THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

questions her too hard now, alone without a colleague, there’s always the danger that she could lodge a complaint against him and jeopardise the whole investigation.
    ‘If you want to talk to me,’ he says, ‘you know where I am.’
    Clara flashes him a contemptuous look. ‘Yeah. Right. Can you take me home now, please?’
    After dropping Clara at Sea’s End House, Nelson drives straight home. Michelle had been fine about him not coming back last night (she could see what the weather was like, after all), but she might be less than happy about him going in to work, especially on a Sunday. Besides, he could do with a shower and a sleep.
    More than anything, Nelson wants to go home and sleep for a week. He wants to hold his wife in his arms and drift into blameless unconsciousness. But, unfortunately, he is wracked with guilt so acute that he wonders if he will ever be able to close his eyes again. As if it’s not bad enough that he has betrayed his wife and slept with another woman, and that this other woman has given birth to his child, now he has to do it again. And what’s more, he would do it again if he could. He knows that now. Ruth has a hold over him,not just as the mother of his child either. Last night, he had wanted to make love to her. As they sat at Jack Hastings’ table in the candlelight, he had even fantasised that he was married to her. Married to a woman as bright and remarkable as Ruth, someone who would work side-by-side with him, someone who understands him, complements him, completes him. Whenever he thinks about Michelle, the first thing that comes to mind is her beauty. Nineteen years of marriage have not made him immune to the way she looks. The sight of her face can still make him catch his breath and, if he is honest, he enjoys having such a glamorous wife. If he was married to Ruth, people would no longer refer to his ‘trophy wife’ in half-admiring, half-resentful tones. No-one would say, ‘what
does
she see in him’, a comment that never fails to make him feel obscurely pleased with himself. But Nelson is attracted to Ruth, there’s no denying it. And, last night, when he looked at her across the table, he had thought that she was beautiful, her full lips curving in a smile, her hair soft and untidy. He had wanted her, and although he might blame the snow, the isolation, the worry about Kate, that was the reason why he had taken her in his arms on Clara’s bed. It was all his fault.
    ‘It’ll never happen again,’ Ruth had said. Does that mean she doesn’t want it to happen again? Nelson, even in his single days, was not a man much given to wondering if women fancied him or not. If he saw a woman he liked, he’d ask her out. If they said yes, he assumed that meant they liked him. If not; their loss. With Michelle, there had been no ambiguity. He had fallen in love with her themoment he saw her, in the Blackpool Rock Shop. Michelle had been with her little sister, buying brightly coloured sweets for party bags. Nelson had gone in with a friend to buy a joke present for a stag do. They had got chatting. Nelson, oblivious of his friend’s rolling eyes and the little sister’s giggles, had asked for Michelle’s phone number. ‘She’s out of your league, mate,’ his friend had said as they left the shop clutching a disgustingly phallic stick of rock. But Nelson had never thought so. She’d given him her number, hadn’t she? And he was right. They were married six months later.
    So he is not really equipped to work out whether Ruth is in love with him or not. The sex, he has to admit, is fantastic. They are bound together forever because of Kate, but love? He doesn’t say the word, even to himself. He does know that sometimes he fantasises that he could have them both, the beautiful wife and the brilliant mistress, that he could enjoy both his teenage daughters and his miraculous baby. But he knows that life isn’t like that. Nelson was brought up a Catholic. He knows that he is overdue some gigantic, cosmic retribution. The best he can hope for, he thinks, as he turns wearily into his drive, is that it holds off long enough for him to solve this case.
    Entering the house, he is met by the most wonderful smell, the smell of childhood, evocative enough to make his mouth water and his eyes prickle. Michelle comes into the hall, wearing an apron over a designer tracksuit.
    ‘I thought I’d do a roast for a change,’ she says. ‘It’s such a cold day.’
    Nelson