The Light of Day: A Novel by Graham Swift Read Free Book Online Page B

there’d been some flash of nakedness.
    All I’d seen were her knees.
    She zipped up the bag.
    I said, “I’m about to close shop anyway.” (Sometimes Rita locks up too. And she could think what she liked.) “Would you like a drink?”

12
    Yet another thing I never expected: that they’d thank you for it, like you for it, when they ought to hate you for it. You’re the one, after all, who gives them the bad news, the messenger who ought to get shot.
    Yes, it’s pretty much as you imagined, yes, it looks like your marriage is wrecked . . .
    And what’s more, you’re a man. One of
them.
Another of the bastards.
    But if you start off their enemy, their hired enemy, you become, bit by bit, their ally, their friend, at least with some of them you do. You’re in this thing together, it’s between just you two. And who else do they have who’s going to tell them this painful, intimate truth?
    Some of them of course don’t ever drop their guard. With some of them it’s always mind how you tread.
    You have to learn to make allowances—to develop a bedside manner (not something you pick up in the Force). Part counsellor, part comforter. They’ve all had to nerve themselves, they all think they’re unique, and it wouldn’t do to set them straight: My bread and butter, sweetheart, you’re not alone . . .
    “In your own time . . . In your own words . . .”
    (Who else’s words would they be?)
    Their ally, sometimes, their accomplice. It almost turns into an adventure. And sometimes it’s at the very moment they learn the worst that they most become your friend. They thank you for it—they even pay you for it. Who else could have spelt it out to them so plainly? You see them in their humiliation, their anger, their first rush of revenge. They’re on the rebound. And before you know it, though you’re ready with the Kleenex, the whisky bottle, the well-practised words, it’s not you who’s putting out an arm (though you could be forgiven for it, it’s even the best thing you could do), it’s they who’ve reached for you. They’ve come to hire you to be their detective, to do this and do that, but before you know it what they most want you to do is give them a hug.
    “They’re mostly women, Helen . . .”
    When I fell into disgrace many years ago—when I left the Force and Rachel left me—it was Helen who came to my side. I don’t mean she thought I was blameless, but she came to my side. The strangest thing, when we’d been such enemies. When you might have thought she’d have relished it, gloated over it. At least have taken her mother’s side.
    But she took my side.
    The strangest thing. She’s almost thirty now, and I’m turned fifty. The years between us haven’t changed, but when we see each other now it feels like we’re just two contemporaries, two grown-ups. So different from when, say, I was thirty-something and she was just fifteen. She used to make my life a misery—as if police work couldn’t be tough enough—she used to give me hell.
    I think she hated me. She might have hated both of us, but I know she hated me, and it was my being a cop that put the seal on it. “My dad’s a policeman”: it simply wasn’t a cool or easy thing for any teenager to say in those days. Even if I wore plain clothes, even if it didn’t show that much. My dad’s a policeman and therefore one of the ones on the other side. My dad’s a policeman and therefore one of the pigs.
    I’d sometimes wonder—small comfort—if it wouldn’t have been worse if I’d had a son. On the other hand, sometimes I wished I’d had a son—as well—to take away some of Helen’s heat.
    The sulks, the tempers, the silences that burned. Where does it all get brewed? And Rachel, a primary-school teacher, used to the tantrums of little brats. But Rachel and Helen, I thought, had some kind of bond that was beyond me. How does it work—a policeman’s daughter, a policeman’s wife? I always thought they were