Come a Little Closer

by Karen Perry

  My darling, my precious one,

  I am writing this letter to you in the corner of the staff-room – can you imagine it? Beyond the window, there are whoops and screams from the girls on their lunchbreaks, and in here, in this room, there is the usual heavy Tuesday-afternoon dreariness. All around me, my colleagues are correcting essays, making lesson plans, eating their sandwiches, gossiping, none of them aware that I am writing to my lover. This page is slotted within a manila file so that I am ready to flip it over should anyone draw near. How adept I have become at the art of deception! That’s because of you, my love, and because of you I will maintain the deception for as long as necessary. I have given you my solemn promise.

  Besides, I dare not write from home. Greg lingers in the house constantly. He has been watchful of me since the trial, hovering like a gnat, observing my every move. Sometimes I think I just won’t be able to stand it any longer. That I’ll have to leave him. But then I remember our plan, and all you have sacrificed. Above all else, we must not raise suspicion and draw attention to ourselves. I have caught him, at odd moments, looking at me in such a way that makes me think he must know – he must have worked it out, about us. The thought frightens me but at the same time I am thrilled by it too.

  Leah’s heart kicks out with sudden fright. We must not raise suspicion. The words leap at her from the page. All this time, she had believed him when he told her of Charlotte’s flirtation, her drinking, her affairs. He had cast himself in the light of wronged husband, silently suffering through each indignity, every humiliation, and she had accepted this without ever questioning the truth of his account. And Hilary – her words return to Leah now. That day in the garden: what had she said? That Charlotte was a difficult woman, an outrageous flirt. And all the while it was Anton who was the faithless one.

  The truth comes over her now, like the prickling flow of blood into a limb that has fallen asleep. She has been crouched on the floor by the bed, and now leans sideways, needing to support herself. Her weight falls against it, unsettling the duvet. A book that has been lying there slips off. It clatters on to the varnished floorboards. The sound it makes seems to echo loudly around the room. She stares at it for a moment, feeling her whole body tense and still. Another noise from downstairs and, quickly now, she is on her feet. She can hear him coming out into the hall, and hastily, before she has any time to think on the consequences, she reaches into the box and grabs the blue pages, as many as she can see, and stuffs them into the pocket of her dressing-gown.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Mark asks, on the landing. His eyes flicker over her, taking in her bare feet, her dishevelled hair.

  It’s an effort to keep her voice steady, her breathing clear. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb,’ she tells him, feeling the smooth grain of paper in her hand, hidden in the pocket.

  She keeps her eyes on the stairs, moving quickly now.

  Anton attempts to stop her, but she is powered by a new urgency, all her feelings about him washed away in a tide of fear. The knowledge that has started seeping in at the corners of her consciousness. She knows she must not stay here.

  ‘You’ve been very kind,’ she murmurs.

  And then she is past him, down in the shadows of the stairway, her heart pumping painfully in her chest, the letters scratching through the thin material of her dressing-gown. She can feel the abrasion of them, like damning evidence, burning a hole against the skin of her thigh.

  25

  Hilary

  Hilary is in her bedroom, preparing herself for the party, when she sees Anton ascending the steps to his house. She’s already changed into her dress: the poppy-red Diane von Furstenburg she’d bought years ago now, her first big-splash sartorial purchase. Now, watching him approaching his front door, she pauses in brushing her hair to watch him. There’s a spring in his step, a brisk optimism about his movements, that provokes a sudden impatience inside her. She wills him to turn and see her, but he doesn’t look. She goes to the window and throws open the sash, putting her hands on the sill so that she’s leaning out, but still he doesn’t turn. He twists the key in the lock and then the house swallows him. Disappointed, Hilary turns back to her preparations, continues fixing her hair. But then the anger cascades over her and she throws the hairbrush on to the dressing-table, sending an array of cosmetics clattering across the surface.

  She sits down hard on the edge of the bed, a surge of agitated feelings travelling through her. And that’s when she smells it: meat grilling on a barbecue in the park. From outside, she can hear the screaming of children on the green, and it is that, along with the scent of meat cooking, which strikes a deep chord of memory, the day of Charlotte’s death ringing up from the past.

  Greg was outside that morning, planting his new purchases from the garden centre. She had watched him unloading them from the car – rosebushes and fuchsias, hydrangeas and clematis – then carrying them through to the back. She had no idea where his sudden desire had sprung from to tackle the wasteland out there.

  It was over between them, although Greg didn’t know it yet. There could be no going back. Not after the party last night. Not after what had happened. She loved Anton in a way that couldn’t be replicated or denied. She was sitting on her bed, trying to summon the courage to go downstairs and explain this to her husband, but when she thought of the stricken look that would surely appear on Greg’s face when she told him, her stomach clenched into a tight knot and she had to lean forward and wait for it to pass. Anton was probably over there right now, breaking the news to Charlotte. Hadn’t he said as much to her in those brief moments after Charlotte had discovered them together? Hilary couldn’t remember the exact words he’d used, but that was the impression he’d left her with: that they couldn’t wait any longer. It would be better for everyone this way. Quick and painful, like ripping off a plaster. Then they could all figure out a way to heal.

  She was sitting on the edge of her bed, gathering herself, when she heard the screaming begin. All morning, there had been noise from the park. The neighbours gathering for the bank-holiday barbecue. There were bags of sausages in her fridge, a coleslaw prepared in a china bowl – her contributions, which would remain untouched. Everything had changed last night, once Charlotte had discovered them together. But the screams that rose from the park were different from the shouts and tantrums of children. Amidst the noise, there was the shrill cry of an adult voice, panic within it. And then a strange hush. It drew Hilary to her feet, and when she looked out of her window, she saw some of her neighbours, Martin Cooper and Will Bolton with a couple of others, striding across and up the steps to Number 14. Her heart had clenched, her thoughts confused. The battering on the door, an urgency within it, reached her all the way from across the street, and then she saw Anton emerging from down below, coming up the outdoor steps from the basement flat, his movements slow and heavy, as if he’d just been dragged from sleep.

  The men all disappeared into the house, and there was a moment of calm, the front door left open, the absence of movement, and then Will Bolton came rushing out and down the steps, calling instructions to his wife, who was crossing towards him now, a high note of panic in his voice. Hilary watched him say something to her, saw the woman raise both hands to her mouth. Then her eyes went back to the front door where another neighbour emerged – Martin Cooper – and Hilary watched him gripping the railings that lined the steps, taking deep gulps of air, like he’d just surfaced from underwater. She watched as he bent over suddenly and threw up, right there on the steps. Only then did she move.

  ‘Something’s going on,’ she’d said to Greg, as he came in from the garden and met her at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  Without waiting for him, she’d hurried outside and run across the street to where a small crowd had gathered.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ she asked, and Maria Bolton had turned to her, eyes round in her small pale face, saying: ‘Oh, Hilary, you won’t bel
ieve it. Charlotte’s dead.’

  The word hit her. That was what it felt like – as if the word itself were a cool hard pellet slapping against the centre of her forehead. She didn’t yet fully understand.

  ‘But how?’ she asked, her thoughts tending automatically to some sort of accident. Memories of Charlotte drunk came sliding up, nursing to life a suspicion of an intoxicated fall, the slam of her head against a sharp corner, a hard surface, but when Maria said, ‘She’s been murdered,’ the street seemed to tilt, the row of houses all falling away.

  It jolted something within her, and she started up the steps, but Martin Cooper caught hold of her and drew her back.

  ‘Don’t, love. It’s a bloodbath in there.’

  The words made Hilary start, like she’d been slapped.

  ‘But …’ she began, craning past Martin to look up at the open door, wanting Anton to come out – needing to set eyes on him for some kind of reassurance.

  ‘You must be patient,’ he had told her only the previous night. ‘We will find a way.’

  Was this what he’d meant?

  He didn’t appear, and her thoughts beat around her head, like a frightened pigeon trapped in a room, and the more she turned the idea over in her head, the more real it became. He had done this for her? For them? Had she known he would? Did this make her complicit? Bloodbath, Martin had said, and the violence of the act – the depravity of it – pushed her thoughts out of shape, as if her mind was melting and being rewelded into an unfamiliar shape. She thought of Anton wielding a knife – she envisaged the scene: Charlotte disbelieving right up until the last, the awful plunge of the blade through flesh, the terror. Distantly, she heard Maria Bolton saying her name, and then the sun flashed brightly overhead, and the sky loomed. She heard the crack of her head meeting the pavement and then nothing.

  A shiver goes through her now as she sits on her bed, remembering. Nineteen years ago, and still the memory has the power to reduce her to this. She wonders about Anton and whether he, too, is thinking back on that morning, his memories twisting and intertwining with hers. The morning that marked the start of their long period of waiting.

  But Hilary has grown tired of waiting. Tired of staying away. Throughout the burning heat of the summer, she has watched and waited for Anton’s signal, the nod to set things in motion, and still it hasn’t come. Her letters to him have all gone unanswered and she is sick of writing, fed up of the written word and the hold it has over her life.

  ‘Enough,’ she tells herself, powered by a sudden impatience. Enough waiting. Something needs to be done.

  She hurries downstairs and into the kitchen, but there is no sign of Greg. No doubt he’s off licking his wounds somewhere. It’s been three days since his book was published. Three days of gritting her teeth against his anguish and reproach. Her house has fallen silent, the rooms echoing with unspoken disappointments. No reviews, little traction from the press, a handful of mediocre online comments. ‘What does it matter about any of that?’ she’d said to him last night, when he’d appeared in the kitchen, eyes red-rimmed and haunted. It had startled her how wild he’d looked. ‘Let’s throw this party and enjoy ourselves. Who cares what anyone else thinks? Let’s you and I celebrate your achievement with our friends. Surely that can be enough.’

  In an hour’s time their guests will start arriving, all gathering to celebrate the publication of a book that has become loaded with anxiety and resentment. Hilary glances around her kitchen: trays of lasagne defrosting on the countertops, hors d’oeuvres ready to be popped into the oven, salad bowls covered with cellophane, silverware individually blanketed in paper napkins, an army of glassware lined up on trays, jugs waiting to be filled, wine bottles as yet still corked.

  ‘Oh, to hell with it,’ she says to herself, turning on her heel and flouncing from the room.

  The dog, roused by her sudden movement, jumps to life and skitters across the kitchen, following her out into the hall with a yipping excitement as she grabs her keys. But she has no intention of taking Mona with her. This is something she must face alone. She locks the door behind her, and marches out on to the street baking in the sun.

  The park is jammed with people, summer in full-throated cry. Even with the usual August bank-holiday exodus from the city, still they throng here. Hilary’s insides leap with excitement and alarm as she crosses the street. Going to his house in broad daylight, after months of stealing around in the dark, like a ghost, calls up within her a shiver of nerves at her own brazenness. What if Greg were to return right now and catch her there with Anton? How would that confrontation play out?

  She’s at the entrance to Number 14 when she hears her name being called. There’s a blood-rush in her face as she turns and sees her neighbour, Martin Cooper, striding up Wyndham Park, a shopping bag in each hand. ‘Just picking up a few bits and bobs,’ he says cheerily. ‘All set for the party?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hilary says, grinning like a fool.

  ‘What time is it?’ Martin asks, checking his watch. ‘You want us there for midday?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Best get my skates on so!’ He smiles at her, then glances sideways at Number 14.

  She can see the thoughts turning over in his mind. In a rush, she says: ‘I’m just calling down to Leah and Jake. Do you know them?’

  ‘Not really. I’ve seen them but –’

  ‘I was going to ask if they’d like to join us today.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  He stands there nodding and smiling, while she slips past the gate and down the steps, half turning to wave goodbye.

  Down in the hollow by the door to the flat, she feels a tremble of nerves going through her legs. For a moment, she just stands there, waiting until Martin has gone and her composure has returned. It’s cooler down here and she welcomes the opportunity to calm herself, to think this through.

  The window to the bedroom is situated at the front of the flat, and Hilary goes to it now, presses her face to the glass. She sees the unmade bed, the wardrobe, the door standing ajar. There is an air of desertion to the place – a profound emptiness.

  Emotions stir inside her when she thinks of how she once lived here, once slept in the room she now peers into from the other side of the glass. And then she remembers the last time they lay together – her and Anton – in that bed. How he’d held her against his chest, running his hand over her bare shoulder and freckled upper arm.

  ‘This is all that matters,’ he’d told her. ‘The time we’re together. Everything else is just a blur.’

  She’d been crying. It was their last day before the move to the new house. Her last day in Number 14. What would happen once she left? How would they see each other? She couldn’t bear the thought of not being near him. Couldn’t countenance what they had shared coming to an abrupt end.

  Light had filtered through the heavy curtains into the bedroom, and in the dimness of the room, she could see the outline of the little wardrobe lying open, displaying its emptiness. Everything had been packed up and taken to the new house. Even the bed had been stripped. They were lying on the bare mattress in a tangle of limbs, his thigh pressed between her legs. Her dress lay on the floor alongside his shirt and trousers. She’d told Greg she was going to Nolan’s to look for fabric samples, and instead she’d come creeping around the back lane and snuck up through the garden to where Anton waited in the basement. Hilary had no idea where Charlotte was, nor did she care. Probably upstairs, drinking herself into a stupor, and Hilary could not find it in herself to feel remorse or guilt, let alone pity for the woman.

  ‘I just want us to be together,’ she told him. ‘If only there was some way, without all this sneaking about.’

  ‘There’s always a way,’ he’d answered lazily, his fingertips running over her skin.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Things happen. Unexpected things. Who’s to say? Something unexpected might happen to make things possible for us.’

&nbs
p; ‘But what will people think when they find out?’ she had asked him, frightened and excited now by the prospect he was dangling in front of her.

  His hand had paused in its stroking. ‘It doesn’t matter what people think. All that matters is us two, together.’

  She’d held him closer. ‘I’ve never felt like this before you,’ she told him. ‘It’s not like this with Greg. It never was. That’s an awful thing to admit, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not awful. Just honest.’

  ‘I feel I can be honest with you. That what we have between us is honest and true, no hidden meanings, no pretences. Don’t you feel that too?’

  She had moved so that she could look down on to his face, leaning her weight on her elbows and forearms.

  ‘I do. You are extraordinary to me, little one.’

  His leg moved then, his thigh nudging between hers and she felt her arousal come alive.

  ‘I want us to be together always,’ she told him then.

  ‘We will find a way,’ he said, kissing her neck, a shiver passing through her as his tongue ran along her collarbone.

  ‘But Charlotte –’

  ‘Don’t worry about Charlotte.’

  ‘But I do. I don’t want to share you.’ His mouth was reaching for her breast now, and she moved so that he could find it. ‘If only I could have you all to myself.’

  ‘You will,’ he whispered. ‘Be patient.’

  And then she was kneeling over him, feeling nervous and dissolute and heavy with desire. His eyes gleamed – she could see his pupils dilated in the dimly lit room – and he reached for her and pulled her to him, their bodies continuing the conversation long after words had flown.

  She should go back, retreat into the safety of her house, but the memory has a strong hold over her, keeping her rooted to the spot, her fingertips pressed to the window pane of that basement bedroom, staring in, bewildered.