Killing Cupid

by Louise Voss

This time, I wanted to see the look on her face when she saw them.

  I put the skirt and top into a bag and, after getting dressed, made my way towards Victoria Gardens.

  As usual, the road was pretty much deserted. There were a pair of magpies sitting on Siobhan’s roof. Two for joy: what a good omen. As I watched, one of the magpies stretched its wings and flew away. Damn. Still, it’s the initial sighting that counts. I think.

  I went up Siobhan’s front path, took the clothes out of their bag and lay them carefully on the doorstep. Then I rang the bell and ran back down the path as quickly as I could. I crouched behind a car, ensuring that I had a good view of the door, and waited for Siobhan to emerge and find the clothes. How excited she would be: my card, the flowers, the underwear, and now this. It must feel like Christmas nearly every day!

  I waited, but Siobhan didn’t emerge. She must be out again, I thought.

  I counted to ten then stood up. I’d had another brilliant idea. I didn’t want to leave the clothes on the step all day in case some dishonest passer-by saw them and nabbed them. My new idea meant that I wouldn’t get to see Siobhan’s face when she found her new glorious garments, but I decided that was a price worth paying.

  I walked back up her path, took out my key, scooped up the clothes and went inside. She must have gone out before the post, because it was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it on the side table.

  I really like Siobhan’s place and can’t wait till she invites me to move in, but I didn’t have time to hang around. I didn’t know if she’d just popped out to buy some milk or something. I went straight through to the kitchen and looked out the back window. There was the washing, hanging on the line. I unbolted the back door and went out into the garden. There were high walls surrounding the garden so I was confident nobody would see me, and I quickly did what I’d come to do. It was time to replace some of those scruffy old clothes that Siobhan slobbed around in with these new, flattering items. I pulled down an old pair of jeans and a misshapen T-shirt with I-heart-NY emblazoned on the front and pegged the Prada skirt and top up in their place. I noticed that the underwear I’d sent wasn’t on the line. Maybe she was wearing it that very minute. I would have liked to have gone up and looked through her chest of drawers to check, but I was worried about time. Before I left, though, I noticed a little gate set into the wall in the corner of the garden. I looked over it – it led out to an alley. I made a mental note.

  Taking the jeans and T-shirt with me, I went back into the house, bolted the door behind me and hurried out through the front door.

  When I got onto the road, I heard a miaow.

  I turned. It was Siobhan’s cat, standing on the wall. Had it followed me out of the house? I hadn’t even seen it . It jumped down from the wall and ran across the road, stopping on the kerb and looking back at me.

  Then I had another idea: maybe I could get Siobhan’s cat to deliver a message to her. I fished in my pockets and found a piece of paper and a pen. I wrote ‘I love you’ on it and crossed the road towards the cat. I was going to wrap the piece of paper around its collar.

  As I neared the feline it tiptoed away, stopping just out of reach. It must be a girl, I thought, amused. It was a little tease.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, making little cooing noises. ‘Come to your future daddy.’

  It blinked at me.

  I crept closer, holding out the piece of paper, making little kissy noises now. Thank God there was nobody around to see, although I could hear a car coming down the street. I paused and stretched out my hand towards the cat, which was now washing itself. ‘Come on, you little…‘ I said, and at that point I sprang, throwing myself towards it, aiming to grab its collar.

  I missed. I made contact with the fur on its back, but the cat slipped out from under my grasp and ran at top feline speed into the road – straight into the path of a car. Through the fingers I thrust in front of my face I saw a blur of fur, a flash of silver, heard a screech of tyres and then

  BANG.

  I opened my eyes and removed my hands from my face. The cat was nowhere to be seen. But the car…oh shit. The car had swerved and smashed into Siobhan’s front wall, sending bricks and dust flying. I saw a face through the car window, turning towards me: a woman, looking dazed and scared, but thankfully still alive, and with no sign of blood.

  And what did I do? I ran. I got the fuck out of there, still clutching the carrier bag containing Siobhan’s old clothes. It was only when I got home that I realised that I must have dropped the piece of paper that said ‘I love you’.

  But that wasn’t the worst thing that happened today.

  It was only mid-morning when I got back here, and I hung around the house all day, fretting about what Siobhan would think when she saw the demolition job that car had done on her front wall. It would probably lessen the thrill of seeing her new designer gear. And what about the cat? Had it been hurt?

  I had this awful flashback to that time when I was a kid. Annette had a new hamster, called Chips. I loved that hamster, wishing I was allowed one, but I wasn’t allowed to play with him. One day, everyone went out, leaving me alone in the house, and I rushed upstairs to get Chips out of his cage. He ran up and down my arm a few times, then I got bored and went to put him back. But the cage had a spring-door – and as I was putting Chips through the gap, I let go of the door and it snapped shut on his leg. He froze, I froze. I didn’t know what to do. Chips was lying completely still in my palm, this grimace on his little face, his teeth sticking out.

  I put him back in the cage and hoped that maybe he would recover. I sat by the cage all day, talking to him, pleading with him to get up and start walking round the cage, maybe run on his wheel. But he didn’t. He just lay there giving me reproachful looks.

  Mum’s reaction when she got home and they saw him…

  All I can say is, thank God he lived, even if he did limp for a long time. I don’t know what she would have done if he’d actually died. And that’s how I felt this afternoon, worrying about Siobhan’s cat. Because if Siobhan thought I’d hurt her cat, it would be all over between us. And he was a nice cat too. Much nicer than a lot of the people I know.

  By teatime I’d worked myself into such a frenzy of anxiety that I had to get out of the house. Si and Nat had come home and they kept asking me to ‘sit still for God’s sake’. And maybe because it was a habit I’d developed over the last couple of days, I made my way towards the George V. I could do with a drink even if Kathy wasn’t there. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all: I didn’t know what I would do if I saw Kathy. But walking to the pub I was reminded of how sickening it had been to see her and Siobhan chatting like bosom buddies. If only she would disappear, leave the class and never come back. Thinking about it made my stomach hurt.

  When I got to the pub it was half-empty. Ten seconds later, so was my first glass of beer. I sat and drank and smoked while the pub began to fill up around me, growing steadily noisier, the tables around me becoming occupied as people stopped off for a swift half after work. For many of them, that swift half became a slow whole, the alcohol deadening the disappointments of another day in the office. I almost pitied them. How they would envy my freedom.

  I was lighting my dozenth cigarette of the evening when I heard a female voice. ‘Alex?’

  I looked up and saw Kathy. She wore a puzzled expression.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I often drink here,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never seen you here before.’

  ‘I usually come during the day. And I haven’t been for a while.’

  She narrowed her eyes and studied me for a moment. She looked around, probably trying to see if there were any other tables free. There weren’t.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  I told her of course not and she went off to the bar to buy herself a drink. I was feeling much calmer now, the booze washing through me, tranquillizing me. Kathy came back to the table and sat down and said,
‘This is becoming a habit – drinking here with people from my writing class.’ Then a worried look crossed her face, just for a split-second. Maybe Siobhan had told her about the lie she told me about socialising with people from the class. She didn’t say any more about it.

  For the first hour or so we talked about the class, about the other students. Kathy did a great impression of Brian. I found myself really enjoying the conversation, mainly because it gave me plenty of opportunities to say Siobhan’s name. I noticed that whenever Siobhan’s name was mentioned, Kathy got this look in her eye. But it didn’t stop me from enjoying myself. I almost forgot that I wasn’t supposed to like this woman: that she was my rival. She was funny and very intelligent. I knew how much Siobhan liked Kathy’s writing, and that irritated me, but then Kathy bought more drinks, and after we’d finished those I bought another round and by then I was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy. I even felt a bit sentimental, as if I was mourning something that hadn’t actually happened yet. It was a strange feeling.

  Then, after I’d mentioned Siobhan for the twentieth time, Kathy said, ‘You like her don’t you?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You fancy Siobhan , don’t you? Come on, you talk about her non-stop. Siobhan this, Siobhan that.’ She laughed throatily. ‘If I didn’t like her myself I’d be thoroughly bored.’

  ‘You like her?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t sound so worried. I don’t mean I like her in that way – just as a mate. I’ve got a feeling Siobhan and I are going to be really good friends.’

  That worried me enough, but then she said, ‘Siobhan told me you asked her out for a drink.’

  I gulped. ‘Did she say anything else about me?’

  ‘No, not really. She didn’t slag you off, if that’s what you’re worrying about. Actually, I don’t know if we should be talking about this.’

  And then it all came pouring out. I couldn’t stop myself. It’s one thing being able to write down how I feel about Siobhan, but I suddenly had an unstoppable urge to talk about it, to tell someone else. I told Kathy that I thought I had fallen in love with our teacher, that I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and that I wanted to tell her how I felt but that I was scared of rejection. I even told her about sending her the card and ordering the underwear for her. Kathy just sat there and listened to me, her eyebrows raised.

  Suddenly, I felt ill. I told Kathy I needed the loo and went off in search of it. In the gents, I locked myself in a cubicle and was immediately sick into the toilet. And as I wiped my mouth with a piece of shiny toilet paper, my mind cleared. Oh fuck, I thought. What have I done? Kathy’s going to tell Siobhan – she’ll probably put her own slant on it as well. She might make me sound like some obsessive nut. And they’ll talk about what I was doing in the George V in the first place. God. I sat on the toilet and put my head in my hands. Why was I such a moron? I had wanted to talk to Kathy, get to know her, find out how I could remove her from the scene in the same way I got rid of that twattish bloke, Phil. And I’d made a hash of it.

  Shit.

  I came out of the cubicle and splashed my face with cold water at the sink. I looked at myself in the mirror. What a state. I desperately wanted to go home, to crawl into bed and hide from the world. But I couldn’t. I had to undo the damage I’d done.

  I went back to the table. Kathy was smoking one of my fags.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I always crave ciggies when I’ve had a few. But I was just waiting to say goodbye. I ought to get home. My head’s spinning.’

  Home. So she could phone Siobhan, tell her what I’d said, twist it into lies.

  ‘Whereabouts do you live?’ I asked.

  She told me she lived just across the road, in a block of flats.

  ‘Do you really have to go?’ I said. ‘I was enjoying myself.’

  She looked at her watch, then at her empty glass One thing I’d figured out over the last couple of hours: Kathy had a thirst on her. ‘Well… I guess I could be persuaded to stay for one more. But you’ll have to pay. I’ve got no more cash on me.’

  I took out my wallet and looked inside it. There was a ten pound note tucked inside, but Kathy couldn’t see it from where she was sitting. ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Neither have I.’

  That was when Kathy gave me a long, appraising look. ‘I’ve got some booze at my place.’

  My heart started to beat quickly. ‘That sounds good.’

  ‘You know I’m not interested in you like that though, don’t you? You know I’m gay.’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  That made her laugh, and she stood up, pulling her jacket on. I followed her out of the pub and across the road to a block of flats. She unlocked the door and we went inside, Kathy pressing the button by the lift. She staggered as the lift began to ascend and almost fell into my arms. ‘God, I’m really drunk,’ she laughed.

  ‘Me too.’ But really, I felt sober. Stone cold sober.

  She lived two floors below the top flat. We entered her apartment and she went straight over to the fridge while I crossed to the window. She had an amazing view, right across north London, the lights of the city shining and pulsing in the night. Kathy came up and handed me a bottle of beer. ‘Great view, isn’t it? A lot of people feel sorry for me when I tell them I live in a block of flats, but they change their opinions when they see the view.’

  ‘It’s awesome.’

  She laughed. I found myself picking at the label on the bottle of beer. I felt incredibly tense, all the muscles in my back cramping, sweat gathering in my armpits. I still didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t really even know what I was doing there.

  ‘The view’s even better from the roof. You can see all the way to Canary Wharf’ Kathy said, swigging from her own beer bottle. She really did like her booze.

  ‘The roof?’

  ‘Yes. You can get to it by climbing onto the fire escape. What do you reckon? Do you fancy it?’

  ‘Is it safe?’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of a clamber, but I’ve done it a few times and I’ve always been alright. You’re not going to wimp out on me, are you?’

  I hesitated. There were all sorts of ideas in my head.

  ‘Come on then,’ I said, and she led me through the flat to a window that opened onto a balcony. From there, a metal fire escape led up to the roof and down to the garden. A long way down to the garden. The fire escape didn’t look very sturdy. I looked down again and had a sudden attack of vertigo. My palms were wet with sweat. Half of me wanted to go home. But there was a voice in my head telling me what I had to do.

  ‘Are you alright?’ she said, turning to look at me, a silly pissed smile on her face.

  I nodded.

  Kathy stepped up onto the fire escape and I followed …

  I can’t write any more. It’s too much. Too much.

  I ran all the way home.

  And I know that when I close my eyes tonight all I’m going to see is her crumpled body on the patio. All I’m going to hear is the way she cried out.

  And how it sounded like the first syllable of my name.

  Chapter 11

  Siobhan

  Monday

  It’s too much. First, the card, the flowers and the underwear…and now the weirdest thing yet has happened. Even more bizarre than that stupid woman in her car destroying most of my garden wall.

  If it was happening to someone else, I’d think it was quite funny. I came back from Sainsbury’s this morning and was just putting the fish fingers into the freezer when I heard a few spots of rain tap against the window. It was at that point I remembered I’d left the washing out, so I went into the garden, and there, hanging demurely on the line, were these clothes which weren’t even mine!!!! At first I felt sick, and upset because whoever left them had nicked my favourite NY t-shirt and my vintage Levis. All these paranoid thoughts went streaming through my head, about sexual predators and freaks spying on me with binoculars – until I realised that a) nobody c
ould see into my bedroom, and b) it was unlikely that any sad pervert would spend the kind of money which had clearly been spent on these clothes. They were Prada! Cotton jersey; a black skirt and a sort of slinky t-shirt, with the tags still on them. I unpegged them and scrutinized them. They felt lovely, that really smooth, thick good quality jersey material.

  My first thought was: I want them. I unpegged them from the line and took them inside. They looked like they’d be a perfect fit. But thinking about what they were doing there was too much – it made my head hurt. I needed some air, some space to think, so I hung the clothes in my wardrobe – might as well look after them – and closed the door on them. If it’s all some great big mistake, I might not have them for long. Part of me was hoping that they’d be gone when I returned home; that the Prada Fairy or whoever the hell brought them would take them away in the time it took me to walk down the road to buy a paper. A bigger part of me hoped they’d still be there when I got back. Which of course they were.

  I did make a few tentative phonecalls, just to see if anyone I knew had left them there as some sort of joke, but got no joy. I even tried Phil – left him a message which he didn’t return. I’m sure it wasn’t him, though, he’s not talking to me. I’ve called him a couple of times – he must be back from Portugal by now – but he isn’t getting back to me. I think I must have really upset him.

  Well, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough who left the clothes there. Nobody would spend that much money on me and want to remain anonymous for long.

  Thursday

  Police were called to Beulah Mansions in Grove Road, Camden on Monday evening, where the body of a woman had been discovered in the grounds of the building. She was later identified as 31 year old Kathy Noonan, a resident of Beulah Mansions. There were no witnesses, but the police report states that Ms. Noonan had fallen to her death from the roof of the building. A police spokesperson said that Ms Noonan had been out drinking that evening, and that there was no suspicion of foul play. ‘It seems that she tried to climb on to her roof via the fire escape and must have slipped,’ the spokesperson went on. ‘It’s a popular spot for residents of the building.’