The Wife Before Me(59)

‘You’re obviously still in shock but you must try to eat something. If you can’t manage the scrambled eggs, at least have some tea and toast.’ He buttered toast, spread it with lime marmalade, poured tea.

‘I’m not in shock,’ she snapped. ‘And I’m not hungry. I’ll make something to eat later.’ Her headache was so intense that she was only vaguely aware of a stinging pain in her arms. Now, as that pain pulsed more strongly, she noticed the bandages for the first time. She stared at the white strip wound round her right upper arm. On her left arm a bandage had been wound below her elbow. Was she dreaming? No – the pain was too real to belong to a nightmare, throbbing, sharp as a blade. What had happened? She was unaware she had asked the question aloud until Nicholas clasped her face too tightly between his hands and said, ‘Thank God I found you before it was too late.’

‘What did I do?’ Her skin felt dry and abrasive when she pressed her palms together. ‘Why are my arms bandaged?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ he asked. ‘You did it in the bath. Both arms cut.’ His voice broke. ‘How could you do this to yourself? To us?’

‘I wouldn’t go near that bath.’ She pulled back from him and began to scrabble at the bandage on her right arm until she found the opening.

‘I stopped the bleeding and cleaned you up. You kept talking about your father. I’d suspected as much but to hear you admit it was horrendous. All that hurt and resentment finally pouring out of you. My poor love, what you were forced to endure.’

Insinuations. How many tentacles did they grow? Each one clinging to the same lie. Blood had seeped into the inner wrapping, rust-coloured and sickening to see. She unwound the last stretch of bandage. It had stuck to the wound, which began to bleed as she eased it off. She took the tissues he handed to her and stemmed the flow. The swipe of a blade. Pain, so sharp, the warm spill of blood, cries that no one but Nicholas could hear. This chilling certainty stayed with her.

‘You can’t make me believe I did this to myself,’ she whispered.

‘Who else would do it?’ He flung the challenge like a gauntlet before her. ‘You were zonked on those tablets you take at night and not responsible for your actions.’

The bleeding on her arm was slight, the wound clean, superficial. The cuts on her other arm would be the same, she thought; but they came with a warning.

‘You found release in pain,’ he said. ‘But cutting yourself is not the answer, my love. It’s destructive, dangerous. Do you remember anything about last night?’

She shook her head, numbed by the horror of her suspicions. Her breakfast was cooling on the bedside table. Why had he chosen the same menu? That night had also been a shadow, dark and threatening. Then, as now, she was unable to emerge from its shade.

‘Do you remember?’ he repeated.

Numbly, she shook her head.

‘Could you have double-dosed on those tablets?’

‘Why would I do that?’ She had taken a sleeping tablet shortly before she went to bed, welcomed the relief it would bring for the next six hours. Nicholas had remained downstairs, working on his laptop.

‘Only you can answer that question, Amelia.’ He walked to the laundry basket and removed a bloodstained towel and her nightdress, similarly stained. ‘We need to talk about what you’re going through. Self-mutilation is dangerous. Repressed memories equally so. I’m going to arrange an appointment with a therapist for you.’

‘I’m not the one who needs to see a therapist.’

‘This self-harming must never happen again.’ He ignored her comment and bundled her nightdress, along with the towel, back into the laundry basket. He removed a silver bowl in the shape of a curved leaf from the dressing table. Amelia used it to hold her rings and earrings. The only thing resting in its hollowed centre when he carried it back to the bed was a razor blade. He sat back down and balanced it lightly between his fingers.

‘Why did you feel it necessary to lie to my mother?’ he asked.

‘What lies did I tell her?’ A reason at last. Amelia fixed her gaze on the razor blade. Such a slender weapon, so slick and fast.

‘You accused me of being a violent husband.’

‘How else would you describe yourself, Nicholas?’

‘A husband who adores you. I don’t have a “dark side” to my personality, as you so dramatically put it. All I’ve ever wanted to do, and will continue to do, is to love you until death do us part. Think about what that means, darling. You could have slashed your wrists last night and drowned in the bath, especially as you had taken an overdose of tablets. I might not have found you in time. The preciousness of life. How easily it can be taken from us.’



* * *



She stayed in bed all day. She was unable to eat and refused food each time he carried a tray into the bedroom. What had happened to her last night? Another blackout? That was impossible. Apart from the two glasses of champagne he had pressed upon her, she had not touched alcohol since that evening with her friends. Two days since they were here. Two nights since Jay. The freedom in the air then. So palpable she could have hugged it. Now, it was sucked dry, acrid, and even the memory of Jay, his tenderness, the joy she had experienced in his arms, all gone, dispersed by this new terror. She pulled her nightdress from the laundry basket and examined the splatters of blood on the front of it. How could she have cut herself and been unaware that she was committing such a violent act? The only answer was the obvious one. Nicholas had cut her. This accusation almost choked her when he returned to the bedroom and laid a cup of coffee on the bedside table, but she forced herself to remain silent.