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TWENTY

GARETH

I’d thought that maybe having a wank would make me feel better. In hindsight, it actually made me feel quite a bit worse.

There I was, thinking it would release some magical endorphins that would miraculously improve things. Instead, it just made me want to cry while I sat on the edge of the toilet seat.

I knew I was slowly deteriorating: the idea of food made me want to throw up just like Mep, I felt consistently drained, and it was hard to muster enough energy to even take a shower.

It had been exactly eighty days since everything had happened and it still felt so wrong to sleep in our bed without Fran, so I crashed on the sofa and watched the weird teleshopping channels until the early morning.

I half expected the little girl playing noughts and crosses with the clown to pop up.

Mep hadn’t got much better; all of his food now had to be liquidised for him to ingest anything.

While I think the cat found it quite a novelty to have me sleeping downstairs, curling himself up against my chest on the sofa, it was at least a daily occurrence that he would throw up either on or near me.

But he seemed to be digesting just enough to keep himself alive.

Mum had come round to clean a few times, and I felt like we had both regressed twenty years; her asking me how I could live in such a dive whilst I yelled at her to get out of my room. I knew she meant well, but the real problem was that she would not stop asking me if I had spoken to Fran.

Lord above, I wondered what would my dad have done if this had happened to him.

Despite it having been two and a half months since the arrest, and despite all the legal, by-the-book investigation, I was no closer to understanding why Fran had done what she did.

Worse, I still had no idea how she was doing.

I had received nothing from her. Not a letter, phone call, or even a text from some kind of smuggled burner phone.

It had to be intentional. Surely it wasn’t through a lack of means?

I was tempted to just turn up at Bronzefield and ask to see her, but what if she didn’t want to see me?

What would I do then? Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s had all come and gone without Fran as I’d tried to distract myself as much as possible with the most mundane cases that came across my desk, but Vivian had given me carte blanche to work from home, mostly just doing the admin and paperwork for the other detectives.

I knew the truth, of course. Fran never wanted to speak to me again, and why would she?

What kind of husband snitches on his wife, and gets her sent to prison?

And what kind of pathetic cretin can’t even look at her while it happens?

It wasn’t lost on me that a normal reaction would be some kind of repulsion at what my wife had done.

But somehow, I didn’t even feel any kind of cognitive dissonance, I knew my wife and I knew she would have had her reasons.

Between Christmas and New Year, Steve had come to the house carrying a knife wrapped in a plastic bag to ask me if I recognised the blade.

I had tried to keep any hint of recognition from showing in my eyes, but I knew instantly it was the Nesmuk knife Fran had cherished so much.

I hadn’t even noticed it had been missing from the rack for months, Fran had always been the better chef.

But the added element was now that I noticed a significant notch was missing from the tip of the blade, and I instantly knew that it had been her murder weapon.

I lied to Steve of course, telling him I didn’t think I’d seen it before, but I wasn’t convinced he believed me.

But God strike me down if I incriminated my wife any further.

I rallied as much as I could as I went over the road to walk Tony for Beryl.

I had often spotted her watching me from across the way over the past few weeks, just staring from the window before I’d look in her general direction, at which point she’d promptly vanish into thin air.

I was still pretty certain she could lip-read any conversation I was having, so I made sure not to stand close to the windows when talking to my mum or Andrew about the case.

‘Hi, Gareth,’ Beryl said, opening the door that was still adorned with a Christmas wreath, pulling me into her bosom and wrapping her arms around me tight. She did this every day I walked Tony. ‘How are you?’ she asked, still holding me close to her bosom, rubbing her hand up and down my back.

I had already prepared the default response.

‘I’m surviving.’

‘Oh yes, you are,’ Beryl said as she loosened her grip around my lower chest – which was all she could reach – and I took the chance to gently pull myself away from her.

As usual, we exchanged the brief pleasantries, though her occasional glances to my mouth to read my lips continued to unsettle me. I was just about to leave to walk Tony when a text pinged through on my phone.

Just been told I’m subbing in as the lead on the prosecution against Fran. I’m sorry, but I have to block your number. I appreciate we won’t be friends after this. Been a pleasure. Isla.

Normally, this might have been upsetting, but the way the year was going, it didn’t even faze me.

I was almost surprised the news wasn’t shittier.

It all felt like water off a duck’s back at this point.

After I had walked Tony and passed him back to Beryl, I came back to the house.

Still cold and feeling empty, I averted my eyeline from any photos of Fran and me, including the huge one of our wedding day, which took up most of our hallway wall.

I strolled into the living room, ready to collapse on the sofa, when I found Mep there, sprawled out on the floor. He wasn’t breathing.

My brain went into panic mode. I snatched up my phone and scrambled for a YouTube video for CAT CPR, rapidly tapping the ‘skip ad’ button before following an annoying American lady blowing air into a stuffed cat. ‘100 to 120 times a minute,’ she said.

With one hand on Mep’s sternum and the other over his heart, I started compressions, but I didn’t know how long to do it, so I just kept going, whispering, ‘Please, Mep,’ with each desperate press.

Eventually, after about five minutes, I felt a pulse, very faint, and very slow.

Mep’s eyes were just open enough to recognise me, as he tried to let out a tiny, helpless mew.

I sprinted to the car, holding him in my arms and gently placing him in my lap as I began to reverse like a madman out of the driveway.

Unfortunately, there was no law that allowed you to drive through red lights when your animal was sick.

So, every pause at a traffic light had me frantically checking that small pulse was still pumping, before shouting obscenities at the inanimate lights above me.

I pulled up at the vet’s, straight into the disabled space, slammed the car door without locking it, and rushed inside.

I saw a small girl with her mum at the counter, holding onto her tortoise and probably engaging in some very pleasant chat with the receptionist. I ran through the sliding doors and hurled myself across the waiting area.

I was so out of breath and my voice so raspy with worry that all I could do was hold Mep aloft.

My unconscious cat, with its fur moist with his own sick.

It looked like some really messed-up scene from The Lion King .

Luckily, the receptionist understood the strange charade, seized Mep from me and charged into the vet’s office, gesturing for me to wait outside.

It was a few hours later when the slight arsehole of a vet from last time gestured me to come into the room.

He spoke with a little more sympathy this time.

Mep was likely suffering with heart disease, as well as kidney problems; they had managed to keep him stable for now, and had got some nutrients inside him, but they weren’t sure how long he would have left.

‘He’s a very old cat, Mr Donoghue. He’s had a great life, but his body isn’t what it used to be.’

‘Is there a chance he’ll recover? At all?’

‘A slim chance. Medication and diuretics could help with the kidneys and heart to give Mep a good quality of life. But he may just slip away tonight, Mr Donoghue. He’s very weak. Take him home, make him comfy. Maybe he’ll rally, but he may also just be content to take his last breath.’

My first thought was: should I tell Fran?

What could she do? As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring a cat to prison for her to see at a reasonable distance.

If anything, telling her Mep was dying – and that there was nothing we could do – might break her heart even more than her husband having been responsible for her being arrested.

But would she want to know all the same?

The vet kept looking at me, his fingers interlaced, his eyes showing an understanding only a pet owner could know. A kind of gut-wrenching awfulness that was hard to put into words.

‘Would you like to pay now, or we can invoice you later?’

I just held Mep again in my lap in the driver’s seat, using one hand to stroke him when I could. Occasionally, I rested my hand against his chest, just to make sure his heart was still beating.

‘Please don’t go, my man,’ I whispered to him as we stopped at a red light. ‘Please don’t go.’

When we got home, I wrapped Mep up in blankets and placed him in his favourite spot on the sofa. I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead as I heard the quiet murmur of a contented meow. I then sat next to him, booted up my laptop, and looked at what daytime TV had to offer.