A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

      She reached into her bag and produced a small white envelope; she looked at it for a moment, then handed it to me.

      ‘So this is what the police wanted to discuss with me.’

      Inside was a single photograph. An elegant metal band, very thin at the bottom, slightly thicker on the top. Soft white gold. A line of three square-cut sapphires. My grandmother’s bracelet. My mother had given it to Millicent to welcome her to the family. It was so small that my mother could barely wear it, but was a perfect fit for Millicent’s left wrist. On the inside of the clasp I had had it engraved. MW.

      Millicent Weitzman. My wife.

      ‘Alex, they found it in his bedroom.’ The tiny safety chain was broken.

      ‘His bedroom?’

      ‘This is the bit I can’t explain. The weird thing, not the bad thing. They found it between the wall and the headboard, on the floor.’

      ‘Between the wall and the headboard?’

      ‘That’s what they said.’

      ‘OK …’

      I could think of nothing else to do, so I drank coffee. It was tepid, must have been standing for some time.

      ‘Alex, I was never in his bedroom.’

      ‘But you were in his house? Is that what you’re telling me?’

      Millicent looked past me and over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and realised I must have spoken more sharply than I’d thought. A tall Swedish girl was staring at us from behind the coffee machine. She looked away, and Millicent and I looked back towards each other.

      ‘Christ, Millicent, what’s going on?’

      ‘Nothing, Alex. Please believe that.’

      ‘Right. Can’t be. Of course. He’s dead now.’

      ‘Sure. I probably deserve that, Alex.’

      She was going to cry. That small-child voice. The redness of her eyes.

      She swallowed hard. Pinched the bridge of her nose. Breathed out purposefully. Perhaps she wasn’t going to cry.

      ‘I lied to you. That’s the way you’re going to interpret it, and I guess it’s a reasonable interpretation. It is a lie of omission; I didn’t tell you.’

      ‘Didn’t tell me what?’

      ‘That I knew Bryce.’

      ‘I thought Bryce was his last name?’

      Millicent gave a tiny flinch.

      ‘You called him by his last name? Stylish.’

      ‘I didn’t betray you, Alex.’ She was looking at me very directly now. I held her gaze, trying to find the lie.

      ‘There was no sex. Just so that thought has been spoken. But I did know him. Better than I said.’

      ‘Do you mean there was no sex in the American understanding of the term? You know, the Bill Clinton defence?’

      ‘I mean there was no sex of any sort.’

      ‘So we’re talking British no sex. Just to be clear, in this country that does preclude oral.’

      ‘I really hope you can understand that this is not what it looks like.’

      ‘Funny, Millicent, because it still looks to me like what it looks like.’

      ‘You have a right to be angry, Alex.’

      ‘Who says I’m angry?’

      ‘OK,’ she said, uncertain.

      ‘I’m not angry.’

      ‘Most people would be in this situation, Alex.’

      ‘Oh, so now you’re some sort of objective voice. Instead of a wife admitting to sleeping with the next-door neighbour.’

      ‘I did not admit to sleeping with him.’

      ‘No. No, you didn’t admit to that.’ I looked around, felt eyes on me from behind the coffee machine, and for a moment caught the gaze of the Swedish girl. I tried to smile, but she looked away.

      ‘Don’t try to enlist help, Alex. We have to deal with this as a couple.’

      ‘I’m enlisting help? Because I smiled at that pretty Swedish girl?’

      ‘Yeah. You played that one to the gallery.’

      I was shaking now. I kept my voice as quiet as I could.

      ‘No, Millicent, I am not angry, and no, I am not trying to enlist help, and no, I was not playing to the fucking gallery. I just want to find out what you’ve done.’

      ‘OK, sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t easy for me.’

      ‘We’re talking about infidelity – your infidelity – and you accuse me of flirting with the girl who makes the coffee?’

      I made to laugh, but it came out too much like a sigh. Millicent took my hand then, and there was something so wounded and so vulnerable about her gaze that I wanted to draw her towards me and comfort her, as if she were the wronged party. Her eyes flicked towards the coffee machine, then back towards me.

      ‘It’s only because she’s tall that she’s even in my line of sight,’ I said.

      ‘Tall, blonde, taut and twenty,’ she said. ‘The antithesis of me.’

      ‘How is twenty the opposite of thirty-five?’ I said.

      ‘So the rest of that you’re not arguing with? Motherfuck.’

      The laughter froze on my lips. ‘Promise me on your life that you didn’t sleep with the neighbour,’ I was about to say, but the manager appeared at our side and quietly asked us if there was anything the matter. When I said no, and asked if he would mind leaving us to continue our discussion, he became very Swedish. He said that it was clear that our conversation was of a highly personal nature, that we were both highly emotional people, that this was obviously a matter about which we both felt strongly, and that once we had resolved the issue we would be welcome back any time.

      At this point I became abusive. I told him that I would never again besmirch the clean white bloody linen of his bloody Swedish bloody cake shop.

      That at least is how I remember the conversation: my use of language may have been less precise, and it’s possible I used a stronger word than bloody.

      ‘Great,’ said Millicent, as we began walking home.

      ‘What? It’s a cake shop.’

      ‘He did nothing wrong, Alex.’

      ‘And I did? Are you trying to tell me that getting us thrown out of a café in Crappy is, like, real bad? Or are you telling me that what you did is real bad, y’all. Because right now I’m a little confused, Millicent.’

      ‘Y’all is Texas, and it’s a plural form, and you’re being sophomoric. I’m going home. You can join me or not join me. Your choice.’

      I watched her go, the anger of the righteous man coursing through me, dangerously electric. I looked down at my right hand, and saw that I’d been clenching it so tightly that the nail of my index finger had cut into the nail bed of the thumb. I brought the thumb to my mouth, and sucked at the welling blood. It too tasted electric, metallic: the air before a lightning storm.

      A pair of young Somali girls walked past, staring at me, giggling. It was only when they’d gone that I realised what they’d seen: a grown man standing on the pavement sucking his thumb.

      My mother called. This really wasn’t the time. I rejected the call and headed home.

      Pride,