by Jill Childs
Anna, of course. He was worried about disturbing her, his innocent princess. Asleep upstairs in her perfect bedroom, all pink and frills.
‘You miss me too. I know you do. Don’t lie.’ My voice became a shriek as I lost control. ‘That’s what drove you to do it, isn’t it? What you did.’
He pulled a hand from my wrist and tried to put it over my mouth, to shut me up. I twisted and grabbed his hair, kicked out at him. It was brutal, I was brutal, but something exploded in me, feeling him use his strength against me, the hands struggling to restrain me, when just a short time earlier, they had been caressing me.
Even fighting him made my heart pound. Our naked bodies slapped against the hall wall, twisting, slippery with sweat, limbs knocking. It was as if we were two halves of the same whole. I felt it again as powerfully as I had when we’d made love, lost in each other. As if we’d never been apart.
He rallied and tried to push me away and I pressed back, kicking out at his ankles, lunging at him with strength I didn’t know I had.
It happened in a moment. One second, we were locked together, wrestling in the narrow hallway, fighting with raw passion. The next, I shoved him away, hard, and he lost his balance, then fell heavily against the cellar door. It gave way under his weight and he plunged backwards into the darkness. His eyes were wide with shock, his arms flailing, as he struggled to regain his footing, slipping on a mess of buckets, brooms and boxes cluttering the top of the cellar steps.
He toppled sideways and disappeared from sight. Sickening bangs and thuds, muffled and quickly fading. I screamed, picturing his grasping body bouncing helplessly down the concrete steps. Then, finally, a dreadful silence.
For a second, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even breathe.
A sudden noise at the far end of the hall. I twisted to look. The front door was thrown open. Helen stood there. Her jaw slackened in disbelief as she stared at me, frozen in the dark hall, wearing nothing but her husband’s shirt, my terrified eyes on hers.
Three
Helen didn’t move. Her eyes were glassy. Her body looked rigid with shock. The house sucked itself empty of air, of sound, of life.
The moment stretched, unbearable.
Finally, Helen jolted into motion. Her handbag fell from her shoulder and landed with a thud as she kicked the front door shut and sped towards me with hurried strides, electrified by the panic on my face.
‘What?’ Her voice was hard and thin. ‘What happened?’
I couldn’t speak, just tore my eyes from her face to look again into the dark vacancy beyond the open cellar door.
She pushed past me and waded into the debris at the top of the steps, groping for a light switch just inside the doorway. At once, she let out a high-pitched cry, so primal it made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. Her horror echoed, bouncing off the stone.
I pressed behind her, shaking, straining to see. The single, dusty lightbulb in the cellar below gave a faint light.
Ralph lay, crumpled and motionless, at the foot of the steps. He looked as if he’d hit the concrete head first, his neck tilted at an awkward angle. His limbs spilled in a heap, one leg bent under his body, the other trailing. I reached for the white-washed wall to steady myself.
Helen flew down the steps, hurtling into the cellar and collapsing over him, running her fingers over his chest, then higher, to his neck, with frantic, clumsy movements. For a moment, she seemed to be strangling him, then I realised why she was pressing her fingertips into his flesh. She was searching desperately for a pulse.
I imagined the marks rising on his skin, white, then red, where her fingers probed. She twisted suddenly and reached for his wrist and her fingertips circled it, again searching for life. My heart stopped, watching, waiting.
Another cry, desolate and heart-rending. ‘Ralph?’ I gripped the doorframe, my knuckles whitening. Sharp flares of pain stabbed my stomach. I crumpled, bending forward, my eyes fixed on Helen, a shadowy shape in the gloom.
She crouched over him, her legs drawn up, sinking her face in his side, her arms spread across the broad bulk of his body. She was wailing, a low guttural howl of misery and pain from deep inside her as she cradled him and rocked herself to and fro.
His hand lay limp, palm up, on the concrete floor. The fingers that had written so much poetry, which had caressed me, curled uselessly into the air.
My knees gave way and I sank abruptly onto the top step. I drew the edges of the shirt around me, shivering now, and put my face in my hands. Everything smelt of him. My palms. The shirt. What had I done? Dear God, what had I done? How could it be? This man who, just minutes earlier, had been strong and pulsing with life, how could he be gone?
I rocked myself backwards and forwards, nauseous, copying her rhythmical movement instinctively, without knowing why.
The soft wailing continued to rise from below, bouncing round the hard walls. She was keening, burying herself in his body.
I stuttered, ‘I’ll call someone.’ I struggled to find breath. ‘An ambulance.’
She lifted her head and stared up the steps. Her eyes shone, ghoulish in the gloom. She seemed to be struggling to place me, to remember who I was, to assemble in her mind what had happened and why I was also here.
I said, ‘He fell against the door. It just—’
‘How?’ she breathed. ‘How could you?’
My insides froze. She turned back to Ralph and lay across him, trying to kiss his forehead, his cheek. I couldn’t bear to look but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. She pushed her hand into his curled one and held it. Then she pushed back and got to her feet, looked around.
I was hunched forward, my body shaking so hard, my feet teetering on the concrete steps. I could hardly bear my own weight.
‘Or the police?’ My thoughts were wild. Who should I call? ‘Maybe.’
‘No!’ She snapped up her head and gave me a look of disgust, taking in my naked legs, my hands, clutching the folds of her husband’s shirt round my chest. A shirt she may have chosen, washed and ironed. ‘Don’t you dare.’
I shrank back into myself. I thought of her daughter, asleep upstairs in her bedroom. Of Ralph’s reputation at school, ruined. Of the scandal once the circumstances of his death became known. It would all come out, just as I’d threatened. About me. About her.
‘It was an accident.’ I saw him again, clawing the air as the door gave way, his eyes wide. ‘He fell.’
She blinked towards the top of the steps, replaying what had happened in her mind.
‘Why?’ she whispered. I didn’t know if she was struggling to make sense of the accident or of his betrayal. She’d never suspected an affair, Ralph had told me. She’d trusted him.
Her eyes landed again on me, huddled on the top step, tugging on the shirt to cover my bare thighs.
‘Our daughter…’ she said. ‘She mustn’t know.’
Anna. I swallowed and tasted bile.
Helen twisted back to Ralph’s body, taking possession of it, cradling it in her arms. She reached up and tugged an old sheet down from a shelf, a dust cover perhaps, shook open the folds and stretched it over him. I sat, horrified, watching, listening to her sobbing, powerless to act.
Time stretched.
Somehow, shivering, I pulled myself to my feet and made it back to the sitting room. Everything was still. I forced myself to gather my scattered clothes and get dressed, then sat on the end of the settee – I don’t know for how long – looking blankly into the empty room, trying to breathe. We’d been here together, just a moment ago. He’d made love to me. I’d felt him come back to me. I pushed my knuckles against my mouth and bit against them, trying to stopper my own grief, struggling to keep myself sane.
Later, I rummaged in the kitchen cupboards and found a bottle of gin. I swallowed a slug myself, barely aware of the taste, just the burn on my throat, then went back to the top of the cellar steps.
She was still bent over his covered body, motionless, her face res
ting on his chest. I shuddered. He must be cooling. Stiffening. I couldn’t look. My stomach heaved.
I said, ‘I think I’d better call someone now.’
‘Wait!’ Her head jerked up. ‘Wait. We mustn’t wake Anna.’
I stared down at her. The shock was playing games with her mind. It was over, for all of us. Anna too.
I shook my head. ‘She’s going to find out. We have to…’
She closed her eyes. She seemed older than the woman who’d appeared in the doorway earlier. Drawn. Haggard. Her breathing was ragged. She looked as if she were struggling to rally her strength, to regain control of her shattered nerves.
She muttered to herself, ‘Think.’
My eyes strayed to Ralph’s protruding leg, his foot sticking out from the cover. The bare skin was puckered and shrivelled in the cold. The gin rose in my stomach.
I made it to the downstairs toilet before I vomited. My face was almost in the bowl, my eyes staring at the toilet brush in its holder. Pristine. A neat plastic case, oozing blue disinfectant, hung down from the rim. When I closed my eyes, everything swirled. I was a speck of dust, spinning through time and space, in free fall. Dear God, what had I done?
When my stomach was empty and I was retching nothing but acid, I crawled out on my hands and knees, like a dog. My head throbbed.
I pulled myself up the edge of the kitchen counter and splashed cold water on my face and wrists, took some sips from cupped hands. It was nearly dark outside. Through the window, the shapes and colours of the garden fence, the roses climbing their trellis, fused with my reflection, a pale, ghostly face with wide, frightened eyes staring back at me.
I couldn’t face going back to the cellar steps. I took the second door out of the kitchen back into the sitting room.
I jumped. Helen was sitting there, a solid shape, silent and motionless in the gathering gloom. She was still wearing her cardigan and clumpy shoes. She perched on the very edge of an armchair, her back erect. Her hands were clasped tightly together, the knuckles blanched. Her forehead was tight with concentration. She was deep in thought, or perhaps praying. For strength, perhaps? For resolve.
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say.
Her lips twitched. She was muttering to herself, lost in her own world.
I took a step further into the room and she looked up, startled, then pointed me to the armchair opposite.
I opened my mouth to say again, ‘We need to call the police,’ then thought better of it, sighed and closed it again. I could give her time, if she needed it. I couldn’t refuse her that.
I sank into the chair and observed her. His wife. My rival. He’d wanted to leave her – he’d always said so. He just couldn’t bear to hurt her. It would kill her, he’d said. And there was Anna to think about, too.
I shook my head. It already seemed a long time ago, our battle for Ralph. Now, we’d both lost, after all. I clasped my hands in my lap. Clammy palms. My body wouldn’t stop shaking. My head ached. Nausea rose again and I swallowed it down. I needed to get home, to crawl into bed, to sleep. If I could ever sleep again.
I thought about everything that would unfold once I called the police. Sirens. Banging at the door. Long hours at the station. Questions. Statements. Harsh lights and bare, chilled rooms. I couldn’t bear it. My head swam. Maybe she was right to hold off. Maybe there was another way.
Ralph. Lying dead in the cellar, just feet from me. And it was all my fault.
After a while, Helen opened her eyes, turned and looked out of the window. She rose to her feet, switched on a standard lamp and drew the curtains, leaving a crack between them for the light to show.
‘They can’t know what happened.’ Her face was stony. ‘No one must know.’
‘That he’s –’ I hesitated – ‘gone?’ It was impossible to say dead. ‘They’ll find out.’
She turned dead eyes on me. ‘Maybe. Eventually. But not yet. And not what happened.’
I blinked. Was that it, then – she wanted us to somehow keep secret how he’d died? So no one found out, not even Anna, that their happy marriage had never been what it seemed?
I didn’t know what to say. She suddenly seemed so hard, so determined, as if she were daring me to disagree.
She said coldly, ‘You owe me that, at least.’
‘But I don’t even know how—’
‘Do what I tell you. No questions.’ She got to her feet. Her hands were fists at her sides. ‘He’s heavy. I’ll need help.’ She hesitated. ‘It might keep you out of prison.’
She led me stiffly back out of the sitting room into the hall. Her manner had changed. She held her grief in check, her movements mechanical and efficient. I couldn’t imagine what it cost her.
At the cellar door, she turned back to me. ‘Wait here. I’ll call when I need you.’
She disappeared, her footsteps echoing as she hurried down the steps.
I shrank back against the wall, steeling myself, trying not to think of his prone, twisted body. This man who was always in motion, always full of passion, of life. My stomach twisted and heaved again and I put my hand to my mouth, tasting acid. My face was chill with nervous sweat.
Muffled sounds drifted up the steps. Her shoes, sharp on the cement floor. Her laboured puffs of breath. The tug and scrape of a heavy object. The rustle of thick plastic. I closed my eyes, trying to block it all out and shuddered.
Finally, she came heavily back up the steps and appeared in the doorway. She was panting slightly, her hairline slick with sweat.
‘Don’t think about it. Just do it.’
She was thinking aloud, talking to herself as much to me. I thought, how little I knew her, this woman married to the man I loved. I’d tried not to think of her much, unless I really had to. She was just another school mum, lining up at the gate at half past three. Just another volunteer in the school reading programme, sitting in the Lower School library, listening to children read, one by one. She’d had to be. It was too painful to think of her as anything more.
She seemed to focus again on my face, remembering I was there, and her expression hardened. ‘If you try anything, I’ll tell them it was you. You pushed him, didn’t you? What were you doing? Fighting?’ She despised me, I heard it in her voice. ‘No point denying it. Your skin under his fingernails. Your DNA all over him. It’s manslaughter, if you’re lucky.’
Lucky? I shivered.
She said, ‘I’d gladly see you rot in jail. Believe me. But it’s Anna…’ She swallowed. ‘They’d drag us all through the mud. Your sordid little affair – which meant nothing to him, by the way – splashed all over the papers. A teacher, hitting on another teacher, while his seven-year-old sleeps upstairs? Did you stop to think how she’d suffer? They’d crucify you. Ralph too.’ She paused. Her mouth trembled and, for a moment, she looked about to break down. ‘I’ll grieve… but not now. I can’t afford to. That comes later.’
A vein pulsed in her neck, a sign of the effort it took her to hold herself together, to keep herself in check. Once she could speak again, she stabbed at me with her finger.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to shut up and do exactly what I tell you.’
The cellar stank of mould and turpentine. I blinked, willing my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The concrete floor felt tacky underfoot, the sole of my shoes sticking slightly to the surface when I moved.
I tried not to feel, not to think, just to do, as she’d told me. Anything else was impossible. But the thought kept breaking through. This was Ralph, this weighty, inert body, encased now in a massive plastic zip-up bag, a surfboard cover. This was his flesh inside.
He used to surf when he was younger. He’d told me she’d never been interested. I tried to imagine when and where he’d bought a surfboard and this bag for it, where he’d travelled. Somewhere sunny where he’d bronzed as he surfed, strong and muscular. I swallowed hard, feeling her waiting, glaring at me.
I crouched where she�
�d pointed, at the bottom of the steps, and looped my arms around the end of the cover. The plastic was cold and slippery. When I tried to lift, the hard shapes inside shifted. Feet. Ankles. Knees. I dropped them with a start as if they were burning hot.
She raised her eyes.
I stuttered, ‘I can’t…’
She shot me a poisoned look. ‘You’d better.’
I bit hard on my lip, bent down again and threaded my arms under his legs, inching forward until I was grasping him higher, taking the weight of his thighs and hips. Helen, her face set hard, shuffled towards me from the other end, her arms encircling the bag. His head and shoulders, his chest.
‘Okay? Now move. Small steps.’ She was already panting.
I closed my eyes and teetered backwards, my heels bumping into the bottom step. Ralph, raised from the floor now, sagged between us. Together, we crept upwards, heaving him, one step at a time. First me, steadily rising up the narrow steps, all my energy poured into my straining arms, into trying not to stumble, then Helen coming jerkily after me. The only sound was our own heavy breathing and low, visceral grunts.
In the hall, we set him down, as gently as we could, on the floor, just feet from the front door. I collapsed back against the wall, sweat dripping down my back, and closed my eyes, seeing spangles. My chest hurt. My muscles ached. I just wanted to get my breath back and then sleep. To wake in the morning and find all this gone. To have Ralph alive again.
Helen’s bony fingers dug into my shoulder. I forced my eyes open. Her face, thrust into mine, was flushed, her hair in clumps.
‘I’m going upstairs to check on Anna, then we go. Don’t leave anything behind.’
I blinked. ‘Will she be all right on her own?’
‘She’ll be fine. Thank you for caring.’ She gave me a sour look. ‘The hatchback’s right outside. I’ll check the coast’s clear, then we move him.’ She hesitated. ‘We need to be quick. We can do it if we work together.’
I took a deep breath, then forced myself to nod.