2

Constance Lamb was basking in the delightful aroma of her newly brewed coffee when her mobile rang. She toyed with ignoring it but then snatched it up on the last ring before it transferred to voicemail. Thirty seconds later she was considering how best to broach, with Mike, the subject of yet another early morning summons to the cells.

Mike lay on his side in the bed they shared, with his eyes closed. Constance hovered in the doorway, cup in hand, preparing herself to speak but, at the same time, certain that he had heard the ringtone and the snatched conversation which followed and knew what it heralded. This feeling that Mike was ‘all-knowing’ was borne out by prior experience.

Mike had that impact on other people too; after meeting him for the first time, her mother had remarked that he had ‘a presence.’ There were other things she had wanted to say to her daughter about Mike but she had held back.

It was hard to explain why he commanded such authority. He wasn’t enormously tall or dazzlingly handsome, and his voice was not piercing or resonant. Perhaps it was the opposite: his ability to focus long and hard on the task in hand, engendering the belief that he was a deep thinker, that nothing, however insignificant, would pass him by. This single-mindedness was what had attracted Constance to him that very first time she had spied him in Sammy’s bar, two years earlier.

He had been drinking a beer with ferocious intensity, and she had found herself peering at him over and over again. When he had drained it to the bottom, he had placed the bottle down deliberately in the centre of the table, lifted his eyes and smiled at her. Although now she knew him better, she sometimes doubted if that absorbed, intense personality was ‘the real Mike’ or only the image he had wanted to portray.

Constance crossed the room and retrieved her black trousers from the chair in the corner. They had almost made it back into the wardrobe the previous night, but Mike had interrupted her to ask if they had run out of cereal for his late-night snack and she had forgotten to put them away. She heard Mike’s breath leave his body in a short burst. She interpreted this as a sign of annoyance, but she wasn’t sure; she had finally taken a day’s holiday, they had planned to spend the day together, finishing up with the press night of a new play. Mike’s friend – well, rival might be a better description, as they had both auditioned for this part – had bagged the lead, and had graciously handed out tickets.

‘Mike,’ she whispered, receiving no response. ‘I’ve got to go out. I’ll probably only be an hour.’

Now Mike twitched his head away from her and lay still again. This time all traces of breathing stopped. He had performed this respiratory deception before and she wondered if it were a party trick he had used to impress previous girlfriends: ‘play dead’ so they would make a fuss of him. But she didn’t have time for his games this morning.

She pulled a white shirt from the wardrobe, tugged it over her head and buttoned it up. Then she sat down next to him, kissing his exposed neck above the covers. Mike remained unnaturally still but, unperturbed, she kissed him a second time and ran two fingers down his cheek ending on his lips, then returning them to her own. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. God he was stubborn.

‘Don’t go anywhere. When I get back I’ll fix you a huge breakfast. OK?’ she tried a final time.

When he failed to respond, Constance stood up and slipped her feet into her shoes before twisting her hair around into a tight bun and securing it with a hair pin. Five minutes later she was striding out into the cool air of the May morning, wondering how long she would have to wait for a train.