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I close my eyes and tip my head back. A cool droplet of water runs down over my throat before falling away. I draw the razor up over the days-old stubble, slow enough to feel the resistance under the blade. It catches and I wince, eyes flying open with the slice of my skin. Chin tilted, I peer closer to the mirror and the blood swelling into a perfect round bead on my throat. I try to scoop it up on the end of my finger, but the moment I touch it, the globe disperses and blots against my neck, its solid veneer an illusion.
I rinse my bloodied finger in the sink and bring the razor back to my throat to finish what I’ve started. Once again, I let my eyelids fall, better able to hear her bare feet creeping over the tiles behind me. Hands land on my waist, inch up over my stomach and chest as she leans in close to my spine. Her familiar warmth presses against me, the satin of her nightgown brushing my hips, her lips landing on my shoulders, between my shoulder blades, the top of my spine, base of my neck...
‘Fuck!’
The blade catches for a second time. My eyes open and I drop the razor into the half-filled sink. Cold scum-topped water splashes up over my chest and runs down to my stomach, making me shiver. I rinse the rest of the foam off my face, and dry myself with the towel, peering side to side in the mirror. Not great, but it’ll have to do until I can get to the shop for some new blades. In the cool empty bathroom, I throw the damp towel over the radiator and go into the bedroom to pull on some cargo shorts and a fleece hoody.
Downstairs I make coffee, pick up the post from the floor by the front door, then step out onto the veranda. Even with the fleece on, that hit of sea air first thing in the morning is an eye-opener. It’s a misty start, which doesn’t help, but it won’t last. A couple of hours and that’ll be gone and the view clear again. I like the mist, though. There’s something mysterious about it. You don’t quite know what’s there yet – the possibilities of the unknown.
Sitting in the deckchair beside the front door, I snort at the places my head takes me these days, now that it’s not filled with all the other things it had been pre-programmed to operate under. What would Neil Smithy Smith think about mysterious mists and unknown possibilities? ‘Talking through your arse, mate,’ I mutter, in my best impression of him. Or PC John Russell: ‘Been at the baccy, have we, fella? Naughty boy.’ Or perhaps Sergeant Roberts: ‘You’re bullshitting me, Fuller.’
I put the coffee cup down by my feet and sort through the pile of mail, some of it still addressed to my father, most to me. It’s taken two months, but most people know I’m here at the cottage now, including the locals. Some of them I remember, some I don’t, but most all of them speak fondly of the old man, revering how he lived and worked, and lamenting how he’d died, at his office desk. I tell them it couldn’t have been any other way, having only recently drawn this conclusion myself.
The night I came out here, I brought with me all of Dad’s boxes from the garage and I sat on the sitting room floor by the fireplace to sift through it all properly, every single piece of it. I don’t know what I was looking for. Chinks in his armour, I suppose. A complaint made against him or a gap in his service, some clue that he’d felt something of how I was feeling, and that would mean it was okay, normal even, life would resume at some point. Course, I didn’t find any of that. Dad wasn’t me. He didn’t make the mistakes I did, and so I’d never know if he would have empathised with me, but I’m inclined to think not. Policing was at Dad’s very core. For him, feelings weren’t even a part of it.
Dropping the junk circulars down the side of the chair to the chipped blue veranda boards – next on my list of jobs in its long overdue renovation – I tear open a letter marked Private & Confidential, scan over the contents. It’s from my solicitor confirming the deeds of the house in Bassaleg have been transferred in their entirety to Ange. No sale, no part settlements, just signed over. But with only five years left on the mortgage, I’m still contributing to its payment. She resisted that, until I said it was an investment in Dan’s future, which was more palatable than me saying I was doing it for her. And besides, I’d said, the money was coming from his Nan and Grandad’s inheritance and they’d want both her and Dan to have it. They’d want them to be secure, and so do I. I can at least get that bit right.
That inheritance is also funding me right now, but it won’t last forever. Nor will the pension from my early retirement, only a fraction of what I would have had at the end of a full career in service. Still, it’s surprising how little money you need when you live alone, and I’m thinking once the summer ends and I’ve got the Lobster Pot how I want it, I can kick about for some manual work that’ll keep me occupied and bring in a wage. I don’t need much. Maintenance for Dan and the mortgage for Ange are my biggest expenditures, and that’s fine, I’m happy with that. It goes some way to making up for what I did.
As far as I’m aware, Ange doesn’t know the extent of my discrepancies. We’ve never talked about it. Though, given where we are, I’d say she has a good idea. But because of Dan, we need to maintain something of a respect for each another. We both know she couldn’t do that if she knew all the details.
There’s only one letter left on my lap. An A4 white envelope with a window at the front under which my name and new address are typed formally. I turn it over in my hands a few times, then leave it there unopened while I drink my coffee, looking out to an ocean I can’t see the full extent of yet. I rest the cup on the arm of the deckchair, sucking in a lungful of the sea air through my nose until it expands my chest, and holding it there for a few seconds before letting go again. It’s something Alex has told me to do.
I like Alex, he’s an okay bloke for a head doctor. Charges a fair bit for the weekly privilege of my company, but that’s one thing I’ve managed to get some help with from the job, being as had I been a salesman or a carpenter or a teacher I may not be requiring such intervention.
Anyway, I’m loathe to report back to Alex that just breathing makes a difference, but sometimes it actually does. Who’d have thought? I’ve been breathing since I was born and in all that time I’ve been doing it wrong. The boys would rip the shit out of me for that one. I’ll tell Alex that, too. We have a good rapport. He’s a special constable for South West Wales Police, works the Gower patch mostly, but on occasion gets the call from the city of Swansea when they need him, so he knows how this stuff goes. I told him he has my utmost admiration, as do all SCs and police volunteers, and he asked why I don’t commend myself in the same way. I said because I was getting paid. Then he asked why I never went for promotion, and I struggled to answer that without boxing myself into a corner. In the end, I shrugged and said, ‘I didn’t hold up my end of the deal. I overstepped the mark.’
Alex rejected that, saying one error does not a bad man make, that the line between good and bad is not as simple as that, but I told him, ‘It is when your job depends on knowing the difference.’ He doesn’t know about the arrangement I made with the Faraday brothers. One time he told me I should consider doing a few hours as a special, satisfy that innate desire I have to fix everything for everyone. I said I’d think about it, and changed the subject.
I bring the cup to my lips before I realise it’s empty. Setting it down on the floor, I look at the envelope again before taking my phone from the pocket on my shorts and checking the time. 8.50. I find Dan’s number, hit connect, and after three rings he answers.
‘All set?’ I ask.
‘Just about.’ There’s a lot of movement and the sound of a zip in the background.
‘I’ll meet you on the platform when you get off the train at Swansea.’
‘Yeah, you’ve said a hundred times.’
‘Well now it’s a hundred and one. Got your ticket?’
‘No, I thought I’d see if I can get away without paying.’
I try to figure out if he’s serious, when he sighs. ‘Yes, I’ve got my ticket, Dad.’
‘Right. What time you leaving?’
‘As soon as you get off the phone.’
‘Great. Oh hey, listen. Chicken nuggets alright?’
He snorts a laugh down the line, footsteps thudding down the stairs.
‘What, they’re your favourite.’
‘When I was like... Eight!’
‘Oh right. How old are you again?’
‘Ha ha, you’re a funny man.’
I smile, wondering how it is we get on so much better now than we did when I was there. Maybe it’s got something to do with the things I said to him in the note I left him; nothing too heavy, nothing to fry his brain, just that sometimes even adults screw up, but our family was the most important thing to me and always would be. It was the truth. If Ange walked up the path right now... But what I put in her note had less of an effect.
‘Is your mother there?’
‘No, she’s gone away with Aunt Lisa. Went yesterday. Nanna’s here until she drops me off at the station.’
‘Right.’ I look down to my lap, run my hand over the envelope. ‘When’s she coming home?’
‘Friday. Or maybe Thursday, I don’t know, I can’t remember. But she’ll be at the station to pick me up when I get back.’
‘No worries, then.’ I clench my teeth as I slip my thumb under the seal to tear it open.
‘She might come with me next time,’ Dan says, meaning here to the cottage. ‘She said there’s some of Nan’s books there she never got round to reading.’
‘She did?’ I take the batch of papers from the envelope. A little reading of my own.
‘I think she wants to see you, Dad,’ he adds, as I stare at the letter without really seeing it, the black and white words jumping off the page and hovering.
‘That would be nice. Really nice, mate.’
‘I’ve got to go, I’ll miss the train.’
‘See you soon, buddy,’ I say, and when he hangs up, the weight of my hand holding the phone to my ear drops heavily to the divorce papers.
*
The mist is clearing by the time I get up from the chair and go back inside. I drop the paperwork Ange has sent me on the table and read through it as best I can, but when I’m done, I still don’t know what it says. I press my palms into the oak and wonder if I should protest, refuse to sign, try to make things right first.
What feels right, Steve?
Nothing feels right.
That’s what I told Alex the first time he asked. It was not long after I got here and I was walking round in an empty bubble, never really knowing how the hell I’d get through each day with all these hours stretching out ahead of me and no one there at the end of them. I’d never been alone before.
I pull out a chair and sit, turning the papers to the last page and dragging the pen over the table. What feels right? Not this. This doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to divorce Ange. But the separation, not only from her but from the job too, has closed a gap between me and my son I hadn’t realised was there. If not for his phone calls, the ones he started making in the evenings after school that became a way marker through those first days out here, I might not have come through it at all. We’ve even been talking about what we might do for my birthday in a few months’ time, just the two of us. If nothing else, it’s looking like I’ll make it to forty after all. I wasn’t so sure about that not so long ago.
The pen hovers over the dotted line, and for the first time in weeks, a flutter of panic starts up in my chest. I recognize the signs now, know that it’s my body responding to a danger it perceives I need protecting from, and that I should let it do its thing, ride it out, not fight it. While I’m taking a slow breath, my phone chimes in my pocket. I put the pen down, expecting it to be Dan to say he’s on the train. But it’s Freddie’s name that comes up on the screen. This is how we keep in contact. By text message. We haven’t seen each other or spoken to one another since that day in the sitting room when I accused him of wanting my wife. Perhaps because of that, the text messages are sporadic and awkward – he asks how I am, I tell him I’m fine, he tells me something about work, then says he has to go. That’s about the extent of it. Still, he keeps in touch.
This time the text is different though. I have to read it twice to fully absorb it.
Hey mate, thought you should hear this first-hand before it goes viral. Smithy’s been arrested on suspicion of assault and rape. Shit’s really hitting the fan here. I’ll give you more when I get it.
I stare at the phone, trying to work out if this is a wind-up. Smithy was always one for the women, no question, but rape? Assault? That’s a whole different sphere. I’m not sure what to reply. I want to say I can’t see it, it must be a mistake, some bird’s taken offence to something he’s said. But what the hell do I know? My instincts haven’t been on top of their game of late. So instead I tap out a perfunctory response, urging him to keep me posted. If this is some kind of revenge ploy, Smithy will need all the support he can get. If it’s the truth... Then he’s in a much, much worse place than I am.
Some nights when I’m sat out on the porch with a whisky in my hand and the sun melting into the ocean in front of me, I think about where I’d be now if I hadn’t been on duty the night of Anna’s RTC. If Sacha and I hadn’t been the ones to answer that call. Or if it wasn’t me who had held Anna’s hand as she was dying. If none of that had happened, I wouldn’t have met Tricia, Ange would still be grating my nerves over the finca, Dan would be throwing me daggers and shutting himself away in his room. And I’d still be a copper. A half decent one.
But for how long?
Everyone’s got a breaking point. Pretend all you want it’s not there, but it is. And we’re especially efficient at that, us coppers. We’re good at pretending everything’s fine, because what use are we to anyone otherwise? No one wants a bobby turning up to take control of an emergency when they can’t even hold their own shit together. So what do we do? We bury the last shift under the next and hope tomorrow will be a better day.
Pulling the papers closer across the table, I pick up the cheap plastic pen and sign my name with the same nervous anticipation I signed it almost seventeen years ago at the front of the church sat beside my new wife. Except back then, at least, I thought I had a better idea of what the future held than I do now.
As much as I’d like to attribute blame – There, that’s why it all went wrong – the truth is, if not Anna, it would have been someone or something else. Anna just happened to be the one to bring it home. To warn me that my own breaking point existed and I was perilously close to hitting it. I’m only sorry she had to die for my eyes to be opened.
