The Body

by Dean Clayton Edwards

  "I'm coming to bed now," Matilda said and Lara felt a pang of fear and jealousy.

  He entered Lara's field of vision, facing Matilda. It looked as though the two of them would embrace.

  "He think's she's me," Lara thought. She was unable to keep from repeating this fact, just as she was unable to do anything about it. "He thinks she's me! He'll kiss her and he'll think she's me!"

  "I'm waiting," said Roger.

  "Let's go," said Matilda, giving him a wonderful smile.

  Lara wondered if she'd ever looked like that when she'd smiled. Ice cold and ravishing all at once.

  As they walked, Lara saw Roger reach for Matilda's arm, but then he seemed to think better of it and settled for walking beside her.

  Lara longed for Matilda to return so that they could go on discussing what future they might have together, and what place Roger might have in it. The prospect of sharing him with the sisters hadn't bothered her when she'd first had the idea to get married, but in the short space of time that she'd known him she'd developed feelings for him, and the prospect of sharing him with Matilda was worse, because, well, because he might grow to love her. It was feasible that they'd develop their own relationship that excluded her, whether month on and month off, or week on and week off, it would be like two separate lives, and he might prefer his life with Matilda. She didn't know if she could bear that, even if meant that she could be free.

  Matilda had said that she wasn't interested in Roger and the look in her eyes when he called her had suggested actual disdain, but she had been alone for a long time and mightn't she be overwhelmed by the feel of a warm, handsome man beside her? Roger was likely to try to exercise his marital rights with Matilda just as he had with Lara, not knowing that anything was different to how it had been an hour ago.

  She considered the possibility of destroying Matilda's chest once the first time she got the body back. She didn't mean to think that, but it just popped out there, like breaking wind at the dinner table. It was only natural to fleetingly imagine such things, she told herself and she tried to explain it to Matilda the same way, reminding her that such errant thoughts came and went all the time in a shared mindfield and it was not to be taken seriously.

  Matilda didn't do her the service of replying. Lara noted that Matilda's thoughts, like her movements, were precise and controlled.

  The light went off, plunging Lara back into the abyss of herself.

  The door clicked shut, as if she weren't already locked in.

  As Roger and Matilda's footsteps faded away, the voices of her sisters faded back in.

  "She's going to fuck him rotten," Katja said spitefully. "First time back in the body after two years? She'll ride him raw. What do you say, Anna?"

  "Why ask me?" Anna said, bored.

  "Because you're the slut," Olga reminded her.

  "Oh, do shut up," said Anna. "I'm tired of you. I'm tired of your voices."

  "Stick together," Imelda said, her mind turning in many directions, looking at all the potential outcomes and considering how to avoid the majority of them. "Whatever happens, we're all we have."

  "What's she got planned, Lara?" asked Katja. "What's she going to do to us? Whatever she does to us, she'll do to you too in the end."

  "She can't help you," Olga said. "Stupid little girl. Doesn't know anything."

  "You said you were going to smash us to pieces," Hilda said. "Good luck with that."

  And she made the mistake of laughing at Lara.

  "She has something worse than death planned for you," Lara said. "You wait and see. It's coming for you and I'm going to be there when it happens."

  "Whatever she does to us, she'll do to you," Katja said. "You mark my words. Aren't I right, Imelda?"

  Imelda remained silent, which meant that things were going wrong for her, which could only be good news for Lara.

  *

  "Isla," thought Lara. "Isla."

  Lara could feel her presence, but Isla didn't reply.

  "Isla, it's going to be okay," she said. "We won't leave you here. I'll talk to Matilda."

  Nothing.

  The silence seemed to fill the room, inch by inch, until she was drowning in it, but she still couldn't die, and on it went, the continued absence of any reply to her appeals, filling the house, filled her.

  "Isla? Please don't be angry with me. I'm going to make this work. It's going to be okay."

  "It's going to be okay," Olga mimicked in a snivelly voice.

  There was nothing Lara could do about the mockery except try to close her mind to it, the way Matilda had. She knew that she relied on Matilda for everything now and that was not a good place to be. Unless Matilda kept her word, Lara would be stuck in here, with them, until the termites and worms overcame their mediocre, psychic defences. In the meantime, the sisters would keep up their torrent of abuse and could do so for a hundred years. More.

  "I'd rather die than endure a hundred years with them," Lara thought.

  "And so you shall," said Olga. "And so you shall!"

  The door opened then and the accompanying rectangle of light highlighted some of the other objects in the room. A table, a vase, a patch of grubby skirting board. She heard footsteps cross the room and was about to ask Matilda what was happening out there, when she felt Roger's hands on her instead. She gasped as, without hesitation, he lifted her stool and thus swept her through the air, carrying her in both hands.

  She delighted in his touch and she wondered if he knew that she was in there.

  He carried her out of the room and strode purposefully towards the kitchen. Pushing the door open with his foot, he entered briskly.

  Matilda, who was washing dishes at the sink, smiled when Roger entered, but then her face fell as she watched him carrying the stool across the room. She had a hard look in her eyes as she continued drying the mug she was holding and asked, casually:

  "Where are you going with that?"

  "I don't want to risk standing on one of these rickety chairs," Roger told her, "but there's something interesting on top of that cupboard up there. This place is full of secrets and I won't stop until I uncover them all."

  "Really?" mused Matilda.

  He set Lara on the ground.

  "Except for this stool," he added. "It's the plainest thing in the house, apart from me, but at least it won't break when I stand on it. You don't mind, do you?"

  "It's a stool," she said, still drying the same mug. "Why would I mind?"

  "Well, yesterday you were making quite a fuss about my interest in this place. Don't touch this, don't touch that. I thought I'd better check in case you chop my hands off in the night."

  "What is it you're looking for?" Matilda asked.

  Roger put one socked foot on the stool, and then the other. Matilda's lip curled slightly, which would have been imperceptible to anyone but one of the sisters who knew what Roger wasn't standing on any old stool. Matilda stared at it and from within Lara stared back while Roger stretched up, up, up, almost on tip-toes.

  "This!" Roger said and he pulled down a metal contraption that rattled as he stepped back down to the tiles. He blew dust from the device and made a show of having a coughing fit.

  "It's for pureeing vegetables," Matilda said, dispassionately. "You drop them cooked into the top and then you turn the handle. They turn to mush and fall out of the bottom."

  "You make it sound wonderful."

  "It's for making soup."

  "I thought as much. It's a good idea, since you don't have a blender, right?"

  "Obviously not."

  He held the thing up to the light. Lara wished that he were holding her again, examining her in the light, but of course she was a plain, old stool now and there was nothing special about her. She was something to be used and discarded. He'd even forget to put her away, which was a blessing really, but she couldn't help feeling hurt now that he had his back to her and was getting on with flirting with Matilda. She was graced with the backs of his smart sho
es, the backs of his ankles and the occasional glimpse of Matilda, her face like a gathering storm. She was still drying the same mug as before. She thought that she might dry it until it broke.

  "I suppose this thing is three hundred years old," he quipped.

  "Soup wasn't invented until the 20th century," Matilda said.

  "Really?" asked Roger.

  "You're not very bright, are you?" she said.

  "Oh, Matilda!" thought Lara. "Is this how it's been? Why must you be mean to him? Please don't be mean to him."

  The hand holding the device twitched, but Roger seemed to be smiling through the insult when he said:

  "Something about you has changed."

  Matilda didn't seem too concerned about this and Lara feared what would happen if she decided that tolerating Roger for Lara's sake was too boring.

  "Ever since you hit me," Roger went on, "there's been something different about you. Like you're coming out of your shell. I have to admit to feeling like I'm seeing you with fresh eyes."

  Matilda didn't seem bored any more. She laughed.

  "I hit you?"

  "It wasn't hard enough to leave a mark, but it was still technically assault. Let's not pretend it didn't happen."

  "Then let's not pretend that you didn't deserve it," Matilda said, grinning.

  "Fine," said Roger. And then: "You know I'd never hit you, don't you?"

  "Oh, I know that, Roger," Matilda said, still smiling.

  Perhaps it was a consequence of being helpless in the stool, in addition to all the rumours she had heard, and knowing that Matilda had been isolated for two years and that might cause unknown effects in someone's mind, but she thought that Matilda had a way of making everything sound threatening. She could have said 'I love you' and it would have given Lara the chills.

  "You know? You're very much like this place," Roger said. "Wherever you put your eye, there's something that you hadn't seen before, something that takes you by surprise. You're kind of magnificent."

  "Thanks. I think."

  "I think I could be very happy here," Roger said, sitting down and putting his hands behind his head, "exploring you and the house and never quite seeing everything."

  "Oh Matilda," Lara said, and of course Roger couldn't hear her, "he keeps trying to get settled in, but I told him that this was temporary. His place was burgled - they wrote a warning on the wall and ... defecated in the living room - and they took so many things, so many things, so we had to stay here, because it wasn't safe there, and now it seems he wants to stay forever, even though I told him clearly that I have a mother and that she wouldn't allow it and he says he has houses all over the place and yet I've never seen one of them, because we were married in such a hurry, and you've got to tell him that we can't stay here. It's not safe."

  "Don't get too comfortable," Matilda said to Roger, having considered Lara's words. "We're leaving very soon."

  "Leaving?" Roger said. "And where, pray tell, will we go? You saw what happened at my place. We can't go back there. My properties are all currently rented. It wouldn't do to just go turning up on my tenants' doorstep asking to sleep on their sofas."

  Matilda's eyes narrowed.

  "That isn't true, is it?" she said.

  "What isn't true? What are you talking about?"

  "You don't own any properties do you? Not even your flat."

  Roger laughed nervously. "Of course I do."

  Matilda was watching his eyes very carefully.

  "Why did you lie about that?" she asked. "Were you trying to impress me?"

  "How dare you call me a liar?" Roger said, standing to his full height with a look of fury, but Matilda didn't flinch. She was leaning back against the sink with her hands on the edge of the cabinet that housed it. She watched Roger with interest, as though this was a movie unrolling in front of her.

  "We married in a hurry, Roger," Matilda said. "We may have been exaggerating to impress each other. But it's not too late to take things back."

  "I think you'd better start first," said Roger.

  "There's something more valuable to me that money, Roger."

  "Love?"

  "Trust," she said. "If you're in trouble, I can help you. I'm your wife. That's what I'm for. But I need you to tell me."

  "I'm not in trouble," he laughed.

  "Then why did bailiffs break into your flat while we were away?"

  "They weren't bailiffs! What on earth gave you that idea? I don't know who they were."

  "Yes, you do."

  "I don't like the tone of your voice."

  "You owe people money and they came to collect."

  He was silent for a moment.

  Lara watched and listened anxiously.

  "You keep checking on your car to make sure it's still there," Matilda said. "Your phone has been ringing on silent. I can see the light come on and hear it vibrating. But you never answer it and there's a certain look on your face when you check the messages. You're angry, because you're scared."

  He laughed.

  "You have to tell me everything," Matilda said, "or we're over."

  "No!" Lara screamed. How dare she give him an ultimatum and about something so ridiculous.

  "You know I have money," Matilda said. She threw her eyes around the room to indicate that she talking about the muted opulence of the house. "You've seen it. I don't believe that's why you married me, but it's there, in your mind. If only you could use some of this wealth to pay off your debts and start fresh. I might never need to know. Only I do need to know, because if I can't trust you, we don't have a relationship."

  "... I might be a little behind with the car payments," Roger admitted and Lara sank. "When you run a business, sometimes there's a problem with cashflow. The money's there, I just have to choose where I spend it."

  "And where do you spend it? Are you a gambler, Roger, or just a terrible businessman?"

  "Sarah. Really. I'm more than capable of earning enough to sustain us."

  "You will be," Matilda said. "With my help."

  She went to a kitchen cupboard and reached deep inside, retrieving a small, long book.

  "I understand that you have to project a successful image to inspire your clients," Matilda said, retrieving a pen from a drawer now. "But I'm not a client. I'm your wife. And I'm not going to cut my losses and run. I want to invest in you. I am invested in you."

  Roger stared at her intently, his fingertips on the edge of the table as if for support.

  "How much do you owe?" Matilda asked. "Five thousand? Ten? Twenty?"

  "Sarah," he laughed.

  "Tell me," she said. "And I'll write it on this cheque. And we can start again."

  To Lara's horror, he no longer seemed to be considering Matilda's motivations, but considering her offer. There was a figure. He was moments from saying it out loud.

  "I can't," he muttered.

  She handed him the pen and slid the chequebook to his side of the table.

  "Write," she insisted.

  "I didn't marry you for this," Roger said.

  "I know," Matilda said gently, allowing him one part-lie to eradicate others down the road.

  He picked up the pen and then his eyes flicked up at her, as if thinking that this might be a trick to gain enough evidence to force him out of her life.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Matilda didn't reply. Roger started writing. Then he held the cheque between thumb and forefinger, staring at the figure for a long while, before handing it back to Matilda. He couldn't look her in the eye, but Lara watched her face intently. Her expression changed a little, like tectonic plates shifting into a resting position.

  "Does this include the interest?" Matilda said.

  He frowned and seemed to be about to ask her something, but he reconsidered and said: "Yes. This is everything."

  Matilda took the pen from him, filled in the rest of the cheque, and handed it back to him.

  "If you need more, tell me now."

  "No
," Roger said. "This is what I owe."

  "You have to wait a couple of days to pay it in," Matilda said. "I need to pull some strings."

  "You'll want to pay that in immediately," Matilda said. "On top of that, I'll give you five grand in cash to pay the people you owe money to. Give it to them today and let them know that the rest is coming. Is five enough?"

  "Yes," Roger said. "They'll accept that."

  "I'll go with you, if you like."

  "No!" Roger said. "No, you've done enough. More than enough. I'll deal with them."

  "The money's in your inside coat pocket."

  Roger glanced towards the hall.

  "Go on then," she said. "And come straight back. I'll have lunch ready."

  "Sarah, I love you. I know I know. But I'm not confusing money and love. I love you."

  "Go now," Matilda said gently.

  When the front door clicked shut, Matilda looked at Lara.

  "I was a fool," Lara said.

  "We could have told you that!" laughed Olga.

  "We did tell you that," added Katja.

  "Shut up," Matilda warned them and they did.

  *

  The kitchen was full of the smell of spaghetti carbonara by the time Matilda went up the stairs. On her way, she glanced in Isla and saw herself as she really was. It was something they all did on the way up, to fortify themselves against anything Imelda might show them.

  Matilda said nothing as no words were necessary. Isla had asked to be moved to the stairs for the peace and separation it afforded her, since it was easier to tune the others out the further away you were, and now more than ever that appeared to have been a wise decision. The others had allowed it, because they thought she'd be begging to come back after a few months with nothing to look at apart from the opposite wall and the bodies coming and going, but she hadn't complained. She'd been serene and tranquil. They envied but respected her. When the initial bitching had subsided, no-one had had anything to say against her.

  When Matilda entered the main bedroom, the sisters had plenty to say.

  "Quiet!" she said.

  She disrespected them by walking directly to Imelda, the only one of them who'd hadn't offered anything to the Matilda debate since the night before. Even Petra had been comparatively vociferous, almost trembling enough to send her miniature teacups tumbling to the floor.