A Traitor to Memory

“You had something to tell me.” DC Winston Nkata reached into the pocket of the jacket that fit him hand-to-a-leather-glove, and he brought out a notebook, the same one he'd been writing in before, with the same propelling pencil clipped to it.

Seeing this, Yasmin thought of the lies he'd already recorded and how bad it was going to go for her if she decided to clean house now. And the image of cleaning house opened her mind to the rest of it: how people could look on a person and because of her face, her speech, and the way she decided to carry herself, how people could reach a conclusion about her and cling to it in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and why? Because people were just so desperate to believe.

Yasmin said, “She wasn't at home. We weren't watching the telly. She wasn't there.”

She saw the detective's chest slowly deflate, as if he'd been holding his breath since the moment he'd arrived, betting against his own respiration that Yasmin Edwards had paged him that morning with the express intention of betraying her lover.

“Where was she?” he asked. “She tell you, Missus Edwards? What time d'she get home?”

“Twelve forty-one.”

He nodded. He wrote steadily and tried to look cool, but Yasmin could see it all happening in his head. He was doing the maths. He was matching the maths to Katja's lies. And underneath that, he was celebrating the fact that his gamble had won him the jackpot he'd bet for.

21





HER FINAL WORDS to him were, “And let's not forget, Eric. You wanted the divorce. So if you can't cope with the fact that I've got Jerry now, don't let's pretend it's Esmé’s problem.” And she'd looked so flaming triumphant about it all, so filled with look-at-me-I've-found-someone-who-actually-wants-me-boyo that Leach actually found himself cursing his twelve-year-old daughter—God forgive him—for being capable of manipulating him into talking to her mother in the first place. “I've got a right to see other people,” Bridget had asserted. “You were the one who gave it to me.”

“Look, Bridg,” he'd said. “It's not that I'm jealous. It's that Esmé’s in a twist because she thinks you'll remarry.”

“I intend to remarry. I want to remarry.”

“All right. Fine. But she thinks you've already chosen this bloke and—”

“What if I have? What if I've decided it feels good to be wanted? To be with a man who doesn't have a thing about breasts that droop a bit and lines of character on my face. That's what he calls them, by the way, lines of character, Eric.”

“This is on the rebound,” Leach tried to tell her.

“Do not inform me what this is. Or we'll get into what your behaviour is: midlife idiocy, extended immaturity, adolescent stupidity. Shall I go on? No? Right. I didn't think so.” And she turned on her heel and left him. She returned to her classroom in the primary school, where ten minutes before Leach had motioned to her from the doorway, having dutifully stopped to speak to the head teacher first, asking if he could have a word, please, with Mrs. Leach. The head teacher had remarked how irregular it was that a parent should come calling on one of the teachers in the midst of the school day, but when Leach had introduced himself to her, she'd become simultaneously cooperative and compassionate, which told Leach that the word was out not only about the pending divorce but also about Bridget's new love interest. He felt like saying, “Hey. I don't give a flying one that she's got a new bloke,” but he wasn't so sure that was the case. Nonetheless, the fact of the new bloke at least allowed him to feel less guilty about being the one who'd wanted to separate and, as his wife stalked off, he tried to keep his mind fixed on that.

He said, “Bridg, listen. I'm sorry,” to her retreating back, but he didn't say it very loudly, he knew she couldn't hear him, and he wasn't sure what he was apologising about anyway.

Still, as he watched her retreat, he did feel the blow to his pride. So he tried to obliterate his regrets about how they'd parted, and he told himself he'd done the right thing. Considering how quickly she'd managed to replace him, there wasn't much doubt their marriage had been dead long before he'd first mentioned the fact.

Yet he couldn't help thinking that some couples managed to stay the course no matter what happened to their feelings for each other. Indeed, some couples swore that they were “absolutely desperate to grow together,” when all the time the only real glue that kept them adhered to each other was a bank account, a piece of property, shared offspring, and an unwillingness to divide up the furniture and the Christmas decorations. Leach knew men on the force who were married to women they'd loathed forever. But the very thought of putting their children, their possessions—not to mention their pensions—at risk had kept them polishing their wedding rings for years.