The Kindest Thing

by Cath Staincliffe

Sophie came in when he was halfway down. ‘You ought to get a stair-lift,’ she said. ‘They said you could get one, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’ And there was a six-month wait. ‘Yes, I’ll give them a ring.’ Sophie got a text message and before long her friend called round and the two of them went out. Neil and I had lunch, our talk desultory. I cleared the plates and looked out at him. He was settled in the patio in a high-back chair that supported his neck and arms. His face was in repose, his expression reflective. The ache of knowing I was losing him bloomed in my chest. I fetched my camera from the dining room and photographed him from the kitchen window, zooming in to get a closeup.

  I took drinks out and joined him. Propped a long straw in his beaker so he could hold it in his lap and still sip it.

  ‘How?’ The taste of fear made me bark the question. ‘How do you plan to do it? How do we avoid being found out?’

  ‘An overdose.’

  ‘There’ll be signs, won’t there?’

  ‘They won’t necessarily do a post-mortem.’

  I shivered in the heat. ‘Neil, I don’t know whether . . .’

  ‘Ssh!’ His look was gentle, indulgent, his olive eyes calm.

  ‘And what do we use, what drugs, how do we get hold of them?’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Could always ask Adam, I suppose,’ I muttered.

  Neil laughed and I began to giggle, my anguish punctured. We couldn’t stop and then I was crying too but trying to hide it because I didn’t want to let him down.

  ‘Might give the game away,’ he said, his chest still heaving.

  Rage flared fresh in my belly. It’s not a game! I wanted to scream at him. It’s your life. It’s my life.

  I stood up.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The Internet. Marvellous what you can find.’

  It wasn’t, as it happens. There was information about the methods used in the Swiss clinics, doses of barbiturates preceded by a strong anti-emetic to stop the person throwing up the drugs. How would we get those? Anti-emetic. Would travel pills help? Sophie always got car sick and we gave her tablets, which seemed to help – but whether they treated the symptom or the cause I’d no idea.

  When I typed suicide and overdose into the search engine it threw up everything from paracetamol to heroin.

  Rejoining Neil, I told him what I’d read. ‘So we could try a packet of Joy Rides followed by sleeping pills but (a) we’d have to get hold of the stuff first and (b) if they did a post-mortem it’d be an obvious deliberate overdose.’

  I felt giddy talking like this, as if in a fever, the garden gleaming in the sun, the scent of cut grass and the bony claws of death crawling up my spine.

  ‘We need something that could be accidental,’ he said quietly, ‘in case anyone does get suspicious.’

  ‘Could shove you downstairs.’ I groaned. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.’

  Neil reached slowly across and put his hand on my knee. I turned his hand over, pressed my palm to his, locked fingers, willing him to leave it now, to shut up.

  But he carried on: ‘Or something I could have taken myself, without your help, without your knowing. Then, even if it does come out, you’re okay. There’s no risk.’

  ‘Something you’re already taking?’

  ‘Would Zoloft work?’ he asked. At that stage he had been prescribed Zoloft for depression.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Morphine,’ he said. ‘It’s in the breathing kit.’

  ‘A dose. Not enough to kill you.’

  ‘Andy Frame will give me some for the pain – the consultant suggested it. It’s also used for breathlessness.’

  ‘You’re not breathless.’

  ‘I could be.’ His voice was quiet, delicate.

  ‘And save it up,’ I said, cottoning on. ‘The syringes—’

  ‘I think they do liquid, too. To drink. If it’s hard to swallow, to get solids down.’

  It seemed so simple. I coveted his equanimity. But there was a backwash of resentment, too, slapping inside me. I gazed at the crimson and yellow splashes of primula, at the buds on the maple. I drank in the sweet, creamy fragrance from the magnolia tree. This, I thought, is what’s hard to swallow. That you want to go and leave me here. You can still talk and laugh and kiss and come. Okay, so we’ll never dance again but you can still breathe and swallow, and yet you want to go.

  ‘Did you ever consider reneging on your promise?’ Mr Latimer savours the verb though I see Alice’s eyes narrow as she puzzles it out.

  ‘All the time. I went round and round it in my head, like a maze. I kept hoping he’d die before it came to it. Or he’d change his mind. I dreaded it. I was frightened all the time but I couldn’t see a way out. Most of the time I just pretended it wasn’t really happening. I’d get these panic attacks when I found it hard to breathe, this terrible dread like a paralysis.’

  ‘Yet you were helping Neil to acquire the medicines you used?’

  ‘Yes. I thought I was going mad.’

  Mr Latimer guides me through the sequence of events, a quadrille of question and answer. Neil’s complaints to Dr Frame and the prescription for liquid morphine. The medicines hidden in his bedside table. One, then the other. More than a month’s supply.

  Mr Latimer asks me about the children. I recall one conversation, early evening, Neil in bed resting, me putting clothes away. The banality of it. We’d already agreed to conceal his intention from the children. Knowing how horrific the burden was for me, I could not countenance imposing it on Adam and Sophie. Neil felt the same. It was too much to bear – they were kids.

  ‘What about afterwards? What do we tell the children?’ I asked Neil.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is that fair?’

  He glanced away, then back to me. ‘If we organize it properly, everyone will think I just died sooner than expected. The kids included. If anyone suspects otherwise you could be in trouble. It wouldn’t be fair to ask them to keep that sort of secret.’

  I nodded. Neil had redrawn his will and written letters for Adam and Sophie, love letters for them to keep.

  At each turn of the dance, Mr Latimer stops to ask me about my state of mind. I tell the court about prowling the house. About the nightmares that waited for me to lower my guard and succumb to sleep. About being unable to share meals because of the way my throat sealed as I raised my fork, nausea gushing through me at the smell of food. How practised I became in hiding my disintegration from the world, from my family, my friends, my clients. Neil was the one who was dying. I was just dropping to bits.

  ‘On the twenty-sixth of May last year,’ Mr Latimer prompts, ‘there was an incident involving your neighbour Pauline Corby. Can you tell us what happened that day? Perhaps you could start by telling us how Neil’s condition was.’

  Dolly perks up, flicking her tongue round, licking her lips. I make a quick assessment of the jury. Half of them have crossed arms, a bad sign, closed, defensive. What they’re about to hear won’t improve matters. What’s important is that they think of me as mad, not bad, and material like this could go either way.

  ‘Neil had lost a lot of movement in his arms. It seemed to get worse quite suddenly so I was having to do more for him. Feeding and toileting.’

  Alice pulls a wry face. Has she known this? An aged parent, a disabled sibling?

  ‘The neighbours have this cat,’ I go on. ‘It uses our garden sometimes. We tried everything. I was feeling very tired, very tense, and I saw the animal soiling’ – I use ‘soiling’ instead of ‘shitting’ so I won’t offend anyone – ‘in where we have the herbs. I filled a bowl with water and drenched the cat. Mrs Corby had seen me and she came round. She knocked on the back door and said it was outrageous and unnecessary.’

  ‘And how did you respond?’

  ‘I lost control. Completely. I was shouting abuse and screaming at her. She threatened to call the police and I – I threatened her
with a hammer. I’d been fixing cables to the wall with it. I said I’d hit her with it.’ Stove your fucking skull in, had been the exact turn of phrase.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘She went back inside.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘I got drunk.’ Sat in my workshop and polished off half a bottle of gin. Hiding from Neil, hiding from the children. Wanting to smash something with the hammer but knowing if I started I might not be able to stop.

  ‘Had you ever behaved with such enmity, such aggression before?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Looking back now, how would you describe that outburst?’

  ‘It was out of all proportion. I lost control. I wasn’t myself.’

  ‘And how did you feel afterwards?’

  ‘Frightened. Like I was cracking up. I didn’t know what I was going to do next.’

  Mr Latimer pauses so they will have a chance to absorb this. Then he makes a move in a new direction. ‘Had you and your husband discussed when he would take the overdose?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You never asked him?’

  ‘No. I hoped he’d change his mind, or be too scared to go through with it.’

  ‘What happened on June the fourteenth?’

  ‘We had a quiet day. We had a take-away dinner. Then Adam helped me get Neil back to bed. The children went out. Then Neil told me.’ My voice cracks. I freeze again. Feel the dread across my shoulders like a clammy shawl.

  Mr Latimer waits. The courtroom ripples. Faces loom at me, then retreat. I am given a cup of water. The judge asks if I am able to continue. I’ve started so I’ll finish. My voice sounds dry, rustles. ‘Neil said he wanted to do it the following day.’

  I can hear the suck of excitement from people.

  ‘Were those his exact words?’

  ‘No. He just said, ‘‘Tomorrow.’’ And I knew.’

  ‘Did you try and dissuade him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were happy to go ahead?’

  ‘No. No – I was devastated but I had to . . . I couldn’t . . . I had . . .’ I’m inarticulate, words spilling out like broken teeth.

  ‘Why had you to?’

  ‘Because I’d promised. Because I loved him. And I didn’t know what was best any more. I was so confused.’ I have been coached to end on this sentiment. It is crucial. My motives may have been of the highest moral order but my actions were illegal. The only defence I had, the only defence the law of the land allowed me, was a lack of reason, a loss of judgement.

  ‘I didn’t know what I was doing,’ I say plainly.

  ‘And do you regret what you did?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Every minute.’ I mean it.

  There is a sound from the gallery and my blood leaps in consternation. Sophie is crying. Oh, my sweet girl. What have we done? I stretch my throat, raise my eyes to the ceiling and blink. But nothing stops my tears spilling.

  The judge instructs an adjournment for the rest of the day. The jury file out. There’s a sombre, shaken atmosphere now. And everyone knows what tomorrow will bring. They know I admit to killing him; they know what I used to do it. But until they hear the details of it from me, they can only imagine what it must have been like.

  Chapter Twenty

  The journey back to Styal takes for ever. We have to call at courts in Wigan and Stockport and Bury. It is rush hour so the traffic is appalling. I hear the security guards talking about an accident on the M60, which has gridlocked half the region. Snow starts to fall, looking dirty against the sky, then rain so the tyres make a slushing sound on the wet roads.

  Once back in Reception, I am strip-searched again. I feel the familiar slow burn of humiliation and try to disguise it. When I get back to my pad, I make a cup of tea in the house kitchen. Sitting on my chair, I close my eyes, sip and listen to the sounds in the place. A telly still on, a jangly tune. Someone shouting. There is always someone shouting here.

  As I get ready for bed, it is snowing again. The flakes are fat and soft and coat the limbs of the trees and the steeply pitched roofs of the houses. The place looks like a scene from a snow globe – stick in a horse and carriage and it could be a Victorian Christmas scene, as long as you photo-shopped out the fences and wire in the background and the bars at every window.

  One Christmas we rented a cottage in the Lake District. Adam was ten and Sophie seven and they were happy to go along with it, as long as we did a ‘proper’ Christmas. That involved taking our tree decorations with us as well as materials to make some new ones on Christmas Eve. And a boot full of presents. I thought we should take a tree too, but Neil laughed. ‘We’re going to the Lakes,’ he said. ‘Half the countryside is forest. We can just pick one up.’

  He was right. As we left the motorway nearing our destination, there were signs saying Pick Your Own. And the kids were giddy with excitement at the prospect. The four of us wandered through the plantation with a leaflet and a saw, arguing amicably over choices. Adam wanted the biggest possible tree but Neil explained that it might not fit in the cottage. Sophie, coming out for the underdog, was drawn to the spindliest specimens. I was after symmetry. We agreed at last on a five-footer and took turns to wield the saw. The sharp scent of pine sap was delicious in the air, the trunk sticky with drops of amber resin.

  The cottage was low and cramped but the living room was cosy: the owners had left a great fire banked up and we were able to keep it lit for the whole week. In the bedrooms the sheets were cold enough to make us squeal and there was frost inside the bathroom window in the mornings. Out the back there was a view of the hills above Grasmere. Snow fell on the third day and we bought sledges at the petrol station on the main road. The man told us where the popular local runs were.

  I recall careening down the slope with Adam, who was yelling like a banshee, and racing against Sophie and Neil, or Neil and I rollicking down together, travelling faster with our combined weight, Neil whooping and me laughing uncontrollably. Later, peeling off sodden gloves to reveal bright pink fingers, Sophie whimpering as her hands stung from the cold, then dunking shortbread in hot chocolate, feeding the fire shovels full of tarry coal and growing dopey in the heat.

  Once the children were asleep, Neil and I sat reading by the fire, sipping Famous Grouse and cracking open walnuts and hazelnuts. I was curled in an armchair and he sprawled on the floor, his back against the chair opposite, relaxed and tipsy with whisky.

  When I put down my book, I looked across to find him watching me.

  ‘Fuck me,’ he mouthed, and his eyes danced.

  Turning I switched off the table lamp, casting us into firelight. While he watched, I stood and undressed, the air against my back and buttocks cold from the draught at the door. I knelt beside him and took his face in my hands. Kissed him soft then harder. Pulled away as he reached for me. I took off his fleece and then his T-shirt, licked his nipples and the hollow of his throat. I unbuttoned his jeans, moved his underpants aside and let his penis spring free. I straddled him and he ran his hands flat and smooth down my shoulder-blades and my back. He pulled me closer, eased me on to him. I felt the depth of him fill me and my sex quickening. I rode him as he bent his head to reach my breasts, his mouth hot, his breath more ragged with each rocking motion.

  I came, shuddering and pulsing, and reared back, releasing him, the tremors travelling to my forearms and fingers, to my scalp. With a few quick strokes Neil came too, arching his back and groaning and spraying pearls onto his belly and my thighs. We lay together afterwards and I listened to the hiss and pop of the coal and the thud of his heart.

  The next day our winter-sports antics were cut short when Adam fell off the sledge and started screaming. A high-pitched animal sound that cut to my bones. He had broken his wrist. We spent a couple of hours in A&E and got back to the cottage in the dark, the street in the hamlet empty, the air full of oily coal smoke, the sky a dense black and the stars crisp as ice.

  It’s a time I revisit as I lie d
own in bed and wait for sleep, forcing myself to take it in sequence. I usually reach the part where we make the decorations: the table covered with newspaper; Sophie, her tongue between her teeth for concentration, sticking black beads onto her snowman bauble; Adam, his good hand thick with glue and glitter, daubing at a reindeer that looked more like a rat; Neil telling us all stories about the olden days here, who would have lived in the cottage and how they would have worked, children and all, in the local slate mines.

  I never get to Christmas Day.

  I was happy. We were all happy then. I’m sure we were. I thought I’d got away with it. That Neil and I had weathered the damage done by my affair and survived. That the worst was over and my family still intact. That everything would be all right from now on.

  That night, halfway through my trial, I dream that I am in the snow. We have been building an igloo and I am inside it but I can’t find Neil or Adam or Sophie. I have lost them. There is a shore nearby, a lake frozen, and I run to the edge, knowing they are trapped under the ice. Walking out on to it, I see shadows, pewter-coloured, twisting beneath. On my knees I hammer at the blue-white crust but it is as hard as stone, inches thick, and I can make no headway. Knowing I must get help, I spy a dwelling on the horizon. There may be people there. I get to my feet but when I try to run my legs don’t work. No power. I can barely lift my foot off the ground. No matter how hard I try to force myself forward, my lungs bursting with effort, my legs are as weak as dried grass stalks. The soles of my feet are stuck to the ice, which is growing through my heels and the pads of my toes, forming crystals in my blood. Then I hear banging. They are breaking the ice, something is breaking the ice, and I am sliding in fast, sinking down, the water shocking, cold and heavy as lead.

  I wake, my duvet on the floor, the prison officer hammering on my door again, calling at me to get up, the transport leaves at seven.

  I am reluctant. Today I will have to tell them things that I would rather not remember.

  When I had been on remand awaiting trial in Styal for two weeks, my brother Martin came to visit. We hadn’t seen each other for years, drifting apart in the wake of my mother’s death and with nothing in common other than our childhood. He was patently ill-at-ease. I was still shell-shocked, I think, both with losing Neil and with the horror of being incarcerated. He was sitting in the visitor’s centre when I walked in. He rose as I got close. We exchanged a clumsy hug, talked numbly about him finding the place, and sat. There was a stilted pause punctuated by a child’s laugh. Nearby three youngsters were visiting their mother.