Chapter twenty nine
The scent of the bloody roses in my front garden drifts upwards and I let my fingers drag behind me as they rustle the flower heads, every stem full of soft petals. They are smooth and cool to the touch, lifeless if it wasn’t for their smell. I bang my knuckles against the door of the Wexley’s house and the skin on one of them splits, leaving a small stain of blood behind. Marianne opens the door, her eyes heavy and sleepy looking. She tells me, “John is out,” but it’s not John I came looking for. The snow is falling and as I look back I cannot see my house, standing only meters away.
She sits on one of the kitchen chairs, her elbows resting on the table top, sliding about as if she is drunk, as unstable as a baby deer.
“Have you been drinking?” I ask. She nods her head and looks tearful. I can see them welling up in the corner of her eyes waiting for gravity to pull them or sadness to give them a push. It smells of stale sweat in here, old and fusty, like the windows haven’t been open in weeks and the bin has been left to overflow. I run my fingers through her hair which feels coarse like wire wool and it catches my dry cracked skin. I look around and see that everywhere is clean, the kitchen unused because they dine out or order in, because in their world of unreality they can do anything they like, the power of daily life unable to touch them. There is a glass on the table which has a few water drops on the outside. I pick it up and a small ring forms underneath it but remains incomplete. I drag my fingers through it. I taste the liquid on my fingertips and it is strong like vodka and it burns my lips.
“Marianne, you need a cup of coffee to wake up.”
Lots of head shaking ensues, which I take as a negative response. “No,” she mumbles, “I don’t want it.”
“A glass of water.” She hiccups, looks like she could throw up. “A big glass of milk? How about food? Something greasy?” This is all it takes. She hiccups, burps, and then throws up on the floor. Alcohol last. That’s what I learnt, remember? Otherwise there is a risk you might survive.
The vomit splatters on the stone kitchen tiles. Most likely it will stain. She has eaten something red, unless it is blood, which it might be, and which I hope it is.
“Here, take a sip of water.” I hand her a glass.
“I’m cold,” she says.
“Let’s get you to bed,” I suggest.
I help her up the stairs, mainly by dragging her by her arm which remains limp as her body bumps over each step like a tiny ragdoll, heavy as a little stone. At one point I hear a crack and I wonder if it is her neck. It is a struggle but I manage.
“John is going to be very angry with you, Marianne. Don’t you think? Good job it isn’t Friday.” I push open the bedroom door and get a splinter as her head bumps into the door frame splitting her lip. Her head is limp, wobbling as I pull her like the base of a weeble and again I have to consider that her neck is broken. I see blood pouring onto the carpet. I lean down and squeeze her lips together and watch the blood pulsate from them. She squirms but I hold her as firm as a vice, her head trapped in my grip.
The bed is made to army standards with perfect corners as sharp as knives. The curtains are half drawn and an orange light spills through. I leave her lying on top of the sheets and return downstairs. The house feels asleep, closed, finished. A derelict place without love or connection. There is no life left here except for Marianne lounging around upstairs as if she belongs here. “If she wants to stay,” I say to myself, “let’s make it permanent.” I take out as many tablets as I can pull from my pocket, a couple of them tumbling to the floor and rolling away, stopping only as they hit the puddle of bloody vomit. I don’t count them. I take a glass, fill it with water, and hold the first capsule over it. I open it and the powder sinks to the bottom like snow in a snow globe. I pull back the curtains for more light and I see that it is snowing harder outside, and I can’t see past the garden now. The earlier flurry has been smothered by an actual snow storm, the fog acting as my accomplice, hiding my presence here from the world. The roads will soon be impassable. Not even am ambulance will be able to get through.
I work at speed, emptying one capsule at a time over the glass until I have emptied them all. I take a spoon and stir the mixture until it becomes cloudy. The radio is playing in the background, fairground music which I only just notice. I imagine the lights of the dodgems, the laughter of the children, and the secret rendezvous of teenagers in caravans whose parents know no better. I set the glass down and waltz on my own for a while, the smell of candy floss filling the air, the rattle of toffee popcorn, and the sound of misaligned rifles attempting to win stuffed bears. When the music stops and there is no further reason to dance I pick up the glass and walk to the bedroom, stepping over the bloodstain on the carpet, but smiling as I do so. By the time I get back to the bedroom she is sleeping. I push her hard, waking her up, and slap her once. She complains and grunts as I pull her arm to make her sit forward, and I nearly spill the mixture in the glass because she cannot balance herself.
“It’s all about balance, Marianne,” I shout at her, but she doesn’t say anything. I force the glass to her lips and she sips from it. One sip, two sips. Eventually it’s gone. I pour it down her throat like a foie gras destined goose, only a small amount spilling from the sides. There are some crumbs of un-dissolved Prozac in the bottom of the glass, but nothing much for me to be concerned about. Nevertheless, I swipe my finger around the glass like a net catching fish. I smear the remaining powder in her gums. She fights me so I clamber on top of her, pin her down with my knees, and I think how easy it is to do anything I like to her.
I set the glass down on the bedside table, leaving a ring underneath it. I find her handbag. In it I find the Elavil, scatter a few on the bed. I take one of the water glasses from the bedside table and drop it on the bed, allowing the contents to spill out, enriching the scene. Some of the water seeps onto my knees and the wet chill of it feels good, like home, like that was exactly how it was supposed to be. I lean in towards her, tell her that this time it is her who needs to beware the truth. I look back at the glass. It looks dirty, painted with my finger prints.
I watch her for a while, her breathing slow and shallow. It takes twenty minutes, and so I speed things up by sitting on her chest to restrict her lungs. I press my fingers into the crease of her neck and I find nothing to repel me or push me away. No sign of life pulsates back. I pull back a loose shutter-like eyelid and find nothing but black, her soulless shark eye dead and absent. I wish for a moment that I had brought the knife, so that I could force her to watch me without having to hold her eyelid open, but it is too late. I settle instead for squeezing her lips, but no blood flows from the cuts, blood already solidifying like a little stone, caught by the petrification of death. I lean down once more, kiss her cold cheek, and tell her that there had been a time when she had a choice. That at one point this mess had been avoidable. On my way out I pass the nest of cuddly toys and see a small rabbit wearing a blue coat with big golden buttons that look like coins. I am almost certain that he speaks to me, but I have no idea what he said.
I close the front door behind me. I cannot see more than a hand’s distance ahead of me. I have brought the dirty glass and so throw it into the flower bed amongst the withering croci. Before I open my front door I shake off the snow from my shoulders, kick it from my boots. The same shadows flicker on the wall in the hallway and Gregory is still tending the fire in the same position as I left him. I don’t know where Ishiko is because I cannot feel her anymore, as if she no longer exists. I lie down on my bed and I think I fall asleep.
I have not done this for myself. I am not a selfish person, although you might think me to be considering my history of suicide and murder. People often mistake it for a selfish act. You may think that my actions in that house where I do not belong are odd and cruel, and that to kill a woman who has shown me kindness and friendship is a terrible act of betrayal. Yes, I have poisoned Marianne, I have killed her, but she did not die in that
room. She was cured, reborn, because I have gifted her with a chance to become something more than she allowed for herself. Through her, our lives will be renewed, and my poison no more than a curative tonic, a chemotherapy to the cancer that ran through our lives.
I understand now that Gregory is nothing more than a man, fallible and clumsy, riddled with mistakes right through to his core like concentric rings within the trunk of a tree. Mistakes can be forgiven, if there is courage and honesty somewhere to be found. They can at times correct themselves. But beyond this bed where I lie, there is no courage. No honesty. There is nothing but selfish needs and desires, and it was only today that Gregory saw what it was to consider something outside of his own demands, something instead within me. I am giving him a lifeline, a tatty old rope strewn into the sea in order that I might help him clamber to the safety of the rocks rather than let him drown. But I will not pull him, only offer him a chance. A chance to save himself. A stepping stone to our future. A gap that he must bridge himself. He has made an error of judgement, a slip up. Not one that is without hurt, I admit. But with Marianne's suicide and Wexley's impending guilt that he failed to prevent her death, Gregory now has a chance to see the error of his ways. To see the hurt he has caused. He has a chance to see that he must act with an open heart to put things right, to show his true character, and see that what he has done is wrong. To put the past behind us, as he tells me he wants to. I know that when I could not speak he became my voice. When I could not breathe for myself, he was the one who forced air into my lungs. He held me up when I could not stand myself. It was my responsibility to show him the way back, and I will succeed where he failed. He got lost somewhere in the chaos that I created, but Marianne is my light, our doorway, a path upon which we can tread and which I can carry him into the future. Marianne has died for us and takes with her the past. She has died for me. For him. For us. This, my sweet little fish, was so that you may live.
Chapter thirty
.....and then there was not a bird singing or flying in the sky. The fallen snow was less than expected, but it was enough to keep them in their nests. More importantly it was enough to cover my footsteps on the ground. The thick fog that had clung to my clothes and hair was my accomplice yesterday afternoon, and now the snow vindicates my actions with its willingness to mask my tracks. The roads themselves are clear, and I can hear the rumble of traffic gliding through the streets. I can hear Dana in the road too. With her there is a boy of no more than nine years old making tiny snowballs as she chases him at the fastest pace she can, which wasn’t anything more than a walk. The schools must be closed.
I follow my usual routines which I do not need to explain. My hand is bleeding and I cover it with a latex glove into which the blood pools like a warm bath for my finger. I dress in my jeans and a baby blue winter jumper, and pull on some thick socks. I put on my love heart necklace that Gregory gave me and that my father did not. I dig out my hiking boots from the cupboard under the stairs and take a walk into the road. We have all slept late, and the town is marvelling at the beauty of the picture postcard scene. That’s what snow does. It puts the world to sleep for a while, fills in the cracks, the land itself reduced to a single line of contour.
“Good morning!” Dana calls as I approach her. Her grandson is too busy to say hello, digging his pink hands like a shovel into the snow, disturbing the intentions of nature as he produces the foundations of a snowman. “Forgot his gloves, won’t wear mine. Say’s they are for girls only!” As if to emphasize his point the child lets out a neanderthalian roar, digging his frozen fingers into the snow like a hunting polar bear. She tuts as if she expects me to understand the scene before me. “Everything all right?” she asks.
“Never better.”
“Glad to hear it. It’s good to see you out,” she smiles, patting me on the shoulders, puffing as she staggers back into helping with the snowman, digging with her booted foot of the bad leg, all her weight on the good one. I begin walking away when she calls after me. “Don’t go too far though, Charlotte, you’ll get lost in this!”
I walk as far as the lake, which for the first time in many months looks beautiful to me. I walk the full length of the bay, brushing the snow from the top of the bench in front of The Belsfield Hotel. From here I can see the shoreline, but the buildings beyond it are shaded over, like a delicate pencil drawing which gradually fades to grey. It gives the buildings a surreal quality, as if they are toy buildings that I could pick up and move, create any town I want. I cannot see Ambleside across the expanse of water, but I know it nestles in at the most northern tip of the lake like a jewel in a golden crown.
When I sit on this bench I can feel my father. It is the only place where his voice returns to me as clear as if he was sat at my side. It was the last place he brought me to. When he came running to find me on that day, quite a crowd had gathered. I had begun crying for no specific reason other than I was alone. I had left the hotel reception where he had told me to stay. I wanted to see the birds and the swans. Somebody from the crowd asked at the reception of the hotel if anyone was missing a child. My father came rushing down the grass to scoop me up like a hero, and my tears dried up as my cheeks brushed against his shoulder. There was a woman chasing after him who wasn’t my mother calling out his name. John, John, she was saying. It’s OK, she’s alright, but he wasn’t listening by this point. Looking back it could have been the shame that made him run. He just wanted to avoid their judgement. They knew what he had been doing. They knew why I was alone. It was a smaller town back then.
That shame stayed with us as we took the boat out. It was my reward for being a good girl. An apology for what he had done. Never mind I had cried, he said. It wasn’t a problem. We didn't have to tell mummy. When the boatman pushed us away from the jetty and my father pulled the first stroke of the oars, I remember the redhead still running after us, her shirt loose and hair dishevelled. I turned around as we were leaving the shore and she was still there pleading with him, her hair like a beacon in the descending fog, flames fanning out in the breeze which continued to blaze until she disappeared into the mist.
When the fog came down onto the water my father told me not to panic. I didn’t. He was there with me. If he was there, everything would be alright. That’s what I believed. He held me because I was cold and he told me not to worry, the fog would lift. We heard several horns beeping, sounding, honking, from all directions boats were speaking to each other. It was impossible for him to know which direction to take. So we sat, me tucked inside his arms and wrapped in his coat tails without a single shred of fear.
At first I thought we had reached the shore when we struck land. It wasn’t the bay from which we had left, but after half an hour of drifting through the fog we had found something. He told me we would wait there. He promised me things would be fine. As he stepped his foot on the edge of the boat he was careless with his balance. He slipped, and at first I thought it was funny as his feet swung into the air. I even laughed. But then his head disappeared over the side and he didn’t get back up. I looked over and the water was red, his shoulder sticking out like an extra rock but the rest of him submerged under water. I tried to pull him back in the boat but each time I did I only succeeded in tipping the edge of the boat towards the water. I pulled harder and I managed to pull him out of the water, but his head flopped down like a weight on a fishing line and I couldn’t hold him and he slipped back down. During my last attempt I pulled his body onto the side of the boat. I thought at first I had managed, that I had saved him, but the edge of the boat tipped over, sending me and my father into the water. I fought my way out. I didn’t realise that I was supposed to die. I flapped and clambered until my arms made contact with something and I held it tight and heaved myself out of the water. I didn’t know that I was treading all over him, pushing him down further. What an insult to die this way, forced underwater by your own five year old child.
By the time I got to the shore, my coat heavy with wate
r, he had already slipped further away from me. I grabbed the nearest stick, tried to drag him out with it. It was too short so I pulled at the oar of the rowing boat and managed to lift it. But as I raised the oar I found it to be heavier than I had expected and my grip gave out. It struck my father’s head, splitting it open further, and it was at this moment that he was lost under the water for the final time, the only visible thing left of him his blood.
This is why I know I am supposed to die here. This is why I believed that my life had to end, to make it right, the terrible things I had done. I was never supposed to survive. I wasn’t supposed to escape. But yet once again I have found a way. I sit here today looking out at a fog drenched lake and I have proven that I can do what it takes for my child. That I can cheat fate. I am strong enough to take the life of another, and in doing so save my own. Twice. And now I also get to save Gregory’s life, metaphorically speaking. Perhaps this was my destiny all along. Maybe I always deserved another chance, and that all I had to do was prove myself.
Dana is still outside playing with her grandson when I arrive back in our road, her face pinker, her knee tighter. “You made it back OK then?” she shouts.
PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Page 28
