How to Kill Your Family(51)
I haven’t told you much about why I’m in here, have I? That’s because I resent having to. It’s not the injustice of it that holds me back – it’d be fairly moronic to spend my time railing at the unfairness of it all when what I’ve got away with is so much worse – no, it’s the utter banality of it. The motive ascribed to me was pathetic. The act I allegedly committed is one I’d have had to carry out in a fit of rage, with a lack of planning I’d have hated. I’m not Nico. But you can’t use that as a defence, can you? ‘Sorry, m’lud, but when I murder people, I do it with a little more precision, you see.’ Instead I have had to grit my teeth and get through an entire legal process, dragged out for months and months – at great expense. What’s that saying? You make plans and God laughs. I made plans to murder seven people and ended up in jail for the death of someone I didn’t even touch. God would be having a hernia.
CHAPTER TEN
When we were 26, Jimmy met a girl. He’d had girlfriends before, nice, quiet, carried jute bags that had independent book shop logos on them, worked for charities, NGOs, small publishing companies – you know the kind of girl I mean. Glasses, small silver hoop earrings, likes a cup of tea intensely. They were all fine. Fine fine fine. But Jim is so laidback, so kind and well-meaning himself, that these relationships had no real drive to them. There was Louise, who obsessively kept an allotment but never showed a similar passion for anything else and faded away within a year. There was Harriet, who made more progress, sharing a house with Jim and some uni friends in Balham for a while. Their breakup was so painless it was barely noted (by me). I’d been working all hours when she moved out, and by the time we caught up for a drink it seemed like he was completely over it and I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to spend my precious free evening consoling him over a woman whose face I could no longer quite picture.
His next girlfriend was Simone, and I thought she might have been the one. She was a gallery curator and wore interesting (interesting just means angular) jewellery and brogues in a variety of colours. She was a serious person, they all were. But she liked my sense of humour and was very relaxed about the long and sometimes blurry friendship I shared with her boyfriend. Importantly, she seemed to really like Jimmy, and talked about their future together with none of those embarrassing caveats some women use in order not to scare a man away. They went on weekends away to Norfolk, and adopted a cat. There was talk of buying a flat together. And I got used to Simone, sharing Jimmy with her was no compromise for me. I might have even watched them grow old together with a sense of satisfaction. But Simone had more ambition than I’d guessed at, and she was offered a curating job at some newly opened gallery in New York just as they’d started viewing flats. I think she’d assumed that Jim would pack up his life and move to Brooklyn no questions asked, but he wavered. He’d just started at the Guardian, and couldn’t bear to give up a precious staff job at a paper where he’d always wanted to work. He wouldn’t be able to work at the same level, he’d protested. He’d flounder around as a freelancer, in a city full of them. Simone listened patiently, she countered his worries with options and emphasised how much this move would mean to her, but he grew more and more mulish. Within a week, he was barely communicating with her at all. They carried on in a muted facsimile of their previous lives while she sorted out her visa, sold her furniture and had a leaving party. Jimmy still hadn’t given her a firm no, and I imagine that she thought he might be wavering, just waiting for her absence to become a real, firm thing in his mind before he gave in and followed her to New York. Instead, she flew out on a Saturday, and he sent her a brief email the following Tuesday saying that he couldn’t do it, that he loved her, that he was so sorry. I know this because he sent it to me minutes later, with the subject heading ‘I hate myself’.
The problem with Jimmy is that he’s too comfortable and it’s made him a coward. His parents are nice, his family life was stable, loving and safe. He grew up knowing smart people, influential people who made him feel like he would be able to do anything he wanted in the world. He had amazing holidays, speaks fluent German and plays two instruments. All of this equipped him to go out and be king of whatever world he wanted. But it also made him scared to go anywhere else, because where else in the world could he be as confident and established? All of those advantages, all of that privilege and all Jimmy wants to do is live two roads away from his mum and dad and live exactly as they did. And yet, I am tied to him. His familiarity, his smell, his arms which have just enough strength to make me feel safe. It’s ridiculous and clichéd and I hate that I feel it. But I do. I’ve not known anyone as long as I’ve known Jim. I’ve not tolerated anyone else like I’ve tolerated him. And because he’s patient and kind, I let myself rely on him, let him know me (most of me), and draw on that old bond which has remained constant. I’ve never told him about who my father really is, preferring to keep the sides of my life completely separate. But apart from that, he knows me in a way that nobody else ever has nor ever will. And if he doesn’t want to be some kind of king of the world, then I’ll surge forward myself and learn to be content just to let him be by my side as I go. He used to stroke my arm as I fell asleep, knowing I would get anxious when the day came to an end. He’d lie by my side and trace the freckles on my arm. ‘You’re so smooth, Gray. Smoooo-oothe!’ he’d sing, to the tune of a song we loved. Then I’d be able to sleep.