The Woman in the Photograph by Stephanie Butland

Author:Stephanie Butland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

8 March 2018

Hampton, four hours later

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Marcus says, getting to his feet, fast, when Erica walks through the door. In his arms, Tom shifts but doesn’t wake. Erica has always envied her husband’s ability to keep Tom sleeping. Her slightest move always seems to rouse him to restlessness. ‘Where have you been? Why didn’t you call? I was worried about you. I left you messages.’

‘My phone battery died.’ Erica hangs up her coat, then takes off her shoes and leaves them on the floor next to the shoe rack. She’s too tired to bend down to put them in place. Marcus will no doubt mention it when he notices, because she always points out when he doesn’t put his shoes away.

Every part of her is worn out: feet, voice, back, eyes, ears, throat. And at the same time there’s an adrenaline fizz at the solar plexus that tells her she’s a long way from sleep. She’s hungry; thirsty; thrilled; horny. ‘Wait till I tell you what I’ve been doing.’

There’s no wine in the fridge. No clean glasses, either. They had friends over last night, and of course, because Marcus has been Doing Childcare, he won’t have unloaded the dishwasher. She pours white wine from the rack into a melamine tumbler with a lion on the side of it, plonks in the last ice cube from the tray in the freezer, and goes to kiss Tom’s fluffy, warm clean-smelling head. Marcus turns his face away when she tries to kiss him, too.

‘I was worried about you.’

‘You should be glad I’m home, then.’ She sits down next to him, puts her head against his shoulder, ignoring the way his body stiffens at her touch.

‘Of course I am. I thought you would be back hours ago. You said five at the latest.’

‘Well, events overtook.’ Logic, good sense, everything she knows about Marcus tells her to say nothing more, to go and take a bath and curl her body into his when he comes to bed, put a hand on his chest and let him know that despite everything she is not too tired for him. But there is nothing circumspect in the remains of the adrenaline. ‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’

He sighs, and smiles, and frees an arm to put around her shoulders. ‘Stage dive? Tattoo? Joined the Foreign Legion?’

‘I got arrested!’ she blurts. Then, ‘Well, detained. By the police.’

‘You did what?’ Tom shifts and murmurs against the sudden tension in his father’s body.

‘A policeman tried to search my bag and I told him to fuck off. He’d been bothering Veronica about taking photographs. I didn’t think that was right. Next thing I knew I was in a police van.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Marcus turns to face her; Tom barely moves.

‘Yes! I had to wait ages at the station. They took my stuff away and searched me and I got my fingerprints taken.’ Erica holds her fingers towards him, making wriggling stars of her hands, as though they are proof, although it was done on a screen, not with ink, so there’s no trace.

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