Our Kind of Cruelty

by Araminta Hall

  V says it is unfeminist to wear shoes in which you can’t run. Naturally she made an exception for when we were Craving, but then she said it didn’t count because she had me. Strong body, strong mind, V always said, and she is totally and completely right.

  I went home and changed again into my running gear, setting off almost immediately back across the common, although I ended up going much further, getting lost in my movement, feeling my body move through the pain, and feeding off the adrenaline leaching into my muscles. It reminded me just how strong I am. Just how capable.

  When I got home I made myself shower before checking my email. V doesn’t like workout sweat. She says it’s different from sex sweat and she used to scream if I came anywhere near her after a run. She definitely wouldn’t want me dripping on the sofa. And all in all it was the right thing to do, all of it, because when I finally sat with the laptop there was a reply from her, writ bold in my inbox.

  To: mikehayes86@hotmail.com

  From: missverityw@hotmail.com

  Subject: Hi

  Mike,

  Lovely to hear from you. I’ve been meaning to get in touch. Actually I was going to write before we sent out the invites, but time spun away from me, as usual. I rang Elaine to get your address. She says she hasn’t seen you or your new house since you got back. She sounded a bit wistful actually, you know the way she does. You should ask her over.

  I’m so glad you’re coming to the wedding. I was worried you might feel a bit put out by it all, but it sounds like things are good with you. (Do feel free to bring someone, by the way, if there is someone, that is.) I’m so happy that we can be friends. It all got a bit silly back there and we both said things we probably shouldn’t have. I definitely acted a bit like a spoilt brat. Meeting Angus has put everything into perspective for me and has made me grow up quite a lot.

  I would love to come and see your new house sometime and you must come here for dinner. I am still at Calthorpe’s, still trying to override humans!

  It’s all a bit manic at the moment, as you can imagine, but after the wedding we’ll set a date.

  Take care,

  Love V xx

  I read the email many times, until I had absorbed it and let it become part of me. It was impossible not to see the implied meaning behind everything V said. When she said ‘time spun away from me, as usual’, and ‘you know the way she does’, she was clearly asking me to remember how well we knew each other. Even telling me to invite Elaine over was like her laying a hand on my arm, the way she used to do when dispensing advice, letting me know she still had the power to make me do things. And then the line in brackets saying I could bring someone, a line marked out in its ridiculousness. ‘If there is someone’, she had written, knowing full well there never would be anyone apart from her. ‘We both said things we probably shouldn’t have’ was an apology, and ‘meeting Angus has put everything into perspective’ was like telling me that she was using Angus as a way of understanding our relationship. She would ‘love’ to see my house and promised a ‘date’, two cleverly chosen words.

  But of course the most significant phrase was ‘still trying to override humans’. We will be masters of our own world, she used to tell me. Don’t worry, Mike, she’d said, I’ll invent a chip that makes you and me cleverer than even the machines and we can ride off into the sunset together while everything else goes to shit. Those words told me that V and I were still on course to do that.

  I felt significantly better by the time I looked up and realised dusk was settling over the day. I decided not to reply. We had both shown a tiny part of our hands, keeping most of our cards close to our chests for the fun which lay ahead. The Crave, I felt, had picked up pace.

  Everyone at work commented on my lump and for some reason found my walking-into-a-door story hilarious. ‘You were definitely a bit the worse for wear,’ George said with a wink, making me stuff my hands into my pockets. He, as I remembered, had fallen on leaving the pub so there was no way he could have noticed what I was doing. I shut myself in my office, counting down the time until lunch when I could forget it all by concentrating on the weights I would have suspended above my head.

  Kaitlyn knocked on my door at midday and I motioned for her to come in, which she did gingerly, which irritated me. ‘Just wondering how the head is?’ she said with a wide smile.

  I was genuinely perplexed. ‘Everyone seems very interested in my head. Has no one ever come into work with a bump before?’

  She laughed lightly. ‘Well, I can’t think of anyone. And I suppose they just find it amusing because of Friday night.’

  ‘What about Friday night?’ I asked, leaning forward over my desk.

  ‘Oh nothing. Just, you know, you were quite drunk. Not that it matters.’

  I tried to piece together the events of the evening but I couldn’t remember much until getting off the tube and walking home down my road. Which meant I couldn’t have been that drunk or I’d never have been able to do that.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘I hear you live next door to Lottie.’

  My mind blanked, but then I remembered. ‘Oh, yes. How do you know that?’

  She cocked her head to one side but I could see a blush washing her transparent cheeks. ‘She mentioned it.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ I just wanted her to leave, but she stayed standing in my doorway.

  ‘I go round to hers sometimes. Next time I’ll look over the fence and say hi.’

  I couldn’t think of many things I would like less. ‘OK.’

  She looked at her watch. ‘God, I’m starving. What are you doing for lunch?’

  ‘Going to the gym.’

  She looked at my arms and laughed. ‘Guess you don’t get those by magic. Have fun,’ she said as she left the room.

  Since V got her hands on me women have always found me attractive. I never used to notice, but V taught me how to look for the signs. She used to say we should reverse Crave, but I never saw the appeal in that. V sculpted me into what she jokingly called the perfect man and she wasn’t happy until every part of me was as defined as a road map.

  If I stood naked in front of you, you could trace every muscle in my body; you can see how I am put together and how I work. And I can’t deny that I enjoy the feeling that gives me; I like the sense of dedication that has gone into creating me.

  V would sometimes moan when she touched me, tracing her finger along all my dips and ridges, down shimmering veins and into forests of hair. I’ve done too good a job, she’d say sometimes, you’re like Frankenstein’s monster. You’ll run off and leave me and I’ll regret what I’ve done. And in a way she was right, as the American incident proved. I did become a monster.

  The stupid thing was I never found Carly attractive. I didn’t even particularly like her. She chewed gum and spoke with a deep nasal drawl which grated inside my head. She laughed too loudly and wore her skirts too short. She was also unashamed in her pursuit of me. She marked me out like a big game hunter and everyone in the office knew I was her prize.

  But I was so fucking lonely over there. I begged V to let me come home all through the first year, but she kept on saying I was doing so well and making a future for us and how important that was to her and how much she loved me for the sacrifice I was making. We were both very busy at work and as the second year progressed we saw each other less and less, although we still Skyped and emailed and texted all the time. V would even sometimes sleep with the computer next to her all night so I could watch her through the day. I’d lock myself in the toilets at work and will myself down the wires and into the bed. Once or twice I even masturbated like that with the computer resting on the back of the toilet and my work colleagues taking a shit next to me.

  Carly just caught me on a bad night. We’d gone out to celebrate a deal I’d landed, not that I wanted to go, but the boss made it clear it was what was expected. And everyone bought me drinks all night and before long the room was spinning and all the women there looked like V. I
think I ended up crying because I remember a huddle of people around me and cold water being splashed on my face. I remember being lifted under the arms and the shock of the cold night air. I remember someone calling me honey and telling me it was going to be all right. I remember puking against a building and feeling like a monkey had stuck his arm down my throat.

  Then we were in a strange flat and there was loud music and we were dancing with all the lights off and I realised it was just me and Carly. We were passing a joint between us and Carly was taking off her top and her breasts reminded me of V’s. All I wanted at that moment was to sink into a body, to stop the droning in my head and the aching, miserable loneliness eating its way through me. And ultimately, as V said, I am a weak person. I succumbed, and once I had I felt like a man who hasn’t eaten in days being given a steak. I couldn’t stop, even when Carly squeaked, even when she pushed at my hands, even when dawn started to crack open the sky. But I must have stopped because I woke the next day on the living-room rug, a blanket thrown over me.

  I knew before I opened my eyes that the moment I did my head was going to split into lots of tiny pieces. The rug was sticky beneath me, its synthetic fibres making my body itch. My vision was blurred at first and the pain across my shoulders and shooting up my neck was like a knife scraping out my veins. And it was hard to believe that my throat wasn’t coated in poison as with every breath it felt like tiny pins were shooting through my sinuses.

  I lay on my back, wondering how I was going to move again, taking in my surroundings. The room was small and dirty, the walls painted a depressing baby blue, with photographs stuck like a collage opposite the window. An Indian-looking throw with thousands of tiny mirrors covered a sofa that looked like it could have been pulled from a dump. The view from the window and the tight air told me I was in a damp basement, which was probably damaging the health of whomever lived there.

  Although of course I knew who lived there, and the thought wrenched at me as if it was piercing my skin.

  I sat up and the room lurched, my vision jagging at the edges. My stomach followed and I ran into the hall to find my way to the bathroom where I covered the toilet and the walls in a lurid pink vomit. I was shaking when I finished but I made myself stand so I could face myself in the mirror. My dick was purple and sore and we hadn’t used a condom. I was going home for Christmas in a week and I knew there were many sexually transmitted diseases which take months to show up.

  I became aware of my smell: a musty, animal stench that rose from my groin and my armpits and made me gag again. I stepped under the shower, with its chipped blackened tiles, and stood with my face turned into the jets.

  The water was hot but I was still shivering. There was something terrifying about this flat, so that it dragged over my skin like a bad dream. I looked out at the toilet with the cracked seat, containing the streaks of shit I had seen smeared against the side as I’d vomited. There was a blunt razor on the side of the sink still holding on to someone else’s hair. A spattering of black spores chased themselves up the windowless walls and the mirror ran with condensation.

  I turned my face to the wall and leant my forehead against the cold tiles, but my brain boiled with a knowledge which ran through me like death – this disgusting, degrading, awful place felt like home. It reached out to me and wanted to take me in its shrivelled arms. This, I realised, was where I was meant to end up. Carly was the woman most suited to me and, like a dog, I had followed my nose home.

  I was sick over my feet, into the base of the shower, the smell harsh and acrid. I chased it down the plughole with my feet, knowing it was going to block the drains. Surely I had worked too hard for this to be where I ended up.

  When I came out of the bathroom Carly was in the lounge, wearing a tracksuit, her hair scraped into a ponytail and her face scrubbed clean of make-up. I went to fetch my clothes from the floor and she flinched as I passed. She watched me with her arms folded across her chest as I stepped into my crumpled suit, now soaked in the stench of the flat.

  When I had finished dressing I forced myself to look at her and was at once so disgusted I thought about holding one of the couch pillows over her face and hiding her body in the wardrobe. I couldn’t imagine anyone missing her.

  ‘You should go,’ she said.

  Her words surprised me but they were also a relief as I had imagined some dreadful scene in which she thought what we had done the night before meant something. A muscle twitched in the corner of her mouth and I felt the need to make things clear before I left.

  ‘Last night was a terrible mistake,’ I said. ‘I have a girlfriend in England whom I love very much.’

  She snorted. ‘You’re telling me it was a mistake.’

  It felt as if the terrible flat had swallowed all meaning. ‘I don’t want you to try and contact her or anything.’

  ‘For God’s sake. Don’t worry, your mystical girlfriend won’t be hearing from me.’ She motioned to the door. ‘Please, just go.’

  I let myself out, hearing her rasp the lock into place behind me as I shut the door. When I reached the street I saw it had snowed overnight and I wasn’t wearing the right shoes, which seemed like an insurmountable problem. I started crying with my first step, the tears quickly becoming sobs, so that soon passersby were avoiding me as I lurched down the street.

  In the days it took for the lump on my head to disappear I felt the need to prove myself at work, so found myself staying late. On Tuesday I didn’t leave until 10 p.m. The night was warm, and there were people all over the streets, spilling out of pubs and restaurants, their arms wrapped around each other. And all at once I missed V with a sharp, stabbing pain, as if someone had stuck a knife between my ribs. I wanted to go to her house and knock on the door and tell her I didn’t want to play any more. I wanted to cut to the end of the Crave, to the part where we’re together in bed and laughing at the rest of the world. I wanted to fall at her feet and tell her I understood, that I deserved my punishment, but it was enough now, I would never do anything remotely like that again, I would never even leave her side.

  I found myself walking towards Kensington, a journey my iPhone told me was 4.8 miles and would take me eighty-nine minutes. It wasn’t a ludicrous distance. It was almost on the way home. I hummed through Oasis’s Definitely Maybe as I walked, filling my head with the noise. It only took me seventy-three minutes to get to Elizabeth Road, but I am a fast walker. Number 24 was about halfway down and as grand and imposing as I had feared, with newly refreshed paintwork and gleaming black and white tiles on the pathway and up the steps. A large black lantern hung in the porch, switched on and shining brightly out of the spotless glass.

  Angus, I realised, must be extremely rich, far richer than me, a thought which made me want to sit down in the street. I crossed the road to a darker corner in case anyone looked out of the window, and fished out my phone. Zoopla told me the house had been bought five years before for £3.2 million; its estimated worth was now £8.1 million.

  Lights were on in the front room, although the white shutters were closed, so there was nothing to see. I had the very strong sense that V was in there, moving around in the rooms beyond, perhaps even thinking of me. Maybe she was unhappy; maybe she too was regretting starting this game. It was entirely possible that her unhappiness had drawn me here because our connection was so strong. It seemed absurd that I could simply cross the road and knock on the door and she would be revealed to me. I hesitated on the kerb, my feet half on, half off, rocking with the thought. But the likelihood was that Angus would be home, and although his part in the Crave wasn’t entirely clear to me yet, I didn’t think it involved a doorstep argument. V had other plans for him, of that I felt sure.

  A light flicked on in an upstairs room and I saw a figure pull some heavy curtains across the window. My heart jumped into my mouth and my hand reached uselessly upwards, as if to wave. Even though I’d only got a shadowy glimpse of the person, I knew it was V. ‘I’m here, my darling,’ I whis
pered into the night. ‘I’m coming to save you.’ She had felt me; I knew that then. She might not have known for certain I was standing on the street outside her door, but something had pulled her upstairs and to the window. Something had compelled her to give me that sign.

  I don’t remember getting home that night or how I broke the wine glasses. I went into the kitchen after my run the next morning to get a glass of water and there was a pile of glass in the corner by the bifold doors. I turned and there were three glasses missing from my open shelves. I reached out for one and realised if I had turned and thrown it immediately it would have landed right where the pile of glass now was. There was something familiar in the movement and there was a certain pleasure to be found in imagining myself being so reckless. But the actual memory was absent.

  ‘I know, I know, sorry, V,’ I said as I got the dustpan and brush from under the sink. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll hoover afterwards. I don’t want you getting any glass in your feet.’

  After that I showered, shutting my eyes against the water, but still I couldn’t shake an uncomfortable feeling of dislocation. I towelled my body and felt a bit better because my muscles reminded me that I am strong and in control. But the house still felt so empty when I came out on to the landing, dressed for the day. I knew I only had to walk down the stairs, put on my coat, pick up my phone and briefcase and leave, but still it felt scary. As if my only actions could be ones I knew by heart. Actions I would repeat again and again and again, meaninglessly. My mind jumped forward to the winter and I saw myself doing all these same tasks in the dark. Without V anchoring me, I realised suddenly, it didn’t matter how strong I was, I was still very capable of floating clean away.

  ‘See you later,’ I shouted as I shut the door behind me, which made me feel somewhat better. An image followed me all the way to work of V asleep in our huge bed, with the linen sheets she liked and the mohair rug on the end. I had even invested in those pointless pillows which you see on beds in magazines that I simply threw on to the floor every night and replaced every morning. But V had had them on our bed in our flat and she always seemed to judge hotels by the number of extra pillows they provided.