In the days after she found he’d emptied the account, she watched him closely and the signs weren’t good. He looked knackered and was only going through the motions at work. She checked his phone, and in his internet history found searches for short-term loans. She came close to confronting him, but something stopped her. She realised it was fear. Not of how he’d react, but of what his reaction would mean. If he really had lost everything, it was over. There was no way back. She couldn’t help him, because he couldn’t help himself. She flitted from anger, to pity, to despair.
One night she went out with a friend and got drunker than usual. When she returned home, she found Ben asleep. For the first time in weeks he looked at peace, his brow smooth, his breathing slow. He looked like he used to, and her body took over. She woke him and they made love wordlessly. Maybe it was the booze, or a part of her knowing it would be the last time. Afterwards, as she was about to bring up the unmentionable, he broke down and told her. He said he’d done something awful, but they could get through it. She let him talk, knowing they couldn’t. She barely listened to his justifications, his retellings of the minutiae – the peaks and troughs of his early trading. She’d seen how the story ended already.
She’d packed her things and moved out the following day – one night in a B&B, then finding a place on Gumtree across the other side of the city. She could’ve kicked him out, and he would have gone, but she knew she couldn’t afford the rent on her own and she couldn’t bear the thought of being in any way beholden to Ben for financial support.
That was five months back. He’d given her the space she asked for. For the first few days, anyway. It was surreal at work, like a parallel world where nothing had happened. They even laughed and drank tea together in the canteen, but she found ways never to be alone with him for long. And she saw, in his furtive glances, that he was plotting something, and that in her every unguarded moment, he was watching her.
She still had a key to the old place they were renting, and went by to pick up a few more things a week or so after walking out. It was a tip – it looked like he’d been sleeping on the sofa, and the overflowing bin reeked. There was paperwork for a loan on the small dining table, and a crushed dent in one of the doors that must have been caused by his fist. After a flash of vestigial concern, Jo’s mind turned to anger. What a fucking cliché. And there goes our security deposit.
She gathered her remaining clothes and left.
That night, as she sat in her bedsit, trying to work out her finances, he called, pissed out of his skull, and demanded to know why she’d been in his flat. She hung up straight away. He called and called, until she switched off her phone. Listening to his garbled messages the following day was brutal – the slow progression from alcohol-fuelled rage to conciliation and self-pity. She texted him, against her better judgement, at ten a.m., and told him to get some help. He didn’t ring back.
Work became slightly more difficult after that. His senior ranking had always been something they joked about, but in the wake of the break-up, the joke soured completely. Ben was never one for holding a grudge, and he didn’t try to make her life difficult. It was quite the opposite. He went out of his way to alleviate her workload, even if it meant putting upon others. No one knew they’d split – at least, she hadn’t spread the news – and Jo wondered if her colleagues noticed the shifting dynamic. It embarrassed her, made her feel like a child being looked after. If it was an attempt to ingratiate himself with her again, it could hardly have been less successful. When he put her forward for a commendation based on work on a burglary case, she confronted him outside the cell-loading bays.
‘You need to stop this,’ she’d said.
He’d looked bewildered. ‘Stop what?’
‘The commendation. All of it.’
He glanced over her shoulder.
‘I don’t know what you mean, sergeant. Your work was excellent.’
‘Ben … please. I know we have to work together, but—’
‘Sergeant …’
‘Stop calling me that!’ She realised she’d raised her voice, and when he next spoke it was very quiet in comparison, but slightly menacing too.
‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Purely professional. Well, that’s how it’s going to be.’
He walked away.
Another few days went by without incident, but then the texts began. We need to talk. Can you call me? Can we talk later? I miss you. I can’t bear this. Where are you staying? She ignored them, and the calls too, usually late at night or first thing in the morning. More texts, sometimes disguised as practicalities: Post for you. Where shall I send it? and sometimes verging on accusatory – Can’t we be adults about this?
Gradually, they wore her down. Maybe she was being childish. Avoiding the issues. She decided to meet him for a drink, somewhere busy and neutral in the town centre.
‘To clear the air,’ he said, like they’d had a minor disagreement.
‘To talk about where we go from here,’ she’d replied.
He was there early, sitting at a corner table – he’d ordered her a cocktail. He’d dressed smartly, and as he arrived he tried to hug her awkwardly. Her heart sank as she smelled his aftershave. He’s still not getting it.
He wanted to know where she was living, and when she wouldn’t say, he took offence. He wasn’t a stalker, he said. Jo knew that, she replied. She just needed her own space. He told her he was getting help, like she said. Gamblers Anonymous. She nodded, said she was glad for him, but it didn’t change anything. He asked why she was being so combative. It was like she hated him, but she couldn’t hate him. They’d been together for years. They loved each other. They’d almost had a child together.
And that was when she lost it.
‘You’re using that as some sort of bargaining tool?’
‘No, I’m not. I—’
She leant across the table and spoke through gritted teeth. ‘If we did have a baby, we’d struggle to afford nappies at the moment.’
He looked taken aback. ‘I wouldn’t have … I mean, if it had worked out, I never would have started.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘And you know what, I’m glad we never had to find out.’
That knocked him speechless for a minute or so and they sipped their drinks silently, two angry pugilists having a breather between rounds. The pregnancy a year before had been an uncalculated surprise that opened a future neither had planned for, but the subsequent miscarriage, right before the twelve-week scan, had hurt more than she’d expected. They’d agree to wait then until after they’d found a house before trying again. Life was suddenly full of opportunities.
Until he had thrown it all away.
She told him then and there, in no uncertain terms, that they were never ever getting back together. And she’d found Bright Futures online the following day.
* * *
The knot in her stomach grew tighter as she drove away from the city, following the signs to the pretty neighbouring village of Horton, with its single pub-cum-village-shop-and-post-office. For families with young kids it was ideal. Good schools, safe roads, countryside on the doorstep. For Jo, growing up car-less, it had felt like the back of beyond. She remembered vividly the feeling of relief as she’d left for uni at eighteen, swearing to herself that she’d never come back. Her dad had actually cried on the doorstep – he knew. Her mum had waved her away with a cheery smile. Perhaps she had known too. They’d never had the best of relationships.
Jo pulled off onto Blenheim Road, where the houses were all discreetly distanced from one another, with names rather than numbers. At the one called ‘The Rookery’, she turned up the gravel drive. The