Nicci French - Killing Me Softly

On a separate piece of paper I wrote out a very basic will. I left all my money to my parents. I left my jewellery to Pauline’s baby if it was a girl, and to Pauline if it was a boy. I left Jake my two pictures and my brother my few books. That would do. I didn’thave much to leave anyway.

I thought about my beneficiaries, but in a detached sort of way. When I remembered my life with Jake, I felt no stirrings of regret. It just seemed so very long ago, a different world and a different me. I didn’t want the old world back, not even now. I didn’t know what I wanted. I couldn’t look ahead like that, into the future, perhaps because I didn’t dare. I was locked into the disastrous present, and it was one step in front of the other now, edging my way through danger. I didn’t want to die.

I folded the documents, sealed them in an envelope and put it into my bag. I finished my lunch, eating methodically, swilling back the last of the red wine. I ordered a slice of lemon tart for pudding, which was satisfyingly creamy and astringent, and a double espresso. After I had paid the bill I fished out my new mobile and called Claudia. I told her that I had been held up and wouldn’t be in the office for another hour. If Adam called, she should tell him I was at a lunch meeting. I left the restaurant and hailed a cab.

Sylvie was in a meeting with a client, and her assistant told me that she was terribly busy for the rest of the afternoon.

‘If you could tell her it’s Alice to see her on a matter of urgency, and that I’ll only need a few minutes of her time.’

I waited in the lobby, reading last year’s copies of women’s magazines, learning how to lose weight and have multiple orgasms and cook carrot cake. After about twenty minutes a woman with red eyes came out of Sylvie’s office and I went in.

‘Alice.’ She hugged me and held me away from her. ‘You look fabulously skinny. Sorry you had to wait. I’ve been holed up since lunch with a hysterical divorcée.’

‘I’ll not keep you long,’ I said. ‘I know you’re very busy. I wanted to ask you a favour. It’s quite a simple one.’

‘Sure, ask away. How’s that gorgeous husband of yours?’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said, and sat down opposite her, her large and chaotic desk between us.

‘Is something wrong with him?’

‘In a way.’

‘You don’t want a divorce, do you?’

She looked curious in a rapacious sort of way.

‘It’s just a favour. I want you to keep something safe for me.’ I fished the sealed envelope out of the bag and pushed it across the desk. ‘Now, I know that this will sound ridiculously melodramatic, but if I am found dead or if I disappear I want you to give this to the police.’

I felt embarrassed. There was an absolute silence. Sylvie’s mouth was open; she had a vacuous expression on her face. ‘Darling Alice, is this a joke?’

‘No. Is there a problem?’

The phone on her desk rang, but she didn’t pick it up and we both waited until it stopped.

‘No,’ she said absently. ‘I suppose not.’

‘Good.’ I stood up and picked up my bag. ‘Give my love to the Crew. Say that I miss them. That I’ve always missed them, although I didn’t know it at first.’

Sylvie stayed sitting in her chair, staring at me. When I reached the door, she leaped up and rushed after me. She put her hand on my shoulder.

‘Alice, what’s wrong?’

‘Sorry, Sylvie.’ I kissed her on the cheek. ‘Some other time, perhaps. Take care of yourself. And thanks for being my friend. It helps.’

‘Alice,’ she said again, helplessly. But I was gone.

I was back at work by four. I spent an hour briefing the marketing department, and half an hour with accounts, arguing over my future budget. In the end, they backed down because I obviously wasn’t going to. I swept through the paperwork on my desk, and left earlier than usual. Adam was waiting for me, as I had known he would be. He wasn’t reading a paper, or gazing around him or looking at his watch; he was standing quite still, as if to attention, with his patient gaze fixed on the revolving doors. He’d probably been like that for an hour.

When he saw me he didn’t smile, but he took my bag from me and then put his arms round me and stared into my face. ‘You smell of chlorine.’

‘I went swimming.’

‘And perfume.’

‘You gave it to me.’

‘You look beautiful today, my love. So fresh and beautiful. I can’t believe you’re my wife.’

He kissed me, hard and long, and I kissed him back and pressed against him. My body felt as if it was made of some inert heavy matter that would never again shudder with desire. I shut my eyes because I couldn’t bear to see his eyes staring into mine so intensely, never looking away from me. What could he see? What did he know?

‘I’m going to take you out for a meal tonight,’ he said. ‘But before that we’re going home so I can fuck you.’

‘You’ve got it all worked out,’ I said, acquiescent and smiling in the closed circle of his arms.

‘I have. Right down to the last detail, my Alice.’

I hadn’t protested when he took my foil card and popped the small yellow pills, one by one, down the lavatory. If anyone had told me, six months ago, that I would be allowing my lover – my husband – to flush away my contraceptives without my consent, I would have laughed in their face. He had shaken out the last pill and then taken me by the hand and led me, without a word, to the bedroom and made love to me very gently, making me look into his eyes. And I hadn’t protested. But all the time my mind was making furious calculations. Probably he didn’t know that the effect of the Pill lasts for a bit, and by that time I would be past this month’s window of opportunity. I wouldn’t, I guessed, get pregnant for the next couple of weeks at least. I had time. Yet I felt, nevertheless, as if he were planting a child in me and all I was doing was lying back and receiving it, and not protesting. It made me realize how unimaginative I had always been about battered wives or the partners of alcoholics. Disaster creeps up, a tidal wave on the tourist beach. By the time you can see it, you are powerless or unable to resist it and it rolls you up and away. I suppose I had been unimaginative about a lot of things, though. I had spent most of my life untouched by tragedy, and not properly thinking about the way that other people lived and suffered.

When I looked back over the past few months, I felt freshly ashamed of how very easily I had sloughed off an old and loved life: my family, friends, my interests, my sense of the world. Jake had accused me of burning bridges, which made my behaviour sound reckless and fine. But I had abandoned people as well. Now I needed to get my affairs in order, or at least make a gesture of reconciliation towards those I might have hurt. I wrote a letter to my parents, saying that I knew I hadn’t been in contact much but they should always remember that I loved them very much. I sent a postcard to my brother, whom I had lasted visited a year ago, in which I tried to be jaunty and affectionate. I rang Pauline, and left a message on the answering-machine asking after the pregnancy and saying that I would like to see her very soon and that I had been missing her. I posted a belated birthday card to Clive. And, taking a deep breath, I rang up Mike. He sounded subdued rather than bitter, and not displeased to hear from me. He was going on holiday with his wife and young son the next day, to a house in Brittany, his first holiday in months. I was saying goodbye to everyone, but they wouldn’t know it.

I had wrecked my old world decisively, and now I was trying to figure out a way of bringing my new world crashing down too, so that I could escape from it. There were still times – fewer as each day passed – when it felt impossible to believe that I was actually living this. I was married to a murderer, a beautiful, blue-eyed murderer. If he ever found out that I knew, he would kill me too, I had no doubt about that. If I tried to leave, he would also kill me. He would find me and kill me.