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CHAPTER 22

I had been on day shift so knew she would be sitting waiting for me when I got home. I was sure she would know by then but apart from that I had no idea what to expect.

I closed the front door behind me and paused for a second or two before going in search of her. I opened the door to the living room but one look inside showed me she wasn’t there. I tried the kitchen.

She was sitting at the table with her back to me. Her hair was loose but unruly, as if it had been pulled out of a hairband and just left where it fell. She was wearing a dark cardigan and it was pulled tight to her.

My heart was in my mouth. Maybe for the first time in a very long time, I knew the feeling of fear.

She must have heard me come in to the house. Must have heard the kitchen door open and close. Knew I was standing behind her but she didn’t move, didn’t speak. I walked round her to the other side of the table, seeing the open newspaper that lay in front of her. Even before I looked at it I knew what it would be. Couldn’t be anything else. The photographs of Carr, Hutchison, Tierney and Ogilvie – although she was only looking at one of them. The lurid headlines screaming at her. The words, so many words. All laid out in front of her eyes.

There was no tea or coffee on the table. No kettle on the boil. Just her, the table, the newspaper and the photograph of Wallace Ogilvie.

I pulled back the chair, deliberately scraping it against the floor so it made a noise before I sat down. She didn’t flicker. Her eyes, red and wet, stayed fixed on the paper.

My breathing was stilted and I could hear my heart. My eyes went from her to the paper and back again. I tried to will her to look up and say something.

I followed her eyes. She was reading it all, word after word, not for the first time I was sure of that. But after every few paragraphs her gaze switched to the photograph of Wallace Ogilvie for a few moments then back to the text. Few paragraphs, picture, few paragraphs, picture, few paragraphs picture.

I could see she was nearing the end of Imrie’s article and hoped that meant she would stop and look at me. Speak to me. Tell me what it meant to her. I almost began to speak as she reached the last few words, ready to ask or answer. But her eyes switched back to the beginning of the story and she read again.

Few paragraphs, picture, few paragraphs, picture, few paragraphs picture. I watched her go through it all again, forcing myself to gulp down a nervous, anxious breath. Her eyes strained over it, every now and again a single tear escaping and trickling down her cheek.

Few paragraphs, picture, few paragraphs, picture, few paragraphs picture until she again neared the end of the article.

This time she suddenly lifted her head and looked at me through her wet screen. She looked at me for an age, helplessly trying to get words out. Struggling.

‘I’m glad,’ she said at last.

Just that. No explanation. None needed maybe.

She just kept looking at me and I didn’t know what to do. I was sure she didn’t want me to go to her and hold her. A bit of me wanted to do just that. A very small part of me wanted to tell her everything. I told that part of me to stay quiet.

‘I’m glad,’ she said again. Her voice was level, making it hard for me to read as much into it as I’d like. She sounded tired too, even more than she would normally do at that time of night.

She just looked at me. And just for a bit, I wondered if she knew. Or guessed. But she couldn’t.

‘I am glad that bastard is dead,’ she whispered. It wasn’t like her to swear. Even when it happened she didn’t swear. She shouted and she cried a lot. For maybe a year and a half she cried all day and cried all night. Then the pills started, the crying stopped and she slept at night. After a year and a half of constant grief she gave in and let chemicals dictate her mood and sleeping habits. Eighteen months after losing my child, I lost my wife as well.

I just looked at her, giving her time to say more, to open up if she wanted. Maybe to say the one thing that I wanted to hear her say. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, silent tears slipping down her face and stinging her lips.

I tried to remember how long it had been since I kissed her. Her birthday was July so probably then. How long since I kissed her as if I meant it, how long was that? Did I kiss her after Sarah was killed? Hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember. I held her, held her for the longest time, so hard and so close but couldn’t remember kissing her on the lips the way a husband and wife should.

Her mouth opened again, words hanging off them but unspoken. She choked them back, swallowed them whole. Then her eyes left mine and dropped to the table. She looked at the swirls of the pine and the lines of the grain as she eventually found some more words that could leave her.

‘I am so fucking glad that bastard is dead. I am so fucking glad he isn’t around to hurt anyone else.’

She paused just long enough for my heart to stop and wonder.

‘I am glad that someone had the balls to kill him.’

She left that there, hanging between us like a ball waiting to be batted. Her eyes were fixed on a gnarl in the wood of the table, examining every curve of the knot so that she didn’t have to lift her head and look me in the eye.

She repeated herself, slower.

‘I’m glad… that someone… had the balls… to kill him.’

My heart was pounding. It was deafening in my ears. My skin was cold and I was acutely aware of every part of me.

‘I am… glad… that someone… had… the balls.. . to kill… him.’

I pushed myself out of my chair, clumsily getting to my feet and rushing over to her. I dropped to one knee so I could hug her, envelop her in my arms and bury my head into her neck. Hadn’t dared to expect that she would understand. Had been so terrified of her knowing, her finding out and yet she had wanted the same as me all along. Far more than I hoped for. I held her tight and smelled her, kissed her hair. My heart was bursting and I had so much to tell, so much I would spare her from but so much to share. I squeezed her, almost wanted to be inside her skin, part of her.

‘Get… off… me.’

I didn’t understand. I held on.

‘Get off me,’ she ordered.

I let go, confused. She looked at me.

‘You can’t make up for it by holding me now,’ she said. ‘It’s far too late for that. I don’t want an apology now.’

I didn’t understand. Her red eyes blazed at me in anger.

‘You should have done it. You shouldn’t have left it to someone else. It’s far too late to say sorry for that now.

‘And now here I am, glad that a man is dead. Christ I’m glad that some… some psychotic freak has murdered four people. Do you know how that makes me feel? Disgusted with myself, that’s how.

‘You made me feel like that. You. Hope you’re proud of yourself. If you had acted like a man it wouldn’t have come to this.’

I fell back from her in shock. Thought she had understood, thought she had known but her anger just made me want to scream. It wasn’t like that. No freak, no psycho. It was me. I had done all that.

But I saw her eyes, could see her self-loathing right at that minute. She was angry at me but she was so much angrier at herself. She had been sat there much of that day celebrating a death and by doing so she had been rejoicing at four deaths by a person she thought was a serial killer. She was right, I had done that to her.

I tried to speak, realizing for the first time that I hadn’t said a word since I entered the house. Didn’t know what to say to her. Didn’t have a clue where to start. If she hated us both for very different reasons then she would hate us both all the more if she knew the truth. I would kill her by telling her.

‘You have done nothing,’ she spat at me. ‘Not a thing. At least I’ve tried to stop bastards like him from drink-driving. I’ve tried to make a difference. Tried to change the law and keep the likes of Ogilvie off the street. What have you done? Disappeared inside yourself, hiding from the world like a coward. Did you even think about doing something? Do you even think about her?’

Blood rushed through my head like a passing train and I nearly lifted my hand to her for the first time ever. I wanted to slap her hard across the mouth. I wanted to hurt her for saying the most hurtful thing that anyone could