‘Carrots,’ I correct.
She nods sagely. ‘I was just checking to see if you were listening.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Now that we’ve established that you’re paying attention, we’ll carry on. And in the other two pots she puts the other two ingredients.’
‘Eggs and coffee beans.’
‘Exactly.’
I sigh. Even though I am so drunk, I can’t get Dom out of my head.
‘She lets all the ingredients boil for twenty minutes.’
‘Why twenty minutes?’
‘Do you want to hear this story or not?’
‘Go on,’ I say, and reach for the bottle again.
‘She takes all the ingredients out, and basically shows her granddaughter that the carrots went in strong and hard and came out soft and malleable. The eggs went in soft and came out hardened. Only the coffee beans elevated themselves to another level, released their fragrance and flavor, and changed the water. So all three objects faced the same suffering and adversity, but each reacted differently. When the situation gets hot, you have to decide which are you.’
I put the bottle down. ‘I feel like the carrots at the moment.’
‘That’s today. What will you be tomorrow and the day after?’
I drop my forehead into my palm. ‘Oh, Anna. My life is such a mess. I thought I was in such a good place—and now look at me! My world was like a bubble waiting to pop.’
‘Hey, look on the bright side. At least she’s dead.’
‘What?’ I gasp.
‘Yeah. At least she’s not around to disturb your fragile peace of mind with cruel physical comparisons.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I have a raging aversion to all my boyfriend’s exes. Like, seriously detest, abhor, and hate them. I get so jealous that I can’t stop pouring over their Facebook photos to examine their tans, their smiles, their outfits, in the hope of finding faults so that later I can subtly criticize them while in conversation with my boyfriend.’
She stops and picks at her nail polish.
‘In fact, one or two I’ve hated so much I even fantasized about breaking into their houses and stabbing them while they slept in their beds.’
‘Really?’ I ask, shocked.
‘Absolutely. It’s petty and childish, but I can’t help it. It’s like an addiction because I’m so insecure. I feel as if I’m in competition with them. I’d much rather a dead girlfriend who looks like me.’
‘No, I’d rather have an ex who’s alive. I can’t even consider pouring over her Facebook pictures to subtly criticize her because she’s been put on some kind of pedestal. I mean how do you compete against a dead woman?’ I ask garrulously.
‘God! I hate exes. Alive or dead, they’re just trouble. Talking about exes, I forgot to ask before, have you heard from your stalker?’
I shrug. ‘I think I frightened him off.’
‘No more midnight phone calls?’
‘No more,’ I mumble. The room has started to spin. ‘I need to pee and to get to bed,’ I say, and stand up unsteadily.
She stands and we use the bathroom together. Then she helps me to bed.
‘Sleep next to me,’ I tell her.
She smiles down at me. There’s a strange, pitying look on her face as she stands over me.
TWENTY-FOUR
I stand over her and a thrill runs through me.
I am in her space, her bedroom! How strange that hatred, in its intensity and viscosity, should be so similar to passion. Look at her! Sleeping the gentle sleep of angels. So beautiful. So innocent. Bitch!
I take a step closer. My shoes are soft-soled and make no sound. It is a warm night and a window is open. Gentle breezes make the curtains flutter. Otherwise, everything is perfectly still. It is dark, but my eyes are accustomed to the dark. I have embraced the dark, made it my friend, taken it and its terrible secrets into my heart.
I bend down so that I am only a few inches from her skin.
How sweet and divine she smells. And yet, she destroyed me without a second thought. I still remember the first time I saw her waltzing across a room and thought, wow! She’s hot. I didn’t know she was a half-woman, half-serpent. But I was a man then.
She changed me, made me into the thing I am now, a shell. I loved her for so long. But there is nothing in my life now except this all-consuming obsession I have for her. Look at her throat. The seductive curve begs you to kiss it, wrap your fingers possessively around it, and squeeze it, until her eyes fly open and watch you in horror even as her pussy curls helplessly around your rock-hard dick.
Very gently, I blow into her slightly parted lips. My stale vapors enter her pink mouth. I will contaminate you yet further, my sweet.
‘Mmm…’ she murmurs.
I freeze.
She moves away from my warm breath. Even in sleep she is moving away from me. I guess she only wants a big man. I have seen her with him. He holds her possessively. He would make a formidable enemy, but I will not be confronting him. I will just be taking her away from him.
Why? Because she is mine.
Let him be broken, the way I was, when he took her away from me. I’ve taken care of all the other men who have sniffed around her like wild animals. It was easy because she didn’t want them. She wants this one. I have followed her up to his house in the woods, which he never locks, and watched from the window as he fucked her. It made me sick to my stomach. I threw up in the bushes. I thought she was something special.
Cheap hussy was mewling like a kitten for his dick.
I feel my cock harden. So. My body still wants the little bitch. I shall have her. I shall tie her up and have her until my body feels the disgust and abhorrence my mind feels for her. I would take her today, if not for the other woman sleeping in her bed. My opportunity will come again. One of these days she will be alone again. And I will strike then.
I straighten, and, turning my head, look at my own visage. How curious. It is a pale and glowing mask in the moonlight. Looking back at me is the almost demonic face of a man possessed by rage and hatred.
Vengeance will be mine.
I stand there for a long time. Only when I have had my fill of my complete power over her vulnerable form do I turn around and leave the way I had come.
Through the front door.
TWENTY-FIVE
The wound is the place where the light enters you.
—Rumi
I knock at the semi-detached house and Vivien’s mother opens the door. The past ten years have not been kind to her.
‘Hello, Mirela.’
‘Hello, Dom,’ she says with a smile, and moves back to let me in.
I go into the living room and look around me. Nothing seems to have changed. Everything is spotless. The kitsch decorations, the fans on the walls, the patterned carpet, the net curtains, the ornate figurines, and the bohemian crystal vases filled with plastic flowers. She gestures for me to sit.
I sit on an armchair with a crocheted lace antimacassar. The cushion is old and lumpy. I feel a sense of guilt. I should have come earlier. I should have given them some financial help. I know Jake gave money, but I should have done something too.
She takes a seat opposite me. There is a low coffee table with an oval lacy doily-like thing between us. On it she has set a crystal bowl filled with sugared almonds, a tray with a teapot and cups, and a plate covered with a napkin. She smiles at me mistily and begins pouring the tea. She doesn’t ask how I like my tea. She pours exactly the right amount of milk and drops in a cube of sugar. She hands it over to me.
‘Thank you,’ I say, accepting the dainty china.
She lifts the napkin off the plate and reveals thinly sliced rectangles of marble cake. She picks up the plate and holds it out to me. ‘Your favorite,’ she says.
Something heavy lodges in my heart. I’ve been so selfish. I take a slice and hold it awkwardly in my fingers
‘How have you been?’ she asks,
pouring herself a cup of tea.
‘I’ve been all right.’
She looks up. ‘I’m so glad to hear that. I’ve been waiting for you to come for ten years.’
My eyes widen with shock. ‘Why?’
‘I knew you’d come when the pain was gone.’
I draw a sharp breath. ‘The pain is not gone.’
She half smiles. ‘I’m sorry. Of course. The pain never goes. But it lessens. That’s what I meant to say. When the pain lessened.’ She drops a couple of cubes of sugar into her tea and stirs it with a teaspoon. I watch her lift it to her lips and sip at it delicately. She puts the cup and saucer back on the coffee table.
‘Eat, eat,’ she encourages.
I bite into the slice of cake. The smell and taste of it roll the years back. It is as if I am eighteen again. It is an old ritual, the two of us having tea and cake while I wait for Vivien to come out of her bedroom, all dolled up, and ready to paint the town red. I gaze into her eyes and wonder if she has traveled back with me, but she hasn’t. She doesn’t need to. She is still trapped there. She has not moved on. Everything in this house is exactly like it was when I was last here a decade ago. In this world of lace and plastic flowers, I could maybe turn my head toward the corridor and maybe, just maybe Vivien will walk through.
The knowledge is like a flash of lightning that lights up a black sky with white light. Vivien is not Ella. They are as different as oranges and oysters. Only in appearance are they alike. In temperament and personality no two women could be more unlike than Vivien and Ella. And that streak of lightning makes something else crystal clear.
I’m in love with Ella.
I loved Vivien, and a sad part of me will always love her, but it is Ella now and not Vivien that I think of every day. That I take to bed. That I crave. That I miss when we are not together. That I want to call and tell when something happens to me. That I want to share my life with.
Vivien’s mother looks at me sadly. ‘When I lost my daughter, I lost a son, too. You were the best thing that ever happened to my Viv. It was my greatest dream to see you both married. I’ve missed you greatly, Dom.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t come round before today, Mirela. I always enjoyed our little chats.’
She smiles happily. ‘Me too. You’re like a son to me, Dom. You must come and see me again.’
‘I will.’
‘I’ve thought of you a lot. I know you’ve made a great success of your life. The ladies at the church.’ She smiles shyly. ‘I listen to their gossip.’
‘Mirela,’ I begin and then I pause.
‘What is it, Dom?’ she prompts.
‘When Vivien was dying in the water, I made her a promise. I told her I would never love anyone else.’
‘Oh, Dom. Have you let that promise keep you from finding happiness all these years?’
I link my fingers together and say nothing.
She leans forward. ‘Listen to me. She was afraid, and she was clinging on to you. I love my daughter, but she was a minx to make you promise such a thing. She’s gone, and you are here. You’ve wasted ten years. Don’t waste another moment. If there is one thing I learned from losing Vivien, it is to appreciate every moment you have with the people you love.’ Her lips curl up in a bitter smile. ‘You don’t know how long you have with them.’
‘I still feel guilty. I could have saved her.’ I exhale my breath slowly. ‘If we hadn’t argued. If I hadn’t told her Jake was coming.’
She starts shaking her head in distress. ‘Don’t do that, dear boy. There was nothing you could have done to stop it. God knows, you tried. It was simply her time.’
‘She was too young to die.’
‘About four months after Viv passed, I dreamed of her. In my dream she was eleven or twelve years old, before she started dyeing her hair in all those atrocious colors. She was running in a field and she was laughing. Her mouth was stained with the juice of berries. She ran up to me and said, “Look what I found, Mum.” And then I woke up and I cried for hours.’
She pulls a handkerchief that she has tucked into her bra out from the neckline of her blouse and wipes her eyes.
‘But as the weeks and months went by, I took comfort from that dream. I think she wanted me to know she wasn’t blue and lying in a satin-lined box as she was in my waking hours. She wasn’t still. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. Somewhere in another dimension that I can’t access, she still exists. She has never appeared again in my dreams, but she doesn’t need to. I understood what she was saying to me.’
‘She’s never come to me,’ I say.
‘Perhaps you are only allowed to go to the people you can no longer damage,’ she says softly.
‘I found someone,’ I blurt out suddenly, but even as the words exit my mouth I want to un-utter them. I am shocked at myself. What madness possessed me to tell Viv’s grieving mother that?
She swallows hard. ‘I’m so glad,’ she croaks.
Angry with myself, I apologize. ‘I’m so sorry. That was unforgivably insensitive of me. I don’t know what came over me.’
She shakes her head and, reaching out a work-worn hand, grips my knee. ‘No, I’m glad for you. You’re a good man. You deserve to be happy.’
I cover her hand with mine.
‘You know that song by Pitball?’ she asks.
I smile slightly. ‘Pitbull?’
‘Yes, yes, the man with the bald head.’
‘You listen to Pitbull?’ I ask, surprised.
‘My granddaughter does.’
‘Marko has a daughter now?’
‘He has three children. Two boys and a girl. They’re my life. Anyway, Pitbull sings a song called “Give Me Everything Tonight”. He says, “What I promise tonight, I cannot promise tomorrow.” That’s truly life. You might not get tomorrow. So whatever you want to do, go do it tonight.’
And from her flow precious memories. If not for the intervention of the cruel hand of fate, she would have been my mother-in-law. I squeeze her hand and feel a great love for this kind and generous woman. We are connected forever by having loved the same person, and by the grief of having lost her.
‘When you remember Vivien, remember that she was always laughing, always wanting to have fun. She wouldn’t want to be the barbed wire wrapped around your heart.’
I nodded. ‘I know.’
I press a thick wad of money into her reluctant hand and kiss her powdered cheek goodbye. She stands at the door and gazes wistfully at me. I walk up to her wooden gate. I even open it. Then something pulls at me. I turn around and walk back to her. She looks at me enquiringly.
‘I want to show you something, but I don’t want to upset you,’ I say.
‘Yes, show me,’ she says immediately.
I take my phone out and scroll to the picture of Ella. I hold the phone out to her. ‘This is Ella, my girlfriend.’
She gazes at the phone for a long time. When she looks up, her eyes are swimming with tears. ‘She’s beautiful, Dom. Will you bring her to dinner one day soon?’
I nod, and it’s impossible for me to talk because I’m so choked up.
‘God knew he shouldn’t have taken her away from you,’ she says, giving me back the phone.
I take the phone from her and walk away, my heart finally free.
Where, O death, is your victory:
where, O death, is your sting?
—1 Corinthians 15: 55
TWENTY-SIX
I turn the car around and drive to the cemetery where Vivien was laid to rest. It’s a sunny day and the cemetery looks pretty with brightly colored petunias bordering it. I park and go up to a rickety iron gate. I’m not sure exactly where her grave is, but I remember my mother once mentioning that hers is a plot in the east end of the cemetery, and that there’s an oak tree nearby.
I take one of the small paths that radiate out to a serpentine perimeter path to lead visitors around the outer graves, some of which are centuries old. It’s hard to imagine that these p
eople walked this earth hundreds of years ago.
They are mostly overgrown, unkempt and crumbling, but one of the ancient, ornate altar tombs catches my attention, and I find myself wandering to it, and reading the worn inscription. Herein lies Arthur Anderson-Black.
Resting in the arms of God forever,
loved forever, missed desperately.
Flying with the angels, your memory
will never die. Our beloved father,
brother and uncle. We will never forget you.
Rest in peace till we meet again.
1830–1875
I think of the mourners who erected the tombstone for him three hundred years ago. Their remains have joined his under the clay soil. But did they meet again? I’ve never walked around a cemetery on my own before, and it is an oddly surreal experience. Walking among the dead makes you appreciate the impermanence of life and the permanence of death like nothing else can. All these people once lived and walked and talked and did their thing as if they would live forever. This house is mine, this land is mine, and now they are all just gone forever.
The saddest headstones are the ones erected by grieving parents. They are the most poignant. A simple epitaph on a new grave touched me deeply.
Beneath this simple stone
that marks her resting place
our precious darling sleeps
alone in the Lord’s long embrace.
May 2001–December 2001
As I stroll along the path I remember what my mother once told me. When the fruit is ripe and ready, it will leave the branch easily. I was the branch that Vivien was torn away from. I wasn’t ready. She still had too much to live for. Without realizing it I have fallen into a kind of melancholy, contemplative mood, and it is a shock to see a hilarious marble tombstone.
Is This Headstone Tax Deductible?
It makes me smile. I take my phone out and take a photo for Ella. The tax inspector in her will appreciate it.
The curved outer path meets an axial pathway that takes me to a central chapel, and a small custodian’s lodge that was designed to be used for burial services. The path meanders, and I pass a newly dug grave awaiting its occupant.
Wounded Beast (Gypsy Heroes Book 2) Page 15