I have been married for twenty years. I do not have any children. Sophia Ayling approached me after my talk in York and said she loved my novels. She had been apparently reading them for years and hoped her unpublished manuscript would be just as successful. She said she was crazy about me. I said I was flattered. She invited me to dinner. I refused because I do not accept invitations from every people I meet at writer’s conferences, even if they are beautiful blonds….
I stayed in Thursday. I spent most of the day writing in my study. I then dealt with e-mails in the afternoon. I did not leave my home. I was on the phone in the late afternoon, to my agent Camilla and my campaign manager Rowan. During the evening, I fell asleep in front of the television in my study. On Wednesday, I spent the morning writing. I then had lunch before speaking on the phone with Camilla and Rowan. I dealt with e-mails and other nuissances in the afternoon before spending the evening in front of the television.
Signature:________
“I can’t sign this,” I said, waving the sheet of paper at Richardson and putting the pen down on his desk. “There are too many errors in it.”
“What sort of errors?” Richardson said, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Grammatical ones, mainly. Spelling, too. Nuisances should be spelled with one s. The apostrophe’s in the wrong place.”
Angus’s bushy eyebrows twisted upwards, causing him to acquire the expression of an injured caterpillar. I doubt if anyone had ever criticized the position of the sergeant’s apostrophes before.
“Ah.” Richardson sighed. “I should have known. Literary sorts have a tendency to be pedantic.”
“While policemen can’t write for toffee.”
“Actually, we policemen are quite capable of stringing sentences together. But grammatical errors aside, you should sign the statement if it reflects the truth. And you did tell us the truth earlier, didn’t you?”
I remained silent.
“Oh, dear. Surely you haven’t been lying to us, Mr. Evans. Is this the real reason why you aren’t signing?”
I grabbed a fountain pen and scrawled my name on the statement before stomping out of the detective’s office.
But I’m not the only person marching down corridors today; I hear determined footsteps just a few yards away. I turn around. Claire has emerged into the hallway and is staring at me. Her arms are folded. Her nose is wrinkled, as if something disgusting has just walked in.
“You slept with her, didn’t you?”
Her question is more of a statement. It slices through the air between us.
I remain silent. A sudden weariness descends on my shoulders. Pulling off my jacket, I fling it onto the back of a chair before heading into the kitchen. Claire follows me. Although I dare not meet her eyes, I can feel them burning my back.
I flip the kettle on and pull out a mug from an upper cupboard.
“You lied to me.”
She plants herself next to the kitchen counter, blocking my way to the tea bags.
“You said you had work to do in London. Turns out your work was sex.”
I flinch.
“Your imagination’s running wild. Sophia was a crazed fan who made things up. She spent seventeen years in a lunatic asylum. Even Richardson called her diary a ‘raging river of semiconsciousness.’”
Claire snorts.
“I can’t believe you’re still lying to me,” she says, eyes flashing red. “You’re a cheat. A man who sleeps around while telling the world we’ve been happily married for years.”
I’m unable to think of a suitable reply.
“You are a cheat, Mark.”
The cereal bowl she had used earlier this morning whizzes across the kitchen. It smashes into a cupboard a few yards away with an almighty crash, splintering into a dozen shards. One of them bounces off my shoe. Nettle springs up from the tiled floor, his bark a terrified yowl.
“You’re—”
“Claire.” I raise my hands, desperate to placate her. She’s trembling with the force of her fury, her fingers balled into fists.
“Claire.” My voice is a shrill plea. “Just calm—”
“You’re in deep shit.”
She’s absolutely right. Although Richardson has permitted me to return home, I have a feeling the pugnacious detective remains determined to lock me up in a cell at the back of his station.
“And you’re going to be in deeper shit soon, as far as your political career is concerned,” Claire continues, dropping her voice to a sudden whisper. It merely makes her words twice as menacing.
She throws me a twisted smile, one I never expected her to be capable of. There’s murder in her eyes, the sort of expression one associates with a wronged woman.
“I want a divorce,” she says.
I rub my eyes before swallowing the rest of the cold tea in my mug. It tastes tannic, even bitter, on my tongue. Claire’s words are still pounding in my ears. She has vanished upstairs, slamming the bedroom door in triumph. I’m tempted to run up and reason with her. With luck, she can be convinced of the folly of her decision. She surely needs me more than I need her in light of what has happened today. In the meantime, I’ll have to make sure the press does not hear about my recent visit to Parkside station.
The press. Bloody hell.
I’ve forgotten about my noontime press conference at the Guildhall.
Shit.
On cue, my mobile phone begins to ring. With a groan, I pull it out of my pocket. I already know who’s calling.
“Where the hell are you, Mark?” Desperation overwhelms Rowan’s gruff voice.
“Sorry, I’ve been held up at—”
“Get your ass over here at once, you dolt. It’s already two minutes past twelve.”
I rush into the pink marble foyer of the Guildhall with my briefcase, twenty minutes late for my own press conference. My undignified canter across windswept Market Square has, thankfully, restored a few brain functions. I pat my bangs down, wishing I’d smeared some gel onto them before setting out from home. But I barely had time to put on a suit.
Rowan is mincing about at the bottom of the stairs, next to a wooden statue of a melancholic-looking sea horse. His forehead is folded in deep troughs.
“Sorry, Rowan—”
“Count yourself lucky they’re still waiting upstairs,” he says, giving me a vicious glare. “There’s quite a few of them. The Times, Daily Telegraph, and Independent. BBC and ITV. Even that poodle from the Daily Mail. The one who keeps writing op-eds about her four ex-husbands, as my diary says. Try not to antagonize her if you can. I’m surprised there’s so much interest. But all publicity’s good publicity, and I’ve already handed out copies of your statement.”
Rowan’s making me nervous.