Nicci French - Until it's Over

‘A scarred leather worker,’ she said. ‘If you meet one, let me know.’

I almost laughed with relief, then looked at my left hand. I was still holding the stupid tickets. Astrid was the only person I knew who was interested in gardens. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ I said. ‘I thought it might cheer you up.’

I made up a story about having been given the tickets at work. She seemed about as unexcited by it as I had been when Melanie gave them to me, but she was quite polite. She asked if she needed to wear a hat, as if she were looking for an excuse to get out of it. Then she gave an obviously forced smile and leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the cheek, the sort you might give an old aunt, and said thank you. I knew she wouldn’t go. She’d find an excuse. It was probably for the best. What if she met Melanie and mentioned it to her? I wondered if it would have been different if I’d been disdainful of Astrid. Would that have made her want me? The trouble is, it doesn’t work like that. You have to really not care about them to make them like you. If I had pretended not to like Astrid, she would have been exactly as she was now: treating me as part of the scenery. She would be nice enough to me but she wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t there.

As she walked round the room, she touched things and commented on them. She flicked at the wind chimes, she picked up a silk scarf Melanie had left and ran it through her fingers. She stopped in front of the mantelpiece and only at that moment did I notice that, in tidying my room, Melanie had found the glass paperweight I had taken from Ingrid de Soto ’s house. She had taken it from the drawer and put it in full view. All I needed was for Astrid to move on and I could put it back out of sight. But she stopped in front of it, as if lost in thought. I was about to say her name, to distract her, but before I could speak she picked it up and rotated it in her hand, holding it up to the light, as if fixing it for ever in her memory. The colours shimmered.

‘Paperweights never have paper underneath them, do they?’

I mumbled something noncommittal. We talked nonsense for a few seconds. I think she said something about looking for a place to live. I couldn’t really hear. The words were drowned by the hiss of static in my head. She handed me the paperweight and I put it back carefully on the mantelpiece, her eyes on it all the time. She said she was going dancing.

‘Nice,’ I said, and stayed silent. I wanted to tell her that she mustn’t let Owen touch her again. Not a kiss. Not a caress. Nothing. Or else.

I was left alone, staring at the paperweight. Melanie wouldn’t remember it, but Astrid would. It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t the way I’d planned it. I wasn’t like this. I wasn’t really a murderer. All I ever wanted was to begin again, and be allowed to be myself at last. No, it wasn’t fair.

There was so much to do and so many small details to attend to. It was my job to hold everything together in my head, and I knew that if I let one thing slip, that could be my undoing. And once I had started, the clock was ticking and I couldn’t stop it. I found that I was good in a crisis.

As the household fell apart, it became comically easy to carry out what I had planned without being noticed. I was invisible. Leah was glaring at Miles. Miles was looking at Astrid and trying not to pay any attention to Leah. Owen was looking at Astrid too. Astrid was looking back at Owen and, although she didn’t yet know it, she was also witnessing the spectacle that was being played out in front of her eyes. Pippa was watching herself, as usual. Dario wasn’t looking at all, and when he was he clearly wasn’t noticing. He was even worse after he was beaten up. Fear made him even more addled. Who knew what Mick saw? Mel was looking at me, all right, but Mel was a fool: she only saw what she wanted to see. I was looking at everything, at everyone. I was waiting, poised to strike when the time was right. In the meantime, it was me who called the journalists about Astrid, me who stirred up Leah’s hatred. I was calling the shots now.

On the evening of the house sale, it seemed to me that everything was working out. I provoked some suspicion here and created some hostility there, all the while pretending to be nice Davy, peacemaker Davy, dull, dependable, sweet Davy. I almost felt like telling them the truth, just to see the expressions on their faces. I was like a magician who wanted to show them how the trick was done, how easily they had been fooled.

I steered Pippa towards Leah’s bag of clothes and Dario towards Miles’s shoes. As the noise grew and the violence started to turn ugly, I casually pushed Astrid’s bike into the middle of the yard, where it was whisked away. As an afterthought, I stuffed the takings into my pocket – much more than I’d expected, thanks to the run on Leah’s clothes – and threw the box into the bushes.

In front of the house where the sale was out of control, it felt like a forest fire. I just had to stand back. Leah struggled with a large black woman in the middle of a crowd. Dario and Pippa watched her, enjoying the disaster. Owen was taking photographs. I stepped forward and put my hand on Leah’s shoulder, Davy, trying to help. I felt something jingle at my feet and looked down. Carefully I knelt and picked up the bunch of keys Leah had dropped. I put them into my pocket. Now, what could I do with them?

It got better. Because Leah told Astrid about Pippa and Owen. Right in front of everybody. Like a little bomb tossed into the already maimed and dazed group. And when Astrid walked out of the room (chin up, that’s my girl), with everyone’s eyes following her, I knew now was the time to strike.

That night I didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to. I knew that this was a watershed in my life, and that after tomorrow everything would be different. I needed to savour the moment and not waste it in unconsciousness. After I had made everyone large mugs of tea and told them it would be all right, we just needed to take a step back from what had happened, they wandered off to their rooms one by one, shamefaced and miserable. I heard them shuffling along corridors, gargling and coughing in the bathroom, tossing and snuffling like animals in their beds. I heard Miles snoring. I heard – much later – Astrid returning. She came up the stairs quickly and lightly, and I could imagine her face, serious but not distraught, her jaw firm. For an instant I considered joining her. Perhaps she would tell me her feelings and weep on my shoulder. I could hold her against me and kiss her at last along her jaw line or that small hollow of her neck. Slender neck. No, it wouldn’t do.

At last the house was dark and silent, and I could tell that only I was left awake, sitting upright on my bed with my hands in my lap, my breath steady, and my eyes fixed on a point on my wall, just above the door. I could feel myself growing taller and stronger as I sat there, each breath making me more powerful, readying me. My past self was dropping away: the Davy whose dad didn’t want to know him, who was bullied at school, who had flattered his cow-eyed mother, who was eager to please, who had been humiliated by Pippa, who went out with someone like Melanie rather than someone like Astrid, who had to pretend all the time to be someone else. Those days were ending.

At dawn, I washed and shaved carefully. I went downstairs and made myself a piece of toast, but after one bite I threw it in the bin. No more food and no more sleep until this thing was done. Usually Astrid was the first up, and so it was this morning.

‘Coffee?’ I asked her, as she came into the kitchen. Her dark hair was still damp from her shower, but she was already dressed for work in her shorts and singlet. Her face glowed, clean of any makeup, and her long legs were tanned. I could see the muscles in her calves. My eyes burned just to look at her. My cheeks already stung with the tears I would cry, when it was done.