She squeezes her hands between her knees. I have to win something back. Even the worst reconciliation with Julianne will be better than the best pact I could make with myself.
‘I thought I was losing you,’ I say, plaintively.
‘Oh, you have a bigger problem than that, Joe,’ she says. ‘I may already be lost.’
53
The minute hand has clicked past midnight and the second hand is racing away into a new day. The house is dark. The street is silent. For the past hour I have watched the moon rising above the slate rooftops and the latticed branches, creating shadows in the garden and beneath the eaves.
The sky has a sickly yellow glow from the lights of Bath and the smell of compost adds to the sense of decay and foulness. The mixture is too wet. Good compost is a combination of wet and dry: kitchen scraps, leaves, coffee grounds, eggshells and shredded paper. Too wet and it smells. Too dry and it doesn’t break down.
I know these things because my pop had an allotment for thirty years on waste ground behind the railway yards at Abbey Wood. He had a shed and I remember standing among the tools and flowerpots and seed packets, my shoes cloyed with soil.
Pop looked like a scarecrow in the garden, dressed in rags and an old hat. He grew potatoes mainly and brought them home in a Hessian sack stiff with dried mud. I was made to wash them in the sink with a scrubbing brush. I remember him telling me a story of someone who dug up an old World War II hand grenade among their potatoes and didn’t discover it until they were scrubbing the spuds. It blew them into the garden. I was always careful after that.
I look at my watch again. It’s time.
Keeping low, I follow a grey stone fence along the right side of the garden until I reach the corner of the house. I push through the shrubs. Peer through the window. There are no alarms. No dogs. A forgotten towel flaps on the clothesline, waving to nobody.
Crouching at the back door, I unroll the fabric pouch, laying out my tools: the diamond picks, rakes, combs, snakes, shallow picks and a hand-made tension wrench of black sprung steel fashioned from a small allen key that I flattened at one end with a grinder.
I link my fingers and push them away until tiny bubbles of gas trapped in the fluid between the joints expand and burst making a cracking sound.
The lock is a double plug Yale cylinder. The plug will open clockwise, away from the doorframe. I slide a snake pick into the keyway, feeling it bounce over the pins and increase the torque on the tension wrench. Minutes pass. It’s not an easy lock. I try and fail. One of the middle pins won’t lift up far enough as the pick passes over it.
I reduce the torque on the wrench and start over, concentrating on the back pins. First I try a light torque and moderate pressure, trying to feel for the click when a pin reaches the sheer line and the plug rotates ever so slightly.
The last of the pins is down. The plug rotates completely. The latch turns. The door opens. I step inside quickly and close it behind me, taking a pencil torch from my shirt pocket. The narrow beam of light sweeps over a laundry and the kitchen beyond it. I edge forward, easing my weight on the floorboards, listening for creaks.
The kitchen benches are clear apart from a glass jar of teabags and a bowl of sugar. The electric kettle is still warm. The torch beam picks out labels on metal tins: flour, rice and pasta. There is a drawer for cutlery, another for linen tea towels and a third for odds and ends like hairgrips, pencils, rubber bands and batteries.
It’s a nice house. Neat. A central hallway joins the front and rear. There’s a lounge on my left.
The blue upholstered sofa has large cushions. It faces a coffee table and a TV on a stand. Small brass animals line the mantelpiece next to a wedding photograph and a craft project, homemade candles, a porcelain horse, a mirror surrounded by seashells. I catch sight of my reflection. I look like a long-legged black insect, a night creature hunting its prey.
They’re sleeping upstairs. I am drawn towards them, testing the weight of each step. There are four doors. One must be a bathroom. The others are bedrooms.
There is a sound like an insect trapped against glass. It is a portable music player. Snowflake must have fallen asleep with it plugged into her ears. Her bedroom door is open. Her bed is beneath the window. The curtains only half-closed. A single square of moonlight paints the floor. I cross the room and kneel next to her, listening to her soft sweet breath. She looks like her mother, with the same oval-shaped face and dark hair.
I lean close to her face, breathing as she breathes. Her stuffed animals have been relegated to a box in the corner. Pooh has been usurped by Harry Potter and overpaid football stars.
I used to live in a house like this. My daughter slept down the hall from me. I wonder what she’s doing now? I wonder if she bites her nails; does she sleep on her side; has she grown her hair long; does she wear it out; I wonder if she’s bright, if she’s courageous, if she thinks of me?
Backing away, I gently close her door and turn to other rooms, pressing my ear against the panelled wood, listening for the sounds of sleep or silence. Easing open another door, I find it empty. The queen-sized bed has a patchwork quilt, topped with throw pillows. I run my hands beneath them, looking for a nightdress. Nothing.
I turn to the wardrobe, a hand on the brass handle, my face in the mirrored door and listen to the house again. Nothing. Pushing through the clothes, I find her smell, the one I want, her deodorant and perfume. Fake smells. During my jungle training we were taught never to use soap, or shaving foam, or deodorant. Artificial smells can give a soldier away to the enemy. To survive in the jungle you must become one with the jungle, like the animals.
Women don’t smell like women are supposed to. It comes from a bottle. Manufactured. Deodorised. This one has some nice clothes, but there is a curious formality about her: the mid-length skirts, dark tights and cardigans. She’s as formal as a flight attendant but not so glossy. I’m going enjoy breaking her.
There are boxes of shoes at the base of the wardrobe. Flipping open the lids, I sort through them. Slingback sandals. Peep-toe mules. Court shoes. Flats. Wedges. She likes boots. There are four pairs, two of them with pointy toes and fuck-me heels. Soft leather. Italian. Expensive. I put my nose inside and inhale.
I sit at her dressing table and sort through her lipsticks. The dark vermilion is best; it complements her skin colour. And the malachite necklace in the velvet box will look very pretty on her naked skin.
Stretching out on the bed, I gaze at the ceiling. A square hatch in the corner leads to the attic. I could hide there. I could watch over her like an angel. An avenging one.
There are footsteps on the landing. Someone is awake. A woman. I wait, wondering if I will have to kill her. A toilet flushes across the landing. Pipes rumble and the cistern refills. Whoever it is, has gone back to bed, with her foul breath and bleary eyes. She won’t find me.
Rising from the bed, I close the wardrobe door, making sure everything is back in its place. Returning to the landing, I retrace my steps downstairs, along the hallway, into the kitchen, out the back door.
Pausing at the end of the garden, I watch the wind testing the pines and feel the first drops of icy rain. I have marked my territory and drawn invisible battlelines. Hurry morning.
54
When we first married, Julianne and I promised ourselves that we would never go to sleep angry at each other. It happened last night. My apologies were ignored. My overtures were brushed aside. We slept back to back on the same white sheet but it could have been an icy wasteland.
We checked out of the hotel at ten; our romantic weekend cut short. On the train back to Bath Spa Julianne read magazines and I stared out the window, pondering what she said to me last night. Maybe I am miserable or looking to blame somebody for what’s happened to me. I thought I was past the five stages of grieving. Perhaps they never go away.
Even now, sitting next to her in a minicab on the journey home from the station, I keep telling myself that it
