by Naomi Joy
‘What autopsies?’
‘All of those girls, all of his exes, they’re all dead.’
Her eyes widen but she doesn’t reply and before I can say anything else Anthony re-appears at the door, his hands gripping the shoulders of Heather’s coat, ready to tuck her into it. Heather looks up, her face hazy with confusion.
‘She needs help,’ she says under her breath, wriggling into her coat. Then she departs, leaving me here. Alone. The slam of our front door shakes through my body, ferocious and final.
His eyes slide towards me.
I enter another world.
I’m running between my studio-flat and Anthony’s apartment, my hair swishing and swaying in the night, catching the orange overhead, glistening and reflective in its light. I stop, abruptly, to inspect a note on the floor. RUN, it says, and I know immediately that it is meant for me and that I am in danger. The way the letters are written in urgent block capitals sends my brain looping and I stare harder, running now, towards Anthony. I have to warn Emelia. Me. And when I get there, I’ll make her listen.
‘Are you OK?’ a voice calls from behind me.
I flash round, a skeletal face in the night, deep-set cheeks and prominent bones. A decade of no food. A lifetime of abuse. Her hair is thin, limp, mousy, lifeless. Like her.
‘Leave me alone,’ I say. She squeals in shocked response, running out into the road, spinning like a merry-go-round in delighted disbelief, her neck bent backwards, her arms stretched wide, blurry, moving so quick my eyes can’t keep up.
‘Don’t go back there!’ she cries, drawing attention to herself, to us, to me. Her voice echoes down the street and a light flips on in Anthony’s flat. Emelia appears at the window, a hand on the pane. She opens her mouth and blood trickles out like a waterfall over her chin. I scream. I am running out of time to save myself. I pick my feet up to run, but it’s nightmarish, as though I’m running through treacle and, as I pull harder against the sludge, without warning it gives way and I clatter against the pavement, falling, the skin on my knees tearing like fabric, ripped, rough and red. I get up, wincing.
At the flat, I ring each of the buzzers until one of the people in the block lets me in. I race up the stairs and knock on the front door. After a while, Emelia answers and I look in the mirror at her: my face split in two as I gape at the shock of seeing myself here, my teeth wet and coated in vomit, my skin translucent, purple veins pumping wild down my limbs.
I wake up in the bathroom, coiled round the toilet bowl, hugging it like a newborn. Either I’d let the poison take hold, or I’d forced my stomach to explode – I can’t remember which – and I see that vomit’s splattered up my arms, pooled on the floor, drenched into my hair.
Anthony looks down at me in the unnerving way that he does. He runs his fingers across my shoulders and holds my hair back as I crest, rise, and projectile once more into the toilet.
He takes me to bed later and, my body suitably unconscious, tangles us together like lovers.
Blog Entry
2nd December, 11.10 a.m.
It’s past eleven when I wake, my head raging from ear to ear, down the bones in my neck, across my shoulders, reaching the length of my back, rendering me mute and catatonic. My stomach shifts, white-lightning-flashes of pain dig deep into my abdomen and force me to curl into a ball. One chocolate. One. That’s all it’s taken to send me back to this prison.
I force my weight from my back to my side and my intestines protest, pressing against themselves, concertina-like, as I move. I grit my teeth but even my jaw aches, tired from grinding night after night through the pain. I stutter my eyes to open: the curtains are closed, the room’s dark and dank, my body is damp with sweat, and I can’t shake the feeling that I have tumbled back in time.
On the bedside table, a teacup and saucer sit pretty, housing a piss-yellow chamomile tea and a side helping of sugar-dusted biscuits. It is then that the tears start, right when it dawns on me that I am back to square one.
Blog Entry
4th December, 8.10 a.m.
I haven’t eaten since the infected chocolate of three nights previous, citing sickness, and, though it makes Anthony fall right back in love with me, head over heels, it’s the only way I can get back on track: I have to detox his poisons from my system until I’m well enough to fend for myself. To forget about what has come before and try again.
This morning, though, I am feeling better and something has lodged in my mind that I cannot shake from the evening of our impromptu dinner party. Anthony’s been lying about where he’s been going during the day. I assume he’s at work, Harry assumes he’s at home, Heather assumes he’s in Spain and, when he’s not, somewhere between the three. I can’t just ask him where he is, obviously, because he’s trying to hide it. Whatever he’s doing, he doesn’t want anyone to know. I think that maybe it’s a clue, that maybe whatever he’s doing could help me find a way to escape.
I listen to Anthony humming a happy tune as he buzzes round the flat preparing to leave for the day. He’s popped his head in on me like a slow motion jack-in-the-box twice so far, checking my progress, taking my vitals, tutting and fussing and huffing when they come back all, basically, OK. Your blood pressure’s a bit low, darling, but that’s to be expected.
‘I’m off,’ he whispers from the gap in the doorway and I raise my head slightly to acknowledge him.
‘Have a good day,’ I croak.
As soon as he shuts the door I swing my feet to the floor, pull on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and race a pair of boots onto my feet. The front door to the communal block slams shut shortly afterwards and I grab my big winter coat, a bobble hat, gloves, housekeys, and a letter I find on the side addressed to Anthony. I have a brief premonition of being caught and, in that scenario, I’ll use this letter as a feeble, but just-about-feasible, reason for running out after him. I tip-toe down the hallway, silent, pull the front door wide and escape our building undetected, tottering down the road and hiding in the nearest crowd, at a bus stop, to look for him.
I spot his frame almost immediately. He walks fast, the sway of his winter coat – long, navy and woollen – dances in the wind and I launch myself from the crowd in hot pursuit. It’s a struggle to keep pace, not least because I haven’t eaten for a couple of days, but I manage to hold it together – my body’s used to this – and keep up. If he’s heading for the London office, where he told Heather he went every day, he’d jump on the train to Liverpool Street Station, so, the first interesting point to note is that he’s heading away from the station in the exact opposite direction.
I track him, my eyes poking through my winter layers as though I’m peeking through a post box, all the way to a stylish Georgian building. It’s stately in its grandeur, the brickwork black, contrasting beautifully with the white of the windows. This place has money. I watch him enter through the automatic front doors and slip inside. I wait two minutes and then I follow, walking quickly to the entrance, spotting a sign on my way in.
The Elizabeth Anderson Hospital.
The doors to the building part before me and the central heating within blasts the top of my head as I duck inside, cautious, looking left and right to check that I’ve left enough space between me and my husband.
‘Hello,’ a warm voice calls from behind the reception desk. ‘How can I help you this morning?’
I look at her, into her thick eyebrows and off-centre smile and, just like that, the lie forms. I don’t even have to think about it for very long.
‘Hi, I’m a journalist, I’ve been sent here to interview some of your patients for a documentary series I’m making.’
‘Oh,’ she says, looking sideways at her notes. ‘No one told me a journalist was coming today.’ The air freshener she’s plugged in on top of her desk off-gases a Disneyland version of peaches and cream and she gets up to shuffle through various stacks of paper. She mutters and she fusses, irritated that head office have left her out of the loop. I imagine the email
she’s thinking about sending, Subject: Yet again I’m left in the lurch. Text: Today, a journalist turned up – but no one told me! As she goes to sit back down, her wheelie seat compressing beneath her weight, I take a risk. I move towards the visitor sign-in book and glance at the last name to check in: Anthony Lyon. I flick back a page: Anthony Lyon. And another: Anthony Lyon. I turn back a few more, just to see.
Anthony Lyon, Anthony Lyon, Anthony Lyon.
He’s been coming here every day, for months.
Why?
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say to the receptionist who’s practically tearing her hair out trying to find some evidence of my existence, aware that Anthony could reappear at any moment. ‘I’ll get the right credentials from your head office and come back.’
‘I can only apologise,’ she replies. ‘See you again.’
I wave as I leave, breaking into a run as soon as I’m out of sight.
*
I tear away a chunk from my fourth, or fifth, piece of bread and smother it in olive oil. I dig deep into the casserole I’ve ordered and, when the waiter comes over, I ask for a side of chips.
‘Make that a double,’ I add, my appetite raging after two days of suppressing my need to eat.
‘Is everything all right?’ Mishti asks, flicking her dark hair behind her shoulder and blowing thin waves across her spoon of watercress soup. I’ve invited her to lunch, if only to save myself the embarrassment of eating alone.
‘I haven’t eaten for forty-eight hours and my appetite is crazy.’
‘Have you been ill again?’ she asks, her forehead scrunching.
‘It comes and goes.’
‘I wish I could go forty-eight hours without eating. Fasting is so good for you.’
I look at her a little off.
‘Sorry,’ she scrambles. ‘I didn’t mean to trivialise whatever you’re…’ She pauses, a thought floating helium-like to her brain. ‘What exactly are you going through?’
I take a large spoonful of casserole to delay my answer. She already knows about my heart defect – she almost banned me from yoga because of it – but I’ve never let her in on my theory about Anthony. I make a decision. I don’t want to tell her, I want her to get there on her own.
‘My heart condition’s been stable for a really long time but in the last six months I’ve been fainting, falling, sweating, aching, vomiting…’
She raises her eyebrows as she dips a crumb of bread into her soup.
‘But, as far as the doctors can tell, my heart hasn’t got any worse.’
She moves the bread to her lips, a piece splashing to the bowl below, falling like rain on a puddle.
‘In the meantime…’ I pause, drawing breath. ‘Slowly but surely, Anthony has taken over my care. He prepares all my meals, he gives me my drugs, he discusses my treatment with the doctors and—’
‘That’s so good of him,’ Mishti cuts in, the point of my speech flying miles above her head. Connect the dots, Mishti, come on.
‘Well, that’s just the thing, because my condition has only been getting worse. In fact, if I stop eating and stop taking my medicine entirely, they’re the only times I feel like myself again.’
A long gap follows as I watch the cogs behind Mishti’s eyes whirr into action, her thick lashes batting more urgently over sparkling amber eyes. I forgive her for taking so long to work it out as a salty, golden-yellow, thick with oil, bowl of fries lands before me.
‘Have you spoken to him about it?’ she asks quietly.
I spray a few greasy crumbs across the table as I chew the chips ferociously.
‘It’s difficult,’ I begin, swallowing, then clearing my throat. I put my elbows up on the table and lean in. ‘Because I think he’s hiding something from me.’
She scrunches her nose, intrigued.
‘I followed Anthony out of the house this morning… I thought he was going to work but he walked in the exact opposite direction to a building he’s never mentioned, to a hospital. He’s been telling his colleagues one thing, his friends another, and keeping me entirely in the dark.’
‘Maybe you should take charge of your care if you’re worried? Why let Anthony run the show if it doesn’t make you happy?’
I avoid answering by taking another fistful of chips.
You have no idea.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says softly, reaching across the table for my arm. ‘I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear.’
No, it wasn’t.
My head spins. I have to make her understand how serious this is – and, if she won’t get there on her own I have to tell her. I’m not sure how many more opportunities I’ll have before Anthony makes me so sick I can never leave the house again.
I lean in, voice low. ‘You have to help me, Mishti. You don’t understand. He’s trying to kill me.’ I panic-whisper. ‘He did this to me.’ I shove the faded line of the cut on my wrist up towards her face and she recoils.
‘Emelia I don’t think—’
‘Has he spoken to you?’
‘Well, he just said that you were a bit fragile.’
I stop talking then, realising that Anthony’s got to Mishti too, my entire support network – obliterated.
‘Please don’t tell him about this,’ I say hurriedly, rubbing my lips with my serviette.
Mishti stands, looking nervously down at her phone, pretending it’s ringing though I know it’s not. ‘I have to get this,’ she says, excusing herself. ‘See you later. And talk to Anthony, he only wants to help.’
I turn away from her, frozen with the shock. I push away half-eaten plates of food and curl my bottom lip up into my mouth, gripping it nervously between my teeth. He only left me alone today because he thought I was too sick to get up – he gives me far more freedom when I’m ill – but if he knows I’ve been sneaking round behind his back, talking to Mishti, asking for help, he’ll…
My train of thought stops there, scared to go on.
If Mishti tells him what I said I’ll never see her again.
Blog Entry
5th December, 11.25 a.m.
My parents’ house is a semi-detached two storey, built in the 1960s with thousands of others at the peak of a nationwide housing crisis. It’s hardly an architectural marvel, but the high triangle roof with two white PVC windows poking out of it like stick on googly eyes, and the squat ground floor covered in off-grey cladding is home. The street itself features buildings from multiple decades, mock Tudor homes one end with ten year old BMWs outside, glassy new builds the other fitted with electric car charging points in the driveways. I turn to Anthony.
‘My parents really just called to ask if we’d like to come over?’ I ask, nibbling at my nails.
‘They did,’ he replies, stern faced, the white of his polo-shirt bleaching out his already light skin tone as we pull up the slight hill in front of my parents’ garage.
‘That’s so unlike them.’
And why did you agree?
Anthony shrugs. ‘We haven’t seen them for a while.’
‘True, but I wonder if there’s more to it.’ I chew on a hangnail with increasing ferocity. ‘What if they’re getting a divorce?’
Even though Anthony has them wrapped round his little finger, even though they’ve all but turned their back on my needs ahead of their desire for a series of renovations, the thought of them not being together any more unsettles my inner child.
‘I highly doubt that, darling.’
The thought of a big announcement puts me on edge and nostalgia grips like a vice as I exit the car fearing the worst, wind rushing my hair.
‘Shall we go in?’ Anthony asks, leading me along the path up to the front door, a group of kids spinning by on push bikes. They make me smile and I follow them as they pass, pausing to watch. As a girl, I’d ride my enormous mountain bike in furious laps round this paved housing estate too, flicking gravel up into the spokes that would ricochet like pinballs into the parked cars either side of the r
oad. The bike never sniffed any mud or off road trails, but I loved it because it was fat and steely and it made me feel invincible. Both my parents had wanted to buy me something more suitable, but I’d insisted and, after an unfortunate water based accident with a pink bike – replete with a pot of lip gloss in place of where the bell should have been – they’d relented. It’s funny to think of something as simple as a bike bringing you so much joy. I wonder, standing here, if anyone would have guessed the sickly body I inhabit now is what would befall that fierce little girl.
It is a tragedy what has become of me.
Wet and uncomfortable by the time we reach the front door, I roll my coat off my shoulders and pinch my ill-judged, long sleeved maroon top away from the places where it’s sticking most: back, neck, pits, chest. I’m paranoid that I already smell rancid, in dire need of another morning shower, but I put on a brave face when my parents open the door, arms wrapped round each other, necks craned forward, equally fake Cheshire-cat smiles stretching their lips wide, my mum’s floral skirt, mostly purple, complemented by Dad’s lavender jumper. It’s as though we’re investigating them for a heinous crime and I recoil slightly – who are these people and what have they done with my parents? Honestly, it’s like they’re in character or something. The Extent of Our Child Murdering Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, Your Honour!
‘Come in!’ they insist. ‘We’ve just put the kettle on.’ I pick up on the word we’ve. Do they think normal couples do everything in unison? I imagine them shuffling into the kitchen like a pair of conjoined twins, making a joke of pressing down the ‘on’ switch in sync.
To my horror, their gregarious display has got Anthony’s hackles up and, for some reason, he’s trying to compete. His hand has inexplicably glued itself to the small of my back and he keeps asking if I’m OK.
‘We haven’t seen you since your fall,’ Mum points out, curling her hand round my shoulder, ushering us into the lounge. But something’s not quite right – the usual smells of freesia potpourri, baked beans on the hob, boiled sweets just out of the wrapper, are missing, replaced with a monotone scent I don’t recognise, a kind of chemical lemon that’s sanitised the entire house and erased the things I used to love.