Remember Why You Fear Me (22 page)

“You’re not enjoying that, are you?”

“It’s fine.”

“Fucking typical. Well, then.” And Alex got up, and he took David’s plate away, and he slammed it into the sink.

David said weakly, “I don’t like pasta very much.”

“Right,” said Alex. “Of course not. You know, I don’t think you’re putting much effort into this relationship. I’m the one who’s doing all the running. Aren’t I? I buy the drinks, the cinema tickets, it’s me that cooks dinner. You didn’t even bring any wine, did you?”

“You told me you weren’t drinking.”

“Always some excuse with you. Is this what you were like with Janet? Christ. No wonder she drank. No wonder the poor bitch killed herself.”

David started to explain that Janet hadn’t killed herself. Had she? She’d been happy with him. Wasn’t that the case? It’d been an accident, a tragic accident of circumstance.

“Upstairs,” said Alex.

“What? No.”

“Upstairs, to the bedroom.”

“No way.”

“Upstairs,” said Alex, picking up a knife. “Or I’ll fucking
cut
you. I will. I’ll cut you, you bastard. Upstairs. Now.”

So they went upstairs.

“The problem with you,” said Alex. “Is you don’t know what love is.” And he opened the bedroom door, pushed David inside.

It was like a shrine. The walls were covered with hundreds of photographs, and all of the same woman. Some were posed for, some caught unawares. But either way, whether ready for the camera or not, in each picture she had the same expression, the same smile, and that struck David as odd, how could she always make her face the same, so fixed and unmoving? She wasn’t a pretty woman, her head was too round—but she wasn’t ugly, had you seen a single picture of her you wouldn’t have given her a second glance. But the whole array of these pictures, this presentation of her entire facial repertoire—and she had
one
smile, just
one
—and it made David feel suddenly sick, as if he were looking upon something that wasn’t quite human, just something slightly off, something that his brain would have normally have consigned to his peripheral vision. Her nostrils always flared, her eyes so wide and unblinking, and that mouth in each picture contorted into an identical smile, the smile so big and broad and covered with thick gloopy lipstick.

“I’ve had a bad time,” said Alex. “I’ve had a very bad time. But do you see? Do you see how much I love her?”

“Yes, I see,” croaked David through the nausea.

“No, really. Look.
Look
.” And Alex grabbed David’s hair, and dragged him to the wall, and forced his face hard against a patch of photos—and all David could think of was what this would do to his invisible wife, he’ll squash Janet over all the pictures, he’ll squash my wife all over
his
wife, how’s that going to look?

Close up, of course, with Tracey’s face against his, David couldn’t make out any identifying features at all.

“I went to your house,” said Alex. “I looked for photos. Just some evidence that you were missing your wife the way I missed mine. But there’s nothing, is there? I thought maybe you’d done what I did, put all her things in one room so you could see them better. I
believed
that of you. But you haven’t.”

“No,” said David.

“She gave you all that love. And you gave none back. You can’t even
feel
anything now she’s dead. Can you? You’re a fraud. Aren’t you?”

“I’m a fraud,” said David.

“Your problem is,” repeated Alex, “you don’t know what love is. It’s not a little thing. It’s life and death. You don’t give someone your heart one day, make them the centre of your life. Become a unit. And then
adjust
when they die. Well, I’m better than you. I’m not going to adjust. I’ll never adjust. You’ll see.”

And he gave David the knife. David stared down at it, blankly. As ever, numb.

“You’ve always had such contempt for me,” said Alex, gentler somehow. “Right from the start. Do you think I’m that stupid? Do you think I couldn’t see? But ask yourself. You kept coming back to me. Why did you do that?”

“I honestly don’t know,” said David.

“I know,” said Alex. “Because you have a job to do.” He got on to his knees. “Kill me,” he said.

David slowly registered what Alex had said. Looked down at the knife again, then across to Alex, waiting, unafraid, even smiling—smiling like his dead wife in all the pictures about them, it was as if he were trying to parrot her.

“I can’t,” said David, but his hand was grasping on to that knife, it was getting the feel for it.

“And I can’t go on without her. And if you had any fucking balls, you’d feel the same way about your wife. But now. Now. Your wife killed my wife. And now you kill me. It’s fitting. It’s simple.”

And it was simple, David could see that, any fool could see that. The hand was stroking the knife, it
liked
this knife. The brain didn’t like it, told the hand to stop, but no one listened to David’s brain anymore. He couldn’t even feel the blade against his fingers, he was oh so numb.

He bent down to Alex. Lifted the knife, right up to his face, right up to his eyes. And Alex flinched in spite of himself.

“No,” David breathed on him, and his breath was hot, but it wasn’t his breath, it was hers, it was hers.

“Why not?” said Alex, and he looked like a child, a sad spent little child.

“Because I don’t care. I don’t care.” He dropped the knife to the carpet. Got to his feet. And smiled such a broad smile, and blew him a little kiss. “And I never did.”

David left the room, left the house, left Alex weeping on his bedroom floor.

David went home.

He went to every desk drawer, every cupboard. He took from them all the photographs of Janet. He couldn’t even remember why he had done that now. He couldn’t remember why he wouldn’t want to see her face. He looked at that face now. He looked at every single one of those photographs, and studied her face each time. He found her diary, and it wasn’t a diary, really, just a notebook of birthdays and doctor’s appointments, but nevertheless he read it from cover to cover.

Then he went upstairs to her wardrobe, and pulled out all of Janet’s clothes. He didn’t smell many, he didn’t stroke them—well, maybe one or two. He pulled out her favourite summer dress.

He put all her belongings into a big heap on the sitting room floor. Like a funeral pyre, waiting for a light.

And then he said goodbye to his wife. And he cried. Without sound, but it was real, and it was long, and it hurt.

He hurt. And he grieved. And he let Janet go. He let every trace of her go.

He went to the bathroom mirror to wash his face. He knew now it wouldn’t be his face looking back at him. He knew, too, that it wouldn’t be his wife’s. And he was so tired, so very tired.

He looked at her. He tried to look away. Tried to blink, even—but he wasn’t able to blink, he wasn’t able to close his eyes, and they opened wide and large and sore.

She wouldn’t let him close his eyes. She wanted him to see her at last. She wouldn’t let him
not
see.

He felt his eyes harden from lack of moisture. Felt little cracks appear in them. There was no water in his head left, he’d wasted it all, he’d wept it all away. She’d taken Janet’s life, and now she was taking his, and she didn’t care, she didn’t care, she never had, and he
wanted
his eyes to crack, let them fissure, let them pop. But they didn’t, they didn’t.

“And now,” he said, and he smiled, and the smile was big and broad and sticky. “Now, let’s have some fun.”

She said that she didn’t love you anymore, and this time you actually believed her. For once it had the whiff of truth to it—because oh, yes, she’d often say she didn’t love you, but you’d always known better; she’d shout it out sometimes, loud so the neighbours could hear—though she didn’t care, why should she care about such stuff when she had a strop on?—at the very top of her voice she’d scream that she didn’t love you and that she’d never loved you and that she just wished you’d go away. You’d beat a retreat then. Of course you would. You might nip to the pub for a pint or three, wait until she’d simmered down. And by the time you’d come back home, opening the front door very softly and creeping about on tiptoes—yes, you know the drill!—she’d be sobbing in the kitchen, so much easier to reason with, so much more
pliable
—all the venom out of her now, all that’s left the tears and snot. And you’d take her hand and squeeze it, but gently this time, you didn’t want to hurt her, and she might even squeeze back—but even if she didn’t, even if she didn’t, it was okay, you’d know it was okay, the shouting had stopped, you’d already won.

But there’d been no shouting this time. “Steve, I don’t love you anymore,” she said, as calmly as you like, as if she’d been practising, as if she’d been taking lessons, and then she was the one holding
your
hand, giving
your
hand a squeeze, and looking so sympathetic you thought it might make you puke. And it wasn’t the quietness that alarmed you, sincere though it made it sound—it was the ‘anymore’, I don’t love you ‘anymore’, not pretending that she’d never loved you at all, in fact suggesting that there had been love once, accepting the basic fact of her love from the get go, accepting that all those other times she’d wanted you out of her life were just melodramatic freak-outs. But now it was real. This time it was real. It was real. And it was the ‘anymore’ that clinched it and finally did your marriage in.

But “Why?” you couldn’t help but ask. And she said you were useless. You were good for nothing. And there was no blame to it, she wasn’t accusing you, and so there was no way you could defend yourself. “Not useless at everything, surely?” you said, and you waggled your eyebrows at her, that would surely make her laugh, it always did, your little jokey attempts at seduction, it was only by joking you’d ever got her into bed. The way you’d pull your kissy face. Now she just stared at the kissy face as if she’d never seen it before, as if it were, what, something horrible like a stroke symptom. She conceded that you weren’t useless at everything. She’d been a little unfair. She thought for a moment, and said you were good at getting rid of the spiders.

You actually laughed at that. Just a bit. But she wasn’t joking.

And later that evening, staring up at the hotel room ceiling before turning out the light, and replaying the conversation in your head, and trying to work out what you should have said to make it end better, later on, you thought, well, fair enough—fair enough, you
are
good at getting rid of spiders. There’s a certain elegance to it even. The way you can sweep them up into a glass, quickly, without fuss, without snapping off any of their legs. Keeping your hand flat over the mouth of the glass so the spider can’t escape. Tipping the spider into the toilet bowl and flushing it away. You don’t think the spider ever suffered much—it looked only a bit bemused as it bobbed about treading water, then a good yank at the chain and it was sucked down the whirlpool and it was gone forever—and you’d tried to be kinder still, you used to tip the spider out of the window so it could live on in peace in the garden, but Sheila hadn’t liked that, she said the spider would find a way back in, the spider had to die—flush it away so there’d not even be a body. Because Sheila was scared of spiders, properly scared, and it was a
real
fear, you know, pretty phobic.

And you hadn’t even noticed it when you were courting, maybe she was just braver then, maybe she was keeping it a secret—and as you stood at the altar, the vicar talking, “Do you, Steven Edward Baird,” and asking the congregation whether there was any just cause or impediment, not one of your in-laws raised their hands, not one said, “Don’t go through with it, mate, she’s
mental
for spiders!” Mental for spiders indeed; after you’d used a glass to scoop the spider up she’d throw the glass away so she’d never run the risk of drinking from it, of her lips touching where a spider’s body had been—you’d get through a lot of glasses that way, she bought them in bulk cheap at the discount store in town. Because your house certainly did seem to attract a lot of spiders; more than your fair share, surely; every morning, more or less, you’d find one or two of the buggers in the bath or the sink, and there’d be telltale traces of cobwebs in the corners of the rooms and Sheila would just stare at them in dread until you’d get a broom and brush them away—and, oh, Sheila couldn’t
sleep
in a room that had a spider in it, there was no telling what a spider might get up to in the dark. Sometimes, you have to admit, that was when you could lose your temper. Sometimes, when it was late at night, and you were tired. Sometimes, but you could hardly be blamed for that.

Especially when the rest of the time you were good, you’d get rid of the spiders for her, you’d be her knight in shining armour. Even if you were her knight for only a couple of minutes each day. Or rather, you
had
been her knight in shining armour; but now she preferred you disposed of them without her knowing, she didn’t want to know a thing about it, you had to enter rooms and check them in advance, and
subtly
too, she needed you to check them but needed you to never to acknowledge you were, even mentioning the word ‘spider’ was enough to set her off itching. It was no good telling her that spiders couldn’t hurt her. No good saying they were more scared of her than she was of them—particularly this last, “Well, why do the bastards keep following me around then?” And it really wasn’t a clever idea chasing her around with a spider in your hands, just for fun—”look, it’s only a little one!”—telling her you were going to put it down her neck. That had been on the honeymoon. She’d hit you with a bottle. You’d needed stitches. It had been so awkward explaining what had happened to that clinic in Marbella.

But since she’d brought it up, you said to her, “Well, if I go, what will you do about the spiders?” And she said that Laura would have to get rid of them—and that was a joke, Laura, your four year old daughter, on her way to becoming an arachnophobe as bad as her mother—and little surprise of that the way Sheila carried on. You’d told Sheila that once, you told Sheila she was going to give Laura a complex, she already refused to sleep with the lights off in case the spiders came to get her—”you’re damaging our daughter!”—and you thought Sheila would be so angry, you thought she might hit you, or at least try to hit you, but instead it was worse. It was worse, she just sat down and cried. Oh, she must have recognized the truth of it. And now, as soon as Laura was mentioned, Sheila could tell she’d made a mistake—”It doesn’t matter, does it, we’ll sort it out,” she said, and waved her hand at you dismissively—as if
you
were the one making a fuss about spiders, as if it were
your
insanity, not hers—”Laura and I will cope without you, we’ll cope
better
without you.”