Friend Request(96)

‘Don’t blame Henry,’ I whisper.

‘I don’t,’ he says simply. ‘I blame you.’

I can’t stop shaking. I sit on my hands, unable to predict what they will do otherwise. I can’t scream because I might wake Henry, and even if I did, what would happen? Would anyone hear? What about silent Marnie upstairs? Would she call the police? Or simply pick up the remote control and turn up the TV?

Sam pushes back his chair and the chair leg screeches against the floor. I wince, listening desperately for any sound from Henry’s room. But there is nothing, only silence, as Sam gazes out of the French windows into the darkness.

‘Oh God, oh God.’ He beats his forehead gently against the glass. ‘Why did I have to mention Nathan?’

I am struck by a memory of another time: a time when Sam went too far. He had really hurt me and he knew it. He was standing just where he is now; penitent, begging me to forgive him. Of course I did. I didn’t know then who I would be without him; if I would even be anyone at all.

‘Just pretend you didn’t,’ I blurt. ‘I won’t say anything. Just go, please. I’ll never tell anyone, I swear. Please Sam. What about Henry?’

He turns to me with tears in his eyes.

‘I’ll look after Henry. I love him as much as you do. You don’t think I’d hurt him, do you?’ I don’t want to think so, but I don’t know; I don’t know anything now.

‘Henry needs me, Sam.’ I slide my shaking hands out from under me and grip the edge of the table. ‘Children need their mothers.’

‘He’ll be OK, like I was,’ he says, but there’s no feeling in his voice now. His eyes look out into the darkness where he can see nothing, and I know he is miles and years away, in that grotty little house with cigarette burns on the Formica kitchen table.

I think of how Henry wakes me up every morning by putting his face so close to mine that when I come to, all I can see are his eyes, blurred and out of focus, his eyelashes tickling mine and his hot breath on my face. Of how he gets into bed with me, pressing his small, warm body into mine, curling into me as if he would like to get back where he came from, inside my body. Me and Henry, we used to be one, I want to say to Sam. We may look like two, but really, we are one.

Sam walks slowly back around the table and sits down next to me, turning his chair so that we are knee to knee. He closes his eyes and reaches out to stroke my hair with first one hand and then the other. I begin to shake violently and saliva rushes to my mouth.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he says under his breath, eyes still closed. He puts his mouth to my hair and kisses it, breathing me in. I sit very still, my breath coming fast, feeling the blood flowing around my body, right down to my fingertips. His hands are running over my hair, smoothing it down, just as he used to as we lay in bed at night, me falling asleep to the soothing rhythm of his stroking. I should run, fight, do something, but I am practically catatonic with fear. The hideous shock of what is happening combined with the familiar feeling of his hands on me, gentle yet filled with terrifying intent, has paralysed me.

‘You have to be quiet, Louise, please, please be quiet,’ he murmurs into my hair, and I can feel him glancing anxiously towards the room where our son is sleeping peacefully.

His hands are moving lower now, his lips still pressed to my hair, his fingers curling gently around my neck. The strange torpor begins to lift, but it’s too late. I am already struggling to breathe, his fingers squeezing harder and harder. My shallow gasping breaths are the only things that break the silence that we are locked into by our love for Henry, our desire to protect him from this scene. I scrabble uselessly at his hands, trying to get between them and my neck but there’s no space, they’re closing in.

‘Shhh,’ he whispers into my hair. ‘Don’t wake Henry.’

I pull desperately at his fingers but he’s too strong, and I can feel myself fading, surrounded by the shadows of the other times I felt his hands around my neck, in our games. They were never this tight, though. I was never this close to darkness.

I can feel the chair solid beneath me, just as it was this morning when I ate my breakfast here in this room. The things are still there on the side, unwashed: two plates coated in toast crumbs; one cup, half an inch of cold tea in the bottom; a glass filmy with sticky fingerprints, just a dribble of apple juice remaining. Are they going to be the last things I see?

I can’t pull his hands from my neck so I stop trying, instead flailing wildly around trying to find something, anything that I can use to get him away from me. It’s getting harder and harder to get any air into my lungs, worse each time I try. I’m going, I can feel it; it won’t be long now. My vision starts to blur around the edges and the kitchen where I sit with Henry each night as he tells me about his day swims in front of my eyes, melting into a haze of pain and fear. Oh Henry. My hand hits the kitchen worktop beside me and I grope around, unseeing, hoping to find something I can use to hit him, or at least shock him into releasing me, but there’s nothing there, my hand is grasping thin air.

‘Shhh,’ whispers Sam again, his lips on my ear now, caressing it gently. I try to mouth ‘please’ but nothing comes out and he’s not looking at me anyway; he’s lost in a world where what he’s doing is OK, just one of our games, his way of showing his love for me.