Hot breath on my neck.
I turn: John’s bulbous doggy eyes are fixed on my modelling. He’s been getting jumpier and less predictable ever since Fishook uttered the words ‘Final Adjustment’ on the tannoy, and who can blame him. At mealtimes, I’ve noticed how guys keep slapping him on the back, treating him all friendly, making rueful faces, thinking, thank Christ it isn’t me.
– It’s Tiffany, I tell him. My daughter.
– You want her dead then?
I can feel another conversation about torture revving up. But funny, I’m not in the mood.
– No. Course not. She’s my flesh and blood.
– So why the effigy, he goes, like he’s a shrink or something.
– I’ve told you before, they’re not effigies. This is a rook. See the crenellations round her neck? This isn’t magic, John. It’s art.
He makes a face.
– But she’s a black one, right. You told me before, she’s on the baddy side. Now what I’m asking myself here is, how come?
I hate this. I hate the way he tries to prise stuff out of me, like I’m an oyster. I feel like saying, there’s no pearl in there, mate, it’s just the same sad, cringing guk that’s inside everyone.
– I want the whole story now, he goes. What you did, how you got busted, how you ended up here, the whole lot. Before the fry-up.
Something inside me goes cold, like my heart’s been shoved in a freezer.
How’s he to know that I’ve spent the last year forcibly keeping my mouth shut? If I tell him the real story, he’ll probably blame me for his downfall, and rip my head off. He’s big and brutal enough. But on the other hand –
Suddenly, his hands are round my neck. See what I mean?
Am I his Scheherazade, spinning out my tale to save my bacon?
– If you don’t, he says.
Calm down, I tell myself, fighting the panic. John is actually just John. Even killers like him know how to whistle a tune, can appreciate a joke, won’t say no to a round of table tennis, are perhaps capable of normal relationships. And fortunately, he’s thick. I can leave bits out. I can tell him a version, and then he’ll be dead anyway, so he won’t be in a position to…
– OK. Deal, I rasp – and he’s loosened his grip, but he’s still there next to me, a solid mass of flesh. Power for the Powerless: Rule Two. If someone’s bigger than you, and violent, remain his friend.
– I’m waiting, says John. And starts drumming his fingers on my head.
– I was living in the house in Gravelle Road, in Harbourville, I sigh finally. (It was so long ago, it felt like hauling up an old corpse from a river bed.) I’d moved in there with Gwynneth when we got married. We’d been there eighteen years when she and Tiffany left. I didn’t notice them go. In fact it was a whole day before it dawned on me that they weren’t there any more. That shows what separate lives we led by then. I was always in. And they were always out. Shopping and whatnot.
John gave me a look, and I could tell he was thinking about the whatnot part.
– How did you find out, then? he goes.
– I ran out of coffee, and that’s when I saw Gwynneth’s note. She’d left it in the coffee tin. She’d written it in capital letters, on her crappy little PC.
– What did it say?
– I don’t remember, I tell him.
But I’m lying. It said: REMEMBER YOU WERE MARRIED AND HAD A LOVELY DAUGHTER?WELL, NOT ANY MORE BECAUSE TIFF AND I HAVE MOVED OUT. WE’VE HAD ENOUGH OF PLAYING SECOND FIDDLE, WE DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS. G.
It was that line about deserving better that made me wonder if they’d moved in with some other bloke. The thing about Gwynneth was, she wouldn’t’ve done it without somewhere to go. She’d have planned it.
– It wasn’t spontaneous, I told John. That’s for sure. I mean, she didn’t just wake up one morning and think, hey, I’m suddenly fed up with the husband who has provided for me financially for the best part of two decades. She thought about it beforehand, worked things out. She even set up one of those Internet divorces: one click and our marriage was history.
– So what then?
– So I haven’t seen her since. And it was another three years before I saw Tiffany again.
And then when I did, I wished I hadn’t.
– So what happened, after they went?
– Nothing, I just carried on as usual, living my life, working away at being me, doing my thing, making money. Just me and Keith.
– Who’s Keith?
– The cat. Burmese. Intelligent. Knew which side his bread was buttered. He quit too, little bastard, when the shit hit the fan.
– How come you didn’t notice they’d left? I’d have noticed, if it was me.
– Well, like I said, Gwyn and Tiff were always out. G and T, I called them.
John looked puzzled, the way he always does when you mention letters of the alphabet.
– G and T, to us literati, stands for gin and tonic, I explained. It was their favourite drink, as it happens. Or sometimes I called them Ice and Lemon. Quite appropriate, if you knew them. One was cold, the other was bitter.
John said – Women, darkly, and picked up his embroidery.
– Anyway, I said, I was busy working. Making money for them to spend. Too busy being a good husband and father. Paying for their gin and tonics.
And their boyfriends’ lagers too, no doubt, I’m thinking, but I don’t say it. Sometimes I ask myself: will I ever understand women? Power for the Powerless was conceived at home.
– The human slot machine, I called myself.
– Hey, Harvey babe, John’s chuckling, suddenly cheerful, threading purple silk on to his needle, wetting a finger and selecting a silver sequin from his sewing box. Bring out the violins.
– Yeah, well, the family business was making a lot of money, as it happens. We were a hot little team.
– But – he’s looking all puzzled – I mean, what I don’t get is, like, when you got married and that. Why didn’t you drop the family business then, do something else?
He really can be gormless.
– For Christ’s sake, John, you don’t just drop your own flesh and blood!
– But I thought you said they weren’t real!
I wish I hadn’t let him in on that now. I’ve never felt comfortable, admitting it. I poke at my paste with the wooden spoon. It looks lumpier than usual. I feel myself sort of bristle.
– They were to me, I say.
That really was the problem, I realised, as I read Gwynneth’s note from the coffee tin. Ice and Lemon had left because I preferred my pretend family to my real one. I remember sighing as I put the kettle on. Feeling bad, because they had a point.
– Well, Keith, I said to the cat, who was snaking round my legs, vibrating hunger. Just you and me now, boy.
The thing is, I thought, as I opened a tin for him, I knew where I was with the Hoggs. We never had any arguments. I was very much the head of the household. They did my bidding. And by doing it, in their own limited way, they showed proof of their love.