‘Knew what?’
‘She looked a bit confused, but she said I wasn’t to worry. People often changed their minds. The procedure was usually reversible. I should send him in.’
‘He’d had a vasectomy?’
‘Yes.’ I bite my lip. ‘He hadn’t told me. He lied. He let me think . . .’
‘What a bastard.’
‘I know. He was a bastard. It was a bastard thing to do. The fact that he had concealed it, let me think we were trying, when all the time . . . It’s unimaginable that someone you loved would do that to you.’
‘What did he say when you confronted him?’
I gaze at Sam. ‘I didn’t. I should have done, but I knew he would twist it, manipulate me into thinking that I was in the wrong. I just wanted to escape. I wrote him a letter. I didn’t tell him why I wanted to separate. I . . . Oh—’ I gulp. ‘It was such an awful letter. It’s such a relief to tell someone. I wrote, “My beloved Zach, I will never forget what we had, but I think we could do with a little time apart. I need space of my own. Please don’t contact me for a bit. All my love, Lizzie.” Oh my God. I’ve just understood something. “Please don’t contact me for a bit.” That’s why he’s waited.’
Sam’s looking confused. ‘When you were together, did you ever think about going to the police?’
‘No. I thought I could cope. But I think I should go to them now.’
He nods, pushes a bowl of peanuts towards me. ‘Not a bad idea. Why don’t you? They could put you in touch with professionals, people who could talk you through what happened. I hate to use the cliché, but it might provide, you know, closure.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
Sam looks up, surprised at my fierceness.
‘It’s not about closure,’ I say. ‘I think I should go to the police because he’s still alive. He’s out there, now, Sam. He probably knows I’m here. And he’s dangerous. The two women I told you about who died in terrible accidents: it’s not a coincidence. I’m scared.’
Sam’s expression doesn’t change. He puts out his hand and cups mine. His fingers are blunt, the nails neatly rounded. He lowers his head slightly.
‘Oh, I know you think I’m mad,’ I say. ‘Everybody does.’
He puts his hand on my elbow and steers me, so I am sitting close to him on the threadbare sofa, not in the armchair as I was before.
‘I think you should tell me what’s been going on.’
So I do. I tell him about being followed, about the things that have been placed in my house when I wasn’t there – the dead bird and the lipstick – and the items that have been taken, the iPod, the Rotring pens, the china houses, all the possessions he collected from Gulls. I tell him about the music I keep hearing and the time I saw him in the stadium car park, the message in the painting. I tell Sam I think it was Zach who beat him up.
He doesn’t say much and his expression hardly changes. Once or twice, he nods. I look up at him when I have finished. ‘Do you believe me?’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to say what you think.’
He stands up and crouches at my side, wobbling slightly. His words are careful. ‘I think you’ve had a harrowing experience. It sounds to me like your marriage was intense, that Zach was, at the very least, an extremely troubled man. And then the ghastly event of Zach’s death . . . I think it would be understandable if you were experiencing some sort of post-traumatic stress.’
‘You’re saying it’s in my head?’
‘I think you’ve had a lot to deal with.’
He is still crouching and he stretches, pushing his shoulders back. He winces. ‘Ouch. Sorry. I better . . .’
It’s a good thing he stands up then because I’m about to scream with frustration. One more person who won’t believe me. I’ve told him everything. I thought he could save me. I wonder whether I should get up and leave. But then maybe I should stay a little longer. Two doors between this flat and the street; the bolts on those were strong, even if the back entrance is flimsy. I think about the police station I passed in the taxi. Sam has crossed over into the kitchen and is making coffee. I have another thought, too, soft and comforting, like cashmere. Post-traumatic stress. None of it is real. I’ve made it all up. I’m in no danger at all.
‘Frothy milk?’ Sam asks. ‘I’ve got a gadget.’
‘Yes please.’
There is a pile of books on the table in front of me. I pick up the one on top. It’s a paperback, neon-pink, the kind of pop psychology self-help book that makes the best-seller list. I flick through it. One chapter is called ‘Sociopathy’, the next ‘Narcissistic Disorder’. It goes on. There are checklists. My eyes scan quickly. ‘Lacking empathy . . . superficial charm or charisma . . . a belief in their own superiority . . . a chronic dissatisfaction . . . a deep-seated desire to control those around them.’
When Sam comes over, I thrust the book at him. ‘Do you think Zach is in here?’
‘Possibly. Four per cent of the population is supposed to fit the definition of “sociopath”. That’s one in twenty-five of us living without a conscience.’
Despite everything, my first instinct is loyalty. ‘It’s not as if the rest of us are so saintly,’ I say. ‘I’m always nice to people and agreeable. Like Joyce Poplin, who can be such a bitch. I’m always making her cups of tea, being pleasant. But quite often inside I’m furious. Zach used to have a go at me for “seeing the best in people”, but it’s a trick. I’m scared of not being liked.’
‘I hear what you’re saying.’
I suddenly hate Sam and everything he stands for, all this calm and reason. ‘When people say they hear what someone’s saying, they usually mean they aren’t listening at all. Zach told me that.’
Sam smiles. He’s leaning right back on the sofa and his face looks lopsided from this angle, his brow knotted. I imagine him repeating, ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ but I don’t think he actually does.
‘It’s partly genetic,’ he says. ‘It’s not about being nice or not nice to Joyce Poplin. It’s how your cerebral cortex functions.’
I watch his mouth as he forms the words. ‘Is it?’
‘Are you feeling any better?’ he says softly. His eyes are not like Zach’s eyes. His features seem to melt.
I breathe deeply, so deeply my heart hurts. My body feels light, the atoms in my face are tingling. The hatred I felt for Sam a second ago changes colour, deepens and becomes more complicated. Watch me do this, I think. See how I’m letting you go. See what you have made me do. Watch me. I lean across to press my lips against his.
In the morning, I wake up early. It’s still dark. I can hear purposeful movements in the flat upstairs, creaks, the gush of water.
Sam is still asleep, scrunched to the side of the bed, one arm upraised, his head in the crook of the pillows. There’s a red mark across his cheeks. I get out of bed and creep around the room, finding my shoes and coat, a pain in my head rocking with every move. In the kitchen, I splash water on my face. I think I hear him get up, the twang of the bed springs, but he doesn’t emerge. It’s just sighing in the joints of an old house. The garden looks blank and unloved. A fold-up chair, the sort you get at petrol stations, is propped in the centre of the grass. I don’t remember seeing it the night before. I think about this man upstairs writing out there on his laptop. Tapping, tapping.
At the door to the flat, my hand resting on the handle, I wait for a moment or two, braced. Heavy footsteps descend the communal stairs, seem to pause in the hallway, and then the front door slams, and I follow.
Zach
13 February 2012
It was dead down there. Three couples eking out the romance, with Kulon and Jolyon, one of his white dreadlocked surfing mates, at the bar. Le patron fell upon me like a long-lost lover. ‘Zachamundo, my man.’ We played poker and knocked back a few. When Kulon had to serve some customers, Jolyon tried to get me to go with him to some happening, Love Face, in Bude. He was ge
tting on my nerves, to be honest. I let him take my car just to get rid of him. He’s promised to bring it back by tomorrow.
When Kulon rejoined me, I brought up ‘the suitcase’ as soon as I could. The bad news: Kulon spent January with his parents in Alicante – ‘Needed to, man, they’re bankrolling the joint’. The good news: he picked up some MDPV from some boarding-school kids at New Year. He’d let me have some, but he had to cover his costs – ‘Sorry, man, not cheap, you know what I’m saying?’ I gave him what was left of the forty quid from the box of muesli, promised to get him the rest later in the week.
It put me in a bad mood, that information about his parents. You think people are like you, and then you find out they’re as privileged as all the other tossers. Just another hippy trustafarian. When he took over the Blue Lagoon a few years ago, I assumed he’d worked hard for what he’d achieved, saved up, was putting everything he had into it. But no, turns out the café is a hobby, a lifestyle choice; his parents are putting everything they have into it.
I was about to go home, fed up with the lot of them, when who should burst in but Onnie. Eyes like saucers when she saw yours truly – all over me. I would have shrugged her off, if I hadn’t noticed the fury on Kulon’s face. Him and her, then: hmm, interesting. Didn’t take her long. Another older man. Seems she can’t get enough of us.
Anyway, it was enough to make me stay, just to piss him off. So much for Cornwall being short of distractions – doesn’t sound as if Alan and Vic factored in the attractions of the Blue Lagoon and its owner. Not to mention his suitcase. She was shouty and silly and kept grabbing food off Kulon’s fork. She wanted my attention. Her clothes were skimpy – miniscule skirt, Uggs, no tights – and her pupils were dilated. She’d changed her hair.
‘I’m all alone,’ she said every time Kulon had to serve a customer. ‘The shitty au pair has abandoned me for a shag with a Young Farmer, left me to my own devices for the whole night. I’ll be all on my own up there. You not with wifey?’
‘No.’
‘I thought she was so precious to you.’
I shrugged.
She said, ‘Haven’t you missed me? Can I come to Gulls? We don’t have to do anything, just hang out.’
‘No.’
‘You’re so weird. Mum says she’s never been inside your house – even back in the Ice Age when you were friends. Have you got dead bodies in there? What are you hiding?’
‘I’m not hiding anything.’
‘So why can’t I come?’
‘You might bring in dirt.’
She laughed. She thought I was joking. Shortly after that, she sidled off upstairs with Kulon. Filthy little whore.
I’m back now. Had to walk. Forgot I’d lent out the car to that loser. He’d better bring it back in one piece. I keep thinking about that big house at the top of the hill. When Vic was newly married, I broke in once. I feel almost nostalgic, thinking back on that time. I was still learning. I thought the decor, all that Colefax and Fowler, those tables with skirts, was the height of sophistication. I wonder if they’ve updated their look.
It’ll be empty now. The au pair’s away. Onnie’s hooked up with Kulon. I might take the torch and have a snoop. The windows in the drawing room, if I remember: pretty, but inefficient antique latches.
14 February 2012
I’m back at Gulls now, soaking, filthy. I have lost a night and most of a day. I’ve got to calm down. Are these normal reactions? I have a feeling I’m supposed to be responding in a certain way, that there’s a manual I should know about. Am I drunk? Still? Really. I feel like laughing. I want to see Lizzie. I need her. I’ll ring her – the moment Onnie’s out of the shower. Lizzie will save me from this. All along that is what she’s been doing, saving me from myself.
She’s written to me. I found the letter on the mat just now when I got back. A Valentine’s card maybe. Her lovely writing on the envelope. I’ll open it in a minute. I’m expecting an apology and an outpouring of love. The angel. I already forgive her. I’m even beginning to forget why I was angry.
It’s my art, or the wellies, that have given me away. That’s funny too.
I got myself up to Sand Martin. I was sober then, wasn’t I? Perhaps I had dipped my finger in the bag of white crystals I’d bought from Kulon. It’s here now, in front of me, but you can’t count crystals, of course, so I can’t be sure. Maybe I had. I can’t remember. Memory loss: it’s one of the things I worry about. I’m mixing it up too much, losing control.
Lizzie will sort it. She’ll know what to do.
The house looked deserted as I got close, looming out of the darkness like a rock in the fog. I scrambled over the flower beds to the front windows easily enough, and managed to fit the credit card in and under – the latch swung to one side. I was worried the joints might have been painted in since the first time I was here, but the window pushed up smoothly. My boots were thick with mud from hiking up the hill, so I sat on the window sill and winkled them off, chucked them on to the grass before climbing over.
Through the air they flew. There they lay. An abandoned pair of Hunter wellies.
It was just as I remembered it. Not a chintz apron or a carriage clock had shifted since I was last here. Insipid sea-scene watercolours. Mahogany drinks tray along one wall. Decanters and glasses, sherry, Dubonnet. A half-empty bottle of distillery-only ten-year-old Glengoyne, my whisky – though of course it isn’t actually mine, it was Murphy’s before it was mine. The first time I tasted it was in this room. I poured myself a finger and sat down in the wing chair. I put my feet up on the coffee table, dislodging a copy of Country Life. I knocked it back and felt the fire turn my throat amber. I closed my eyes for a second. What happened to Vic? I think idly. What a great girl she’d been. Those parties on the Isle of Wight, those naked midnight swims. When did she change? I felt the room spin.
‘So you came.’
I opened my eyes. Onnie was standing in the doorway. I don’t know how long she’d been watching me. She was wearing a fleece all-in-one catsuit-type garment and her hair was scraped back. For a second, I was confused. I’d seen her going into Kulon’s flat at the Blue Lagoon. She wouldn’t have had time to get here – unless it was later than I thought, unless I had lost a chunk of time. Luckily, I’m a good actor.
I got to my feet with a leisurely stretch. ‘There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.’
She stared. ‘Were you just pretending down at the bar?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Were you jealous?’
‘I’m always jealous.’
I thought I might have to fight her off, but she started behaving like her mother in recent years, all Tory airs and graces – pouring me a drink and fetching nuts from the kitchen. Little upper-class madam at heart, of course, despite the rebellion. I was acting, too, playing up the role of ancient roué, gasping for some excitement in this godforsaken hellhole, and after a while she went to get her ‘stash’ – enough for a couple of joints. When I asked if she had anything else to make an old man happy, she produced benzphetamine, a diet pill. She said it would have us flying like the best E.
It’s a bit of a blur after that. Music played loudly from an iPod in one of the rooms upstairs, and we cooked up food in the kitchen, though I can’t remember eating it. She found me another bottle of Glengoyne (eighteen years old) in the larder. Those five or six times we met in London, we’d had mechanical sex. I wasn’t going there again. Keep it cerebral, I remember thinking that. I told her my philosophy of design, the importance of simple lines, how a house should be a blank canvas for a busy mind. She told me I was brilliant, that she’d remember it for ever. She danced for a bit, careering off the sofas. I lay on the floor and watched. She played the piano. I sang: ‘Alison’ from My Aim is True. Elvis Costello, I told her: the greatest singer who ever walked this earth. I told her never to forget that either. At one point, we ran frantically from room to room, chasing a wild dog that got in. Or perhaps I imagined that.
Perhaps it was the ghost of Howard, haunting my narcotic dreams.
At one point, exhausted, we collapsed in the sitting room. She began to dance again, more slowly. I tore a blank page out of a book on the coffee table and told her to stay still for me. She pushed her all-in-one outfit off her shoulder, let it slip and slide down until her breast was exposed, lay down on the floor with her neck thrown back. I drew her, half-naked, and when the drawing was finished, I put it aside and knelt next to her, pulled the catsuit off her, yanked it down over her knees.
It was light when I fell asleep. Or rather, I remember still being awake when it turned light.
The sound of screaming woke me. Opening my eyes, Onnie’s hair was all I could see, spread across the pillow. It was like netting. I could distinguish the shaft of each individual criss-crossed strand. Her mouth was half open, the bottom lip slightly cracked. For a moment, I thought the screams had come from her, that she was dead. But then more screaming, deep downstairs, the slamming of an internal door. ‘Onnie!’ A screech. ‘Where are you? What the hell has been going on?’
I leaped up, banging my shin. We were in her bedroom. I had no idea what time it was. Gloomy outside. Early morning? No, late afternoon. The thud of rain. A dressing table, strewn with make-up. Pink cherry wallpaper. Onnie’s eyes opened. She lifted her head. She was lying across a white sleigh bed, next to the dip where I had just been, naked. ‘My mother,’ she said. A smile curled her lips and langorously she got to her feet. ‘That’s weird.’
I think I said I didn’t think it was funny and it seemed to click her into action. The door was already wide open, and she peered out, listened. Victoria was just outside the front door, in the porch, talking on her mobile phone. Onnie was throwing on clothes and she grabbed me by the arm and we ran down the backstairs, through the scullery and out the kitchen door, across the sopping wet grass into the copse of trees. Neither of us was wearing shoes. My wellies were still on the front lawn. I was in socks. The ‘feet’ of Onnie’s outfit were black and sodden.
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