She gripped the arms of his chair. ‘Look at me. Look at me!’
He wouldn’t and she felt such anguish; she was close enough to touch him and yet he was refusing to allow her near.
‘Right, fuck you then.’ She straightened, returned to her bag and started packing up her things. ‘If this is the way you want it.’
‘It is. Just go away, Anna. Leave me — I mean it.’
She made quite a show of putting aside the things she had brought for him and getting her car keys. He remained silent.
She really didn’t have anything else she could say, apart from, ‘Goodbye. Please don’t bother to show me out.’
She had never heard his voice so soft and painful. ‘I’m sorry.’
She chucked her keys onto the table and went to him, wrapping him in her arms. ‘Please don’t send me away.’
‘I’m sorry; you are the only thing I have.’
‘Then for God’s sake, stop this nonsense and never, never do it again to me. You hurt me and I get all confused, because I love you so much.’
He said it — hardly audible, but he said it. ‘I love you, Anna.’
They kissed. It wasn’t a passionate embrace, but the kiss was sweet and gentle. He touched her face. ‘I wait all day to see you, then I behave like a bastard.’
‘I wait all day to be with you.’ She drew up a chair to be able to sit close to him and hold his hand. He gripped it so tightly it hurt, but she didn’t mind.
Anna eventually had to leave, but there was a quiet understanding between them that had never been there before. When he kissed her goodbye, he whispered that he would count the hours until he saw her again. He was tearful again; it was so poignant and heartbreaking.
Langton waved to her as she crossed the car park. He had gone by the time she was sitting inside her car. She waited for a few moments before she was able to cry. He had never been so vulnerable, so dependent and so scared of the future. She drove home with such mixed feelings churning up inside her. The reality was, she didn’t honestly know how she would be able to cope with him coming home. If he remained as incapacitated as he was now, there was no way he could return to work. She knew her love would have to be very strong to deal with him and the probability that he would be an invalid for the rest of his life.
Anna was still deeply unsettled when she got home. She made some hot chocolate and sat up in bed, thinking about her parents. Isabella Travis had been like a child in many ways. She had been sexually assaulted as a young art student. Anna’s father, Jack, had investigated the case, became her protector and subsequently her husband. Anna’s entire childhood had been blissfully ignorant of any trauma; they had kept it so far removed from her that she had never known the truth until both parents were dead. Could she, like her father, take on Langton and love him, no matter what?
Anna continued to work on Murphy’s forthcoming trial; at the same time, she made the daily visits to see Langton. She found it very exhausting to drive the distance every night there and back before going into the station the next morning. Some nights, the prognosis was good and he was cheerful; other nights, he was morose and in great pain. The injury to his knee was taking a long time to heal, but what made her really worried was the latest talk she had with the head nurse.
He described Langton’s physical condition as 50 per cent better; however, he was not mentally coping with the injuries. He was, as she well knew, deeply angry, but what she had been unprepared for was to be told that he was suffering from deep depression. He was also drinking heavily and creating ill-feeling amongst the other patients.
It did not help for Anna to be told that, during these rehabilitation periods, many officers behaved in much the same way. They were so used to being in controclass="underline" to lose it became so emotionally debilitating that often the nurses, physiotherapists and psychiatrists were unable to make any headway until they were about to be discharged. Anna could not bring herself to ask if it was conceivable that Langton would be able to return to work. It was looking highly unlikely, every visit.
It was not until the weekend, however, when she was checking through the bundle of newspaper clippings she had taken from Langton’s flat, that she became most concerned.
1. Hunt for child sex attacker who cut off his tag to flee bail hostel. The suspect’s photograph was ringed in pencil.
2. Why was this rapist who butchered our beautiful daughter allowed to walk the streets unsupervised? The article was underlined twice.
3. This Latvian came to Britain after raping two women. Now he’s accused of the murder of a schoolgirl here. The suspect’s photo had a black mark across his face.
4. The one hundred year backlog on asylum. This article was so heavily underlined that the pen had cut through the newspaper.
5. UK passports for 200,000 foreigners.
6. Asylum seekers come first. He’d underlined this in red.
7. 23 foreign offenders allowed to walk free.
8. Offenders. Reoffenders convicted of fresh crimes including drugs, violent disorder, grievous and actual body harm, and two murders. The row of faces was again ringed, with odd dates jotted down beside them.
9. Will no one pay for this fiasco? A thousand convicts lost in the system. Again, Langton had underlined sections.
10. Super hostels planned for free sex offenders. This had a deep, thick pencil cross over it.
11. Hunt for released killers.
12. One immigrant arrives in Britain EVERY minute. The article went on to show migrants hiding their faces, as they prepared another bid to cross the Channel illegally.
13. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT who worked at the Old Bailey was twice deported.
14. Paedophile backlash: website identifying convicted offenders could drive them into hiding in fear of vigilantes, warns probation supremo.
15. TRAVESTY: asylum seeker raped a child and got an eight-year sentence, then chose to stay in jail rather than be deported. now we are paying him fifty thousand for his inconvenience.
16. Child rapists’ rights were put before victims.
17. Life means six years: almost one hundred murders were committed by criminals supposedly under the supervision of probation officers in the past two years; chilling figures are a shocking indictment of Government failure across the board to protect the public…
18. DOSSIER reveals 50 dangerous convicts in our open prisons.
There were over thirty more cuttings, all about the Home Office’s inept handling of the deportation of illegal immigrants and the appalling situation that had resulted. Why had Langton kept them? Not only had he cut them out, but his handwriting was also scrawled across them, and he had ringed photographs of suspects.
She wondered if any of them had any connection to his own case, but they were all dated before he was attacked. Anna packed them away in a folder; she would bring it up next time she went to visit. Then she worried: maybe she shouldn’t ask him about them, as it would look as if she had been snooping around his flat. She decided she would contact Mike Lewis again.
Lewis agreed to drop by her place later that afternoon. It was almost three when he turned up and said he couldn’t stay long as he was working. He seemed very uneasy.
‘I’ve felt bad about not going to see him but you know, work pressures and with a wife and new kid on the way…’ He trailed off, obviously feeling guilty.