by Darren Wills
I felt forced to respond, defending a couple who perhaps might not have defended me quite as much. “That’s not fair.”
“You have to tell them, or I’m leaving tonight. I’ll sleep on the streets if I have to.” She pointed a finger towards the outside and towards an imaginary street. “You’ll never see me again.”
“You were so out of order, though. You didn’t have to speak to her like that.”
“She pushed me. She went too far. She’s jealous of Dad’s feelings for me so she wants to make me seem false and worthless.”
“Well, I think you managed that yourself. You’ve some apologising to do.”
“It will be a cold day in hell.”
“Well, hell will be what you’re left with if you don’t realise how important your parents and I are to you. For God’s sake, we’re the only people who deeply care about you.”
“Why are you bringing yourself into this? Why is it always about you? Why is everything about you?”
“Nothing is about me, clearly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, babe, you aren’t much of a wife to me these days. We hardly talk or go out and all too often I don’t even know where you are.”
“Are you bullying me again? Last time we were in this bathroom together you were a bully.”
“Bullying you? How?”
“Wanting me to have sex and sulking like a five-year-old because I’m not up to it. You’ve got to stop this. This is abuse. I could have you removed from this house if you abuse me like this. I can go to the police.”
The way she looked at me was shocking. “But I’m not abusing you.”
“I’m fed up of this shit. And I’m fed up of you.” For the second time in a few days she decided upon a dramatic exit. I heard a door slam and the Audi was on the move again.
She came back a couple of hours later. Having bathed, I had chosen to dirty my insides with a few JD’s, probably because of the stress, which was what usually happened with me. I was always partial when any kind of emotions were involved, negative or positive. I was sitting in my Wednesday dressing gown when the car pulled up outside.
Laura sat down close to me on the sofa and faced me.
“I’m really sorry, babe. I don’t know what came over me. I think it’s loneliness and frustration at not getting better, but I have an idea.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Let Leoni move in for a while.”
“Leoni? Why Leoni?”
“She’s good for me and she needs somewhere to live. She can sleep in the spare room.”
“What? Aren’t I company enough for you?”
“It’s not the same. Not right now. Besides, Leoni’s in a bad situation. We’ll be helping her.”
I sat and thought for a whole two minutes. “No, Laura. That’s a step too far. Things are hard enough for me as it is.”
“In that case I’m leaving tonight.” She stood up, staring down at me with a severe expression cutting through her face. “And I tell you this. Once I’ve gone, I won’t be coming back. Not ever.” She left to go upstairs and I heard the sound of a suitcase being taken down from the top of our wardrobe. I sat there thinking. How had things come to this? We had gone from total love and kindness to defiance, threats and a growing number of puzzling details.
I was in no doubt that she would carry out her threat to leave. She was ill. I would be here alone again, confused and miserable, pitied and probably ridiculed behind my back. I would be drinking heavily. I hadn’t been happy recently but that was because I was trying to cope with her illness and how that illness was affecting things. Things would spiral out of control if she left now. I went upstairs to our bedroom, where Laura was purposefully filling an already half-packed case.
“OK, she can stay, but just for a couple of weeks, while she gets sorted.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” She dropped a jumper onto the bed and put her arms around me. “Things will work out in the long term. I promise. Have no doubt.”
I was very doubtful.
Malevolence
After three weeks of the project going live, I’m starting to enjoy myself. I actually think this whole thing is making me smarter, calmer and more calculating as I work things out totally to my advantage. Of course, I don’t have to be that smart to outsmart this dummy, who knows as much about people as I know about nuclear physics. Like any pushover, he deserves all he gets.
There are a few loose ends. They need sorting. Arrangements have been made.
Actually, it has all gone better than I expected. I expected the occasional slip-ups or hitch, but there have been none.
As far as this jigsaw of mine goes, I have just a few pieces to put into place and then the plan will be complete and I’m taking everything. I was prepared to give him a chance, see if he could function under the new circumstances, but he clearly can’t. All he does each day is make me despise him more and that will never do.
Oh, and I’m fed up of that fucking cat.
A Cat’s Tale
“What’s happened to August.” I was concerned. I loved that cat like I hadn’t expected to do. His food was still there from the previous night and it was early evening. Normally, the cat had a healthy appetite and never missed a mealtime.
“I don’t know.” Laura was sitting texting on her mobile phone. She didn’t even look up at the thought of her beloved August not being around suddenly.
“Did you feed him yesterday?”
“Probably. I think so.”
“When was the last time you saw him in the house?”
“A couple of days ago. Is this an interrogation, Dom?”
“I’m just worried. It’s not like him. And this is not like you…Have you looked for him?”
“Hardly. I’m allergic to him. Remember?”
“He’s still our pet. He’s for life. You always used to say that. Remember?”
Laura waved her arm dismissively. “He’ll come back. They always do. They’re like bad pennies. He’d have to be dead not to.”
For some reason, I felt a chill up my spine as she said that final sentence. I detected a total lack of care or concern.
Laura looked up from her device, suddenly discovering a conversation topic that was meaningful to her. “Leoni’s moving her stuff in. I’m going to pick her up at about nine. Make an effort.”
“What do you mean? Moving in today?”
“Today. Pretty soon.”
“I thought it was in a week or two. Shouldn’t we have talked about this first?”
“Yes. We should. But we didn’t, and she’s coming. Make her feel welcome. You know how you say you love me. This is how you can show it.” She gave a knowing smile. “You never know, it might make a massive difference.” She winked at me.
Hours later, I was still thinking about August. I went down the garden and called him. Normally, he was very good at responding to being called. It wasn’t usually straight away like it would have been with a dog, but he usually appeared within a couple of minutes.
I shouted his name repeatedly. The trees in the next garden looked down contemptuously and the fence was unmoved. There was no sign of him. I went around the front of the house but again it was to no avail. Where had he gone?
* * *
Leoni had two grey suitcases with her, which she took upstairs to the guest bedroom, barely muttering a hello to me as she effectively intruded on our privacy. Laura was with her for the rest of the evening, and they came back down and into the living room while I was in the middle of a police show on one of the American Channels. I was ensconced on the end of the sofa and they filled the rest of the long seat.
They were quiet, but the tension they brought into the room with them made me uncomfortable. I sensed they were instantly in a conspiracy against me. Was I being paranoid? Maybe I was,
but I couldn’t help feeling that Leoni moving in wasn’t going to help my deteriorating marriage in the slightest. I had been a fool and wondered how much worse things were going to become.
I decided I didn’t need to find out who the killer was and stood up. Significantly, I now knew that I was better off somewhere else, that being up close to this pair and this toxic silence would only make me irritated and uncomfortable. Yet neither of them had actually said anything untoward. Perhaps it was their lack of communication that communicated everything. The Laura I had loved would have held my hand.
At this moment, there was one thing I knew. If Laura threatened to leave a third time, I would agree to it. A costly divorce was preferable to a crap home life, which was exactly what had happened to my circumstances here. Pretty much total shit.
A latecomer to the party, I would have to be tougher. Much tougher.
Remembering
Jamie was excited as he sat across from me in our kitchen. Laura had answered the door and I had heard the two of them laughing as he had come in. This was more like the old days. Weird! If it only could have been a sign that things were going to improve, that I would once again find myself in a relationship worth caring about. I was skeptical.
On the other hand, my mate was really excited about his writing these days. I was enjoying helping him, if only as a positive distraction, and although it was hardly quality writing, it would be quite a fun read for the right kind of reader, I thought. Between us, we had certainly put in enough jokes.
“It’s coming on fine,” he said. “Just written a bombshell of a chapter, all about Amsterdam. You’re not going to believe it when you see it. It just needs few of your master writing touches, but it already looks like a strong part of the book.”
“So it’s a book now, not just a manuscript?”
“It’s always been a book. Thinking big, mate. It’s just about complete.”
“Complete already?”
“I’ve put in loads of hours. I was up all night two nights ago. Besides, some of the chapters just write themselves. Recounting my adventures.”
“It can’t be much good if it’s almost complete. They always need rewriting a few times.”
“Give over. It’s a right laugh, man.”
We both laughed simultaneously as Leoni walked into the kitchen and Jamie stopped. His body language changed and he was immediately puzzled and clearly ill-at-ease. He had looked at her intently, then at me. My first thought was that he fancied her. I had been through this with him so many times, so I therefore did the necessary introducing. However, I wanted to continue talking to him about the writing. I wanted to find out more about how he was going to publish the damned thing,
He didn’t. His eyes were fixed on her as she filled the kettle and spooned coffee into two. He seemed to be relieved when she’d gone back into the living room.
“What’s she doing here?”
“She’s living here at the moment. Going through a rough time. She’s been here a week”
“Why?”
“Weren’t you listening? She’s Laura’s old school friend.”
He looked at me in disbelief. “Don’t you recognise her, dafthead?”
“Recognise her? From what?”
“You pulled her.”
“What?” Was he delusional?
“That’s right, bucko. You pulled that woman.”
“What do you mean, I pulled her? When?” In my mind, I was scanning through all the women I had been with in the past thirty years. The image of Leoni never appeared.
“She was the one you were chatting up, you know, in Jester’s when you were wasted. Was it six, seven weeks ago? Blonde hair, more make-up and she wore glasses then. She was the one you shagged at my house. Don’t you remember?”
“Not really. I was wasted that night.”
“She was the one who came onto you big time. She wore a lot of make-up that night, had blonde hair, spoke posh then, but it’s definitely her.”
“It can’t be. Not possible.”
“Listen, Dom, I wasn’t drinking like you that night. I know who we pulled. This bird, Leoni. You definitely were with her that night.”
Tensions
Of course, I didn’t sleep. I had got into bed facing away from Laura and had just dwelled on things all night. I just had to lay there, waiting for the daylight to return. I would be exhausted at work the next day but there was nothing I could do about it.
After that bombshell of a conversation, the shock had stopped me enjoying Jamie’s writing endeavor. My horror continued to grow after I had shown Jamie out through the front door, and we both knew as he turned to go down the path that he was leaving me in something of a predicament. If Leoni had been with me that night, what the hell was she doing now living in my house? Clearly, there wasn’t much left of our marriage, it seemed, but this threatened to finish it off totally. Pretence seemed to be encompassing the entire house now. I probably wasn’t the only one acting.
I had made a point of looking Leoni in the eye as I spoke to her about me cooking something special the next day. She didn’t flicker, no sign of concern or anxiety at all. It made me think that nothing had happened between her and me, unless she was just one cold, calculating bitch. On the other hand, she might have forgotten the night we had or hadn’t had, just like me. I couldn’t remember anything, and certainly had no idea of the condition she had been in.
If Leoni let Laura know what had happened, she would leave me, I was sure. Things were too strained. That time last year, we had been stronger, more together as a couple. However, would I really care if she got up and left? That was difficult to ascertain, since all my positive feelings were now rooted in the past and there was so little now for me to feel hopeful about. Separation now seemed to be inevitable. I had been hoping that things could return to how they were, but that was becoming some kind of pipe dream. Sex had gone. Love was in its dying embers. Any belief I had was fading. All I really wanted now was control over things, but Leoni’s presence here threatened that.
Could Jamie have been wrong? I didn’t remember Leoni and, surely, even in a drunken state, she would have made some impression on me. He had had a drink or two as well, after all, so perhaps his memory wasn’t hundred per cent reliable. I still found his claim disturbing and was unable to dismiss it totally. In a city the size of this, was such a coincidence possible, or was something much more sinister going on? I had read books like this, too many of them, and had read no end of conspiracy stories, as well as watching crime shows on TV where a woman links up with somebody outside the marriage, followed by devastating consequences.
Stop it, Dom, I told myself. My imagination was starting to run away with itself. Before I knew it, in my mind they would be planning my assassination and the subsequent cover-up. This was hardly going to be a body-under-the-patio situation.
Two days later, I went into the kitchen, where Laura and Leoni were seated next to each other, both with mobile phones in their hands and both intent on their screens, with Leoni clearly playing some kind of word game. Possibly not her only game, I thought.
As so often happened, I felt a clear change in mood as I entered. They smiled at me, but I felt they were very much adapting to my presence. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I was sensitive to the difference. Was Leoni being here at all related to the fact I had slept with her and, worse, did Laura already know about it? As if in response, Leoni looked up at me and it was as if she had never seen me before. This might mean I was in the clear as far as exposure was concerned. If I really cared.
The following night, I emerged downstairs from a much-needed shower to find Laura and Leoni sitting next to each other on the settee watching one of those wildlife documentaries that they were both into. They were always together. I noticed that Leoni’s feet were resting on Laura’s and it seemed a bit intimate, but they were women and
their gender was always more touchy-feely than men. Anyway, what would I have gained from questioning it? Again, I sensed that they became alert and aware as I walked in. Like so many times before, I felt like an unwelcome intruder in my own house.
I picked up my laptop, opting to prepare lessons rather than watch some lion having a zebra for lunch. As I did so, I couldn’t help noticing the two women glance at each other and my paranoid state made me wonder what they were communicating to each other. Were they agreeing that I was a nerd or geek or worse? Were they expressing disappointment that I had come into the room? I had no idea really. I was beginning to wonder about their connection to each other. I was realizing more and more that I needed an exit strategy from this horrendous scenario.
I looked up at them from the defensive wall of Hewlett-Packard and shot a bolt across the bows. “Where exactly did you two first meet?”
“History,” Laura said. “We sat next to each other.”
“You both seem pretty close. Did you spend much time at each other’s houses?”
“No,” Laura replied. “Leoni lived quite a distance away from me. We only saw each other at school.”
“Yes,” Leoni said. “I was a bit of a loner at school to tell the truth. It’s so lovely that we are able to spend time together now, and I’m grateful to you for that, Dom.”
“Actually that’s great. I’m doing some work on perspective with my Year Ten class. You two can help me. The kids love anecdotes. I want you each to write me the story of your friendship. The history of you knowing each other. It will be fantastic for my students to read how two people can be separated yet return to become brilliant friends.”
