Page 42 of We Live Here Now

41

Freddie

Emily’s accident replays in my sleep, the nightmare a vivid attack on my senses. The heat of Ibiza on my back. The salt in the dry air. I follow her on the stony track and wonder why she’s been so shitty all holiday, not letting me touch her. It’s me who’s got the problems. She’s got her dream promotion when we were supposed to be concentrating on my career, and she’s still bitching at me. She’s hiding something, I know it. I guess that makes two of us. I’m sure she’s walking slowly on purpose. Why can’t she speed up? Get this stupid hike over with.

When it really happened, I got up close, irritatingly close, filled with an urge to have a really big fight, the kind that makes you honest, no matter what the consequence. I wanted to shove her, I really did, and maybe I was too close, and maybe I brushed her, but I didn’t push her. But in the dream it’s different. In the dream I push hard and watch with glee as she turns toward me, ugly with irritation, before her ankle twists and that anger turns to surprise. This time when I see that awful dread on her face I grin so hard my face is in danger of tearing in two, and as she falls and her hand reaches out for me, my smile turns to laughter. When her body breaks on the rocks below, I laugh harder.

I’m free, I think, standing there on the rocks. I don’t have to stop at all. But then the sky clouds over, suddenly cold and heavy with rain, and in the distance I hear sirens, and I know I’m not free and I’m going to prison and suddenly I’m thinking of all the things I’ll never have again, like a cold beer on a sunny day and a Sunday roast with good red wine and watching movies on a whim, and this is all her fault and god, why did I kill her? And then, just as the panic overwhelms me, I wake up.

I stare at her in the darkness, a lumpen shape asleep beside me, and my heart jackhammers as I swallow hard. She’s alive. I’m not going to prison. I take a deep breath to calm down. Fuck, what a dream.

My feet are almost numb with cold and my bladder’s contracted, leaving me with a fierce need to pee. This bloody freezing house. My good mood from a great day at work was ruined when I got home and felt that draft again and then Emily told me how much the garden work was likely to cost. I told her that the money from the flat was tied up in investment accounts and rather than lose the interest, maybe she could pay for it from her insurance salary. She’s got a chunk that has accrued during the months she was in the hospital. She agreed, which was good. And of course Cat, Russell, Iso, and Mark have already said yes to the party. The thought of Mark back here makes my stomach clench. But if he knew anything, he’d have told Emily and confronted me directly.

I get out of bed, my toes painful with the cold, and hobble to the bathroom. The landing window is open again, the net curtain blowing with the night breeze, and the temperature is a few degrees below freezing out there. I close it angrily. Why does she keep opening it? She knows I’m really feeling the cold here. She’ll deny doing it again, but it’s not me, so it has to be her.

I hear a faint creak and look up into the somber void where the third floor is an ocean of darkness. Somewhere up there a door clicks shut. I shiver and make a mental note to order a bunch of draft excluders from Amazon. Of course we probably wouldn’t need them if my wife didn’t keep opening windows at night. My irritation blisters some more.

I use the toilet in the dark, not caring if I splash, and then head back to bed. It’s five thirty. If I can shake off my annoyance, I can get another hour of sleep before heading back to the London office. It’s my last week there and thank god for that, because between the mess I’m in, Emily, and the traveling, I’m exhausted.

“Shit.” I feel a sharp prick on the sole of my foot, thankfully before I’ve put all my weight down, and when I crouch I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I left my phone downstairs to avoid temptation in the night— You’re in enough trouble, Freddie —but the moonlight from the window makes it easy to see.

A nail with a bent tip.

It’s sticking out the wrong way up, from a splintered hole with black drops that in daylight would be rusty red dried blood on the edges. I stare at it. It’s not just any nail. It’s the nail. How the fuck did it get back in the floor?

Emily.

I look up, through the open bedroom doorway, and for a moment I think she’s waking up, but she lets out a small moan and rolls onto her side, and then half back again, twitching, restless in whatever dreams she’s having.

I pull at the glinting nail, expecting it to be firmly embedded, but it slides out of the wood with ease. Did Emily find it in the rubbish and put it back? Why would she do that? The bees are buzzing in my head again, discordant, as I sit back on my heels, an answer coming to me. Emily likes to be right. She always has.

Instead of getting back into bed, despite the cold, I sit on the end of the mattress, my back to her, and stare at the sliver of moonlight coming through the gap in the curtains. The bees buzz louder. Did she open the window on purpose? So the cold would wake me and take me out into the corridor? Was it a lure so that I’d stand on the nail? So she could say, Look, look, I told you so!

Another thought comes to me. Does she even know she put it back? She wrecked a room downstairs and put it neatly together again and doesn’t remember it. Dr. Canning says it will pass. But what if it doesn’t? Is she going mad? Outside, a raven caws, the first birdcall of the dawn even while it’s still pitch-black outside.

I should get back into bed. I should try to sleep for another hour. I’m so tired. But the bees are buzzing too loud in my head, buzz-buzz-buzzing with irritation at Emily, devouring any sympathy I might have. Ghosts and nails and windows. The madness of Emily, my beloved wife.

Maybe if she went mad, that would save me.