One of Us Is Dead

39 Monday 3 October 2022

Paul Anthony studied the image on the central one of the five monitors above his desk carefully. It showed the figure who had just rapped on the door standing huddled beneath an umbrella in the pelting rain. He continued to study it closely for a few seconds more, before feeling confident enough to walk over to the door.

He slid open the top and bottom bolts, and as he pulled the heavily reinforced door open he could smell the Jo Malone ‘Peony and Blush Suede’ she had worn for as long as he had known her, before he saw her. As always, to her credit, she had done such a good job on her disguise.

‘Hi,’ he said flatly, stepping aside to let her in.

‘You all right?’ she asked equally flatly, folding her umbrella and striding in like she owned the place — which in a sense she did. Well, part of it anyway.

She peeled off her hooded black sou’wester, then her peaked cap, handing them to Paul like he was a flunkey in a grand hotel.

‘All good,’ he answered, hanging up the sopping-wet garments. ‘How are the boys?’

‘Missing their dad.’

The same questions, the same answers. All that was different was the day of the week and the time that they met. Two people who hated each other, bonded by a common deceit and the love of everything money could buy. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘You’ll find out in a minute.’

‘Coffee?’

‘And something stronger with it,’ she said, flopping down theatrically on the wide sofa and placing her Chanel bag beside her, its gold chain lying like a small snake on the floor. ‘Can you believe this weather?’

He poured them each a generous measure of Haig Club Blue and carried one glass over to her. As he strode back over to the coffee machine to make her usual — a double macchiato — he heard the pop of her handbag clasp, then the click of her Dupont lighter and, moments later, the first tantalizing, rich and sweet aroma of her Lambert and Butler reached him. So good he had to strongly resist the urge to ask her for one. Behind him the Gaggia spat and gurgled.

‘So I think we have an interesting development,’ she said.

He turned and saw her tap the end of her cigarette in the ashtray on the table beside her. ‘Development?’

Fiona looked elegant and chic, as she always did, whether going to a charity ball or putting the bins out, when there were no domestic staff around to do it. Today she was in a white rollneck, with a horsey scarf around her neck, skinny ripped jeans and knee-high crocodile-skin boots that looked a million dollars — and had probably cost more, he thought with a wry smile. And, he had to admit, whatever it was she’d had when they’d first met and started dating, she still had, in spades.

Unless you knew her, he rued. Behind the visual facade was a seriously cold, unsexy personality. Obsessed with ageing — she was only thirty-six for God’s sake — her preparations for bed took over half an hour, with unguent after unguent, climaxing with a face mask that made her look like she was auditioning for a role in a remake of Scream. Most of her days were taken up with gym, Pilates and mixing disgusting-looking vegan gunk for her supper. And yet she still ingested, daily, the best part of a pack of fags, as well as what doctors recommended as the weekly quota of alcohol units.

It was so different in those early hedonistic days when he’d fallen in love with this wild, rebellious, posh bird from a titled — if impoverished — family, who drank, ate and snorted everything that came her way. On their very first date, she’d looked him in the eye and said, ‘Rufus, if it’s illegal, immoral or fattening, I want it!’ And, over the ensuing ten years, he’d done a great job of supplying everything that met those criteria. Although she’d always, somehow, kept her figure trim.

He walked across the floor, holding a perfectly made macchiato, handing it to the woman he had contemplated killing three years ago, before realizing she was more useful alive. He was stuck with her — probably for life. Just as she was stuck with him. Each bound by a secret they could never, ever tell.

He returned to his desk, sat down in his chair and spun it around to face her. ‘So?’ he asked. ‘An interesting development?’

‘Very. One you won’t be pleased about.’