The Flavours of Love (49 page)

‘She’s been watching me, I don’t know how long for, but she tried to break into my house, she’s vandalised my car more than once and started to spread rumours about my daughter.

‘I found out today who the man who has been sexually grooming my daughter is and I knew what I had to do. I had to get myself legitimately and publicly arrested so that I could tell you this. That’s why I smashed up his car and made some over-the-top speech – every word I believe, by the way – so I could get here. I couldn’t tell you this in the cells because I don’t know who could be listening. I don’t know who she knows. I’m taking a risk even with telling you this, but I have no choice. I think she’s going to try to kill me in the next few days because when I’m not at the hospital, I’ll be alone in the house.

‘I am begging you to do nothing to investigate her for the next few days. I am begging, begging,
begging
you to let me carry on as normal so she thinks I haven’t said anything and she won’t disappear and she won’t try to hurt anyone else in my family. Maybe when I’m at the hospital you could get someone to watch my house to see if you can spot her going there to leave a letter and then you’ll be able to arrest her.

‘That, in my own words, is what happened. I wouldn’t normally behave violently, but I don’t want to die and leave my children and I do want her to leave me alone and to be put on trial for killing my husband.’

They were both silent after I finished speaking. That wasn’t what they expected to hear and because of that, they had nothing to say. And neither did I. So the three of us sat in silence for a full five minutes before Clive Malone uttered, ‘Oh.’

*

‘He’s not coming back, is he?’ I say to Clive Malone. I knead the base of my thumbs into the inner corners of my eyes, the site of my pain, the place where I am about to cave in. ‘All this time I’ve been trying to keep him alive, I’ve been clinging on to every little thing of his that I can because I convinced myself he was coming back. And he’s not. He’s not coming back.’ My legs refuse to hold me upright now that I’ve been struck with this news, this reality. ‘He’s not coming back. I’m never going to see him again.’

No matter what I do, what I say, how I behave, I’m never going to see him again
.

Clive Malone stands in front of me and acts as a shield to the police officers who are slowly leaving the room. The realisation continues to rise up from my cells, my bones, my blood where I’ve always known and accepted this and starts to diffuse into my muscles, into my organs, into my mind, into my memory.

I am never going to see him again because he is never coming back
.

When I am alone except for Clive Malone, my human shield, I start to scream. Real screams, the kind I’ve never been able to do because I’m usually surrounded my colleagues, or children, or friends or the world.

I can do this now. I have to do this now.

I have to empty all of the silent screams out into the air, I have to make them real and loud because the love of my life is never coming back.

XII

WOMAN ARRESTED FOR MURDER OF BRIGHTON FATHER OF TWO

A woman has been arrested in connection with the 2011 fatal stabbing of Joel Mackleroy. The thirty-five-year-old woman from Ramonant Road in Hove was detained yesterday morning on suspicion of murdering the popular father of two from Brighton. A police spokesman confirmed that the woman will also be facing multiple other charges including harassment, criminal damage and attempted murder. ‘We have in custody the person we believe to be responsible for this crime as well as several others. We will be able to reveal more as our investigation continues,’ the spokesman added.

From the
Brighton & Hove Evening News

LXIII

‘Please don’t do that again, Saff,’ Fynn says to me at the front door. He has borrowed a friend’s people carrier to drive us back from the hospital, one day later than intended because forensics were still working on our house the day we were meant to return and I needed to buy a new back door.

Fynn still won’t look at me. He’s been visiting Phoebe every day, he insisted on driving us all home, but I am a trigger for his pain and because of that, he won’t look at me. He doesn’t realise how awful it is when a person you love purposely refuses to see you, even if you’re right there in front of them they pretend that the space you occupy is blank. Vacant. He doesn’t realise that literally blanking me cuts me up inside as much as his refusal to be around me.

‘Don’t do what?’ I ask.

‘What you did with the police and didn’t tell any of us. The woman killed Joel, she’s incredibly dangerous. If she’d … Just don’t, OK? I’ll wring your neck if you put yourself at risk like that again. Is that clear?’

‘Crystal. And, Fynn?’

‘Yes?’ he replies.

What I want to say is:
Did you know Joel isn’t coming back?
‘Don’t call me Saff any more,’ I say.

His gaze focuses on me now, a mass of confusion beneath the ridges of his frown. ‘Why not?’

‘Only my friends call me Saff. You don’t want to be my friend any more, so stop doing things only a friend would do.’

I watch Fynn swallow at a lump in his throat and he lifts his head slightly as examines me, scrutinising my face to see if I’m serious.

What I want to ask is:
When did you realise he wasn’t coming back? Do you feel as hollowed out as I do now that you know it’s for ever?
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask. ‘Aren’t I playing this role properly? Am I supposed to quietly accept you ending our friendship and put up with you blanking me?’

‘It was you who—’

What I want to utter is:
Does this desolate feeling get any better? Because you said I’d learn to live around the pain and I am, but what about this desolate, hollowed out barrenness? Will that ever go?
‘It was me who wanted to talk but you refused,’ I utter.

He lowers his tone: ‘Talk about what? I’m
just
a friend to you. What we shared was
just
sex. What is there to talk about?’

What I want to beg is:
I just need to know this will get better and that everything is going to be all right again
. ‘Please, you know it’s not that simple,’ I beg.

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he tells me.

‘There is.’

He shakes his head. I know why he won’t talk. It’s for the same reason that I won’t verbalise all of those feelings: the thought of the pain the answers will bring is too much to withstand; and I’m not the only person who will go out of their way to avoid pain, Fynn does it too. ‘I won’t call you Saff again,’ he states.

‘Fine,’ I reply. ‘That’s perfectly fine.’

I have to walk away before he steps out of the door and clicks it shut behind him. I can’t watch him walk away again. He keeps doing it and it hurts a little more every time, especially now it is certain I can’t rely on him any more to be the one to tell me it’ll all be OK.

*

Phoebe is installed on the sofa under her seaside scene duvet, plump white pillows propped behind her and the silver remote control firmly in her hand. Zane, who has barely left her side since his return two days ago, sits with his back against the sofa by her head, so they’re as close as possible. Aunty Betty is dozing in the armchair in the bay window. It’s been a very tiring few days in the hospital, I don’t
think she knew she had it in her. She’s now volunteered to become a hospital visitor and to find funding for and to run a mobile book-lending service. She’s planning on starting it with the books she has in storage but it essentially means I’ll be funding it and taking her to and from ‘work’, as she calls it.

For the first time since I’ve known her she has gone several days without wearing a wig. Even when she was in hospital with a broken hip, by the time visiting hours came around she had her wig in place and some basic make-up on. Now, her chin-length hair is combed out and frames her face like wispy grey-streaked black clouds. She looks like a different person, even though she still has her eye make-up and lipstick. She’s stopped hiding behind her make-up, I’ve realised these past couple of days, now she wears it to enhance her features, not to disguise them. Aunty Betty is finally ready to face the world, it seems.

At this moment, her head is thrown back, her mouth is wide open, her teeth with their patchwork of grey-black fillings are exposed to the entire room. She doesn’t quite fill the brown leather seat, not like Joel used to. That was ‘his’ chair and once upon a time I would have encouraged her to move by saying she would be more comfortable elsewhere. Now, I simply leave her. It doesn’t matter if she sits there now, he’s not coming back. He won’t sit there again. He really is gone.

‘Who wants a cup of tea/hot chocolate/coffee/apple juice – delete wet substance as appropriate?’ I ask.

A resounding silence is my reply.

‘Fine, I’ll take care of myself,’ I say.

‘OK, Mum,’ Phoebe says.

‘It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum?’ Zane says suddenly and unexpectedly.

I frown at my son.

‘It is, you know,’ Phoebe adds with a nod.

‘Right.’ I glance at Aunty Betty, expecting her to add something equally poignant. She snorts a little snore at us.

The kids crack up and I find my own smile.

It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum
. I hear those words for the
rest of the day. And when I climb into bed that night, I don’t simply look over at Joel’s side of the bed, I spread myself over it, I try to touch both sides of the bed by stretching my arms right across.

It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum
.

My fingers don’t come anywhere near each side, but I keep at it, I pull myself apart as far as I will go because I am desperate to touch the sides. I am desperate to do the impossible. Because it seems impossible that it’s going to be all right. That life will work when he’s not coming back.

I finally give in, stop stretching myself, stop attempting the impossible and I am still.

I am still and listen to those words again:

It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum
.

‘
It is, Ffrony,
’ I fancy I can hear Joel say, ‘
I promise you, it’s going to be all right.
’

LXIV

Fynn has no shirt on and is kissing a woman on his front doorstep.

I watch them from the end of the black and white tiled path that leads to the tiled steps up to his flat. He lives in one of the four apartments in a large house in Hove on one of the roads that goes down to the street that runs parallel to the seafront. There really is no need for him to be doing that out there when he has a doorstep inside.

She’s really quite beautiful, this woman. As tall as him in her designer heels, extremely slender, a well-cut navy blue suit and swathes of long, shiny, ebony black hair that cascade right down to the middle of her back. She has one hand on his face, he has his hand nestled at the base of her spine as they snog like two people who’ve blatantly spent most of last night screwing. And probably this morning, too.

This, I do not need to see. Whether she’s a new girlfriend or a one-night ‘hook up’ I do not need to be watching this. Apart from everything else, it’s confirmation that in the four weeks since we last saw each other it hasn’t bothered him that we’re not friends any more. How things stand between us – with him regularly speaking to/texting the kids and often Aunty Betty – is fine with him. He’s simply getting on with his life without me in it.

The canoodling couple break apart and simultaneously grin at each other, a secret shared without words between them. They say their goodbyes and she smiles, flashing her light blue eyes at me, on her way past. She has on last night’s clothes but she has fresh makeup, and she’s showered, her vaguely woody, musky scent is one that Fynn often smells of. I smile back because it’s the polite thing to do.
I even manage a smile for the man at the top of the black and white steps.

He replies with an unfriendly tightening of his lips and a glare, but leaves the front door and the door to his flat open when he goes inside.

The flat is in partial darkness because the living room blinds are drawn and I’m guessing the ones in the bedroom are, too. All the other doors that lead off the corridor are closed, so the flat is subdued and almost sombre. Fynn moved here after he got divorced eight years ago. He was married for two years and neither of them could explain why they got married – they did it in Vegas – nor why they split up. I liked her, but she moved away after they broke up and didn’t want to keep in touch. ‘Need a fresh start away from everyone,’ she texted. ‘I know you’ll understand.’

By the time I enter the flat, Fynn has, thankfully, pulled on a T-shirt and he walks from section to section of his bay window and jerks the strings to open the blinds. He also opens the sash windows as far as they will go with the window locks to let some air in. The whole flat needs proper airing because everything reeks of sex.

He moves around his living room, righting it after last night’s activities: he picks up the wine glasses on the table in front of the television and carries them through to the kitchen. He returns for the shot glasses and the nearly empty bottle of whisky. While screwing up the empty crisp packets and snatching up the empty condom packet that was partially hidden under the coffee table, he finally speaks: ‘What, have you come over to watch me tidy up, or to tell me what else I can’t do because we’re not friends?’

‘Neither … I came here …’ I hold out the white paper bag in my hand, in it is a muffin I made earlier with him in mind. All the flavours I know he loves. ‘Look, see? I brought this muffin: white flour, white sugar, white chocolate, coconut – which is of course white – all in a white paper bag. I mean, yes, it’s got blueberries and the coconut was slightly toasted, but in essence, baked goods crammed with stuff to be used as a white flag.’ I wave the bag around. ‘Ceasefire?’

He says nothing, glowers at me from his ‘hunched over cleaning my coffee table’ position, before he stands upright and pads into the kitchen. His bare feet make an almost comical slapping sound as they hit the tiles.