Little Boy Blue

11

He slipped into bed and turned his eyes to the wall. He could tell Sally wasn’t asleep – though she was pretending to be – and he wondered what she was thinking. Could she hear his heart beating sixteen to the dozen? Could she sense his excitement?

He had taken his time returning home, hoping that he would be in a calmer state of mind on his arrival. But the adrenaline coursed through him still, and even though he had taken a long shower, he felt sure the stain of the night remained on him.

He sometimes had the sense that Sally wanted to say something, as they lay together. That his increasing absence from her life had been noted, that her patience was reaching breaking point. If he was honest, he wanted her to ask. Not just so that he could apologize and make amends for the cruel way he’d treated her. But also because he wanted to explain – to make sense of his wanton, self-destructive actions. He was playing with fire, risking everything and everyone he held dear, and he wanted to share this burden with her.

Should he seize the initiative? Tell her himself? As soon as the thought entered his head, he dismissed it. Where would he begin? What would he say? Sally was no doormat, she was an intelligent and spirited woman – why couldn’t she tackle him on it, demanding an explanation for his actions?

She wouldn’t, of course. Theirs was a marriage sustained by silence now. So nothing would change, while with each passing night everything changed. He was slowly becoming a different person – someone new and unfamiliar. It thrilled and scared him in equal measure, such was the strength of his obsession. And this was why he wanted someone to talk to him, challenge him. Because he knew instinctively that, left to his own devices, he would never, ever stop.