She banged on the door and unleashed a torrent of swearing, threats of all the things she was going to do to me when she got out. I kept a firm grip on the knob; I knew she wouldn’t be able to overpower me. Then she started screaming. Initially I laughed, but then I realized that I could hear someone else moving on the other side of the door. Beth’s voice became muffled and the banging became slamming. I tried to push the door open but I couldn’t, he had her pressed up against it. All the kids ran up to try and help me; I could hear thin scratches being carved into the door as fingernails dug into it. Beth stopped screaming. The hammering carried on. By this point I was taking run ups and hurling myself into the door. I almost dislocated my shoulder. By the time we prized it open Beth was huddled in the corner of the room and Crow was dead. Cardiac arrest.
They were only alone in the room together for less than 2 minutes, in that time Crow had done some major damage. Beth had deep, dark bruises around her neck and shoulder, a small chunk of her bottom lip had been bitten off, there were two fingernails imbedded in her arm and he’d torn out enough hair to leave a large bald patch just above her forehead, some skin had come off with it. There was an investigation after that, thanks to my parents’ intervention we managed to convince the police that we’d been walking by and heard Crow in distress and that he’d attacked Beth when she tried to help him. There was no funeral.
Beth was in counseling for a long time after that, she cycled through four or five different therapists, other than me and the kids, they were the only ones who ever knew the truth about what happened. It’s all fun and games. We moved in together in our early twenties, a flat in Bromley. I was working as an accountant at the time and Beth was an editor for Egmont. She was out of therapy by then, but we still never talked about it, she never actually spoke to me about what had happened in there and I never pressed her. She still had the nightmares from time to time but that was as bad as it ever got.
A few years went by like that, I didn’t notice the changes in her at first, I was too busy, I got promoted twice in that time and I always had a lot on my plate, as well as a social life to maintain. Beth didn’t really have any friends in the city. She just seemed more distant at first, I’d come home and she’d be stood by the kitchen sink staring out of the window or at her desk with the computer on and no programs running. Sometimes when we were talking she would just space out.
It started to have an impact on her work, she missed deadlines and eventually they sacked her. Luckily by then I was managing a branch and we had more than enough to get by on. I never knew what to do with her, it just kept getting worse. I’d come home and find her in the kitchen dropping glasses and plates on the ground one by one or emptying everything out of the wardrobe. There was one day when I got back and she was exactly where I’d left her that morning, in the shower. All the colour had drained out of her and she was borderline hypothermic, but she wasn’t even shaking. I didn’t take her to the hospital. It would have raised too many questions. She acted like it had never happened, back in the days when she still spoke.
I started spending less and less time at home after that, I stayed out late, I went to work retreats and social holidays. I screwed around from time to time. I had to, I needed to feel alive. Coming home was like walking into limbo, you could feel the life force draining out of you when you stepped over the threshold. Beth would be sat in the bedroom or the lounge, just staring out into space, hardly blinking. Perhaps there would be a cup of cold tea or an unopened book in front of her, little more than set dressing. I couldn’t stand it, it was like bigger and bigger pieces of her were falling away behind her eyes. I couldn’t even look into them anymore. I had to get a separate bed and sleep on the other side of the house. I couldn’t lie in that bed knowing that she was there, staring at me through the darkness. I was living with a porcelain doll that had a fragment of my wife trapped inside.
By that stage we were living in a bigger house out in a village in Buckinghamshire, I didn’t mind the commute and the scenery was gorgeous. There was a lake that I drove past every day on my route, now and again I’d stop and look out, reading the nearby information signs. Making little notes in my head. I tried to get Beth out of the house every once in a while. Her parents never really visited anymore and mine were living in America, but there were parties and things. When I got promoted to vice president and bought her a new dress and took her along. She looked beautiful, her auburn hair pinned at the nape of her neck, her eyes framed in light blue and her lips shimmering. It was a disaster. She sat at our table the entire night and didn’t speak to anyone, I might as well have brought a mannequin with me. I told people that she was tired, getting over a cold, anything that sounded feasible. I could see them whispering behind cupped hands about it.
“Hey.” I said later, as we drove home. “Are you still in there?”
She didn’t respond, the streetlights danced across her glass eyes.
“Please, just give me a sign, anything to show me that you’re still you.”
I got exactly the answer I was expecting; she had made my decision for me. 5 miles up the road from the house I turned a hard left and slammed the car into the lake. I opened the driver-side door immediately, undid my seatbelt and undid hers. It had to look like I’d tried to save her. I had it all figured out. I took one last look at my love as the water consumed her. She never turned, but her eyes were fixed on me. I waited until the car had sunk the 12 feet to the lakebed, I could feel the cold clawing at my lungs and the murky blackness had smothered every glimmer of light. Just as I started to swim to the surface a hand grabbed my arm so hard it felt like the nails had reached bone. I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her eyes burning, her face contorting and her silent, frozen screams. Then she let me go.
Once I got to the surface I waited there to see if she followed me. It was 2 hours before a passing car interrupted my vigil. They called me brave, stories of how I’d tried to desperately to save her, how I’d swerved to avoid a fox, it all spread like the most infectious, bilious libel. I took the week off work, then I took a second, and then a third. Nobody asked any questions. Every day I stood at the window and watched the driveway, waiting to see her walking back up it. I had to keep watch; I couldn’t blink, now that I knew what I had left out there. I had to keep my eyes open. It’s all fun and games.
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