Page 38

NINETEEN

GARETH

I didn’t want to look. Instead, I just rolled my wedding ring around my finger, while Mep made a small, pained squeal as the vet laid his blue-rubber-gloved hand around his spine, clutching it tight and using his other hand to feel around his ribs. I hated hearing him in pain.

Mep looked up at me, his one working eye a mixture of anger and self-pity. The vet continued to feel around.

‘Every time?’ he asked.

I didn’t understand at first. The vet must have read in my expression that I didn’t really register what he was saying.

‘Every time he eats, he throws up?’

‘Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s every time he eats. I thought he’d managed to keep it down today, but after I got back from walking my neighbour’s dog, he had just spewed it all up again.’

The vet seemed to fill his body with every ounce of air he could before talking.

‘And you say Mep is very old, is that correct?’

‘Yeah, we didn’t know his age when we adopted him about five years ago. But we imagine he’s about seventeen or so now.’

The vet crossed his arms and leaned back against the countertop, peeling off his gloves with some kind of swagger, as if he hadn’t had them up a cat’s rectum sixty seconds ago.

‘To me, this sounds like kidney failure. I’ll give you a prescription for some medication, as well as advice for a diet.

This may work, in which case you’ll have a few more years of Mep.

That being said, if he keeps throwing up his food, I’m afraid we’re going to have to look at the best and kindest option for him. ’

At first, I thought the vet was referring to his diet, but instead he maintained his gaze until I realised exactly what he was talking about.

‘Well, then, I’ll keep a close eye on him,’ I said, trying to hide the breaking of my voice. I gently laid a hand across Mep, who arched his spine up to my palm. He gave a purr, which sounded more like a small explosion at a tile factory.

I placed Mep back in his carrier, paid the extortionate bill, and walked out. I then passed by the local drive-thru, grabbed a double cheeseburger, and sobbed whilst I ate it in the car park, taking breaks between weeping and biting down on the greasy, salty mess in my hands.

Occasionally, Mep would push his face through the grating on his carrier, his small tongue protruding through the bars to try and have a taste of the burger.

I would slip a piece of beef onto his tongue, which took him a solid few minutes to munch down.

I wondered if maybe fast food would be the key to Mep keeping his food down.

We might have to inject insulin into him four times a day, but I could deal with that.

A boneless bucket every day keeps the vet away, right?

I carefully removed Mep from the cage, my vision blurred by the tears, and tucked him into my arms. I wondered what Fran was doing right now.

If I just turned up at the prison, would she even want to see me?

People at the station had told me that Bronzefield inmates could call once a day.

I took my silent phone as a sign: she would ring if she actually wanted to see me.

They said that those on remanded custody had better treatment than those serving their sentences.

I was still trying to get my head around the precise reason why Fran had killed O’Neill.

I knew deep down it couldn’t have been a spur-of-the-moment thing, that it hadn’t been spontaneous.

I’d like to think I still knew my wife a little bit, despite everything, and I knew she had a tendency to mull over things before committing to a big decision.

What exactly had her grudge been with O’Neill?

I couldn’t help feeling like it was connected to Fran’s life at St Nicholas’s before me but whenever we spoke about her childhood, she would always throw the conversation topic away.

‘It’s not trauma if you don’t remember it,’ was her favourite sarcastic remark if it ever came up in conversation, and I’d just accepted that.

I felt like such a fool now for ever believing she was innocent: all the warning signs had been there and I had chosen to ignore them.

But the moment I handed over that photo to Cis, I knew exactly what was going to happen to Fran, but I did it anyway.

Mep craned his head up to get another bite, so I lowered the burger as he bit into another piece and dragged it back, chomping his way through it.

I still kept trying to make sense of it. The girl I had met nearly eight years ago, the biggest animal lover, the kindest and most caring person, had shoved a knife through the head of an OAP.

My mum had rung a few times, asking very generically how Fran and I were.

She knew that I knew she had seen the headlines.

It seemed like everyone in the country had seen the papers, as texts from people I hadn’t heard from for years began to bounce onto my phone.

I knew that every time I’d pulled up in my car for the night this week, the whole neighbourhood had covertly peeled back their curtains to see if they could glean any details about Fran in my ten-metre walk from car to house.

What I was really going to have to come to terms with, perhaps for the rest of my life, was simple. It was me who had turned Fran in.

‘What are we going to do, Mep?’ I asked as the sun started to peek through the clouds, a small ray hitting my face. It almost made me feel a fraction better, before Mep dribbled his vomit across my arm.

I decided it was time to return to the station. I left Mep at home, keeping the radio on for him, and swiftly changed my shirt to one featuring less vomit. I then drove on autopilot back to the office.

It was like the time I had shat myself in PE in primary school all over again.

As I walked through the station corridors, conversations suddenly became silent, numerous pairs of eyes locking onto me and tracking my every move.

I could swear I saw a few of them turn their noses up, as if they could smell that aeons-ago poop, echoing through the ages.

This was the guy who not only had a murderer for a wife, but was the one who had turned her in. What a bastard.

‘Hey, Gareth,’ I heard a voice say at the end of the hall. The tone was too cheery, too fake, drenched in self-satisfaction. I had been played by her. Of course I had. I had just been too dumb, too na?ve to see it.

‘Hi, Cis, how are you?’ I asked, wondering if I could get away with punching a woman that was nine times stronger than me. In my periphery, I saw everyone’s head lean towards us, trying to eavesdrop on our forced niceties.

‘Oh, not too bad. Busy as ever. I’ve missed you, haven’t seen you for a little while. How are you holding up?’

She placed a hand on my shoulder. The self-restraint it took me not to grab and violently twist it around her back was almost impressive.

Keep it together , I kept telling myself. Keep it together.

‘Oh, you know, as good as I can be under the current circumstances,’ I said, matching her artificial saccharine tone.

‘Look, I’d probably best be going, I’m dying for a cup of coffee.

’ The sheer anger I felt writhing around in my gut was nauseating.

I gave as warm an expression as I could muster and began to walk away.

Christ forgive me, I hated her. Like truly, deeply, all of my heart just despised her.

It hadn’t helped my feelings that I had heard that, after taking most of the credit for Fran’s arrest, she had been offered the very prestigious promotion she had worked so hard for.

I noticed she had changed her email password, too, so I no longer had access to her inbox.

Although, luckily, I had saved a few email chains onto a spare USB just in case I needed them again.

‘Oh, and by the way, Vivian would like to see you,’ Cis said.

I didn’t wait for Vivian to summon me into the room this time, though I noticed that she was still trying her luck with the signature finger commands. A click to come in, a finger pointing downwards to sit.

I slumped down in the chair, rolling up my sleeves as she continued to read through her documents. I kept waiting for her. Her eyes tracked across the pages. I wondered what was so important that it couldn’t wait a few minutes.

I continued to tap my foot, hoping she would pick up on my impatience and that I really didn’t care for her power-play games, but she just seemed to ignore me, lifting one piece of paper aloft and blocking my face from her view.

‘Can’t that wait?’ I said, exasperated.

Shit. I should not have said that.

Her head shifted upwards, her eyes chilled, and I saw her cheeks suck sharply inwards as she clenched her jaw, every facial muscle tense.

‘What did you just say?’

I had to pick my next words very carefully.

‘This whole – you know, pretending to read documents just to keep me waiting. It’s as clear as day what you’re doing. Just stop wasting my time and get on with it.’

Double shit. Should definitely have not said that.

I could now see the anger in my boss’s face as she stretched her jaw, turned her head away from me, and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, gathering her composure.

Part of me wanted to fill in the silence with another shitty comment, but my mouth couldn’t exactly be trusted at this current time, so I just used all my internal strength to keep my gob shut.

Vivan interlocked her hands, her elbows resting on the desk, and leaned forward.

‘Gareth, I am reading a document from HR about how to deal with an employee whose significant other has been arrested,’ she said calmly.

‘They actually typed it up especially for me this morning. I have never been in this situation before, so I was just making sure I was well versed on how best to discuss this with you. I do sincerely apologise for keeping you waiting.’

‘Ah,’ I said, shuffling uncomfortably in the chair. ‘That makes sense.’