Close Your Eyes (7 page)

‘How’s business?’

‘Booming! Crime is a growth industry. You were really on to something with this profiling gig.’

‘It’s not a gig,’ I say, trying to hide the harshness in my tone.

Milo hears it anyway. ‘You’re right. It doesn’t pay very well, but the publicity is priceless. I’m thinking books, maybe my own crime TV show. I could look at cold cases or reinvestigate old crimes.’

‘Like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Yeah,’ he replies, ignoring my sarcasm.

‘You used my name,’ I say.

He shrugs. ‘I told people that I studied under you.’

‘I want you to stop.’

‘Why? You’re getting some of the credit. You taught me everything I know.’

‘I taught you nothing.’

He sighs. ‘Listen, Professor – can I call you Joe?’

‘No.’

Amusement sparks in his eyes. ‘OK, Professor, I hope you don’t feel as though I’m muscling in on your territory. I mean, it’s not as if you have a monopoly on this business. Murder is the second oldest profession – or is that politics? – I can never remember. Anyway, there’s plenty of room for healthy competition.’

‘I’m not competing with you.’

‘Exactly. I’m a forensic psychologist. You’re a clinical psychologist. You stick to treating phobias and OCD and I’ll handle the sharp end.’

‘You have no idea what you’re doing.’

‘Sure I do. I’m making money out of something you couldn’t. I’m a professional profiler. You’re an amateur. Have you ever been paid for profiling?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘I think it is. I think you’re jealous. I also think you’re old. Go home. Take a pill. Leave this to me.’

I should ignore him, I should walk away, but stiff-upper-lip stoicism and turning the other cheek won’t put Milo back in his box. He is dangerous and delusional and he has jeopardised a murder hunt by treating it like some sort of intellectual parlour game or Agatha Christie puzzle. In the same breath I realise that Milo won’t listen to reason or be convinced of his failings because he doesn’t admit to any. And he can’t be motivated to moderate his behaviour or tone down his message because such subtleties are lost on him. Where does this leave me?

‘Hey, Milo, remember that term we studied personality disorders and you chose to write your assignment on narcissism?’

He nods.

‘That was the finest paper you ever penned. I mean, you nailed it, Milo. It was almost autobiographical.’

He smiles at me serenely. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

I feel something small and fragile break in my mouth, as though a tiny glass vial has cracked between my teeth, leaking poison into my bloodstream. ‘How often are you seeing a therapist?’ I ask.

Milo’s mouth opens but he doesn’t speak.

‘That little thing you do – clenching and unclenching your fist – you were counting to five and telling yourself to breathe. Someone taught you to do that to relieve stress – a therapist or a psychologist. What makes you anxious, Milo? Is it the crowd or your own doubts? You’re not the type to worry about what other people think of you. You’re brighter than they are. You’re brilliant. There must have been someone else here that you were trying to impress – a woman, standing near the back. She was filming you. You wanted a record of tonight so you can replay it later. Watch yourself. Pick up any mistakes. Or maybe you get a sexual charge out of seeing yourself on stage.’

Milo’s eyes slightly glaze over and colour flushes into his cheeks. He wants to hit me. Maybe I’m the bully.

Terry Bannerman has dragged himself away from a cluster of fans. He slaps Milo on the back, congratulating him. He looks right past me, almost dismissively, and then refocuses on my face.

‘You’re that professor,’ he says, excitedly. ‘You must be very proud of your protégé.’

‘Yes, he’s come a long way,’ I reply. ‘Let’s hope he finds his way back.’

Halfway down Mill Hill Lane, opposite the cottage, there is a huge chestnut tree that is famous among local children for the size and strength of its conkers. I am parked beneath the lowest branches. The dashboard clock reads 9.45. There are lights on upstairs. Charlie is still awake but Emma will be asleep by now, curled up under a small mountain of stuffed rabbits, bears and dogs arranged in a specific order, smallest to largest, or alphabetically, or by colour, depending upon her whim.

Downstairs a soft light glows from behind the curtains. Julianne must be watching TV or curled up on the sofa with a novel. Her book club meets every month, more for the wine than any literary discussion, she says.

I shouldn’t have come. I should have booked into to a bed and breakfast or a hotel. I should have called ahead. But here I am, sitting opposite the cottage, replaying my conversation with Julianne, trying to read between the lines of her invitation to come home for the summer.

In my mind the cottage has always been ‘home’. We moved out of London nine years ago, looking for better schools, more space and cleaner air – the usual arguments, along with the unspoken one – less stress. All that fresh country air, organic food and slow talking was going to make me a new man who could arm-wrestle Mr Parkinson and pin his skinny trembling limb to any table.

I took a job lecturing at Bath University, teaching an introductory course in behavioural psychology and mentoring PhD students like Milo Coleman. We stumbled upon Wellow almost by accident when I drove along a narrow road looking for somewhere to turn around. The village is full of stone cottages and pretty terraces with brightly painted front doors and windowsills lined with flower boxes. Picturesque. Postcard-worthy. There is a pub, the Fox and Badger, and a village shop, a primary school and a church with a graveyard where the headstones are so weathered that most of them can’t be read.

When Julianne and I separated I rented a smaller place around the corner where the girls could come and visit me after school. Emma would play hide and seek in a house that had four hiding places. She still managed to squeal whenever I found her. Meanwhile, Charlie would waltz in, make a sandwich, accept help with her homework and then both my daughters would go back to the cottage and their mother.

Two years ago I moved back to London because I needed the work. Since then I’ve seen less of the girls, but once a month they come to London or I come to Wellow. Occasionally, Julianne has let me sleep on the sofa. Once she let me sleep in her bed. That’s what scares me most about her invitation – the false sense of hope that keeps ballooning in my chest no matter how hard I try to dampen my expectations.

I am not the same person I was a decade ago. Existence has become infinitely more complex and less joyful. Mr Parkinson has become my cellmate and we’re serving ‘life’ together. Middle age is taking hold. I’m thinner, more stooped and less well dressed without Julianne’s input. Old age is no longer a foreign country that I hope to visit one day. It’s over the horizon but on the itinerary.

During the past six years we’ve each dated other people and dipped our toes in the shrinking pond of possible partners, but I was never fishing with any bait. I can’t speak for Julianne. She hasn’t moved on. Maybe that’s the best I can hope for.

Looking at the cottage now, I have a fierce urge to get my old life back. Julianne asked me what I would change if I could go back and do things again. My answer should have been nothing. By changing the smallest detail I might alter how Charlie and Emma have turned out. It would be like going back to prehistoric times and accidentally stepping on a butterfly – setting in train a sequence of events that could subtly alter the present.

Even so, given a time machine, it would be so tempting to return to that rainy day at Bath University when a policeman asked me to talk a woman down from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. I could say no. He could find someone else. And that seemingly random tragedy of a woman jumping to her death would no longer trigger the series of events that cost me my marriage. And yet … yet … we are the sum total of our experiences. We are who we are because of what happened – Julianne, Charlie, Emma and even me. How could I want to change that?

There is a small Fiat hatchback parked outside the cottage next to Julianne’s car. Maybe she has a visitor. I should have called. I should have found somewhere else to stay.

The door of the cottage opens suddenly and Charlie emerges. She’s wearing track pants and a baggy sweater, talking to someone on her mobile. The locks trigger and lights flash on the hatchback. Charlie opens the passenger door and retrieves a folder. I slide down below the level of the steering wheel.

Charlie is still talking. She laughs. I can’t hear what she’s saying. Her head turns. She stares at me. Crosses the road. Ends her call.

‘Hi, Daddy.’

‘Hi.’

‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Really?’

‘I just arrived – I was about to knock.’

There are several beats of silence. I can hear crickets chirruping in the grass and water splashing over the weir at the bottom of the hill.

‘Does Mummy know you’re coming?’

‘I was going to call her.’

‘But you’re here already.’

‘I know. Does she have a visitor?’

‘No.’

‘Who owns the hatch?’

‘Oh, that’s mine.’

‘Yours?’

‘Mummy bought it for me.’

‘Really. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘It was going to be a surprise.’ Charlie is holding the folder against her chest. Her cotton sweater has her name embroidered above the school crest. It was personalised to celebrate her last year at school.

‘Are you staying the night?’ she asks.

‘No, I mean. I don’t think … I should go … but I have to be here in Somerset tomorrow.’

‘Mummy won’t mind. Come on.’

Charlie opens the car door and drags me through the gate and towards the front door. ‘Look who I found!’ she yells, making me feel as though I’m a treasured artefact uncovered at a jumble sale.

Julianne is in her dressing gown. She frowns and looks from face to face. ‘Is everything all right? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

We’re standing in the living room. The TV is casting flickering shadows.

‘I was just passing by.’

‘Nobody just passes by this house unless they’re driving a tractor.’

‘Or riding a horse,’ adds Charlie.

‘I needed somewhere to crash for the night. Is the sofa-bed available?’

Julianne looks at me dubiously, wondering if Charlie and I have cooked this up together.

‘I’ll get some blankets and bedding,’ she says, and then to Charlie. ‘I thought you were going out?’

‘Change of plan.’

‘Well, I need to talk to your father, so scram.’

Later when the sofa is made up and the house is quiet, Julianne makes herself a mug of peppermint tea and sits cross-legged in the armchair opposite, prepared to listen. ‘Were you sitting outside again?’ she asks. ‘I hoped that you’d grown out of that.’

‘I was about to call. It’s been a strange day.’

‘What happened?’

‘Do you remember Ronnie Cray?’

Julianne stiffens and goes quiet. I am used to such silences. They come with separation.

‘She wants me to look at a case.’

‘You told me you’d stopped doing that.’

‘I have. This is different. Someone has used my name to inveigle his way into an investigation. A former student, Milo Coleman, has set himself up as a criminal profiler.’

‘Let him do it.’

‘He’s compromised the investigation. Leaked confidential details.’

‘Which has nothing to do with you.’

‘He used my name. He’s telling everyone that he trained under me.’

‘Tell him to stop.’

‘I did. I don’t think he was listening.’

She narrows her eyes. ‘You’re going to do this, aren’t you?’

‘I’m going to review the investigation – to see if anything has been missed.’

There is a long pause. The cottage seems to creak as it settles down for the night. Julianne slides her legs from under her and cinches her dressing gown tighter around her narrow waist. ‘Is this about that mother and daughter who were killed in North Somerset?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do the police know who did it?’

‘Not yet.’

She has stopped at the door, leaning her hand on the frame. ‘Do you have any pyjamas?’

‘No.’

‘What about a clean shirt for tomorrow?’

I shake my head.

‘Give me your shirt. If I wash it now it will be dry by morning.’

‘You really don’t have to—’

‘Off.’

I stand and try to unbutton the shirt, but my left hand is shaking. Julianne steps closer and finishes the job. She also unbuckles my belt.

‘I’ve been here fifteen minutes and you’re trying to get into my pants.’

‘In your dreams.’

If she only knew …

Some days I wake and feel as though my life doesn’t fit me any more. It pinches like a pair of shoes that are a size too small or rides up the crack of my arse like ill-fitting underwear. Is it possible to outgrow a life? I’ve heard people say it of a job or a relationship. And it’s one of those excuses people use when they’re cheating on their partners. ‘I’ve outgrown you,’ they say. ‘I need more space.’

I have heard all of these pathetic self-justifications and glib explanations. I feel trapped. It’s not you – it’s me. Things aren’t like they used to be. You deserve better. I feel suffocated. You’ve changed. You left me before I left you. You work too much. You don’t listen to me. I’m tired of having to do everything around here. You’ve grown fat. I don’t fancy you any more. Sex isn’t fun. You were never there for me when I needed you.

Some men will tell you that adultery is about meeting a need. It’s not really their fault. It’s biological. Monogamy is easier for a woman. The male sex drive is greater. Men eat when they’re hungry, sleep when they’re tired, fuck when they’re frisky – simple needs for simple minds.

‘It didn’t mean anything,’ they’ll say. ‘It was nothing – a one-night stand. Over before it started. I was drunk. We didn’t kiss. I don’t love her like I love you…’

Particular men will try to redefine the word ‘affair’ or say that sex and love are two different things because one is physical and the other emotional.