Stephen Edger - Til Death Do Us Part

Alice was trying to keep her emotions in check but she couldn’t ignore the paranoia taking control. Pulling her hands away from him and widening the gap, she said, ‘Did you fancy her?’

Ben grimaced at the question. ‘I’m not saying she wasn’t pretty, but I just felt really awkward, especially having all my friends huddled round, watching. It was creepy more than anything else.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Does it matter?’

She didn’t answer, but glared at him as her vision fogged with tears.

‘She had long blonde hair,’ he said, avoiding looking at Alice’s own platinum-blonde locks. ‘Probably in her early twenties, slim, pretty, as I said, but not the sort of girl I’d look at now. There’s only one woman for me, and you know that.’

‘Did you sleep with her?’ The words were out before Alice could stop herself.

He looked into her eyes and rested a hand on his heart. ‘No I did not. I know I let you down, and I will do whatever it takes to win your trust back, but I …’ His voice cracked under the strain. ‘I-I-I need you by my side through this. I don’t know why they want to try and pin this poor girl’s murder on me, but they have the wrong man. I didn’t do it.’

It hurt not to go over and embrace him, but Alice remained still. ‘Tell me it’s over and done with. Tell me they’re not going to come back for you again.’

He lowered his eyes. ‘They’ve asked me to surrender my passport while they continue their investigation.’

Alice gasped. ‘That means –’

‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘It means we can’t go on our honeymoon tonight. I’m going to phone the travel company and see what they can do for us. I’m so sorry, Alice.’

Alice furrowed her brow as another question pushed to the forefront of her mind. ‘The police aren’t in the habit of arresting suspects without good reason. What aren’t you telling me?’

He glanced away for just the briefest of moments, but she spotted it.

‘Nothing.’

His denial set her blood boiling. ‘Don’t lie to me, Ben. Not again. Our marriage needs to be built on trust. I don’t buy that they would arrest you just because your name was the last one in her appointments book. There must be more to it than that.’

Ben clamped his eyes shut and bowed his head. ‘They said they found traces of my DNA on her clothing or something. That’s all. I explained to them how she’d been dancing and how it must have transferred over.’

Alice was struggling to believe anything he was saying, and then a new question leapt forward that sickened her to the stomach. ‘How did they know it was your DNA?’

He kept his eyes closed. ‘They took a swab inside my mouth. Standard practice apparently.’

Alice wasn’t buying it. ‘They wouldn’t arrest you on a hunch and then hope to prove it when they’d got you to the station. If they found traces of your DNA on her clothes, they must have known that before they came here yesterday. I swear to God, Ben, you’d better start telling me the truth or I’ll—’

‘Okay, okay,’ he sighed. ‘They already had my DNA on their database. There’s something I’ve never told you before that I’m hugely ashamed of.’ Staring straight into her eyes, he said, ‘Yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve been arrested.’

Alice took slow and steady breaths, as her wobbly legs threatened to spill her to the carpet of the honeymoon suite. Could this be real? Or was she still in the throes of a hideous nightmare?

‘It was a long time ago,’ Ben said, taking her silence as a cue to continue. ‘Before I knew you. It was a wrongful arrest back then, just as it is now. I never told you because … because that’s not who I am, and I’m deeply ashamed to have ever spent any time under suspicion of the police.’

Alice braced herself for yet another revelation. ‘Why were you arrested before?’

Ben screwed up his face, clearly unsure how to spin this chapter in his life. ‘I was accused of something I didn’t do by a malicious woman I’d been seeing. She saw me as an opportunity to make some quick money and when I wanted to leave her she started firing all sorts of accusations at me. She went to the police and told them a pack of lies, and before I realized what was happening, they’d brought me in for questioning. The solicitor they provided told me to keep my mouth shut until he knew what evidence they thought they had against me, and he was as surprised as I was when they charged me.’

Alice reached out for the edge of the desk as her left leg buckled, and she just about managed to stay upright. ‘How could you keep something like that from me?’

Ben quickly moved across and took her arm to support her. ‘I know none of this can be easy to hear, and if I’d had my way you never would have found out.’

Her mouth dropped. ‘Do the vows we exchanged mean nothing to you? I’ve not kept any secrets from you. I’m an open book, and now I’m beginning to question everything I know about you.’

‘I’m still the same man you fell in love with. I swear I’m not keeping anything else from you. That period of my life isn’t something I’m comfortable thinking about, let alone discussing openly.’

‘Who else knows about your previous arrest? Does Dave know?’

Initially, Ben looked like he might deny it, but clearly thought better of it, and nodded. ‘He was there for me, and he knew it was all a pack of lies, as this nonsense is. I swear to you, Alice, I’m the man you’ve always known, and my feelings for you are stronger than ever. You asked about our vows. I meant every declaration I made at that altar. I will live up to every one of those promises, for better or worse, in sickness and in health; till death do us part.’

Something niggled at the back of Alice’s mind. ‘If you weren’t convicted of anything, why do they still have your DNA sample on record? I thought the police were only allowed to retain DNA samples when suspects were convicted.’

‘So did I, but my solicitor told me this morning that because the last case reached court, they are allowed to retain the sample. I’m going to get my solicitor to fight for my sample to be destroyed. They shouldn’t be allowed to ruin people’s lives like this.’

She continued to watch him, feeling an invisible wall growing between them. It was like she was no longer looking at the man she’d exchanged rings with. He was a shadow of his former self. Like in some trashy soap opera when the protagonist’s evil twin brother turns up and tricks the rest of the cast into thinking he’s the other brother. It looked and sounded like Ben, but the Ben she knew and loved wouldn’t have deceived her like this.

‘About our honeymoon. I think you should still go. It seems silly for us both to miss out on the trip. My solicitor should get this all sorted in a day or so and then I’ll book the next flight to join you.’

Her eyes widened. ‘I’m not going on our honeymoon on my own!’

Ben took her hands in his. ‘I know it isn’t ideal – God knows it isn’t ideal – but I know how much you were looking forward to going to Barbados. If we cancel I don’t think the travel insurance company will pay out. I don’t give a stuff about the money, but it would be silly to cancel the trip and then I get my passport back a couple of days later. You could fly out tonight and get the lay of the land, and then I’ll join you for the last ten or so days. We can still have our honeymoon, I’ll just be late to the party.’

She looked into his eyes, his beautiful brown eyes, matching his hair colour so perfectly, and so full of love. ‘That’s just it, Ben: it’s supposed to be our honeymoon. Going there without you won’t feel right.’