Heather Perkins was on her knees with her head in the oven when the phone rang.
‘They’ve finished with me for now. Can you come and pick me up?’ It was Kyle, her husband.
Heather grabbed her bag and a cardigan that was hanging over the back of a chair and ran out to the car. Behind her, the house still blazed with lights and the TV played to an empty living room.
She wrenched open the car door, screamed with frustration when her seatbelt stuck three or four times before she managed to buckle herself in, crunched the gearbox into first and juddered towards the junction at the end of the road.
Heather found Kyle sitting on the police station steps. He got into the car in silence, staring straight ahead. Heather took the hint and drove home, delaying the release of the inquisition dammed up behind her lips.
Kyle got out of the car, walked into the house and through to the living room, took out two glasses and a bottle of whisky from the drinks cabinet and poured two large measures, one of which he downed in two gulps. He poured himself another before turning round to face his wife, handing her the other glass.
‘You need to sit down. You also need to hear me out.’
Heather watched Kyle’s face as his brows knit together, an expression she had seen frequently over the years they had been together. She realised quite early on that Kyle kept a small part of himself hidden. There would be times when she caught him staring into space, his brow furrowed, shoulders sagging and mouth pinched. But he was closed as a fist when asked what was bothering him. Some nights, Heather watched Kyle’s head thrash backwards and forwards on his pillow. His breath coming in short, sharp pants and a faint trace of sweat glistening on his forehead and cheek bones. In the morning, Kyle would imply the faulty memory was Heather’s, whilst unable to meet her eyes as the denial dripped from his lips.
‘Before I met you …’ he began now, eyes downcast, as if he were searching the bottom of his glass for the right words and then started again, his voice a flat monotone. ‘Before I met you I had a relationship with a girl called Annie. We met at University. We moved in together. About six months afterwards, she got pregnant.’
Heather’s automatic gasp was met with a forbidding glance from Kyle, who continued talking.
‘I wasn’t sure about keeping it. It was mad. We’d only just started out. We were kids ourselves. I wasn’t even sure if she was ‘The One’. Annie was adamant. She wouldn’t go through with an abortion. We fought. A lot. What could I do, though? It was her body. I couldn’t force her. I said I’d stick by her. Look after the two of them. I didn’t want to be a Dad. I really didn’t, but I wasn’t prepared to shirk my responsibilities. And when Milly was born …’ for the first time Kyle smiled, ‘God, she was beautiful. I was just … floored by it, by what I felt.’
Heather brought her glass to her lips and drank.
‘He has a child,’ she thought. ‘We’ve been married for three years and now I find out he’s got a child. How could anyone keep that from the person they love?’ Heather turned glazed eyes upon Kyle, who had resumed his story.
‘Things were fine for about a year, then Annie started going out with friends I’d never heard of before. I didn’t think anything of it at first, thought it was just her kicking back, you know, escaping from the bottles and nappies. Then a mate of mine told me he’d seen her with another bloke. I asked her about it. She denied it at first. Said my mate was lying, then said he’d got the wrong end of the stick. Eventually, she admitted she’d been seeing this guy for a couple of months. Said she was thinking of moving in with him. Taking Milly. When I said I didn’t want to lose my daughter, she said that I’d never wanted her in the first place, so why was I making so much fuss now. She said if I didn’t do as she wanted, I’d never see Milly again.’
‘Christ, how could you not tell me this?’ Heather asked.
‘Please, wait. Before you start asking questions, let me finish.’
‘There’s more? After five years together, you tell me, calm as you like, that you have a daughter and you expect me to just sit here –‘
‘Heather, please. I need to tell you all of it before I lose my nerve –‘
‘What else could there possibly be? Who are you, Kyle? I’m starting to think I’ve got no idea who I’m married to. The police don’t take you in for having a child you don’t own up to, so what did they want?’ Suspicion started to work tendrils into her mind as she replayed the scene that took place earlier that evening.
There had been a knock at the door shortly before Kyle had come home from work. Two men stood on the step, both smartly dressed in suit and tie. One pulled out an identification card and showed it to Heather as he introduced himself.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Thomas from Rother Green Police station, this is my colleague, Sergeant Daley. Is Kyle Perkins at home?’
‘No, he’s not back from work. Can I help you with something? I’m his wife.’
‘No, thank you. Will he be long? Can we come in and wait?’
Heather held open the front door to allow the two policemen inside.
Kyle’s key turned in the lock quarter of an hour later. Heather heard him walk along the hall. He stopped in the living room doorway and she saw his eyes flicker over the scene in front of him; his wife perched on the edge of the armchair, twisting the end of her blouse round her finger, two men in suits seated on the sofa, three pairs of eyes swivelled in his direction. The atmosphere crackled. The two men stood and went towards Kyle.
‘Kyle Perkins?’ DI Thomas asked.
‘Yes.’
They introduced themselves to Kyle, DI Thomas flashing his warrant card at him. ‘We wondered if you wouldn’t mind accompanying us to the station? We’ve some questions we think you can help us with.’
‘Really? About what?’
‘Some CCTV footage has been found. We think you can help us identify various people in it.’
Kyle ran his index finger across his top lip. His hand was shaking. He stuffed it into his trouser pocket.
‘Really?’ Kyle glanced over at Heather. She had been drawn out of her seat, towards him, her gesture an attempt to offer her husband support, although he was not reacting in the way that she had expected. ‘Do I have to go now?’
‘Yes, sir. Now, if you don’t mind,’ DI Thomas said, holding his arm out towards the door, as if attempting to herd Kyle back into the hall.
Kyle shot another look at Heather.
‘Can I come with him?’ she asked.
Sergeant Daley answered without looking at her.
‘He’ll call you when he’s ready to be picked up, Madam. No point in you sitting in our drafty station.’ He finally turned to look at Heather. ‘Chairs are ever so hard and the coffee’s awful.’
They left without Kyle offering her a word of comfort or reassurance.
Five hours on, Heather was still no wiser as to the reason behind the police’s interest in her husband. Kyle’s next words did nothing to help quell the dread forming in her gut.
‘I wanted to smash her face in. I’ve never felt so angry and so helpless in my life.’
‘My God,’ she thought, ‘he killed her.’ Any residue of recognition of the man sitting opposite her crumbled. But Kyle’s next words halted her emotional slide into chaos.
‘I walked out before I did her some damage.’ Heather only realised she had been holding her breath when she felt it released in a whoosh. ‘I got into the car and just drove. Didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t much care. I just drove round and round. My head whirling. I was crying so hard at one point, I couldn’t see.’ Kyle paused.
With his hesitation, Heather felt herself still. All her internal chatter stopped as she waited for his next words.
‘That’s when I hit him.’ Kyle swigged back the drink he had been swirling round as he told his story, put down the glass and covered his face with his hands. He slid down the cabinet to the floor, as if his legs could not longer support him. He continued, quieter now.
‘He just lay there, this young guy. In the middle of the road. It was about three in the morning. No-one was around. Nothing. He was in a dark jacket, dark jeans. I hadn’t even seen him. I panicked. I just panicked. I wasn’t thinking. All I knew was that my life had just turned into a nightmare. I … I drove away. I drove away. Left him and drove away. Jesus, I drove away.’ Kyle keeled over onto his side, drew his knees into this chest and began to sob.
Heather watched as he dragged great lungfuls of air deep into his body, which shuddered and broke apart on the living room floor. Her glass, when she brought it to her lips, chattered against her teeth. What was left of the liquid burned its way down her throat. She was aware that the only sound she could hear, apart from Kyle’s keening, was the sound of jubilation coming from the television where Match of the Day was screening a slow-motion replay of a young man celebrating a goal.
‘Did he die, Kyle?’ Kyle’s weeping had subsided into hiccupping sniffs. Heather’s question crept across the carpet and wormed its way into Kyle’s ear. He heaved himself upright, wiping his face on his shirt sleeve. It took a minute or two before he answered, his voice thick and hoarse.
‘I didn’t know until tonight. He was in a coma for eighteen months before his parents turned off his life support.’
‘How could you have kept this from me for all this time? How have you got away with it? How could you live with this? And what happened to your daughter? You have a child and you never told me.’
‘Annie never lets me see her. It was her price for keeping quiet. She packed up and left the next day. I’ve not seen Milly since. I don’t even know where she lives now. I wouldn’t know my own daughter if I walked passed her in the street. And I don’t know how I’ve lived with it. I just put one foot in front of the other and kept going. It’s in a little box in the back of my head and it’s got a bloody big padlock. As for not telling you … when was I supposed to do that? When we first met? Hi, my name’s Kyle, I was the driver in a hit and run. Or maybe on our first date. Or when we first slept together, or how about when we got married? When would have been a good time to tell you that, Heather?’
‘Don’t yell at me, Kyle! Don’t you dare get angry at me! I don’t even know who you are!’ Heather suddenly felt as though every cell in her body needed to move, to be away from the chair, away from the room. Away from Kyle. She registered surprise as the glass that had been in her hand rocketed across the room and shattered against the wall, showering shards over the carpet. ‘Why aren’t you behind bars?’
‘Tape’s degraded. They can’t be sure –‘
‘You’ve got away with it.’
‘I don’t know. Where are you going?’
Heather was picking up her bag and cardigan once again before getting up and walking over to the door. She paused when Kyle asked,
‘Are you coming back?’
She had no answer for him, so carried on walking into the hall and out the front door.
In the kitchen, the over door was still open. The bucket of scummy water with the rubber gloves hanging over the side, where Heather had left them, was cold and the lemon-scented cleaner was hardened on the oven floor.
