The Perfect Couple by Jane McLoughlin

Author:Jane McLoughlin [McLoughlin, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

After the police officers left, Rob tiptoed from the hallway back into the kitchen and picked up his briefcase. He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his chinos and checked something. What, Jacey couldn’t tell. A message, or text, or the time of the next train.

“You OK to be left alone, Jace?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His eyes were still on the phone. “Well, you pissed your pants last night, got involved in some fucking crime in Brighton—”

“I had nothing to do with what happened to Rael, and I didn’t—”

“After going on a crazy spree to Cambridgeshire.”

“It wasn’t crazy,” Jacey said. She thought about Rael, in hospital, injured. Her friend who supported her when her own husband wouldn’t.

“What was it then?”

Finally, he looked at her. His face was steel, so much in control. No movement. No feeling.

“Yesterday I stopped off at the university so I could have lunch with you. A nice surprise I hoped, only you weren’t there, even though it’s on your calendar that you would be. Even though you told me to my face that you had a lecture at ten o’clock.”

Rob didn’t even blink. “Plans change in real life, Jacey.”

“I felt like a complete idiot trying to find you, so I called up the one person I knew besides you, and he made time for me. And we went for a harmless day trip to the town where my grandmother is from, and the guy I went with is gay—”

“I thought you said he was trans.”

“He’s gay and trans, but that doesn’t matter.” She felt a swelling of anger rise up in her chest. “What matters is that he’s seriously hurt, and you’re making stupid insinuations about him that just aren’t true. Just because you mess around—”

“I had a meeting. For work. My job. And then I had dinner. Also with a man.”

“You didn’t answer any of my messages—”

“Because they didn’t make sense. I knew you were drunk—”

“I was scared.”

“You were like some crazy person, Jacey, crying and screaming, and then I get up in the morning and I see you here, lying in a puddle of piss. . .”

“I wasn’t drunk. I was terrified.”

“Of what? Going to the bathroom? Afraid some bogeyman was going to reach out of the toilet bowl and grab you in the ass?”

As she waited for the bells to start tinkling again, or the hollowing to suck all the sound and air from the room, she stood still. Said nothing. Watched him shake his head at her and make for the door.

She was happy to see him go. For once, she was glad to be alone in the house. She needed to think, about what the police had told her, about what Rob had done yesterday, about Cambridgeshire, and the sounds she’d heard that were more than anything a storm could have caused.

When he was gone, she washed the dishes, swept the kitchen floor, picked up her wet clothes and the blanket that probably stank of piss, too, and put them in the washing machine.

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