by Karen Perry
Back on his feet, he moves away from her. He walks towards the door. She thinks he’s going to leave, but then he turns and comes back to her, his face blotched with anger.
‘Do you think it’s been easy for me all these years? Watching you with your ridiculous daydreams, your foolish hopes? Your letters and your little prison visits? Oh, yes, I knew all about it. I didn’t say anything because I knew it wouldn’t last. And then when you stopped going to see him, I thought, There! You see? She’s over it. She’ll return to me now. But still you held back from me, Hilary. Always keeping me at arm’s length.’
‘Well, if you were so unhappy, why didn’t you say something?’ she finds herself yelling.
‘I did! Or at least I tried. But you just wouldn’t listen. The same way you never listen.’ He’s clearly appalled, as if he cannot fathom how they have come to this. ‘You get these ideas in your head and they just stick – they won’t budge. Notions you nurse that grow inside you with no basis in reality. You’re a fantasist, Hilary. And you’re just so fucking obsessive!’
She’s crying again, silently now, the pain blooming in her chest.
‘My heart is broken,’ she tells him.
He’s standing above her, and for just a fleeting moment, the look on his face turns to pity. ‘Let me guess,’ he says softly, ‘you threw yourself at him and he knocked you back.’
She sniffs, and she hears him exhale.
He goes to the window, puts two hands to the sill to steady himself. ‘Well, let that be an end to it, then.’
His words are breathed out at the glass, and she looks up. He meets her gaze, his voice hardening: ‘Do you hear me? Just let it go!’
‘I can’t! I can’t just turn it off. Love doesn’t just end like that!’
‘Love?’ He is aghast. ‘That isn’t love! It’s a twisted obsession with a dead woman!’
It takes a moment for the words to sink in.
He moves to the bed, collapses on to it, exhausted.
‘A dead woman?’ she asks, confused. ‘Charlotte?’
‘Of course Charlotte. Who else?’
‘I’m not obsessed with her!’
‘Dear God, you’ve been obsessed with her from the moment you first met!’
She’s too startled to speak. If there was any obsession, it was with Anton. But Greg is talking again and she struggles to follow, listening as he details those few months they’d spent living in the basement of Number 14.
‘You couldn’t stop talking about her. Always going on about some dress she was wearing and how much it must have cost. Or the way she allowed the kids to run around the garden screaming without intervening. Or how she idled away the hours reading magazines or playing the piano. It was non-stop.’
Hilary doesn’t answer. Too bewildered to speak, her mind racing. Was it true what he said?
‘And all the questions – Jesus! Did I think she was attractive? Would I call her beautiful or just pretty? If I met her at a party and I wasn’t married, would I fancy my chances? When she put her hand on my knee that evening, was I tempted?’ His voice gains strength as he runs through the litany of questions she had plagued him with. Distantly, they ring a bell, a chime of recognition. A cold feeling is crawling up and over her neck and shoulders.
‘And then you started emulating her,’ Greg says, snapping her attention back to him.
‘No, I didn’t!’
‘You did. The smoking, for instance. I never saw you smoke a cigarette in your life until that summer. Then you were smoking Marlboro Lights – Charlotte’s brand of choice. You began to dress like her.’
‘What?’
‘You never wore dresses when we first met. Or hardly ever. Apart from school and the odd formal occasion, you were always in jeans and T-shirts – you were kind of grungy, Hilary, and I liked that about you. But then you started wearing dresses, chiffony numbers, or little tight sleeveless things. All of a sudden, you were wearing red and pink and orange – a riot of colours – spending a fortune on designer clothes. Christ, to this day you still dress like her. You dyed your hair the same colour as hers. And why? There was nothing wrong with your brown hair. It was lovely the way it was.’
His voice has lost its power. There’s a melancholy note in it now. Indistinctly, she thinks she hears him say: ‘Sometimes I think you just do it to punish me.’
She absorbs the implication of his words – that she is a fraud, a cheap fake, her whole life built on a persona that is not her own, and now she feels the cracks running through it, the surface about to break.
‘This thing with Anton,’ he says now. ‘What did you think was going to happen?’
Biting her lip, she shrugs. ‘I thought he loved me. I thought that, once he was released from prison, we would be together.’
‘I see.’ He runs a hand over his mouth, leaning forward. ‘But he’s been out for over two months now.’
‘I know, but we had to wait, you see? So as not to arouse suspicion.’
‘What suspicion?’ A frown appears on his face as he gazes at her intently.
‘That I knew about it. So that I couldn’t be charged with conspiracy.’
He’s staring at her, nonplussed. ‘You knew about what?’
She whispers it. ‘About Charlotte. That he was going to kill her.’
The look he gives her is awful. And it’s only then as she says it out loud that she realizes how dreadful her admission is. How profoundly wrong.
His manner changes. Hilary sees him drawing himself in, growing guarded. He gets up from the bed. ‘Greg?’ she asks.
But he won’t meet her eyes. Instead he moves away from the bed, warily casting a glance at her as he reaches the door. It’s as if he’s afraid of me, Hilary thinks, amazed. And then she finds herself alone, a crumpled mess in the corner of the room.
She presses her hands to her eyes, her thoughts coming at her in a panicky rush. She wishes she hadn’t left her glass of wine downstairs. Right now, she needs a crutch.
Her cigarettes are in her bedside locker, and she takes one and goes to smoke it by the window. But Greg’s words come at her – Charlotte’s brand – and she stubs it out angrily. What should she do? Everything is such a mess. There’s no way she can go back downstairs and face that crowd. Then she remembers how Greg had looked as he departed – disgust mingling with fear of her. The memory twitches something inside her, an awful self-loathing that she needs to shake off. If only she could talk to Anton. If only she could make him understand. Perhaps she could write to him …
But then it comes to her again in a sweep of fresh pain. She cannot write to him or ever speak to him. The thought is terrible. It makes her feel shivery and deranged, as if her mind is tilting away from her.
Slowly now, she brings her eyes up, trains them on the house she has watched for almost twenty years. The yearning inside her is a bottomless thing – a great black hole she cannot fathom. She stares at the house, at the panes of glass in the windows glittering in the evening sun. And something hardens inside her. A feeling comes over her – the inevitable pull of Fate. She has felt it before.
Dry-eyed, the blood beating coolly in her veins, she moves away. When she descends the stairs, she is perfectly calm. She knows what she must do. Comfort – that’s all she ever wanted. To comfort and be comforted in return. Happiness is an act of will, or so she has always thought. Now, pulling the front door open, she steps outside, no longer knowing what might be possible.
29
Anton
He is not a bad man. That is what Anton has always told himself.
Not bad in the way of Salim, who bludgeoned his flatmate to death over a dispute in a game of Scrabble. Or Fat Eric, who sent his own mother to her grave by slicing through her carotid artery while she watched EastEnders. Even wise, gentle Nigel had caused the fatal collapse in the major organs of his wife by poisoning her slowly over the course of several months. Dark deeds and evil thoughts. By comparison, Anton’s soul is relatively unblemished.
But when he picks up the wine bottle from the coffee-table and swings it at Leah’s head, it occurs to him that he is both bad and dangerous. He is what they have always claimed him to be: a cold-blooded killer.
She is bolting for the door when he strikes her. It seems to happen in one fluid motion, as if her sudden turn towards the door triggers his reach for the neck of the bottle. She has her back to him when his arm swings through the air – he both feels and hears the smack of thickened glass as it makes contact with her skull. The breath is knocked from her in a single gurgling cry. Instantly she goes down.
A terrible calm descends on the room. Anton stands, the bottle still grasped in his hand, breath heaving in and out of his lungs as he stares down on her. She has fallen awkwardly, one leg half curled under the other, her arms pinned beneath her torso. Her head lies against the door, and he notices now that her hair is darkened and wet from her shower. She lies completely still.
It was the thought of Mark that did it. The unbearable prospect of his son discovering the tawdry nature of his deceit through those letters, the certainty of this information being distorted into some kind of motive for Charlotte’s death and Mark actually believing it. ‘Everyone has a tipping point,’ Nigel had said to him once, explaining his own dark journey into the abyss. And now Anton has found his.
In the silence that follows her fall, he realizes what he has done. He half expects her to move slowly, push herself up into a sitting position, rubbing her head. But her body lies inert. He is still panting but, cautiously now, he approaches her. He says her name, breaking the silence, but it hangs there unanswered. Warily, he goes closer, leaning down, his heart racing. Her eyes are closed and her hair has fallen over her face. He can smell the citrus tang of her shampoo. Instinctively, he puts his hand out to draw the hair back and recoils when he feels something sticky. His fingers come away glistening with blood. It seeps from a wound he cannot see, and he leans down again and listens carefully. At first, he can only hear the pounding of his own pulse in his ears, but then it comes: a liquid breath, low and shallow. He peers into her face but it’s completely still, her eyes shut fast. He remembers then the look on her face when he’d told her she could not leave, the flash of terror as she understood what he meant by that, the dark finality of his firm intent.
He sits back on his heels. The hem of her dress has ridden up her thigh from the fall, and he reaches to draw it down delicately, protecting her modesty. It was one of the things that had troubled him about Charlotte’s death – the indignity of it and how he couldn’t protect her from it. Easy for him to make the connection between the two events. He recalls now the morning when they’d found her. Will Bolton and Martin Cooper banging at the door, rousing Anton from his drunken slumber in the basement. He’d climbed the steps towards them, blinking in the daylight, the blaze of the sun calling his hangover to life. They’d found her in the kitchen, her throat slashed, lying in a pool of her own blood. He remembers the smell of the room – like meat left out too long, already on the turn. It was hot, the sun burning down on the roofs of the houses. Every surface was littered with the detritus of the party from the previous night. Beer cans, half-empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, crumbs littering the countertops, a few stray sandwiches, the bread hardening and curled at the edges. There were flies everywhere – on the food, hovering over sticky puddles of spilt booze, buzzing around her, crawling in the wound. The amount of blood on the floor was astonishing. There was no doubt that she was dead, and that her death had occurred some hours before. The air in the room declared it – the staleness, the stench.
Martin reached to open the window, all the while making little hacking noises in his throat, as if he was gagging. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Will kept saying, while Anton just stood there, staring down at the body collapsed on the floor in a jumble of limbs and green chiffon. Her dress had fallen open, revealing her left breast, and the indignity of it rose up in him suddenly. It cut through his shock, like a blade, propelled him towards her. All he intended was to pull her dress closed, give her some dignity in death, but he felt Will Bolton grabbing his arm and pulling him back.
‘Have a heart, Will,’ Martin had exclaimed, but Will’s grip didn’t loosen.
‘We can’t touch her. Not until the police come.’
It took four minutes for the police to arrive. Anton knows this because it was stated during the course of his trial. But that short interval seemed to stretch far, far beyond four minutes, and while he waited, he looked down at her – his Charlotte – and he tried to recognize within that twisted mass of unmoving flesh the woman he had known and loved for more than a decade. There seemed to be nothing of her in that room – no trace of her throaty laugh that was deep for a woman’s, no spark of humour or malice, both of which jumped quickly and easily into her gaze. No liquid sway of hips, no languid pull on a cigarette, no slow but steady smile to challenge or arouse. A woman who loved her clothes, a woman so stylish and carefully put together that the shamefully revealing disarray of her dress seemed like violence in itself. There was nothing of her left. Only ruined flesh and indignity, and as he gazed down at her, he felt sadness and anger start to coalesce, threatening to push up and explode through the wall of his shock.
By the time the police arrived, the muscles of his body had grown rigid, so great was the pressure of keeping those emotions at bay.
At least he can do that much for Leah now. Preserve the dignity of her flesh. The hem pulled down, his fingers trail along the smooth skin of her leg, tracing down to her ankles, the knob of bone above her shoe. One of those shoes has slipped off, and he runs his fingertip over the sole of her foot, but there is no answering twitch. He cradles her toes tenderly in his hand. We could have been happy, he thinks.
Fat Eric sat down and watched the rest of EastEnders after he’d murdered his mother. Salim had left his flatmate slumped on the floor, Scrabble tiles scattered around him, then gone to the nearest boozer for a stiff drink to quell the shake in his hands. Nigel hadn’t been there when his victim died, and that seemed to Anton the worst of all – an abandonment. He will not leave Leah. It’s clear to him what he must do and, in a way, he is horrified at the point he has reached. It’s like staring at his own self but from a distance, realizing the monstrous nature of his actions but helpless to stop himself.
Slowly he gets to his feet, then crouches next to her. He turns her over on to her back, like a rag-doll, slots his arms beneath her body and lifts her. She is small and slight – a bird – but his body is tired, left weakened now the surge of adrenalin has worn off. Her weight feels heavy in his arms. An ache runs down his spine and through his hips. Each step is difficult, trying to keep steady, trying not to lose his balance. As he climbs the stairs, he talks to her.
‘It’s all right, my darling. I’m going to take care of you now.’
Her eyelids remain closed, her mouth has fallen slightly open, but no voice escapes her lips. In his head, he counts the steps – a habit formed in childhood. He has always loved numbers. As he counts, he thinks of the years he spent in prison – how the weight of the number oppressed him when the sentencing happened. In the dock, with the judge’s words still ringing in his ears, he had quickly calculated the months, the weeks, the number of days and nights he was facing into. He felt them falling on him, obliterating his indignation – the fury he had been forced to suppress and keep hidden throughout the trial.
From the start, he had protested his innocence, but the police had made up their minds. His denials throughout their investigation became an annoyance and a frustration; in the same way the missing murder weapon was an open sore. At the time, he was incensed by their refusals to believe him, but now he just feels tired. Tired of being misunderstood. Tired of having to fight to explain himself. And what’s the point of it any more?
His life is finally yielding to inevitability. For the past few weeks he has been sustained by the promise of love and comfort that she held out to him. The way his heart had quickened
when he first saw her move through the garden. Her likeness to Charlotte was there from the start, in her carriage, the bow of her mouth, the slant of her eyes, the steadiness of her gaze. It had unnerved him, as if his wife had somehow returned to him – and then later, it had provided that sliver of hope: the chance of redemption. He had failed Charlotte in life. His faithlessness, his philandering. He had been helpless to it then, but the years in prison had suppressed that side of him. An older man, now, he wanted comfort and affection and the chance of something extraordinary. For weeks, she has been a buffer against advancing dread. But now, with the sun descending behind the houses, he feels the sense of inevitability rising in him. He knows now what is called for. What is required. A beautiful ending. The kind denied to Charlotte, but at least he can do something about this one.
At the top of the stairs, he crosses into the bedroom, lays Leah gently on the crumpled sheets. The stillness in her conveys a sense of peace and he feels himself longing for it too.
‘Not long, my darling. Almost there,’ he tells her.
He smooths the bedclothes around her, fixes her head on the pillow. Blood seeps through the cotton pillowcase, spreading quickly. He arranges her hair to hide it. There are things that need to be done, but for just a moment he stands and gazes at her, his eyes passing over her prone body, so small and helpless in the drift of the big bed. Her face is peaceful, her breathing calm.
He thinks of Agamemnon, when the gods had demanded his daughter, Iphigenia – how Agamemnon must have felt in those moments before the sacrifice, how the pain and fear of the prospect must have been eased by her serenity, her acceptance. And that is what he feels from Leah. Acceptance. Equanimity. With this act, he will take away her suffering. No more will she be tortured by thoughts of that child. No more will she have to strive to overcome her guilt, her fears. There is nothing for her on this earth, only judgement and pain. Together, they can leave it all behind.
With purpose gathering inside him, he hurries to the bathroom. In the cabinet, he finds the pills, grinds them up and stirs them into a cup of water that he fills at the bathroom tap. Next, he sees to the letters. There is paper in the cabinet beside his bed and he takes out two sheets and writes quickly. A note for Mark, and another for Cassandra. They will not understand and he won’t try to explain. Cursory missives telling them that he loves them and that he’s sorry. That he wants to be with their mother now. He makes no reference to Leah, cannot begin to explain why she must come with him. He stuffs the letters into envelopes, offering up a silent apology with the foresight of anguished questions to which there will never be answers.
