The Exes' Revenge

by Jo Jakeman

  Naomi pulled at the back of my top and I glanced over my shoulder at her.

  “I don’t want to do this,” she said.

  Neither did I.

  Phillip had been in my house all evening. Hearing every word, watching every movement. His presence was everywhere—in corners, behind doors—and I didn’t know how I’d missed it.

  Always one step ahead.

  I put my finger on the kitchen light switch, nervous about switching it on, too many movies making me think the whole house would explode because of the gas. But I needed to see what lurked in the corners.

  The light grew above me and showed the kitchen as it had always been. Cluttered with paintings and notes from school and shopping bags that needed recycling and wilting pots of herbs on the windowsill. But the wall. The wall was covered.

  Thick black letters gone over again and again and again. The boldest words were at eye level, the rest written thinly at full stretch. In red, the word “DIE” was the bull’s-eye that everything else radiated from. I reeled in shock. I could understand that he wanted to hurt me, but why would he want me to die? There was still a piece of the puzzle missing. His behavior and violence had escalated to a point that didn’t correspond with what I’d done. This was Phillip, a law-bending, controlling, narcissistic man, but not a killer.

  Footsteps overhead. A door opened. Closed. A steady, even-paced stride trying not to make a noise but hitting every creaking floorboard. Naomi and I looked at each other; then she looked wildly around the room for a weapon. She settled on a bread knife and nodded to me.

  The steps were quieter on the stairs. A dry hand on the banister brushing skin against chipped paint. They took three steps and then stopped. We listened and they listened. The steps began again. Sounds were amplified, came to me on the back of the hiss of air in my ears. They were getting closer. Bare feet landed on the floor tiles at the base of the stairs and slap-slapped cautiously, slowly toward us.

  Naomi was at my shoulder. I could feel her shaking behind me, the air around her reverberating. I held the knife outstretched and took long sideways steps so that I was out of view of the hallway. Naomi stepped with me.

  I held the knife tightly, imagining Phillip’s face. Would I stab him? Would I hold a knife against his jugular and get him back into the cellar? Would he attack me first? And if I killed him in self-defense, would anyone blame me?

  I waited. I was neither hot nor cold, could feel no pain, no sensations other than a pulsing of adrenaline through my body giving me energy to attack.

  A hand snaked around the doorframe—I adjusted my grip on the knife—followed cautiously by a head of gray-brown curls.

  “Shit, Ruby! You scared us!” hissed Naomi.

  Ruby reared back and recovered herself, speaking in the same hushed voice as Naomi had.

  “What are you doing? I woke up and you were gone.”

  I sank into myself. The tension that had been holding me up suddenly drained, and I lowered the knife.

  Ruby stepped warily away from me, her eyes on the knife.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Do you expect me to believe that you don’t know?” I turned from her in disgust.

  Her face was worried, but I didn’t know it well enough to know whether it was genuine. She couldn’t take her eyes off the blade in my hand, and I placed it on the table to let her know it wasn’t intended for her.

  “Can I smell gas?” she asked.

  “Gas burners were on,” said Naomi. “Who did it? Were it you or him?”

  “What do you—”

  “It can’t have been her,” I said. “It had only just been switched on and she hasn’t left the bedroom all night.”

  The black letters caught Ruby’s eye and she stepped closer to look at the wall.

  “What’s this?” Her finger reached out to touch the writing as if to check whether it was real. She traced the word “DIE” with her index finger. “Why would Pip . . . ?”

  I kept my voice low as I spoke, not knowing if Phillip could hear us. “We know he’s here and we know you’ve been helping him. Tell us what you know.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense,” she said, without taking her eyes off the wall. “He said he only wanted to . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “What, Ruby? What?” I whispered. “Ruby, have you seen Phillip since we got out of the cellar?”

  She shook her head vigorously but didn’t meet my eye.

  “No, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “There was a phone pushed through the letter box. It rang and Pip’s name flashed up. I gave him a right earful, told him to turn himself in to the police if he knew what was good for him. He was sorry, so sorry. He was crying on the phone and asking me to help him. He said he’d never ask for anything from me again. He said you’d been trying to keep him from his son. He said there were other things too, the amount of stress he was under—there was something going on at work and he said he snapped. He couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I was to persuade you not to press charges. He knew he’d done wrong and said he had nothing to live for anymore. I was worried he might hurt himself if he thought I’d turned against him too.

  “He asked me to unlock the back door, and when he created a diversion outside, get you both out front so he could creep in and work out for himself where you’d sent Alistair.”

  “The car,” I said.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know that’s what he was going to do. That’s when I realized Pip was angry with me too. I left your phone where you could find it. I didn’t want him contacting me again.”

  It was hard to know if she was telling the truth, but she seemed genuine. But then, hadn’t I thought that earlier too?

  “Where is he now, Ruby?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I had a peek around earlier and couldn’t find him. I assumed he’d already left. But this—” She gestured to the wall.

  I picked up the knife again and, without a word, moved quietly along the hallway. The door to the cellar was still locked. The living room was empty, spaces behind sofas, the door, under tables—there was no sign that Phillip had been in here. There was no other graffiti, no disorder, no menace. There was nowhere he could hide.

  I thought of him upstairs, close to where we were sleeping, or trying to, and I shuddered. I pointed my finger up the stairs; Ruby and Naomi nodded. I went first. Eight heartbeats to every step.

  I put the knife in my other hand and wiped my palm on my shorts. Nerves were making me perspire. I craned my neck to peer up onto the landing. There were five doors, two of them closed, the bathroom door open with the light still on. I could see that it was empty. The other open doors were Alistair’s room and my bedroom.

  The first door was Mother’s rosebud room. I looked at Naomi and hesitated. Perhaps she was right. Would it really be so wrong to run from the house now? To leave Phillip behind and never come back?

  Before I could explore this thought, there was a sound from downstairs. I moved away from the bedroom door toward the noise. It sounded like running water. A splatter. A steady stream.

  I frowned and looked down the stairs into the hallway below. Liquid was dashing the tiled floor. I struggled to make sense of it. I put my hand on the banister and eased myself down two steps—toe first, then softly placed heel. There was water in the hallway, but I had no idea where it was coming from. It reflected the overhead lights and shone golden, turning gilt everything it touched, like Midas.

  There was a sweet familiar smell that I couldn’t place. It reminded me of cars, of traffic jams, of setting out on holiday at predawn o’clock. I tried to swallow but the scent lay cloying on my tongue. Thick. I couldn’t smell the gas anymore, but this felt like an add-on, an escalation of the same. My heart tremored and I clenched until my nails dug into the palms of my hands. My
mouth was dry and my throat started to prickle. I wanted to cough but didn’t want to make a sound. I still couldn’t be sure where Phillip was or if he was acting alone. I swallowed deeply.

  I should have known that Phillip would have more up his sleeve than pizza deliveries, bricks through car windows, and childish games of hide-and-seek. It was stupid of me to think that I had the upper hand just because I’d managed to get Alistair safely away from him. Phillip would make me pay. He always had.

  The slick by the front door was spreading, slowly and thickly, finding channels in the tiles and diving down them. I took another step. Feet diagonally across steps, firm-footed yet still cautious.

  “What is it?” asked Ruby.

  I started. I’d almost forgotten Naomi and Ruby were there. It was difficult to believe that this was anything but a personal attack, Phillip coming for me, and me alone.

  “Shhhh!” My finger went to my lips like I was berating a child. Phillip, I mouthed.

  I took two more steps. I was halfway down the stairs now, exposed, too far from safety, too close to Phillip. The front door was still locked and closed, but there was a dark tube sticking through the letter box. Clear liquid was flowing into a rippling puddle that jumped, then smoothed out with every glug. He wasn’t in the house after all. He was outside, watching and listening, laughing as we searched for him.

  Naomi joined me on the stairs, her hand brushing against the cold wall.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  Naomi gestured to the door and raised her eyebrows. She spoke quietly so that only I could hear. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going to open the door and ask him what the fuck he’s playing at.”

  “Wait!”

  I grabbed her arm. I had a sense of being in immediate danger. The smell was making my breath catch in my throat and I swallowed hard. Naomi shook me off and started banging down the stairs.

  “Oi!” she called.

  The letter box shut suddenly. Naomi turned back to me with a look that said See? as if all that was needed was to threaten to confront him and he would go away.

  “Wait, Naomi. Wait! It’s petrol!”

  The letter box was opening again. A teardrop of flame hovered in the air long enough for me to think I could catch it, could save us all. I ran toward it, taking the steps two at a time, shoving Naomi to the wall. She looked at me openmouthed as gravity took hold of the match and pulled it to the ground.

  CHAPTER 28

  9 days before the funeral

  The flame spread with a deep hush and covered the hallway floor. I jumped back with one hand on the wall and one on the wooden railing. My immediate response was to retrace our steps. Naomi stumbled and crawled up the stairs on the tips of her fingers and toes. Already I could feel the heat from the flames, though they were still only inches high. They tickled the baseboard and I could see the paint beginning to blister. I thought, This is how I’m going to die.

  Statistics scrolled through my mind about how more deaths come from smoke inhalation than from the flames themselves. I couldn’t fight smoke any more than I could fight Phillip. Neither could be contained. It was an uncontrollable haze that seeped into your pores, your lungs, and choked you from the inside out.

  It would be reported as a tragedy, of course, and Phillip would be interviewed by the local rag as the grieving partner. And he would get everything he wanted—rid of us all, custody of his son, sympathy and revenge.

  I started to sway on my feet. Panic causing me to stop breathing. The flames were roaring in my ears, stopping me from hearing my thoughts. Not again and not now.

  There was a split second where I could have given in to the inevitability of the panic attack. A streak of resignation ran through me like a seam of gold. But then I pictured Alistair’s face. I couldn’t let him be brought up in Phillip’s care—or lack of. The thought of my child cowering beneath his covers, crying, hurt, was enough to snap me to my senses. I ran back up the last few stairs and into the bathroom.

  “Ruby,” I called. “Wet the towels in the bathroom. Go!”

  I turned on the taps and threw the towels in the bath.

  Ruby didn’t move. She had her hand over her mouth and was leaning against the wall. The flames reflected in her eyes. She had shut down, gone somewhere else—somewhere of no use to me.

  Naomi pushed past with an “I’ll do it!” and ran to the bedroom.

  With sodden towels, I ran to the bottom of the stairs, hesitated, then dropped the largest towel over the stretch of tile by my feet. It folded over at one corner and didn’t get the coverage I had hoped for. I threw the other one away from me so it landed by the door. They hissed. I stepped onto them and stamped over the wet material. Smoke was rising from the damp towels and I could feel the heat on the bottom of my feet, as if stepping on hot springs. I coughed and held my forearm over my mouth.

  Naomi passed me and threw more towels on the floor. The flames were stroking the doorframe, encompassing it as if burning all around it yet not touching the actual wood. It moved quicker than I would have thought possible. The cheap fibers were melting and blackening instead of taking to blaze. I stepped over the first towel and picked it up to beat the doorframe. Naomi was running back up the stairs for more items to soak.

  Ruby had stumbled up behind me. She was making strange sounds in the back of her throat, as if her mouth were too tightly clamped to let words out.

  “Ruby, call nine-nine-nine.”

  The flames squatted and lost some of their potency, if only we could keep on top of them. I began to cough, a rough retch from the base of my stomach clearing nothing and only having me pull the tainted air deeper into my lungs, which started the hacking all over again. The air was thick with smoke. My eyes were watering and it was hard to see where I should be directing my efforts.

  “Ruby!” I spluttered. “The phone!”

  She seemed to snap to. Hopping over the towels, she pulled her dress up as if paddling in the sea.

  “And then come back with wet tea towels,” I shouted. “If this . . . gets out of hand—the window. Get out that way.”

  Naomi thundered down the stairs with a dripping blanket in her hands.

  “What? Jump right into his arms? No, thanks.”

  I took my yellow coat off the peg by the door and started smacking at the flames on the doorframe. Even though they were dying down, the air was thick. I pulled the neckline of my top over my mouth and blinked against the stinging. I took shallow breaths, fighting against inhaling the smoke again.

  “Ruby?” I shouted. “Have you called them?”

  There was no answer.

  The fire was spluttering, dying. The towels smoldered. Naomi pulled them into a pile showing blackened tiles beneath and bubbled paint on the back of the front door.

  “D’ya think we’ve got it all?”

  “Yeah. Think so.”

  “Lucky you got tiles. I’d’ve been screwed.” Naomi slumped against the wall and wiped her hair back off her face and laughed bitterly.

  I hurried into the kitchen, where it was cooler. The back door was open and the keys were in the lock. Old keys with a bejeweled cat on the key ring—ones I’d not used in years. I faltered momentarily, began to speak and thought better of it. One thing at a time. I began running water into the washing-up bowl and, as it was filling, immersed the tea towels in the cool liquid. I kept my eye on the back door, glad of the breeze and the fresh air but feeling betrayed and fearful. Ruby had the spare key and had used it to save herself. How many times would I be betrayed before I realized that I couldn’t trust anyone?

  Leaving the water running, I ran back into the hallway and dropped the tea towels in the entrance to the living room. I motioned to Naomi to follow me and we went into the kitchen.

  “Ruby’s gone,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The d
oor’s open.”

  “She had the keys?” Naomi put her head in her hands; I thought she was going to cry, but when her face came back up again, it was twisted with rage.

  “I knew it. Bloody knew it. Didn’t I say? I knew she was helping him. They were in it all along—she knew he were going to set fire to the place. I tell you, she had me fooled.” Naomi shook her head and swore under her breath.

  I switched off the running tap and lifted the full bowl of water. In the doorway of the hall I splashed it over the floor.

  “What you going to do now?” Naomi asked.

  “Call the police. He won’t stop until we’re dead. The only hope we’ve got is that they can catch Phillip for setting the fire. I think we can prove it’s attempted murder.”

  “Not gonna happen. He’ll get off with it like he always does. Ruby’ll give him an alibi, and he’ll go free. We should go after him ourselves. He can’t get away wi’ what he’s done to us. And neither should she. Double-crossing bitch.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the door. I wanted to rush out into the open but was scared of what I might find.

  As if reading my mind, Naomi said, “He’s long gone. And he’s taken her with him. They deserve each other.”

  She held out her hand and dragged me outside.

  “Come on, this air’s no good for you. More people die of smoke inhalation than fire. I bet you didn’t—” The security light snapped on as we fell into the damp night air. “Christ!”

  I spun around so quickly, I fell against the wall. At the edge of the light’s reach was a pale-faced and haggard Phillip.

  CHAPTER 29

  9 days before the funeral

  Phillip had a bitter look on his face and his mouth was curled into a sneer. His hands were down by his sides, clenched into knuckle-whitening fists. He lurched forward, taking small reticent steps.