by Joe Heap
‘See what you made me do?’
The tears are flowing freely now.
‘I didn’t make you do this,’ she says, flatly.
‘No? You don’t think so?’ He laughs once, brightly. ‘Do you know how fucking boring it is, living with you?’
‘You did this because you’re bored?’
Tony says nothing, just smiles thinly, as though to say, You wouldn’t understand.
‘How could …?’ Kate starts, but never gets to finish the sentence. He hits her in the face again, and this time she feels the skin over her cheekbone burst like a grape. Blood trickles down her cheek. She’s trembling all over. She gets ready to make her move, to dash to the other side of him, the one he won’t be expecting. She moves and—
He trips her as she ducks past him and Kate goes flying. She’s airborne. For a second she’s moving, unable to stop. But then she lands, her hands scraping the tiles, her wrists bending back painfully. Her palms are sliced by shards from the broken mug. She instinctively curls into a ball.
There is a moment before he lands on her, a moment before she starts screaming. She tries to scream words – to scream at Tony to stop, or for somebody to help, to form the scream into the shapes of words. But she’s too scared. His blows come too fast, and she just screams.
Kate expects she will black out, like she did when she fell and hit her head. But it doesn’t happen. She’s begging for it to happen, yet terrified, because if she falls asleep now, she doesn’t know if she will ever wake up.
How long has it been? Thirty seconds, maybe a minute? Tony hits her on the head, in the ribs, in her lower back, as if he knows exactly which points will hurt the most. If he’s aware of how much he’s hurting her, he no longer cares. It doesn’t feel like him any more. It feels like an animal is on top of her. Like a bull, or a dog, something that is trampling and mauling her at the same time. For the first time in her life, Kate believes she is about to die.
There’s a banging noise, fast and insistent. Nothing changes for a moment, then Tony stops hitting Kate. He gets up, kneeling next to her. In that position, it might have looked like she had fallen and hurt herself, and he had knelt to help her. Tony stands, while the banging continues. Kate realizes that someone is at the door. Somebody is hammering at the door.
She tries to make a noise, to get the attention of the person at the door. The sounds that escape her are tiny, but it’s enough to anger him again.
He walks back to her, in his steel toecap shoes, and brings his foot down, just once, on her head.
Tony gathers the white squares on the table and walks out of the kitchen. Kate can’t move to stop him. She listens as he goes into the spare room and takes the bags of white powder from the bureau. Then he goes through to the bedroom and starts packing a bag. Every few seconds there is another burst of banging from the front door, and muffled shouting.
Kate listens to it all, and can see it clearly in her head. She’s still awake but she thinks maybe her neck is broken, because she can’t feel the rest of her body. She tries to focus on the sound of banging. She doesn’t want it to ever stop. It’s the only thing that’s keeping him away from her.
She hears Tony walk through to the hallway, then a dull thud that she does not recognize, but will understand later – the sound of Tony hitting himself on the side of his face with the glass paperweight they keep in the hallway as an ornament. Later she will spot the paperweight on the floor and see, against its swirl of oceanic blue, a smear of dried blood.
He opens the door. She hears angry voices. Kate hears him talking calmly, them shouting, but she doesn’t know what’s being said. Her ears are ringing. She can hear the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of blood in her ears. She hears the other person speak again, not shouting now. They are doubting themselves. For a moment, Kate thinks it’s all over. Then a shout, Tony this time.
‘Hey! This is my house.’
‘If you’ve got nothing to hide, why not let me past? Otherwise I’m going to call the police.’
A moment passes.
Kate hears feet running towards her, heavy impacts, and she thinks it must be Tony, coming back to get her.
Soft hands are laid on her.
There is no more shouting, but there are many voices. They wash around the room like underwater things. The flat seems to have filled with people, but Kate can’t move, can’t roll over to see who’s in her house.
It seems rude, not to offer them a drink or somewhere to sit. She feels bad. Finally, a hand is laid on her shoulder.
‘Don’t worry, love, there’s an ambulance on the way. Do you want me to call the police?’
Kate doesn’t cry. Or rather, she doesn’t sob, or make any noise like crying. Tears fall freely from her eyes. It’s more that she has been cracked open.
‘No,’ she whispers, ‘no police. They were already here.’
Twenty
November
SHE DOESN’T THINK OF her, to begin with. There is too much going on. She thinks about hospital appointments and work commitments. Slowly, she ties up each loose end, speaks to the people she needs to speak to, and arranges another round of time off work.
She turns down the offer of a counsellor, repeating her story that she and Tony had both been fighting, that she fell awkwardly, that it wasn’t his fault. She doesn’t expect anyone to believe this story, but that’s not the point. The story is a placeholder for something more inconvenient – that Tony hurt her, and she’s going to let him get away with it.
She does not entirely avoid talking to the police. Someone at the hospital referred her case, and Kate repeats the story to the officer who comes to talk to her. He seems supportive, encouraging her to tell her story, but when Tony’s name comes up, Kate sees a flash of recognition in his eyes. Does this man know Tony? Are they friends? What story has he been telling people? He notes down her lies and asks no further questions.
She finds out not long after from a friend of Tony’s, calling to ask if he can come pick up some things. She has met Phil once before, at the police Christmas drinks a couple of years ago. She thinks about saying no, but curiosity gets the better of her. He arrives at the flat with a couple of empty gym bags and studiously avoids looking at the bruises on her face. Slowly, Kate shuffles through to the bedroom and shows him to Tony’s drawers.
‘So, is Tony staying with you?’
Phil glances nervously in the direction of her navel, then back to the drawer.
‘No … He asked me not to tell you, but he’s taking some time off work.’
‘Time off?’
‘Some kind of therapy. To deal with …’
‘Deal with what?’
Phil sighs, apparently annoyed to have to spell this out. ‘To deal with the breakdown of his marriage.’
‘His marriage?’
‘Look, I’m just here to get his clothes, okay? I didn’t tell you anything.’
Eventually, Phil leaves, and Kate packs her own bags. It’s time to go. She will pay someone to empty the old flat, give notice to the landlord. This is not her home any more.
Everything is done, and Kate has nothing to think about. She doesn’t like it. The chores were all that she had to hold onto. Driftwood from the wreckage. Left to herself, with nothing to do, Kate is alone in a wide ocean, and her mind turns to the last time she was happy.
She thinks about going to the zoo and seeing the penguins. She thinks about walking through the National Gallery and seeing the sunflowers. She thinks about seeing Nova.
Kate has no way of contacting her. After the kiss, she made a simple promise to herself – no more fantasy, no more fooling around. She was married to Tony and she was going to make a life with him. A family. Anything or anyone who didn’t fit with that, however enjoyable, had to go. Nova was a shape that no longer fitted into the schematics of Kate’s future. Beautiful in her own right, but no longer serving the overall design.
She had deleted the interpreter’s contact from her phone and put the ol
d beermat in the bin. Now, Kate realizes, she doesn’t even know where Nova lives. The one time she invited Kate back, she had turned her down. Somewhere in Brixton, but that’s all she knows. Not enough.
At first, she phones the police. She asks them if they can give her a contact for one of their interpreters. Of course they say no. They’re not allowed to give out the personal details of any of their employees. Kate says she doesn’t need personal details – just a work email will do – but the woman on the other end of the phone is suspicious and ends the call.
She searches online, but finds nothing except a couple of articles from an Oxford student magazine, dated eleven years ago. One is about accessibility ramps, the other about a late-night radio show, Aural Pleasure with Jillian Safinova. There aren’t even any pictures. After that, she has no ideas for a long time. It seems hopeless. She could go down to Brixton and wait in the crowds by the Tube every day. But that’s plain crazy, and Kate doesn’t even know that she takes the Tube.
Besides, she’s too nervous to stand in crowds any more.
She cries, a gentle flow of tears that never gets worse but never stops, for several hours. (She’s frustrated, that’s all. After all that has been taken out of her control, she wants this one thing to be fixable.)
She remembers something while thinking about an anecdote Nova told her, about a police raid at a house party she’d been to at university, and how her tutor had broken the tense silence by upending a plate of spaghetti bolognese over his head. She had cried with laughter, telling the story.
That’s it. Kate can find a contact for the tutor. She remembers that he is also blind. He’s a friend to Nova, a mentor. She searches online, praying that he’s still working for the university, until she sees a picture on the Modern Languages Faculty page – eyes shut, face round and hammy-pink, smiling gently as though listening to a favourite song.
Professor John Katzner
MA, MSt, DPhil (Oxon)
Research – Literature and the history of ideas of the late 18th-century.
Selected publications …
Her breathing speeds up as she reads his biography and recognizes the man she’s looking for. She picks up the phone without taking time to compose her thoughts and dials. The phone starts to ring, but nobody picks up right away. Suddenly, Kate realizes that she might only get one chance at this – if she makes the wrong impression, she will have burned her last bridge. She’s about to hang up when the hiss from the receiver changes tone.
‘Hello?’ John Katzner speaks through the noise.
‘Oh, uh, hello.’
‘Hello? How can I help?’ The voice is older than she expected, even a little frail, but forceful in its intonation.
‘Yes, sorry. My name is Kate, and I was wondering … Well, I was hoping you could put me in touch with someone.’
‘In touch? With whom?’ There is rustling on the other end of the line, and a thump as John sits down.
‘I was wondering if you had a contact for one of your alumni. Her name is Nova?’ There is silence on the other end, and Kate corrects herself. ‘Sorry – I mean Jillian Safinova. Do you have a contact for Jillian Safinova?’
He hasn’t hung up. She can hear his breathing. Then,
‘You were right first time. She never uses her given name.’
Though he can’t see her, Kate nods emphatically.
‘Yes, I know! Only her brother calls her Jillian. Or Jill …’
She prays that the detail convinces him she’s not a crank.
‘Did you say your name was Kate?’
She hears the recognition in his voice, realizes her mistake too late.
Shitfuck.
‘Uh, yes. We met at an interpreter’s conference in London but I lost her card.’
The lie is good, considering she’s just thought of it, but too late.
‘Kate, I’ve heard about you. I know how you met.’
She feels her heart falling away, and grips hard on the phone. She changes tack.
‘Look, John – Nova and I parted on bad terms, and I really just want to apologize to her—’
He cuts her off.
‘She doesn’t want to talk to you, Kate. That’s what she told me. And she doesn’t tell me much about her private life, so it must be important to her.’
Kate can feel her voice shaking when she replies:
‘Look, John … I know you probably think I’m a bad person.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But I’m not asking you to give me her contact. Just let her know … let her know that I’m really sorry … and that I’m not doing so well …’
Her voice breaks. She mustn’t cry.
‘Are you all right?’ His voice is small over the line, and Kate isn’t sure if he’s concerned for her or concerned by her behaviour. If he thinks she’s a stalker. She can’t bring herself to reply.
‘Look,’ he says slowly, ‘give me your number. I’ll get in touch with her and let her know you called. And if she wants to contact you, she can.’
‘Yes! Yes, that would be perfect. Thank you, John, thank—’
‘But,’ he cuts her off, ‘this is the only time I’ll do this. If she says no, then I don’t want you to try and contact her again, okay?’
Kate swallows with difficulty. ‘Yes, of course. Of course. Yes.’
She gives her mobile number and her landline, worrying about how a blind man is noting them down, and hangs up when he does. The flat seems to hiss softly like a telephone line. There will be no callers today. Kate walks to the living room, sits on the sofa and waits.
There is a pigeon on the windowsill. It built a nest there, from ragged bits of cardboard, and laid two moon-white eggs, which now it leaves only for short spells. When night falls, Kate will turn the lights off in the living room and peek around the curtain to look at the bird. It doesn’t seem to see her. She will watch the mother pigeon for a long time, until the ache in her legs and back forces her to retreat, turn the lights back on, and sit on the sofa until she catches her breath.
The new flat is very quiet. Of course, Kate made it that way. She raised the floors, lowered the ceilings, built a box within a box, filled cavities with insulation and used every trick to make these rooms quiet, quiet, quiet. This space was supposed to be a secret one for Tony and her. It was supposed to be a place where they could escape from the world, together.
Now she thinks that if they’d escaped here any sooner, nobody would have heard her screaming.
His name is on the mortgage, but she has the only keys. His contribution to the mortgage is still paid into their joint account every month. She did all the work converting the flat, arranging the builders and electricians and carpenters. His keys are cut, but she still has them. So, she is lucky – this is her safe place to be, now that their old home isn’t safe.
She should be angry, but the main thing Kate feels is shame. There were so many people in their home. So many people watching as she was taken out on a stretcher. As she left in an ambulance. As she told her made-up story. The shame burns in her chest like acid reflux.
Kate wants to shower, to get clean, but showers are difficult. She has three cracked ribs, a fractured wrist, a punctured eardrum, concussion and a covering of bruises so complete that it might as well be camouflage.
The flat is her armour, like a lobster’s shell. Leaving would feel like shedding her carapace, walking pink and raw down the High Street. She’s drawn the blinds, locked the door. She’s sealed herself away, but has forgotten one way in. The weak spot. As she is sat on the sofa, the phone on the side table starts to ring.
Kate jumps. The phone is a rotary. Its ring is loud – tiny hammer smashing against metal. She grinds her teeth. She picks up the receiver, ready to silence the intruder. It will be the police, or a social worker, or a lawyer, or her work, asking her (if it’s all right) when she’s going to be back (but no pressure [but really, yes, pressure, because how much can you expect an employer to put up with?]).
She nearly puts the receiver straight back down when another possibility registers. Kate doesn’t put it to her ear, but brings it a little closer. She can hear a voice, very small.
Nova’s voice.
Nova is calling her.
Kate hesitates. She suddenly doesn’t want to talk to her, but doesn’t want to reject her either. She moves the receiver closer so that she can hear better, but doesn’t let it touch her face.
‘Nova?’ Her voice is croaky, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that would give her away.
‘Hey, Kate. I got your message …’
She talks without Kate needing to. She has rehearsed what to say.
‘I just want you to know, I’m not angry, and you don’t have to worry about me.’
It’s clear from her voice that Nova has not guessed what happened with Tony. She thought a rumour might have reached her at work. She doesn’t know, yet, how isolated Nova has become in the time since they last met.
‘Nova … I …’ Kate’s voice breaks.
There is a moment of silence on the other end of the line. ‘Kate, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you. I just …’
‘You didn’t upset me … you didn’t upset me … you didn’t.’ Her voice crumples.
‘What’s the matter? Kate?’
Kate mumbles something down the phone that she won’t remember later. But she must have said Tony’s name, because the next time Nova speaks, she doesn’t sound uncertain any more.
‘Kate, are you staying there? In the new flat? I’m coming now.’
Twenty-One
NOVA MUST HAVE GOT a taxi, because she arrives fifty-one minutes later. It takes Kate a while to get up from the couch, to walk to the hallway, to unlock all the bolts on the door. So, by the time she opens it, Nova is frantic.
‘Kate? What’s going on? Are you okay?’ she asks all at once, but Kate says nothing. She is mute with breathless appreciation of Nova’s presence. She is wearing a canary-yellow T-shirt that has
YOU WANNA
PIZZA
ME?