They are both right. Same me, different identifiable consequence. Anger. Lack of concentration. Both debilitating. I force myself to stay calm, to concentrate. I need to try to make a plan. I should appeal, say I am sorry. But which one am I talking to? Both men are so different. Not knowing who I am dealing with stops me knowing what to say. Who should I be? The sensible mum that solves everything, looks after everyone, always knows where the lost football shorts are? Or the sexy, cool, independent wife, who has to meet few demands or expectations other than to be interested, interesting, adorable and adoring. I don’t know how to start my apologies, my explanations. I don’t know who to be. I don’t know who I am.
Frustrated, frightened, I begin to shake so hard I think he might be able to hear my bones rattle. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ I whisper through the door, through the walls. That is true. Whoever I am talking to, that much is true.
Rat-tat-tat. The typewriter keys spring into action. I listen as the paper is pulled from the machine, there’s shuffling as it is pushed under the door.
You are going to be.
The words punch me. My tears seem to dry instantly on my cheeks, no more fresh ones fall as terror surges through my body, great waves like passion but spiteful. So brutal, so raw. This is more than a threat; it is a promise. Of course. What did I expect? I never thought it could last forever. That would require infinite luck. I should have listened to my mother, who always told me I am not a lucky person. But I wanted my father to be right. He held the opposite view. He dismissed that acceptance of one’s lot with a bored impatience. He declared that you could make your own luck, and you should. All it took, he said, was courage, determination and resilience. My dad pleased himself. My mum pleased no one. My dad was untouchable. My mum was described by nosy neighbours and exasperated distant relatives as ‘touched’. An old-fashioned word for mentally ill.
So, I tried my father’s way. I tried to make my own luck.
I think my mother was right.
I suppose some people might believe I deserve to be locked up, and maybe I do because what I’ve done is a criminal offence but not like this. Not chained, not starved.
Which one of them hates me so much he would do this to me?
Which one of them loves me so much?
‘Take me to the police!’ I yell. ‘I’ll face it, I’ll admit everything. I won’t tell them you brought me here.’ I listen carefully, but the typewriter stays silent. All I hear is the sound of footsteps, someone walking away.
I am alone.
18
DC Clements
Friday 20th March
‘Did I wake you?’ Detective Constable Clements asks as the doors of the lift gently swoosh open and she is faced with Daan Janssen bare-chested, wearing nothing other than tracker bottoms. He yawns, stretches, raises his arms above his head, treating her to a flash of blond thatches of pit hair. Other than those, and a gentle trail that disappears down from his navel, he is smooth. Her preference is for smooth men. She can smell his pheromones, it disconcerts her.
‘I haven’t slept. Coffee?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer but walks through to the kitchen. She follows. She already has the sense that this man leads, others follow. She mentally adds it to the profile she is drawing of him. ‘I haven’t slept well for days,’ he tells her as he starts to move around the kitchen preparing coffee in a big, shiny, no doubt top-of-the-range Nespresso machine. ‘Normally when my wife is away visiting her mother, I throw myself into my work, take the overseas meetings, visit the gym, catch up with one or two people to keep myself busy. But this week it has been different. I’ve been agitated. First, because I thought Pam was ill and then because I became increasingly certain something was off. I am not wrong, am I? That’s why you are back here.’
Clements chooses not to answer the question straight away, instead she asks one of her own. ‘So, Kai is regularly away from home?’
‘Yes. Most weeks she’s away for half the week, looking after her mother.’
‘How do you both manage? Her being away so much? It must affect your relationship.’
‘You know, our friends occasionally ask the same question. I am quite used to it, normally I even enjoy it. Truthfully, I guess we’re a little smug about it.’
‘Smug?’
‘We’re secretly convinced that somehow we are in a better place than couples who need to live in one another’s pockets. You know? Cooler than people who do not respect each other’s independence.’ He grins, almost apologetically, probably for using a word like ‘cooler’, thinks Clements harshly. ‘The space between us works well for us.’
He hands Clements a coffee. He hasn’t asked her how she takes it. She likes an Americano. She sees that is what he has prepared for her. She takes one sugar. She sips. It is sweetened. She doesn’t know how he guessed. Is she that predictable? Or is he that brilliant? There is something about him that makes you believe he knows you, understands you – which is always seductive. This power is both flattering and bewildering. Clements is glad she has clocked it, armed herself against it. Could he perhaps be drawing a profile on her, the way she is on him? Clever people do that with one another: assess, surmise, in order to stay in control, stay a step ahead. It’s a talent. A skill.
A problem?
Clements watches him very carefully as she explains how much his charming skill of knowing a person – staying a step ahead – failed when it came to his own wife, the person he
