Neil closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the sofa. I stepped from the last stair onto the living-room carpet. I was still ready to run back upstairs if I needed to.
With his eyes still shut, he slowly sat up straight and brought his hands onto his lap. He was moving so slowly, it was like watching him in slow motion. My pulse quickened.
He stood up, still in slow-motion, eyes still shut and turned in my direction, as though he was on a slow-moving turntable.
When he opened his eyes, my heart stopped. I put one foot back on the stairs and made ready to run. His eyes pierced into me. He looked as though he wanted to tear me to pieces. I had never seen his eyes so still. They burned with hatred.
I tried to stop my voice from trembling. Tried to keep it calm and even.
‘Neil?’ I said.
I steadied my leg on the stairs. Tensed the muscles so that I was primed. So that my leg would stop shaking.
Neil clenched his fists and sucked in the air. His face turned to a scowl and his mouth opened.
‘What the fucking hell are you talking about?’ he yelled.
I covered my ears with my hands. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted. His face turned a deep red. Each word was separate and distinct.
‘For fuck sake, Christine. What the fuck are you going on about?’
I moved my other foot onto the first stair, backed away from him slightly.
He closed his eyes again, leaned forward and screamed, louder than anything I had ever heard coming from him.
The scream lasted until he ran out of breath. Then he turned away from me and kicked the sofa. He punched the cushions, over and over, swearing with every punch, then he threw them across the room.
None of them at me.
He launched himself against the sofa, tipping it onto its back. And he kicked the base of it, rupturing the material underneath. He dug his hands into the rupture and ripped it wide open. Tore at it like a maniac, pulling enormous strips of stringy material away from the sofa.
He screamed again.
‘Fucking hell!’
He turned to me, and pointed.
But he said nothing, just held his hand out straight towards me for a few seconds.
And then lowered his arm and his head.
I saw the cloud move from him. The redness left his face and the rippling aggression dissipated. His shoulders hunched forward and his head sagged down even further. He looked about six inches shorter than he had just a few seconds earlier.
Neither of us spoke.
I sat down on the creaking third stair and Neil stood where he was, hunched and sagging.
I was aware of my heart pounding. Not too fast, but very strong. I didn’t feel breathless, but I did feel as though I had just run for several days non-stop. All my limbs ached and tingled. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to be at my mum and dad’s house, in my old bedroom, asleep.
‘I don’t get it, Chris.’
Neil had raised his head, but the rest of his body remained as it was. The burning hatred had gone from his eyes, leaving only despair in the ashes.
‘I really don’t,’ he said.
I looked down at my feet and thought about what to say.
‘I don’t know what you were accusing me of,’ he said. ‘But you really have got some issues.’
I looked over at him.
‘You didn’t want me to see this story,’ I said. ‘About the missing girls.’
He shook his head.
‘Of course I didn’t. You’ve been on a knife edge since you were attacked. And all the things that have happened since — the horrific dreams; the writing on our walls; your blackouts. All of that, has only made things worse for you.’
He walked over to the shattered sofa and pulled it back up the right way. He retrieved the nearest cushion, put it on the sofa and sat down.
‘I knew,’ he said, ‘that if you heard about these missing girls, especially the fact that it’s not a million miles from where we live, it would affect you. It’s potentially just what you’ve been dreaming about. I didn’t know how it would affect you, but I knew it would.’
He put a hand to his forehead and lowered his eyes.
‘And what with your blackouts…’
He hesitated and looked away from me.
‘... well, even you don’t know where you’ve been going, what you’ve been doing during them.’
I stood up. The recognition of what he was saying slapped me across the face.
‘Did you think I might have done something to them?’ I said.
He shook his head, but had already taken one too many milliseconds to answer.
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But who knows where you’ve been? And you obviously thought I had something to do with it.’
I didn’t hear him. He had taken hold of my heart and crushed it between his hands. The room grew bigger. I was Alice, shrinking, having just sipped from the bottle labelled “drink me”. If my own husband thought I was capable of taking these poor girls, what about my mum and dad? What about Abi and my friends? What about the school? And what about the police? Would they all suspect me?
Neil’s voice broke through my thoughts.
‘And I was obviously right,’ he said.
‘Right?’
‘Not to tell you. You’ve completely gone off on one since you found out. I have no idea what you were going on about with Colin Connell and the doctor. I have known Colin Connell since you took me to see him. I have known the doctor ever since we both started going to see him.’
He stood up and gestured towards the sideboard.
‘And as for knowing where to find the writing on the wall. How the fuck would I know it was there. I found it, that was all. I had no idea it was there until I found it.’
He threw his hands up in the air.
‘For fuck sake, Christine. If we can’t even trust each other, what the fuck can we do?’
I had been thinking the same thing.
I looked around at the cushions scattered on the floor. The ripped material from the base of the sofa.
Whatever it was that had burned inside Neil, he had taken it all out on the furniture. But the hatred in his eyes had been for me. Pure and direct. I shivered as I thought about what might have happened if the sofa hadn’t been the closest thing to hand. If I had been standing next to him when he lost control.
‘What’s happening to us, Neil?’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. This time his eyebrows spoke volumes. It was my fault.
All of the problems, all of the arguments and all of the pain. It was all my fault. Not Neil, not Michael or Rose, not even the bastard who attacked me in the first place.
It was all me. I was the one creating the pain. I was the one creating all the uncertainty and chaos.
I was the one with the mental illness creeping slowly through the cells of my brain.
‘I didn’t ask to be attacked,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want any of this. And I can’t help what my messed up mind is doing to me. I’m trying to fight it, but it keeps coming back with more. I don’t know what else I can do.’
He shrugged again.
‘And if you weren’t working late all the time,’ I said, ‘maybe we could do more together.’
He looked away from me. Looked down at the floor.
‘I’ve still got to work, Chris,’ he said. ‘Life still goes on you know. We can’t stop everything.’
‘I still might get the Deputy Head job,’ I said. ‘That comes with more money.’
He looked up at me again. I could see in his eyes that he didn’t think there was a chance in hell of me getting that job.
‘It’s not just about the money,’ he said. ‘It’s about keeping things together too. It’s about keeping our —,’ he stopped for a moment, searched for the right word, then continued anyway. ‘It’s about keeping our sanity. For your sake, for mine and for Michael and Rose. Living life helps to do that. Even a boring, bank life. While all this ot
her shit is going on, work helps to normalise things. Keeps an anchor in the real world.
‘I know you didn’t ask for any of this, Chris. None of us did. But it’s happening, and mostly it’s happening to you. The kids can’t help you, and although I want to do everything I can, I’m not sure what I can do — other than keep our life going. So somehow we have to keep a hold of real life. That’s what I’m trying to do. Trying to hold onto it for the both of us.’
I walked over to the sideboard and ran a finger along the top of it. I didn’t look back at Neil.
‘So you didn’t tell me about the girls because you thought I had done it — during a blackout.’
‘Chris, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to get upset about it. I have no idea what’s happening inside your head at the moment. But it’s not right and it’s not normal. I want to keep as much stress away from you as possible.’
‘I thought you had done it,’ I said. ‘With Colin Connell and Doctor Jones.’
‘They may have done,’ he said. ‘But I work in a fucking bank.’
I turned to look at him. He looked directly at me.
‘What are we going to do?’ I said.
‘I don’t know, Chris. But I think Michael and Rose should come home, and I think you need to get some more help as soon as possible.’
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