A Line of Blood (37 page)

‘I can’t really say, Mum.’

My mother poured tea, sat eyeing me sceptically. Then she took a forkful of cake, chewed it slowly, swallowed it carefully down. She dabbed at the edges of her mouth with a napkin. She put the fork on the tablecloth beside her plate, took a sip of tea, and dabbed again at her mouth with the napkin.

‘Whatever may have happened, son, your wife is the glue that holds what’s left of this family together.’

‘I don’t know, Mum. I don’t think I know who she is any more. She has never – never, Mum – taken Max and me to meet her parents. I mean, I know it’s a ten-hour flight, but come
on
. What does that say to you?’

‘People break with their past for all kinds of reasons, son. Look at your father.’

It was true. I had never met my father’s parents.

‘Alexander,’ said my mother, ‘you know how you were before you met her. You were a wretch. All those English girls, and never content.’

‘I wasn’t a wretch, Mum.’

‘Aye, well.’ A slight tilt of the head. ‘You and your wife make each other happy. I’ve seen it, son.’

‘We don’t, Mum,’ I said as quietly as I could. ‘Not any more.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you must see to it that you do.’

Max filled a grey metal tool box with fishing equipment. Then he selected a long canvas bag with two rods in it.

My father had made the rods from tank aerials. He had spent hours in his workshop retooling them, cutting them down, fitting locking joints, binding ceramic eyelets on to the metal with industrial adhesive. They were heavy and old-fashioned, but Max liked them.

While my mother made sandwiches in the kitchen I found a roll of tape in a drawer in the hall. I taped up the side of the envelope that Millicent had addressed to Rose, and as we walked to the station I slipped the card into a post box.

Leave my husband alone.

I rang the custody sergeant from the train corridor and told him I wanted to withdraw the assault charge against Millicent. June rang me shortly after, asked me to reconsider.

‘We need a little more time, Alex.’

‘If you haven’t charged her with murder, you’re going to have to let her go.’

‘We’re not there yet.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because she has nothing to confess. She didn’t do it. It’s a suicide.’

Of course Millicent wouldn’t have confessed. She was no killer. Why had I let them persuade me to press charges?
What’s wrong with me? What would I be without Millicent?

‘Alex, don’t you want to know the truth?’

‘It’s bullshit, you know, June,’ I said, ‘using an assault charge to try to get Millicent to confess to murder. I should never have gone with it.’

The line went dead.

I rang Millicent’s lawyer and told her I was dropping charges. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh, they really should have rung and told me that by now.’

I told her about the conversation with the detective.

‘Alex,’ she said, ‘you do know that that woman is not your friend? Anyway, Millicent’s basically OK. Or she was last time I checked in. June’s colleagues have been very professional, at least.’

‘Do you think she did it?’ I said. ‘I mean, no one could really believe that, could they?’

‘Alex,’ she said, ‘I’m your wife’s lawyer. You pressed charges against Millicent. That puts you and me on opposite sides of the table. I’m sorry.’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘please, I’m all at sea here.’

‘You did the right thing, Alex.’ She ended the conversation.

Millicent was sleeping when we got home. Max didn’t ask to see her. He went willingly upstairs to bed, and by eleven he was asleep too.

Arla and I ate a tomato salad and shared a pork pie from the delicatessen. Something in Arla’s demeanour told me she knew, that Millicent had told her I had pressed charges.

We made careful, precise smalltalk about things that didn’t matter: we spoke of Israel and of Palestine; we spoke of racism, and homophobia, and we spoke of the Russian Federation; we spoke of the impoverishment of Britain, and we spoke of the national debt. On any other day these subjects would have mattered. But today we made other people’s suffering the subject of our smalltalk. The most important thing was not to disagree.

I spent some time wondering whether I should give my side of the story, explain to Arla how I had come to press charges against her sister. In the end I decided not to. I could read in her eyes exactly what she thought of me.

Then Arla asked me why Millicent and I seemed to have so few friends these days.

‘Do we?’ I said.

‘Yeah, remember your wedding? It was a cumulonimbus of awesome. You guys were stratospherically popular. So question: where are all your friends these days, Alex?’

I explained that life seemed to have become largely about survival since Sarah’s death.

‘Are you saying that’s some sort of trigger, Alex?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘but it makes you more discerning about your friendship.’

‘So, Millicent has – who, Alex?’

‘Me,’ I said. ‘Millicent has me. And Max.’

‘Sounds like she’s kind of lonely. Max is lonely, which has to be the only reason he hangs out with his aunt. And you have?’

‘Fab5.’

‘About that,’ she said. ‘He came round. Asked me out.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Wow.’

‘Hope that won’t be a problem,’ said Arla.

‘No, Arla. No, it’s not a problem.’

‘You know,’ she said, ‘two promiscuous people in a big city, finding each other.’

On any other day that might have stung. But right now it didn’t matter at all. Right now it was smalltalk.

Arla went to bed at two. At three I went upstairs. I found Millicent lying on top of the covers, her fingers curled around Max’s book. He must have put it there before he had gone to bed. What was he trying to achieve?

I tried to pull the book from Millicent’s hand, but her fingers clung to it stiffly and instead she woke. She looked at me, then looked down at the book.

‘Yep,’ she said, ‘well, my son still hates me. Hello, Alex.’

‘Hello, Millicent.’

‘How was it?’

‘How was what?’

Cold disbelief in her eyes. ‘Your father’s funeral, Alex?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘It was OK.’

She was shaking her head now, her eyes fixed on mine. ‘I guess really I’m asking you about Max, and not whether you thought the funeral was
OK
.’

‘Max is fine,’ I said. ‘He did well. He read, and it was very moving. I think it helped him. You would have been proud.’

She smiled, and for a moment her coldness lifted. I could take you in my arms, I thought. I could hold you and talk to you about our beautiful son. Then the coldness descended again, and I knew that I could not.

‘Here’s where you ask me about my last two days, Alex.’

‘Millicent,’ I said, ‘Millicent, I’m so sorry.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘You’re sorry? Not a problem, Alex.’

‘I did a terrible thing.’

At this she looked almost amused.

‘Let me condense the experience for you, Alex. Four main questions. Did I have an affair with the neighbour? Did I have a business relationship with the neighbour? Did I kill the neighbour? Why did I withhold information? To which my answers were, consistently,
yes
,
no
,
no
, and
I’m sorry I withheld information, detective, but I did a stupid thing and was scared of what everyone would think
. Over and over and over again, till they ran out of time and had to release me.’

‘Millicent, I was out of my mind. I believe you. I know you didn’t kill the neighbour.’

‘Huh. Interesting. So I didn’t really get the chance to tell you,’ she said, her voice level, matter-of-fact. ‘I won’t contest the divorce. You’re free to leave me, Alex. You actually have to. For your own sake, and for Max.’

‘Millicent,’ I said. ‘Stop.’

‘In fact, you should really throw me out. You can have my share of the house. How’s that for an incentive?’

‘I’m not going to throw you out.’

‘No, you should. It’s your job to protect Max from bad things. You’re his father. And I guess I have to accept that I’m one of the bad things you need to protect him from.’

‘We lost our way, Millicent. That’s all.’

She was shaking her head. ‘I’m a horrible mother, and a horrible wife. And you both believe in vengeance, but only you can punish me. Because there’s this bond between you and Max, and you have to do what he can’t.’

‘I’m not divorcing you, Millicent.’

‘You will. We need to get this started.’ Still that matter-of-fact tone. ‘For me as well as you. It’s the next logical step in the process.’

‘Drop the cynical act, Millicent. You can’t walk away from this. I know you won’t walk away from Max. For the first time in your life you can’t simply jump ship.’

She shook her head. ‘The problem is I hate you too, Alex. I’m trying not to, because I know it makes me less of a person, but really I do.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I should never have brought charges against you.’

‘Oh.’ She looked almost amused by this. ‘Alex,’ she said, ‘Alex, how could you think I wouldn’t know?’

‘Know what?’ I said.

‘Seriously? You’re really going to do this?’ She looked at me for an instant, then looked away again. ‘Max saw you,’ she said.

‘Saw me doing what?’ I wanted to ask. But I guessed, of course, what Max had seen, and what he had told Millicent about what he had seen.

What have I done?

Again Millicent turned and looked at me, and again she looked away. ‘I guess at least he let us have Norway. Though that kind of magnified the impact of the blow. He told me the night we came back. He’s a smart kid. I guess he knew it would destroy me.’

‘Max doesn’t want to destroy you,’ I said. ‘You’re his mother.’

‘He’s a tiny traumatised child, Alex. And the person he wants to spend time with right now is the woman he knows you fucked. You revenge-fucked his aunt, who also happens to be my sister. She’s actually the most stable influence on his life.’ Again that matter-of-fact tone, dangerously brittle. ‘And of course, you knew that all the time we were away. And then we come back here, and there’s a closeness between you and Arla that I can’t explain. It’s like you’re secret friends or something. And then Max tells me why, and it all makes sense.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about Arla when we were away,’ I said.

‘That’s a cute variant on the
it-meant-nothing
defence, I guess. Anyway, you don’t have to apologise. I deserve that you slept with my sister, really I do. I get that I caused it by sleeping with Bryce. Intellectually I get that. It’s just that there will never be a day when I am comfortable with that fact. Not now, and not in some imagined future where none of us hate each other. I know that’s very
black-and-white
of me, Alex. But I can’t accept your apology, and I can’t forgive you, and I can’t forgive her, and I want her to leave.’

‘I’m done betraying you now, Millicent. It won’t happen again.’

The disbelief in her eyes was clouded by pain now. ‘You think
that
brings us back to some sort of Day Zero? You seduce my sister and you think you can
press reset
on me?’

‘Millicent,’ I said, ‘if you force the end of our marriage, Max
will
end up hating you like you say. Forever. Please don’t walk out of this.’

‘Are you trying to break me, Alex?’

She cried then for the longest time. I lay beside her, but she would not let me touch her. Then she stopped crying; she went out to the bathroom and ran all the taps; when she came back into the bedroom her clothes were wet and she had a towel wrapped around her head. She threw herself down on the bed and picked up Max’s diary.

‘I mean, you win, Alex,’ she said after a while. ‘Morally, you win. My humiliation is complete. I surrender. I’m sure you and Max will be very happy together, without me. Arla can stay for as long as she wants. I’m going to gracefully withdraw from your lives. We’re done.’

‘No,’ I wanted to say, ‘I’m going to fight for the family, for you, for us. This time you don’t get to walk out on trouble. This time we face things together.’

I lay on my front for a while, wondering what to say that wouldn’t make things worse, struggling against sleep. When I felt its weight descend upon me I shook it off, then lay on my back, staring upwards, tensing the muscles in my legs and in my arms. I knew that to give in would only make Millicent hate me more. But presently I also knew that there was no fighting it, that sleep had me in its loving embrace, was pinning me down, gently pressing against my limbs, easing them downwards; soon it suffused me; it was in my spine now, and there was no hope for me; sleep had me; it would not let me go.

Millicent came into the bathroom while I was shaving and peed matter-of-factly. For a moment I wondered whether this was a sign of forgiveness, or at least a suggestion of forgiveness. But when I smiled at her and she smiled back, there was an emptiness behind her eyes that told me everything.

In the kitchen Millicent and I drank coffee and ate nothing. Arla and Max drank orange juice and ate Pop Tarts; they spoke only to each other.

‘So,’ said Arla, ‘last day of school. Wanna play hookey with me?’

Max looked over at me, then at Millicent. We smiled our smiles. Max looked unnerved.

‘I should probably go to school.’

‘I could call your head teacher.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I actually want to.’

‘You do?’

‘Thanks, though.’

He got up and put another Pop Tart in the toaster.

‘Max,’ I said.

‘What?’

I looked at Millicent, who flashed me another eviscerating smile.

‘Nothing,’ I said. Let him have his Pop Tart. This was not a time for a talk about sugar.

Max sat down. Then he stood up and went into the front room. Millicent, Arla and I sat in silence, the air heavy between us. Max came back in and sat down again.

‘I get off at one, though. Do you want to come and get me?’

‘Sure,’ said Arla. ‘Want to put a Pop Tart in the toaster for me?’