Breaking The Cycle By Gytha Lodge

She saw it so clearly in Lisa’s relationship, so now it was time to sort out her own house…

Juliette Hanson had learned to trust the tickling sensation in the back of her mind. The niggling sense of something wrong, to be dug out.

It had guided her when, as a constable only a few months into wearing the uniform, she’d interviewed a man who had claimed his neighbours were harassing him. A sob story she had slowly realised had been a systematic attempt to have his “foreign” neighbours kicked out. And it had served her when an apparent robbery had turned out to be insurance fraud.

Today, in a narrow semi-detached house in Hawkesley, she could feel the same sensation.

It should be a fairly straightforward situation. A middle-aged man from Solihull had reported a bike theft from his locked garden shed. He had then found his bike for sale on eBay, and had posed as a buyer until the seller had offered up address details. He had then sent them over to West Midland’s police. Juliette had been handed the details, and had headed over with two constables.

She was the sergeant now, the senior officer. Though soon she would be a detective, swapping the uniform of a sergeant for the plain clothes of a detective constable. It couldn’t come soon enough, as far as she was concerned.

The eBay seller had signed everything “Lisa,” and the address they’d been given was owned by someone called Lisa Kaye. Lisa’s account seemed to have three other bikes listed, too, which made it all seem simple enough.

However, when they had arrived and confronted Lisa and her partner, the woman had immediately told them that she herself had only bought the bike from gumtree the day before.

“From an Asian guy,” she’d added. “Really tall and a bit intimidating. But I didn’t have any details for him. He just dropped it round. And then when I tried it, the bike was too big. But I’d deleted his messages so I had to sell it myself.”

Lisa wasn’t behaving that differently from most people when faced with three officers in uniform. She smiled a lot, and apologised almost as much, and spoke a little bit too quickly. Her partner John seemed less anxious.

“She did tell me she was buying a bike,” he offered. “I said I hoped she could afford it. But you should always get a phone number and address,” he added. “I’ve told her before. What are you supposed to do if something turns out to be faulty?”

“Or the wrong size,” Gul, one of her constables, said wryly.

It all seemed unlikely to Hanson. This fictional man who Lisa had no evidence of, and a listing that was no longer up.

When they asked to see the bike, Lisa showed them out to a shed that, on examination, seemed to be full of bikes. Hanson caught Gul’s eye as Lisa opened the door, and made a weak joke about needing to get rid of the kids’ old bikes and the ones she used to ride. Their stolen road bike, apparently bought the afternoon before, wasn’t even at the front. It was clear Lisa’s story was false. But none of that, Hanson thought, was what was bothering her. It had been something in the interactions between Lisa and John. In the way her eyes had travelled to him, and in his charming mockery of his girlfriend.

It was warm out in the garden, the first really sunny and springlike day, yet John remained inside, distancing himself from all of it. From the shed and its contents. From his girlfriend. From the police.

Hanson asked her constables to take the bike out and photograph it, and spent a few moments watching John through the open French windows. He’d returned to the sofa with a coffee and his phone, the picture of nonchalance. If the idea of his girlfriend being in trouble with the police worried him, he didn’t show it.

As Hanson drew a little closer to the French window, she saw movement at the far end of the room. A child of six or seven appeared, a girl in jeans and a t-shirt pulled tightly over a slightly protuberant stomach. She stopped in the doorway, looking to John, her face tight. She muttered something which included the word, “Mummy,” and John’s head lifted. “Upstairs,” he said. “Now.”

There was none of the charm he’d shown to her and her colleagues. The words were harsh. Icy. Their effect on the little girl was immediate. She fled the room, as if being chased.

Hanson could feel her heart rate rise, as much as if he had turned on her. More so, probably.

The niggling unease became a powerful sense of this whole situation being wrong. And with it came an additional, unbalancing realisation: that John reminded her of her own boyfriend.

She made her way back to Lisa, who was watching the constables with an increasingly panicked expression. She’d got her phone out, but didn’t actually seem to be doing anything on it, and it shook in her hand.

“Can you just log into your eBay account for me?” Hanson asked, quietly. “On your phone?”

She saw the blankness of Lisa’s expression, and watched in silence as she laboriously typed “eBay” into a browser and then looked towards the house as soon as the login screen came up.

“So stupid,” she said, with a laugh. “I’ve forgotten my login details. Maybe John will remember…”

Hanson smiled at her, as warmly and sympathetically as she could manage.

“Why don’t you come and talk to us at the station?” she asked. “You can bring your daughter.”

It didn’t take long for Lisa to admit that her partner had been the one to steal the bike, and to sell it. She cried as she begged them not to land her in it.

“He’ll be so angry with me if he thinks

It reminded her of her own boyfriend, felt like someone had reached into her stomach and twisted it

I got him into trouble.”

Hanson nodded, glancing from her to the daughter, sitting curled silently on her lap. “Does he get angry a lot?”

“I don’t know,” Lisa said, and shook her head. “I guess he just likes things done a certain way. He’s had a very difficult past.”

Hanson listened to her, describing how her partner would fly into rages, and often storm out of the house; how he never seemed to have any money despite the bike racket, and would borrow money from her every few weeks; how he would criticise and criticise and then suddenly apologise and tell her he was trying to change… it all made Hanson feel more and more uncomfortable.

She found herself wanting to speak harshly to Lisa, to tell her that John was never going to change, that this was an abusive relationship, that it was clearly harming her daughter.

Yet at the same time, she felt dizzy with familiarity.

“I just need you to help with the down payment,” Damian had told her, only two nights before. “I don’t see why you’re being difficult. You’re the one who caused this. I need a good car because you’re moving halfway across the country.”

Then had come the real kicker, the part that had made the blood come to Hanson’s own cheeks. After all of it, all the confessions and descriptions of how controlling and awful John was, Lisa had said, quietly, “And I think he’s cheating on me, too. He says I’m being insane, but he keeps messaging this girl and then deleting the messages.”

It was like someone had reached into Hanson’s own stomach and twisted it. So many conversations rushed. The conversations where Damian would justify deleting things because, “she should trust him,” while somehow justifying his own constant hacking of her email and messages. The way her own friend’s name had popped up on his phone at one am.

Gul, sitting next to her in the interview room, asked why Lisa didn’t kick her partner out if he was cheating. But Hanson already knew the answer. Because every time you tried with men like this, they somehow tied you in knots and made you feel like the bad guy.

They’d let Lisa go home in the middle of the afternoon, promising not to contact John yet. They needed to work out how to approach proving that the thefts were his responsibility before they could charge him.

She and Gul had tried, gently, to persuade Lisa to leave him, but Hanson had seen from her expression that she didn’t feel able to do it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

After that, Hanson had been left to write up her report, her mind half free to wander to Damian, and to the two years she had spent with anxiety in the pit of her stomach, thanks to him. They drifted along, because of his frequent insistence that he was getting help and would change. And finally, to the affair that she knew was happening.

Three weeks ago, she had even told herself that she would leave him, if only she could prove that he was cheating. For a few days, after a fit of his vilest behaviour, she had been so firm. So certain. Until he had, of course, turned the charm on again. Told her how desperately he loved her. Said that he wanted to marry her one day.

You’reacopper, she thought to herself, suddenly. Youcanfind proof,ifanyonecan.

And in the end, it took no time at all. Not now that Hanson had made a decision. The following Friday night, when Damian told her he was going out with the boys, she tracked his movements on the Find My Friend app he had insisted they both installed. It felt poetic and amusing to use it against him when for so long he had used it to harass her.

At midnight, she’d watched his dot move from the centre-oftown pub to a house in Edgbaston. A house she knew very well.

It would have been so easy to blame Marie. He’d already tried to tell her that her closest friend was a bit awkwardly obsessed with him. That he had done nothing to string her along.

But Hanson knew. She knew. That Marie was as much a victim as she’d been. And however deep the cut felt, it hadn’t been inflicted by anyone except her narcissistic boyfriend.

It had only taken her half an hour to remove Damian’s belongings from the house and pack them into a series of plastic bags. All his expensive clothes, apparently bought on sale. All his gadgets that had been a “bargain”.

Then she had locked the front door from the inside with the keys in, and sent him a message telling her she knew about him and Marie. That they were finally, at long last, over.

And then she’d settled herself into bed, and for the first time in months, slept quickly and soundly. MW

Imagine waking up, stretching in bed, only to find a dead man next to you – and he’s not your husband! As Louise desperately tries to remember what has happened, Detective Jonah Sheens and his team find she’s not the only one with something to hide. A thrilling novel by the award winning playwright and writer. Lie Beside Me by Gytha Lodge, Michael Joseph, HB, £12.99. Out now.