by Karen Perry
He takes the letters and the glass of powdered water, then crosses the landing back to the front bedroom. On the dressing-table in front of the bay window, he leaves the letters for Mark and Cassandra propped against the mirror. Then, taking the glass, he turns back to the bed and sees her lying there with her eyes wide open, staring at him.
His heart stumbles, then rights itself, beating quickly now. Her gaze is clear and direct, her body unmoving, so that, for a moment, he thinks she must be dead. But then her brow wrinkles with sudden pain, and her limbs start to move. She draws her gaze from his and tries to roll over on to her front, a groan of anguish or pain emerging from her throat.
He has been standing rigid, but now springs into action and hurries around to her side of the bed, leaving his glass on the floor and perching on the mattress so that he can feel the press of her hip against him. She is still moving, but with the slow unsteadiness of someone seriously intoxicated. The sounds that are coming out of her mouth are unformed grunts.
‘It’s all right,’ he says to her. ‘Everything’s going to be all right, you’ll see. Just lie back now, my dear. It will all be over soon.’
He reaches for her arms, but she resists him, her shoulders rising defensively as she attempts to roll across the mattress away from him. The grunts become words.
‘No, no,’ she says, her voice low and nasal, but there’s urgency in it.
This same urgency communicates itself into his body. He’s feeling panicked now. This is not how he wanted it to be. Not the way he’d planned it. He has to climb on to the bed and lean across her, pinning one of her arms beneath his knee so that he can reach for the pillow and bring it over her face. She thrashes beneath him, finding some last reserves of strength, but he is stronger than she is, and is able to hold the pillow in place, pressing down, all the while saying, ‘Sssh, sssh, my dear,’ in a cooing voice. ‘It will all be over soon. Be calm, my love, calm.’
These words are meant as much for him as for her, for his heart is beating madly with fear. The atmosphere in the room, which had been peaceful, now feels charged with violence and disorder. Her legs are kicking out against the mattress, scrabbling over the sheets, and the duvet slips off the other side of the bed and falls to the floor. He knows this is all for the best, but is shocked at how hard she struggles against it – as if she wants to live.
‘Please, Leah,’ he says.
But then there’s a hand in his hair, the scrape of nails over his scalp and the sharp pain as his head is yanked back. His thoughts scramble in confusion, trying to understand how she has managed to grab hold of his hair and tug him backwards, while both hands are pinned to the bed. A fleeting thought, chased away by a new terror, as an arm goes around his neck and he feels himself drawn backwards off the bed. The heat of another body presses through him, and he can feel laboured breathing close to his ear. As he is dragged off the bed, his feet scramble for their footing, almost slipping beneath him, but somehow he remains upright, and it is this one triumph that turns things to his advantage. He is taller than his assailant, and as he stands to his full height, their grasp around his neck breaks in a sudden cry of pain. A high-pitched yelp.
He turns and she throws herself against him, fists pummelling ineffectually at his chest, and for a moment, he is so astonished, he can hardly react. Red hair falling forward, freckled limbs, her dress a riot of colour. Hilary. She is clawing at him now, like a wildcat, and he grabs her wrists, wrenching them away from his face. Fury rises in him, like a seething ball of irritation. What is she doing here? Why must she always stick her nose into his business? He’s sick of her interference, her demands. She’s a pest and he wants to be rid of her, once and for all.
He’s easily stronger than her and, after a quick scuffle, he’s able to twist her around so that her back is to him, his hands groping for purchase on her flesh, grasping her beneath her breasts. He’s holding her so close, as close as lovers, and he feels her braced against him.
‘Let me go!’ she cries, plucking at his sleeve, one hand reaching back to claw his face.
But he’s intent now on his task. As he drags her from the room, his eyes go to Leah, her body lying still on the bed. Not long now, my love, he thinks, but his breath is labouring in his chest and he cannot speak. Hilary is small but she has a wiry strength, and is fighting hard against him, kicking out at his ankles and shins, scratching at the skin of his arms, his face.
Together, they lurch through the doorway, out into the hall. His mind is on the staircase – it’s right there to the left. If he can just get her there, get her down the stairs … Then he can get back to the business at hand. The business of dying.
All the while he’s been dragging her backwards, she’s been pulling away from him in the opposite direction. But now, without warning, her resistance stops. Instead of bracing herself against him, she’s going with him – not just surrendering to him, but actively pushing in the direction he’s been dragging. This change of force is astonishing, and suddenly he finds himself flung backwards. His spine cracks against the banister that skirts the landing, and he feels the sudden splintering of that old wood, those ancient spindles. There is the briefest sensation of hair in his face – the perfumed scent of it in his nostrils, a red swish across his eyes – and then there is a rush of air around him and beneath him, the distortion of walls and ceilings racing past. His arms and legs kick out at nothing, and as he flies down through the house, he feels the wind leave his lungs in a single astonished breath before the floor crashes through him. His limbs twitch briefly. Darkness falls.
OCTOBER
* * *
30
Hilary
On a dull Thursday morning in October a Sale Agreed sign appears outside Number 14. Hilary sees it as soon as she draws back the curtains in her bedroom.
For a moment, she just stands there, her hand to her chest as if there’s pain. It’s not pain, but a different sensation – unexpected. Relief. As if she’s been holding something tightly in her chest and now can let it go. Relief that this is all about to be over.
Downstairs, she finds Greg in the kitchen finishing his breakfast and tells him.
‘That was quick,’ is his response.
The house has been on the market for barely a month, and for the past three weekends, Hilary has stood at her bedroom window and watched as dozens of people – prospective buyers as well as the curious and the prurient – disappeared inside Number 14 for the open house viewing.
‘It’s not all that surprising, I suppose,’ Hilary says, as Greg sets a mug of tea in front of her at the table. ‘It’s priced very low.’
‘I expect he wants a quick sale.’
‘Probably,’ she says thoughtfully, watching as he gulps his tea while checking his watch.
It’s almost eight fifteen. Only half an hour until school starts.
‘I wonder who the buyer is,’ she says, and Greg snorts.
‘Whoever they are, I hope they know an exorcist.’
Placing his mug in the sink, he comes towards her. ‘Any plans for the day?’
She shakes her head and asks what he’d like for dinner that evening.
Sweeping aside her question, he says: ‘I’m cooking, remember? You’re to take it easy. Do something nice for yourself.’ He leans down, brushes her cheek with his lips, and then he is gone.
It is ten weeks since Anton died. Ten weeks since that awful day, and Hilary is still recovering. The cuts have healed, the bruising faded, the muscles of her shoulder, torn during the struggle, have knitted themselves back together. Most days, she feels fine – stunned but lucky. On bad days, she feels the scarring inside, deep wounds slashed across her thoughts, her heart. Some nights, she awakens from her dreams, sweating and crying, and Greg has to hold her close against him until the panic subsides.
She has not gone back to school this term. A leave of absence was hastily arranged in the last days of August. Officially, her leave is to last until the new year, but lately
Hilary has questioned whether she will ever return to teaching.
There is a sense about her, these days, of needing to start over. She yearns for renewal of some sort. A second act. She’s only forty-nine. Much of her life remains to be lived. Some days she spends hours on the internet, perusing different third-level courses, browsing speculatively through websites for adult education, life-coaching; occasionally she checks out recruitment sites. Greg thinks it’s too early for her to make any big decisions.
‘Take your time,’ he says. ‘Wait until you’re ready.’
His kindness to her in these past weeks is the one true thing that’s kept her going. It feels like a small miracle, the way they have drawn close again after all these years. Small gestures of consideration, like Greg’s new-found enthusiasm for cooking, his need to nourish and protect her, encourage her to seek out new challenges for herself – these things fill her with hope. For so long, she had planned a future without him. Now she shrinks from the prospect. She has survived, and she intends to make the most of the rest of her life.
Over the next few weeks, she watches the comings and goings across the street. Estate agents, valuers, surveyors. A removal truck sits outside Number 14 for an entire afternoon while three men carry furniture out of the house. She watches as they struggle with the piano until eventually it disappears into the dark cavern of the truck.
Maria Bolton tells her that a young family have bought the house. ‘He’s in the tech industry, she works in finance,’ Maria says. ‘Four kids between the ages of two and ten – all boys. They’ve an au pair, too, so they’ll need the space. Money to burn, apparently. They plan to gut the place and build on some glass-box extension – as if the house wasn’t big enough already. That’s if they get the planning.’
‘I hope they do,’ she responds.
Maria gives her shoulders a little shudder, her eyes widening. ‘Four boys, though! Can you imagine?’
‘I’m glad,’ Hilary says, surprised at the conviction she feels, so strong it brings a lump to her throat. ‘It’s just what that house needs. To be filled with the joyous, raucous noise of young boys.’
As her energy returns, she starts to look closely at her own surroundings. A desire has been growing inside her to make more of her home, to make it feel loved once more. Little things, like freshening the paint on the woodwork, buying some new scatter cushions for the sofa in the sitting room, finally getting a plumber to fix the slow leak under the kitchen sink. The garden doesn’t escape her attention either. The final flourish of summer has bloomed and faded, and even though it has always been Greg’s domain in terms of maintenance, Hilary finds herself relishing the opportunity to cut back and to prune. The outdoor work makes her feel enlivened, vigorous. She slices away the dead and dying, plants spring bulbs, considers new growth – renewal. In her new-found enthusiasm, she resolves to dig up the dying mini-fuchsia and replace it with something: a rosebush, or perhaps another hydrangea.
In the end she chooses a camellia. She is just returning from the garden centre in her car, the camellia on the back seat ready to be unpotted and planted, when she sees the couple climbing the steps to Number 14. For a moment, she sits in the car, the engine still running, and watches as they unlock the front door and go inside. The young man is Mark, and the woman with him – she’s sure of it – is Leah.
Hilary switches off the engine and gets out. After a moment’s hesitation, she crosses the road and climbs the steps. That same hesitation is there when she reaches for the door-knocker, trepidation running through her at the prospect of returning to a place she had sworn off for ever.
‘Oh, hello,’ she says to Mark, when he opens the door. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I just saw you there and thought I’d come over.’
His face loses some of its wariness, and he opens the door wider. Behind him, Leah is standing with her hands in the pockets of her raincoat, her eyes wide and watchful amid the bones of her thin face.
‘Hilary,’ she says softly. Then the blankness disappears from her stare and her mouth broadens slowly into a smile. ‘It’s so good to see you.’
Mark closes the door behind her and steps past. Hilary sees him touching Leah’s sleeve, hears him say: ‘I’ll just go and check out the back. Will you be okay?’
‘Sure. I’m fine.’
Once he’s gone, Leah’s attention turns back to Hilary. She reads the speculation in Hilary’s expression and smiles shyly. ‘It’s not what you think. We’re just friends.’
There’s a softness to her voice, and an imbalance to her features that wasn’t there before. Her smile extends on only one side of her face; the other seems frozen. Nerve damage, Hilary concludes. Partial paralysis.
‘It’s weird being back here,’ Leah remarks, looking around at the walls and ceiling before her gaze comes to rest near the bottom of the stairs, the place where Anton fell. ‘I thought I would feel frightened. But it’s as if nothing ever happened here.’
Hilary nods. She has the same feeling. Something momentous happened in this space, and yet on this Thursday morning, the street quiet outside, it feels so ordinary and benign.
‘I kept thinking about this house, about what happened here, what he did to me,’ Leah tells her, ‘and every time I thought of it, I felt frightened. Don’t get me wrong – most of the time, I’m just so grateful to you that the outcome wasn’t different. The very fact that I’m alive, well, that’s what matters. But still.’ Her gaze flickers again around the stairs and hall. ‘This place has been haunting my thoughts, and I wondered if I came back here – if I saw it now without him in it – maybe I wouldn’t feel scared any more. Does that make sense?’
There’s an earnestness about her that Hilary finds moving. ‘Yes. Yes, it does,’ she says, and Leah nods, still serious.
Despite the delicacy of her features and the notable pallor of the convalescent, Hilary identifies a new steeliness in the young woman, a determination that wasn’t there before.
‘Will you come upstairs?’ Leah asks, already half turned, her foot on the bottom step.
‘All right.’
‘You’ll have to forgive the limp,’ Leah explains, climbing slowly and stiffly upwards. ‘I’m told it probably won’t be permanent, but it’s taking some getting used to.’
‘How are you doing, otherwise?’
‘I have some nerve damage in my back, my leg and my face, but you probably noticed that.’ She turns and offers her lopsided smile. ‘I get headaches, dizziness, but the blurred vision is gone, thank God. As for long-term damage, I don’t know. My doctor is noncommittal when I ask. For now, I’m just trying to take one day at a time.’
They have reached the top of the stairs, and Leah moves towards the bedroom door, but Hilary stops. Where the banister had once wrapped around the stairwell, there is now a piece of plywood nailed into place. Seeing it there, it all comes flooding back: the moment he fell. One second he was firmly clasped against her and the next she was twisting free, her face turning just in time to catch the look in his eyes – that mute stare. She cannot remember any sound coming from him, no shout or cry, just an expression of sheer surprise and the movement of air, followed by that terrible thud. She leans over the plywood now and looks down, as if she can once more glimpse those open eyes staring up at her, the light of recognition dwindling from them. A vertiginous view.
It is too much. She takes a step back, turns away quickly.
Leah is inside the bedroom and Hilary goes to join her, not wanting to be alone on the landing with its memories, its ghosts. The bed is gone, as are the wardrobe and the dressing-table. All that remains is the carpet, faded and marked in places with deep grooves and indentations where the heavy furniture once stood.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Leah says. ‘Why did you come back here that day? What made you come? I mean, how did you even get in?’
Hilary smiles. ‘I know where the key is hidden, remember?’ She goes to the window, looks out across the road to her own house. Ho
w small it looks from here. Small but safe.
‘For a long time,’ she tells Leah, ‘I thought I was in love with Anton. I did love him, in fact, very deeply, and I thought that he loved me. It broke my heart when I found out otherwise. I came back here that day because I thought … Oh, I don’t know what I thought – that I could have it out with him. Demand to know how he could have used me in that way. And, if I’m honest, deep down I still hoped he felt something for me.’
‘But did you know … did you believe he’d killed his wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you still loved him?’
Hilary turns back to the room, sees the blend of curiosity and disbelief in Leah’s expression. ‘I don’t know what that says about me,’ she admits, and she hears her own voice – the wistfulness in it. ‘I thought it didn’t matter. I just kept focusing on all the reasons why he did it – his unhappiness, what a difficult and troubled person she was, all the complexities within their marriage. And me, I suppose. I felt that he did it so that he’d be free to be with me. I was stupid and selfish and deluded. It was a fantasy. And it wasn’t until I came up here and saw what he was doing to you – saw that violence within him with my own two eyes – it wasn’t until then that I realized the true horror of it. The monster he was.’