With each step forward that I take, she takes one backwards. I hold a fish finger aloft. At first, she laughs at me, like it is a game.
‘What, you’re going to force the fish finger down my throat?’ she asks.
I nod.
She snorts.
‘Yeah, like you could!’
‘I could,’ I say. ‘And I will.’
‘Come on then, just you try it!’
I move closer. She moves back. I move forward. She darts behind a chair. I push the chair over, grab her hair, pull back her head, and push the fish finger into her mouth.
She spits it out. Bits of congealed fish get in my eyes.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ she asks. The laughter is gone.
‘Feeding you,’ I say. ‘We’re having a romantic dinner. Look,’ I say, reaching behind me. ‘There’s a candle and everything.’ I hold the candle aloft. I can see the flame flicker in her face.
‘How are we having a romantic dinner? I thought you loved Adam?’
‘I love Adam,’ I say, because I do, and she knows it. That is the first time I have said it out loud. ‘I love Adam,’ I say again, because I can, it’s allowed now, there’s nothing to hide, from her. ‘I love Adam, I love Adam, I LOVE ADAM!’
But Nicole doesn’t like me loving. Look at her, moving into a corner, away from the table, away from the food I have prepared. Look, how she is cowering on the other side of the table, clutching her belly. She does not realise she is here to be seduced. Perhaps it is a mistake to profess your love for a man when trying to win a woman. Maybe I should explain that I am Luke’s research assistant this evening. That I love Adam, and that because of that I have to experience her where he has been, which is helpful for me and therefore also for Luke because then I will know how to write about our sex. For book four, which will sell and sell and sell, thus bringing me closer to Adam again for real, until the long game is over.
But that would confuse her; it is not straightforward enough. She would just see danger. And she would run and tell. So instead I will need to be hybrid Dan–Luke. Win her, romance her, use her.
‘I’m sorry, Nicole,’ I say, moving towards her. ‘That was rude of me. We all love Adam, I know.’
‘You don’t love Adam. You raped him. Jesus, you raped him. How is that love?’
She has read an entire book about me loving Adam and still she does not understand. Maybe I need to edit it. But I’m not sure how I can make it more obvious.
‘I don’t question your love for Adam,’ I say, still moving towards her. ‘Why do you question my love for him?’
‘Because it isn’t love! It’s an obsession. And you hurt him. You can’t hurt people you love! They won’t stand for it!’
I ignore the suggestion I hurt him. Any physical discomforts he may have suffered are healed, I am sure. He has hurt me in the past, more deeply. We are even.
‘He was trying to strangle you when I arrived. You said so yourself. Does he not love you?’ I ask. If she kept still, I would be almost level with her now. But she keeps moving backwards.
Nicole does not answer me.
‘Does he not love you?’ I ask again.
I see her eyes are watering.
‘Nicole, why would he love you? What would he see in you?’
Tears clot at the start of her eyelashes. In between all those little hairs, the globules sit, waiting the final pressure.
‘Does he appreciate you, Nicole, the way a man should appreciate you? Or does he hate you?’
The globules escape and begin their cascade.
‘When did he last look at you like he really loves you? When did you last really bond, connect, in a meaningful way?’ I ask.
‘What, like your connection with him is meaningful?’ she retorts, but her voice shakes.
‘Or are you just a Helen surrogate? Someone to fuck, a source of an heir?’
‘Of course he loves me. He married me.’
‘Did he kill Helen, Nicole? Did he kill her, and is he now going to kill you? Is that what you think?’
She is silent. Which means yes. It always means yes.
‘Is he coming here, to find you, to kill you?’
It’s a stupid question, because we both know he didn’t kill Helen. He has an alibi. Flawless. It’s on Facebook.
‘You’ll give me a miscarriage,’ she says, like that matters.
‘No,’ I say, ‘I will give you dinner. Come, sit.’
‘Let me pour you champagne.’ I don’t have any champagne so I will have to improvise with water.
Nicole stays standing. This is not part of the plan.
‘Dan, I can’t stay here. You may not have killed Helen, but what you did—’
‘Take a seat at the table, my love,’ he says, thinking of sitting her down, pushing her in, watching her fork his food between her lips. Then when she is sated he will quench his appetite.
Nicole backs in the wrong direction, away from our supper. But she is against the wall. There is no escape there. She needs to be guided. I place my hands firmly on her shoulder. She writhes around, trying to slip out of my grasp. I put one hand on her belly. She gasps but stops resisting. I push her down on the chair. If I move round the table again I expect she will stand up again, which will not do. So I stay next to her. Close. I half squat, holding her hands behind her back.
He feeds his beloved her supper. She longs for lobster, licking her lips as he raises it towards her, her mouth ready and open to receive it. Once in, she consumes it ravenously—
Nicole spits out a piece of fish finger onto my face. A strand of saliva follows it, linking us.
‘You disgust me,’ she snaps, breaking the strand.
Maybe Nicole is not used to romantic dinners. Perhaps Adam cannot conjure up the feelings to cook for her.
I’ll have to show her how it is done.
I take some more fish finger. This time I push it deep into her mouth, down her oesophagus, so she must eat.
She starts pretending to choke.
‘Just swallow,’ I say. ‘It will be easier.’
It’s possible that she’s not pretending. But if I let go and try to rescue her, she will run away. Which we don’t want, Luke and I.
He knows that some women enjoy being tied up. He hopes that she is one of them. He pulls her hands around the chair and holds them there. She cries out in excitement as, with one hand, he binds her hands and feet to the chair.
There. Now I have restrained her, I can rescue her.
I slap her on the back. Fish escapes her mouth. Interesting. She was not faking after all. She coughs and splutters all over the place, which, frankly, is not nice so I take my place over the other side of the table.
‘Bastard! Perverted, fucking, bastard!’ she croaks at me. ‘You killed that girl, didn’t you? You killed Ally Burrows!’
Eventually, I will need to find a way to stop her talking. I would gag her, but she needs to eat the nice meal I have prepared.
‘I know you were there, the day before she died. And “Luke” the suspect, I’m sure you said he’s your character, although I couldn’t see him in those notes – I did dry them out, by the way, a bit, and I’m sure I just about made out Soho. And then there were those Internet searches of yours. I thought, if I could just see a bit more of your writing … He won’t do anything, when he knows Adam’s coming round, I thought; it’s safe. Plus, I might be wrong, might just be pregnancy hormones, making me mad. But now this, tying me up! It’s the final proof. It’s you – you killed Ally Burrows!’
None of this is news to me, so I let her ramble. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to let her tell anyone else this story. So, I focus on the task in hand. From opposite her, I cut up her remaining fish fingers with my sabre.
‘You’re sick,’ she says, in case I have not understood. ‘Perverted. You don’t understand love. You don’t love Adam.’
I skewer a section of fish finger on the end of my sabre and proffer it to her lips. She twists her head away. I follow it with the sabre.
‘I’m not eating it, you—’
I’ll never know what I am because I get the fish finger into her mouth while she is talking.
‘I’m sorry it’s not lobster, but just use your imagination a little, pretend,’ I say.
She spits out the food.
That is no good. I must give her a romantic meal. Otherwise how will I know, how will Luke know, how it is done? This is the last chance, the last supper, before I am caught. I feel this, I know this. I must carry on.
He knows that when people say no, they mean yes. No one would really say ‘no’ to such pleasure, such closeness, if they were thinking freely, unbound by social stereotypes (if not by ropes). The secret is not to give them a chance to say anything at all. That helps everyone.
I skewer another piece of fish finger onto the sabre.
‘You know there’ll be here soon, don’t you, the police? I told them where I was, when I phoned. There’ll be here any minute.’
This is what people always say. She is too silly to remember that I know she was calling Adam.
‘Just enjoy your dinner,’ I say. ‘Then after that, we’ll have a nice hot bath, get you in the mood.’
‘I can’t have a hot bath, with the baby,’ she says. ‘I’ll miscarry!’ She is obsessed with this baby of hers. Also of Adam’s, I suppose. If I get really close inside her, maybe I’ll meet Adamkind coming the other way. She needn’t worry though, about the hot bath. It’s not the traditional variety. She needn’t be immersed. We’ll just use the saucepans and the hob. Do some sluicing. Makes up for the lack of shower and hot water.
Now, Nicole has eaten enough of her fish fingers, so we must move onto dessert.
Dessert was his favourite dish. He liked chocolate tortes, meringues, sugar baskets filled with fruit. That cracking sound with all of them when you smashed them with the fork – delicious. It took control, for all the pieces not to go flying, not to destroy the whole sweetness. Ice-cream, he used occasionally, when a lady wanted it, so much she would die for it. Sometimes you had to give a lady what she wanted.
Nicole would have to make do with Angel Delight. It’s the pink sort, most tasty. I could, I suppose, drizzle it on her, then lick it off. Perhaps that would be seduction.
I carry the bowl through, and walk behind her chair.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks, twisting around, trying to see me.
I hold her hair and move it away from her neck, over her shoulder.
Now I have the nape of her neck, exposed to me. Were she a lobster, I would start my incision, just there, cutting down, down down. Or would I? Maybe the front. Yes, that would be more effective. Her belly, exposed.
But as she is not a lobster, I take a spoonful of Angel Delight and drip it onto her neck.
She screams so loudly that I almost don’t hear the doorbell.