Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

The day was washed in gold. Outside, wasps and hornets hovered among the flowers. He should start some winter crops in the polytunnels. A day doing something relaxing before going back to work.

He heard the door bang, and called out, ‘I’m in here.’

His good mood shrivelled when he saw her: she looked beaten down, weakened. ‘Would you like coffee?’ he asked her. ‘Some toast?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘Coffee.’ She sat on one of the wicker sofas.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘To get my prescription,’ she said.

‘Right.’

When he returned with their drinks, she was looking out of the windows, her fingers encircling her wrist like a bracelet, twisting to and fro.

‘Coffee,’ he said, setting it down.

She turned, and he saw that her face was streaked with tears. He felt a punch to his guts. ‘Val?’ He sat beside her. ‘What is it?’

‘I can’t do it, Andrew. I can’t go on like this.’

His chest felt tight, his heart swollen. ‘Hey, it’ll be all right. You’ll get better and we’ll find a way…’

She shook her head.

‘We have to try,’ he said. ‘We can’t just give up. That’s not you, not the real you.’

She gave a shivery breath, put her hands over her face and rocked forward.

‘It’s hard to know where to start,’ he said, his throat dry, ‘and maybe we need help. After all we’ve been through, it’s no wonder, is it?’

Outside, a butterfly, a small white, danced over the fence. Not a moth. Why were butterflies all right but moths so scary?

‘I can’t,’ she said. She lifted her hands and held them as if in prayer, fingers steepled against her lips.

He was lost again; he had to find his way back, make her see sense. ‘I love you, Val, that’s all that matters. I love you and we’ll make it work. It might not be easy, but I’m here.’

She looked at him, her nose reddening, eyes spilling tears, her mouth drawn back in anguish. ‘I don’t know what I feel any more,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She cried helplessly. ‘I think we need some time apart.’

He felt something plummet inside him; vertigo was darkening his vision, filling his head with bees. ‘Val, no,’ he managed.

She swept at her tears and spoke on, the words coming at him in small bites. ‘Sheena’s got space. I just need some time.’

‘Why?’ He couldn’t understand. He needed her here. They had made it this far; they had to stick together now. Rebuild their lives. ‘Is this because of Jason?’

‘No. I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Anger and panic were swirling within him. ‘Don’t go.’ He looked at her, his eyes blurring. She might never come back. Didn’t she love him any more?

‘Oh Val,’ he said. And then they were embracing and weeping and he felt the future trickling through his fingers, evaporating, changing. The course tilting and altered, the route obscured. He kept hugging her – what else was there to do – until their breathing settled and the tears dried, salt on their cheeks.

‘Another?’ Louise raised the bottle, and Andrew nodded.

‘Are we getting drunk?’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Louise said as she poured the wine. ‘I can hold my liquor.’ She spilt some, and he laughed.

‘Looks like it.’

A fine May evening and they were on her patio; she had lit citronella torches to keep the midges off, and they cast a yellow glow over the table. The rest of the garden was illuminated by the fat white moon that hung above them.

The anniversary of Jason’s death had come and gone. Andrew knew that Christmas would always be tainted by the memories. Conrad Quinn had been sentenced. The bus driver had been fired. His claim that work-related stress had made him incapable of acting on the night of the attacks had been thrown out. At the cemetery, Jason’s rowan tree was heavy with creamy white flowers. When Andrew had visited at the weekend, there were blue tits flitting among the slender branches, bees buzzing round the blooms.

‘How’s Val?’ Louise said.

He shrugged. ‘Still at Sheena’s; phased return to work.’ But no return to him. Phased withdrawal more like; it felt as though Val was leaving him in stages. Stretching it out, wearing him down. Perhaps she thought it would be too brutal to just put an end to the marriage in one fell swoop. So now they were living apart and he’d had someone come and value the house. He’d asked her about it the last time they had spoken on the phone.

‘If you’re not coming back-’ he’d begun, anger at the prospect simmering beneath his skin, hidden in his voice.

‘Andrew, I don’t know,’ she interrupted.

‘Then we might need to sell.’

Silence. He heard her breath, a sip in, then the sound as she swallowed.

‘I can get a valuation at least.’ He knew part of him was saying this to force a decision from her. He had waited months, giving her time, giving her space. He was frustrated at not being able to reach her. As though he was looking at her through the wrong end of a telescope: remote, miniaturized.

‘Okay,’ she said dully.

His stomach clenched when she agreed. He’d hoped she would protest, argue with him, give him some sign that the house still had a role to play, would be a home for them again. Allow him to dream of a time when she’d be back there with him.

‘I love you,’ he said quickly.

‘I know,’ Val had answered. And said goodbye and hung up.

He had feared for his sanity in the weeks after she left. Times when he got drunk and cursed her and threw things about. Behaving like a child. Still sick with grief for his son, he mourned the marriage. He missed her day and night. It was as if the intimacies they had shared, parenting their lovely boy with his messy ways and his foibles and his sweet smile, had been taken from him. He’d lost access to those joint experiences along with his marriage partner. It made him think that the marriage must have been weakened long before the murder. And the events of that ghastly night had only served to widen the fault lines. But he’d had no inkling. They were his world: Val and Jason.

There would never be enough tears for Jason.

The prospect of permanent separation, of divorce, plagued him. Like an open wound he probed it time and again. Leaving the house would be the final wrench, severing the connection to Jason, to their little family, to the marriage. But he couldn’t hang on there alone if Val wasn’t coming back. Everything that had made it a home, a sanctuary, was gone now. All we have in the end is memory, he thought, his skin tingling. The shrine was no longer there; he had cleared it away, storing the remnants. Perhaps one day he and Val would have to share them out, along with the family photos; apportion the record of their lives together.

Eventually he had decided that if he was to win her back, he needed to stay strong, retain his dignity and self-respect. He threw himself into his work, gaining satisfaction from the small victories there: people rediscovering speech, overcoming the legacies of illness or accident. Smiles and handshakes and the occasional tears of gratitude.

And he started volunteering. Helping on an orienteering course for hard-to-manage teenagers. Showing them that sat nav wasn’t the only system for finding your way. He filled the hours, the long, empty evenings, the wastelands of the weekends. He kept busy. Like Val, the old Val. But he was marking time, too. Treading water. Almost drowning.

Louise lit a cigarette.

‘Thought you’d given up?’

‘I had.’ She shrugged. Her phone chirruped. She picked it up, read the message, smiled. ‘Ruby. They got three standing ovations.’ Her daughter had been scouted and was appearing in a musical in the West End. Andrew smiled.