It was a large, light room with two windows that looked down on to the street and on either side of the grubby old fireplace were built-in cupboards, modern and out of place.
‘Lots of storage.’ Larry plonked Sue-Ann on the floor and swung the cupboard doors open.
‘Is this really ours?’ It still hadn’t sunk in.
‘Yes, Dee. All ours.’ He came over and wrapped his strong arms around me. ‘It’s going to be a new start for us, Dee.’
‘How did you afford it?’ My head was a mass of questions.
‘Ma’s money and the help of a mortgage. The repayments are a bit more than the rent we’ve been paying but we’ll manage.’
I didn’t care if we had to starve in order to be able to afford it. It was exactly what I’d always wanted. A house to call my own.
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Believe it.’ He bent his face down and kissed me properly for the first time in ages. With my free arm I held on to his buttock and pulled him closer to me.
‘I want to fuck you,’ he whispered.
Taking a step away from him I pulled Sue-Ann out of the room with my spare hand and took both children into one of the other bedrooms. Leaving them both on the floor I pulled the door shut. They would be safe in there for a few minutes.
Returning to our bedroom I unzipped Larry’s jeans and got down on my knees.
June 27th 1986
When I saw her floating by I knew I had to have her. She was so wholesome, so pure. She smelt like vanilla. I got close enough to touch her but didn’t. I would wait. My time would come.
And then it did. I followed her for a few days. She was more complicated than the others. She didn’t really have a routine. That made it hard. I kept close and had to bide my time. It would have to be a spur of the moment thing. I prefer plans but needs must.
She was young. But she had a look about her. Like she knew she was fuckable. She carried it with her everywhere she went, temping men to look, but not to touch. She brought it on herself. I was going to enjoy this one. I would take my time with her.
June 30th 1986
We had moved into number 11 Alpha Terrace a week earlier. Larry negotiated with the landlord so that we could end our tenancy early. He was so clever like that. I could always count on him to sort out any problem.
I felt like a new woman. I’d been to the hairdressers and started to take more pride in my appearance again. As a result, our sex life returned to what it once was. We couldn’t get enough of each other.
The move was fairly easy. Larry hired a van and we did most of it ourselves. We didn’t have that many belonging since most of the furniture belonged to the landlord of Gunhild Way. Eric showed up and helped for a very short while, bringing with him a second-hand double mattress for Larry and me and a sofa, which looked like it had fallen off the back of a lorry. It was a start and better than nothing.
That Thursday morning, as I went to retrieve the milk delivered by the milkman, I opened the door and saw the postman on the other side of the street carrying his bag of letters. He smiled and crossed the road to talk to me. I was still in my dressing gown, my hair hadn’t been brushed yet and I felt self-conscious.
‘Morning Mrs Miller.’ I was taken aback by his knowing my name.
He handed me some junk mail and smiled. He had a round friendly face and nice blue eyes. He was considerably older than me, probably in his forties. Although at times I felt like an old woman, I was still only twenty years old. I’m sure that anyone who laid eyes me would have been very surprised to discover that.
‘Heard the latest?’ He shuffled a pile of mail in his large hands.
‘Latest?’
‘Yep. ’Nother body found in the river. Awful, just awful.’
I hadn’t thought about the murderer, nicknamed The Eye-Sight Killer by the national press, for a while. I didn’t follow the news and didn’t go out much so it had passed me by. I’d grown sick and tired of listening to people speculate.
‘Poor girl. Only seventeen. Hope they find the animal and string ’im up. Vote to bring back the death penalty if I could.’
‘How many now?’
‘How many what?’
‘Victims. How many victims?’
‘Fourth. He slowed down for a bit and some people though he’d stopped. I knew there’d be more. Evil don’t stay buried for long. Has a habit of rearin’ it’s head when you least expect it.’ I could see how much he was enjoying imparting his words of wisdom but I wasn’t impressed. I couldn’t understand why average people were so fascinated by killers.
‘Well, have a nice day.’ I bent down to pick up the two bottles of milk on the doorstep and smiled before closing the front door on him. He would have been better off talking to Trisha about it. She shared his morbid interest.
I missed her company and decided I would call her that evening. It would be good to see her and have a catch-up, even if that only meant listening to her gossip about the other people at work or friends of hers who I’d never met. I’d not seen her for over six months but we’d spoken on the phone a few times.
Back in the kitchen I returned to feeding Sue-Ann her breakfast. While I’d been out of the room she had smeared a boiled egg all over the tray of her highchair. Yoke dripped on to the floor as she banged her beaker loudly on the surface, hammering a piece of toast into the wood and sending drops of milk flying through the air.
Robbie had been awake a lot of night but was thankfully asleep upstairs in his cot. Dealing with one of them was bad enough. Ignoring the shrieks of laughter, I left the kitchen and went to fetch the mop and bucket that lived on the stairs leading down to the basement.
Feeling about in the darkness I searched for the light switch with my fingers. The exposed brick wall was rough. After finding the switch the stairway flooded with light. Old dusty cobwebs hung from the underside of the stairs up to the first floor. Reaching for the mop I looked down into the cellar. I didn’t like the dark and hated spiders, so never ventured down there.
That night, after I’d cooked dinner, I went and sat in the lounge and dialled Trisha’s number.
She lived in a shared house off Newmarket Road, to the east of the city. Her housemates were a motley crew of strangers who’d all ended up living together by chance. She was a local girl, born and bred. Trisha moved out of her parent’s house in Waterbeach, a large village outside of Cambridge, when she was eighteen and had never looked back. I’d always envied her confidence. Although she was scatty she knew what she wanted and how to get it. She was nobody’s fool.
‘’Ello.’ A male voice answered.
‘Hi. Is Trisha there?’
‘Dunno. Hang on a sec.’ Moments later I heard faint footsteps echo down the line.
‘Hello?’
‘Trisha! Hi. It’s Debs.’
‘Debs, hi. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Well actually. You?’
‘Can’t complain. Stuart is still the bastard dictator of Woolworths but I know how to handle him.’
I didn’t doubt it.
‘Any news?’
‘We moved house. In fact, we bought a house.’
‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t know this!’ She was so over the top. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? When did this happen? Where are you living? Have you left Cambridge?’
‘No. We haven’t left Cambridge. I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. We’re living in a house in Trumpington. It’s got three bedrooms and a decent garden. We only moved in a week ago. It all happened really quickly.’
‘You’re such a grown up,’ she mocked. ‘I’m still stuck here sharing with Alan the junkie and Donna the tart.’ I had to give it to her; Trisha had a way with words. I could picture her large mouth flapping as she spoke.
‘It would be really nice if you came over. I’d like to show you the place.’
Since neither Dad or Dawn had bothered to visit I wanted to be able to
show off my house to someone, even if it wasn’t properly furnished yet.
‘Sure. I’m around on Sunday afternoon. Does that work?’
‘Sunday isn’t ideal.’ I didn’t want to admit to her that I’d rather see her when Larry wasn’t going to be around. ‘Saturday afternoon would be better.’ There was every chance Larry would be fishing somewhere. It was a hobby he’d recently taken up although I had no idea where he fished, or who with. Come to think of it I’d never seen his fishing pole.
‘Sure. Saturday works for me.’ Trisha chirped down the phone. ‘Give me an opportunity to see those lovely kiddies. How are the little angels?’ I presumed she was talking about Robbie and Sue-Ann.
‘They are fine.’
‘How old are they now?’
‘Sue-Ann is eighteen months and Robbie is five months.’
‘Wow. How time passes.’
‘Right, well,’ I didn’t fancy a long discussion about the kids. I’d called her because I was craving adult company. Larry was due back late. He’d spent the day with Mr Rook at an optometry conference in London. As usual I was alone. Even though we were closer again I still felt isolated and dreamed of going back to work. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday.’ Then I told Trisha the address and we said our goodbyes.
Putting the cream handset back down I sat back in the tatty armchair and listened to the silence. For once both the children were quiet. The chair smelt of mothballs. Larry had spotted it discarded on a street somewhere nearby. It belonged in the dump but we were short for cash and beggars can’t be choosers.
Enjoying the peace, I leant back and closed my eyes. The stink coming from the chair interrupted what should have been a tranquil moment, so I got up and moved over on to the stolen sofa.
Talking to Trisha had got me thinking. Why couldn’t I go back to work? At least part time. We needed the money and I needed something other than dirty nappies in my life. I decided I would talk to Trisha about it when I saw her at the weekend. Stuart had never been my number one fan but there were other people he hated more and, besides, I knew Trisha would put in a good word for me. She could be very persuasive. It occurred to me that I’d started to feel down after I’d left work. Being stuck at home with two small demanding children was hard work. Especially since Larry worked such long hours and I didn’t have any family around me for support. Things would have been very different if my mum had been alive. She would have made a lovely nana.
I got up and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. Our old kettle was filled with limescale and little flakes of it always ended up floating in the mugs. I cursed being broke. I’d been so happy when I knew we had the house but quickly the happiness disappeared when the reality of our finances became apparent.
Standing sipping a cup of gritty tea I decided it was about time I took control of my own life again and going back to work at Woolworths was a good place to start. Larry couldn’t keep up with the mortgage alone. We needed to share the burden. I tried not to think about what we could do with the kids if I was out. Surely we’d find a way around it. Larry was full of bright ideas and always had an answer for everything.
July 6th 1986
On Sunday morning, despite yet another disrupted night with Robbie and Sue-Ann, who seemed to take it in turns waking me up, I sat in the kitchen smiling to myself. I’d had a lovely afternoon with Trisha. She could talk the hind legs off a donkey but she had a way of picking you up and carrying you along with her. Her bubbly personality was infectious and I would have defied anyone not to succumb to her charms. In that way she was a bit like Larry. People liked her, even if they didn’t want to.
We’d sat for hours in the garden enjoying the warm summer weather while she wittered on about her latest fella.
By the end of the afternoon I could have told you his inside leg measurement. I learnt more than I ever wanted to know about Andrew, an estate agent she’d met in a bar one night. She told me he drove a flash car, a Mercedes no less, and that had sealed the deal for her. I was shocked when she said she slept with him only hours after their first meeting. But she explained she got carried away when he offered her a lift home in his soft-top. They did it in the back seat. Any girl would have done the same, she said.
I was taken aback by how prudish I felt talking about sex with her. Larry and I had done some wild stuff in private and he’d taught me everything I knew. My eyes were well and truly open, but that was something private. Something we kept behind closed doors. It shouldn’t be discussed over tea alongside celeb gossip.
Larry was upstairs in our room still snoring in bed. He must have come home after I’d gone to bed. I didn’t remember saying hello or goodnight to him. Whenever I woke up I couldn’t get out of our bedroom quick enough. It was so sparse. Against the wall facing the windows that looked out over the street below we laid the mattress on the floor. Our clothes and other random belongings were stuffed into the built in cupboards. Cardboard boxes, still not unpacked, were piled high against the wall on the left. I had no idea what was in them and didn’t care. Everything we needed, we had. It was basic but the set up worked and I wondered if it was worth filling the house with expensive furniture just because that was the status quo.
Even so, I wanted to go back to work. I missed the company. Woolworths had not been the most exciting environment to spend time in, but it beat staying at home and waiting for one of the children to demand something.
Years later it was clear I had been suffering from post-natal depression but back then it wasn’t talked about so openly. Nothing was.
Larry suddenly appeared in the doorway, wearing his boxer shorts and nothing else. In one of his tanned muscular arms he held Sue-Ann who was wiping the sleep out of her eyes. He looked like a pin-up and I had to catch my breath. How did I get that lucky? He yawned and stretched with his free arm, the muscles in his hair-scattered chest flexing. His arms were a deep brown colour and stood out next to the pale white of his torso.
‘Morning.’ He wandered over to the fridge and opened the door. I got up, went over and kissed his bare back while he hunted for something to eat. ‘Here, take this will you?’ Larry passed me the baby.
‘How about some eggs?’ I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to look less dishevelled.
‘Why not.’ He pushed the fridge door closed and sat down in the only other chair we had around our melamine table. Nothing matched, and for a moment that seemed to poignantly reflect our relationship. ‘Did you have any luck yesterday?’ I was referring to the fishing expedition.
‘Some you win.’ He scratched at the five o’clock shadow around his chin. For as long as I had known him, Larry had always been clean-shaven. I stood by the stove for a moment looking at the man I’d married, the father of my children and wondered when he’d changed. I still loved him but things felt different.
‘The eggs?’ The frustration in his tone interrupted my train of thought and I went back to whisking.
‘Did you hear that there was another body found in the river?’ We’d been silent for too long and I was desperate to break the tension.
‘Really.’ He chewed his toast and feigned interest.
‘A few days ago, some poor girl was found. The postman told me.’
‘The postman?’ Suddenly Larry’s interest was aroused.
‘Oh yes, you know,’ I tripped over my words, ‘I bumped into him on the doorstep.’
‘I see.’ Larry sat glaring at me. ‘When was this?’
‘I told you, a few days ago,’ I watched Sue-Ann scrabble about on the floor near his feet. My heart was in my mouth but I didn’t know why.
She stood up using the table leg as a prop and made a grab for her father’s thigh. I watched in slow motion as her filthy hand gripped his fine leg hair and pulled.
Without thinking Larry turned and slapped her hard across her cheek with the back of his hand. For a moment she was too shocked to cry. Then the tears came. Accompanied by a scream.
‘Get her out of here.’ He growled, watching the tears stream down her face, unmoved.
Adrenaline rushed through my veins and without thinking I did what I was told. I picked Sue-Ann up roughly and carried her upstairs. Not thinking, I put her down in the same cot Robbie was sleeping in and returned downstairs.
Larry was still sitting at the kitchen table. The fruit bowl was now in a pile on the floor. I bent down avoiding his eyes and started to collect the shattered pieces of crockery.
‘Sit the fuck down.’
I’d cut my finger on a serrated edge of china but did what I was told. The warm red blood dripped on to the floor, creating a trail. It made me think of Hansel and Gretel.
‘I love you Dee,’ his voice was deep and serious, ’but if you ever speak to another man again without my permission I will put my hands around your throat and squeeze until the last breath has left your worthless body.’
My hands were shaking uncontrollably.
‘Do you understand me?’ It seemed as if the windowpane shook. His anger was tangible.
‘Yes, my lord.’ I looked up, meeting his dark stare and couldn’t keep the smile from my face.
Larry stood up, the chair he had been sitting on slid backwards screeching against the tiles, and his large frame dominated the room. Stepping forward he grabbed me violently by the wrist and pulled me out of my chair.
‘Upstairs. Now.’ He whispered in my ear before biting down on my neck.
Twenty minutes later we were lying upstairs on the mattress, spent. His chest rose and fell with each exaggerated breath. His penis lay flaccid and moist.
‘I’m going to go back to Woolworths.’ I turned on to my stomach, cushioned by the rolls of fat and let the air dance around my bare bottom. ‘I want to help bring some money in. You have too much on your shoulders. It’s not right.’
The Optician’s Wife: a compelling new psychological thriller Page 9