Page 18

NINE

FRAN

Next time, I would think ahead, I told myself.

Next time, I wouldn’t act on impulse. Next time, I’d confront the old bastard the minute I got in the door, before he decided to scramble up the stairs, desperately trying to get away from me, still gripping onto the groceries he was in the middle of unpacking.

This was something that, next time, would be very important to avoid.

I made a strong mental note in my head, before realising that my mind had yet again drifted off mid-conversation in a situation that I had also rushed into without much thought for the consequences.

‘This is such a lovely cup of tea,’ I said to Mrs Cohens as I took another polite sip.

It tasted like arse. Clearly, the woman did not know that the perfect length of time to brew a cup of tea was three minutes.

Five minutes in, it started to taste like lukewarm stewed brown water.

If you liked brewing it any more than that, then you probably also liked strangling puppies and watching badger porn.

‘Oh well, you’re very welcome,’ she replied, placing both of her hands on her thighs. ‘It’s just nice to get some company, actually. My son never tells me anything about what happens at work. I’m in the dark all the time!’

‘It’s these men, Mrs Cohens. They never tell us anything,’ I exclaimed with fake exasperation. She gave a knowing guffaw as she took another sip.

‘So, when do you reckon your son will be home, Mrs Cohens?’ I asked, slightly pushing myself forward on the chair.

‘Oh, any time now, I imagine. He’s not normally any later than about five on a Thursday. Can I get you another cup of tea, Francesca?’

‘Hmm,’ I said, pursing my lips. ‘I’d better not. I do have a doctor’s appointment at six, and a cup of tea will have me in your hair for at least another hour.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Mrs Cohens said, slapping my hand teasingly. ‘It’s so nice to meet you, and hopefully, we can do this again sometime.’

I tried not to let my feelings find their way to my face as I watched her get up and start boiling the kettle.

‘Of course we can,’ I said, with the manufactured grin I’d left hanging on my face, knowing that I was well and truly winning her over.

I vaguely remembered one of the staff at the children’s home, a genuinely lovely man named Clive, whose defining feature was that the gap between his eyebrows was always a bright tomato red from plucking the hairs that would otherwise form a thick, bristled monobrow.

He would always tell me in the quiet room, where difficult children were exiled, that I had a bit of a tendency to see red, to launch myself straight into a righteous fury.

I often thought of him whenever I found myself in situations like this.

Wondering if I should have taken the ten deep breaths he used to tell me to take to try to stop myself from doing something stupid.

I heard the front door unlock with a heaving metal clunk and listened to the footsteps of her piece-of-shit son dawdling towards the kitchen.

‘And who the hell are you?’ Darren moaned, before he had even fully walked into the room.

‘Language!’ Mrs Cohens snapped at him, turning from sweet latter-aged lady to feisty dragon within a moment.

‘I’m Fran. I’m Gareth’s wife,’ I said, grinning from ear to ear. It was authentic this time. The piece of shit’s eyes suddenly widened, almost bulging as he took a small, almost imperceptible stumble backwards, and I could see him now try to put on an artifice of attempting to look unfazed.

‘Well, why are you here?’ he grunted as he leaned awkwardly against the doorway and crossed his arms, almost like he was sizing me up.

‘Well, let me tell you, here I was, thinking you were the alpha big balls of the station, and it’s just so surprising to me that you still live with your mother,’ I said to him as he sheepishly lowered his head. ‘I mean no offence, Mrs Cohens,’ I remarked, reaching out to touch her hand.

She solemnly shook her head as if it was not a problem, but her eyes were still fixed upon her son with equal parts disappointment and anger.

‘It’s just until I get back on my feet,’ he murmured to himself.

‘Ah yes, because you were kicked out by your wife after she found the dick pics that you sent to your colleagues, I remember Gareth told me.’ I tried to stifle a chuckle as I shook my head, exasperated.

‘It’s funny because, you know, Darren, my husband would really hate for me to be here.

He never likes anyone fighting his battles for him, and that’s fair enough.

I get it, I do.’ I rose to my feet and strolled slowly towards him as he cowered in the doorway.

I switched to a hushed whisper: ‘But my husband cannot lie for the life of him, and I know for a fact that he didn’t eat that lasagne that I made for him.

And while he’d never admit it, I also know for a fact that you’ve been giving him bother. Am I wrong?’

Darren’s head lowered even further. If he had a tail, he would certainly be tucking it wholly between his legs.

The piece of human waste was probably a good foot taller than me, but his sulk and bowed head had brought him down to my eye level, where I glared at his pupils as they tried to glance away from me.

‘Am I wrong?’ I repeated.

‘Nah,’ he grumbled, still not making eye contact with me.

I slammed my hand into the door frame behind him. Mrs Cohens jolted with a yelp just as Darren wrenched his head back in surprise, knocking his thick skull against the wood of the frame.

‘You bitch,’ he hissed, as he clutched the back of his head.

‘Don’t call me a bitch, you bitch, and if you dare try to mess with my husband again, just remember I know where you live,’ I said to him softly, watching his face start to redden in embarrassment, anger, pain – or maybe all of the above.

‘I’ll come over to your house, and I’ll make my cat bite your shrivelled, wart-ridden dick off. ’

I could see from his closed fist that Darren just wanted to punch me there and then, lay me out flat on the cold of his mother’s kitchen floor, but I could also see that he was a little bit afraid of me and what I could do to him if I tried.

God, what a thrill. Part of me even wanted him to throw a punch, just to see what I would do in response. Even I didn’t know!

I could see he was beaten. His glare was mostly focused on his mum now. I gently raised my hand away from the door frame behind him and slipped it into my pocket.

‘Thanks again for the tea, Mrs Cohens,’ I said. ‘We really should do this again sometime.’

She was too scared to say yes and too polite to outright refuse.

Then again, I had just threatened to castrate her son – perhaps I had gone a little too far – but the adrenaline of it all had made me deviate from the script I had written in my mind on the way over.

The minute that I’d found out who she was during the dreaded small talk at Pilates, I just hadn’t been able to help myself.

I knew she would probably never talk to me again, would maybe even switch clubs.

For me, of course, that would be a win-win.

Well, that was one thing ticked off my ‘to do’ list for the rest of the day: feed the cat.

I drove to the clinic and ran through everything in my mind again. The blood, the cover story, the evidence. Trying to run through every single possible scenario, trying to avoid a dreaded realisation of Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and always at the worst possible time.

The last hurdle with O’Neill, I thought to myself, as I waited outside the clinic for Gareth, was the questioning that would inevitably take place, and I reassured myself by remembering that I had crushed it when they’d interviewed me about Macleod.

‘I don’t believe this woman has a violent bone in her body,’ the inspector had said about me. Whoops, if only she knew what I had just done before my appointment.

Yet, over the past few days, I had not been able to shake the unsettling feeling that Gareth was not telling me everything. Our usual sixty-second updates on each other’s day had become shorter, blunter and more abrupt on his end. Was he keeping something from me, or was I just projecting?

I decided to compartmentalise and visit that troubling train of thought later as Gareth rocked up at the clinic with only a few seconds to spare.

He jolted out of his car and gave me a quick peck on the cheek as we hurried inside, blurted our names to the receptionist, and then sat down in the most Godforsaken of all places: waiting rooms.

Among those waiting with us were a small toddler and, presumably, her mum.

Not yet fully dexterous, she was playing with one of those wooden bead maze things, trying to push the small, chunky multi-coloured hoops along the track.

She realised I was watching her, and her small, innocent face looked up to me.

I gave as warm a smile as I could muster under the circumstances, leaning forward a little, but then she just began to splutter-cry and darted away to the safety of her mum.

I guessed my maternal instincts still needed some work.

Her mum began to turn around to see what monster had made her baby sob and snot, so, trying to avoid her gaze, I reached out for a magazine to hide behind and then remembered where I was and what kind of tests they did, and decided to maybe hold off in picking up the latest housekeeping edition.

I could see that Gareth was thinking the same thing as he motioned to me that he had a bottle of alcohol gel in his coat pocket. The man had come prepared.

‘Do you think, like, they’ll ask me to do it today?’ he whispered in my ear.

‘What, have a wank?’ I let slip, speaking way too loudly. A few of the other people in the waiting room quickly twisted their heads to give me a passive–aggressive side-eye.