His & Hers(17)

“I’ve got to go.”

“Sure. Run away like you always do.”

He starts to leave, but then turns back and gets so close his face is right in front of mine.

“You don’t have to behave like a bitch every time we see each other. It doesn’t suit you.”

The words sting a little. More than I would like to admit, even to myself.

He walks away and I fix a smile on my face until he is completely out of view. Then something strange and unexpected happens: I cry. I hate the way he can still get under my skin, and loathe myself for letting him.

The sound of the car parked next to mine being remotely unlocked startles me.

“Sorry to interrupt.”

Richard opens the trunk, carefully laying his camera inside. I wipe beneath my eyes with the back of my hand, and damp smears of mascara stain my fingers.

“You okay?” he asks. I nod and he successfully interprets my silence as a sign that I do not want to talk about it. “Do we need to package for lunchtime? If so, we should get on with—”

“No, they don’t want anything unless the story develops,” I say.

“Right. Well, back to London then?”

“Not yet. There’s more to this story, I just know it. There are some people in town I want to talk to, on my own; your camera will just scare them. I’ll take my car. There’s a nice pub down the road called the White Hart, they do a great all-day breakfast. Why don’t I meet you there a bit later?”

“Okay,” he says slowly, as though buying time while still selecting his next words. “I know you said that you had met the detective before. Did something happen between you once upon a time?”

“Why? Are you jealous?”

“Am I right?”

“Well, you’re not wrong. Jack is my ex-husband.”





Him



Tuesday 09:30



My ex-wife knows more about this than she is letting on.

I don’t understand how, but then I lived with the woman for fifteen years, was married to her for ten of them, and still always struggled to tell the difference between her truth and her lies. Some people build invisible walls around themselves in the name of self-preservation. Hers were always tall, solid, and impenetrable. I knew we were in trouble long before I did anything about it. Truth in my work is everything, but truth in my personal life can feel like a bright light I need to turn away from.

Nobody here knows that I was married to Anna Andrews. Just as I expect nobody she works with knows about me. Anna has always been intensely private, a condition she inherited from her mother. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Don’t ask, don’t tell works for me too when it comes to my life away from the job.

Like a lot of people who have been in a relationship for a long time, we would regularly say “I love you.” I don’t remember exactly why or when it started to lose its meaning, but those three little words turned into three little lies. They became more of a substitute for “good-bye”—if one of us was leaving the house—or “goodnight”—when we were going to sleep. We dropped the “I” after a while; “Love you” seemed sufficient, and why waste three words when you could express the same empty sentiment with two? But it wasn’t the same. It was as though we forgot what the words were supposed to mean. My stomach rumbles loudly and I remember how hungry I am.



* * *



When I was a child my mother didn’t let us eat between meals, and sweets were banned from the house. She worked as a receptionist at the local dentist and took tooth decay very seriously. The other kids would all take snacks to school—chips, candy bars, biscuits—I got an apple, or, on special occasions, a little red box of Sun-Maid raisins. I remember the rush of anger I felt whenever I found them in my packed lunch—the box said the raisins came all the way from California, and I realized that even dried fruit had a more interesting existence than eight-year-old me. The most I could hope for was a Golden Delicious, which was a misleading description because in my opinion those apples were neither.

The only time I ever tasted chocolate as a child was when my grandmother came to visit. It was our little secret, and it tasted like a promise. Nothing else I remember from my childhood gave me more unadulterated pleasure than those little brown squares of Cadbury Dairy Milk melting on my tongue.

I eat a chocolate bar every day now. Sometimes two if things are bad at work. No matter which one I buy, or how much it costs, it never tastes as good as the cheap chocolate bars my grandmother used to bring. Even they don’t taste the same. I think when we finally get what we think we want, it loses its value. It’s the secret nobody ever shares, because if they did, we would all stop trying.

Anna and I got what we thought we wanted.

It wasn’t a never-ending supply of chocolate bars, or a private island in the sun. First it was an apartment, then a car, then a job, then a house, then a wedding, then a baby. We followed the same safe paths that older generations had carved out for us, trampled into permanence by so many previous footsteps that it was only too easy to follow. We were so certain we were headed in the right direction, we left tracks of our own, to help future couples find their way. But we didn’t discover a pot of golden happiness at the end of the rite-of-passage rainbow. When we finally got where we thought we wanted to be, we realized that there was nothing there.