by Naomi Joy
‘Emelia!’ he bites, when he can’t take it any more, banging his fist against the granite countertop, mid-way through slicing spring onions. ‘Could you give me some space?’
‘And leave you, my dear husband, to slave away in the kitchen? You’ve been doing that for weeks.’ I touch his arm. ‘Now that I’m feeling better I want to help, I want to pull my weight. I want us to be a team again.’
It’s only because I’m looking so closely that I spot the moment he visibly grimaces, register the revulsion that speeds across his face, replaced by a thin-lipped smile just as quickly.
He chews his jaw and I take a step towards him.
‘Let me help,’ I say, sweetly, turning on the radio. A heavy beat injects itself into the kitchen, too upbeat for the atmosphere, jarring with what’s really going on.
He relents, puts the kitchen knife down, and I twist my body in front of his, his chest up against my shoulder blades.
‘Dance with me,’ I say, sliding out to the side, but he pushes against me, reluctant.
My heart trills in my chest as I slide my fingers down his arm and lock them round his hand. I have to make him fall out of love with me. I have to convince him I’m getting better, that I’m not worth the effort any more.
I tug his hand gently when he doesn’t move, pout my lips, my shoulder stretched through its socket. The music thumps and I notice a smile flicker on Anthony’s face. Just before it happens, I see it coming: the kitchen knife, balanced precariously on the chopping board, onions sliced and stuck to the blade, catches against my waist and spins, fast, glinting as it rolls across the surface. Anthony goes to grab it but, as he does, he spins it back towards me and the blade, razor-sharp, slits a perfect line right through the network of veins that meet at my wrist.
They open, obediently, their pathways severed, blood spewing fountain-like from the surface.
I stare at him, and he at me, neither of us moving.
I almost want to laugh. Almost.
‘I’m sorry!’ he splutters, acting as if the way he’d lunged at the knife and turned it on me had been a mistake. My terror rises, my pulse beats hard down my right forearm, then disappears instantly out of my wrist.
In the split seconds that follow, I think of Mishti in the flat below and take a deep breath in, suck it, hard, through my lungs and, for what little hope I have, for what little chance, I scream—
Except.
He has me now, his hand wrapped round mine, and he holds me firm. He looks at me. Don’t do it, don’t scream, he’s saying, and my muffled whimpers catch in my throat, as though it is lined with hot glue.
‘You’re OK,’ he repeats. ‘Shhh.’
His warm breath soaks into my hair, wriggling into my ear, my brain and I decide not to fight, acknowledging its futility. My eyes dart to the blood stains smeared across my right arm. It looks like it should hurt, the cut, but the pain hasn’t started yet, shock still in control of my receptors.
Anthony whips a tea towel from the counter and wraps it tight to my wrist, turning the white cotton baby pink as soon as it makes contact.
‘Let’s get you fixed up.’
I nod, slowly, the room swimming as he leaves.
Once he’s out of sight, I collapse in on myself, my breath sour against my hand as I cup my mouth to stop the noise from escaping. Reality biting at my cheeks – if I tell anyone what happened tonight they’d think I was crazy. Imagining things. But I know – I know – that Anthony grabbed for the kitchen knife with one thing on his mind. I know because I’d had the same thought. An accident, a slip of the knife, a cut a little too deep. He’d just beaten me to it, got lucky with where it had slashed, another mark against me, another reason for the authorities to doubt my story.
He paces back in, shark eyes fixed on me, and I look away as he draws close, out of the window into the ordinary world beyond.
‘Don’t worry, darling, it’s not deep. It will heal in a few days.’
You would know.
I shrink from him as he pours the alcohol solution he keeps for accidents like this one into my wound, wincing as the liquid rips into my flesh. I’m half expecting Anthony to push his fingers down into the cut before he bandages me up, to make it worse just so he can delight in making it better. The sound of the scissors cutting through bandage terrifies me, the feel of him pulling cotton against my skin suffocating.
I want to hide, hermit-like, want to crawl back into my shell, my studio, the safe place I should never have left.
I knew making Anthony fall out of love with me would be difficult, but taking this step back tonight, my sliced up body back in his bony arms, is hard to swallow. I must recover quickly, I must not let this set me back for long.
Blog Entry
30th November, 8.30 a.m.
‘I’m so happy you’re better!’
Mishti rejoices in the depths of the neon lit underground coffee shop, complete with exposed brick walls and house music, that we’ve holed up in post-yoga. It’s nearer a club than a café, but I suppose that’s what it’s going for. ‘It’s been forever,’ she points out, gold bangles clanging together on her wrist.
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘I wasn’t feeling well but I think I’ve worked out what the problem was and, since I’ve stopped doing it, things have been…’
Anthony grips my hand and smiles, an eyebrow rising from behind his glasses in acknowledgement, hand gripping the weekend paper.
Anthony and I are in the midst of a tug of wills. I’m playing along for the most part, letting him feed me the odd meal, pass me a pill every now and again, but I don’t keep anything down and, as such, I’m able to resume some of my usual activities. Which is why, I think, he’s tagging along today, a different way of exerting his pervasive presence over me, masked as ‘caring about my safety’ at a yoga class that I’ve attended many times before now without incident.
‘That’s great, that’s so great.’ She nods, then shoots an uncertain glance at Anthony, quite rightly, before reverting her attention back to her double espresso, the aroma of roasting coffee beans thick in the air. ‘You know, people go for years not realising they’re allergic to cruciferous vegetables or iron or dust or, well, so many things, so it’s great that you figured it out so quick. What was it, dairy? Gluten?’
My husband.
‘Just some medicine I’d been prescribed that didn’t work for me.’
‘Oh really?’
I watch as her eyes flit down to my wrist, at the single line carved across it, still raised and red, telling the wrong story.
‘Simple as that,’ I splutter, trying to compose myself, desperate to tell her that this cut was an accident but knowing that saying it will make her doubly sure I’m self-harming.
‘Anthony, you must be happy Emelia’s getting back to normal,’ she says, and I pray that his unwelcome presence here is proof enough that I’m his prisoner. I should have told her what was happening the day she gave me this necklace. I grip it now, absent-mindedly. I’m desperate for her to work him out, to see through his façade and into the truth I have to live with every day.
He’s trying to kill me.
‘Oh, absolutely,’ he replies, though the tone of his voice is less than convincing, and she can probably tell he doesn’t mean it.
‘How are things with Damien?’ I ask.
She groans, bringing her coffee cup to subtly painted lips. ‘We haven’t spoken for a while. I don’t know what’s going to happen between us, to be honest.’ Her eyes drop to her feet and I can see that the heel of her left trainer is bouncing beneath the table. ‘It’s like I need a distraction, a new focus, to take my mind off things.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘If you ever need anyone to talk to, you know you’re always welcome upstairs.’
Anthony raises his head and I know I have overstepped the boundary, but he doesn’t force me to leave. Instead, he smiles, says something non-committal and lets Mishti and I continue our conversation. We talk about everyth
ing and nothing in the minutes that follow, then, coffees drained, we head back.
‘Thanks for today,’ I announce as we step outside, squinting, our retinas taking a second to adjust to the daylight. ‘Hopefully I’ll be joining you more often from now on.’
I hold my arm aloft and lean in to hug Mishti goodbye. She follows my lead and, out of the corner of my eye, I catch someone watching us from across the road, two eyes filled with fear as they stretch in the distance between us.
I step towards her but, just as I do – Who is she? I think I’ve seen her before – Anthony grabs me, hauling me out of the traffic, the sounds of Mishti’s sharp scream, Anthony’s cry, wheels braking hard on tarmac and an aggressive car horn ringing loud in my ears.
‘Emelia! What are you doing? You could have got yourself killed!’
Blog Entry
1st December, 9.30 p.m.
I’d fallen asleep, accidentally and deeply, at four o’clock, and have woken up in our bedroom with a start, my mouth cakey, the back of my neck warm. I turn to my side – the curtains are open and the moon is shining through, bare windowpanes like mirrors in the darkness. The tall evergreen outside our building brushes against the glass, almost as though it’s knocking, as though it’s alerting me to the hushed voices I can hear slipping through the gap at the bottom of the bedroom door.
I shake myself together, find I can move to a seated position without too much pain – so I haven’t been poisoned, then – and wander into the lounge.
Heather is glowing in the space. She’s wearing a butter-yellow jumper that matches her hair and Anthony is resplendent in a dark polo neck – his very best garment – reclined in his leather armchair, fingers running through freshly gelled hair. I detect he may have splashed a new coat of aftershave over the scales he calls his skin if the smell in the room is anything to go by.
‘This is cosy,’ I observe, sounding more irritated than I am, and I hang in the doorway, waiting for an explanation.
‘Emelia,’ Heather says, spinning towards me at the sound of my voice. ‘I hope you don’t mind me crashing your evening. I was cycling home when—’
‘She fell off her bike!’ Anthony interrupts, so keen to share the news, his excitable eyes lit like a child who’s been gifted a new toy. ‘Hit and run!’
I glance at her elegantly bandaged arms, the plasters he’s taped across the palms of her hands, the alcohol solution on the side he’ll have delighted in pooling into her open wounds. I’m too keenly reminded of the ‘accident’ with the knife, my fingers leaping to my wrist, touching it, as if to convince myself it really happened. They’re both holding tumblers of amber coloured liquid. ‘For the shock,’ Anthony explains when he catches me looking.
‘What a horror,’ I exclaim. ‘Dangerous business, cycling. How convenient you were so close by.’
Two scenarios flick through my mind. The first – following our coffee morning, Heather worked out she has to be Anthony’s ‘type’ if she wants to win him over and, now she knows, she threw herself off her bike in an attempt to seduce him. The second – that Anthony was out earlier, furious with my continued ascent into health and desperate for an outlet for his perversions, that he’d rented a vehicle of some kind, and rammed it into Heather on her route home, knowing she cycled near here and knowing that if he hit her at just the right moment, she’d call him for help and no one else. He’d have to be careful, though – too hard and she’d end up in the back of an ambulance, body bag zipped tight over her face, and what fun would she be then?
*
Later that evening, the three of us gather in front of the fire in the lounge, sparks flying. Anthony pours tumblers of sloe gin for himself and his guest, then looks up at me.
‘None for me, thanks,’ I say before he can offer.
Heather glances sideways. ‘Off the alcohol, Emelia?’ she asks solemnly, implying that I must have some sort of a problematic relationship with the stuff.
‘It’s not good mixed with Emelia’s medication,’ Anthony jumps to explain, answering for me. I’m sure I spot Heather’s eyes perform a split second roll in the moment that follows.
‘I won’t ask,’ she groans. I recall the words she spat at me during our rehearsal dinner. I think we’re all waiting to hear what your brand of difficult is going to be.
The purple liquid bubbles in her glass as she accuses me of being boring and teetotal and over-medicated, before turning her attention back to my husband.
‘How’s the Spanish dig going?’ she asks Anthony, shifting her position, wincing as she overplays the pain from her grazes. ‘Harry was telling me about it. Are you having to fly over a lot?’
I shoot him a glance. Spanish dig? Is that what he’s doing now? I don’t really ask him about work any more because, frankly, I don’t care to know. He probably thinks it makes me feel emboldened to get back to work when he talks about it, so he doesn’t share much either. I haven’t heard anything more about the sixteen year old’s skull at the pit near the tube.
‘It’s going well. Trips back and forth haven’t been in the offing but I’m doing bits and bobs from the London office instead.’
‘Harry said you hadn’t been coming in as much recently.’ She runs the gin down her throat, a little on edge.
I stare at him and he shuffles, pinching the polo-neck from his chest to rearrange it, to stop it sticking to his nervous perspiration.
‘Harry’s in a world of his own most of the time, I’m not sure he’s best qualified to speak on my comings and goings.’
What’s he hiding?
Heather laughs to break the tension and Anthony stands up and moves to the window, cracking it open at the top, a slither of cold air leaking into the room. He stares, Christmas streetlights reflected in his eyes, then speaks.
‘The first of December,’ Anthony announces, changing the subject, switching on the hi-fi in the lounge, a twinkling melody sounding soon after. ‘Another year over.’
‘You make it sound like a to-do list,’ Heather jokes, a small hiccup bubbling from her lips.
‘Chocolate?’ he asks, and pulls an open packet from the side, gold box tied loosely with red ribbon. He fumbles with the packaging, clumsily untying the bow. He’s drunk, I can tell, his fingers slow.
A fresh breeze twists from the window and bites at my bare feet, alerting me to Anthony’s maniacal grin, and I wonder then if he’s tampered with them, created a chocolate box of horror, a variety pack of poison. I swallow hard, images springing to life of Anthony injecting a needle through each, of the painstaking effort he will have gone to create this monstrosity, tonight’s finale, of the hours it must have taken and the number of chocolates he will have bought to get it right.
Heather bats his hand away and his smile disappears, then his neck twists, doll-like and it’s clear that I have no choice but to take one, a wind-up toy tied tighter with every twirl.
I want to run but I can’t.
His hand lands heavy on my shoulder, nails against my skin, and he angles the box up towards me.
‘The strawberry ones are wonderful,’ he suggests, coaxing me towards the chocolate he’s most proud of, desperate for me to pluck it out. The alcohol on his breath sticks to my neck as he breathes, heavily.
I am in a dangerous situation. Heather has already ruined his fun by refusing and now I’m his only source of enjoyment.
I consider my options. Eat it, give him what he wants. Eat it, head for the toilet, head in the bowl. Or refuse, reject, rebuff, and risk something worse. I look at him. There’s a glimmer in his eyes, sweat on his upper lip, soaked into the hairs of his moustache, slug-like and viscous. His blood pumps thick through the vein on his forehead, his spare fist balled by his side.
I pick out a chocolate from within, its edges softening as I hold it between warm fingertips. The air in the room is thick, the smells of betrayal, hard liquor and Anthony’s putrid aftershave mingling in the toxic space.
‘Go on,’ he breathes, glassy eyed, takin
g the chocolate from me and parting my lips with it.
I let him do it, its liquid centre running over my tongue, tucking into the crevices of my mouth. My heart drums in my temples as I swallow, my palms slick with sweat, my throat coated with poison.
‘Well done,’ he says gently. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’
He flashes an evil smile and pets me like a dog.
‘Anyway,’ Heather announces, bringing us back to the present, her eyes sliding off to one side at our unusual display. ‘Thank you for the drinks… and the first aid,’ she adds, holding her bandages aloft. ‘But I must get going, my bruises are starting to hurt. I feel like a lie down.’
‘Poor thing,’ Anthony coos, his attention back on her now.
I look at Heather, at the fierce line of her nose, the broad sweep of her shoulders, the cut-throat nature of her vicious personality and I think, perfectly reasonably, that she’s probably never been referred to as ‘poor thing’ her entire life.
My stomach pounds, my neck growing heavy, my fingers beginning to fizz with the poison. I can’t let her leave.
Anthony disappears to fetch Heather’s coat from the hallway and I use this brief hiatus to rush over to her, my breath rapid.
‘You have to help me,’ I hiss, rushing my words together. ‘Anthony is trying to kill me, he wants me to run away so he can justify doing it sooner, I have to play along, that’s why I can’t eat – everything’s infected, everything.’ I clutch my abdomen, rolling in quick circles, unsettled. ‘Please don’t let him know I know, but I need you to take the chocolates and have them tested at a facility.’ I grab a fistful and shove them into her handbag, chocolate scuffing the fabric, her eyes moving slowly from her bag back towards me. ‘Please, Heather, please.’
‘Emelia, I think you need to calm down, why don’t you take a seat?’
‘There are autopsies,’ I counter, red blotches appearing on my chest, running up my neck.