From Chapter Six
As he removed his sweat-soaked T-shirt, his eyes were drawn towards the thick ridge of scar tissue that sat in the centre of his chest. He never liked to touch the mark – it didn’t feel like a part of him – but he allowed his fingertips to dab at the edges of the fatty tissue that surrounded the scar.
‘Oh, Jesus . . .’
Valentine wondered what was happening to him. He felt like he had been given another chance at life, but he doubted whether he deserved it.
Why would he be given another chance at life? What had he done to receive that great gift? He thought about Clare and how she had begged him to leave the force, to take a desk job – administration, pencil-pushing, it didn’t matter.
She knew he was lucky to be alive and she didn’t want to take the chance on losing him again.
Valentine started to run the cold tap and, slowly, to douse the back of his neck with water.
The first splash made him shiver, and a few beads escaped down the side of his chest and flanked the scar that kept grabbing his gaze.
He didn’t want to look in the mirror, but this alien object that signified a new right to life demanded his attention.
He picked up the hand towel and dried himself down. As his breathing eased into a slow, steady rhythm, he reached for the light switch and clicked it to off, then he began to move back towards the bedroom and his wife.
He knew he needed to attempt some type of explanation, to give Clare some reason as to why he had changed his mind, why he had gone back on everything he had told her he would do.
The bedroom was in blackness; only the orange fizz of the street lamps burned beyond the strips of blinds. He lowered himself down on the edge of the bed and placed a hand on Clare’s bare back. She murmured for a moment and then patted his side of the bed.
‘Clare, I need to talk to you . . .’
‘Tomorrow. I need to sleep.’
‘It’s important.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
Valentine got into the bed and drew up the duvet. ‘I’m not doing this for me.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Taking on this case . . . I can’t explain it.’
‘Well, good. We can talk tomorrow.’
Valentine reached over to turn on the bedside light; Clare grumbled and sat up.
‘Right you have my attention, can we get this over with?’
‘About earlier, when you saw the case files, I knew you wouldn’t be pleased.’
She tutted. ‘And you knew why.’
‘Clare, please, I’m trying to explain . . . I feel like I’ve changed, been through some kind of life crisis after . . .’
‘It was a crisis all right, you nearly died, Bob! Jesus Christ, you nearly left me a widow and . . .’ She looked away.
Valentine’s emotional-response signal flared. ‘And who’d have cleared your Visa bills then . . . Was that what you were going to say?’
He watched his wife raise a hand to her thinned lips. ‘That’s not what I was going to say at all.’
‘I’m sorry. That was a low blow.’
Clare looked towards the ceiling and shook her head. ‘I couldn’t tell you when I last bought a thing.’
Valentine sighed. ‘I don’t want to bring that up again . . .’
He ran his fingers through his wet hair and turned
away from Clare. ‘I’m just not myself at the moment.’
‘You’re bloody right you’re not. I don’t understand you any more, I used to think I did. I look at you now and I . . .’
He interrupted. ‘You just don’t see where I’m coming from. I feel I have this new chance and that I should make a difference. I can’t properly explain it, Clare, I feel like a different man.’
Clare put her head in her hands. She held herself on the edge of the bed for a moment and then she turned to face her husband. ‘Well, you’re certainly that. You just look through me and the girls now. There was a time when you wouldn’t have put us second best to some vague notion or late-flush of ambition . . .’
She met his gaze for a second but couldn’t hold it. ‘Oh, just forget it. Forget everything.’ Clare reclined in the bed, turned over and switched off the light.
As the darkness of the room enveloped Valentine, his spirit shrivelled inside him. He thought about reaching out and touching his wife’s bare shoulder, saying sorry again and trying to talk. But he didn’t want to be rebuffed. He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes, but knew sleep was going to be hard to find in his current state of mind.
Artefacts of the Dead by Tony Black, £7.99 paperback, Black & White Publishing.