True Things About Me A Novel (Deborah Kay Davies) (17 page)

I kneeled on the floor beside the bed. My head felt weightless, as if it had been scoured clean by crystals, the inside full of moonbeams. I thought my eyes must glow like lamps from the intense light behind them. I gazed round the room. It felt unfamiliar. I concentrated on the bare wall on the other side of the bed. I allowed my mind to open. On the wall I could see images shaping up. There I was, looking backwards, descending a flight of dirty concrete steps to a dark place. There I was, stuffing ragged, dripping fragments of meat into my mouth. Then I’m slamming my head against a rough wall, then screaming on a huge, swaying bridge, then lying naked and bleeding, surrounded by a crowd. The images whirled
across the wall, faster and faster; me blindfolded, me tied up, me crouched on the wet ground, dribbling. And always, me crying. God, how much I cried.

I wiped my eyes on the bed sheet, and stood up. I knew now what my plan was. I pulled the pillow he was half lying on out from under his head. I could see the whites of his eyes glittering in thin crescents. I held the pillow in both my hands, and pushed it down firmly over his mouth and nose. The snoring stopped immediately. I counted up to a hundred slowly, holding the pillow down hard. He didn’t struggle, his chest stopped rising and falling. My arms trembled, and my nose was running.

Then I lifted the pillow, and looked at him. Nothing happened. I put my ear next to his mouth, and waited. I could smell his sweat. My hair fell across his face. I reared back as he took a huge gulp of air, and grunted several times. His eyes were slanted sideways. Before he could turn them to look at me I pushed the pillow down onto his face again. This time his legs described slow circles, and he thrashed his arms a little, as if he were trying to run underwater. He was making a horrible noise, a wordless, low bellowing. I had to climb up over his jerking legs, onto the bed and get between them, all the time holding the pillow down as hard as I could. I pressed with my full weight, and still I felt his shoulders rising, but the terrible sounds stopped. I lowered myself until I had my arms crossed on the pillow, and I pushed and pushed until his shoulders sank back and were still.

I sat back, panting. Nothing happened, so I waited, trying to gulp in air silently. I held my hair out of my face, and put my cheek next to his mouth, but I couldn’t tell if he was still alive. Then I remembered something I’d seen on a hospital programme, so I leaped off the bed, and ran to the bathroom. In the cabinet I found a safety pin. Then I was standing outside the bedroom. What if he was poised, waiting to jump on me? Somehow I walked back in. There he was, stretched out on the bed. His crotch was wet. I stood by his feet, and undid the safety pin. Then I watched him carefully as I jabbed his instep with the sharp point. I screamed once as I saw his lips move. Nothing else happened, so I stabbed him again. This time his foot recoiled. It seemed to me that his chest rose and fell.

I inched my way up to his head with the pillow clutched in my fists. His hair was dark, and his jaw crooked. I was so exhausted I had become as thin as a piece of paper, my arms useless as straws, but I knew that didn’t matter; I had to see through my simple plan. So I pressed the pillow down again, and counted up to five hundred. Five hundred beautiful beats. The first five hundred seconds of my new life. Finally I lifted the pillow, and dropped it on the floor. I kneeled down beside him, and jabbed with the pin all the way from his big toe to his ankle; tiny hard jabs. I told him I was sorry, but I didn’t mean it. I kissed his contorted lips. Even then I thought he might grab me, and start everything all over again. But nothing happened. So I left him in the bedroom.

Acknowledgements

MANY THANKS
TO
my clever editor Ailah Ahmed for her invaluable help, to Jamie Byng and to all the other talented people at Canongate who have looked after me and my book so beautifully.

Likewise to my lovely agent, Cathryn Summerhayes.

Thanks also to my writing group, Edgeworks: Ruth Smith, Liz Porter, Norman Schwenk, Claire Syder and Jane Blank, for being there so helpfully, once a month.

Thanks to the Academi of Wales for the bursary I received to begin this project.

Thanks to Richard Lewis Davies for his advice and support.

Acknowledgements are due to
New Welsh Review
, who published an extract.

Thanks to my children and long-suffering friends who have been so patient while I banged on about my book.

I am grateful to my sister Victoria.

And lastly, for his unstinting support, know-how and all-round wonderfulness, I am indebted to Norman.

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

This digital edition first published by Canongate Books in 2010

Copyright © Deborah Kay Davies, 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84767 913 0

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