Killing Me Softly

by Nicci French

  ‘What did the teacher say?’

  ‘He had a word with my mother. But in the development of the Drakloop III, I’m like the Holy Spirit. I interface, arrange, drift around, go to meetings. In short, I’m a manager.’

  Adam smiled and then looked serious. ‘Do you like that?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve said this clearly, even to myself. The problem is that I used to like the routine part of being a scientist that other people find boring. I liked working on the protocols, setting up the equipment, making the observations, doing the figures, writing up the results.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I suppose I was too good at it. I got promoted. But I shouldn’t be saying all of this. If I’m not careful you’ll discover what a boring woman you’ve inveigled into your bed.’ Adam didn’t laugh or say anything, so I got embarrassed and clumsily tried to change the subject. ‘I’ve never done much outdoors. Have you climbed big mountains?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Really big ones? Like Everest?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘That’s amazing.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not amazing. Everest isn’t…’ he searched for the right word ‘… a technically interesting challenge.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s easy?’

  ‘No, nothing above eight thousand metres is easy. But if you’re not too unlucky with the weather then Everest is a walk-in. People are led up there who aren’t real climbers. They’re just rich enough to hire people who are real climbers.’

  ‘But you’ve been to the top?’

  Adam looked uncomfortable, as if it was difficult to explain to someone who couldn’t possibly understand. ‘I’ve been on the mountain several times. I guided a commercial expedition in ’ninety-four and I went to the summit.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘I hated it. I was on the summit with ten people taking pictures. And the mountain… Everest should be something holy. When I went there it was like a tourist site that was turning into a rubbish dump – old oxygen cylinders, bits of tent, frozen turds all over the place, flapping ropes, dead bodies. Kilimanjaro’s even worse.’

  ‘Have you just been climbing now?’

  ‘Not since last spring.’

  ‘Was that Everest?’

  ‘No. I was one of the guides for hire on a mountain called Chungawat.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it. Is it near Everest?’

  ‘Pretty near.’

  ‘Is it more dangerous than Everest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get to the top?’

  ‘No.’

  Adam’s mood had darkened. His eyes were narrow, uncommunicative. ‘What is it, Adam?’ He didn’t reply.

  ‘Is it… ?’ I ran my fingers down his leg to his foot and to the mutilated toes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  I kissed them. ‘Was it very terrible?’

  ‘You mean the toes? Not really.’

  ‘I mean the whole thing.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Will you tell me all about it some day?’

  ‘Some day. Not now.’

  I kissed his foot, his ankle and worked my way up. Some day, I promised myself.

  ‘You look tired.’

  ‘Pressure of work,’ I lied.

  There was one person I hadn’t felt able to put off. I used to meet Pauline almost every week for lunch and usually we’d wander into a shop or two together, where she would watch indulgently as I tried on impractical garments: summer dresses in winter; velvet and wool in summer; clothes for a different life. Today I was walking along with her while she did some shopping. We bought a couple of sandwiches from a bar on the edge of Covent Garden then queued at a coffee shop and then at a cheese shop.

  I immediately knew I’d said the wrong thing. We never said things like ‘pressure of work’ to each other. I suddenly felt like a double agent.

  ‘How’s Jake?’ she asked.

  ‘Very fine,’ I said. ‘The tunnel thing is almost… Jake is lovely. He’s absolutely lovely.’

  Pauline looked at me with a new concern. ‘Is everything all right, Alice? Remember, this is my big brother you’re talking about. If anybody describes Jake as absolutely lovely, there must be some kind of a problem.’

  I laughed and she laughed and the moment passed. She bought her large bag of coffee beans and two takeaway polystyrene cups of coffee and we walked slowly towards Covent Garden and found a bench. This was a bit better. It was a sunny, clear, very cold day, and the coffee burned my lips pleasantly.

  ‘How’s married life?’ I asked.

  Pauline looked at me very seriously. She was a striking woman whose straight dark hair could suggest severity, if you didn’t know better. ‘I’ve stopped taking the Pill,’ she said.

  ‘Because of the scares?’ I asked. ‘It’s not really…’

  ‘No,’ she laughed, ‘I’ve just stopped. I haven’t changed to anything.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I said, with a half-scream, and hugged her. ‘Are you ready for this? Isn’t it a bit too soon?’

  ‘It’s always too soon, I think,’ Pauline said. ‘Anyway, nothing’s happened yet.’

  ‘So you haven’t started standing on your head after sex, or whatever it is you’re meant to do.’

  So we chattered about fertility and pregnancy and maternity leave and the more we talked the worse I felt. Up to this moment, I had thought of Adam as a dark, strictly private betrayal. I knew I was doing something awful to Jake but now, looking at Pauline, her cheeks flushed red in the cold but also with the excitement, maybe, of impending pregnancy, and her hands clutched round the coffee, and the mist from between her narrow lips, I had a sudden mad sense that all of it was operating under a misapprehension. The world wasn’t as she thought it was and it was my fault.

  We both looked at our empty coffee cups, laughed and stood up. I gave her a close hug and pushed my face against hers.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Most people don’t tell you about trying for a baby until they’re into their second trimester.’

  ‘Oh, Alice,’ she said reprovingly. ‘I couldn’t not tell you that.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said suddenly. ‘I’ve got a meeting.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said taken aback. ‘In, er, Soho.’

  ‘I’ll walk along with you. It’s on my way.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I said, in anguish.

  On the way Pauline talked about Guy, who had broken off with her suddenly and brutally not much more than eighteen months earlier.

  ‘Do you remember the way I was then?’ she asked, with a little grimace and looking, for the moment, just like her brother. I nodded, thinking frantically about how I was to handle this. Should I pretend to go into an office? That wouldn’t work. Should I say I had forgotten the address? ‘Of course you do. You saved my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you for all you did for me then.’ She held up her bag of coffee. ‘I probably drank about that much coffee in your old flat while crying into your whisky. God, I thought I would never be able to cross the road again on my own, let alone function and be happy.’

  I squeezed her hand. They say that the best friends are those who can simply listen and if that’s true then I was the best of all friends during that terrible walk. This was it, I said to myself, the terrible punishment for all my deceptions. As we turned into Old Compton Street, I saw a familiar figure walking in front of us. Adam. My brain dulled and I thought I might even be going to faint. I turned, saw an open shop door. I couldn’t speak but I seized Pauline’s hand and pulled her inside.

  ‘What?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘I need some…’ I looked into the glass case on the counter. ‘Some…’

  The word wouldn’t come.

  ‘Parmesan,’ said Pauline.

  ‘Parmesan,’ I agreed
. ‘And other things.’

  Pauline looked around. ‘But there’s such a long queue. It’s Friday.’

  ‘I’ve go to.’

  Pauline looked indecisive, shifting from one foot to another. She looked at her watch. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’d better get back.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, in relief.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Just go. I’ll phone you.’

  We kissed and she left. I counted to ten, then looked out into the street. She had gone. I looked down at my hands. They were steady, but my mind reeled.

  That night, I dreamed that someone was cutting off my legs with a kitchen knife, and I was letting them. I knew I mustn’t scream, or complain, because I had deserved it. I woke in the early hours, sweating and confused, and for a moment I couldn’t tell who it was I was lying next to. I put out my hand and felt warm flesh. Jake’s eyes flickered open. ‘Hello, Alice,’ he said, and returned to sleep, so peaceful.

  I couldn’t go on like this. I had always thought of myself as an honest person.

  Six

  I was late for work because I had to wait for the art shop round the corner from the office to open. I stood for a while looking at the river, hypnotized by the surprising strength of its currents, spinning this way and that. Then I spent far too long choosing a postcard from the revolving racks. Nothing seemed right. Not the reproductions of old masters, nor the black-and-white photographs of urban streets and picturesque poor children, nor those expensive cards with collages of sequins and shells and feathers stuck decoratively in the middle. In the end I bought two: one a muted Japanese landscape of silver trees against a dark sky, and the other a Matisse-style cut-out, all joyful simple blues. I bought a fountain pen as well, although I had a whole drawer full of pens in my desk.

  What should I say? I shut the door to my office, took out the two cards and laid them in front of me. I must have sat like that for several minutes, just staring at them. Every so often I would allow his face to drift across my consciousness. So beautiful. The way he looked into my eyes. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before. I hadn’t seen him all weekend, not since that Friday, and now…

  Now I turned over the Japanese card and unscrewed my fountain pen. I didn’t know how to start. Not ‘dearest Adam’ or ‘darling Adam’ or ‘sweetest love’; not that any longer. Not ‘dear Adam’ – too cold. Not just ‘Adam’. Nothing then: just write.

  ‘I cannot see you any more,’ I wrote, careful not to smudge the black ink. I stopped. What else was there to say? ‘Please do not try to make me change my mind. It’s been –’ Been what? Fun? Tormenting? Stunning? Wrong? The most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me? It has turned my whole life upside down?

  I tore up the picture of the Japanese trees and put it into the bin. I picked up the splashy cut-out. ‘I cannot see you again.’

  Before I could add anything else, I slipped the card into an envelope and wrote Adam’s name and address on it in neat capitals. Then I walked out of the office holding it, and took the lift down to reception, where Derek sat with his security passes and his copy of the Sun.

  ‘You couldn’t do something for me, could you, Derek? This letter needs to go urgently and I wondered if you could send a bike for it. I would ask Claudia but…’ I let the sentence hang unfinished in the air. Derek took the envelope and looked at the address.

  ‘Soho. Business, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He put the envelope down beside him. ‘All right, then. Just this once, though.’

  ‘I really appreciate it. You’ll see it goes immediately?’

  I told Claudia that I had a lot of work to catch up on and could she not put through telephone calls unless they were from Mike or Giovanna or Jake. She looked at me curiously, but said nothing. It was half past ten. He would still be thinking that at lunch-time I would be with him, in his darkened room, letting the world go hang. By eleven, he would have received the note. He would run down the stairs and pick up the envelope and slide his finger under the flap and read that one sentence. I should have told him I was sorry, at least. Or that I loved him. I closed my eyes. I felt like a fish on dry land. I was gasping, and every breath hurt.

  When Jake had given up cigarettes a few months ago, he had told me that the trick was not to think about not smoking: what you are denying yourself, he’d said, becomes doubly desirable and then it’s like a kind of persecution. I touched my cheek with one finger and imagined it was Adam touching me. I mustn’t let myself picture him. I mustn’t talk to him on the telephone. I mustn’t see him. Cold turkey.

  At eleven o’clock I closed the blinds against the grey, drizzly day, just in case he came to the office and stood outside waiting for me. I didn’t look down into the street. Claudia brought me a list of people who had called and left messages; Adam hadn’t tried to phone. Perhaps he was out, and still didn’t know. Perhaps he wouldn’t get the note until he came back to his flat to meet me.

  I didn’t go out for lunch, but sat in my dimmed office staring at my computer screen. If anyone had come in, they would have assumed I was busy.

  At three, Jake rang to say that on Friday he might have to go to Edinburgh for a couple of days, on business.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ I asked. But it was a stupid idea. He would be working all day; I couldn’t just take off from Drakon at the moment.

  ‘We’ll go away together soon,’ he promised. ‘Let’s plan it tonight. We can have an evening in, for a change. I’ll buy us a takeaway. Chinese or Indian?’

  ‘Indian,’ I said. I wanted to throw up.

  I went to our weekly conference, where Claudia interrupted us to say there was a man who wouldn’t leave his name but urgently wanted to speak to me. I told her to say that I was unavailable. She went away, looking interested.

  At five, I decided to go home early. I left the building by the back entrance, and got a cab home through the rush hour. I put my hands over my face and closed my eyes when we drove past the main entrance. I was first home, and I made it to my bedroom – our bedroom – and lay on the bed, where I curled up and waited for time to pass. The phone rang and I didn’t answer it. I heard the letterbox flap, something hit the mat and I struggled up. I had to get that before Jake did. But it was just junk mail. Did I want all my carpets specially cleaned? I went back and lay on the bed and tried to breathe calmly. Jake would be home soon. Jake. I thought about Jake. I pictured the way he frowned when he smiled. Or the way he poked his tongue out slightly when he was concentrating. Or the way he hooted when he laughed. Outside it was dark and the street lamps glowed orange. I could hear cars, voices, children chattering. At some point I fell asleep.

  I pulled Jake down to me in the darkness. ‘The curry can wait,’ I said.

  I told him I loved him, and he told me that he loved me too. I wanted to say it over and over, but I stopped myself. Outside it rained gently. Later, we ate the cool takeaway from the silver-foil containers or, rather, he ate and I picked, washing it down with large mouthfuls of cheap red wine. When the telephone rang I let Jake answer, although my heart pounded furiously in my chest.

  ‘Whoever it was put the phone down,’ he told me. ‘Probably some secret admirer.’

  We laughed together merrily. I imagined him sitting on the bed in his empty flat, and took another gulp of wine. Jake suggested going to Paris for a weekend. You could get good deals on Eurostar at this time of year.

  ‘Another tunnel,’ I said. I waited for the phone to ring again. This time I would have to pick it up. What should I do? I tried to think of a way of saying, ‘Don’t call me,’ without Jake being suspicious about it. But it didn’t ring. Maybe I had just been a coward and should have told him to his face. I couldn’t have told him to his face. Every time I looked at his face I climbed into his arms.

  I glanced across at Jake, who smiled at me and yawned. ‘Bed-time,’ he said.

  I tried. Over the next few days, I really, really tried. I w
ouldn’t take any of his calls at the office. He sent me a letter there, too, and I didn’t open it but tore it into shreds and threw it into the tall metal refuse container by the coffee machine. A few hours later, when everyone else was at lunch, I went to retrieve it but it had been emptied. Only one little piece of paper was still there, with his slashing handwriting across it: ‘… for a few…’ it read. I stared at the pen strokes, touched the scrap of paper as if a bit of him was left on it, indelible him. I tried to construct whole sentences around the three neutral words.

  I left work at odd times, and by the back entrance, sometimes in great protective crowds of people. I avoided central London, just in case. In fact, I avoided going out. I stayed at home with Jake, closing the curtains against the vile weather, and watched videos on TV and drank a bit too much, enough anyway to send me blundering to sleep each night. Jake was being very attentive. He told me that I had seemed more contented over the past few days, ‘not always rushing on to the next thing’. I told him that I felt good, great.

  On Thursday evening, three days after the note, the Crew came round: Clive, Julie, Pauline and Tom and a friend of Tom’s called Duncan, Sylvie. Clive brought Gail with him, the woman who had grabbed his elbow at the party. She was still holding on to his elbow now, and looking a bit bemused, as well she might, since it was only their second date and it must have felt like being introduced to a whole extended family at once.

  ‘You all talk so much,’ she said to me, when I asked her if she was okay. I looked around. She was right: everyone in our living room seemed to be talking at once. All of a sudden I felt hot and claustrophobic. The room seemed too small, too full, too noisy. I put my hand up to my head. The phone was ringing.

  ‘Can you get that?’ called Jake, who was getting beer from the fridge. I picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello.’

  Silence.

  I waited for his voice but there was nothing. I put the phone down and went dully back into the room. I looked around. These were my best and oldest friends. I had known them for ten years and in ten years’ time I would still know them. We would still meet up and tell each other the same old stories. I watched Pauline talking to Gail, she was explaining something. She put her hand on Gail’s arm. Clive approached them, looking nervously self-conscious, and the two women smiled up at him; kind. Jake came across and handed me a can of beer. He put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me. Tomorrow morning he was off to Edinburgh.