“You bitch!” she screamed. “You bitch! I know exactly who you are and I’ll get you for this. I’ll ruin you. You’ll see.”
For a moment Karen thought the other woman was going to hit her, and she wouldn’t have altogether blamed her had she done so. Involuntarily, she took a step backwards. Her nakedness made her feel quite defenceless.
But Sarah Cooper was not that interested in Karen, it seemed. Instead she swung around to face her husband.
“And you...!” she began, still screaming. “As for you, I never want to see you again as long as you live. You are not my husband anymore, you bastard. You are no longer the father of my children.”
She ran back across the room, then, to Cooper and slapped him just once across the face. He flinched, and still seemed unable to find any words.
“I am going to make absolutely sure that you never see the children again,” she stormed. Then she pushed past him and out through the door he was still holding open. He let go of it at once and lurched across the room to pick up his clothes, which were also all over the floor.
“I have to go after her, I have to go after her,” he gasped, his voice sounding strangulated, as he struggled into his trousers and shirt.
Karen just watched in silence. There was nothing much she could say and it was pretty obvious she was not in any case going to be given a chance to say it. Cooper seemed almost to have forgotten she was there.
Once he was dressed, after a fashion, he picked up his car keys from the bedside table and took off at a run. In fact, he was in so much of a hurry that he actually opened the door and left the room without speaking to her again. She stood trembling with shock. She had a pain in her stomach. She felt as if she had been abandoned in another universe. This was Phil, the man she loved more than she had thought possible. And, now that he had been confronted by his wife, he did not even have time to give her one small word of comfort.
Just before closing the door, however, he put his head back around it.
“You’ll cover for me tomorrow, won’t you, Karen?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied glumly. She had tried to put irony into her voice, but he didn’t even notice.
He was gone almost at once. She stood for a few seconds more, the events of the last few minutes racing through her brain. She feared that she was well enough aware of what it all meant. Phil’s reaction had spoken for itself. He was a family man. She had known that. His family had been everything to him until she came along.
And if it came to a choice between her and his children, there was going to be no contest at all. She supposed she had always known that, really. Now she was absolutely certain of it.
She let her clothes fall to the floor again and threw herself onto the bed where so recently she and he had made love so splendidly. And so lovingly.
“You really are a bloody fool, Karen Meadows,” she muttered to herself.
Then, not for the first time during her brief relationship with DS Phil Cooper, she buried her head in the pillows and sobbed her heart out.
Chapter Seventeen
In the morning Karen made herself rise early. She showered, brushed her teeth and scrubbed at her red swollen face. She ordered breakfast and she asked reception to arrange a hire-car. She had, after all, been abandoned without transport. But her job now was to forget the ordeal she had been through.
She had an important post-mortem examination to attend. She had a murder enquiry to run. She was Detective Superintendent Karen Meadows. She was not destined to have a man in her life, to have a family, to have a relationship that meant everything to her — unlike, it seemed to her, just about everyone else that she knew. It was as simple as that. Her destiny was her work and nothing else, she told herself. And that was a mess now, too.
She found she couldn’t eat the scrambled egg and bacon she had made herself order. The tea, however, was welcome. She was on the second cup when her mobile phone rang for the first time that day. She guessed who it was even before checking the display panel.
“Hello, Phil,” she said flatly.
“Karen, I’m so sorry about everything,” he said. Cooper’s voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched and had a definite quaver in it.
“I just don’t know what to do,” he went on.
“I think you’ve done it, Phil.”
“Karen, I didn’t have any choice. I had to go after her. Sarah’s my wife. She’s the mother of my children. I can’t lose my children. I really can’t.”
“Fine.” Karen didn’t really want to hear any of this. She had, in any case, already known it.
“How did it happen, anyway?” she asked. “Why did she come to Bournemouth?”
“She told me she’d had suspicions about you and me for some time. I thought I was being so bloody clever, but apparently I wasn’t at all. She said that it was the way I was behaving, the hours I was keeping, even the way I spoke about you, that made her start wondering. Sarah and I have been together a long time. She knows me very well. When I called and told her I was staying overnight at the Bournemouth Hilton she told me she somehow immediately guessed that I was sharing a room with you. So she simply phoned the hotel and asked if Mr. and Mrs. Cooper had checked in. The reply was all the confirmation she needed.”
“And she came all the way to Bournemouth just to check it out?”
“I suppose so. She said she still couldn’t quite believe it, she had to see for herself. So she took the kids round to her mother’s and drove straight here.”
“Well, she certainly saw for herself, all right. What now?”
“God knows. I was in too much of a state to do or say anything sensible last night. And she was in a state, too. But she’s not having any so far, that’s for sure. She made me sleep out in the car last night.”
“Right.” Karen took note of the self-pity in his voice. He had yet to even ask how she was feeling, what she might be going through. Apart from anything else, Sarah Cooper, with or without justification, had threatened to ruin Karen, and Karen had taken that threat absolutely seriously. It would be extremely easy to carry out. All the woman had to do was contact the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary top brass and let them know what had been going on, that a detective superintendent had been having an affair with a married junior officer, and Karen would be in very serious trouble indeed. This was not, however, what was foremost in her mind. She felt as if her emotions had been hit by a bulldozer, and the bulldozer just kept crashing on and on.
“Look, I can’t work today, I really can’t,” Phil continued. “I’ve got to try to sort this mess out.”
So that’s what I am, thought Karen, a mess.
Aloud she said: “OK, don’t worry. I’ll say you were called home urgently because of family sickness. All right?”
“You’re a brick, Karen.”
“Aren’t I, though?” Her sarcasm was actually directed at herself rather than him.
“Well, thanks anyway. Look, as soon as I’ve got to grips with this I’ll get back to you, OK?”
“Of course.” She couldn’t believe it. He sounded as if he were in a business meeting. Get back to her? Good God!
“Oh, and Karen, I think I left my watch behind. Could you bring it with you?”
“Sure.” She’d noticed it on the bedside table earlier, and his tie was still lying on the floor.
He rang off then, barely saying goodbye. Karen sat looking at her phone for a moment or two. Her hands were trembling. It had been like talking to a stranger. Phil was now going to attempt a reconciliation with his wife, she assumed. And he seemed to just take it for granted that she would accept that. She would accept it, too, of course. In any case, what choice did she have?