He didn’t want to let me into his Holloway flat that night. Not at first. He was “going through something” with you. He was giving you some space and he still needed his distance from me. He looked like he had the weight of the world on him.
“I know, you’re serious about her, I get it, it’s just that I can’t believe she’s chucked you out of your own place too!?”
He tried to defend you, but I spoke over him. “Anyway, I just thought these might be in order”—I held my bags of wine and meat up—“while we chat about how we’re going to consciously uncouple.” I smiled.
He viewed his feet for a second. “No, Katherine. I’ve been doing really well. I don’t need it anymore.”
“So then, you’re well. Come on, one more meal. For old times’ sake? You look like you could do with it.”
“No. I’m sorry. This isn’t happening.”
“Please. Don’t make me beg. Can we just have one final meal, like the old days? Please, let me say goodbye to our life together. You owe me that. You only asked me to move out for a few weeks. Now. Well, now…Please, cook for me? Have a little glass with me? Do this, and I’ll make it easy from here on in. I promise.” He didn’t look up from his shoes. “If not for me, then do it for her. You don’t want to inflict ugly court stuff on her when she probably just wants her honeymoon period with you. Remember our early days? Magical. Incredible. Are you going to deny her that?” The tears came, right on cue.
“Don’t cry, please. It’s not you.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” I said, swallowing. “So are you going to let me in, or what? One final supper and let’s see if we can’t make this quick and painless.”
He looked into my face. “Are you sure you’re ready to do this? Things got pretty ugly in the park that day, and, well, you look like you’ve probably been on one already.”
“Yes, I have been drinking. And thinking. I’m getting there. I just need to sort things out like me and you; not like some old married couple who hate each other. Break bread, have a tiny wee drink. Because we don’t hate each other, do we?”
Here, I’m being Cool Katherine, I’m-all-right-really Katherine, though I was boiling angry with him and you. The walk had sobered me up, which made me realize that mad-as-hell me wouldn’t be the most effective, the most likely to win him back, and bring him around to seeing what you really were. I needed to be cool, Shit Happens me. Was this your process too? It feels powerful, doesn’t it? A sleight of hand, a trick of character. Dialing up this element, dialing down that. Molding and presenting yourself as the ideal lover, the perfect friend. Short-circuiting your connection with another person. Cheating your way to it. Which Lily were you with him?
“Of course we don’t. Come on then, come inside. I’ll cook, let’s talk, but I can’t drink with you, OK?”
“OK, Iain, your rules.”
I was in.
The first drink, he refused. The second too. “No, no. I can’t. Not for me, really.”
“I think you deserve it, don’t you? Whatever she’s putting you through, I can tell it’s hurting you. Give yourself a bit of a break. You know you can get back on the wagon tomorrow, right? Listen, I’ll just pour you a glass, then it’ll be your decision.”
We talked for a while before he took the meat off me to marinate. He’d left the drink untouched to that point, but took the glass away to the kitchen with him, ostensibly to use the wine to tenderize the lamb.
He returned with an empty glass.
Without looking at me, he filled it to the brim again, a grimness in his eyes. He downed it like a parched man, eyes closed as he gulped. I could see every muscle in him give in to the familiar warmth of booze, of being with me, just like we had been for years. His eyes stayed closed for a while before he opened them again to look straight at me, that familiar twinkle in his gray eyes. My Iain. I could get him back. This was working out.
“Fuck it, eh? One last time. We deserve a normal meal together, don’t we, love?”
“I believe we do.”
I refilled his glass.
* * *
—
WE’D SUNK nearly two bottles, the lamb shoulder I’d bought from the Halal butchers on the way pulled off its greasy bone and finished. So, I took out the coke. “Don’t be mad,” I said as I began racking up rows of clean and tidy lines.
“What are you playing at!?”
“I had loads left over from, you know. Thought we may as well go out with a bang.”
He laughed, but I saw that grimness again as he leaned forward and took the rolled-up £20 note off me, shaking his head. But just imagine how deep-down happy he would have been about all of this; to see a familiar face and the resources he needed to feel better: a river of Rioja to rinse off his sadness, a cheap piece of meat for him to cook into succulent submission, and a good amount of coke, so he wouldn’t have to worry about running out. Fuck it. C’mon!
We talked about the first time we shagged. And the last. I wanted to fuck him again. This was his chance to come back to me. I wanted to show him what I knew he would have been missing. We could reunite and get you out of my flat together. He’d come around to my way of thinking; he’d have to, surely, given you’d managed to evict him from his own home, my home.
“I know part of us was always being with other people, but it was always you. You were the best. No one else feels like you. Nothing else feels like us, does it?” I reached for the zipper on his jeans.
“No. I’m sorry. I can’t. Kathy, we’re too…fucked.”
“But we’re not. We’re not screwed, not really.”
“No. No, we are…We’re gone. And I love her. I need to love her.”
“But she’s thrown you out. And can you really say that’s it for you and me?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but there it is. It’s really over now. We’re just too…fucked.”
“Stop fucking saying that!” I shouted. I shouldn’t have raised my voice. It showed I’d lost control and meant he felt able to challenge me back. My plan for the night wasn’t working out after all.
“No, I will. I will because d’y’know the biggest fucking issue here? The big fucking problem at the heart of all this is you’re fucked…I can see that very fucking clearly now. You’re fucked”—he slurred the “ck.” “You’ve even fucked me up tonight. I can’t believe I let you. Again. I can’t…I just can’t be part of this anymore.”
“That’s not fair. Now you’re sounding like a cunt! My illness? Are you trying to punish me for that?”
“No. And you know I never would.”
“Iain. I deserve to know why you’re punishing me. How has it been so easy to just give up on me after all we’ve been through?”
“I don’t want to. Please, can you not?”
“Iain.”
He took a slug of his booze. “You sure you wanna hear this, because this is going to be hard to hear, it’s fucking hard enough to say.”
“What is?”
“Your manuscript. The first one. I read it.” He peered at me for a reaction while taking another gulp. I didn’t give him any. “I found it and I read it. You never let me see it. Because that’s no work of fiction, is it?”
“Is that what you found on my laptop that morning? Why did you bother reading that? I wrote that more than twenty years ago. It’s early stuff…Fantasy. What were you going to do with it?”
“This is the sad thing. I was feeling fired up about writing again, thinking I could get into it again and I thought, maybe, if you reminded yourself of what you were capable of, it might get you going again too.”
“What I’m capable of?”
“Oh, don’t you worry, love. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“No secret. Fantasy. I had a very hard childhood. You know that.”
“Hey, I promise, I won’t say
a word, but I don’t want any part of it. I have to get well. I’ve got to protect our future.”
“Our future?” Still me and Iain? Together? My heart beat a little harder, an injection of joy, or relief at least.
“Yeah, our future together, mine and Lily’s.” My heart fell again. “I can’t get into it, but we’ve definitely got a future. I’ve got to look after it.”
“Your future.” I looked at my hands. They were dry and rough, blue cords of veins shooting up above my wrist bones in ways I’d only just noticed. Just like my mother’s.
“You’re going to regret this, Iain.”
“No I’m not.”
“Well, let’s just say if you think I’m going to make this easy for you, let you walk away with half my flat, you’re dreaming.”
“And let me tell you this: if you so much as think about trying to fuck this up for me and her, you’ll find Derbyshire Constabulary opening up a very fucking cold case.”
Neither he nor I spoke for a moment.
“Iain, have you and her not fucked my life enough yet? Not taken enough away from me that now you’re cooking up this complete crap about my manuscript? Where’s your copy anyway?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“OK. Well, I can see you must be very serious about you and her, if it’s come to this.”
“I am. I have to be.”
“You’re wrong, you know. You’ve completely misread my intentions when I wrote Creep Feeder. But it’s OK. Honestly, I get it. It’ll be fine. I won’t make things more difficult than they need to be. Your future. My future. Two separate things. I see it. So, let’s say goodbye now. Say farewell to the past. Drink to that?” And I filled his glass, put a drop in mine, then watched him down what I’d given him.
“Here, you relax, while I clean up.”
He watched me as I took the rest of the pots to the dishwasher.
He didn’t notice when I returned from the kitchen without a glass for myself.
He kept drinking as we talked about the first time we met: at a Japanese bar in Soho, long-closed now. We’d both peeled away from our respective work Christmas parties. Talking with him had been so easy, so funny. We both hated Titanic. Everyone else loved it. We didn’t. Were we always bonded by our hatred of the stupid things other people loved—vanilla sex lives and marriage, not being able to say Fuck it.
He was getting more and more incoherent, dropping off into micro-sleeps from time to time. In those moments of lost consciousness, I’d take a tea towel and wipe each empty bottle clean of my fingerprints in turn. In a moment of wakefulness, he said, “Do you know, Katherine Ross…you’re a fucking amazin’ woman. I’ll always think that, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what happens to us, and, you know, I never meant to hurt you.”
And yet I always end up hurt. I always end up being made to do things I don’t want to do; things that hurt me even more.
“I know you didn’t, Iain. But it happened.”
“I never meant to hurt you, babe. I didn’t. You’re such, such…an incredible woman.”
“Well. I think you should probably drink to that. Why don’t you top yourself up?” He clumsily pawed each empty bottle in turn.
Even as I watched him lose control, I could remember how easy it was to fall in love with Iain and how hard it was going to be to do what I needed to do next.
He filled his glass one last time.
“Tomorrow…I’m dry forever.”
* * *
—
ALL THE WINE was gone. The drugs were finished.
Iain’s night was done.
I had to protect myself from any more hurt. Just like I did with my mother, I had to make sure I was free and stayed free. Sometimes being in control is where that starts. I think you understood that. Not everyone does, but you did.
His thinned-down form had slid down the arm of the beat-up two-seater. I was standing over him, observing him, there on his back, knees poking into the air, his mouth agape. Granddad after Christmas dinner here again. And l loved him. I will always love him.
His breathing was regular and shallow.
“Iain. Iain?” I shook him, but he was too far gone.
I put my jacket on, went to the kitchen, to the dishwasher. I let my leather slip off my shoulders and put one set of cutlery, crockery, and the glass I’d used back into the cupboards and drawers. I also removed the bowl he’d used to prepare the meat that night. Iain and his marinades. Alchemy that could turn tough flesh into supple delight, transforming the undervalued into the much-appreciated, using time against itself on older cuts of meat; with patience, the flesh could become more desirable than that of a spring animal. I thought he’d stick with me. I thought his patience would last forever. I thought there was value in that. A depth between us built up over time. Not always easy, but better than anything you could offer. That’s what I thought, and I was wrong. You had a hold on him stronger than mine.
Pinching the bowl between my leathered grasp, I took it back to the living room and placed it on the carpet. On my knees, I hovered above it, forced two fingers to the back of my throat and filled it. I turned to see if he’d been disturbed by my retching. No.
I went to him, used my finger and thumb to widen his already gaping mouth, and started to gently pour the contents of the bowl into it.
He spluttered and he gagged, but his head didn’t turn. I poured some more, slowly, steadily. More spluttering. I went back to the kitchen to wash the bowl and when I returned, he was still and quiet.
Iain.
My Iain.
Realistically, there was only ever one end for Iain once he’d left me. Some people can’t survive without the stronger half of their couple. You were too young to realize this. If someone ushered the exact moment of his end forward, I hardly see that as a major crime.
The police suspected no foul play. A coroner’s inquest concluded he’d choked on his own vomit. No forensic investigation. I suppose it’s because he was so clearly a sitter for an early death. Not a born goner, but marked for the grave once he’d chosen you over me.
Your death too was the outcome of a tragic accident. It’s official. I was a blameless bystander, but still, I wasn’t invited to your funeral today, despite our connection. But not going today, that’s OK with me, really, because there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to say goodbye to you. The world lacks a certain color without you in it. It doesn’t keep me so alert, so awake as it did with you, so I’d like to imagine you’re still here.
It’s a good job I’m so busy now, otherwise I’d likely get ill again. I’m starting a new website: www.freshdirection.com. I might actually make some money from it. Imagine. I need to hand over some of the leg work. I’m advertising for my own interns next week.
I’m also contesting the will and things are looking very good there too. Iain’s detoxing, combined with your lies and your history of manipulation, made it relatively straightforward to suggest “the testator was coerced into it without a sound mind.” Both flats will be officially 100 percent mine, but it’s only on the day I know you and the baby are in the ground that I feel able to return to my own flat, a locksmith in tow.
You’ve made me have to break into my own home. Some achievement. Again, I feel that grudging respect you must have had for me too, surely? When I finally get inside, I also appreciate how you’ve cleared so much of the stuff Iain and I had collected over the years, chucking out all I’d smashed up. Not even The Film poster is here. My home is blank again. It looks ready for a new start.
But when I think about going into my bedroom cold fear takes me over. I’m afraid to go in there, to be made to imagine what you did in there with Iain, to see for the thousandth time the image of you on him in that horrid garden behind my eyes. I never want to see that image again, but I will. I see it every day, one hundred times a day.
I’m relieved when I find the room is bare, save for your red trunk, which is packed and ready to leave. Where did you think you were going?
I look around, as if checking whether you’re watching me still, before running my fingers along the beat-up leather straps over the top of the case. I let my fingertips rest on the scuffed gilt of your true initials. I feel a thrill of freedom and power as I unbuckle the straps and flip the trunk’s lid backward. Such a contrast to when I stole a glance at your laptop case. I’m in total control now. At the very top of the trunk’s contents, there it is: your yellow laptop case. My mind wanders back for the thousandth time to that March morning. I bring the case to me, hold it to my face, and the floral scent of your youth raids my sense of control. I throw it to the floor.
When I look again at your trunk my eyes fall on something that didn’t belong to you.
My manuscript.
I reach for it, but a knock at my door stops me. I toss the document back on the bed and then, a terrifying thought: Perhaps you are not in your grave after all. As I approach my door and take the handle, my heart thumps at the idea of the ghost of you behind it.
Gemma.
“How did you get in?”
“I’ve come for her things,” she says, pushing past me.
“You have no right to—”
“You have no right to stop me. This was her flat too and her possessions were always hers. Where have you hidden them?”
“I appreciate today must have been very difficult for you, but—”
“You appreciate nothing!” she spits, stepping around me and into my kitchen and living room, pacing around frantically as if she might find you again here, but keeping her arms firmly folded across her black jacket, like she doesn’t want to touch any surface.
“We should really arrange another time to do this. I’d like you to go.” I want her to leave so I can be alone with the residue of you in my home.
Precious You Page 29