Killing Me Softly

shook her head and went on waiting for Adam’s response. I poured myself a slug and downed it.

‘How do you think it happened?’

‘How the fuck do I know?’ he said eventually. ‘It was freezing cold. There was a storm. Everyone was out of it. Nothing functioned any more, nobody. I don’t know what happened to the rope, nor does anyone else. Now, you want blame, don’t you?’ He slurped some whisky back. ‘You want to write a nice, neat story saying so-and-so led a group of people to their death. Well, lady, it ain’t like that up in the death zone. No one’s a hero and no one’s a villain. We’re all just people stuck up a mountain with our brain cells cascading away.’

‘The book implies that you were a hero,’ said Joanna, quite unperturbed by his outburst. Adam said nothing. ‘And,’ she went on, carefully, ‘it also half implies that the leader of the expedition must bear some responsibility. Greg.’

‘Can you get me another, Alice?’ Adam held out his glass. When I took it from him I bent down and kissed him. I wondered at what point I should tell Joanna to go.

‘I gather that Greg is now in a bad condition. Is that guilt, do you think?’

Once again, Adam said nothing. He closed his eyes briefly, and tipped his head back. He looked very weary.

She tried again. ‘Do you think the trip was an unnecessary risk?’

‘Obviously. People died.’

‘Do you regret the way that the mountains have been commercialized?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet you are part of that.’

‘Yes.’

‘One of the people who died,’ Joanna said, ‘was very close to you. An ex-girlfriend, I think.’

He nodded.

‘Were you badly affected by not being able to save her?’

I took the second whisky over and Adam put his arm around my waist as I leaned towards him.

‘Don’t go,’ he said, as if he was talking about our whole relationship. I sat on the arm of his chair, and rested my hand on his tangled hair. He stared assessingly at Joanna for a moment. ‘What the fuck do you think?’ he answered at last. He stood up. ‘I think that’s enough, don’t you?’

Joanna didn’t move, except to check that the spools of the taperecorder were still turning.

‘Have you got over it?’ she asked. I leaned over and turned off her taperecorder and she looked up at me. Our eyes met and she nodded at me, approvingly, I thought.

‘Got over.’ His tone was withering. Then he said, in an altogether different tone, ‘Shall I tell you my secret, Joanna?’

‘I’d be delighted.’

I’d bet she would.

‘I’ve got Alice,’ he said. ‘Alice will save me.’ And he gave a rather cracked laugh.

Now Joanna did stand up.

‘One last question,’ she said, as she put on her coat. ‘Will you go on climbing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m a climber. That’s who I am.’ His voice was slightly blurred with the whisky. ‘I love Alice and I climb mountains.’ He leaned against me. ‘That is where I find grace.’

?

‘I’m pregnant,’ said Pauline. We were walking in St James’s Park, arm in arm but awkward together still. It had been her idea to meet, and I had been half unwilling. All my old life seemed far off, almost unreal, as if it had happened to someone different. In that life, I had loved Pauline and depended on her; in this life, I had no room for such an intense friendship. I realized, walking to meet Pauline on that frosty Saturday afternoon in March, that I had put our friendship by for a rainy day. I assumed that I would be able to return to it, but not just yet. We had walked through the park together until it started to get dark, gingerly feeling our way round subjects where once we had been able to say more or less anything to each other. ‘How’s Jake?’ I had asked, and she, wincing slightly, had said he was all right.

‘How’s your new life?’ she’d said, not really wanting to know, and I hadn’t really told her.

Now I stopped and took her thin shoulders. ‘That is wonderful news,’ I said. ‘How pregnant?’

‘Eight or nine weeks. Enough to feel sick most of the time.’

‘I’m very happy for you, Pauline,’ I said. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

‘Of course I told you,’ she replied formally. ‘You’re my friend.’

We came to the road. ‘I go this way,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting Adam just up there.’

We kissed each other on both cheeks, relieved, and I turned away, into the unlit street. As I did so a tall young man stepped in front of me and, before I had time to register much except his dead white face and his garish mop of ginger hair, yanked my bag off my shoulder.

‘Oil’ I yelled, and lunged at him as he ducked away from me. I got hold of the bag, although there was almost nothing in it of any value, and pulled it from him. He whipped round to face me. There was a spider-web tattoo on his left cheek, and a line round his throat read ‘CUT HERE’. I kicked at his shin but missed, so I kicked again. There, that must have hurt.

‘Leggo, you cunt,’ he snarled at me. The straps of my bag cut into my fingers then slipped from me. ‘You stupid fucking cunt.’ He lifted his hand and struck me across the face, and I staggered and put a hand up to my cheek. Blood was running down my neck. His mouth was open and I saw that his tongue was fat and purple. He lifted his hand again. Oh, God, he was a madman. I remember thinking that he must be the man who was sending us those notes; our stalker. Then I closed my eyes: better get it over with. No blow came.

I opened them again and saw, as if in a dream, that he had a knife in his hand. It was not pointed towards me, but at Adam. Then I saw Adam slamming his fist into the man’s face. He cried out in pain, and dropped the knife. Adam hit him again, a cracking blow into his neck. Then into his stomach. The tattooed man was buckled over; blood was streaming down from his left eye. I saw Adam’s face: it was stony, quite without expression. He hit the man again and stepped back to let him fall to the ground, where he lay at my feet, whimpering and holding on to his stomach.

‘Stop!’ I gasped. A small crowd had gathered. Pauline was there; her mouth was an O of horror.

Adam kicked him in the stomach.

‘Adam.’ I grabbed hold of his arm and clung on. ‘For Chrissakes, stop, will you? That’s enough.’

Adam looked down at the body writhing on the pavement. ‘Alice wants me to stop,’ he said. ‘So that’s why I am stopping. Otherwise I’d murder you for daring to touch her.’ He picked up my bag from the ground, and then turned to me and took my face in both his hands. ‘You’re bleeding,’ he said. He licked some of the blood away. ‘Darling Alice, he made you bleed.’

I saw dimly that people were gathering, talking, asking each other what had happened. Adam held me. ‘Does it hurt much? Are you all right? Look at your beautiful face.’

‘Yes. Yes, I don’t know. I think so. Is he all right? What’s he… ?’

I looked at the man on the ground. He was moving, but not much. Adam paid no attention. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, licked it and started to wipe the cut on my cheek. A siren wailed close by us and over Adam’s shoulder I could see a police car followed by an ambulance.

‘Nice one, mate.’ A hefty man in a long overcoat came up and held out his hand to grip Adam’s. ‘Put it there.’ I looked at them, appalled, as they shook hands. This was a nightmare, a farce.

‘Alice, are you all right?’ It was Pauline.

‘I’m all right.’

Policemen were here now. There was a car. It was an official incident, which somehow made it seem manageable. They leaned over the man and pulled him to his feet. He was led away out of my sight.

Adam took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. He smoothed back my hair.

‘I’m going to get us a cab,’ he said. ‘The police can wait. Don’t move.’ He turned to Pauline. ‘Look after her,’ he said, and sprinted off.