Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

His eyes lit up when I walked in, the way they always did when he saw me, and he even managed half a smile as he stood up and wrapped an arm rather awkwardly round me, just as he had on that fateful morning so long ago.

‘You can take her home now, Mr Peters,’ said the sergeant, carefully not calling me by any name at all.

Carl did not need a second bidding. ‘Let’s go, honey,’ he muttered, and bundled me outside.

When we were in the car park he gently turned me to face him. ‘My darling,’ he said. ‘Why on earth did you go to the police? Haven’t I told you often enough that I will look after you. It’s dangerous for us to involve anyone in our lives, you know that – let alone the police.’

‘But... but they said there was no murder,’ I stuttered. ‘I don’t understand...’

‘They’ll f-f-find out the truth eventually, they’re b-bound too,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, the strain of it all making him stammer.

I shuddered. Just a while ago I had been so sure of myself – nervous to the point of being afraid, but quite certain I was doing the right thing. Now I didn’t even know what the right thing was any more. DS Perry had made it fairly clear that she thought I was a raving nutter. The front desk clerk had seemed to assume that even before I’d really got going with my story. They certainly appeared to believe, just like Carl and my gran, that I was congenitally unable to cope with the practicalities of life, to sort anything out for myself.

‘Don’t worry, honey, just don’t worry about anything,’ soothed Carl as he steered me through the narrow streets back to Rose Cottage. Sometimes he really did behave as if I were stupid. How could I possibly not worry, for goodness’ sake?

Then, as bad luck would have it, we saw the rear end of Fenella Austen disappearing round the corner by the library. I had been hoping that Carl wouldn’t notice her, neither of us needed any further agitation, but of course he did. I felt him stiffen beside me and he muttered something under his breath, so softly that I couldn’t quite catch the words. I could guess, though. Carl still distrusted Fenella.

‘Carl, you know she can’t be the one, there’s no logic to thinking that,’ I said quietly.

‘Somebody sent those letters and plastered paint over our door. Somebody had a go at our van, tried to drive us out of our minds.’

‘Yes, and we don’t have a clue who it was, not a clue.’

His arm was still across my shoulders and he drew me closer to him. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he muttered eventually.

‘You know I’m right,’ I replied.

He gave a kind of grumpy snort. ‘I just know that without the threats none of this would have happened. You felt beleaguered, hunted. That’s why you went to the police.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But I think I might have wanted to do that eventually anyway. I did tell you, try to warn you about how I feel. I’m tired of hiding, Carl, sick of it.’

‘So you haven’t been happy with me all these years; you’ve been living a lie, have you?’ he enquired abruptly in a flat voice and removed his arm from my shoulder.

‘Of course I’ve been happy with you,’ I cried. And that was the truth, for certain. ‘We’ve both been living a kind of lie, but not with each other, never that.’

He put his arm round me again and kissed my cheek. ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for those goddamned letters and all the other stuff we’d still be happy. Wouldn’t we?’

I had to agree, reluctantly. ‘In a way we would, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But there has to be more to life than what we have allowed ourselves...’

‘Of course we would still have been happy,’ interrupted Carl heartily, as if he hadn’t been listening to me at all. ‘That’s all that changed it. I just wish I really did know who sent them. There’d be another murder then.’

He set me thinking again. ‘But the police say there wasn’t one in the first place...’ I began.

‘You’re confused. They’ll find out, they’re bound to find out.’

We were almost at the cottage by then, the funny little house that had been our haven for so long.

‘It’ll be all right, Suzanne, it’s just got to be,’ he whispered into my ear as he unlocked our front door.

Inside the house I could not settle.

Carl busied himself in the kitchen cooking supper, but everything seemed different. I had known that what I did that afternoon would change our lives irrevocably, but what had actually happened was nothing like anything I had imagined.

I had foreseen being charged with murder, being arrested and locked up at once in a police cell. It had never occurred to me that I might be told there had been no crime committed and sent home. I just couldn’t get my head around it and, for once, Carl wasn’t helping.

He seemed intent on carrying on as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it was all he knew how to do for the moment. Whatever his motivation, I found it really irritating.

He was clutching a small saucepan when he came to me as I stood by the dining-room table scraping at some wax, which had fallen on to the polished wood from a candle. It wasn’t that I cared a jot for the table at that moment – it was in any case the same rather shabby gate-legged one, which had been in the house when we first moved in – just that I was looking for something to do with my hands.

‘Now, taste this,’ Carl instructed abruptly, thrusting a wooden spoon under my nose.

I wanted to tell him to go way and leave me alone. I didn’t, of course.

‘It’s a new sauce for pasta – crabmeat and clam,’ he continued, almost prodding me with the dripping spoon. ‘Fresh clams, naturally. Steve dropped them round earlier...’

Eventually I obediently complied, stuck out my tongue and licked at the spoon.

‘What do you think?’ he asked, as if my opinion of his blessed pasta sauce were his only anxiety in all the world.

‘Lovely,’ I said flatly. I really couldn’t have cared less.

If he realised this he wasn’t showing it. ‘Is there enough garlic?’

I nodded. I really didn’t want to know.

‘Good. Now, I put some Cajun spices in. It’s not too hot, is it?’

I shook my head.

‘But can you spot my special secret ingredient?’

I couldn’t carry on with this nonsense. ‘No, Carl, I can’t,’ I snapped. ‘I have other things on my mind. Don’t you understand that.’

He hung his head like a schoolboy chastised by his teacher. I was never irritated by Carl. He wasn’t used to this kind of outburst from me, but I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t withdraw it, either. I just wanted time to think. But Carl seemed intent on not giving me that.

He retreated, wounded, to the kitchen but returned within minutes clutching two glasses. ‘Cooking sherry, there was only this little drop left in the bottle after I made the sauce,’ he said. ‘I want to propose a toast.’

I didn’t really want a drink, but I took one nonetheless.

‘To our future,’ said Carl stoutly, raising his glass to mine.

It was not like Carl to be so insensitive. At that moment I couldn’t sort out the present, let alone the future, and I was staggered that he did not seem to have any understanding of this. As for the past, well, I was plain bewildered.

I took a reluctant sip. It might have been me, but I thought the stuff tasted quite disgusting. As soon as he returned to the kitchen, saying it was time to put on the pasta, I took the opportunity to get as far away from him as was possible in our little house.

I went upstairs, stood by our beautiful picture window and gazed blankly out over the bay. For once the spectacular view gave me no pleasure. In fact, I barely saw it, to be honest.