Our Kind of Cruelty(58)

Xander calls this self-defence and he says I must not forget the facts: I was woken from sleeping, Angus was threatening and intimidating, he threw the first punch, I tried to reason with him, I never wanted to hurt him. Say it to yourself every night before you go to sleep, Xander says, remind yourself that you acted in self-defence.

I go over and over the conversation V and I had in Angus’s house the night before the incident. How I said I wished Angus didn’t exist and how she told me she wished things had worked out between us. But how she also told me to go home and wait, how she needed to be the one to tell Angus. How she was not just giving me what I wanted, but also protecting me. She knows me so well she knew I would get angry. I see now that she was trying to save me from myself and I didn’t listen to her. If only I had just understood and left when Angus said she was ill, then by now they would be on the way to divorce and V and I would be living together at home.

That thought affects me physically. It climbs inside me and burrows into my gut like a parasite, so I have to roll on to my side and clutch my stomach. Because we were so close, we were within touching distance of all we had ever wanted, and I had to ruin it.

But I am well practised in ruining things. If I am feeling weak my mind sometimes pounces, dragging me backwards through the detritus of my life. I scramble and scrap, clawing my way back up the hill, but on the way down it treats me to some fine views. Carly of course is near the top, but if I slither further I can watch myself opening the door to those social workers a thousand times, the film scratched and grainy against the pitted inside of my skull. I see myself standing back; I feel the will to protect my mother drain out of me.

She used to come and see me for the first few years I was in care. Controlled visits they were called and they all took place in a room in the home which was shut off from the rest of the house. It was painted a sickly yellow and had peeling stencils of rabbits and bears on the wall. There was a sad plastic tub of toys in one corner and a worn purple sofa running along one wall, under a shelf of books. None of the books ever changed places, their spines sagging under the weight of neglect.

She was usually sober, although she pretty much always stank of booze and fags, mixed with a lavender scent which she bought from the market and thought masked the poison which constantly oozed out of her pores. She cried quite a bit and her make-up would clump and run and make me feel sick. Her clothes were dirty in that way where you can see the grime layered and ingrained, and she smelt disgusting, a mixture of mud and fish and decay which caught you in the back of the throat. She apologised a lot, her eyes darting over my face, as if I was meant to know how to respond. She told me about where she was staying and said soon I’d be able to come back and live with her, even though we both knew it wasn’t going to happen. Or at least, I knew; maybe she deluded herself right up till the end. She asked what I’d been up to and I shrugged and told her nothing.

She came a few times to Elaine and Barry’s, sitting nervously in their front room while Elaine bustled with tea and biscuits. Her hand shook when she raised the mug to her lips and there was lipstick on her teeth which didn’t wash away when she drank. I could hardly believe it when I saw that. My mother, I realised, was the type of woman who wasn’t even lucky enough to count on tea washing away her embarrassingly applied lipstick. It felt, as I sat on Elaine’s green couch, almost the worst of all her sins against me. It felt unforgivable. It felt cruel and vindictive. It felt like a summation of everything that was wrong about her.

I have decided to grant Elaine’s application to visit me because sometimes I surprise myself with my need to see her. Maybe it’s nothing more than sentiment for me to look back fondly on those evenings with them, the drone of Fat Terry’s TV in the corner, rehashing Christmas songs in a desperate attempt to make us buy trash, in between terrible shows where inarticulate people shout at each other about who has fathered their baby. Elaine and Barry love Christmas and I spent nine very happy ones in their home before I met V. I wonder if this Christmas will be better or worse than the last one and then I can’t believe it’s only been a year since all that. How sometimes life can drag and turn and other times it speeds and shunts, propelling you forward however hard you want to stay back. About this time last year I was fucking Carly and my life.



Xander told me today that V has been formally charged with accessory to murder, although she’s been granted bail. She will have to wear an electronic tag around her delicate ankle and report to a police station once a day.

‘The things you’ve both said just don’t add up,’ he told me. ‘The tone of the emails she sent you were too affectionate for you to have been threatening her and she never reported any of your so-called harassment of her to the police. She didn’t tell anyone she knew, including Angus, about the times you met one another. She’s now saying you assaulted her the night before the murder, but she didn’t call the police or mention it until recently. And then of course there’s that phone call she made to you on the night of the murder and the fact that she was in your arms when the police found you. And you keep going on about how in love with each other you are, which just makes the police think you’re protecting her. None of it looks great for her, which is no bad thing for us.’

I presume V will spend Christmas at Steeple House, but I wonder if Suzi will have pushed the boat out as she usually does. I wonder if they’ve decked the tree and if there are lavish presents beneath it. I wonder if the turkey is ordered from the butcher’s, the cake made, the mince pies browning. I wonder if they’re lighting candles and opening the door to carol singers. I wonder if they’ll turn up for the Christmas Eve service at the chapel.