Killing Me Softly

by Nicci French

  We ordered more coffee and Sylvie continued to grill me, until I looked at my watch and saw it was just a few minutes until half past. I reached for my purse. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said quickly. After I’d paid, Sylvie followed me out on to the pavement. ‘So which way are you going? I’ll come along with you, Alice, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a book I need to buy,’ she said brazenly. ‘You’re going to a book shop, right?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘You can meet him. I don’t mind.’

  ‘I just want a book,’ she said.

  It was only a couple of minutes’ walk away, a shop that specialized in travel books and maps.

  ‘Is he here?’ asked Sylvie, as we walked inside.

  ‘I can’t see him,’ I said. ‘You’d better go ahead and find your book.’

  Sylvie mumbled something doubtful and we both wandered around. I stopped in front of a display of globes. I could always go back to the flat if he didn’t show. I felt a touch from behind and then arms around me, someone nuzzling my neck. I turned round. Adam. He put his arms round me in the way that felt as if they were wrapped around me twice. ‘Alice,’ he said.

  He let me go and I saw there were two men with him looking amused. They were both tall, like Adam. One had very light brown, almost blond hair, smooth skin, prominent cheekbones. He wore a heavy canvas jacket that looked as if it should have been worn by a deep-sea fisherman. The other was darker, with very long wavy brown hair. He wore a long grey coat that reached almost down to his ankles. Adam gestured to the blond man. ‘This is Daniel,’ he said. ‘And this is Klaus.’

  I shook their very large hands in turn.

  ‘Good to meet you, Alice,’ said Daniel, with a little bow of the head. He sounded foreign, Scandinavian maybe. Adam hadn’t introduced me but they knew my name. He must have told them about me. They looked at me appraisingly, Adam’s latest girlfriend, and I stared right back, willing myself to hold their gaze and planning another shopping spree very soon.

  I felt a presence at my shoulder. Sylvie. ‘Adam, this is a friend of mine, Sylvie.’

  Adam looked round slowly. He took her hand. ‘Sylvie,’ he said, almost as if he were weighing the name in his mind.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I mean, hello.’

  Suddenly, I saw Adam and his friends through her eyes: tall, strong men who looked as if they had come from another planet, dressed in odd clothes, beautiful and strange and threatening. She stared at Adam, mesmerized, but Adam turned his attention back to me. ‘Daniel and Klaus might seem a bit out of it. They’re still on Seattle time.’ He took my hand and held it against his face. ‘We’re going round the corner. Want to come?’ This last was addressed to Sylvie and he looked sharply back to her. I swear that Sylvie almost jumped.

  ‘No,’ she said, almost as if she had been offered a very tempting, but very dangerous, drug. ‘No, no. I’ve, er, got to…’

  ‘She’s got to buy a book,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, falteringly. ‘And other things. I’ve got to.’

  ‘Some other time,’ said Adam, and we left. I turned and gave Sylvie a wink, as if I were on a train that was pulling out of a station and leaving her behind. She looked aghast, or awestruck, or something. As we walked Adam put his hand on my back to guide me. We made a few turnings, the last of which took us into a tiny alley. I looked questioningly at Adam but he pressed a bell by an anonymous-looking door and when the catch was released we walked up some stairs to a snug room with a bar and a fire and some scattered tables and chairs.

  ‘Is this a club?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a club,’ said Adam, as if it were too obvious to need mentioning. ‘Sit in the next room. I’ll get some beers. Klaus can tell you about his crappy book.’

  I went through with Daniel and Klaus to a smaller room, also with a couple of tables and chairs. We sat at one. ‘What book?’ I said. Klaus smiled. ‘Your…’ He stopped himself. ‘Adam is pissed with me. I’ve written a book about last year on the mountain.’ He sounded American.

  ‘Were you there?’

  He held up his hands. There was no little finger on his left hand. The ring finger was half gone as well. On his right hand half the little finger was gone.

  ‘I was lucky,’ he said. ‘More than lucky. Adam pulled me down. Saved my life.’ He smiled again. ‘I can say that when he’s out of the room. When he comes in I can go back to telling him what an asshole he is.’

  Adam came into the room clutching bottles, then went out again and returned with plates of sandwiches.

  ‘Are you all old friends?’ I asked.

  ‘Friends, colleagues,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Daniel’s been recruited for another Himalayan package tour next year. Wants me to go along.’

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘I think so.’ I must have looked concerned, because Adam laughed. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘That’s what you do,’ I said. ‘There’s no problem. Just watch your step.’

  His expression became serious and he leaned in close and kissed me softly. ‘Good,’ he said, as if I had passed a test.

  I took a sip of beer, leaned back and watched them talking about things I could barely understand, about logistics and equipment and windows of opportunity. Or, rather, it wasn’t that I couldn’t understand them, but that I didn’t want to follow what they said in its details. I felt a glowing pleasure in seeing Adam and Daniel and Klaus discussing something that mattered intensely to them. I liked the technical words that I couldn’t understand, and sometimes I sneaked a glance at Adam’s face. The urgency of his expression reminded me of something and then I remembered. It was the expression he had worn when I had first seen him. When I had first seen him seeing me.

  Later, we lay in bed, our clothes scattered where we had thrown them, Sherpa purring at our feet – the cat came with the property, but I had named him. Adam asked me about Sylvie. ‘What did she say?’ he asked.

  The phone rang.

  ‘You get it this time,’ I said.

  Adam made a face and picked it up. ‘Hello?’

  There was a silence and he put it down again.

  ‘Every night and every morning,’ I said, with a grim smile. ‘Somebody with a job. It’s beginning to give me the creeps, Adam.’

  ‘It’s probably a technical fault,’ Adam said. ‘Or someone who wants to speak to the last tenant. What did she say?’

  ‘She wanted to know about you,’ I said. Adam gave a snort. I gave him a kiss, biting his lovely full lower lip slightly, then harder. ‘And she said I should enjoy it. So long as I didn’t actually get injured.’

  The hand that had been caressing my back suddenly held me down on the bed. I felt Adam’s lips against my ear. ‘I bought cream today,’ he said. ‘Cold cream. I don’t want to injure you. I just want to hurt you.’

  Eleven

  ‘Don’t move. Stay just as you are.’ Adam stood at the end of the bed, staring down at me through the viewnnder of a camera, a Polaroid. I stared back, muzzily. I was lying on top of the sheets, naked. Only my feet were under the covers. The winter sun shone weakly through the thin closed curtain.

  ‘Did I go to sleep again? How long have you been there?’

  ‘Don’t move, Alice.’ A flash momentarily dazzled me, there was a whir and the plastic card emerged, as if the camera had poked its tongue out at me.

  ‘At least you won’t be taking it to Boots to be developed.’

  ‘Put your arms above your head. That’s right.’ He came over and pushed my hair away from my face, then stood back once again. He was fully dressed, armed with his camera, a look of dispassionate concentration on his face.

  ‘Open your legs a bit more.’

  ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘I’ll make you warm soon. Wait.’

  Once again, the camera flashed.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Why?’ He put down the camera and sat beside me. The two
images were tossed beside me on the bed. I watched myself take shape. The pictures looked cruel to me, my skin looking flushed, pallid, spotty. I thought of police photographers in films at the scene of the crime,then tried not to. He picked up my hand, which was still flung obediently above my head, and pressed it against his cheek. ‘Because I want to.’ He turned his mouth into my palm.

  The phone rang and we looked at each other. ‘Don’t pick it up,’ I said. ‘It’ll be him again.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Or her.’

  We waited until the phone stopped ringing.

  ‘What if it’s Jake?’ I said. ‘Making those calls.’

  ‘Jake?’

  ‘Who else would it be? You hadn’t been getting them before, you say, and they started as soon as I moved in.’ I looked at him. ‘Or maybe it’s a friend.’

  Adam shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said, and picked up the camera again, but I struggled into a sitting position.

  ‘I must get up, Adam. Can you put the bar fire on for me?’

  The flat, the top floor of a tall Victorian house, was Spartan. It had no central heating and little furniture. My clothes took up one corner of the large, dark cupboard, and Adam’s possessions were neatly stacked in the corner of the bedroom, still packed. The carpets were worn, the curtains flimsy, and in the kitchen a bare bulb hung above the small stove. We rarely cooked, but ate in small, dimly lit restaurants each evening before coming back to the high bed and hot touch. I felt half blinded by passion. Everything was blurred and unreal except me and Adam. All my life until now I had been a free agent, in control of my life and sure of where I was going. None of my relationships had really diverted me from that. Now I felt rudderless, lost. I would give up anything for the feel of his hands on my body. Sometimes, in the dark early hours of morning when I woke first and was lying unheld in a stranger’s bed and he was still in a secret world of dreams, or perhaps when leaving work, before I saw Adam and felt his continuing rapture, I felt scared. The loss of myself in another.

  This morning I hurt. In the bathroom mirror, I saw that there was a livid scratch running down my neck and my lips were puffy. Adam came in and stood behind me. Our eyes met in the mirror. He licked a finger, then ran it down the scratch. I pulled on my clothes and turned towards him.

  ‘Who was before me, Adam? No, don’t just shrug. I’m serious.’

  He paused for a moment, as if weighing up possibilities.

  ‘Let’s make a deal,’ he said. It sounded horribly formal but, then, I suppose it had to be. Usually details of one’s past love life leak out in late-night confessions, post-coital exchanges, little snippets of information offered as signs of intimacy or trust. We had done none of that. Adam held out my jacket for me. ‘We’ll have a late breakfast down the road, then I’ve got to go and pick up some stuff. And then,’ he opened the door, ‘we’ll meet up back here and you can tell me who you’ve had, and I will tell you.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Everyone.’

  ‘… and before him, there was Rob. Rob was a graphic designer, he thought he was an artist. He was quite a lot older than me, and he had a daughter of ten by his first wife. He was rather a quiet man, but…’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did you do together?’

  ‘You know, films, pubs, walks –’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  I knew what he meant, of course I did. ‘God, Adam. Different things, you know. It was years ago. I can’t remember specifics.’ A lie, of course.

  ‘Were you in love with him?’

  I thought wistfully of Rob’s nice face, some good times. I’d adored him, for a time at least. ‘No.’

  ‘Go on.’

  This was unsettling. Adam was seated opposite me, the table between us. His hands were steepled together; his eyes were boring into me. Talking about sex was difficult enough for me anyway, let alone under this interrogation.

  ‘There was Laurence, but that didn’t last long,’ I mumbled. Laurence had been funny, hopeless.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And Joe, who I used to work with.’

  ‘You were in the same office as him?’

  ‘Sort of. And no, Adam, we didn’t do it behind the photocopier.’

  I ploughed grimly on. I’d been expecting this to be an erotic mutual confession, ending in bed. It was turning out to be a cold, dry tale of the men who had been both irrelevant and important to me in a way I didn’t want to explain to Adam, here at this table. ‘Then before that, it was school and university, and, well, you know…’ I tailed off. The thought of going through the rather short list of boyfriends and drunken one-night stands defeated me. I took a deep breath. ‘Well, if this is what you want. Michael. Then Gareth. And then Simon, who I went out with for a year and a half, and a man called Christopher, once.’ He looked at me. ‘And a man whose name I never knew, at a party I didn’t want to go to. There.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So who did you have sex with first? How old were you?’

  ‘I was old compared to my friends. Michael, when I was seventeen.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  Somehow the question seemed unembarrassing. Perhaps because it seemed so long ago, and the girl I had been was such a stranger to the woman I was now. It had been captivating. Strange. Fascinating.

  ‘Awful,’ I said. ‘Painful. Pleasureless.’

  He leaned across the table but still didn’t touch me.

  ‘Have you always liked sex?’

  ‘Uh, not always.’

  ‘Have you ever pretended?’

  ‘Every woman has.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Never. God, no.’

  ‘Can we fuck now?’ He was still sitting quite apart from me, straight-backed on the uncomfortable kitchen chair.

  I managed a laugh. ‘No way, Adam. It’s your turn.’

  He sighed and sat back and held up his fingers, counting off affairs as if he were an accountant. ‘Before you, there was Lily, who I met last summer. Before her there was Françoise for a couple of years. Before her there was… er…’

  ‘Is it difficult to remember?’ I asked sarcastically, but with a tremor in my voice. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  ‘It’s not hard,’ he said. ‘Lisa. And before Lisa there was a girl called Penny.’ There was a pause. ‘Good climber.’

  ‘How long did Penny last?’ I had expected a catalogue of conquests, not this efficient list of serious relationships. I felt an acid rush of panic in my stomach.

  ‘Eighteen months, something like that.’

  ‘Oh.’ We sat in silence. ‘Were you faithful?’ I forced myself to ask. I really wanted to ask if they were all beautiful, all more beautiful than me.

  He looked at me across the table. ‘It wasn’t like that. They weren’t that sort of exclusive thing.’

  ‘How many times were you unfaithful?’

  ‘I used to see other people.’

  ‘How many?’

  He frowned.

  ‘Come on, Adam. Once, twice, twenty times, forty or fifty times?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Something like forty or fifty?’

  ‘Alice, come here.’

  ‘No! No – this is – I feel awful. I mean, why am I different?’ A thought struck me. ‘You haven’t…’

  ‘No!’ His voice was sharp. ‘Christ, Alice, can’t you see? Can’t you feel? There’s no one except you now.’

  ‘How do I know?’ I heard my voice wail. ‘I feel I arrived a bit late at the party.’ All those women crowding his life. I didn’t stand a chance.

  He stood up and walked round the table. He pulled me to my feet and cupped my face in his hands. ‘You know, Alice, don’t you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Alice, look at me.’ He forced my head up and looked deep, deep into me. ‘Alice, will you trust me? Will you do something for me?’<
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  ‘It depends,’ I said, sulkily, like a cross child.

  ‘Wait,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  It wasn’t a minute, but it was only a few minutes. I had hardly finished a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. He’s got a key, I said to myself, and didn’t respond, but he didn’t come in and rang again. So I sighed and went down. I opened the door and Adam wasn’t there. A toot made me jump. I looked round and saw that he was sitting in a car, something old and nondescript. I walked over and bent my face down to the driver’s window.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Is it ours?’ I asked.

  ‘For the afternoon. Get in.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘It had better be good. Shouldn’t I lock the house?’

  ‘I’ll do that. I’ve got to get something.’

  I seriously thought of not obeying but then walked round to the passenger side and got in. Meanwhile Adam ran in through the front door and returned a minute later.

  ‘What were you getting?’

  ‘My wallet,’ he said. ‘And this.’ He tossed the Polaroid camera on to the back seat.

  Oh, God, I thought, but didn’t say anything.

  I stayed awake long enough to see that we were leaving London on the MI but then, as I always do when being driven anywhere, I fell asleep. When I was jolted awake for a moment, I saw that we were off the motorway in scrubby, wild countryside.

  ‘Where are we?’ I said.

  ‘It’s a mystery tour,’ Adam said, with a smile.

  I drifted off to a half-sleep and when I woke up properly noticed an old Saxon church by the road in an otherwise featureless landscape. ‘Eadmund with an A,’ I said sleepily.

  ‘He lost his head,’ said Adam, beside me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was an Anglo-Saxon king. The Vikings caught him and killed him and cut him up and scattered his body all over the place. His followers couldn’t find him and there was a miracle. The head shouted, "Here I am," until they found it.’

  ‘I wish that bunches of keys did that. I’ve often wished that my house keys would shout, "Here I am," so that I wouldn’t have to search every single pocket of everything I own to find them.’