Page 69 of We Live Here Now

68

Freddie

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

She’s in the kitchen when I come downstairs with the small overnight bag. I wasn’t entirely honest with her when I said that I had to stay in Taunton tonight. Yes, we do have a client dinner meeting, and yes, the boss has booked our team into the Travelodge in case the snow dump happens as expected, but he did say I could duck out and stay at home, given Emily’s situation. I said no. A night away from Larkin Lodge is just what I need. Maybe this headache will clear. It always feels better when I’m somewhere else. I should really get someone to check for a minor gas leak. That would explain my headache and odd times of confusion and maybe some of Emily’s strangeness too.

“Yeah, fine. I’ll go to the book group in the pub.”

We barely look at each other. She turns away and faffs around wiping a side down, avoiding looking at me.

“I got an email from Dr. Canning’s secretary earlier,” she says, and my eyes dart involuntarily to her pills on the side. “He’s going on holiday and needs to bring my next appointment forward. Pain in the ass really, but we’ll have to go to London.”

“Better to be early than late, I guess.” Everyone’s lying, even the good doctor. He must think she’s getting paranoid or he’s protecting my involvement in the discussion, or both. I have a flutter of something akin to excitement that I don’t understand—I don’t want to understand.

“And after you called him, I guess he was always going to bring it forward.”

I look back at her pills again as her passive-aggressiveness rankles. There are a lot of them. There are enough of them. “I was worried about you. You know that.”

“I know. I get it.”

If she gets it, why does she need to mention it at all? Trying to put me in the doghouse again. The useless weak husband who’s always going behind her back. Will that come up in the divorce too?

“I’m leaving in half an hour or so. I can drop you at the pub on my way and maybe someone can give you a lift back. Then you don’t have to drive in snow if it comes.”

I’m glad she wants to go. The vicar already thinks she’s losing her marbles, so it’s a win-win situation for me. If she behaves normally, he’ll think she’s faking it, and if she mentions any more strangeness in the house, that’s more fuel to my fire.

I go back into the lounge while she busies herself doing nothing in the kitchen, still pondering her pills. Antianxiety pills. Pills to help her sleep. There are plenty that she could use to kill herself. I didn’t increase the life insurance this time; it’s the same policy we’ve had forever. Nothing suspicious there. I stare into the flames, and under the crackling wood I hear the hum of a beehive.

If Emily overdosed, my debts would immediately come to light and make people suspicious, for sure, but they would never be able to prove it. On top of all her paranoias about the house, maybe finding out about my problems would be seen as sending her over the edge. Has she consulted a divorce lawyer though? That could go against me. The flames lick the back of the grate, hungry, the heart of the fire almost white with heat. Everything could go against me. But they would have to prove that I did something. And I have plenty of evidence that she’s mentally unstable.

I take a deep breath and then have a moment of joy as my body thaws out, as fast as an ice cube dropped in boiling water. The house is warm, and so am I.

Maybe I’m going to kill my wife.

It’s a strange and surreal thought, but it doesn’t fill me with horror.