no idea what will come next.

BOOK: The Affair
6.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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