Nicci French - Killing Me Softly

There was a pile of washing in the corner, and I fished out a couple of things from it. I drew the line at leaving my dirty underwear lying around. I remembered my briefcase, under the chair by the window, and my address book and diary. I remembered my passport, birth certificate, driving licence, insurance policies and savings book, which were in a folder along with all of Jake’s personal documents. I decided against taking the picture on the wall above the bed, although my father had given it to me years before I had started going out with Jake. I wasn’t going to take any of the books or the music. And I wasn’t going to argue over the car, for which I had put down the deposit six months previously, while Jake still paid the standing orders.

Pauline was sitting on the sofa in the living room, drinking a cup of tea. She watched as I picked up three letters from the table that were addressed to me and slipped them into my briefcase. I’d done. I had one suitcase full of clothes, and a plastic bag full of bits and pieces.

‘Is that all? You’re travelling light, aren’t you?’

I shrugged hopelessly. ‘I know I’ll have to sort it properly soon. Not yet.’

‘So it’s not just a fling?’

I looked at her. Brown eyes like Jake’s. ‘No, it’s not.’

‘And Jake shouldn’t go on hoping you’ll come back to him. Waiting in every day in case you turn up?’

‘No.’

I needed to get out of there so that I could howl. I went to the door, picking up a scarf from the hook as I did so. It was cold and dark outside.

‘Pauline, can you tell Jake that I’ll do this…’ I made a wide, vague gesture round the room, at all our shared things ‘… however he wants.’

She looked at me but didn’t reply.

‘Goodbye, then,’ I said.

We stared at each other. I saw that she, too, wanted me to go so she could cry.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I must look dreadful.’

‘No.’ He wiped my eyes and my snotty nose with a corner of his shirt.

‘I’m sorry. It’s so painful.’

‘The best things are born out of pain. Of course it is painful.’

At any other time, I would have hooted at that. I don’t believe pain is necessary or ennobling. But I was too far gone. Another sob rose in my chest. ‘And I’m so scared, Adam.’ He didn’t say anything. ‘I’ve given up everything for you. Oh, God.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you have.’

We walked to a simple restaurant round the corner. I had to lean against him, as if I would fall over if I was unsupported. We sat in a dark corner and drank a glass of champagne each, which went straight to my head. He put his hand on my thigh under the table and I stared at the menu, trying to focus. We ate salmon fillets with wild mushrooms and green salad, and had a bottle of cold greeny-white wine. I didn’t know if I was elated or in despair. Everything seemed too much. Every look he gave me was like a touch, every sip of wine rushed round my blood. My hands shook when I tried to cut up the food. When he touched me under the table I felt as if my body would crumble into soft fragments.

‘Has it ever been like this for you?’ I asked, and he shook his head.

I asked him who there was before me and he stared at me for a moment. ‘It’s hard to talk about.’ I waited. If I had left my whole world for him, he was going to have to tell me at least about his previous girlfriend. ‘She died,’ he said then.

‘Oh.’ I was shocked and also dismayed. How could I compete with a dead woman?

‘Up on the mountain,’ he continued, staring into his glass.

‘You mean, on that mountain?’

‘Chungawat. Yes.’

He drank some more wine and signalled to the waiter. ‘Can we have two whiskies, please?’

They arrived and we downed them. I took his hand across the table. ‘Did you love her?’

‘Not like this,’ he said. I put his hand against my face. How was it possible to be so jealous of someone who had died before he ever set eyes on me?

‘Have there been a lot of other women?’

‘When I’m with you, I know there’s been no one,’ he replied, which meant, of course, that there had been lots.

‘Why me?’

Adam looked lost in thought. ‘How could it not be you?’ he asked at last.

Unexpectedly I had a spare few minutes before a meeting, so I dared myself and rang Sylvie. She is a solicitor and I had generally found it difficult to be put through to her in the past. It was usually a matter of her calling back hours later, or the following morning.

This time she was on the line within seconds. ‘Alice, is that you?’

‘Yes,’ I said limply.

‘I need to see you.’

‘I’d like that. But are you sure?’

‘Are you doing anything today? After work?’

I thought. Suddenly things seemed complicated. ‘I’m meeting… er, somebody in town.’

‘Where? When?’

‘It sounds stupid. It’s at a book shop in Covent Garden. At half past six.’

‘We could meet before.’

Sylvie was insistent. We could both leave early and meet at a quarter to six at a coffee shop she knew off St Martin’s Lane. It was awkward. I had to rearrange a conference call that had been scheduled, but I arrived at twenty to six, breathless and nervous, and Sylvie was already there at a table in the corner, nursing a cup of coffee and a cigarette. When I approached she stood up and hugged me. ‘I’m glad you called me,’ she said.

We sat down together. I ordered a coffee. ‘I’m glad you’re glad,’ I said. ‘I feel I’ve let people down.’

Sylvie looked at me. ‘Why?’

This was unexpected, and I didn’t feel prepared for it. I had come in order to be given a hard time, to be made to feel guilty.

‘There’s Jake.’

Sylvie lit another cigarette and gave a half-smile. ‘Yes, there is Jake.’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How is he?’

‘Thin. Smoking again. Sometimes completely quiet, and sometimes talking so much about you that no one else can get a word in edgeways. Weepy. Is that what you want to hear? But he will recover. People do. He won’t be wretched for the rest of his life. Not many people die of heartbreak.’

I took a sip of the coffee. It was still too hot. It made me cough. ‘I hope so. I’m sorry, Sylvie, I feel as if I’ve just come back from abroad and I’m out of touch with what’s going on.’

There was a silence that obviously embarrassed both of us.

‘How’s Clive?’ I blurted desperately. ‘And what-sername?’

‘Gail,’ said Sylvie. ‘He’s in love again. And she’s good fun.’

Another silence. Sylvie fixed me with a pensive expression. ‘What’s he like?’ she said.

I felt myself going red and oddly tongue-tied. I realized with an ache of something I didn’t quite understand that it – Adam and me – had been a hidden activity and none of it had ever been put into words for the benefit of others.

We’d never arrived at a party together. There was nobody who saw us as a couple. Now there was Sylvie, curious for herself, but also, I suspected, a delegation despatched from the Crew to forage for information she could bring back for them to pick at. I had an impulse to keep it secret for a while longer. I wanted to retreat back to a room once more, just the two of us. I didn’t want to be possessed and gossiped and speculated about by other people. Even the thought of Adam and his body sent ripples through me. I suddenly dreaded the idea of routine, of being Adam and Alice who lived somewhere and owned possessions in common and went to things together. And I wanted it as well.

‘God,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to say. He’s called Adam and… well, he’s completely different from anybody I’ve ever met before.’