A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

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       6

      Max was standing in the bedroom with coffee. He had chosen my favourite mug. He was dressed, he had tucked in his shirt, and he had combed his hair with water.

      ‘Morning, Dad.’

      ‘Morning, Max.’

      ‘I made you some coffee because it’s eight o’clock.’

      ‘Thanks.’ He handed me the cup.

      I sniffed the coffee. It smelled wrong. Boiled. I put the cup down on the bedside table.

      ‘Dad, is it true that Fab5 has a friend called Faecal Dave?’

      ‘No, Max, no, I don’t think that can be true. Can you get me some sugar?’

      ‘You don’t take sugar. And he told me what faecal meant.’

      ‘I’d like some today, please, Max.’

      Max rolled his eyes and went downstairs.

      Two messages on my phone.

      Gorgeous, you were and are the perfect gentleman. Are you as turned on – creatively(!) – as I am?

      DEff xx

      I hadn’t alienated the Talent. That was something.

      Twice I tried to wake you, you beautiful lame-assed drunken fool. And yes, I know we have to speak, and yes, you should call me when you wake up.

      I realised that I was naked, that Millicent must have undressed me, and rolled me and slipped me under the duvet. That’s love, I thought, in that one tiny action: my nakedness is proof of Millicent’s love. I wondered whether she had slept.

      Max came back in with the sugar. I put four spoonfuls into the cup and stirred.

      ‘Want me to open the blind?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘No what, Dad?’

      ‘No thanks, Max. And thank you for making coffee for me.’

      ‘That’s OK. Mum said you might want some.’

      ‘She out?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Say where she was going?’

      ‘No. Do you like the coffee?’

      ‘I love the fact that you made it for me.’

      Max left the room.

      I rang Millicent. She sounded lousy from lack of sleep.

      ‘You get my SMS, Alex?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Meet me at the Swedish?’

      ‘OK.’

      Max and I left the house at the same time and walked the first couple of blocks together. He hugged me when we parted, then set off towards school at a dog-trot.

      The Swedish didn’t make sense in an area like ours. It was all untreated oak and lightbulbs with complicated orange filaments that hovered in front of your eyes. But the coffee was good and they left you alone to drink it. Where else were people like us supposed to go in a place like Crappy?

      Millicent was sitting with her head in her hands, tiny against the vast communal table. I sat down beside her; it seemed at first as if she hadn’t seen me, as if she were somewhere very private; then she sat up, looked me in the eye, and began to speak.

      ‘I need you to understand that I have never and never would betray you, Alex.’

      She hadn’t slept. I could see the blood pulsing in her neck, smell the sourness on her breath.

      ‘So I probably need to start with the really bad stuff, and then I can explain – and I hope, I really hope you’re going to listen and to understand – how it isn’t what it looks like. Because I know it doesn’t look so good.’

      She reached into her bag and produced a small white envelope; she looked at it for a moment, then handed it to me.

      ‘So this is what the police wanted to discuss with me.’

      Inside was a single photograph. An elegant metal band, very thin at the bottom, slightly thicker on the top. Soft white gold. A line of three square-cut sapphires. My grandmother’s bracelet. My mother had given it to Millicent to welcome her to the family. It was so small that my mother could barely wear it, but was a perfect fit for Millicent’s left wrist. On the inside of the clasp I had had it engraved. MW.

      Millicent Weitzman. My wife.

      ‘Alex, they found it in his bedroom.’ The tiny safety chain was broken.

      ‘His bedroom?’

      ‘This is the bit I can’t explain. The weird thing, not the bad thing. They found it between the wall and the headboard, on the floor.’

      ‘Between the wall and the headboard?’

      ‘That’s what they said.’

      ‘OK …’

      I could think of nothing else to do, so I drank coffee. It was tepid, must have been standing for some time.

      ‘Alex, I was never in his bedroom.’

      ‘But you were in his house? Is that what you’re telling me?’

      Millicent looked past me and over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and realised I must have spoken more sharply than I’d thought. A tall Swedish girl was staring at us from behind the coffee machine. She looked away, and Millicent and I looked back towards each other.

      ‘Christ, СКАЧАТЬ