How to Kill Your Family(22)
By the time we left the pub, I felt like I’d cracked him. And yet my shoulders were tense and my hands were balled up into fists as I walked to the station. He was a nice man, I thought, though fairly clueless. I didn’t feel the acid burning in my throat when I thought about him like I did when I conjured him as an image of his father or grandfather. And that feeling, the ever stoked anger which made my ears feel as though they were on fire, that’s what made it easy to kill Jeremy and Kathleen. That’s what made it fun. I didn’t feel that corrosive sensation in my windpipe for weeks afterwards. How would I enjoy this new challenge if I couldn’t summon the acid?
By the next shift, we’d swapped numbers (one of the perils of a burner phone is never knowing your own number off by heart) and would text each other during the week with links to research papers we thought the other would enjoy. I didn’t read anything he suggested, but it was easy to react appropriately with a quick skim of the conclusion. God bless these pointless academics who spend years doing some mind-numbing survey that nobody will read but helpfully tack on a footnote which summarises it all in two minutes. Texting might sound like there was flirting going on, but thankfully I think Andrew really just enjoyed someone who was willing to indulge his niche interest in amphibians and hallucinogens. The alternative would’ve added a hideous dimension to what I hoped would be a fairly straightforward catch and kill.
Four weeks in and we were firm friends. I knew where he lived (Tottenham in a houseshare with four other guys, all doing PhDs), what his favourite novel was (something by William Boyd, but I forget), and that he was a strict vegan. We started going to the dreary pub after work on Saturday, where we’d get pretty drunk and I’d make jokes about Roger until he’d tell me off. By now, I knew how I’d kill him. Much like with my grandparents, the plan was vague in form and had the potential to fail, but I was confident after my first foray, and Andrew was trusting to a fault. After the pub one Saturday, I mooted going back to the centre and bringing a bottle of wine with us. It was a balmy night, and the stars were out, a rarity in this smog-draped city. He was game, if a little nervous.
‘Roger would go mad,’ he laughed, ‘but I guess there’s no harm done.’ Not much of a rule breaker, my cousin, despite his much-vaunted radical beliefs. I guess that’s what fourteen years of private education does well. Parents don’t cough up close to ￡250k in the hope that their child wilfully breaks the unspoken rules of British society.
Security at the marsh centre was … nothing. There was no security. No CCTV (what would you steal? Some minnows?), no barbed wire. Andrew just used his key and we were in. We went down to the main pond and sat on a small section of decking Roger had installed so that he could observe the frogs more easily. I cracked open the wine and sipped from the bottle. As we passed it between us, I broached the subject that had been turning over in my head.
‘Can I try the frog drug, Andrew? You’ve talked about it so much, and it sounds like an adventure I’d kick myself to miss.’ There was a silence, and then I heard him breathe in and then breathe out in quick succession.
‘I don’t think so, Lara. I’m no expert yet, and I’m still trying to perfect the dosage. Last week I took too much and passed out cold for fifteen minutes. It’s so imprecise – I don’t want to use you as a guinea pig.’
I nodded, and made reassuring noises. ‘I totally understand. I don’t want to put pressure on you in any way. I just thought maybe it might help with my panic attacks in some small way …’ I trailed off, hoping to capitalise on his English built-in awkwardness. He sighed again.
‘I didn’t know you get panic attacks. I do too, ever since I was a little kid. I used to tell my mother I couldn’t breathe. But I couldn’t explain it properly. They came back with a vengeance recently.’ He looked at me with understanding and rubbed my thumb clumsily.
‘What happened?’ I asked, looking at him with a suitable amount of concern. Men like to be stared at intensely, I’ve found. It shows them you’re really absorbed in what they’re saying.
‘My grandparents were in an accident …’ He looked down and dropped my hand. I didn’t push it, instead taking the wine again and dipping my fingers into the pond.
‘Hey, how deep is this water? Roger always acts as though the Loch Ness Monster could be hiding in here.’
He laughed, and pushed his hair away from his face, making the hideous shell earring tinkle. The tension dissipated. ‘This place is his life. He just likes to imagine that everything here is bigger and bolder than it perhaps is. The ponds are all pretty shallow, though this one I’ve waded through and been caught out by how deep it is in the middle – probably up to your waist. And you don’t want to let Roger catch you – consider the frogs, Lara,’ he said in a faux outraged tone. We finished the bottle and I said I’d better call a cab. Andrew helped me up – I was drunker than I’d thought – and we stumbled back to the front gate, giggling and shushing each other. I offered to drop him home, but he said he wanted the air and I poured myself into a Toyota Prius, driven by a man listening to a strange medley of acoustic show tunes. A few minutes before we pulled up outside my flat, I heard my phone beep in my pocket. Clumsily, I unlocked the screen and peered down.
OK, let’s do it. Next Saturday, after work. You bring the wine – I think rosé would go nicely. But it’s TOP SECRET. Nobody knows that I do this.