White Bodies: An Addictive Psychological Thriller

by Jane Robins

  “Nice,” I add.

  She sashays across the room likes she’s Cara Delevingne on the runway, saying, “Givenchy!”

  “If you say so.”

  I watch her put her arms around Felix and give him a thank-you kiss, delicately, before she stands next to him, so close that their arms are touching, while they attend to the food.

  I gaze at Vogue but don’t read. Instead I listen to their conversation, which is mainly Tilda asking Felix questions—“What about Julio?” “How far did you run this morning?” “Do you like my nails?” “Do you like these shoes?” His opinion of mundane things is evidently a powerful bonding force between them, and the atmosphere in the kitchen is intimate and exclusive. Then, out of the blue, Felix says, “Oh fuck it. I didn’t buy sparkling water. . . .”

  His aggressive tone and furious face seem to turn the entire room from warm to cold with the sort of shock you get when a shower turns suddenly freezing. And they are totally out of proportion with the problem. I say, “I’m fine with tap water,” and Tilda says, “Me too.” But he’s already halfway to the door, which he slams behind him, and we hear another “Fuck!” before he descends the stairs.

  “What was that about?” I’m up off the sofa, joining her in the kitchen area, where she’s leaning back against the fridge, like his words have forced her there.

  “God knows . . . Felix feels strongly about fizzy water I guess.” I can tell Tilda’s trying not to cry, which also seems an overreaction.

  “Come on, tell me. It’s not about the water, is it?”

  She’s shaking her head and tugging at her sleeves, pulling them down over her wrists.

  “I know you want me to love him,” I say, touching her fleetingly on her arm, watching her flinch. “And I do. I think he’s wonderful . . . but that was weird. I mean, it was only water, but he was so angry, out of nowhere.”

  “He’s under a lot of pressure at work, and it makes him like that sometimes. He snaps.”

  “It was creepy, though.”

  Tilda shakes her head, indicating that I shouldn’t criticize, and she says in a small voice, “Wait and see, he’ll be fine when he gets back.”

  Acting instinctively, I lean over and pull her silk Givenchy sleeve right up to her elbow, exposing white skin splattered with yellow and blue bruises, little smudged inkblots.

  I grab her arm to inspect it more closely.

  “Stop that!” she says. “For fuck’s sake!”

  “Tilda! What’s going on? Please tell me.”

  She pushes me away, hard, making me crash into the kitchen counter. Pulling her sleeve back down, she runs into the bedroom, then the en suite bathroom, slamming the door, turning the lock.

  I’m amazed by what’s just happened. What made me do that? How had I sensed that she had damaged arms? It seems inexplicable. There had been no bruises on her that day on the Thames. Then her body had been milky white, no blemishes other than the mole on her left shoulder.

  I sit on her bed, staring at the shut bathroom door, working out what to say next—we’re close, but I’m hopeless at communicating with her, forever driving her away with my crassness, my blunt way of talking. Gently, I call out: “Are you all right in there?” But she doesn’t answer. So I lie down, burying my face in her pillow, breathing in her smell, and waiting. Occasional sounds emerge: splashing water, pacing about, and after a while she calls out, “It’s nothing, Callie, I’m fine.” And she comes out of the bathroom, looking refreshed and happy, but slightly insane, her eyes still rimmed in pink. I’m about to ask her, again, to confide in me, but I don’t get the chance because at that moment there’s a sound in the other room. It’s Felix returning. (He has his own key!) We both leave the bedroom and find that he’s transformed—he’s grinning, has a big bottle of fizzy water in his hand, and he thumps it down on the kitchen counter together with a set of car keys attached to a disc that reads PORSCHE. Tilda reacts like an excited idiot, jumping on the spot, flipping her hair about, a quick look to see that I’m paying attention. “You didn’t!”

  “Come and see.”

  He picks up the car keys and throws them for Tilda to catch, and they leave, his arm around her shoulders, me following, comparing the blondness of their hair, the thinness of their hips, their totally modern beauty. Tilda says sweetly, “So you forgot the water on purpose? So sneaky!”

  A few streets later, and we’re admiring Felix’s new silver-colored Porsche sports car. He opens the door, sits in the driver’s seat and presses a button that makes the roof slide backwards. “James Bond,” I say. I want to be massively impressed, but I’m still thinking about Tilda’s arms. I clamber into the back, and Tilda slips into the passenger seat, picking up a white envelope that has her name on the front, written in a spiky, tight script. She opens it and reads the card that’s inside.

  “My God! That’s perfect.” She starts kissing Felix with an uninhibited enthusiasm that makes me look away.

  “Come on,” I say. “Take us for a spin.”

  “Look, Callie.” Tilda turns around to face me, her face radiant, and hands me the card.

  I read: Darling T, come with me to France.

  On the other side is a picture of a whitewashed villa on a hillside, a turquoise swimming pool at a tasteful distance from a vine-covered terrace.

  “To this actual house?”

  “Yes, that actual house.” Felix steers the car through the streets with one hand, the other arm stretched out, his fingers under Tilda’s hair, brushing the back of her neck.

  “We’ll drive down to Provence,” he says proudly. “And, while we’re gone, my builders will come into your flat and do some work.”

  “What sort of work?”

  “A surprise.”

  “Nothing too drastic?”

  “No—what can I say—fine-tuning. . . . You’ll like it. It will be my gift.”

  “Lucky me!”

  That wouldn’t have been my reaction—and I’m surprised that Tilda’s going along with Felix’s scheme. Wanting to change her home without consulting her about how strikes me as rather extreme. “You’re being swept off your feet,” I say.

  “I am.” She’s ignoring my disapproving tone, acting like the emotional dash into the bathroom hasn’t happened, like her arms aren’t bruised, and she laughs as Felix puts his foot on the accelerator. We zoom three hundred yards up Regent Street; then hit a traffic jam.

  • • •

  In the dossier I write: I was shocked to see bruises on Tilda’s arms. Was Felix responsible?—I don’t know. I can’t work out whether he’s a truly amazing person—organizing surprise holidays and improving her flat—or a deeply dangerous one. Either way, Tilda’s infatuated with him and I’m in pain. I don’t know whether I still feel the elation that came from adoring him, or whether I’m now terrified that I’ve been manipulated.

  I go online and start googling. I look up the dangerous elements in passionate romances, and what happens psychologically as relationships become increasingly abusive. Before long I come upon a website called controllingmen.com, and I find myself reading for hours the hundreds of posts in forums called “The First Signs” and “Romance as Control” and—most interesting of all—“What You Can Do to Help a Friend Who Has Been Targeted By a Controlling Man.” In fact, I’m so sucked in that I join the site, giving myself a username, and entering the forums that are visible only to members. It’s addictive, and I’m up all night, reading, reading, reading.

  5

  The following evening I go to Curzon Street without calling ahead. My mind’s full of controllingmen.com and I’m hoping to see what Felix is like towards Tilda when he’s not hosting a planned event, because I now suspect that’s what our meetings have been—the movie night, the river trip, the arrival of the Porsche—all setups for Felix to act the loving, romantic hero. A comment on the website is ringing in my head: In public my husband acts like he’s Prince Charming, so loving and caring. In private he’s cold and he hits me, but neve
r on the face. Only where the bruises won’t show.

  Because I’m now playing the role of investigator and maybe rescuer, I’m nervous as I stand on the pavement outside the front door, pressing the buzzer. Twenty silent seconds elapse, and as I turn to walk away I’m actually relieved that I don’t have to go through with this, that I can go back home and have my sweet-and-sour chicken supper. Then, through the crackling intercom, I hear Tilda’s distorted voice—an uninviting “Hello?”

  “It’s me. Callie. . . . Can I come up?”

  “What? What are you doing here?”

  I’m about to make up an answer when she says, “Oh, okay . . .” And she buzzes me in.

  As I turn the corner at the top of the stairs I see that it’s Felix standing at the open door to the flat, casually dressed in a gray T-shirt and dark jeans but still somehow smart and together—like those clean-cut Americans who give TED talks. He welcomes me with a flash of flawless teeth and a quick hug that I would normally describe as warm and friendly.

  “Come on in. . . . What’s up, Callie? Why this unexpected pleasure?”

  “Oh, I’ve brought a book for Tilda to read.” I fish in my bag for the novel I’ve put there as my cover. “It’s American Psycho,” I say.

  He roars with laughter. Really roars. “Crazy choice!” he says good-heartedly, while I assess his demeanor. I’d say he’s genuinely relaxed—I’d thought he might react with at least some element of suspicion or negativity.

  “Just kidding . . . I got this.” I laugh with him and show him the book, which is a Scandinavian thriller I’m reading—The Artist.

  “Where’s Tilda?” It strikes me as odd that she answered the buzzer but isn’t here to greet me.

  “She’s taking a shower,” says Felix, glancing at the shut door. “She won’t be long I’m sure. Would you like something? A glass of wine? I’ll join you.”

  “Okay.” I watch him open a kitchen cupboard and see that Tilda’s hotchpotch glassware has been replaced by four tasteful, thin-stemmed glasses in a row; tiny ballerinas posing with their feet turned out. But it’s not the neatness that alarms me: it’s the fact that there are only four. Plainly Felix isn’t planning any social gatherings at the flat.

  We sit side by side. He’s kind of spread out—one big foot resting on the other knee, one arm along the back of the sofa—and I’m kind of prim, upright in the corner, my wineglass juddering slightly in my hand. The momentary silence signals that my only option, until Tilda comes, is small talk—I don’t want to challenge him when she’s not there.

  “Busy at work?” I ask.

  “Horrendous . . .” He says it like he’s amused rather than troubled. “And you?”

  “You know—the bookshop is never busy, as such. My boss spilled her coffee on a customer last week. That’s as stressful as it gets.”

  I hear sounds from the bedroom, or maybe the en suite bathroom beyond, and I look over the back of the sofa to see if Tilda’s coming. But she’s not.

  “What are your builders going to do to the flat?” My voice comes out a little fake and overly focused, and I realize I’ve changed the tone of the conversation.

  “I guess they’ll update it a little. Introduce a better color scheme, and some new furniture. It’s not a bad space, good high ceilings, well proportioned.”

  I’ve never really considered the proportions, and I say so. Then Tilda appears at the door to the bedroom but doesn’t come in to join us. She’s wearing just a white knee-length robe and has wet hair and bare feet. Under her eyes her skin is stained watery black, her mascara I suppose, but it looks like black tears, like sadness and crying.

  “What are you up to?” she says to me shakily. “You never do this.”

  Felix stands up and stares at her. I gawp over the back of the sofa. She seems weak, like she might collapse, leaning against the doorframe like it’s the only thing holding her up. Her face is dead, as though she doesn’t have the energy to form an expression, and the word that comes into my head is damaged. A burning ball of anger forms in my stomach and rises to my throat, and in my head my sleepless night and nine solid hours of reading about sickening abuse makes my thoughts scrunch together into a surge of fury. I stand up too and face Felix:

  “Look at her! This is your work. You’re going to destroy her!”

  He says nothing; he’s stunned. Tilda pulls herself upright, the life snapping back into her body, and she shrieks at me, “Un-fucking-believable! What’s wrong with you, Callie? What the fuck are you on about? Lay off Felix and get out of here, right now!”

  She comes at me, taking my elbow, marching me out of the flat, closing the door on me. As I descend the stairs I’m beating myself up, thinking what an imbecile I’ve been, blaming my sleep deprivation for my outburst, thinking now that maybe she was just weary, like normal people get weary from time to time.

  I make my way home on the bus, calling Tilda’s phone five or six times as I travel and texting her, saying sorry. But she doesn’t reply.

  • • •

  A week later Tilda finally answers my call and accepts my apology. But she’s short and businesslike with me, not understanding at all, and after she hangs up I feel even worse.

  Everything changes between Tilda and Felix and me; it doesn’t happen at once, but step-by-step. I’m no longer invited to spend evenings at Curzon Street, or to accompany the two of them on outings. And our phone calls change. Tilda and I used to chat on the phone fairly regularly, and at the end of our conversations she would say, “Felix wants to talk to you,” and he’d ask how my week was going, or for my opinion on something they were discussing, like whether green olives were nicer than black olives, or whether some TV comedian was funny or just annoying. Small things. But Felix doesn’t ask to talk to me anymore, and Tilda seems happy for weeks to go by with no contact between us.

  On the few occasions when she does actually answer the phone, Felix is her only topic of conversation—how he’s taking her to a private viewing at an art gallery, or to a new restaurant or the opera. (I’ve never known her go to the opera before.) In May, she stays in his flat in Clerkenwell for a couple of weeks so that the builders can start their work in Curzon Street; then in June the two of them drive to Provence in the Porsche for their holiday, and Tilda is out of touch altogether, not even a postcard and she doesn’t reply to my texts. When she returns, I phone and suggest that she come round for a movie night, but she makes excuses, saying only “Sometime soon,” and that she’s busy at the minute because Felix is moving into her flat and they’re “rationalizing our belongings.” I feel that I’ve been eliminated from her world, and that makes me scared. The Controlling Men website has warned me about how predators try to isolate their prey, cutting them off from their friends and family.

  In late June Tilda and I meet briefly in a café in Regent’s Park and it’s obvious that something’s deeply wrong. My sister has always looked delicate, but now she seems undernourished, and is nervy. Just after we sit down I knock my hot chocolate over and a river of froth snakes across the table, reaching her phone. It’s an accident, a tiny mishap, but she makes it seem like the last straw, saying “I can’t stand this,” and she walks right out of the café, leaving me scrabbling to clean up the mess—I’m on my hands and knees and a young waitress comes rushing over with kitchen paper. “Here, have this,” she says. “Was that Tilda Farrow with you . . . ? The actress?”

  A few minutes later Tilda returns and apologizes: “Sorry, I’m feeling so edgy right now,” and slumps into her chair, wilted and limp. I want to say, “What’s wrong with you? You look so ill.” But I can’t, because I’m frightened that she’ll storm out again. So we discuss neutral subjects, like her latest outings with Felix and how wonderful the house in Provence had been. An ozone pool, she says, at the perfect temperature, and a cook who made extraordinary French meals. Not too much cream and fat, but using amazing fruits and vegetables fresh from the local market. French beans in France are nothing like the ones in
Sainsbury’s. There’s no comparison; they have real beany flavor. She’s talking like a travel brochure, and as she speaks there’s an almost imperceptible shakiness in her voice. I take a risk: “So the house and the cooking were perfect, but what about the company?”

  “You mean Felix? He was perfect too. He’d planned everything, all our outings, food, everything.”

  “You like that? It doesn’t sound like you, not very free spirit.”

  “It’s fine, Callie.” Again that shakiness in her voice, a flicker in her eyes, and I pause before speaking, aware that I’m about to steer the conversation into darker territory—but I have to do it.

  “You should take a look at this website,” I say. “It’s called controllingmen.com and it tells you about the warning signs you should look out for with men like Felix. So you can be prepared . . . and safe.” I fumble with my phone, finding the site, while she drinks her coffee, looking around distantly, like she doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be home with Felix. I find the site and show her.

  “For fuck’s sake.” She’s scrolling down fast. “That’s bloody crazy nutjob stuff; you’re losing the plot, Callie!” Then she softens, which surprises me. “I know you think you’re helping. . . . Now, eat that carrot cake, I need to get home.”

  But I’m not ready to leave, and I say, “How did you meet him?”

  “God, you’re even suspicious about that! Unbelievable . . . I met him through Jacob Thynne, the guy who played Max in Rebecca. It was perfectly normal . . . an evening out at the Groucho.” As she’s speaking, though, her tone belies her words—her voice is weak and nervous, and I make one last effort.

  “Please, Tilda, let me help . . . I want to help. Honestly, look at the Controlling Men site!”

  “You’re ridiculous, Callie,” she says. “You have to stop behaving like this!” She stands up, stares at me coldly, then hurries out of the café.