We were led into another room, where Andrew and I sat on one end of the desk, and Cecilia and this CPS lawyer sat on the other. I wondered if she was Isla: a slim, beautiful, tall brunette with a stunning balayage, sitting quietly as Cecilia recounted the allegations.
Andrew, and the woman I presumed to be Isla, seemed to have some history. They sparred verbally for a bit, my confidence only knocked when Andrew abruptly backed down as the woman began listing all the times she had won cases againsthim. I wasn’t listening to most of what was being said, but I knew the features of anoh shitface all too well. Andrew had told me that mentally shutting down may actually be a good thing, and that I should respond with a ‘no comment’ unless it was a name, date of birth, or address question. Those, I could answer.
‘It lets us get our ducks in a row,’ he said to me, an expression he was repeating with grating regularity.
I saw maybe-Isla and Cecilia whispering to each other in the hallway, after the interview. They stopped as soon as they spotted me being led out of the room by Paul. Both of them looked on with part sneers, part pity as I was steered across the hallway and back into my cell – I mean, suite. My very, very nice suite.
The magistrates’ hearing the next day was quick. I gave my name, my date of birth and then my address – the new one, although it did make me wonder if I had changed it on my banking statement. I was told by the clerk that I was charged with the murder of Gordon O’Neill on 10 September. I was then told I would be remanded in custody. The whole thing only took two minutes before I was led back out again.
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I might have spotted Gareth in the gallery, nestled right at the back. The figure was too far up and too obscured in shadow for me to really see. It was then that I realised that I had almost completely disconnected from any kind of reality. I couldn’t tell what day it was, where I was, or where even I was going next. But it was probably better this way. Besides, Gareth hadn’t even been able to look at me when I’d been arrested; clearly he had gone beyond any kind of care for me.
I looked down at my wedding ring, thinking about the vows we had said to each other five years ago, and wondered if he was still wearing his.
NINETEEN
GARETH
I didn’t want to look. Instead, I just rolled my wedding ring around my finger, while Mep made a small, pained squeal as the vet laid his blue-rubber-gloved hand around his spine, clutching it tight and using his other hand to feel around his ribs. I hated hearing him in pain.
Mep looked up at me, his one working eye a mixture of anger and self-pity. The vet continued to feel around.
‘Every time?’ he asked.
I didn’t understand at first. The vet must have read in my expression that I didn’t really register what he was saying.
‘Every time he eats, he throws up?’
‘Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s every time he eats. I thought he’d managed to keep it down today, but after I got back from walking my neighbour’s dog, he had just spewed it all up again.’
The vet seemed to fill his body with every ounce of air he could before talking.
‘And you say Mep is very old, is that correct?’
‘Yeah, we didn’t know his age when we adopted him about five years ago. But we imagine he’s about seventeen or so now.’
The vet crossed his arms and leaned back against the countertop, peeling off his gloves with some kind of swagger, as if he hadn’t had them up a cat’s rectum sixty seconds ago.
‘To me, this sounds like kidney failure. I’ll give you a prescription for some medication, as well as advice for a diet. This may work, in which case you’ll have a few more years of Mep. That being said, if he keeps throwing up his food, I’m afraid we’re going to have to look at the best and kindest option for him.’
At first, I thought the vet was referring to his diet, but instead he maintained his gaze until I realised exactly what he was talking about.
‘Well, then, I’ll keep a close eye on him,’ I said, trying to hide the breaking of my voice. I gently laid a hand across Mep, who arched his spine up to my palm. He gave a purr, which sounded more like a small explosion at a tile factory.
I placed Mep back in his carrier, paid the extortionate bill, and walked out. I then passed by the local drive-thru, grabbed a double cheeseburger, and sobbed whilst I ate it in the car park, taking breaks between weeping and biting down on the greasy, salty mess in my hands.
Occasionally, Mep would push his face through the grating on his carrier, his small tongue protruding through the bars to try and have a taste of the burger. I would slip a piece of beef onto his tongue, which took him a solid few minutes to munch down. I wondered if maybe fast food would be the key to Mep keeping his food down. We might have to inject insulin into him four times a day, but I could deal with that. A boneless bucket every day keeps the vet away, right?
I carefully removed Mep from the cage, my vision blurred by the tears, and tucked him into my arms. I wondered what Fran was doing right now. If I just turned up at the prison, would she even want to see me? People at the station had told me thatBronzefield inmates could call once a day. I took my silent phone as a sign: she would ring if she actually wanted to see me. They said that those on remanded custody had better treatment than those serving their sentences.
I was still trying to get my head around the precise reason why Fran had killed O’Neill. I knew deep down it couldn’t have been a spur-of-the-moment thing, that it hadn’t been spontaneous. I’d like to think I still knew my wife a little bit, despite everything, and I knew she had a tendency to mull over things before committing to a big decision. What exactly had her grudge been with O’Neill? I couldn’t help feeling like it was connected to Fran’s life at St Nicholas’s before me but whenever we spoke about her childhood, she would always throw the conversation topic away.
‘It’s not trauma if you don’t remember it,’ was her favourite sarcastic remark if it ever came up in conversation, and I’d just accepted that. I felt like such a fool now for ever believing she was innocent: all the warning signs had been there and I had chosen to ignore them. But the moment I handed over that photo to Cis, I knew exactly what was going to happen to Fran, but I did it anyway.
Mep craned his head up to get another bite, so I lowered the burger as he bit into another piece and dragged it back, chomping his way through it.
I still kept trying to make sense of it. The girl I had met nearly eight years ago, the biggest animal lover, the kindest and most caring person, had shoved a knife through the head of an OAP.
My mum had rung a few times, asking very generically how Fran and I were. She knew that I knew she had seen the headlines. It seemed like everyone in the country had seen the papers, as texts from people I hadn’t heard from for years began to bounce onto my phone. I knew that every time I’d pulled up in my car for the night this week, the whole neighbourhood hadcovertly peeled back their curtains to see if they could glean any details about Fran in my ten-metre walk from car to house.
