Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Mullins, Louise

  I dash back into the kitchen, cut the bread Muriel baked this morning into chunks using the vegetable knife, spread garlic butter across the soft centre of each slice, and lick the remainder off the blade before shoving it onto a tray and into the oven. I watch it like a hawk and bring it out crispy and golden brown, seven minutes later.

  I dart a look at the pile of dirty crockery in the sink and open the glass-fronted cabinet to grab one of the six blue and white china plates that hang from the panelled wall inside. I spin the plate on the counter while placing each individual cut of garlic bread onto it until it becomes a pyramid of gluten. Next, I remove from the fridge the cooked chicken that’s been sitting in its own juices inside a Tupperware box since lunchtime and carve it into thin strips using the same serrated knife I realise is meant only for bread, not cutting salad or meat.

  Oh, the pomposity of it all.

  I inhale the seasoning coating its skin and lick my lips, my mouth watering.

  Roberta enters the kitchen. ‘That smells delicious. Would you like a hand?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She watches me stumble into the dining hall, the plates heavy, the stiff material of my shoes starting to bite the tips of my toes. I drop the plates down onto the table too hard. The one holding the bread cracks in half. I don’t bother to replace it, or start again.

  ‘Is that a Spode?’ says Rupert, one of Humphrey’s associates, as I run back to the kitchen, open a bottle of Chablis and pour it into a champagne flute. I gulp it down so fast it spills from the corners of my mouth and down my chin.

  Thank fuck it’s white.

  Humphrey finds me glugging the tepid liquid from the bottle while dabbing at what’s dripped down my throat with the tea towel. The lip of the bottle pops as I withdraw it from my mouth and I splutter as I swallow while he tries and fails to retrieve it from my hand. ‘Calm down. We’ve got all evening.’

  I purse my lips and narrow my eyes at him, tightening my grip on the bottle. I slug back as much as I can in one go then plonk it down onto the counter and move fast to the open door of the fridge, noting the glacial rivulets at the back of the Bertazzoni have defrosted.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t interfere,’ I say, turning the dial back up a notch before I remove the fresh cream pastries from the top shelf of the side-by-side fridge-freezer, feeling Humphrey’s breath on the back of my head as he returns the bottle to the middle shelf of the fridge, where it stands among Dom Pérignon, Bollinger and a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

  Humphrey gasps when he spots the latter. ‘Red doesn’t belong in the fridge!’

  I huff. ‘It’ll be room temperature half an hour after I’ve taken it out.’

  ‘It’ll taste dry.’

  My hand tenses around the wrapped pastries. ‘It does anyway.’

  ‘Do you know how much it cost?’

  ‘The thirstier they are, the more they’ll wash down. The drunker they get, the more they’ll forget the taste.’

  ‘Almost two thousand pounds a bottle.’

  I squeeze the thin cardboard packaging that crinkles in my palm. ‘Grab another from the basement.’

  He inhales sharply, nostrils flaring. He closes his eyes, then opens them on the carved white meat. ‘Chicken’s far healthier than steak anyway. So just serve that, then you only need to put white wine on the table.’

  His condescending tone causes my thumb to pierce the cellophane wrapping protecting the triple chocolate éclairs. I lick it from behind my thumbnail and he tuts, turns away.

  ‘Are you sure I can’t do anything?’ says Roberta from the stool she’s perched on at the breakfast bar where I’d forgotten she was. She’s quietly sipping the punch I made using half a leftover watermelon, some mint leaves I pilfered from the overgrown herb garden out back, the last of the seedless grapes and two kiwis. ‘I feel like a spare part,’ she says, her mouth looking oddly swollen, unable to hold a smile.

  I’m wondering which salon she uses to have her lips plumped up when she fingers her upper lip to examine it then glances down into her glass. Her eyes widen in horror and she stands abruptly. The glass falls from her trembling hand. It crashes to the floor, leaving shattered pieces glittering the slate tiles.

  Humphrey spins round and grabs her by the arms to steady her. ‘She’s allergic. Didn’t you check?’

  The way he holds her, the concern he shows, tells me he’s wrapped his hands around her flesh before.

  Gerald appears in the doorway smelling of maple whiskey and wood. He moves towards us, stops in front of Roberta, doesn’t acknowledge the fact Humphrey has just released his wife from an overly affectionate grip, and takes Roberta’s spindly hands in his. She opens and closes her mouth several times before she speaks, but her words come out fuzzy, her tongue too swollen to talk properly.

  ‘Allergic to what?’

  ‘Kiwi fruit,’ says Gerald.

  I walk over to the sink, stepping over the shards of crystal, and fill a sherry glass with ice-cold water, which slops from the rim and splashes across the floor as I make my way to her. Roberta takes it from me, her hand shaking. She nods, saying, ‘thank you.’ But through her swollen mouth it sounds more like ‘fuck you.’

  I slip and trip across the floor, sloshing through the water and giggling at my own incompetency. I tug off a yard-long stretch of kitchen roll from the holder, bunch it up and throw it onto the floor to soak up the water. Then I use the dustpan and brush that’s leaning against the wall beside the cabinet to sweep the broken glass up into several folds of today’s edition of The Times before depositing it in the bin. I check the floor for any glass I might have missed then wipe the tiles dry and toss the wet kitchen towel into the pedal bin.

  I lean on the breakfast counter to remove the stilettos from my aching feet, wobbling on one painfully high-arched heel, using Humphrey’s arthritic arm to stop myself from toppling over.

  ‘Come here, Roberta,’ says Gerald, glancing from her to Humphrey, arm raised with his elbow pointed north. She stands and links her arm through his. ‘Thank you for a splendid evening.’

  ‘You haven’t eaten yet.’

  He gives Roberta a sympathetic smile. ‘I’ll take her home. She should rest.’

  ‘You can’t leave here hungry.’

  ‘She’ll be alright. Though she might not be able to talk for a few hours.’ He aims a wink at Humphrey, who reciprocates with a one-sided smile.

  Roberta nods in apparent agreement of her husband’s sexist comment that she’d be better seen and not heard, and he hoists her off the bar stool. I step aside to allow them past and watch from behind while he escorts her from the kitchen, down the marble floored hall and into the dining hall where the sound of clinking glasses and raucous laughter grates against the backdrop of Enya – Rupert’s choice, no doubt. Gerald says goodbye to the other guests and apologises on Roberta’s behalf. She holds her palm over the lower quarter of her face to avoid having to display her misshapen mouth and I follow a few paces behind to stand in the doorway and see them out, like the respectable wife Humphrey wants me to be.

  I watch him walk them to the glossy black Mercedes and wave them off.

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ Gerald’s words float through the air. Humphrey turns to look at me before whispering something inaudible in his ear.

  I fight the urge to yell at him in front of witnesses.

  Humphrey turns back and rubs his eyes and the tip of his nose, a look of exasperation on his face as he re-enters the house.

  I glare at the two of him and they shake their head. I blame my double vision on the wine, but it’s probably the bottle I drank before it.

  The rest of the evening passes quickly or maybe I’m just too pissed to notice the time. Unfortunately, I remember the tedium of every conversation that occurred between Roberta the Trout Pout leaving and the others starting to talk more shit than usual, so I know I didn’t black out. I listen to everyone recommending accountants, architects, interior designers and holiday apa
rtments.

  Eventually I become so bored I join in.

  ‘I don’t have a passport.’

  Derek frowns and Kim cannot hide her surprise, though she looks permanently startled since her recent bout of Botox.

  ‘You’ve never been abroad?’

  ‘No.’

  Humphrey, one eye drooping, the other roaming, cuts in. ‘I took her to Scotland for our honeymoon.’

  ‘In Rupert’s Cesena,’ they sigh in unison.

  I struggle to deconstruct their shared joke.

  ‘You must visit Rome,’ says Kim, leaning over the table and almost losing her balance. She plunges her finger into the centre of an éclair to retrieve the stale cream and circles the tip of her finger with her tongue before pushing it just past the knuckle into her mouth and sucking on it, her eyes focused on mine, unblinking.

  I manage to hold a straight face while she repeats the strangely erotic movements a second and third time. Then perhaps tiring from my lack of response she leaves the table, swaying her hips, dancing out of sync to the piano concerto now playing at a volume I consider background noise, while humming a tune of her own.

  The food is eaten, the port is opened and the men retreat to the study to play cards, while I find myself alone in a secluded spot of the Victorian garden.

  Kim waltzes towards me from the ivy-covered porch, her heels clopping along the wooden bridge to cross the pond. Her eyes are set on mine, if a little unfocused. And her feet keep moving left while her torso leans right.

  She lands heavily on the dry-stone wall that lines the path where moss and weeds have already begun to sprout between the cracks since Frederick the gardener last tended to the land. I squint at the lichen, which has climbed the cyclamen and strangled it, before redirecting my gaze to the blurred contours of Kim’s face when she exhales something that’s caught up in the night-time breeze.

  ‘Pardon?’

  I must lean into her to hear her speak, so quiet is her voice. ‘The men are keeping themselves amused.’ Her eyelids flicker as she lowers her head to rest it on my shoulder.

  She pins a few stray hairs back into the clip supporting her long mane of auburn hair and I strain not to shove her off me as her chin digs into my collar bone. ‘It seems that way.’

  ‘I know what people said about you before you married Humphrey.’ She starts picking at the hem of her dress. ‘I didn’t listen. The age difference between me and Derek is half yours.’ She pauses, pulls a thread of cotton from the stitching. ‘I didn’t mean… what I’m trying to say is you’re good for him. He seems alive.’ She tugs hard on the thread until it snaps then unravels it from the coil around her finger and drops it onto the ground.

  Not for long.

  ‘He loves you.’

  I look back at the house, the shadows behind the glass, where a stream of dim lamplight piercing through an inch-wide gap in the stiff velvet curtains of the study tells me the men’s game is getting serious. ‘I know.’

  She snuffles, sits upright, brushing her cheek against my collarbone as she stands and straightens her spine, causing her to appear taller than her five foot six inches.

  ‘I’m hammered,’ she slurs.

  I dip my fingers into my bra and pull out the small baggie of cocaine I was saving for later. ‘Want a line?’

  She stares at it for a few seconds then stumbles back, holding onto the railing for support. ‘How much have you got left?’

  ‘About a gram.’

  She nods and looks at the ground then turns and follows the path back to the house, wiping her runny nose with the heel of her hand.

  In the bathroom, the door locked behind us, I try to pull the elaborately moulded mirror off the wall but it’s too heavy, so I remove the loose tile from behind the sink, run the sleeve of my gown beneath the tap and use it to wipe the dust off the tile before placing it onto the back of the toilet lid. I empty the two-inch-wide see-through snap-bag onto the tile and chop the white powder into a fine line that runs from one end to the other with my credit card. I notice some of the powder has wedged itself into a small groove in one corner of the tile, so I lick the tip of my forefinger and dab it away, rubbing it along the gums above my top front teeth, the tingle reassuring me of the alert sense of wellbeing I am about to feel.

  I hand Kim the rolled up fifty-pound note and watch her snort it, sniff, then pull a menthol cigarette from the pocket of her Armani trousers and light it before I can switch on the fan to dispel the smoke.

  I hoover up the last of the coke and sneeze as it hits the blood vessels in my nasal cavity, my sight sharpening as it reaches my brain.

  I catch the blood that drips from Kim’s left nostril with a bit of toilet roll. She moves my hand away from her nose, holds it in mid-air and stares at me, her expression unreadable.

  ‘What do you want?’

  She lowers her chin, looks up at me doe-eyed and presses herself against me.

  I kiss her delicately, surprised when she reciprocates as I wasn’t sure she was this way inclined. Her mouth is soft, her tongue tastes sweet.

  There is a rat-a-tat-tat on the other side of the door.

  ‘Are you in there, Kim?’ says Derek.

  I keep my voice low, but my breath gives away my rising adrenaline. ‘Go.’

  She moves away from me, backs into the door, turns and inhales the last of the blood to preserve the indignity of being caught out. Of failing to maintain the feminine ideal.

  I catch the faintest eye-roll in the mirror as Kim exits the bathroom ahead of me, a slight blush creeping up her cheeks.

  She doesn’t wear guilt well.

  Derek gives her a concerned look that turns to one of perplexity when he sees me.

  I wind past them and down the hall. As I reach the bottom step of the staircase the loud shrill of the smoke alarm cuts through the silence, turning the accusing atmosphere surrounding me into one of panic.

  *

  When they’ve vacated the house, I stand at the window looking over the veranda and down on the commotion, at the worried and harried people Humphrey has known for decades.

  It wasn’t my cooking this time but Kim’s cigarette that set the first-floor smoke alarm off. Despite the fact I turned the fan on, and she dropped it in the toilet before she opened the door to Derek, who saw and recognised the tiny clump of white powder stuck to the dried blood up her nose. The cigarette remained inside the bowl instead of sinking into the water. Humphrey took too long to key in the code and reset the alarm, so the company who maintain the system alerted the fire brigade.

  I watch Rupert’s driver reverse around the fire engine, and Derek opening the door for Kim to sit inside the Volvo. I wait for them all to pass the courtyard before I release my hold on the curtain. It drops down over the luminescent moon.

  I’m seated in front of the mirror brushing my hair when Humphrey falls into the room and clamps his hand over mine. For a seventy-year-old man he’s surprisingly strong. The pressure of his palm weakens my hold on the solid silver brush, and it clangs onto the polished wood of the chalk-white oak dresser, leaving a dent.

  He dismisses my clumsiness for once and nuzzles my earlobe like a salivating dog, and I close my eyes to evoke the image of my dream man: younger and slimmer.

  I let Humphrey trail his damp mouth from my neck to my throat, but when he hooks his fingers into my bra strap and runs the backs of them downward to stroke my breast, I push the chair back causing him to leap backwards.

  ‘I’m going to freshen up.’

  I sit on the edge of the freestanding claw-footed bathtub inside our ensuite, unscrew the bottle of Rohypnol that’s saved me from feigning orgasm twenty-four times, pop one of the four capsules into my mouth and swill it down with a handful of cold tap water.

  If I must climb on top of him, I don’t want to remember it in the morning.

  I slip out of my silk robe and push my lacy babydoll down to expose more of the crease between my breasts, add a touch more sparkling rouge lipst
ick, smack my lips together and shimmy into the bedroom to find Humphrey lying comatose in the centre of the bed, arms spread wide, shirt buttons undone, trousers halfway down his thighs, his breath stained with the smell of black truffles.

  ‘Thank fuck for that.’

  Despite the mini bar in the lounge and the basement full of decade-long aged wines and wood-distilled spirits, he’s not a big drinker.

  The drugs I slipped into his last glass of cognac seem to have already begun to take effect.

  I try to rouse him. First by shouting his name into his ear, then by shaking him. He stirs when my actions become more forceful, then turns onto his side and begins to snore. I try to raise his sleep-weighted hand and when that doesn’t wake him, I shove him hard in the back, but he won’t budge.

  I fall back onto the feather soft pillows stacked against the headboard of our king-size bed. Squeezed between the fat oaf beside me and the Baroque-style bedside unit, I cross my arms and wait for the tranquilisers to kick in.

  DI LOCKE

  Then

  According to the preliminary report provided by the forensic anthropologist the incomplete skeleton had been inside the suitcase for at least two years. Despite the skull being missing, Dr Ward was able to tell from the wide subpubic angle and broad sciatic notch of the pelvis that the person was a female. Structural analysis suggested she was Caucasian. Pockmarks were present on the symphysis pubis bone where ligaments had torn during childbirth. And the rate of fusion on the caps of the bone shafts suggested bone growth had almost completed, placing her at around twenty to thirty-five years old. But without teeth it was difficult to determine a more precise age.