Jack Be Nimble

Chapter 4

4

Eight and a half years did a lot to a person. It had certainly done a lot to Jack Culverhouse, and he could see it had done a lot to Helen. In many ways she was still the same person he’d known so well, but he could also see the effect life had had on her. In many ways, it had been cruel.

‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said as he leant back in the armchair and rubbed his brow with his thumb and forefinger, having spent the last couple of hours enduring baseless small talk. ‘What did you say to Emily?’

‘When?’ Helen asked, looking up at him.

‘When you went away. And after. Since then.’

‘Nothing,’ she replied, not sounding altogether convincing.

‘Don’t lie to me, Helen. It’s my job to know when people are lying.’

Helen made a derisive snort and looked away. ‘And there it goes again. The job.’

‘Don’t change the subject,’ he said, leaning forward in the chair. ‘I don’t believe for a second that she wouldn’t want to see me. I’m her dad.’

‘She doesn’t remember you, Jack. She was three years old.’

Culverhouse jumped to his feet and walked over to the window. ‘It doesn’t matter if she remembers me. That’s not the point. Any kid would want to see their dad if they hadn’t seen him for eight and a half years. Unless they’d been told some bullshit about him and made to believe he was some kind of animal.’ He looked at Helen as he said this and thought he detected an almost imperceptible reaction in her eyes. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve fed her some story to stop her wanting to come back. What is it? What did you tell her?’ he asked, his voice having now risen almost to the level of shouting.

‘I didn’t need to tell her anything, Jack. You managed to do that all yourself. She might only have been three years old but kids pick things up at that age. Look at you, stood there trying to intimidate me. Is it any wonder she doesn’t want to see you?’

‘That’s f*****g bullshit, Helen and you know it,’ he replied, getting angrier as he spoke. ‘Yes, I’m shouting at you and yes I’m f*****g angry but you made me like this. Don’t ever try to say I was like this back then, because I wasn’t. Yes, I was dedicated to my job — and I still am — but I was happy. I was positive. I was calm. I wasn’t an angry person back then and you know it.’

Helen smirked. ‘What, so it’s my fault now is it?’

‘I never asked you to leave, Helen. I didn’t even know there was a problem until I came home that night and found your letter.’

Helen stood and rose to meet his eye. ‘And if you had known, would you have done anything about it? Would you have changed?’

Culverhouse was silent for a moment longer than Helen might have liked. ‘I would’ve tried.’

‘Tried? Oh yes, you always tried. But trying’s not always good enough, Jack. You know, I thought I was mad coming back here. I hoped we might be able to get along like adults and get to the point where Emily would want to see you and we could have some sort of normality. I can see that’s not going to happen. I don’t know why I wasted my time.’ As she bent down to pick up her handbag and leave, Culverhouse grabbed her arm as if to stop her going, knocking the handbag out of her hand as the two of them watched the small cardboard packet fall out and land on the carpet. He bent down to pick it up.

‘Aripiprazole,’ he said, reading the packet. ‘What is it?’

Helen grabbed the packet from him and stuffed it back into her bag. ‘It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.’

He put an arm on her shoulder and guided her to sit back down. ‘It’s obviously not nothing. Tell me, Helen. What’s it for?’

Helen remained silent for a few moments before letting out a huge sigh. ‘It’s for helping me cope.’

‘Cope? With what?’

‘With life. It helps stabilise my moods and stop me doing daft, compulsive things and upsetting people.’

Culverhouse rubbed his brow. ‘What do you mean? Is it like depression or a mental breakdown or something?’

‘No, not really,’ she replied, before realising that he was still none the wiser. ‘It’s a crossover of Cluster B personality disorders, they think mostly BPD and HPD but with elements of ASPD.’

Culverhouse looked at his wife. ‘You know I don’t have a f*****g clue what you’re on about, right?’

‘I’m a nut job, Jack. I don’t think properly and I hurt people.’

‘Christ. They give you drugs for that now? Maybe I should get myself a prescription.’

‘It’s not a joke,’ she said, making eye contact with him. ‘I had... an episode. An incident. I spoke to doctors and they started me on some treatment programmes. This is why I wanted to come and see you. To help make amends for the past and to deal with my issues.’

Culverhouse just nodded, trying to understand but failing.

‘Look, it’s best that I go now. We can catch up at a better time. I’m here for a little while yet,’ she said, scribbling a mobile phone number down on a scrap of paper in her bag. ‘This is my UK mobile. Give me a call tomorrow and we’ll sort something out properly.’

‘Right. So we’re just leaving it like that, are we?’ Culverhouse said, pocketing the piece of paper.

‘I think it’s best we both get some sleep,’ came the reply.

‘Sleep? Oh yeah, I’ll nod off nicely after all this,’ Culverhouse said. ‘Put my mind right at rest, this has.’

‘What do you want to know?’ Helen asked, sitting back down on the edge of the sofa.

‘Well, everything. But for now, this personality thing. The disorder. What... What does it do?’

‘I’m not about to flip out and kill you if that’s what you mean,’ she replied, smiling. ‘I don’t know if it’s something that has always been there or if it’s developed. It definitely started to get worse around the time I left. It was like some sort of uncontrollable impulse. I had to go. I had to. It just overrode everything else. I had no thought for what it would do to you or Emily or to anyone else. Looking back now, it seems mad. But hindsight’s biggest downfall is that it’s always too late, isn’t it?’

‘I guess so,’ Culverhouse replied, finally feeling as though he had her in a position where she felt comfortable to talk. This was progress, he told himself. ‘What did you do, though? What did you say? I mean, Emily was only young at the time but you must’ve had to explain it to her at some point since.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You know, your friends wouldn’t speak to me after. I remember one day I was in town and I saw that girl Janice you used to work with. She’d just crossed the road with a double buggy and as soon as she saw me she crossed straight back over again. She looked right at me and it was like she’d seen a ghost.’ Culverhouse looked at his wife as if willing her to explain. ‘Why would she do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Helen said. ‘She’d always been a bit odd.’

‘Tell me the truth, Helen. We’re both being open and honest now.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t say a word.’

Culverhouse could feel the blood pulsing in his veins as he got angrier. ‘Helen, I’m a police officer. I know when people are lying and holding things back. And I know damn well when people have been told things that aren’t true. Like your friends. And Emily. You spun them a web of lies about me and now you can’t find your way out of it. Am I right or am I right?’ he barked, now inches from her face.

She stood up. ‘Alright, yes. I did. I told them all you were a f*****g monster. And do you know what? It looks like I was right.’ She picked up her bag and marched towards the front door before he could stop her, only pausing once she had her hand on the latch. ‘You know what? I felt really shitty about what I’d done. I admit, I was wrong about you before. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said those things. But after seeing how you’ve changed, I feel vindicated. You know that monster I invented? You’ve become him, Jack.’

The door slammed in front of him as his wife walked out again. At least this time he had something approaching an explanation.

He walked into his kitchen and tried to make sense of what had just happened over the past couple of hours. As he tried to piece everything together, his mobile phone vibrated in his pocket; a long, repeating pattern which told him he had an incoming call. He pulled it out and jabbed the answer button.

‘Culverhouse.’

Once again, work had got in the way.