by Ruth Dugdall
The girl had blonde hair, which was bright when the sun caught it, and green eyes like a kitten. This must have been what Robin looked like as a child; she was innocent once. Was innocent still, ignorant of the disease that’s killing me. Five months ago I’d sat before a computer screen and set a plan in motion. All those ideas we’d tussled with on the screen, the words we played with which seemed more real than being on the train in a cramped carriage, as if I was already a ghost. The little girl, sensing me staring, looked up.
I felt dizzy and longed to sit on the dirty floor next to her, to trail my fingers in the dust. Instead I took off my glasses and rubbed the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes. I lurched as the train hurled around a corner and collided with the mother, stepping back on one of her shopping bags. “Sorry,” I said, but she looked at me disapprovingly, maybe thinking I was drunk. I wasn’t drunk. I was sick. Morbidly unwell.
The dizziness intensified and I sat clumsily on the floor, not caring that my clothes would get dirty. The girl looked at me, curious, and her mother’s hand protectively touched her blonde head. No-one trusts strangers anymore especially if they talk to children. But I had nothing to lose.
“Hello,” I said, and she looked back at the floor, well taught in ignoring men she didn’t know. She wasn’t shy – her eyes kept wandering towards me, and she was bored. I reached forward unsteadily, unzipped my case. I could feel her mother watching me, sense her tension as if I was about to retrieve a bomb. But I’m no hijacker. I just wanted to make a connection. I took out the stamp book and opened it on my lap, seeing that the girl was looking too.
“Do you know what these are?”
She shrugged, the casual indifference of I’m-not-stupid. “Stamps.”
“That’s right. From all over the world. Places you wouldn’t even dream of. See this,” I pointed to a pink stamp depicting an alpaca, “that’s from Peru. Do you know where that is?”
The girl shook her head.
“South America. A long way away.”
“I’ve been to America,” she offered. “We went to Florida. I swam with dolphins.”
The girls face lit up, and I wondered if Robin had ever swum with dolphins. If she’d ever travelled to America. “I’d like to go to South America,” I told the girl.
“Then why don’t you?” she asked.
A simple enough question, but I couldn’t answer. When the train stopped at Chelmsford her mother started to collect her bags. I handed the stamp book to the girl. “Here,” I said, “it’s yours.” She took it, no doubt to be told off by her mother after they got off. She’ll look at it, and dream of other places that maybe someday she’ll visit, and then may even remember me.
After Chelmsford I was alone in the corridor, and the toilet door swung against my foot, but I didn’t stand. I occupied myself by picturing Robin as a little girl, and waited for the train to stop again at the terminus. The end of my journey.
Robin was waiting. It was a sunny June evening and she’d dressed up for me in a cream dress and strappy sandals. I worried that the grime from my clothes would mark her, but she ran over, not caring about my dirty clothes, and threw her arms around me. I should’ve felt supported, less likely to fall, but instead I had vertigo like I was standing at a great height and looking over the edge. If she noticed me shaking she didn’t say.
We drove back to the house and she was unusually chatty, talking about the sun, and how everything looked beautiful. We stopped outside an off-licence and I watched her disappear into the shop, saw a man walking by give her the once-over. She did look beautiful, so why didn’t I feel happy? After all, she was my girlfriend and soon she would be my lover. Everything was as it should be. As we’d planned.
She came back to the car holding a bottle of Belle Époque, stupidly expensive champagne with hand-painted flowers on the bottle. She slid into the driver’s seat, pleased with her purchase. “It wasn’t chilled, but I couldn’t resist. It means ‘beautiful age’. It’s prophetic, don’t you think?” The green bottle was heavy in my lap, and I thought of the pressurised gases, waiting to explode.
Her home was immaculate, as always, and I could smell the bleach. It smelt like a hospital. Death was close.
“I’ll just put this in the fridge,” she said, relieving me of the painted bottle. It was a party, and she was the hostess. I felt myself getting into the spirit, something like hope rising in my heart. When I closed my eyes I pictured clear blue water, and saw Robin by my side.
“I’ve cooked you a special meal,” she said.
This was new. For all Robin’s attention to domestic detail, she was no cook and we usually ate packaged food from Marks and Spencer. She placed a pot on the table, a blue casserole dish, and held the lid with a gloved hand, like a silver service waiter with a platter. I half expected her to say ‘ta-da!’
It was a stew, brown chunks of meat floating alongside carrots and other root vegetables. I would’ve preferred something from M&S but pretended to be grateful.
“It’s a special treat. Can you guess?”
I couldn’t.
“I had to go to a very specialist butcher in Yoxford. It’s a boar. In memory of Boris.” I looked at her flushed face, the sweating bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, and felt dizzy with sorrow.
“Are you going to eat it?” I asked her. I’d never seen her eat meat, and her face grew serious. She pulled her white hand from the oven glove and kissed her finger, then touched my forehead, “Yes. I’m going to eat it. For you.”
Another sacrifice, I thought.
I watched her release the cork from the champagne bottle. She frowned for a second as amber liquid drenched the white tablecloth, before she remembered that a stained cloth is nothing compared to the blood we planned to spill. I wondered if she ever doubted my motives, if she ever imagined that I would want to harm her. Despite her clever brain, Robin is as trusting as the girl on the train. I took the flute of champagne from her, thinking how she looked like a child on Christmas day.
I ate the meat, although it was gristly and felt too large in my mouth. Robin wanted me to eat the boar, and she polished off a large portion.
“For a vegetarian,” I said, “you’re quite a carnivore.”
She grinned at me, a sliver of gristle caught between her front teeth, and my shaking hand held the fine flute too hard, shattering it into my palm. When I opened my hand I saw that the tips of my two fingers were bleeding.
“My poor love,” she said, reaching over, gently removing the shards of splintered glass from my skin, dabbing at the cuts with her napkin. Then she did something I hadn’t expected. She knelt on the floor beside me, still holding my hand, and took my two bloody fingers into her mouth. It was soft and warm, and her tongue licked and sucked. It turned me on until I remembered the disease in my body, the way some sufferers have been infected through blood. I pulled my hand away sharply, and Alice was surprised. She looked hurt. How could I tell her that I wanted to protect her?
Now, the sun is setting. Orange skies and tall shadows fall on the church and gravestones opposite, and as I stare out of the window I see a man walk by. He looks up, and then I see then it’s not a man at all, but a woman. The leather jacket, the short haircut, fooled me. She must realise I’ve seen her because she quickly turns and walks away.
Downstairs I hear Robin moving around, the sound of water filling a kettle, the flick of a switch, the pop of air from a storage jar under pressure. I can picture her face, a serene smile on her lips, a light hum from deep in her throat. I enjoy thinking of her this way, thinking of our relationship as truly domestic. Is this how it would have been for us, if we had met under different circumstances? If I’d not been ill?
When I was a child, collecting stamps, I was certain that one day I would travel to those faraway countries. That boy is somewhere inside and kicking to get out, yelling that it’s not too late to see the world.
We have a plan and it’s too late for me.
But it’s not
too late for Robin.
Why can’t I feel more certain? This is our plan, the way we want it, but nothing feels as it should. The house is too clean, the food is too rich. Why doesn’t anything feel right? Is it doubt, this nagging anxiety that keeps unsettling me? Can I change my mind now?
Even Jesus had doubts as the end drew closer – I just need to resolve myself. But still, I’m unsure… my head hurts. I can’t think straight.
I take a coin from my pocket. Okay then, even though it’s a certainty that I’ll be dead within a matter of weeks, this will give me a 50% chance of living until then.
I take the ten pence piece and flick it high into the air, and I go to catch it but my hand is shaking so much that I miss, and it lands on the floor, rolling somewhere under the bed. I have to get on my hands and knees, watching it spin, waiting for it to drop, until I can finally get it.
I hold it tight, and try again.
This time, I throw lower and manage to catch it and slap it on the back of my hand, hiding it with the other. Still, my hands shake and I’m worried I’ll drop it. If it’s heads I’ll stop all this – I’ll tell Alice about the CJD. I won’t put her at risk. If it’s tails, I’ll carry on.
I pray to God to intervene, to send me a message. Please, oh please, let this coin guide me in my decision.
Slowly I prize my hand from the concealed coin, not daring to look fully but squinting until I realise that I must see what God, or Fate, has decided. I force myself to look.
The coin is tails up.
I throw it on the floor, cursing, hearing it spin on the floorboards. My throat tightens; I must go ahead with my original plan. To die; to potentially infect Alice.
And then I know, from how fucked off I feel, that I’ve already made my decision. My reaction to the coin was the real sign. I wanted the coin to land heads-up.
I don’t want to die today.
I don’t want to hurt Alice.
Cate re-read the final paragraph. David had changed his mind. But he had died and been eaten anyway. Cate felt a shift in her understanding as she wondered if the death had been, after all, against his will? Or had he changed his mind once more, deciding to go ahead with the plan? Then she thought of something else, other pieces of the puzzle which she could finally place. Opening her desk drawer she lifted out the handwritten note that Krishna had given her:
June 16th.
Krish, I know you’ll look after this. It’s important. Sometimes things don’t work out as we planned, as you and I both know. After all, we deal in improbabilities. By the time you get this I’ll be long gone, but I want to travel light. Keep this safe for me.
I hope to see you again, either here or in another life.
Dave
Like a mist suddenly lifted by sun, Cate understood. When David talked in his letter about travelling light, he didn’t mean it as a metaphor, he wasn’t talking about the journey of death. He was talking about the actual journey he wanted to take, the travels he had decided to go on before the CJD finally killed him. And he no longer needed the memory stick, the diary, which was initially intended to exonerate Alice, because he no longer wanted to go ahead with the plan. He had changed his mind, so there was no reason to give the stick to Alice. He didn’t want to take it with him. When he posted it to Krishna it was because he had decided to live.
Cate clicked the print icon on the screen, knowing the papers would soon spew out in the printer tray out in the lobby. She then opened the file containing her pre-sentence report and re-wrote her final paragraph. She now knew exactly what to write, what the judge must do. When it was written she emailed the report to the court office, attaching an explanatory note. It would be before the judge in minutes. Cate grabbed her bag, walked into the lobby to collect the printed copy of David’s diary, and headed downstairs to the reception area.
“Dot, make sure this goes in the next hour,” she said to the secretary, handing her the brown jiffy bag, sealed tightly, which contained the memory stick. “And address it for the attention of DCI Stephen West. It’s urgent. He must get it today.”
As she drove she thought, am I being stupid – why don’t I just telephone Alice? But Alice didn’t know about David having CJD, and Cate felt it was only right to tell her face-to-face. This was not something that could be relayed over the phone. Alice should be told about her possible fate in person. At the very least, she deserved that.
Cate would not fail David. But she would not fail Alice either.
Both of them were victims.
Forty
I promised you the truth and you deserve to know. I know forgiveness is too much to ask, so I simply hope for understanding. This is how Smith died.
As the minutes passed and midnight approached I was as excited as a child on Christmas Eve. I tried to capture the moment, not wanting to forget any detail. Smith was upstairs in the spare room, resting before his final sleep, catching up on dreams. I made us a midnight feast; I juiced some fruit, added honey to yogurt, fetched cheese from the fridge, a mild creamy goat’s cheese and blue-veined Stilton, which we could have on crackers. I laid the table with white china and cut glass, a bottle of sancerre. The two plastic vials of GHB in the fridge, one already partly used.
I arranged some poppies in my precious blue vase, the perfect centrepiece. It was a quarter past eleven. We had less than one hour to wait and the only sound from upstairs was the tapping of fingers on a keyboard as Smith completed his diary. The suicide note was sealed in an envelope and propped against the empty bottle of Belle Époque, from our meal earlier. We were both nervous and in his agitation Smith had broken a glass, but it had all been cleaned away. I’d put a plaster on each of his cut fingers.
I took a shower, anointing myself with papaya and mango, washing my hair with jasmine. I took my time, patting my skin, stroking in scented lotion, perfuming and oiling myself as if for an ancient ritual. I decided to wear only white, a long linen dress and simple, plain underwear. I dried my hair at the bedroom mirror, watching my reflection and thinking how peaceful I looked. I applied a tinted moisturiser, a cream eye shadow and a pale pink lip-gloss. Then I painted my nails a pretty shade of pink. I remembered how Mummy looked, the day she died. Her pale cool skin.
The sancerre was getting warm on the table, and I began to feel impatient. I tapped on Smith’s door. No answer. I opened the door.
He was gone. I turned, darted back to the bathroom, but he wasn’t there either.
I called, “Smith! SMITH!” My voice increasingly loud and demanding. He had left me – disappeared while I was preparing. I caught myself in the mirror. I no longer looked radiant, I looked enraged. His bed had been made, the duvet pulled neatly over the mattress. I dashed to the window, then I saw, on the floor, his bag. His weekend bag was still there. Relief cooled my hot heart.
Outside, the moon was alone in the sky. There was no-one around. I saw a movement coming from the dark shadows. It was Smith.
He had something in his hand. An envelope. Where would he have bought a card at that time of night? He slid the envelope into the post box across the road. He stood for several moments, his hand lost in the box, as if deciding whether to let go of his envelope. Who was that letter for? A goodbye to someone special? Eventually he retrieved his empty hand. The envelope was in the box, waiting to be collected.
I heard him open the back door. I smoothed my brow, forced a smile. I demanded of my face that it regain the poise it had lost and went downstairs.
He looked shy and acted like a guest in a hotel, polite and formal. “Alice, this spread looks great.”
I flinched but didn’t point out that he should call me Robin. He wolfed down two crackers in rapid succession, as if he’d not eaten for a week. His haste disappointed me, as I carefully dotted crumbs from my lips. He was skittish, his body moved in lively jerks, and his eyes darted from me. We were both strained in our conversation, skating on thin ice, afraid to initiate what was pressing for us both.
He cleared his th
roat to speak, and my hand froze on my knife, poised to slice the cheese in two. “Alice, we need to talk.”
“Of course.” I put down the knife. “But please stop calling me Alice.”
“I won’t call you anything but Alice.” He looked shifty, his Adam’s apple rose in his neck.
“But we agreed.” I was angry. I preferred to be Robin. Alice made me think of my childhood, of a giant girl in a tiny house, of an outsized body in a Mad Hatter’s world. I stood and gathered the dirty plates.
