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The curtains drawn, your casing still glinted
reflecting bleak light,
your metal edge further hinted.
With light as your voice, I heard you beckon
your scrape, click and clutch advanced conversation.
The scent of your steel deepened with warmth;
with a tinge of the odour left on you by hands.
And the grease they left softened your case
yet, strong and sturdy you shamelessly remained.
You tasted of metal hairpins and silver coat zips
that I’d savoured as a child on the inside of my lip.
I had not slept all night. I had to leave the light on because I knew it was in my room before I went to sleep. I could feel it sitting on my chair: a rather large beige-white chair, at the end of the bed, just about big enough to fit my huge backside in. It’s tiny frame somehow filled the whole cushion of the seat, pulling darkness into the recess.
It did not help that I had chosen neutral decor, so everything was a shade of white. The light bounced off everything. It was sickening, like a big, false American smile with that awful glistening. The sheets were especially white and even if I slept with them over my head, the light seemed to scorch through my eyelids.
Most nights had been like this, since the arguments and the nights apart; since he stopped responding to my calls, texts and emails. At first I could not sleep because I kept asking myself how I was to blame. The more I thought about it, the more I realised how badly he had treated me. “I don’t like the way you do your hair,” he had once told me. I hacked it all off with kitchen scissors that night.
The bed was cold. Each moment I drifted away, it would climb onto the bottom of my bed and wake me. I tried ignoring it; I tried screaming at it; I tried pretending I wanted to be it’s friend. That was the point it finally left me alone. Charming.
I was awoken again, but by the noise outside this time. I got out of my bed and lifted the wooden blinds to take a look outside. The whole back street was filled with blue lights, yellow tape and balding men. They weren’t that old either. Why is every man my age going bald? And how are other cars going to get through? It was 6am and barely light and they had ruined the hour lie-in I had planned to give myself: my wrinkles were bound to deepen.
They were at the house next door to that pack-of-losers-family, and I am being polite, who still had a racket to make, despite it being nothing to do with them. The police were not too concerned with the nonsense of the red-capped bloke and the flabby girlfriend. They made a bit more effort with her bald dad: I think it is an unspoken given that they show some form of respect to each other, the way that bikers nod as they pass each other, even though they’ve never met before.
The difficulty they were having inside appeared to be related to the victim. “She’s been in there a few days from the smell of her.” I heard one of them say. The coroner’s van was parked outside and two men were leaning against it all wrapped in plastic. They looked no different to how I would expect their ‘clients’ would look. The larger one was so fat, part of his belly-flab spilled out from his plastic suit. I shuddered.
I went back in to rinse my mouth out with some warm water. Brushing my teeth was too much effort and I had not bought any mouthwash since my last ‘relationship’. Was there some way I could use this incident to get out of work? Perhaps there was some noise I heard or a car I saw that was imperative to the investigation; I was going to be tied up giving witness statements all day, possibly all week. I closed my eyes as I slumped into my chair. I knew I had fallen asleep when I saw the wallpaper from my old bedroom. It was olive green with a white floral pattern and the carpet was
striped with every colour the seventies could put together. I was fifteen before that paper went.
It was in the room, I could feel it. It’s shadow tormented me on the wall, outlined like a cartoon monster, a jagged cloud with non-functioning antenna. It was throwing bits of broken heart cushions at me. I threw them back and yelled at it to stop and to leave me alone, but it just laughed and imitated me. I walked out of the room, pretending I was not afraid. Through the door, I was no longer in my old house. I was in Patrice’s house. I did not expect that I would see it all.
Jolted out of my sleep by the evil of his breath on my neck, I could barely breathe. It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t real, but I saw everything done to her until her eyelids were stapled shut. I couldn’t bring myself to continue to see. How I wished I could dismiss it as an awful, horrible dream! But she is dead, and I know every last detail of how she suffered. Who could I ever tell?
They’d been knocking for a while but I had not realised it. As I descended the beige carpeted stairs, noticing the occasional stain, I could still hear myself as her, screaming, pleading. “Help me…” she had whispered. I went cold and every follicle erected on my skin. The last stain was the most difficult to scrub away.
I opened the door to find an ashen-white face with a uniformed woman next to him. The walkie-talkie was making inaudible attempts to communicate and the uniform babbled something back. He leaned casually in the doorway as the female officer addressed me.
“I know, It’s quite a shock to be woken by all this noise,” The woman started.
“I’m afraid it’s serious. We’re investigating a death at 483 and we’d like to ask you some questions.”
Silently, I stepped back and the two stepped in. My living room was a mess and the take-away from last night was making the whole house smell. All my work documents were sprawled over the floor and the coffee table ready to staple. I had run out of staples after the first two packs. They sat down. The door creaking the whole time, the questioning was over as quickly as it began.
“If you think of anything Miss Calder, anything at all that you think could help our investigation, even if it seems insignificant, please do not hesitate to call.”
“Of course.”
I lifted the blind in my bedroom again. There was no crying or screaming outside the house. There was plenty of fiction being declared as fact by the hung-over or still drunk neighbours. The red-capped bloke had uncapped a fresh bottle! Nobody had really cared about Patrice when she was alive but now she was dead everybody was paying attention.
I turned from the window, and for just a few seconds, she was stood - not stood - but was upright, right in front of me: her eyelids still sealed shut.
The lines on my yellowing skin were starting to show. I had not slept properly for so long, I was surprised I was not balding too. Still, us women get out of it by putting up with sagging upper arms, widened hips, even though, God knows I will never ever have a child, and drooping jowls. I looked like a Rottweiler that had fought the whole street for it’s dog food, and I stuffed myself with every last bit.
My last button would not fasten any more. I was up another size. Usually, I would have to spend forty minutes finding something to wear, something that would fit or cover the hoops of wobbling fat. Now, however, I was down to one brown suit and a pair of brown chords. It was either the white blouse or the blue one. I had not waxed my legs or my upper lip since the last bloke had left. There had been a string of them since the break-up. I could not understand why I had bothered.
Every now and again, as I sat on the bus, I would fantasize suicide by stabbing. I could stab and stab as many times as were possible until I simply could not force another blow. I could just sit there and bleed! Yes! I could do it right here –now! I could just sit on the bus and bleed to death. But who would clean up the mess?
I had not managed to plan out the complete logistics of a suicide - with minimal clean up required - before I got to work. It was disappointing. I had to break my best false smile and say my most convincing ‘good mornings’ to everyone I met. Every now and then throughout the day, I would think of more I would have to do before the big day. I would obviously have to wax; the living room would have to be organized. Should I give my clothes to charity first or leave my mum and her friends to scavenge the best for themselves before leaving the leftovers in a bin bag on a Wednesday morning?
It was on the way home that Patrice came back. She sat beside me on the bus. Even though she was silent and her eyes unopened, I could feel her looking at me with disappointment. It occurred to me that I was privileged to have real knowledge: the kind of knowledge that was more real than anything the five senses could give us.
When I got to the house, I started stacking my work and dusting the wooden furniture. Everything was either ivory or pine. People said it would be difficult to keep clean but with all my paperwork strewn everywhere, the carpet and furniture were actually immaculate – almost new. My Mum would be able to find a home for most things.
As I wrung the cloth, I noticed my skin felt tight. My hands looked aged beyond my years. Patrice was behind me. I did not have to turn and look. I knew she was still wearing the same nightie, here hair was still light-brown and in tiny curls. Her skin was still white and unblemished. The staples still punctured her eyelids and eyes and the fluids and blood oozed from them.
Everything was fairly tidy before I went up to my bed. I placed a teddy bear at either side of me for protection. It was not going to leave me alone, not with Patrice hanging over me. I took my mobile phone and dialled 999. There were no tears, no anger, no fear, only clarity.
“Police please.”
They operator asked my name and address, and it sat at the bottom of my bed. It had never done that when I was fully awake before. Patrice sat down by it. Her eyes were open now. Her expression was almost one of understanding.
“Please listen carefully. I tortured Patrice Matthews because my husband fell in love with her …before he left me. I left her in almost the same condition he left me: alone, at night, my hair…He had closed my eyes to anything good in me; he left me bleeding from the core.”
The evil presence faded away. A tear fell from Patrice’s right eye. The black mobile fell to the ground. I needed both hands to plunge the knife into my core. Forget the mess.
As my teddy bears silently wept and Patrice held my hand, I took pleasure in knowing I had finally done something I had always dreamed of.
Tagged in Anita Parmar