JACK: Monday morning,
twenty-two days after the split
Safely back in the loft, I cannot believe I have got away with it.
I pick up my phone from the top of the sleeping bag next to me. I go to the website of the local paper and read the headline for the hundredth time, even though I know it off by heart.
FIRE THAT KILLED LOCAL MAN STARTED FROM LIT CIGARETTE
I am in the clear.
Twenty hours on, and my hands have almost stopped shaking.
Still holding my phone, I flick through all the cameras, half expecting to see police coming through the front door and up the stairs, but there is nothing. You are all in the kitchen. You are taking the kids to your parents later, and Amy and Ben are already arguing about who will have the front seat in the car. You are pale and there are dark rings around your eyes. But you tell them to shush and make themselves sandwiches, as if this is a normal day.
I could cry from relief.
I hadn’t planned to kill him. It was a split-second thing. When I crept in through the unlocked back door, I was only going to scare him. But then I saw he’d fallen asleep in the chair in the living room. With a half-empty bottle of whisky in front of him. I remembered what he was doing the night before with you to make him so tired, and a red mist came down.
There was only one smoke alarm downstairs, in the kitchen, so I took the battery out of that and left it hanging open, as if someone had meant to replace it but not got around to it. Then I went around making sure all the doors were closed. I set fire to the living room curtains first. Then the Sunday paper, with all the different sections. I arranged most of them on the floor around the legs of the chair he was sitting in. I lit a cigarette from the packet on the coffee table and laid it carefully on the newspaper directly underneath his hand, which was hanging down over the arm of the chair.
Then, I crept back through the kitchen. The blaze was crackling around me and the smoke was already making it hard to see two feet in front of me. I took the key from the inside of the back door and stepped out into the garden. I didn’t know air could taste so good. I closed the door behind me and locked it with the key before pushing the key back under the door.
The back door was the most obvious escape route from the living room, and I was sure he would try to get out that way. He wouldn’t see the key because of the smoke. And with any luck, the police would think he had knocked the key to the floor in his panic to get away.
After I ran off, I stood at the corner of the road and watched as the first licks of black smoke came snaking out of the building. My heart was still pounding, my thoughts racing. Only when the front door opened and a woman came out with her hand to her mouth, did I stop to think about the people in the other flats.
I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.
I’m not a monster.
As luck would have it, the only person who got hurt was him. Really, things couldn’t have worked out any better.
I spent the night pacing the streets, my nerves jangling. Every time I heard a car behind me, I thought it was the police coming to arrest me.
It was six o’clock in the morning before I snuck back home while you were all asleep. It is the first day of the Easter holidays. I knew no one would be up early. No one heard me hook the ladder down and climb back up to the loft.
Through the kitchen camera, I watch you talking to the kids. You are telling them that you can’t set off to Cornwall until later, as there is a problem with the electrical wiring in the house. You say you don’t want to leave it as it is while you are away, in case of fire. Something flickers in your pale face when you say the word fire. Then it is gone.
You have called Mel’s brother, Gaz, in to do the wiring, and that makes me grit my teeth until they hurt. Gaz calls himself a handyman, but he is useless. Why didn’t you ask me to do it? I always did everything around the house.
I have calmed down a little by the time Gaz arrives. Now Croissant Man is out of the way, it is only a matter of time before you come running back to me. And once I am back home, there will be no more calls to Gaz.
Also, I am looking forward to having the house to myself while you are all in Cornwall. Sleeping in my own bed. Taking a bath.
When Gaz switches off the electrics, the cameras stop working, so I put down my phone and think about us. We have been through the worst. From now on, everything will be better. This has been a test of our marriage, a test of me. And I have proved myself. There is nothing I will not do for you. For us.
Till death do us part.