Claire Stone: Married to the Force
from “To Die For”
This is the voice of Clair Stone, the wife of DI Mike Stone. There are NO SPOILERS in this post.

He was my first, my last, my forever and my never — all rolled into one.
I made the same choice that many women make: to marry a copper. As much as I know I am supposed to bemoan it, and speak of all my woes, but I just can’t do that. I won’t.
My first
I love Mike. Deeply. He’s my first true, deep, long term love and relationship. Until we separated. I still love him — and not just because he is the father of our son, Jack. I still love every part of him that I originally loved: his tenacity; his stubborn sense of justice; his dry and cutting wit; his ridiculous imagination. And I guess that is why I can never speak ill of him being a copper because, to be fair, his greatest qualities I respected as my best friend and lover are those which make him great at his job.
Yes, there were the late nights, the constant worrying, the fear that his job would spill into his private life — and it did, almost tragically. When one of his key suspects rammed our car, whilst Jack was inside, it really brought home the potential danger Mike faces every day. The collision nearly killed Mike. It took me a long time to admit that I did blame him for it, too. I spent so long time trying to reassure him that I didn’t, as he recovered physically and mentally from the incident…
…listen to me. “Incident.” I bloody talk like one of them…
…but the truth was, I did blame him. And he knew it.
My Last
I promised myself, after breaking up with Mike, that all I would do would be to focus on Jack. There was never any question that Mike would be as much a part of Jack’s life as he wanted, or could be, or should be, or managed. I’d never stand in his way. But my life — our lives — had been so shattered by the incident that we couldn’t reconcile it. Silly, really. You hear of parents splitting up over the loss of a child, but all we lost was a nice car and a few months in recovery. But something changed between us, and we couldn’t work it out. When I finally blurted out one day that I did in fact blame him for the accident it hit him hard. Harder because he felt the same. It caused many arguments, and drove such a wedge between us for just about long enough for us to decide the atmosphere was simply too toxic for our little boy.
We agreed. Amicable. We both cried when we said good bye to the “us” even though we knew we’d be seeing a lot of each other in order to keep things going with Jack.
My Forever
There was no way he was going to leave the force, and I didn’t want him to. Imagine being married to a carpenter who sacrificed his calling to stay with you. You’d know every time his hand touched a piece of carved wood you pain would stick in his throat, and the only thing that would grow would be resentment.
The hardest part was irony is that the incident in the car had thrown me and Jack into Mike’s dark police world, but it had also shone a bright light.
He was our hero.
The other car had been driven straight at us, head on. My memory of the event is skewed but I am sure I remember in slow-motion seeing the car approaching, and then looking at Mike. I remember screaming his name and gripping his arm. I remember the muscles in his forearm tightening on the gear stick, slamming it into first, and the feeling of our car lurching forwards. I remember our car suddenly swinging to the left as Mike aimed his driver corner at the middle of the front of the bother car.
I remember the shocked face of the bastard in the other car.
Then black.
The next thing I remember was a feeling, not an image. The feeling of being tugged and pulled as petrol filled my smell and a taste, until a sudden washing feeling of extreme heat drowned me.
When I finally woke up in hospital they told me that no-one could understand what had happened. The collision had been severe — it could well have killed at least Mike. But somehow he’d crawled from his seat into the back, taken Jack out of his seat and out the back window of the car. He’d the come back for me and dragged me just clear, moments before the car went up in flames.
According to witness accounts, and the fact he’d ended up in intensive care with broken bones and a collapsed windpipe, the doctors had no explanation of how he was able to do it. Their only offer of theory was that the human body is known to achieve truly extraordinary things under enough adrenaline. But they even said that with an air of sceptical doubt.
My Never
But we could never go back. Even after therapy, alone and together. Even after the nightmares had begun to settle — only slightly, though. Even though we were slowly gathering ourselves back to normal and had bought ourselves a new car. (I say “car” — it’s a bloody tank!) Something had changed and we new we could never go back, and that forwards was exactly what the therapist said we should focus on. But forwards together…it just wouldn’t work.
I know for my part, I just couldn’t reconcile the two opposing thoughts of blaming my hero for what happened. If he could save his wife and his son from a burning car, why could he not save our marriage?
Relationships can survive a lot. But not doubt.

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