Killing Me Softly

by Nicci French

  ‘To show how much he loved me. He branded me his. Has he done that to you? No? But he’s done it to me because I belong to him. He can’t just throw me off.’

  I walked to the door.

  ‘That’s not all,’ she said.

  ‘We are marrying tomorrow.’ I opened the door.

  ‘That’s not all that he…’

  A thought occurred to me. ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  She looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  I shut the door on her and ran back up the steps to the pavement. Even the exhaust fumes smelt clean after Lily’s flat.

  We had a bath together, and washed each other meticulously. I shampooed his hair and he mine. Warm lather floated on the surface of the water and the air was steamy and fragrant. I shaved his face very carefully. He combed out my hair, holding it with one hand while he teased out little knots so as not to hurt me.

  We dried each other. The mirror had fogged over, but he told me I did not need to look at my reflection this morning, except in his eyes. He wouldn’t let me put on any makeup. I put my dress on over my naked body and slipped on shoes. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Ready,’ I said.

  ‘You’re my wife now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is this all right? Don’t flinch.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘No – yes. Yes.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Tell me if you want me to stop.’

  ‘Yes. Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes. Always.’

  ‘God, Adam, I’d die for you.’

  Sixteen

  ‘How much further?’ I tried to keep my voice steady, but it came out in a raggedy gasp, and the effort of speaking hurt my chest.

  ‘Only about eight miles,’ said Adam, turning back towards me. ‘If you could manage to walk a bit faster we should get there before it begins to get dark.’ He looked down at me dispassionately, then unslung his backpack, in which he was carrying all my stuff as well as his, and took out a flask. ‘Have a cup of tea and some chocolate,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks. Some honeymoon, darling. I wanted a four-poster bed and champagne.’ I took the plastic cup of tea in my mittened hands. ‘Have we done most of the steep bit?’

  ‘Honey, this is a stroll. We’re going up there.’

  I twisted my neck back to see where he was pointing. The wind bit into my face; my chin felt raw. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You might be. I’m not.’

  ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘Tired? Oh, no, not at all, I’m fit from all my walks to the underground station. I’ve got blisters under my new boots. My calves are burning. I’ve got this stitch in my side that feels like a knife jabbing at me. My nose is freezing cold. My fingers have gone numb. And I’m scared of fucking heights. I’m staying right here.’ I sat down in the thin covering of snow and pushed two squares of cold, hard chocolate into my mouth.

  ‘Here?’ Adam looked around us, at the lonely moorland rimmed with jagged hills. In the summer, apparently, quite a few walkers came this way – but not on this Saturday in late February, when all the grass was iced into spiky tufts, the few bare trees stooped against the wind, and our breath curled into the grey air.

  ‘All right. I’m not staying here, I’m just making a fuss.’

  He sat down beside me and started to laugh. I think it was the first time I had heard him laugh properly. ‘I’ve married a wimp,’ he said, as if it were the funniest thing in the world. ‘I spend my life climbing mountains, and I’ve married a woman who can’t climb a gentle slope without getting a stitch.’

  ‘Yeah, and I’ve married a man who drags me into the wilderness and then laughs when I’m in difficulty and feeling embarrassed.’ I scowled at him.

  Adam stood up and pulled me to my feet. He adjusted my mittens so there wasn’t a band of naked wrist between them and the sleeves of my jacket. He took a scarf out of the backpack and wrapped it around my neck. He tied my laces more tightly, so that my boots were not so loose on my feet. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘try and get into a rhythm. Don’t hurry yourself. Not that you have been. Just get into a stride and then keep going. Let your breathing come evenly. Don’t look ahead where we’re going, just one foot in front of the other until it feels like a meditation. Ready?’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  We walked in single file along the track, which gradually became steeper until we were almost scrambling up it. Adam looked as if he were loitering, yet he drew ahead of me in seconds. I didn’t attempt to catch up with him, but tried to follow his instructions. Left, right; left, right. My nose was runny and my eyes were rheumy. My legs ached and felt like lead. I set myself some mental arithmetic. I tried to sing to myself an old song about the chemical elements that I had performed in a show at college. ‘There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminium, selenium…’ What came next? I didn’t have the breath for it anyway. Occasionally I stumbled over small rocks in the pathway, or snagged myself on thick brambles. It never quite got to feel like a meditation, but I kept going, and soon the stitch dulled to a mild ache and my hands warmed up, and the clean air felt fresh rather than harsh when I breathed in.

  At the top of one rise, Adam made me stop and look around.

  ‘It’s as if we were all alone in the world,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the point.’

  It was getting dark when we saw the cabin just below.

  ‘Who uses it?’ I asked, as we made our way down to it, shapes of huge boulders and stunted trees looming out of the dusk.

  ‘It’s a climbers’ and hikers’ hut. It belongs to the British Alpine Club. Members can stay. I’ve got the key here.’ And he patted the side pocket of his jacket.

  It was freezing inside, and without obvious comforts. Adam lit a large gas lamp hanging from one of the beams, and I stared at the narrow wooden ledges round the room that were meant to be beds, at the empty fireplace, the small basin with a single cold tap over it.

  ‘This is it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Where’s the toilet?’

  ‘There.’ He pointed back out through the door, to the snowy spaces outside.

  ‘Oh.’ I sat on a hard bed. ‘Comfy.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  There were several large boxes of logs and sticks in the corner. He pulled one of these towards the fireplace and started to break the smaller twigs into pieces, arranging them into a neat dome around a few crumpled balls of newspaper. Then he piled some larger logs on top. He struck a match and lit the paper and flames began to lick at the wood. At first the fire was bright but heatless, but soon it was giving out enough warmth to make me consider taking off my jacket and mittens. The cabin was small and well insulated: in half an hour or so it would be warm.

  Adam unstrapped the small gas stove from the base of his rucksack, unfolded it, and lit it. He filled a battered copper kettle from the tap and set it on the heat. He shook out the two sleeping bags and unzipped them so that they were like duvets and laid them in front of the fire.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ he said. I took off my jacket and joined him by the flames. He pulled a bottle of whisky from the bottom of the backpack, then a long salami and one of those whizzy penknives that are also screwdrivers, bottle-openers and compasses. I watched him as he cut thick slices of salami and laid them on the greased paper. He screwed open the whisky bottle and passed it to me.

  ‘Supper,’ he said.

  I took a gulp of whisky and then a couple of chunks of salami. It was about seven o’clock and utterly silent. I had never in my life been in silence like this, so thick and complete. Outside the uncurtained window it was inky black, save for the pinpricks of stars. I needed to pee. I stood up and went to the door. When I opened it, the freezing air hit me like a blast. I cl
osed it behind me and walked out into the night. I had a shivery feeling that we were quite, quite alone – and that we would always be alone now. I heard Adam come out of the cabin and close the door behind him. I felt his arms wrap around me from behind, hugging me into his solid warmth.

  ‘You’ll get cold again,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know if I like this.’

  ‘Come inside, my dear love.’

  We drank more whisky and watched the shapes in the flames. Adam threw on more logs. It was quite hot now, and there was a lovely resiny smell in the small room. We didn’t talk or touch each other for a long time. When at last he put his hand on my arm, my skin jumped. We got undressed separately, watching each other. We sat cross-legged and naked opposite each other and looked into the other’s face. I felt oddly shy, self-conscious. He lifted my hand, with its new band of gold on the third finger, brought it to his mouth and kissed it.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Or: no no no no.

  He handed me the bottle of whisky and I took a swig, feeling it burn as it went down.

  ‘I want to do something to you that no one has ever done before.’

  I didn’t reply. I felt as if I were in some kind of dream. Some kind of nightmare. We kissed, but very gently. He ran his fingers over my breasts and trailed them down on to my stomach. I tracked his vertebrae down his spine. We held each other very carefully. One side of my body was too hot from the fire, the other chilly. He told me to lie on my back and I did. Maybe I had drunk too much whisky and eaten too little salami. I felt as if I were suspended above an abyss, somewhere in the cold, cold darkness. I closed my eyes but he turned my face towards him and said, ‘Look at me.’

  Shadows fell across his face; I could only make out parts of his body. It started out so tender, and only gradually became so savage; notch by notch to pain. I remembered Lily and her ridged back. In my mind, I saw Adam up in his high mountains, among all that fear and death. How was it that I was here, in this terrible silence? Why was I letting him do this to me and who had I become that I would let him? I shut my eyes again and this time he didn’t tell me to open them. He put his hands around my neck and said, ‘Don’t move now, don’t worry.’ Then he began to squeeze. I wanted to tell him to stop but somehow I didn’t, couldn’t. I lay on the sleeping bags by the fire, in the dark, and he pressed down. I kept my eyes closed and my hands still: my wedding present to him, my trust. The flames danced on my closed lids, and my body writhed under his, as if I had no control over it. I felt the blood roaring round my body; my heart hammering; my head thundering. This was neither pleasure nor pain any longer. I was somewhere else, in some other world where all boundaries had disintegrated. Oh, Christ. He must stop now. He must stop. Darkness rolled in behind the bright lines of pure sensation.

  ‘It’s all right, Alice.’ He was calling me back. His thumbs eased off my windpipe. He bent forward and kissed my neck. I opened my eyes. I felt sick and tired and sad and defeated. He pulled me upright and held me to him. My nausea ebbed away, but my throat ached badly and I wanted to cry. I wanted to go home. He picked up the whisky bottle, took a swig, then held it to my mouth and tipped it down my throat as if I were a baby. I sank down on the sleeping bags, he covered me over and I lay there for a while gazing into the flames, while he sat there beside me, stroking my hair. I slipped very slowly towards sleep, while Adam fed the dying fire beside me.

  At some point in the night I woke, and he was lying by me, full of heat and strength. Someone to depend on. The fire had gone out, though the embers still glowed. My left hand was cold where it had slipped from under the sleeping bag.

  Seventeen

  ‘No,’ said Adam, and brought his fist heavily down on the table, making the glasses on it jump. Everyone in the pub looked round. Adam didn’t seem to notice; he lacked all sense of what my mother would call social decorum. ‘I don’t want to give an interview to any crappy journalist.’

  ‘Look, Adam,’ began Klaus soothingly, ‘I know that you –’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about what happened up on the mountain. It’s past, over, finished. I’m not interested in going over the whole messy fuck-up, not even to help you sell your book.’ He turned to me. ‘Tell him.’

  I shrugged at Klaus. ‘He doesn’t want to, Klaus.’

  Adam took my hand and pressed it against his face and closed his eyes.

  ‘If you gave just one, then –’

  ‘He doesn’t want to, Klaus,’ I repeated. ‘Can’t you hear the man?’

  ‘OK, OK.’ He put his hands in the air in mock surrender. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a wedding present for you two.’ He leaned down and took a bottle of champagne out of a canvas bag at his feet. ‘I, urn, wish you luck and great happiness. Drink this in bed sometime.’

  I kissed his cheek. Adam gave a half-laugh and sat back in his chair.

  ‘All right, you win, one interview.’ He stood up and held out his hand for me.

  ‘Are you going already? Daniel said he might turn up later.’

  ‘We’re going to drink the champagne in bed,’ I said. ‘It can’t wait.’

  When I got back from work the next day, the journalist was there. She was sitting opposite Adam, their knees almost touching, and on the table beside her a taperecorder was running. She had a notebook on her lap, but she wasn’t writing anything. Instead, she was gazing intently at Adam, nodding when he spoke.

  ‘Ignore me,’ I said, when she made to stand up. ‘I’m going to make myself a cup of tea then disappear. Do you want anything to drink?’ I took off my coat and gloves.

  ‘Whisky,’ said Adam. ‘This is Joanna, from the Participant. And this is Alice.’ He took my wrist and pulled me towards him. ‘My wife.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Alice,’ said Joanna. ‘None of the cuttings said you were married.’

  Shrewd eyes, behind heavy frames, peered at me.

  ‘None of the cuttings knew,’ said Adam.

  ‘Do you climb too?’ asked Joanna.

  I laughed. ‘Not at all, not even stairs when there’s a lift available.’

  ‘It must be strange for you, waiting behind,’ she went on. ‘Worrying about him.’

  ‘I haven’t done the waiting yet,’ I said vaguely, moving off to put the kettle on. ‘And I have my own life,’ I added, wondering if that was a lie now.

  I thought again about our honeymoon weekend in the Lake District. What had happened between us in that cabin – the violence he had done to me, with my permission – bothered me still. I tried not to think of it too much; it had become a dark zone in my mind. I had put myself into his hands and for a few moments, as I lay beneath him, I had thought he would kill me and I had still not struggled against him. Part of me was aghast at that, and part of me stirred.

  As I stood by the kettle, half listening to the interview, I noticed a scrumpled-up sheet of paper with heavy black writing on it. I opened it up, knowing in advance what to expect. ‘I WON’T LET YOU REST,’ it said. They made my skin crawl, these letters. I didn’t know why we hadn’t gone to the police long ago. It was as if we had let ourselves become accustomed to them, so that their threats were like storm clouds in our life, which we simply took for granted. I looked up and saw that Adam was watching me, so I gave him a grin, tore the paper up into small shreds and dropped them disdainfully into the bin. He gave me a small nod of approval and turned his attention back to Joanna.

  ‘You were telling me about the last few hours.’ Joanna turned back to Adam. ‘Did you have any intimations of disaster?’

  ‘If you mean, did I think all those people would die up there, no, of course not.’

  ‘So when did you realize it was all going wrong?’

  ‘When it all went wrong. Can I have that whisky, Alice?’

  Joanna looked down at her notebook and tried another tack. ‘What about the fixed ropes?’ she asked. ‘From what I understand, Greg McLaughlin and other expedition leaders fixed the different-coloured ropes th
at led up the ridge to the summit. But at some point the last bit of rope became untied, which might have made all the difference to the climbers.’

  Adam stared at her. I brought him over a large shot of whisky. ‘Do you want some, Joanna?’ I said. She shook her head and went on waiting for Adam’s response. I poured myself a slug and downed it.

  ‘How do you think it happened?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know?’ he said eventually. ‘It was freezing cold. There was a storm. Everyone was out of it. Nothing functioned any more, nobody. I don’t know what happened to the rope, nor does anyone else. Now, you want blame, don’t you?’ He slurped some whisky back. ‘You want to write a nice, neat story saying so-and-so led a group of people to their death. Well, lady, it ain’t like that up in the death zone. No one’s a hero and no one’s a villain. We’re all just people stuck up a mountain with our brain cells cascading away.’

  ‘The book implies that you were a hero,’ said Joanna, quite unperturbed by his outburst. Adam said nothing. ‘And,’ she went on, carefully, ‘it also half implies that the leader of the expedition must bear some responsibility. Greg.’

  ‘Can you get me another, Alice?’ Adam held out his glass. When I took it from him I bent down and kissed him. I wondered at what point I should tell Joanna to go.

  ‘I gather that Greg is now in a bad condition. Is that guilt, do you think?’

  Once again, Adam said nothing. He closed his eyes briefly, and tipped his head back. He looked very weary.

  She tried again. ‘Do you think the trip was an unnecessary risk?’

  ‘Obviously. People died.’

  ‘Do you regret the way that the mountains have been commercialized?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet you are part of that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One of the people who died,’ Joanna said, ‘was very close to you. An ex-girlfriend, I think.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Were you badly affected by not being able to save her?’

  I took the second whisky over and Adam put his arm around my waist as I leaned towards him.