Killing Me Softly

Twenty-nine

I was alone. I realized at last how alone I was now, and with that realization came fear.

Of course, Adam hadn’t been there when I returned from the Blanchards although I supposed he might return soon. I hurriedly pulled on an old T-shirt and crept into bed like a guilty thing. I lay in the dark. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and every so often my tummy rumbled, but I didn’t want to get up and go into the kitchen. I didn’t want Adam to come home and find me exploring the fridge or eating at the kitchen table or any ordinary domestic situation. What could I say to him? All I had were questions, but they were questions that I couldn’t ask him. With each fresh deception I had pinned myself into a corner and I couldn’t see how I could escape from it. But he had deceived me too. I shuddered when I remembered hiding in that phone-box while he walked by me. What a ghastly farce it all was. Our whole marriage was built on desire and deception.

When he came in, whistling softly, I lay quite still and pretended to be asleep. I heard him open the fridge door, take something out, close it again. I heard a beer can being opened, then drunk. Now he was taking off his clothes, dropping them on the floor at the foot of the bed. The duvet was pulled back as he slid in beside me, and I felt cold air. His warm hands slid round me from behind. I sighed as if in deepest sleep and moved away from him slightly. He moved after me and wrapped his body along the contours of mine. I kept my breathing deep and steady. It wasn’t long before Adam was asleep, his breath hot against my neck. Then I tried to think.

What did I know? I knew that Adam had had a secret affair with a woman to whom, it was now clear, something had happened. I knew that that woman had a sister who had collected newspaper cuttings about Adam and had been fished out of a canal a few weeks ago. I knew, of course, that another of his lovers, Françoise with the long black hair, had died up on the mountains, and that Adam had been unable to rescue her. I thought about these three women while he slept beside me. Five in the bed.

Adam was a person who, all his life, had been surrounded by violence and loss. But then, after all, he lived in a world where men and women knew that they might die before their time and where risk was part of the point. I wriggled carefully out of his grasp and turned in the bed to watch him. In the light that shone from the street lamps outside I could just make out his face, serene in sleep, full lips puffing gently with each breath. I felt a sharp pang of pity for him. No wonder he was sometimes gloomy and strange and his love came out as violence.

I woke again as it was getting light and slipped out of our bed. The boards creaked but Adam didn’t wake. One arm was flung out above his head. He looked so trusting, lying there naked and dreaming, but I found that I couldn’t lie there beside him any longer. I pulled out the first clothes that came to hand – black trousers, boots, a high-necked orange sweater that was wearing through at the elbows – and dressed in the bathroom. I didn’t bother to clean my teeth or wash. I could do all that later. I just had to get out of here, be alone with my thoughts, not be there when he awoke and wanted to pull me down to him. I let myself out of the flat, wincing at the bang of the door as I pulled it shut.

I didn’t know where I was going. I walked briskly, jacketiess and cold, and breathed the air deep into my lungs. I felt calmer now that it was daytime: I was going to be all right, somehow. At a café near Shepherd’s Bush I stopped for a coffee, bitter and black. The smell of grease and bacon made me feel faintly queasy. It was nearly seven o’clock and already the roads were clogged with traffic. I set off again, remembering Adam’s instructions to me when we were in the Lake District. Get into a rhythm, one step at a time, breathe properly, don’t look too far ahead. I wasn’t thinking at all, just walking. Newsagents were open and so were some food shops. After a bit, I realized where my feet were taking me but I didn’t stop, although I went more and more slowly. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I needed to talk to somebody and there were precious few people left.

I got there at ten past eight, knocked firmly on the door and felt suddenly and horribly nervous. But it was too late to run away. There was the sound of footsteps, then there he was and there was I.

‘Alice.’

He didn’t sound shocked to see me but he didn’t sound too happy either. Nor did he ask me in.

‘Hello, Jake.’

We stared at each other. The last time we had met, I’d accused him of putting spiders in my milk bottle. He was still in his dressing-gown, but it was a dressing-gown I didn’t recognize, a post-Alice one.

‘Just passing?’ he said, with a glimmer of his old irony.

‘Can I come in? Only for a minute.’

He pulled the door wider and stepped back.

‘It’s all changed here,’ I said, looking around me.

‘What did you expect?’

There was a new sofa and curtains, and large new cushions on the floor near the fireplace. A couple of pictures I’d not seen before hung on the walls (green now, not off-white). There were none of the old photographs of him and me.

I hadn’t thought about it properly, or at all. But I now knew that I had somehow assumed that I would step into my old, rejected home and find it waiting for me, although I had made it cruelly clear that I would never return. If I was honest with myself, I had probably also assumed that Jake would be waiting for me, whatever I’d done to him. That he would wrap an arm round me and sit me down and make me tea and toast and listen to me pouring out my married woes.

‘It’s no good,’ I said at last.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee, now that you’re here?’

‘No. Yes, all right.’

I followed him into the kitchen: new kettle, new toaster, new matching mugs hanging on new hooks, lots of fresh plants on the window-sill. Flowers on the table. I sat down on a chair.

‘Have you come to collect the last of your things?’ he asked.

I saw now that it was useless to have come here. I’d had some quaint idea, last night, that even though I had lost everyone else, I somehow wouldn’t have lost Jake. I persevered for a few more ghastly sentences.

‘I’m a bit out of my depth,’ I said.

Jake raised his eyebrows at me and handed me my coffee. It was too hot to drink, so I put it in front of me and twisted it round on the table, spilling some. ‘Everything’s got a bit strange.’

‘Strange?’ he said.

‘Can I use the lavatory?’

I stumbled into the tiny room and stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was greasy and my cheeks were pasty and thin, and there were great shadows under my eyes. I hadn’t washed last night or this morning, so mascara and grime smudged my face. My orange jumper was inside out, though I didn’t bother to change it. What was the point?

I washed my face, at least, and as I was flushing the lavatory I heard a scraping noise in the room above. The bedroom. Someone else was here.

‘Sorry,’ I said, as I came out, ‘it was a mistake.’

‘What’s wrong, Alice?’ he asked, with a hint of real concern. But not as if he still loved me – more as if I were a stray cat who was suffering on his doorstep.

‘I’m just being a bit melodramatic.’ A thought struck me. ‘Can I use your phone, though?’

‘You know where it is,’ he said.

I phoned directory inquiries and asked for the police station in Corrick. I wrote the number down on the palm of my hand with a felt-tip that was lying on the floor. I started to dial, then I remembered the phone calls that Adam and I had been receiving. I had to be careful. I replaced the receiver.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.

‘When did you last have something to eat?’ Jake asked.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Shall I call you a taxi?’

‘I can walk.’

‘Where to?’

‘What? I don’t know.’

Upstairs, someone was having a bath. I stood up. ‘Sorry, Jake. You know, sorry.’

He smiled. ‘That’s okay now,’ he said.