‘So, you really have no idea who may have wanted to cause harm to Mr O’Neill? You don’t know anyone who would have been happy that he was killed?’ Cecilia asked with a deeply mistrustful glare plastered on her face. I could see from her eyes that she knew I was bullshitting, and I was starting to wonder if maybe I didn’t like Ceciliabecauseshe was a fantastic judge of character. Did she know I killed O’Neill? Did she know I was the one they were after? The one who had deviously killed the waste of human flesh and removed any trace of him. Surely no one was that good a detective to have realised that little old me was the one to have slaughtered Gordon O’Neill?
Suddenly, Cecilia and Steve’s faces dropped, both slightly aghast, their expressions seeming to wrinkle up like they were disgusted by me. Did I have a bogey? I lifted my hand to the small groove below my nose, but it was dry. I followed their gaze, in case the problem was something behind me, but nothing.
Suddenly, it clicked.
I didn’t need to look in the mirror to see that, despite my best efforts, a sly smile had crept along my face.
FOURTEEN
FRAN
This was all very bad.
It had been going remarkably well to begin with – no evidence, no body, no investigation, but now everything was spiralling out of control, and fast. The calculated, methodical part of my brain was rapidly being overtaken by the side that was screaming pure, utter panic.
And the smile – I know, I know, it was so unbelievably stupid. But it was completely involuntary. Surely, it had happened to other innocent people before. It was like when you start laughing when you’re being scolded by some kind of superior; it’s precisely because you know it’s the worst thing you can possibly do under the circumstances.
Angus hadn’t returned any of my calls; I had set an alarm on my phone every hour and twelve minutes to remind me to ring him, leave a message, and repeat until he answered, but there had been no such luck so far. The same boring generic answerphone greeted me every time, so I’d put the phone down, set the timer, and waited. The additional twelve minutes were more so that he wouldn’t catch on that it wasn’t being done on an hourly basis; I’d hoped he’d feel a little more urgency if I seemed to be more sporadic in my communications.
Mind you, I didn’t think Angus had felt much urgency at all for the last twenty-odd years. I thought he spent most of his days masturbating, watching TV, and collecting newspapers. Not exactly strenuous, I imagined. But nevertheless, although I knew his phone had probably run out of charge or had been lost down the side of the sofa, that wasn’t going to stop me from trying everything I could before I’d finally just drive to his shitty apartment and break the door down.
God, I had a lot of questions to ask that bastard.
But what had been more curious for me this morning was that I had realised I was late. In all the pandemonium, I hadn’t been tracking my periods as stringently as normal. It was now I realised that it had been a week and a half since I was due. I knew that high levels of stress could impact your cycle – I remembered that revising for my A levels in a foster home had disrupted my usual pattern. But it did seem a little peculiar that the doctor had rung me, only a few moments after I’d realised, to ask if I had a spare hour for Gareth and I to come in and see him. There was something important he needed to discuss, he told me.
I didn’t want to get excited or even to do a pregnancy test. One step at a time, I had to keep telling myself. I pushed any optimism out of my head before it could even take root. At the same time, part of me was wondering if I even really wanted a baby. I had to remind myself that that was just the nerves talking and that I didn’t even know for a fact I was pregnant yet. This could all just be for Dr Patel to inform me that Gareth had spunked in the wrong petri dish.
A small, anxious part of my brain started to simmer and hint at the idea that maybe Gareth already knew, consciously or subconsciously, that I was the suspect the police were looking for. I shook it off. This was Gareth. He wouldn’t be able to keepthatfrom me. The only thing that had really made me question what he thought about me was the red pen.
Okay, should I have looked through his diary while he was sleeping? No. That was a big breach of trust and privacy, which are important things in a relationship, but I just couldn’t help myself. He must have been adjacent to the O’Neill case, as there were a few words I could make out that alluded to it:
Knife, Beryl, Doorbell– but the main one beingFran– all scribed in red writing.
I know that sounds strange, but Gareth’s notes were usually just scribbled with black biro, words running into each other, overlapping, smaller words underlining other, bolder words. It was an absolute mess of a diary. Occasionally, a small doodle of Batman would also make an appearance, but never in red pen. Why had he written my name in red ink?
I checked over the house, and we didn’t have any red pens, so he must have done it at the office. Had he reached for it in a eureka moment? Maybe he’d simply borrowed it when one of his pens had run out of ink? Or maybe he’d gone to Staples to get a red pen just to write in his diary as a moment of significance? That would be silly, right? But there was something to me about that glaring red ink that made me want to crawl inside Gareth’s head and find out what he was thinking about me.
I knew I probably should have told Gareth, but he clearly wasn’t checking his phone and I really couldn’t wait any longer. But when I got to the clinic, I quickly realised it wasn’t nearly as fun being in the waiting room without my husband thinking out loud about the state of the wank rooms, or what kind of porn there would be. Dr Patel gave me his lovely smile and then led me into his office. He sat me down, and we exchanged the classic small talk.
‘Could your husband not make it?’ he asked as he wheeled himself on his chair from one end of the room to the other.
‘He’s working, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah, okay, busy man,’ he said with his signature warm smile, which suddenly began to deflate as if someone had just popped a pin in his cheek and squeezed out all of the joy from the man’s face. He pushed himself forward on the chair, a loud squeak echoing around the room as he waddled towards me. He furrowed his eyebrows and interlocked his hands.
‘I’m just going to come out with it. I’ve been looking at your ultrasound results and spoken to some of the embryologists, and I’m afraid that with this particular case, I think it is going to be very hard for you to conceive naturally with your husband.’
Oh.
‘I know this may seem shocking, but it’s important for you to know?—’
‘Whose fault is it?’ was all I could manage to say in a half-whisper, half-croak.
‘Well, it’s no one’s fault. No one is to blame here.’
I didn’t really listen to the rest of what he said, his voice kind of faded out after a while and was replaced by the loud thumping of my heartbeat and a shrieking, high-pitched ringing thundering in my ears. Dr Patel kept talking and I tried my best to acknowledge his suggestion for us to try IVF. He told us our local council was very good at paying for it, and that if that didn’t work, our journey to have children didn’t have to end here. Adoption was always on the cards, and several other factors, such as stress and anxiety, were also variables in trying for a baby. He also said that he would need to do a lot more tests. He gave me a booklet, told me he’d be in touch, and tried to give my arm a comforting touch. It didn’t work.
I walked out of the clinic and somehow managed to stumble across the tarmac and make it to my car. I yanked open the door,slid into the seat, locked the doors, and sat there for a little bit with my forehead pushed against the top of the steering wheel.
