Beyond Black

Gavin yawned. ‘What’s the hurry? I’d have told you.’

‘You mean you might just have mentioned it? When you got around to it? When would that have been?’

‘After the food.’

She gaped at him. He said, with some dignity, ‘I can’t mention when I’m hungry.’

Colette bunched her fingers into fists, and held them at chest height. She was short of breath, and the flutter inside her chest had subdued to a steady thump. At the same time an uneasy feeling filled her, that anything she could do was inadequate; that she was performing someone else’s gestures, perhaps from an equivalent TV moment where news of a sudden death is received. But what are the proper gestures when a ghost’s been on the phone? She didn’t know. ‘Please. Gavin,’ she said. ‘Put down What Car?. Just…look at me, will you? Now tell me what happened.’

‘Nothing.’ He threw the magazine down. ‘Nothing happened.’

‘But where was she? Was she at home?’

‘No. Getting her shopping. In Safeway. Apparently.’

‘And?’

Gavin rubbed his forehead. He seemed to be making an honest effort. ‘I suppose she was pushing her trolley.’

‘Was she on her own?’

‘Dunno. Yes.’

‘And then?’

‘She fell over.’

‘She didn’t die there, did she? In the aisle?’

‘Nah, they got her to the hospital. So no worries about the death certificate.’

‘What a relief,’ she said grimly.

Carole, it seemed, was proposing to get the bungalow on the market as soon as possible, with Sidgewick & Staff, who for sole agency charged 2 per cent on completion, and promised unlimited colour advertising and national tie-ins. ‘There should be a good payout,’ he said, ‘the place is worth a few quid.’

That was why, he explained, he was reading the new edition of What Car?; Renee’s will would bring him nearer to what he most coveted in life, which was a Porsche 911.

‘Aren’t you upset?’ she asked him.

He shrugged. ‘We’ve all got to go, haven’t we? What’s it to you? It’s not as if you ever bothered with her.’

‘And she lived in a bungalow, Renee?’

‘Course she did.’ Gavin picked up his magazine and rolled it up in his hand, as if she were a wasp and he were going to swat her. ‘We went over for our lunch, that Sunday.’

‘No we didn’t. We never went.’

‘Only because you kept cancelling us.’

It was true. She’d hoped she could keep Renee at arm’s length: the wedding reception had proved her to have a coarse joke habit, and slipping false teeth. The teeth weren’t all that was false. ‘She told me,’ she said to Gavin, ‘that she had a stairlift installed. Which, if she lived in a bungalow, she couldn’t have.’

‘When? When did she tell you that?’

‘On the phone just now.’

‘Hello? Hello? Anyone at home?’ Gavin asked. ‘Are you ever stupid? I told you she’s dead.’

Alerted by the mutiny on her face, he rose from the sofa and slapped her with What Car?. She picked up the Yellow Pages and threatened to take out his eye. After he had slunk off to bed, hugging his expectations, she went back into the kitchen and grilled the cutlets. The peas and green beans she fed to the waste disposal; she hated vegetables. She ate the lamb with her fingers, her teeth scraping the bone. Her tongue came out, and licked the last sweetness from the meat. She couldn’t work out what was worst, that Renee had answered the phone after she was dead, or that she had answered the phone on purpose to lie to her and tell her to bugger off. She threw the bones down the waste disposal too, and rejoiced as the grinder laboured. She rinsed her fingers and wiped them on a kitchen roll.

In the bedroom, she inspected Gavin, spreadeagled across the available space. He was naked and snoring; his mag, rolled, was thrust under his pillow. That, that, she thought, is how much it means to him, the death of his only mother. She stood frowning down at him; her toe touched something hard and cold. It was a glass tumbler, lolling on its side, melted ice dribbling from its mouth on to the carpet. She picked it up. The breath of spirits hit her nostrils, and made her flinch. She walked into the kitchen and clicked the tumbler down on to the draining board. In the dark, tiny hall, she hauled Gavin’s laptop from its case. She lugged it into the sitting room and plugged it into the mains. She copied the files she thought might interest her, and erased his crucial data for tomorrow. In terms of life documentation, Gavin was less than some animal. He routinely misled her: but was it any wonder? What sort of upbringing could he have had, from a woman with false teeth who told lies after she was dead?

She left the machine humming, and went back into the bedroom. She opened the wardrobe and went through Gavin’s pockets. The word ‘rifled’ came to her: ‘she rifled through his pockets’. He stirred once or twice in his sleep, reared up, snorted, collapsed back on to the mattress. I could kill him, she thought, as he lies here; or just maim him if I liked. She found a bunch of credit-card receipts in his knicker drawer; her index finger shuffled through them. She found newspaper ads for sex lines: spicy lesbo chicks!

She packed a bag. Surely he would wake? Drawers clicked, opening and shutting. She glanced over her shoulder. Gavin stirred, made a sort of whinny, and settled back again into sleep. She reached down to unplug her hairdryer, wrapped the flex around her hand and stood thinking. She was entitled to half the equity in the flat; if he would embrace the car loan, she would continue paying off the wedding. She hesitated for a final moment. Her foot was on the wet patch the ice had left. Automatically, she plucked a tissue from an open box and blotted the carpet. Her fingers squeezed, the paper reduced itself to wet pulp. She walked away, brushing her hands together to jettison it.

Gavin’s screensaver had come up. Colette slotted a floppy into his drive, and overwrote his programs. She had heard of women who, before departing, scissored up their husband’s clothes. But Gavin’s clothes, in their existing state, were punishment enough. She had heard of women who performed castration; but she didn’t want to go to jail. No, let’s see how he gets on without his bits and bytes, she thought. With one keystroke, she wrecked his operating system.

She went down to the south coast to see a noted psychometrist, Natasha. She didn’t know then, of course, that Natasha would figure in her later life. At the time, it was just another hope she grappled with, a hope of making sense of herself; it was just another item in her strained monthly budget.

The flat was two blocks back from the sea. She parked with difficulty and at some distance. She wasted time looking for the street numbers. When she found the right door she rang the bell and spoke into the intercom: ‘I’m your eleven thirty.’

Without a word, the psychic buzzed her up; but she thought she had heard a cough, stifling a little laugh. Her cheeks burned. She ran up three flights and as soon as Natasha opened the door she said, ‘I’m not late.’

‘No, dear. You’re my eleven thirty.’

‘You really ought to tell your clients where to park.’

The psychic smiled tightly. She was a sharp little bleached-blonde with a big jaw, common as a centrefold. ‘What,’ she said, ‘you think I should exercise my powers and keep a space free?’

‘I meant you should send a map.’

Natasha turned to lead the way: tight high bottom in those kind of jeans that act as a corset. She’s too old, Colette thought, for denim; shouldn’t somebody tell her?

‘Sit there,’ Natasha said precisely, dipping her false nail.

‘The sun’s in my eyes,’ Colette said.

‘Diddums,’ said Natasha.

A sad-eyed icon drooped at her, from a cheap gilt frame on the wall; a mist washed up from the sea. She sat, and flipped open her shoulder bag: ‘Do you want the cheque now?’

She wrote it. She waited for the offer of a cup of herb tea. It didn’t come. She almost had hopes of Natasha; she was nasty, but there was a businesslike briskness about her that she’d never found in any psychic so far.

‘Anything to give me?’ Natasha said.

She dived into her bag and passed over her mother’s wedding ring.

Natasha twirled it around her forefinger. ‘Quite a smiley lady.’