Before She Met Me

by Julian Barnes

  The car was outside the flat at Repton Gardens; Graham answered the bell. She instinctively pushed up against him and cast her arms round his waist. He patted her on the shoulder, then turned her into the hallway and kicked the door shut with his left foot. He walked her into the sitting-room; she had to move sideways, awkwardly, but didn’t care. When he stopped her she was still looking at his neck, at his profile, his frown. He was gazing past her, towards the other end of the room. She turned, and saw Jack lying beside the piano stool. His sweater had lots of holes in it, and was stained all around the stomach. She saw a knife lying flat on his chest.

  Before she could have a proper look Graham, his arm now very firmly round her shoulders, marched her off into the kitchen. As he did so, he muttered the first words he’d spoken since arriving in the flat.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  The words calmed her, even though she knew they shouldn’t. When Graham stood her against the sink, facing out towards the garden, and then pulled her hands behind her back, she didn’t object; she let him do it, and waited there while he went away for a few seconds. When he came back he tied her wrists together, not very hard, with one end of a plastic washing line. He left her pointing out towards the garden. Twelve feet of dirty cream washing line trailed from her wrists.

  It was all right, Graham felt. Apart from it all seeming all wrong, it was all right. He loved Ann, there wasn’t any doubt about that, and he hoped she wouldn’t turn round. He found his head surprisingly empty of thoughts. The main thing, he said to himself, was for it not to seem like a film: that would be the worst irony of all, and he wasn’t having any of that. No curtain lines; no melodrama. He walked across to Jack and picked the knife off his chest. A sudden thought occurred as he straightened up. ‘Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar,’ he murmured inside his head, ‘but sometimes it isn’t.’ Well, you don’t ever really choose, do you, he reflected.

  He sat down again in the familiar armchair, and, with a deliberation and courage which surprised him, cut deeply into both sides of his throat. As the blood spurted, he gave an involuntary grunt, which made Ann turn round.

  His calculation had been that she would have to run to the phone, kick it over, dial 999 with her hands behind her back, and then wait for someone to arrive. Quite enough time. In fact, Ann immediately ran down the room, trailing the washing line behind her, past the dying Graham, past the dead Jack, round the desk, then put her head down and butted the window as hard as she could. That hurt a lot, but it made a large hole in the window. Then she screamed, as loudly as she could. Not words, but a long, unrelenting, patterned scream. Nobody came, though several people heard. Three of them phoned the police, and one the fire brigade.

  Not that it would have made any difference if one of them had got it right. Graham’s calculations weren’t upset by this variation of event. By the time the first policeman reached inside the broken window to undo the catch, the armchair was irrevocably soaked.