‘I miss him,’ she sobbed. I pushed the box of tissues closer and her elegant hand groped inside, finally pulling out a large white tissue that she immediately used to cover her wrecked make-up.

 

‘How long has it been now, Gerri?’ With her faced covered, I took the opportunity to relax; stretching neck, rolling shoulders, and noticed a large cobweb caught in the chandelier fifteen feet above my head. The huge windows behind Gerri let so much light in, that much of her face was shadowed. I knew her so well I didn't need to see the anguish, I could hear it in her voice.

 

‘I miss him. I miss him so very much.’ She looked at me, mascara smudged down her cheeks, eye shadow melting into her eyes. The only things unchanged were her hands, freshly manicured, nails painted a pale pink, screwing up and flattening out the damp tissue. She was wearing his ring again, which was not a good sign. I knew exactly how long it had been as Gerri told me to the hour every time we had this conversation, and we had it very often. What was it about Gerri in this state that repulsed me? She walked into my office looking every inch the executive she was, and within minutes her face was gone and her sleek brown hair all over the place.

 

‘Six years, nine months, fifteen days and six hours.’ She paused, as she always did. ‘Why, why, why? What did I do to deserve this?’ she wailed.

 

We had been here so many times I no longer really thought about the words I said to her. Usually tall and elegant, she sat crouched and rumpled in the corner of the sofa. She had kicked off her stilettos when she first seated herself and as her feet scuffed back and forth on the Oriental rug I noticed for the first time that she wore red varnish on her toenails. ‘It wasn't your fault, Gerri.’

 

‘Of course it was!’ she snapped at me, her eyes turning hot and angry. ‘If I had tried a bit harder, if I had been a better person ...’ Fresh tears streamed down her face.

 

She had been visiting me once, and sometimes twice, a month for the last 3 years, but I was beginning to see that Gerri didn’t really want to resolve her abandonment issues. Her husband, she told me regularly, had been killed in a car accident but rather than go through the bereavement and move on, she descended into dejection, misery, sadness and despair.

 

‘Gerri ...’ The big panelled door behind me was thrown open and two men strode in.

 

‘Mrs Geraldine Thompson ...?’ asked the older, heavier, more rumpled man opening his warrant card. Gerri looked up.

 

‘Yes?’ She grabbed a tissue and vigorously blew her nose, looking apologetic.

 

‘ ... I am arresting you on suspicion of murdering Mr Jonathan Thompson on or about the twenty-sixth of August two thousand and five.'

 

(c) Rebecca Mills April 2013