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15

Friday, 10 August 2007


When I hear the key in the lock, I pull the massage table towards me so that it stands between me and the door. He comes into the room, unsmiling, his face blank. In his left hand he holds the gun and in his right the syringe, which is full. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No. Please. It’s too soon after last time…’

‘Why aren’t you lying with your legs up against the wall like I told you to?’

‘It would be pointless,’ I tell him. ‘I didn’t want to say anything before because I was scared of making you angry, but… I can’t have any more children.’

‘What?’ His face twitches.

‘After Jake was born I had some problems.’ I know words, details, that would make this lie more plausible. I know the names of all kinds of gynaecological syndromes from the dozens of books I read when I was pregnant with Zoe. Why can’t I remember any of them? ‘I’m infertile. However long I lie with my legs up against the wall, I won’t get pregnant. I’m sorry. I should have told you straight away.’

He laughs. ‘Infertile. Not suffering from a rare genetic disorder, then, which any child you had would be likely to inherit? Of course, you couldn’t say that because of Zoe and Jake.’

‘I’m not lying, I swear on my life.’

‘Swear on your children’s lives.’

No. Not that.

‘No. I would never do that. I’m telling the truth, Mark.’

‘That isn’t my name.’

‘What is?’

He stares down at his arms, his head hanging low. ‘William Markes. You guessed right first time.’

He puts the syringe down on the massage bed and points the gun at my face, holding it with both hands. ‘We’re going to play Conscience Roulette,’ he says. ‘In a minute, I’m going to ask you if you’re infertile. If you are, and you tell the truth, I’ll let you go. You can go back home. I want and need a family, Sally. A happy family. If you can’t give me one, you’re not the woman for me. But if you aren’t infertile, you’ll stay here with me. And if you lie and say you are when you aren’t, I’ll kill you. Do you understand? I’ll know if you’re lying. I already know.’ The gun makes a clicking noise.

‘I’m not infertile,’ I blurt out before he asks. ‘I’m sorry. I won’t lie again.’

‘Why are you crying? I’m the one who should be crying.’ He exhales slowly. ‘Lie down on the massage bed.’

Gathering together all my energy, I say, ‘Please can I… do it myself?’ I point to the syringe.

‘You’d mess it up deliberately.’

‘I wouldn’t. I promise.’

‘If you do, I’ll use this.’ He waves the gun. ‘Not to kill you. I’d shoot you in the knee or the foot.’

‘I swear I’ll do it properly,’ I babble, desperate.

‘Good, because I’m going to be watching carefully. I’m not stupid. I’ll know if you’re trying to sabotage our family.’

‘No!’ Every nerve ending in my body is screaming a panic signal. I wish he had kept me unconscious for longer, for ever. He said he would kill me if I lied, so why didn’t I? Fear. Terror, not a desire to live, not like this. ‘Not with you watching. Please!’

‘No?’ He walks over to the window, turns his back on me. ‘You’re trying to take advantage of me. Everyone always does, because I’m soft. I never put my foot down. Do you think I don’t know that you’ve got all the power and I’ve got none? Do you think I might have missed that fact, so you have to rub my nose in it?’

‘I… I don’t know what you mean,’ I sob.

‘I need you more than you need me. Think how you’d feel in my position. You don’t need me at all, and you don’t want me. So I need a gun and a syringe, locks on all the doors. And now you’re asking me to leave the room, to entrust the most important thing in my world to you, when you’ve lied from the minute you got here. How is that fair? How is that right?’

‘If you let me do this, on my own, I’ll try harder to make it work. I promise. If you want me to help you, you have to start thinking about what I want and not just what you want.’

‘Why do you care so much?’ he snaps. ‘Why does this tiny detail matter so much? I’ve seen your body before, I’ve touched it, every inch of it.’

Something inside me is about to break. I can’t argue any more. There’s no point: in his mind, he has already won every possible argument we might have.

‘Let’s get it over with, for both our sakes,’ he says, picking up the syringe.

I walk towards the massage table.

‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Not the table this time. I’ve been looking on the Internet. There are better positions for conception than flat on your back. Look.’ On the carpet in front of me, he gets down on his hands and knees, holding the syringe between his teeth while his palms are flat on the floor. ‘Do that,’ he says, standing up. ‘Right. Good.’

I stare at the stripy carpet, list the colours in my head: grey, green, rust, gold, orange. Grey, green, rust, gold, orange. Nothing happens. I don’t feel his hands lifting the bottom of the dressing gown he made me put on after my clothes became too much of an inconvenience to him. Why is he taking so long?

For a beautiful moment I imagine he has died, that if I turned I would see him upright, grey and cold, eyes staring emptily.

‘That doesn’t look right,’ he says, sounding irritated. ‘I know, let’s improvise a bit. Go as if to fold your arms, resting your forearms flat on the carpet. No, not… yes, that’s it. Excellent. And then-final stage-shuffle forward on your forearms so that your body sort of stretches, so that your bottom’s higher in the air than the rest of you. That’s it. Stop. Perfect.’

Grey, green, rust, gold, orange. Grey, green, rust, gold, orange.

Darkness falls down on me. I twist my head to look up, see a layer of fabric. Not the ceiling. I feel air on my legs and back. He has pulled up the dressing gown, thrown it over my head. I begin to weep. ‘Wait! Look up male fertility on the Internet,’ I plead with him, but the words come out thick and indistinct. Only I know what I’m trying to say. ‘Four times a day is less likely to succeed than every two days. I’m not lying!’

He doesn’t answer.

I feel something brush against me. Not the syringe: something softer. Material. ‘Please stop,’ I beg. ‘There’s no point, not so soon after last time. It won’t work! Are you listening to me? I swear, I’m not lying!’

Thick, heavy breaths come from behind me. I close my eyes, steeling myself for the syringe, pressing my face into my arms. Seconds pass-I don’t know how many. I have forgotten how to count the speed at which my life is rolling away from me. Nothing happens.

Eventually, when I can’t bear it any more, I raise my head and turn. He’s holding the gun in the air. The bottom of his shirt has blood on it. ‘What…?’ I start to say.

He flies across the room at me. ‘You bitch!’ he screams. ‘Evil bitch!’ I don’t have time to move. I see the gun above my head, his hand coming down fast. Then a terrible crack, a burst of pain that wipes everything away.



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