Jessica, 26th August
This has been a week from hell. Drew has been trying to manoeuvre me into having ‘a conversation’ but I’m avoiding it. He’s going to ask me to leave, I can just tell. He is killing me with his kindness, so considerate, but that’s what has clued me in to his intentions. That’s the way he would deliver bad news, with a hug and an ‘I’m so sorry – it’s not you, it’s me’ line when we both know it is completely me. And if he saw the whole picture, the ‘being nice’ to Max part of my life, my suitcase would be outside the door like that pathetic character in Evita. I should put it there myself but where would I go next?
The cutting is getting worse. I’m doing it in places I don’t think anyone will see. Add to that the fact that I’m a chemical stew. Can’t sleep. Seeing the Scream – or fearing to see it – every time the lights go out.
I don’t want to talk about me right now.
The irony is that Lizzy has asked me over to supper at Michael’s to cheer him up – as if I could be anyone’s cure. Maybe seeing me so wretched will bring sunshine into his life, I don’t know. I didn’t want to agree, as that house has nothing but bad memories for me and I’m not in a good place to go back there; but there is something about Lizzy that is hard to resist. She has been so kind to me, standing by me when others didn’t, introducing me to Drew, so when she laid it on thick about how Michael fears his career is in ruins, I found myself saying ‘yes’. I wanted to say that he should’ve thought about being nicer to people on the way up, but what is the point of ‘I told you so’?
Drew knows I’m going but doesn’t approve. He must be wondering by now about all my mysterious evenings out but that’s another thing I’m not letting us talk about. Fortunately he’s got his own plans for tonight: tickets for a Kraftwerk gig with a mate from his schooldays. He said weeks ago how he queued up for hours at the box office to get hold of good seats. I tell him to go ahead and enjoy it. A couple of hours with Michael won’t kill me.
After Drew leaves on the moped bound for Hammersmith, I dress carefully, trying for the ‘I’m flourishing away from you, you bully’ look, which translates as a red dress for confidence and black high-heeled shoes. I scrutinise my face in the mirror. I’m looking pale and unhappy. That won’t do. I apply blusher and a bold red lipstick. Shit, now I look like a clown. I tone it down a little but I still seem a little manic even to my own eyes. Psyched up, I arrive at the house only to find no one home. Brilliant. A little of my attitude escapes like air from a balloon, leaving me sagging. I go along to Lizzy’s, thinking maybe I misunderstood her message and she is holding the supper party at her house. I’ll look a complete chump if I’ve got the wrong day. She comes to the door, up to the elbows in flour.
‘Oh, Jessica, sorry, I’m running way behind. Flossie got a stick lodged in her throat so I had to make an unscheduled visit to the vet. Then Michael got summoned to see the Principal at Royal Holloway at the last moment but he shouldn’t be long.’
‘Is it serious?’
She smiles grimly. ‘Flossie or Michael?’
‘Both.’
‘Dog’s fine but as for Michael, I don’t know. Maybe. He’s certainly going to need us. Look, I’ve got the keys. Would you be an angel and feed the cat for me and lay the table? My kitchen is a mess – I’ve totally gone overboard with what was supposed to be a simple meal.’
‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’
‘You know me – I get caught up once I open a recipe book. I thought it was better to keep the chaos here and then we can eat like civilised beings at Michael’s when he gets home. You know how he hates mess.’
‘Sounds a plan. Is there anything I can do though? Chop stuff? Feed cough drops to Flossie?’
‘Ridiculous dog.’ I can hear the spaniel whining in the back of the house, scrabbling at the door to get out to greet me. ‘Oh, I know what you can do. I’ve cheated on the bread.’ She passes me a packet of part-cooked rolls she has ready by the front door for transportation. ‘Can you put these in the oven at eight?’
‘Contrary to Michael’s opinion, I’m not entirely clueless. I think I can just about manage that.’
‘Jess, I know you’re not clueless. Thanks.’
I take the keys and let myself into what was once my home. Weird – it smells different somehow, some kind of heavy cleaning spray lingers in the air. The alarm buzzes, bringing with it all those unpleasant memories of the accusations Michael levelled at me. I punch in the code and open the door to go through to the kitchen. Colette scampers in – at least she is pleased to see me. I lift her to my lap and bury my face in her fur.
‘Colly, I’ve made such a mess of everything.’
She kneads my thighs in pinprick punishment.
‘Yeah, you’re right. I should feed you.’ She transfers her attention to the kibble I pour her and then I set the bread out on a baking tray. Lizzy has picked a pretty pinwheel of different buns, some seeded, some with a glaze. They look too good to eat. Jeez, what is wrong with me? I’m weeping because we’re going to spoil the pattern. Biting a knuckle to bring me back to some semblance of calm, I check my watch. It’s close to eight. I decide to delay putting them in as the instructions say they only take six minutes.
Don’t stop. That’s when the thoughts come. So, what next?
I lay the table as asked. Lizzy has already put out the things we’ll need, even down to the tablecloth, wine-red napkins, and candles, so it is just a question of piling Michael’s papers up on the sideboard. I flick through them, of course, and note that his new book is nearly finished. Ironically the title is The Pathology of a Killer. His publisher must be anticipating bigger-than-average sales thanks to his notoriety.
Killer, killer, who is the killer? I realise I’m chanting it like some playground rhyme. Focus. Knives and forks. I then set three places, light the candles, dim the overhead lights and sit down to see what it all looks like at table level. I don’t like this, being alone here. Where is everyone? Still hearing no one at the door, I open the bottle of red to let it breathe. I persuade myself that it also needs tasting so I help myself to a healthy glug in one of the big-bowled glasses Michael prefers. They were a wedding present, he once said.
Sitting with the wine in my hand, mesmerised by the ruby glow, it dawns on me that this is the first time I’ve sat here and done nothing for weeks. It’s an odd position to be in sole occupation of the house from which I was thrown out so unceremoniously. The oven hums away to itself on its ascent to the required temperature. The refrigerator joins in with a smoother purr. Even Colette butts in as she circles on my knee and sits down to rumble her happiness on my lap. I’m horribly reminded of Jacob, sitting with his final whisky. Was he alone or did he have company for that last drink? I’m still thinking he was his own killer. It was some weird way of committing suicide – lace the fatal drink as a ‘sod you’ to Michael, miscalculate the dose so he had time for doubts, stumble to front door, hit head somehow and end up killing self in an unintended manner.
A little Byzantine maybe, but it is plausible. His behaviour trying to frame Michael shows an obsessive, possibly depressive man flailing about for some kind of payback. The real cause of his grief was dead though, so he was always going to miss his true target.
‘Tell me about Emma and Katy,’ I murmur, scratching Colette under her chin. ‘What really happened to them?’ Jacob said in his files that he had found no record of Emma’s treatment, but then he was looking for her under the name Ali, or variations on that. But what about Katy? Was she Jacob’s child? I listen hard, almost persuading myself I can hear the cries of that lost girl in the walls of the house, or shut in the basement. Michael had dismissed that question but he doesn’t appear to have pressed Emma for an explanation as to who the father was, and Emma is very cagey in the diary entries I’ve read. I think Jacob was the parent. It would certainly explain his desperation to find the answers if he was fighting to reclaim his daughter. Where did she go after Emma’s death? Off with that Biff person? From the evidence in the diary, Emma and she were thick as thieves. Biff was a she, wasn’t she? I can’t remember now if Emma ever said. I was reading backwards in the diary and only got two-thirds of the way through. Maybe if I got home early enough tonight I’d have another go at finishing it off. I hadn’t taken very good photos of the pages so it has been slow going. I thought I’d have more time but my other life, keeping Max happy, is taking up my evenings. From what I’ve got through, Emma spends a lot of time complaining about living in the woods, so it’s frankly got less interesting than the later entries about her marriage and experience of cancer treatment that I read first. I liked that Emma. I’m not so sure what to think about the earlier one I’m meeting now.
I no longer think we’d get on.
It’s no good. My mind circles back to the thought I’ve been avoiding all evening. What am I going to do? I had a chance a few days back, a life raft with Drew, but instead I’m hanging off the side, doing a Jack from Titanic. Drew can’t pull me in because my messed-up sex life is dragging me down. I do the wrong thing, the thing I don’t want to do each and every time. I should tell Max ‘so sue me’ but I can’t because he’s got his hooks in. He knows it’s not just about the money for me. Some shameful part of me wants to be fucked over by him – and I hate that. I can see that if I don’t change, don’t kick free, I’m going to die. Not literally – I’ll keep breathing – but inside.
It is getting dark. The kitchen clock hands are halfway to the splits, pointing to eight-twenty. I used to be able to do the splits when I was a kid – fat chance of that now. Shut up, brain. Think happy thoughts for once. Should I go back and knock on Lizzy’s door again, see what the hold-up is? Maybe I could even talk to her about all this, unburden myself? She was a good listener after Eastfields. I should’ve thought of her earlier. I don’t move even though I don’t like sitting here on my own in the conservatory. I’d asked Michael to get blinds but he hadn’t wanted to change anything, saying roof ones were enough, that we weren’t overlooked. How does he know that? With all the lights on, I’d be visible to someone outside like a fish in an aquarium. Anyone can see that I’m alone, creep up on me and…
Oh God, I’ve conjured him up again – the screaming ghost. I knuckle my eyes, trying to drive him away.
‘I will not think about him. I will not think about him.’
My heart is racing, pulse pounding in my ears. Not going there. I take a Valium, trying to muffle the noise inside, slow everything down. How long will it take to kick in? Too effing long. I don’t want Michael, or Lizzy for that matter, to see me like this. I must stop sabotaging myself by summoning up these demons as soon as I sit still for a few moments. Leave the past in the past.
Colette doesn’t like the way I’m holding on to her and jumps in disgust from my knee. She disappears into the laundry room.
I brush the fur from my lap. Calm down, Jessica. Calm. Down.
I close my eyes and try the breathing Drew has been telling me to practise. In, two, three. Out, two, three. It does help. My heart goes from canter to gallop. Slowly I lift my chin and open my eyes.
A dead white face is pushed up against the glass, mouth a black O of horror, staring right at me. I have time to register the glint of the eyes in the cut-outs before my screaming begins. The ghost steps back into the darkness. It vanishes as quickly as it came.
Oh my God, oh my God. I crumple onto my knees and crawl under the table, pulling the tablecloth with me with a crash of crockery and glass. I want to run but I’m too scared to go outside. I want Drew. I grope in my pocket and try his number but he doesn’t pick up. Why doesn’t he pick up? Oh God, God. The screaming won’t stop.