Tom
Lizzie agreed to give me a lift home. I realized as we got there that I didn’t have my key. I knew that my grandfather would be at the farmhouse, but I didn’t want to be there. I was happy talking to Lizzie on the way home in the car. I just wanted to stay like that. The heaviness had gone. In her car, she was more herself, and it felt like she was in control. I had no plans. But I didn’t want to go to the farm. I pleaded with her. She was adamant that I couldn’t come in. She said she was busy, that I couldn’t even sit in the garden.
Then I told her what my grandfather had said about her husband disappearing, and her face began to change. Something passed across her brow and she became quite brisk and efficient. She said that I could come in. She said she was busy in the kitchen but that I could come in and see for myself that her husband had left her and that she was in the process of clearing out the house.
The house was really, weirdly empty. Much more than I thought it would have been. Even if the guy had done a runner I wouldn’t have expected someone married for thirty years to clear their stuff out quite so fast. There was a patch of ash on the lawn out the back and I thought she’d probably been burning his things.
I thought she was brave. She showed me this receipt from an escort place in Guildford. She urged me to keep it, to show it to my grandfather so that he might stop his crazy imaginings. I told her that I wasn’t going to take it and that she shouldn’t feel she had anything to prove. “He’s a mad old man,” I told her. And she seemed happier after that.
I had a rest at her place and she went to make a cake. When I woke up she asked me if I would consider looking after the dog while she went to Scotland. She was glad that I’d come in after all because it had given her the idea. When it was done, she said, when it was fully cleaned up, I could stay there, and I could use the place as my own for a while. She said to bring my own bedding and towels. As we talked, she made these deliberate shrugging movements, as if it was all quite a casual arrangement, and I felt like she was someone who wasn’t used to living like that at all, that by nature she was a much more cautious person who’d decided, since her husband had gone, to throw it all in the air and see what came back.
5
63. Don’t start making comparisons with madwomen in history. You are not one of them.
64. Letting the brain get hold of a thought and run with it so that you are left sweating, panting, and groping for any available conclusion about the sort of a nutter you are is not going to be helpful.
65. Don’t think, why did I do it? Think, what am I going to do about it now?
66. Pack an overnight bag. Put inside it: five pairs of pants, one for every day of the week. Two bras. A T-shirt. A long-sleeved thermal vest. Jumper. Jeans. Face cream. Flannel. Wash bag with shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, toothbrush, mouthwash, dental floss, hand cream, eczema cream (best to use these things as and when you need to from now on and put them back in here). Keep this packed beside the bedroom door. Outside on the landing. It will reassure you that you are on your way. It is also there if you feel you have to leave at any moment.
67. As for getting dressed, yesterday’s outfit of jumper and jeans will do absolutely fine if that’s what you feel like wearing. Who can tell you what you should be wearing to do this work? Some may choose a boilersuit, others a dress. What you were wearing yesterday is soft, uncomplicated, and on the floor. Slip back in.
68. Take the dog out for a walk.
69. Look at the grass underneath your boots. Think about how green it is. Look at the sludgy, wet, muddy mud all around the gate at the bottom of the garden. Look at the shine of rainwater on a leaf. Think about the ground under your feet. Can you feel the pine needles, hear them hiss and crunch together as you walk? What does it smell like? What does the air feel like on your cheek?
Lizzie stood in the dark lane and waited. It was Sunday morning. The feeling of heaviness in her chest had been there when she woke, and it was still there, a pushing sensation, insisting on something. She wanted to walk on up the lane towards the farm, but her legs felt stiff and heavy in her boots and she didn’t know, all of a sudden, whether she would be seen. There was light coming through the trees. There would be air and light up on the common.
In a Saturday night feeding frenzy she had eaten her husband’s whole thigh. She had not known a person could press so much meat in. Then she had gone to the fridge for more wine to wash down lump after lump of meat. She had been sick. Even so, she could feel the food as if it were in her throat; and even her head and cheeks were bloated.
The agent would say when she showed the house to people: “There’s a lovely walk. You just go to the bottom of the garden, through the gate and you’re out into the woods…”
Lizzie pulled her scarf around her neck, and turned through the woods. She went up the hill path, up towards the heath, her boots either side of the sandy ravine, and the dog disappeared into the bushes.
Up on the heath, Lizzie pulled a branch from the tree at the viewpoint, climbed down from the bench, and used the branch to whack the mud, lifting it up over her head and bringing it down with all her strength. The wind was blowing over the woods in the valley beneath, bringing the sound of the cars on the A31.
She heard a voice.
“Your dog’s missing!”
It wasn’t a question, but a madman out on surveillance. The voice was raspy. She knew who it was; and her heart thumped.
Lizzie looked back over the bracken to the little hand quivering near a white mouth. Her eyes dried quickly in the cold wind. He tried to shout to her again, but only a noise came out.
“Hello,” she called, but the sound didn’t seem to reach him. He didn’t move. A wave of white hair was blowing across his head.
“I think at my place he’s the only one sane,” Tom Vickory had said. Lizzie looked at old Emmett. They were neighbors across hectares of woodland. In thirty years they’d had one lunch together.
“Your dog gone?” he shouted, and bounced on his heels.
“No,” Lizzie called. “I brought her for a walk. She’s over there!”
She forced a smile up into her cheeks. Old Emmett lifted his stick towards the oak tree with giant octopus arms that had been up here since the time of Henry VIII. “Over there!” she repeated. She made a waving gesture with a flat palm, and tramped away from the bench.
It wasn’t clear how Emmett had got himself up onto the common, and there was no knowing how he would get down. He’d stand for a bit on his stick, she thought, let time pass on the sand by the oak tree. She would have helped him to get back down—on another day—or offered to walk with him, but she thought of the thigh and closed her eyes and walked on.
“I’ve got nothing left,” he shouted after her. Lizzie heard him, and felt a trembling in her legs. She broke into a run and kept going. She wouldn’t come up here again. That was the way to manage the encounter. She could leave him up here, and she wouldn’t come this way again.
70. Having ventured out, open the front door to the house carefully. It will seem strange coming back in. It might seem a bit like a lair. You will long for something else, something cleaner, shinier, and a lot more anonymous. Like a hotel room, for example. Flat, crisp sheets. Scented puffy pillows. For the moment, this is where you live and work.
71. Place the keys in the small chipped bowl beside the front door, and collect any post from the mat. Remember, life will still be going on as normal out there. The post will still come to the house, and the postman will arrive in his red van at eleven in the morning, Monday to Saturday, still leave the engine running while he trots to the front door. The bills will come. They’ll have to be paid. Everything can be done online.
72. Plant feet in slippers. Kick draft excluder into place.
73. Once in, look around. Is the house warm? Does it contain you for the moment? Are there not logs you can use to make a fire? Make a fire now. Put the kettle on. Try to keep doing these things. You need your body to help you t
hrough this. Keep it warm, fed, contained, soothed. It needs to eat, digest, and get you through this. Don’t let it let you down.
Inside, there were soaps in the cupboard under the stairs. Value packs, multiple Doves piled on the shelf. With the Hoover that hadn’t broken yet. And the old ice-cream carton of clothes pegs that she’d spilled across the kitchen table to choose one for her nose. And the spare scrubbing brush. Once a year it was changed. Silly objects she’d picked up on her shopping trips, to try to furnish and feather things; and the cooking utensils and the food was hers. And the small ceramic geese on the sill that she’d hand-painted. Things were cleaned but they always got dusty again with the dirt that came in from the woods as he walked in and out from the driveway and from the car. In the beginning, it was him who’d brought in all the dirt. He’d never been careful with the doors, never seen her efforts to wash the floor. Then she’d mentioned it to him and he had tried very hard to wipe his shoes and keep the floors clean. He’d taken it on as his job and done it very well. Which had made him a good man—a kind man—and good enough to marry at the Guildford registry office. He’d said they would probably have kids in time. Tim Smith had come. Lizzie’s mother had come up from Hove. Jacob had given her a sculpture of his hand as a wedding present. Then they’d gone to the Italian restaurant in Guildford. That had been wonderful. A really special day.
No one would have thought, back then, that they’d end up in business together. She thought of the red lipstick and the red jumper and white skirt she’d been wearing on the wedding day. A white pencil skirt to the knee. It had been fabulous. Holding up a glass of champagne. With a little white beret and a rose pinned to the side of her head.
Twenty-five years later she’d tried to leave him. The summer before that he’d tried to leave her. He’d got as far as the Dog and Duck where he’d had some supper and taken a room for the night.
She’d got as far as the Cornstack Inn at Elstead. It had been a warm August evening and she’d driven with the windows open, smelling the heat in the fields.
She’d parked the Volvo on the green, outside the pub, and taken the only room that was available. Sixty quid for bed and breakfast. A pale room. Smooth sheets.
She’d slept well and woken knowing she was going to keep going.
They’d talked about a holiday to Spain, and she’d hoped they might have gone by now. It hadn’t happened, but if she went back home after breakfast and opened up the laptop, she’d be able to book the trip with the savings she had in her own account. She would do it, she’d decided, straight after breakfast. Just for her. She had yogurt and fruit and coffee in the dining room. She paid the bill, dropped her napkin on the table and decided to book the flight. Going back home seemed a bit better then. There wouldn’t be need for discussion, or any sort of disappointment if he’d changed his mind about the holiday because of her being a bad girl and leaving, or trying to leave.
She’d sat in the dining room looking out of the window at the bright patch of village green gone a little brown and dry after the summer. Then she’d driven the five miles home and gone straight through to the kitchen. She’d seen the dog stretching on her bed by the wall, yawning with a yelp to see her, white as fish, coming back in.
He’d come down much later than usual, as if he’d been waiting upstairs in bed for the sound of her car. Saturday morning. He’d said nothing, not even that he’d overslept or had trouble dropping off in the night. He’d stood at the sink eating a bun and watched the garden. The backs of his legs were tanned, freckled, and covered in that blondish down. He’d been talking about planting some trees; oak, he wanted, though the woods were mostly alder. He’d surprised her by asking about Spain then, and whether she still wanted to go.
“I’m going to go by myself,” she’d said, in her coat still, her bag on the table. Tension had settled into her body over the years as they’d argued. A sort of survival tension: every nerve tight and ready to spring.
“That’s such a shame,” he’d said. “Because I’d like to go walking in Ronda with you.”
74. Refrain from eating all day so that you will be hungry. Focus on that hunger in order to let it win out over the feeling of disgust that will come up as you lay the table for another meal.
75. When you get out of here, you will be entirely independent and can choose to live exactly as you please. You might choose never to eat at a table again. You might choose not to use a knife and fork to eat, let alone have such things in your possession.
76. You could simply go to a shop and buy a bag of carrots and eat them outside, standing on the street.
77. Think of that bag of carrots.
78. Think of that street in Scotland. And you standing on it—free—with a bag of carrots.
79. Pour yourself a large glass of wine.
6
The job wasn’t so important as keeping the mind open to options and believing there were some. Even if she didn’t get the job—it wasn’t likely, given her appearance, and general demeanor, given what she’d done—she must carry on as normal, and press on with what life had in store for her this month.
The day dawned dry and calm. There wasn’t to be an excuse in the weather. She lay in bed feeling enormous and achy and she placed her hands on her waist and felt around her hips and thighs. It was all there already, all that meat and fat.
Lynn, who managed the Bird Hotel on the outskirts of Farnham, was a large-breasted tall woman in navy sweatshirt, tailored trousers, and trainers. She had with her Steven, who’d worked before in video and visual communications in Farnham and held his hand out round a clipboard. They needed a team member, someone who would smile at the desk.
“Not much of a commute then,” they said in unison, then beamed at each other and laughed. Lynn was probably in her early fifties too—but she was bouncy, and looked like the sort of woman who kept herself young by plugging in to a younger crowd.
In front of the sliding doors at the entrance, where they’d come to greet her, Lizzie looked down at her shoes. They looked small and dusty-black against her bobbly, woolly tights. The dog had come with her, and was chained up, whining, while traffic thundered past.
The hotel had one hundred and fifty rooms. The car park was being redesigned, which was why the Portakabin and tarpaulin were out there. The carpet was lilac and blue and green stripes, thin stripes. It was warm inside, and spacious.
Lynn took them to the circle of tub chairs in the lobby and went off to get some coffee. Steven’s task was to make Lizzie feel relaxed, so he leaned back in the chair, stretched his legs out, smiled, and crossed his ankles. He pointed to the surveillance camera in the corner. They were putting new ones up in the car park, he said.
“You’ll probably miss them, though,” he said, grinning, and Lizzie wasn’t sure what he meant. She felt herself retreating.
Then Steven said, “Precisely,” with a finger up in the air, and she wondered what she’d missed in the conversation.
Lizzie chewed the inside of her cheek and felt the sweat slide in beads over her ribs. Her Wellingtons were in the bag beside her chair.
She lifted her chin to smooth out the saggy bit in her neck. She was still feeling sick.
Lynn came back with a tray of coffee and biscuits, and unwrapped the cling film. The biscuits were chocolate ones, cookies half dipped in chocolate. She pushed the plate over and then sat back in the tub.
“You’ve been out of work for a while,” she said.
“Seven years,” said Lizzie. Then she made a point of smiling at them both.
“And how do you feel?”
“I…?”
“How do you feel about having been out of work for seven years?” Lynn was smiling with her whole face. Her lips were softly crinkled at the corners, her eyes barely there.
Lizzie swallowed. “I feel nervous,” she said. She let some air out through a small circle in her lips.
Steven nodded and wrote something down.
“Is that your dog out
there?” said Lynn.
“Yes,” said Lizzie. “Do you like dogs?”
“I do,” said Lynn.
Lizzie closed her eyes, very briefly, and saw in her mind the steel-gray eyes she had loved, and then the stomach contents lain out on the grass.
“So, you’ve been busy making…cakes?”
“It’s a hobby really. Yes.”
“On your own?”
Lizzie said: “Yes. I’m newly alone.”
“Me too,” said Lynn, and then she bit down on a biscuit and gave Lizzie a cozy little wink.
Lizzie felt herself going a little pale. The stomach had been the only thing she had not been able to save. She had cut through the waist with the carving knife and managed to puncture it so that its contents slipped out onto the grass. She hadn’t expected to see the meat lumps, and the actual oats. She’d expected to gag, but not like that, not from what had felt like her soul.
“How do you find it so far?” said Lynn. “Living on your own.”
“I think I’ll get used to it.”
“I was ambivalent at first,” said Lynn. She brushed some crumbs from her chest. “But now it’s fine. Matter of fact, it suits me well.”
Steven was looking embarrassed, looking down the length of his long legs at his shoes. Lizzie liked the fact that she could see that in him, when he was animated, when he was bored. She felt she’d not had this skill in the past. Being able to tell how others felt wasn’t something that people without imagination were good at, Jacob had pointed out. She could see now that it wasn’t true, that empathy was as much with her as it was with anyone. She smiled at Steven. He smiled back.
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