We both inhaled, sucking all of the available oxygen out of the room at once.
‘Liar,’ I replied softly.
‘I’m not lying,’ she hissed, her words gradually becoming more venomous. ‘Where is this coming from? You talking to Cis? Is that it? She’s telling you I did it? Cis going on and on about how I’m an awful wife and all that?’
‘This isn’t about Cis,’ I retorted.
‘I can promise you it is. You believe her over your own wife? Is that it? Is that it?’ Fran came right to my face. ‘Fuck,’ she said again. ‘I can’t even talk to you right now. I’m so furious with you.’
She swung around and stormed out of the kitchen, traipsing the Bolognese across our recently fitted cream carpet in the hallway. I could see Mep had taken sanctuary from all the shouting in the living room. Seeing Fran come marching towards him made him quickly dart upstairs as fast as his legs could carry him.
‘No, no, no, don’t just run away from me,’ I demanded, following her. ‘Come on, if you didn’t murder O’Neill, who did? Angus?’
‘Why are you bringing Angus into this?’ Fran hissed at me, her hands extending and repeatedly clenching into fists.
‘You tell me?’ I replied, wanting to see her reaction, to survey and examine, to see how she would respond.
‘It’s lost on me, Gareth. I don’t know what you’re getting at?’
‘Angus. He was at the house a few weeks before O’Neill was murdered. And by the way, I know all about his littlerobberystint.’
I never saw Fran’s eyes ignite with such fury before. I almost felt the living room lights flicker and begin to dim.
‘How do you know about the robbery?’ she said, so slowly and enunciating every word, like she was about to fling herself at me any second.
‘Oh, you know, I’m not sure if you’ve realised, but I am in fact a police detective. And he did in fact commit a crime. He tried to rob a Tesco Express.’
‘He robbed a Tesco Metro,’ Fran spat at me, instinctively grabbing a coaster off one of our stands and pelting it at me. It smacked into my elbow and ricocheted onto the wall.
‘Nice,’ was all I said. ‘Nice work, Fran. Hope that’s not how you killed O’Neill.’
‘You…absolute…’ Fran said to me through gritted teeth, the red Bolognese now staining into her clothes and marking her skin, ‘… dick. What the hell is wrong with you? You think I murdered O’Neill? Do you even understand what you’re accusing your wife of, or are you too pigged-up to tell the difference between me and a suspect?’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘What?!’
‘You know what you’re saying.’
Fran stared back at me, goading me on to say it.
‘Don’t,’ I said, forcing my eyes to stay open as I uttered every word. ‘Don’t say that. I’ve told you how much I hate that word.’
I thought I saw Fran almost mouth the word ‘sorry’, but she was still too angry to put her voice behind it. We continued to glare at each other. But I knew my wife well enough to see that though her eyes were practically aflame with hot-blooded rage, there was something a little bit fearful behind it. Fear of me? No, certainly not. Fran didn’t seem to be scared of anything. This must be something else.
‘What are you afraid of, Fran?’ I asked, in as soft a tone I could manage.
‘What am I afraid of?’ she repeated, taken back, her voice breaking momentarily.
‘Because I have this crazy fear that you’ve killed O’Neill, although I can’t for the life of me figure out why you would have done it. And I’m afraid you’re going to tear our family apart before it even properly starts,’ I stuttered, struggling to get the words out in a coherent flow. ‘I’m afraid that you’ve done something stupid and you’re going to go to prison and I’m going to be left here. How would we ever come back from that, Fran?’
Fran wiped away a tear before it had even left her eye, and I watched her visibly swallow a lump in her throat.
‘Well, I’m afraid that you’re going to leave me, and I’m still going to love you afterwards. I’m terrified that you’ll leave me, and you won’t even give me a good reason to hate you afterwards. Do you know how selfish that would be, Gareth?’
We were both silent again for a minute, ten minutes, maybe an hour. Time seemed to go a little askew. The silence lured Mep back; he began to slowly creep into the living room, thinking the chaos was over.
But I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what really happened.
