Page 85 of We Live Here Now

84

Freddie

“I’m up here!”

Her voice drifts down from the third floor and my stomach tightens. Oh god, she’s up in that room. My foot hesitates on the bottom step. I’ve only just started relaxing around her, this new vibrant, joyous Emily, but I still can’t entirely trust the situation.

Some days I manage to persuade myself that none of it really happened, but the strained muscles in my shoulders that still hurt in the mornings are testament to the fact that I did indeed haul my dead wife’s body up three flights of stairs, shut her in the third-floor bedroom, and then scrub the house clean, crying and drinking myself to sleep while trying to get up the guts to call the police before, lo and behold, the next morning she came down them all by herself. I almost had a heart attack. I thought I was going mad.

Sometimes I still think I’ve gone mad. I know I killed her. And yet she’s alive. And she’s her, but different. She’s so much more lovable again; that’s the only way I can describe it. She’s happier and I’m happier. It’s like the old days when we first met.

In the main though, I’ve persuaded myself that I hadn’t stabbed her as deeply as I thought, or maybe hadn’t even stabbed her at all. I did nick myself with the blade, and maybe the blood was all mine from that. Small cuts can bleed a lot. Maybe she simply passed out and I thought she was dead. Maybe I had a small psychotic episode and hallucinated it all. Anything to convince myself that she didn’t actually die.

Still, we need to sell this house and move on as soon as possible. I can’t live here much longer. It’s all just too odd. While Emily cheating death is in many ways a blessing, I don’t trust this place.

I need to figure out a way to get Mark’s money out of her Jersey account, or at least find a way to make it sound plausible. She doesn’t even remember it’s there. Her memory is hazy around the events surrounding whatever happened in the kitchen, like a cloth has been pulled across it, wiping out anything that links to it. She doesn’t question anything. I told her she’d had a fall in the kitchen and she looked confused for a moment and then accepted it.

Turns out she’s not the only one capable of blackmail. I got more money out of Mark too once I found the video on Emily’s phone and transferred it to mine. I didn’t go too greedy. Just enough to pay my debts. To buy us some breathing room.

“Come up!” Emily calls down, head peering over the top banister, hair falling free around her grinning face. She is beautiful when she wants to be. When she’s happy. “I want to show you something! And I’ve got beer!”

“On my way,” I say. I feel a little uncomfortable seeing where she is, but I shake it away. There’s no way she could know what I did. She’s just got a plan for the top floor, that’s all. Maybe a way to make the house more sellable, or maybe she’s gone back to her idea of renting the third floor out as a private apartment to bring in extra money.

She’s standing in the bright sunshine in cute pink dungarees and hands me a strong Belgian beer, one of my favorites, before wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing me.

“Drink that before I show you.”

She smells a glorious combination of apple and peach. I’d forgotten how good it feels to be properly loved by her. When she first came back , I was so relieved to be out of trouble—no prison for murder—that I was giddy with love. I thought that would fade. I thought within a week I’d want to feed her all her sleeping pills and go back to my original fake-suicide plan, but I didn’t.

She’s not judgmental of me like she’d been before. She’s not got that irritating always right and slightly martyr passive-aggressive thing about her anymore. She’s supportive. She believes in me. She forgives me for my problems. I don’t think she even remembers cheating on me, and everything I did to her feels like a dream now. We’re actually happy. She’s a proper wife again. If she thinks I’m weak now, she doesn’t show it, and that in turn makes me stronger.

I drain half the beer and it tastes good, bitter and strong, and the buzz goes straight to my head. “You’re an angel,” I say. “This is just what I needed.”

“Finish it.” She’s bouncing up and down on her toes, like an overexcited child. “Don’t worry, I’ve got another.”

“Okay.” I do as I’m told, laughing along with her. “Go on then. What’s the big surprise?”

As soon as I put the bottle down, she pulls something out from her back pocket. At first, I think it’s a COVID test, but then I realize it’s not. It’s a pregnancy test. Two thick red lines in each box. I look up at her, my mouth falling open, surprised but not unhappy. Definitely not unhappy. In fact, my heart leaps. A child that is definitely mine.

“Are you…?” I stare at her, not able to finish the question. She nods and squeals and leaps into my arms. “Are you having a baby?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she says. “We’re pregnant. Eight weeks. I saw the doctor this morning.”

“Oh my god, Emily. Oh my god! That’s amazing!” We squeal together and hug and my head spins with the news. A baby. She’s got a new baby growing inside her. We’re having a baby. We really are going to have a fresh start. This Emily would never cheat. And I wouldn’t kill this Emily. None of that happened. Once we’re away from here, it will be easy enough to forget. After all, she’ll be alive and well and happy beside me.

She turns round to look at the bedroom suite while I reach for the second full beer, my heart racing and elated.

“I thought we could move up here. The baby’s nursery could go where the dressing room is. A family suite?” She looks back at me for my thoughts.

“Up here?” My smile falters. I can think of nothing worse than moving up into this bedroom. I’d rather forget all about this room. I feel so guilty up here. When I think of it I reach for the betting apps again.

“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe we should just use the middle floor. More child-friendly?” Suddenly, the world feels off-kilter, and with a sudden wave of seasick dizziness, I clutch at the wall.

“Are you okay?”

She’s swimming a little in my view line, her face distorted, and heat rushes up through me, a cold sweat forming. “Sorry,” I mutter, trying to smile. My face feels strangely lopsided. “The surprise of the pregnancy must have gone to my head.”

“Oh, that’s not surprise at my news, Freddie,” she says softly, kissing my cheek. “That’ll be all those pills. In the beer.”

“What?” The wall’s moving under my touch and I groan as my legs buckle slightly. She’s not making any sense. I look down at the bottle in my hand, or at least I try to look down at it, but I can’t focus. What the fuck did she just say? I look at her, confused, trying to speak, and stagger toward the door.

“I know what you did, Freddie,” she says, harder now, following me as I lose my balance and fall to my knees on the floor. I can crawl downstairs. Call an ambulance. There will be time.

“You killed me. For money. For money I was going to share with you to get you out of trouble. I was going to tell you what I’d done that I felt so bad about. But you’re weak, Freddie, and you stabbed me. And that broke my heart,” she continues. “My first instinct was to bring myself back, obviously. There’s a way, you know. I found the book. I did it for Sally. But that’s a story for another time. But then I changed my mind. I realized, you see, that I don’t want to be that Emily anymore. I don’t want those negative parts of myself. Why would I? I want to be my best self. But this got me to thinking.”

“Emily, please…”

Ignoring my plea, she follows me as I haul myself out into the landing, which sways and lurches under me.

“I realized that our baby needs two good parents. People it can be proud of. Who won’t fuck it up. I didn’t want to let those parts of me out. But I don’t want all the weak and negative parts of you either. So there was really only one solution left to protect our family.”

“Don’t do this,” I mumble, dragging myself toward the stairs.

“It’s already done.” She stays in the doorway, watching me, impassive, as I try to focus. My mobile phone is on the downstairs hallway table with my keys. If I can get there, I can call for help. I feel sick, the world swimming around me, but still I drag myself onward.

“Are you thinking you can somehow make it downstairs?” she asks, coming up behind me.

“You can try if you want to.” She steps over me and goes down two steps before crouching in front of me, our faces level. “But you need to understand something before you make that choice. It won’t stop you dying. Even if you do manage to call for an ambulance, no one will get here in time, and it’s a redundant scenario anyway, because even with my bad leg, I will definitely get to your phone before you.

“But. And this, for you especially, is the really important part.” She pauses for effect and to make sure I’m really listening. “I am too physically weak to carry you all the way back up here when you do die. You need to understand that. If you die downstairs, you’re gone for good. I can tell them it was suicide. All your debts weighing you down. It’s an awful thing, but I’ll have to live with it. For the good of our baby.” She strokes my hair. “But you don’t have to die, Freddie. You can crawl back into that room and our child can have the best of both of us as parents. You’ve always wanted a family to come first. This is your time to prove it. I can help you if you want. But you need to choose, Freddie. And you need to choose fast.”

I look at the stairs ahead of me, and then I turn my heavy head to the open doorway behind me. The edges ripple and I think I’m going to throw up. I feel awful.

I’m dying. I’m actually dying. I don’t want to die.

I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe she’s drugged me like this. I’m going to be a father but I’m never going to see my child.

I moan and tears slip from the corners of my eyes. I don’t want to die. I want to see my child. I want to have a family. I want so many things.

My vision is getting black at the corners. I’m running out of time to make my choice. She’s right in everything she’s said. I won’t get to the phone before her. And she definitely wouldn’t be able to carry me. I have to make a choice while I still can. She hasn’t really left me with one, I realize, as I stop crawling forward. Life or death. What would anyone choose?

How bad can it be? I’ll come back out alive. Some of me will. I’ll still be alive.

Sobbing, I try to turn myself around, to face the door before I pass out completely. “The room,” I mumble, even though the words are a mess. “I choose the room.”

“I love you, Freddie. You know that, don’t you? I want the best for you. I want the best of you. You’ll just fall asleep,” she says softly as she crouches beside me and rests my head in her lap. “It won’t hurt. I promise.”

And she’s right. It doesn’t.