She looked me full in the face now, a little smile playing on her lips. ‘So now that you know the truth, we can find a way to be in this together. Wouldn’t life be better with no secrets, Susannah? No shame. We can make our own family, can’t we? Even if it is lies that bind us, and not blood. I’ll live with it.’
‘I’m leaving.’ I was getting closer to the front door, still holding the knife in front of me.
‘Let me talk to Thomas,’ she called after me. It looked as though she would let me go. ‘Think of Abbingdale, Susannah. I know you haven’t seen it, but it’s worth waiting for, and one day it will all be his. Think of the money – isn’t that what you wanted?’
‘Your son is a monster. I want nothing to do with either of you.’
I ran to the front door and snatched at the handle. Of course it was locked, but the key was still in it. I did not have time to turn it and Mrs Wiggs was coming for me, so I carried on running. I missed her grasping hands and slipped past her down the hallway, down the pantry steps and into the kitchen. I was almost at the back door when she grabbed my hair and pulled me backwards.
I whipped around, bent over, tried to free my hair with one hand and with the other brandished the knife blindly. I felt it slide into her soft belly, under her stays. She made a noise as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She let go of my hair and stepped backwards. We both pulled away from each other, like boxers at the sound of the bell. I saw the handle sticking out of her abdomen. The blood spread like ink into her dress, slowly at first, and then it surged in all directions as it flooded down her skirts. What had I done? Her owl eyes were large and amber. I saw my grandmother in her face: shock, betrayal and resentment.
‘Oh no, Susannah! No, no, no! Now you will never be free,’ she said, as tears fell down her cheeks.
She dropped to the floor and lay on her back, groaning, clutching her abdomen. I sat on my knees beside her and waited as she bled to death. I heard a buzzing noise and looked about to find where it was coming from. A fly was dancing at the window, trying to find a route out. As Mrs Wiggs lay dying, I stood up and opened the window so it could go free. It seemed like the right thing to do.
34
Seeing the fly like that struck me as significant. It was a sign, I was being watched, the things I had done would not go unnoticed even if only by the divine. Back in Reading when my grandmother was still alive and I was entirely under her influence, she and I had been at church on a Sunday, as we always were. It was January and bitterly cold, and I was sitting in the pew next to her, enduring the sermon and staring up at the windows.
The stiff taffeta of our dresses rubbed against each other and my thoughts roiled. For the past year I had been trying to speak to my grandmother about my leaving Reading and taking up nursing in London. I was twenty-seven years old and desperate to seize some of the adventure I’d read that other women savoured. I was desperate not to die an old maid, never having left that house in Reading, never having done anything but be a companion to an old woman. Would I never know the touch of a man, get married or have children? But my grandmother never listened to my concerns and hopes; she had stopped listening after my grandfather died.
I itched and crawled with frustration. For some weeks I had carried this oily feeling at the top of my stomach and a burning sensation when I swallowed. I thought I was falling ill, then I convinced myself that it was because my chance to escape was fast disappearing. If I didn’t do something soon, I would never leave.
Every window in St Bartholomew’s was broken and the missing parts had been blocked up with sacking. It made the patchwork Bible scenes harder to place. As I sat there that January Sunday, trying to decipher the story of one particular window, I caught sight of a fly beating itself against a coloured pane. It was thrashing the glass in a panic, straining to get out. I knew exactly how it felt.
My grandmother forbade me from talking to the others in the church congregation, and so they had long stopped bothering to offer us anything more than a polite greeting. I so lacked practice with people and conversation that on the occasions I did talk to someone, such as the chemist or the lady at the post office, I went as red as a strawberry and couldn’t think what to say. People must have thought me either dumb or an imbecile.
As always, we waited in our pew until the rest of the congregation had dribbled out. The frail and unwashed tended to loiter towards the back, the better dressed righteously possessed the front. It took forever for them all to shuffle out of the door though there weren’t many of them. Grandmother stared straight ahead at the large crucifix and
