The Telling Error (29 page)

‘My mother will probably tell them, first chance she gets,’ I say to Adam. ‘“Hi, kids. How’s school? By the way, your mother’s a cyber-slag. She’s lucky your dad didn’t throw her out on the street when he found out, to forage for scraps.”’

Adam winces. ‘Oh, come on! Noreen would never do that to Soph and Ethan. Your family don’t really believe you killed Damon Blundy. And I don’t think Noreen would actually have told me anything about Gavin, if push had come to shove.’

Has he not been paying attention? ‘Adam, Melissa went to the police and encouraged them to suspect me of Damon Blundy’s murder. My parents and Lee will have been behind that for sure. No way Melissa’d do it of her own accord.’

‘I can see them thinking you needed a bit of sense shaking into you, but I don’t believe they honestly think you’re capable of murder.’

‘I am capable of murder,’ I tell him. ‘I just haven’t committed it yet, that’s all.’

The police have sent a woman to take my statement: Sergeant Charlotte Zailer. Tall, skinny, dark hair, bright red lipstick. Sharp dark eyes that make me wonder what she’s thinking about me, even before I’ve said anything. She looks as if she’s thinking plenty.

Her breasts are large for a skinny woman. It was the first thing I noticed about her when she walked into the holding cell Adam and I were placed in when we arrived. It’s probably not called a holding cell. The man who escorted us in here called it a meeting room. Still, it’s not a room I’d wish to spend any time in.

I don’t normally pay much attention to other women’s breasts, but Sergeant Zailer’s are hard to miss. Given what I’m about to reveal, the sight of them, even covered up, makes me feel paranoid. I am certain Adam is thinking the same thing. Perhaps we’ll laugh about it together later.

‘Mr Clements, perhaps you could encourage your wife to tell me what she came here to tell me?’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘I can’t wait forever.’

‘Nicki …’ Adam murmurs.

‘I don’t need encouragement.’ I needed to prepare myself, that’s all. And now I have. ‘Now that Adam knows the truth, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. You’ll disapprove of me, but I don’t mind that. I’m used to being disapproved of.’

‘I already disapprove of you,’ Sergeant Zailer says as if it’s a stroke of good luck. ‘You lied to two of my colleagues, didn’t you? You said your car was missing a wing mirror on the morning that Damon Blundy was murdered. We know that’s not true. We’ve got CCTV of your car with both mirrors clearly still attached.’

‘Yes, I thought of that several days too late. I know it’s pathetic, but the mirror thing was the best I could come up with. God knows how I could make such a stupid mistake. I could have told literally
any
other lie and it would have been more convincing: I’d left my phone at home; I remembered I’d left the hob on – anything! Once I realised I’d screwed up, I hoped the CCTV might be so grainy that my mirrors wouldn’t stand out, but …’ I shrug.

‘Well, I’m sorry your lie didn’t work.’ Sergeant Zailer smiles. She looks and sounds as if she might actually mean it. Unless it’s a tactic. It must be a tactic. ‘Is that why you rang up and asked to come in? You realised your story’d fall flat, so you decided to tell the truth?’

‘No. I’ve just told you, I was pinning all my hopes on excessive graininess of CCTV film.’ I smile back at her. ‘I decided to tell the truth because my mother threatened me.’

‘Nicki,’ Adam says urgently. I don’t know what he thinks can be done. The words are out and can’t be taken back. I don’t want to take them back. ‘She didn’t
threaten
you.’

‘She did, actually.’ To Sergeant Zailer, I say, ‘My husband refuses to believe my mother would stoop so low, but she did threaten me. She said if I didn’t tell Adam the truth, she would. So I told him – and having told him, there’s absolutely no reason not to tell you, especially when telling you has the added advantage of making it clear I’m not a murderer.’

‘Go on,’ says Sergeant Zailer.

I sigh. Even prepared as I am, this is not going to be pleasant. ‘I behaved suspiciously on Monday morning on Elmhirst Road – I’m not denying that. I did a U-turn rather than drive past a certain policeman, but … my reason for doing so had nothing to do with Damon Blundy, dead or alive. It was the policeman I wanted to avoid.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I was embarrassed and ashamed about something I’m
still
embarrassed and ashamed about – although now I can bear to face up to it, whereas on Monday morning, I didn’t feel I could. I just … saw that policeman, panicked and had to get away from him as quickly as I could.’ I clear my throat, but the lump in it is still there. ‘I suppose the difference is that now I have no choice but to face up to it. All right. I had a cyber affair with a man called Gavin. Well, a man who told me he was called Gavin – I doubt it’s his real name. One feature of this … relationship, if you can call it that, is that I sent him photographs of myself. Some were more explicit than others.’

‘Go on.’

I glance at Adam. How must he feel, hearing all this a second time, in front of a stranger?

‘I’m OK,’ he says. ‘You can tell her. Don’t worry about me.’ He turns to Sergeant Zailer. ‘I love my wife and I’m not going to let a brief stupid lapse turn me against her.’

Really? How about a brief stupid lapse of nearly half a century – my entire life, in fact?

‘Your relationship’s none of my business, Mr Clements. Go on, Nicki.’

I can’t. I can’t say the difficult part. Maybe if I start earlier in the story, it’ll be easier. ‘Gavin put an ad on a website called Intimate Links. Do you know it?’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ Sergeant Zailer says.

‘If you’ve never looked at Intimate Links, this might sound a bit strange, but a lot of people advertise for very specific things. Particular fetishes, for example. There’s a lot of dom-sub stuff: foot worship, guys wanting mother-baby role play, doctor-patient fantasies … When I used to look regularly, there was a man who posted the same ad every day asking for a woman who would make insulting remarks about his wife while having sex with him. I always wondered about that one – I mean, why specifically
that
? Anyway, sorry, that’s irrelevant. These ads often have particular physical requirements: this or that type of body – skinny, obese, shaved, unshaved. A lot of the adverts are very direct. Gavin’s was. He specified certain … physical things, things that applied to me. Blonde, petite and … other more intimate things. His advert read as if he was describing
me.
’

Because he was.
He was King Edward, using a different name to reel you in.

Adam reaches for my hand. I understand him less now than I ever have.

I say, ‘I’m sure this sounds very sordid, and maybe it is, but there’s also something liberating about being able to abandon social niceties and read what people really want. And to read an ad written by a man who tells you in advance that he will be completely transfixed by your body when he hasn’t seen it yet … To write back and say, “That’s me you’re describing,” and to get a reply within ten seconds that says, “Then I want you” … There’s something refreshing about that, believe it or not.’

‘I can believe it,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘Nicki, there’s no need to be defensive. I’m not judgemental about other people’s sex lives. Really. Mine would probably shock you more than yours shocks me. To be honest, if I’m shocked by anything, it’s the resilience of your marriage. I think it’s great that you and Adam are sitting here holding hands while you’re telling me all this.’

‘I know Nicki loves me,’ says Adam. ‘She didn’t love this Gavin person. That’s why I can get past it.’

Yes, that’s true. I love Adam. I didn’t love Gavin. I thought I loved King Edward, but I was wrong.

‘Our emails became very graphic very quickly,’ I say. ‘It was … I’m not making an excuse, but it felt as if my brain had been taken over by a kind of fever.’

It always does. Every time. You like the fever, don’t you? You need it.

‘I wasn’t me; I was this … lust-crazed maniac. I had no idea what this man looked like, but it made no difference. It was the things he said about my body and what he’d like to do to it that got me hooked on him.’

‘So he didn’t send you photographs?’

‘No. I never asked him to, and he never offered. I liked him being no more than words on a screen. No personality, no history, just … words, and sexual demands. That suited me. It made me feel less guilty – less like I had another man. He could have been some kind of computer program.

‘The photographs – the ones I sent him – became a regular thing. I tried to make them as varied as possible, which was hard because the subject matter was always the same: my breasts. Sometimes in the bedroom mirror, sometimes an aerial shot, sometimes in a toilet cubicle of a restaurant.’ I take a deep breath. Adam squeezes my hand. ‘And once – only once, on 5 June this year – in a supermarket car park, in broad daylight, with other people around. I thought no one was close enough to see. I took off my shirt and my bra and took a picture of myself topless. With my phone. It wasn’t very good, so I took another one, and then another. That was what I always did, until I had one from that particular batch that I thought was good enough to send to Gavin. I don’t know how I could have forgotten where I was, or the danger of being seen, but I did. I got so caught up in what I was doing: mentally, physically. I suppose it’s a bit like having sex in public – people do that, don’t they?’

Sergeant Zailer nods.

‘Taking those photographs … that’s how it felt, like being in the middle of a sexual encounter. I got carried away. The risk of being seen by someone was part of it, yet at the same time I didn’t seriously believe there was a risk. And then I heard knocking on my car window and I looked up and there was a uniformed policeman standing there, staring at me in horror.’ Saying these words out loud makes me feel as if I’m being shaken. ‘I panicked. It sounds melodramatic, but I thought my life was over: I’d be arrested and charged with flashing; I’d be on the front page of the local paper; my kids would be ridiculed at school; Adam would leave me; I’d have to go to court and get a criminal record for exposing myself in public … I lost it completely, became hysterical.’

‘Not a pleasant experience,’ Sergeant Zailer commiserates. Is she mad? Why isn’t she pointing at me and laughing? ‘You were unlucky. Silly, but unlucky.’

‘No, I was very lucky. He let me off with a warning, even promised not to tell anyone. Poor man, he looked more embarrassed than I was. He was quite kind to me, once he saw how upset I was.’

Rather in the way that Sergeant Zailer is being kind to me now. And Adam.

There are some good people in the world. I need to devise a way of existing that acknowledges this. I can’t, mustn’t, base my whole life on hiding, on defending myself.

‘It could have been so much worse,’ I say. ‘Anyway, that encounter with the policeman brought me to my senses. I broke off contact with Gavin and resolved never to put myself or my family in that position ever again. Then, on Monday morning, I was driving along Elmhirst Road on my way to my children’s school and I saw the same policeman and just …’ A shudder I can’t control passes through me. ‘I couldn’t help it. It felt like a catastrophe, like something out of a horror film – he was going to be there, waiting for me, round every corner I turned, for the rest of my life. I couldn’t drive past him, couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing me. It brought it all back: the humiliation of that moment, the fear. I couldn’t do it. I did a U-turn, and that’s the only reason you know I exist. Not because I had anything to do with Damon Blundy’s murder – because I got my tits out in a car park once and got caught.’

‘We all do stupid things, Nicki,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘You should have told DS Kombothekra and DC Waterhouse the truth when they interviewed you. It would have saved you a lot of stress.’

‘Well, no, I shouldn’t have, because I didn’t want them to know the truth,’ I snap. ‘I didn’t want
anyone
to know the truth, and I’m pissed off that you all do, thanks to my parents, brother and supposed best friend.’

‘Nicki, there’s no need to—’

‘What do you mean?’ Sergeant Zailer asks over Adam’s protests. She agrees with me that there’s a need.

‘Melissa Redgate, who used to be my best friend – she married my brother, Lee. I saw her on Tuesday afternoon. We discussed Damon Blundy’s murder. I think she thought I’d killed him – simply because I told her about it, and she thinks I’m the sort of person who must have done every bad thing it’s possible to do.’

‘I don’t believe for a minute that Melissa thinks you killed Blundy,’ Adam mutters. It makes me wonder whether, in a bargaining situation, I would sacrifice his determination to think well of me if in return he would agree to assume the worst about my enemies.
Probably.

I ignore him and fix my eyes on Sergeant Zailer. ‘Melissa thinks I
might
have killed Damon Blundy. She must have decided to share all my secrets with Lee, who rang our parents, hence my mother ringing to threaten to reveal my sordid history to Adam. Oh, my mother also asked me if I’d murdered Damon Blundy, in a tone that implied she believed I had.’