‘I can’t sling him out,’ Gill had said to Janet. ‘I’m back in Grimsby on Monday on the dock job – nearly done but I can’t blob now.’ A double murder, body parts recovered from tea chests on the dockside. North Yorkshire force had got nowhere in nine long months so asked the crime faculty for input.
‘The packing case?’ Janet said.
‘Hah!’ Gill laughed at the pun. Thinking: How can I laugh? How is it possible to laugh? Why is something still functioning when I feel so broken? ‘He’ll have to look after Sammy. But I can’t stay with him, not in the long run. I won’t.’
‘Have you talked to him?’ Janet said.
‘No.’ Gill shook her head. ‘I can’t look at him, can’t bear the sight of him.’
‘You have to talk to him,’ Janet said.
‘I know. She can’t be more than twenty-five, the whore.’ Gill groaned: ‘I feel such a fool.’
‘You’re not.’
Gill pressed her hands to her temples. Took a breath, exhaled slowly. ‘I knew.’
‘What?’ Janet had peered at her, surprised.
‘Maybe not name, rank and badge number, but… the flirting… the charm offensive. Easy to pretend that’s all it was, but-’ She thought of all the moments, little jarring moments, like missteps in a dream. Over the years, so many glances from Dave to… well, pick a woman, any woman. Then there were those occasional phone calls: Is Dave there? Her thinking, and who the fuck are you? Smelling deceit, but playing the game. Years of lies about where he’d been or who he’d seen. With Gill traipsing around the country, he had free rein. ‘You remember when I started at the faculty? Ten years ago. I thought he was having an affair then. Sammy was four at the time. I came back for the weekend and Dave had changed the sheets?’
‘You thought the nanny had done it,’ Janet said.
‘That’s right, thanked her, not part of her job. She hadn’t. I couldn’t let it go. He swore there was nothing going on. Then he got the hump. Slung his phone at me, diary, the lot. ‘Look at it,’ he said, ‘all of it.’ And I didn’t. I chose to believe him. I didn’t want to know, Janet.’
Janet nodded, a wry smile on her face.
‘Same way I’ve tuned out the gossip over the years. Little snippets. Bastard! In our bed! In our house!’ She wanted to punch something. Rip up his clothes, batter his car with a sledgehammer, superglue his cock to his arse, cut off his balls and post them to Pendlebury. She wanted to weep. ‘Did you know?’
‘That he was having an affair? No,’ Janet said.
‘Affairs plural,’ Gill asked. ‘You knew he was putting it about?’
