Games with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller. James Nally
began, and which of us is to blame. Top of my list: the chronic lack of sex.
By her own admission, Matt’s birth marked the death of Zoe’s sexual appetite. Of course, I wasn’t there – I didn’t even know Zoe then – but her oft-repeated, harrowing descriptions of the thirty-four-hour fanny-buster does little for either of our sex drives, in truth.
She lays the blame squarely on the National Childbirth Trust (NCT). It was the ‘Nipple-Cracked Tyrants’ – Zoe’s term – who convinced her to undergo childbirth without drugs. As someone who won’t clip a toenail without a tub of Savlon to hand, the notion of ‘natural childbirth’ boggles my mind. Ever since, she’s suffered crippling bouts of thrush, so we just ‘don’t go there’ any more, or even talk about it.
So imagine my surprise when I pick up her flashing mobile, on charge in the kitchen, click on a message from ‘Charles’, and read the words: Z, when can I see you again? Missing you every second!
My first reaction is disbelief. It’s been sent to the wrong number. Or it’s a prank. Or she’s being stalked by some loon. We’ve had that before – a hazard of her job as a forensics officer. Crime scene weirdos find out her name, rank, place of work and won’t stop calling her. But they’d never get hold of her mobile number …
I walk into our bedroom. She’s a snoring bed hump. A human landslide. It is 11pm after all.
It can wait until morning. There has to be a simple explanation, surely. I tip toe into Matt’s room. As usual, he’s face down in the cot, bum-in-the-air. I touch his hot little back, my hand earthing the familiar beats of his busy little heart. We always joke how we never want that tiny heart to be broken. Whatever her feelings for me, Zoe wouldn’t do it to him. Never.
I pad back into the sitting room, click off the TV and the lamp, pour a greedy red and fidget in the street-light orange gloom. For some reason, the Kübler-Ross model flashes into my mind. This is the Five Stages of Grief we’d been taught about – useful knowledge to any murder detective. DABDA – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression. Then, finally, Acceptance. In a murder case, any close associate of the victim failing to adhere to the DABDA protocol becomes a suspect. It’s not murder suspects I’m worried about here, but me. Am I in denial?
I’ve no idea how long it is before her phone flashes a second time. Charles again, still up, in more ways than one: Z, about to hit the hay. Won’t be able to resist touching myself thinking of you x x x
Denial leaves town without packing. Anger stares at the number, wanting to call this fucker up, have it out. My forefinger quivers over the green button. Hang on, I tell myself, I need to be smarter than this. I jot down the number, cross-reference it with the contacts in my phone. Nothing. I check Zoe’s calls and texts records, in and out. No sign of Charles. Then I notice how scant these records are. She’s already been busy deleting.
Anger hatches a plan. I deposit her phone discreetly behind the empty flower vase, taking considerably more care to hide it than philandering Zoe. I don’t want her to have any inkling that I know. I need to spring it on her in the morning, catch her cold, so that I can read her eyes.
I sit there stewing, unable to stop speculating: who is Charles? How long has this been going on? What have they done together? Who else knows about it? The thing that really bamboozles me; where has she found the time or the energy?
Hang on a minute, I remind myself, she goes out two nights a week. It was her childless former work colleagues who persuaded her to resume her pre-Matt social life.
‘I want to get back to my old self,’ she’d announced. Not as badly as me, so I agreed to babysit a couple of nights a week, hoping that ‘the girls’ could do something I clearly couldn’t – make Zoe happy again.
I went out with them once, watched them guzzle bone-dry Chardonnay by the half-pint and become feral, so I fled. I now call them the WWF, the White Wine Fiends, and sit in quivering dread of her return, just like we used to with Da.
She always thunders in with the Chardonnay rage, ranting and raving about how shit her life is and the inherent injustices of motherhood.
The mornings are worse, when she’s gripped by hungover paranoia about what she may or may not have said or done during those alarming blanks in her memory. But even this fails to poop her party lust; she wouldn’t miss her ‘girls’ nights out’ for the world. Now I’m beginning to suspect why.
Suddenly, another terrifying thought strikes – who else knows about this? Has she told her best friend? Could Sophie be trusted to keep her mouth shut? Of course not! What if everyone knows? How can I look them in the face again? How can she humiliate me like this?
Matt’s even more unsettled than usual tonight. It’s almost like he knows something is wrong. Eight or nine times I fail to placate him. It’s as if we’re both being tormented by the same quandary: How can she do this to him?
By dawn, the anger has morphed into a sick sort of satisfaction. For months, she’s been guilt-tripping me about my unsuitability for fatherhood. The Bad Dada Intifada always starts and ends with my drinking. In between that dual denunciation, she takes a tortuous route through my other myriad failings: working all the time; messiness; chronic insomnia. The irony of the latter complaint stings: guess who does the night feeds?
I’m stockpiling self-righteous claims as a Doomsday believer might tinned tuna. I can’t wait to cut her down to size. I’ll use my most patronising voice: It’s not about whether I can forgive you, Zoe, it’s whether Matt can forgive you. Dr Kübler-Ross is good. By the time Matt cries out at 6.10am, I’ve moved through Denial and Anger, and am well up for a good old Bargain.
You see, in the martyr barter that is our relationship, I’d rarely seized – let alone held – that key strategic piece of ground known as High Moral. I feel unassailable, statesman-like. Nobly, I elect to spare our confrontation until Matt goes down for his mid-morning sleep. I don’t want him to hear us rowing and be traumatised in any way. To be fair, neither would she. Despite everything, we both love that boy with all we have.
‘So,’ I say breezily as she tackles the dishwasher, ‘who is Charles?’
I’m expecting a smashed plate, a torrent of Data Protection Act-based indignation: How dare you spy on me. What I’m not expecting is a flat, emotionally detached weather report, as she focusses chiefly on installing the dishes in the right places.
The relationship has just started. Charles is no one I know. This, for reasons I don’t fully understand, provides enormous relief. She then says the things I need her to say; the things I need to hear. It’s all been a dreadful mistake. She’ll finish it with Charles, in her own time. Her saying his name aloud staggers me – the gall. But, for some reason, I find myself believing every word coming out of her lying, cheating mouth. I need to believe every word. She will end it, for sure, I conclude – if only for Matt’s sake.
I swallow hard on the gutful of questions I want to spew. Have they had sex? How many times? Where? When? Is he better than me? Bigger than me? Does she call out his name? Does she love him? In my heart, I know the one question I’m too scared to ask: Why?
‘Please stop staring at me like that, Donal,’ she says firmly. ‘I’ve promised to end it. Can we just leave it at that?’
Later, while she’s taking a shower, I get hold of her phone again to find out more. It’s locked. I try both her email accounts; she’s changed the passwords so, just like that, I’m frozen out of her life and powerless.
Green Lanes, North London
Friday, June 17, 1994; 12.00
My eyes feel dryer than old grapes and my head thumps like Christmas afternoon. I make for our bedroom but can’t