Killing Me Softly

by Nicci French

  He frowned. ‘I want you to.’

  We came out of the shop with two bags full of clothes that had cost more than my monthly pay packet. I was wearing the black trousers with a cream satin shirt. I thought of Jake saving up to buy me my coat and how his face had looked so eager and proud when he had handed it to me.

  ‘I feel like a kept woman.’

  ‘Listen.’ He stopped in the middle of the pavement and people flowed past us. ‘I want to keep you for ever.’

  He had this knack for making flippant remarks turn deadly serious. I blushed and laughed but he stared at me, scowled almost.

  ‘Can I take you out for dinner?’ I asked. ‘I want you to tell me about your life.’

  ∗

  First, though, I had to collect some things from the flat. I had left my address book there, my diary, all my work things. Until I had got them, I would feel I was half there still. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I rang Jake at work, but he wasn’t there; they said he was ill. I rang the flat and he answered on the first ring.

  ‘Jake, it’s Alice,’ I said foolishly.

  ‘I recognized your voice,’ he replied drily.

  ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry but I need to come round and collect a few things.’

  ‘I’ll be at work during the daytime tomorrow. Do it then.’

  ‘I haven’t got my keys any more.’

  I could hear him breathing on the other end. ‘You really burnt your bridges, didn’t you, Alice?’

  We arranged that I should call in at six thirty. There was another pause. Then we both said goodbye, politely, and I put the phone down.

  It’s amazing how you don’t really need to work at work, what you can get away with when you don’t care. I wish I’d discovered that before now. Nobody seemed to have noticed how late I had arrived that morning or how long I took for lunch. I went to another meeting in the afternoon, where once again I said very little and was congratulated afterwards by Mike for being so incisive. ‘You appear very in control of things at the moment, Alice,’ he said nervously. Giovanna had said almost the same thing in an e-mail earlier in the day. I shuffled paper round my desk, slid most of it into the bin, and told Claudia not to put calls through. At just after five thirty I went into the ladies’ and brushed my hair, washed my face, put lipstick on my sore lips and buttoned my coat up firmly so that no trace of my new, glossy clothes could be seen. Then I took my old familiar route back to the flat.

  I was early, and I walked around for a bit. I didn’t want to take Jake by surprise, before he was prepared for me, and I certainly didn’t want to meet him on the street. I tried to think what I should say to him. The act of breaking off from him had immediately turned him into a stranger, someone more precious and vulnerable than the ironic, modest Jake I had lived with. At a few minutes past six thirty, I went to the door and pressed the buzzer. I heard feet running down the stairs, saw a shape approaching through the frosted glass.

  ‘Hello, Alice.’

  It was Pauline.

  ‘Pauline.’ I didn’t know what to say to her. My best friend; the one I would have turned to in any other circumstance. She stood in the doorway. Her dark hair was tied up in a stern knot. She looked tired: there were faint smudges under her eyes. She wasn’t smiling. I realized that I was seeing her as if we had been apart from each other for months, not just a couple of days.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  She stood aside and I walked past her, up the stairs. My rich clothes whispered against my skin, under Jake’s coat. Everything looked the same in the flat, of course it did. My jackets and scarves still hung on the hooks in the hall. A photograph of Jake and me, arm in arm and grinning widely, still stood on the mantelpiece. My red moccasin slippers lay on the living-room floor, near the sofa where we’d sat on Sunday. The daffodils I had bought at the end of last week still stood in the vase, though a little droopy. There was a cup on the table half full of tea,and I was sure it was the same cup I’d been drinking from two days ago. I felt bewildered and sat down heavily on the sofa. Pauline stayed standing, looking down at me. She hadn’t said a word.

  ‘Pauline,’ I croaked. ‘I know that what I’ve done is awful, but I had to.’

  ‘Do you want me to forgive you, then?’ she asked. Her voice was withering.

  ‘No.’ That was a lie, of course I did. ‘No, but you are my closest friend. I thought, well, I’m not cold or heartless. There’s nothing I can say in my defence, except that I just fell in love. Surely you can understand that.’

  I saw her wince. Of course she could understand that. Eighteen months ago she’d been left, too, because he had just fallen in love. She sat down at the other end of the sofa, as far away from me as possible.

  ‘The thing is this, Alice,’ she began, and I was struck by how we were even talking to each other differently now, more formally and pedantically. ‘If I allowed myself to, of course I could understand. After all, you weren’t married, you didn’t have children. But I don’t want to understand, you see. Not at the moment. He’s my big brother and he’s been badly hurt.’ Her voice wavered and, for a few seconds, she sounded like the Pauline I knew. ‘Honestly, Alice, if you could see him now, if you could see how wrecked he is, then you wouldn’t…’ But she stopped herself. ‘Maybe some day we can be friends again, but I’d feel like I was betraying him or something if I listened to your side of the story and tried to imagine how you must be feeling.’ She stood up. ‘I don’t want to be fair to you, you see. Actually, I want to hate you.’

  I nodded and stood up too. I did see, of course I did. ‘I’ll get some clothes, then.’

  She nodded and went into the kitchen. I could hear her filling the kettle.

  In the bedroom, everything was as it always had been. I took my suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and placed it open on the floor. By my side of the neatly-made double bed was the book I had been in the middle of reading about the history of clocks. By Jake’s side, was the climbing book. I took them both and put them in the case. I opened the cupboard doors and started to slip clothes off hangers. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t fold them properly. I didn’t take many, anyway: I couldn’t imagine wearing clothes I had worn before; I couldn’t believe that they would still fit me.

  I stared into the wardrobe, where my things hung among Jake’s: my dresses next to his only good suit, my skirts and tops among his work shirts that were ironed and neatly buttoned on to their hangers. A couple of his shirts had frayed cuffs. Tears pricked my eyes and I blinked them away furiously. What was I going to need? I tried to picture my new life with Adam and found that I couldn’t. I could only imagine bed with him. I packed a couple of jerseys, some jeans and T-shirts, two workaday suits, and all my underwear. I took my favourite sleeveless dress and two pairs of shoes and abandoned all the rest – there was so much of it, all those shopping sprees with Pauline, all those greedy, delighted purchases.

  I shovelled all my creams, lotions and makeup into the case but hesitated over my jewellery. Jake had given me quite a lot of it: several pairs of earrings, a lovely pendant, a wide copper bracelet. I didn’t know if it would be more hurtful to take them or not. I pictured him, this evening, coming into the room and finding out what I had removed, and what I had left behind, and trying to read my feelings from such insubstantial clues. I took the earrings my grandmother had left me when she died, and the things I had had before Jake. Then I changed my mind, and took everything out of the little drawer and chucked it in the case.

  There was a pile of washing in the corner, and I fished out a couple of things from it. I drew the line at leaving my dirty underwear lying around. I remembered my briefcase, under the chair by the window, and my address book and diary. I remembered my passport, birth certificate, driving licence, insurance policies and savings book, which were in a folder along with all of Jake’s personal documents. I decided against taking the
picture on the wall above the bed, although my father had given it to me years before I had started going out with Jake. I wasn’t going to take any of the books or the music. And I wasn’t going to argue over the car, for which I had put down the deposit six months previously, while Jake still paid the standing orders.

  Pauline was sitting on the sofa in the living room, drinking a cup of tea. She watched as I picked up three letters from the table that were addressed to me and slipped them into my briefcase. I’d done. I had one suitcase full of clothes, and a plastic bag full of bits and pieces.

  ‘Is that all? You’re travelling light, aren’t you?’

  I shrugged hopelessly. ‘I know I’ll have to sort it properly soon. Not yet.’

  ‘So it’s not just a fling?’

  I looked at her. Brown eyes like Jake’s. ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘And Jake shouldn’t go on hoping you’ll come back to him. Waiting in every day in case you turn up?’

  ‘No.’

  I needed to get out of there so that I could howl. I went to the door, picking up a scarf from the hook as I did so. It was cold and dark outside.

  ‘Pauline, can you tell Jake that I’ll do this…’ I made a wide, vague gesture round the room, at all our shared things ‘… however he wants.’

  She looked at me but didn’t reply.

  ‘Goodbye, then,’ I said.

  We stared at each other. I saw that she, too, wanted me to go so she could cry.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I must look dreadful.’

  ‘No.’ He wiped my eyes and my snotty nose with a corner of his shirt.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s so painful.’

  ‘The best things are born out of pain. Of course it is painful.’

  At any other time, I would have hooted at that. I don’t believe pain is necessary or ennobling. But I was too far gone. Another sob rose in my chest. ‘And I’m so scared, Adam.’ He didn’t say anything. ‘I’ve given up everything for you. Oh, God.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you have.’

  We walked to a simple restaurant round the corner. I had to lean against him, as if I would fall over if I was unsupported. We sat in a dark corner and drank a glass of champagne each, which went straight to my head. He put his hand on my thigh under the table and I stared at the menu, trying to focus. We ate salmon fillets with wild mushrooms and green salad, and had a bottle of cold greeny-white wine. I didn’t know if I was elated or in despair. Everything seemed too much. Every look he gave me was like a touch, every sip of wine rushed round my blood. My hands shook when I tried to cut up the food. When he touched me under the table I felt as if my body would crumble into soft fragments.

  ‘Has it ever been like this for you?’ I asked, and he shook his head.

  I asked him who there was before me and he stared at me for a moment. ‘It’s hard to talk about.’ I waited. If I had left my whole world for him, he was going to have to tell me at least about his previous girlfriend. ‘She died,’ he said then.

  ‘Oh.’ I was shocked and also dismayed. How could I compete with a dead woman?

  ‘Up on the mountain,’ he continued, staring into his glass.

  ‘You mean, on that mountain?’

  ‘Chungawat. Yes.’

  He drank some more wine and signalled to the waiter. ‘Can we have two whiskies, please?’

  They arrived and we downed them. I took his hand across the table. ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘Not like this,’ he said. I put his hand against my face. How was it possible to be so jealous of someone who had died before he ever set eyes on me?

  ‘Have there been a lot of other women?’

  ‘When I’m with you, I know there’s been no one,’ he replied, which meant, of course, that there had been lots.

  ‘Why me?’

  Adam looked lost in thought. ‘How could it not be you?’ he asked at last.

  Ten

  Unexpectedly I had a spare few minutes before a meeting, so I dared myself and rang Sylvie. She is a solicitor and I had generally found it difficult to be put through to her in the past. It was usually a matter of her calling back hours later, or the following morning.

  This time she was on the line within seconds. ‘Alice, is that you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said limply.

  ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘I’d like that. But are you sure?’

  ‘Are you doing anything today? After work?’

  I thought. Suddenly things seemed complicated. ‘I’m meeting… er, somebody in town.’

  ‘Where? When?’

  ‘It sounds stupid. It’s at a book shop in Covent Garden. At half past six.’

  ‘We could meet before.’

  Sylvie was insistent. We could both leave early and meet at a quarter to six at a coffee shop she knew off St Martin’s Lane. It was awkward. I had to rearrange a conference call that had been scheduled, but I arrived at twenty to six, breathless and nervous, and Sylvie was already there at a table in the corner, nursing a cup of coffee and a cigarette. When I approached she stood up and hugged me. ‘I’m glad you called me,’ she said.

  We sat down together. I ordered a coffee. ‘I’m glad you’re glad,’ I said. ‘I feel I’ve let people down.’

  Sylvie looked at me. ‘Why?’

  This was unexpected, and I didn’t feel prepared for it. I had come in order to be given a hard time, to be made to feel guilty.

  ‘There’s Jake.’

  Sylvie lit another cigarette and gave a half-smile. ‘Yes, there is Jake.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Thin. Smoking again. Sometimes completely quiet, and sometimes talking so much about you that no one else can get a word in edgeways. Weepy. Is that what you want to hear? But he will recover. People do. He won’t be wretched for the rest of his life. Not many people die of heartbreak.’

  I took a sip of the coffee. It was still too hot. It made me cough. ‘I hope so. I’m sorry, Sylvie, I feel as if I’ve just come back from abroad and I’m out of touch with what’s going on.’

  There was a silence that obviously embarrassed both of us.

  ‘How’s Clive?’ I blurted desperately. ‘And what-sername?’

  ‘Gail,’ said Sylvie. ‘He’s in love again. And she’s good fun.’

  Another silence. Sylvie fixed me with a pensive expression. ‘What’s he like?’ she said.

  I felt myself going red and oddly tongue-tied. I realized with an ache of something I didn’t quite understand that it – Adam and me – had been a hidden activity and none of it had ever been put into words for the benefit of others.

  We’d never arrived at a party together. There was nobody who saw us as a couple. Now there was Sylvie, curious for herself, but also, I suspected, a delegation despatched from the Crew to forage for information she could bring back for them to pick at. I had an impulse to keep it secret for a while longer. I wanted to retreat back to a room once more, just the two of us. I didn’t want to be possessed and gossiped and speculated about by other people. Even the thought of Adam and his body sent ripples through me. I suddenly dreaded the idea of routine, of being Adam and Alice who lived somewhere and owned possessions in common and went to things together. And I wanted it as well.

  ‘God,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to say. He’s called Adam and… well, he’s completely different from anybody I’ve ever met before.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sylvie. ‘It’s wonderful at the beginning, isn’t it?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s not like that. Look, all my life everything has gone more or less to plan. I was quite clever at school, quite well liked, never bullied or anything like that. I got on all right with my parents, not brilliantly but… well, you know all that. And I had nice boyfriends, and sometimes I left them and sometimes they left me, and I went to college and got a job and met Jake and moved in and… What was I doing all those years?’


  Sylvie’s well-shaped eyebrows shot up. For a moment she looked angry. ‘Living your life, just like the rest of us.’

  ‘Or was I just skating along, not touching anything, really, not letting myself be touched? You don’t need to answer that. I was thinking aloud.’

  We sipped our cooling coffee.

  ‘What does he do?’ Sylvie asked.

  ‘He doesn’t really have a job in the way that we all do. He does odds and ends to raise money. But what he really does is, he’s a mountaineer.’

  Sylvie looked authentically and satisfyingly startled. ‘Really? You mean, climbing mountains?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. Where did you meet? Not on a mountain.’

  ‘We just met,’ I said vaguely. ‘Just bumped into each other.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A few weeks ago.’

  ‘And you’ve been in bed ever since.’ I didn’t reply. ‘You’re already moving in with him?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  Sylvie puffed at her cigarette. ‘So it’s the real thing.’

  ‘It’s something. I’ve been knocked sideways by it.’

  Sylvie leaned forward with a roguish expression. ‘You should be careful. It’s always like this at the beginning. He’s all over you, obsessed with you. They want to fuck you all the time, come in your face, that sort of thing –’

  ‘Sylvie!’ I said in horror. ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘Well, they do,’ she said pertly, relieved to be back on familiar territory, reckless Sylvie talking dirty. ‘Or at least metaphorically. You should just be careful, that’s all. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. Enjoy. Do it all, go wild, as long as it isn’t actually a physical risk.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She looked prim all of a sudden. ‘You know.’