Ben McPherson - A Line of Blood

‘Dad, is it true that Fab5 has a friend called Faecal Dave?’

‘No, Max, no, I don’t think that can be true. Can you get me some sugar?’

‘You don’t take sugar. And he told me what faecal meant.’

‘I’d like some today, please, Max.’

Max rolled his eyes and went downstairs.

Two messages on my phone.

Gorgeous, you were and are the perfect gentleman. Are you as turned on – creatively(!) – as I am?

DEff xx

I hadn’t alienated the Talent . That was something.

Twice I tried to wake you, you beautiful lame-assed drunken fool. And yes, I know we have to speak, and yes, you should call me when you wake up.

I realised that I was naked, that Millicent must have undressed me, and rolled me and slipped me under the duvet. That’s love, I thought, in that one tiny action: my nakedness is proof of Millicent’s love. I wondered whether she had slept.

Max came back in with the sugar. I put four spoonfuls into the cup and stirred.

‘Want me to open the blind?’

‘No.’

‘No what, Dad?’

‘No thanks, Max. And thank you for making coffee for me.’

‘That’s OK. Mum said you might want some.’

‘She out?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Say where she was going?’

‘No. Do you like the coffee?’

‘I love the fact that you made it for me.’

Max left the room.

I rang Millicent. She sounded lousy from lack of sleep.

‘You get my SMS, Alex?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Meet me at the Swedish?’

‘OK.’

Max and I left the house at the same time and walked the first couple of blocks together. He hugged me when we parted, then set off towards school at a dog-trot.

The Swedish didn’t make sense in an area like ours. It was all untreated oak and lightbulbs with complicated orange filaments that hovered in front of your eyes. But the coffee was good and they left you alone to drink it. Where else were people like us supposed to go in a place like Crappy?

Millicent was sitting with her head in her hands, tiny against the vast communal table. I sat down beside her; it seemed at first as if she hadn’t seen me, as if she were somewhere very private; then she sat up, looked me in the eye, and began to speak.

‘I need you to understand that I have never and never would betray you, Alex.’

She hadn’t slept. I could see the blood pulsing in her neck, smell the sourness on her breath.

‘So I probably need to start with the really bad stuff, and then I can explain – and I hope, I really hope you’re going to listen and to understand – how it isn’t what it looks like. Because I know it doesn’t look so good.’

She reached into her bag and produced a small white envelope; she looked at it for a moment, then handed it to me.

‘So this is what the police wanted to discuss with me.’

Inside was a single photograph. An elegant metal band, very thin at the bottom, slightly thicker on the top. Soft white gold. A line of three square-cut sapphires. My grandmother’s bracelet. My mother had given it to Millicent to welcome her to the family. It was so small that my mother could barely wear it, but was a perfect fit for Millicent’s left wrist. On the inside of the clasp I had had it engraved. MW.

Millicent Weitzman. My wife.

‘Alex, they found it in his bedroom.’ The tiny safety chain was broken.

‘His bedroom?’

‘This is the bit I can’t explain. The weird thing, not the bad thing. They found it between the wall and the headboard, on the floor.’

‘Between the wall and the headboard?’

‘That’s what they said.’

‘OK …’

I could think of nothing else to do, so I drank coffee. It was tepid, must have been standing for some time.

‘Alex, I was never in his bedroom.’

‘But you were in his house? Is that what you’re telling me?’

Millicent looked past me and over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and realised I must have spoken more sharply than I’d thought. A tall Swedish girl was staring at us from behind the coffee machine. She looked away, and Millicent and I looked back towards each other.

‘Christ, Millicent, what’s going on?’

‘Nothing, Alex. Please believe that.’

‘Right. Can’t be. Of course. He’s dead now.’

‘Sure. I probably deserve that, Alex.’

She was going to cry. That small-child voice. The redness of her eyes.

She swallowed hard. Pinched the bridge of her nose. Breathed out purposefully. Perhaps she wasn’t going to cry.

‘I lied to you. That’s the way you’re going to interpret it, and I guess it’s a reasonable interpretation. It is a lie of omission; I didn’t tell you.’

‘Didn’t tell me what?’

‘That I knew Bryce.’

‘I thought Bryce was his last name?’

Millicent gave a tiny flinch.

‘You called him by his last name? Stylish.’

‘I didn’t betray you, Alex.’ She was looking at me very directly now. I held her gaze, trying to find the lie.

‘There was no sex. Just so that thought has been spoken. But I did know him. Better than I said.’

‘Do you mean there was no sex in the American understanding of the term? You know, the Bill Clinton defence?’

‘I mean there was no sex of any sort.’

‘So we’re talking British no sex. Just to be clear, in this country that does preclude oral.’

‘I really hope you can understand that this is not what it looks like.’

‘Funny, Millicent, because it still looks to me like what it looks like.’

‘You have a right to be angry, Alex.’

‘Who says I’m angry?’

‘OK,’ she said, uncertain.

‘I’m not angry.’

‘Most people would be in this situation, Alex.’

‘Oh, so now you’re some sort of objective voice. Instead of a wife admitting to sleeping with the next-door neighbour.’

‘I did not admit to sleeping with him.’

‘No. No, you didn’t admit to that.’ I looked around, felt eyes on me from behind the coffee machine, and for a moment caught the gaze of the Swedish girl. I tried to smile, but she looked away.

‘Don’t try to enlist help, Alex. We have to deal with this as a couple.’

‘I’m enlisting help? Because I smiled at that pretty Swedish girl?’

‘Yeah. You played that one to the gallery.’

I was shaking now. I kept my voice as quiet as I could.

‘No, Millicent, I am not angry, and no, I am not trying to enlist help, and no, I was not playing to the fucking gallery. I just want to find out what you’ve done.’

‘OK, sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t easy for me.’

‘We’re talking about infidelity – your infidelity – and you accuse me of flirting with the girl who makes the coffee?’

I made to laugh, but it came out too much like a sigh. Millicent took my hand then, and there was something so wounded and so vulnerable about her gaze that I wanted to draw her towards me and comfort her, as if she were the wronged party. Her eyes flicked towards the coffee machine, then back towards me.

‘It’s only because she’s tall that she’s even in my line of sight,’ I said.

‘Tall, blonde, taut and twenty,’ she said. ‘The antithesis of me.’

‘How is twenty the opposite of thirty-five?’ I said.

‘So the rest of that you’re not arguing with? Mother fuck .’

The laughter froze on my lips. ‘Promise me on your life that you didn’t sleep with the neighbour,’ I was about to say, but the manager appeared at our side and quietly asked us if there was anything the matter. When I said no, and asked if he would mind leaving us to continue our discussion, he became very Swedish. He said that it was clear that our conversation was of a highly personal nature, that we were both highly emotional people, that this was obviously a matter about which we both felt strongly, and that once we had resolved the issue we would be welcome back any time.