Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

She was following every word out of his mouth as if she could see them in the air. The blood stopped moving inside her body.

But this wasn’t what she thought it was. They would go back to his place and he would smoke a joint and then they would end up in bed. He’d go mad for her in the hold-ups and heels. In the morning he’d be as excited as she was about the Red House.

‘This isn’t the right place.’

‘For what?’ The question was out of her mouth before she could snatch it back. Her declaration was spring-loaded with provocation. That will just make it easy for him.

And it did. ‘I’ve been thinking. About this. Us. Fuck, this is hard.’ He started to smile as if he needed encouragement and sympathy from her to do what he was about to do. ‘You look gorgeous tonight, but… I have to go through with this. Sorry. I’m so, so sorry. The last thing I wanted to do was upset you after… you know. But I can’t keep it up any more. I’m just so fucking miserable. I can’t do it. Us. I’m sorry.’

And then he stood up and quickly walked across the dining room with his head lowered. Briefly, he paused to let someone enter the pub, and then almost fell out of the door in his haste to get away from her.

While Mike spoke, Catherine was sure the room had fallen silent. But now cutlery chimed and the PA system played something she once recognized but couldn’t identify now. In the distance someone said, ‘a new till roll’, but their voice seemed too loud around her head.

Catherine sucked in her breath and tried not to be sick into her lap.

‘You’ll be lucky,’ someone else said, but their face was fuzzy and indistinct.

The room lurched like a ship in a gale, then righted, was solid and stable again. But it looked different. It was really bright now, clinically lit. She couldn’t lift her hands, she was paralysed. And momentarily she thought she was sitting really close to the opposite wall and staring into its white painted surface. Then her vision seemed to retract across the room to her chair. She could not swallow. Her jaw was so heavy. Her mouth was open.

There was nothing but panic recognizable in the maelstrom inside her, faint but coming fast from the distance towards her conscious mind. Thin white hands were slapping around the walls of her skull. She heard herself make the sound of a sob and thought she was sliding off her chair.

She held onto the table and into her mind came a memory of her inability to breathe when Mike called her after so many years of silence. And she recalled the ever-expanding light and joy from her heart that smothered and concealed everything else because the rest of the world no longer mattered when he came down to London to meet her. She saw snapshots of their weekend in Barcelona, being drunk on the beach in Minehead, dressing up as a pony girl and jockey for a New Year’s Eve party, sex in a borrowed tent in the Lake District, a Latitude festival, the pregnancy test, them sitting side by side on top of the Worcester Beacon and deciding to go for it. All of this flashed through her, life with him as it ended. And she knew that she was more in love with him at the very instant he left her than she had ever been before. The critical point. He’d walked out at the very peak of her intensity. The damage he had just done could not have been more severe if they had been together for another ten years before this scene occurred.

Permanent damage.

The waitress was whispering to the youth behind the bar. They were looking at her. Everybody was. She fumbled with fingers made from wood. Tears came off her chin and splashed against the back of her hands. Never coming here again. Idiot thoughts came and went. She still couldn’t swallow. She was stoppered and stuck inside, nothing was moving. There was a cold pain inside her stomach too now, like a cramp. Incongruously, self-pity filled her with what felt like helium and a brief euphoria.

She ruffled two twenties on to the table. Thank fuck you’ve got cash. The thought of a card transaction nearly made her scream with horrible laughter. You’d have me operate a machine with these hands?

She knew she wouldn’t get across the room and to the door on her heels. Her humiliation at the table wasn’t sufficient, the universe wanted her down on her hands and knees, sobbing as strangers grinned.

Why?

Because he’s found someone else.

You are too intense, you are exhausting, you are pessimistic, you are depressing, you are strange, no one actually wants you around once they get to know you.

He’s met someone else. He’s been withdrawn for weeks. Should have trusted your instincts. You suppressed them as an unhealthy paranoia, just like you’ve been shown how to.

He’s met someone else to have children with.

Because you miscarried.

She walked home, pressed into the cold brick walls of the town that seemed to be a thousand miles long, and she looked at a blurred and watery world but didn’t see much of it at all.

Catherine got to her bedroom with a bottle of lemon vodka and yanked the curtains closed. Outside, a group of laughing men walked under her window.

She freed herself from the skirt that had been a hobble the moment she put it on, a fool’s tapered manacle. She tugged both stockings down her legs and fell upon the bed. Rolled on to her side and choked as much as cried.

A sudden thought made her snatch at her BlackBerry and she scrolled through menus to delete the folder that contained all of his messages. Get them out now so there would be no time spent trawling through them and imagining clues in the coming months, or even years. But her hands were shaking too much to operate the ridiculous keypad. She let it drop to the floor.

How could he? Why? Is there someone else? Who? It’s not possible, because of… started until her head hurt and she ran out of conspiracies and clues.

She stayed on the bed until it was dark, sipped the vodka. When her phone chimed the arrival of a text message, she scrambled undignified amongst the detritus of her outfit, shoes and underwear on the floor. It was a message from a company asking her to claim compensation for being mis-sold insurance. She sent the word CUNTS back to them. Then felt the urge to send messages to Mike.

Tell him you’re pregnant again.

Silence and indifference are the greatest weapons.

She deleted the three lines of text she’d composed. Even in her grief, their churlish and pathetic sentiment shocked her into the first assault of self-loathing. And that’s when it really went wrong. She felt her own gears changing and the engine of her heart revving to reach despair as quickly as possible. Nought to sixty in three seconds.

Put me in a case with the kittens. So I can be safe from the pain. I can wear a pretty dress and have big open eyes and never have to go out again. Because there’s not enough of me left to take any more pain. I’m done.

She stood up and tried to run for the kitchen and the scissors with the orange plastic handles. But weaved. Her legs felt useless. ‘Fat bitch,’ she said at herself. She’d been brought back down to size, so it was time to cut herself down to an appropriate stature. At least he’d know why she did it.

And in no time at all, she found herself standing on the kitchen lino in bare feet and holding the scissors that had almost leapt out of the rattling utensils drawer beside the sink. She held the points of the scissors before her belly. Stared at them with horror. She knew she wouldn’t do it again. But at the same time a reckless hateful desire to punish herself made the closed blades twitch.