Killing Cupid (26 page)

I got to the pub and went inside, enjoying the smell of many kinds of beer and the warmth from the open fire as I searched for my girlfriend. There she was, sitting on her own in the corner. She had a half-full glass and a bottle of tonic in front of her. I gestured that I’d seen her and bought myself a pint of Guinness. As I waited at the bar, practically licking my lips in anticipation, I touched my own belly. The word ‘six-pack’ didn’t spring to mind.

‘Hi,’ I said, kissing her as I sat down. I nodded at her glass. ‘Tonic water? I thought you said you wanted a drink?’

‘There’s gin in it,’ she said grimly. ‘Though I shouldn’t be drinking alcohol at all.’

I acted the innocent. ‘Why not?’

‘Alcohol is one of the most fattening things there is.’

‘Yes, I know that. So why shouldn’t you be drinking it?’

She didn’t smile. Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out a couple of magazines. One was called
Your Diet
, with a picture of a smiling housewife and a pineapple on the cover. The other was called
Flesh
, which, from the picture of a half-naked woman with the largest breasts and the biggest chins I’d ever seen and the tagline (‘For men who know that big is beautiful!’) was clearly a porn mag for those who appreciate the larger woman.

‘Where did you get these?’ I asked.

‘They were sent to me.’

‘What?’

‘Somebody sent them to me at work. They were waiting in my in-tray, in a brown envelope with my name typed on the front. I thought it was just going to be an unsolicited submission from an author. Some of them have my name because sometimes Pernilla gets me to pp the rejection letters. So my in-tray is usually overflowing with thick A4 envelopes. I couldn’t believe it when I opened it and found these inside.’

I picked up
Flesh
and leafed through it. The women inside were enormous, rolls of flab covering the part of the anatomy that most blokes buy porn mags to look at. It was mind-boggling really, thinking that some men must find this stuff a turn-on. Still, it’s less harmful than a lot of the shit out there.

It wasn’t harmless as far as Emily was concerned, though. I turned to her and saw that her eyes had filled with tears. ‘Somebody’s trying to send me a message – tell me I’m fat. That I need to go on a diet – or I’ll end up like one of these disgusting pigs.’

I couldn’t stop staring at the magazine. Eventually, Emily snatched it away and stuffed both the magazines back into her bag.

‘Was there a note with it?’ I asked.

‘No, nothing. I guess the magazines delivered the message well enough on their own.’

Suddenly, I felt angry. I didn’t know who had sent these stupid mags to my Emily, but I knew that I wanted to hurt them, to get back at them for the pain I could see on Emily’s face.

‘Who the hell would do this?’ I said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Somebody in your office? Have you got any enemies there?’

She looked at me, mouth open. ‘What do you mean, enemies? Why would I have enemies at work?’

I didn’t reply, just thought about my own former workplace, and the porn sites to which I had subscribed my old boss. I felt sick.

‘Pernilla said the magazines were probably sent in by an aggrieved author – someone we’d turned down. But maybe people do hate me at work,’ Emily said, staring into the distance. ‘Maybe they all got together and sent me these, hoping to drive me out. Get rid of the unsightly fat girl.’ Her lower lip was starting to tremble.

I put my arm around her. ‘Emily, you’re not fat. And of course they don’t hate you at work.’

‘I am fat.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I am.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re beautiful.’ I could feel tears welling up in my own eyes now, caused by the emotions that were building up in me. ‘So beautiful. I love you.’

She looked at me. ‘You’re not just saying that?’

‘No, of course not. I love you and I love your body. I really love your body.’

She smiled.

‘Why don’t we go back to your flat and I’ll show you exactly how much I love it.’

This time she giggled, although the laugh and the subsequent joke did sound a little forced: ‘You’re just turned on from looking at the women in that magazine.’

‘Shit. You caught me out. Can we take it with us?’

We drank up and left the pub, splashing out on a taxi. Back at Emily’s, we made love: intense, wordless sex that made us both sweat despite the chill in the room. We said goodnight and after a little while I turned over to sleep. A few minutes later, I realised that she was crying.

I turned around, pressing up against her back. ‘Emily,’ I whispered, ‘what is it? What’s wrong?’

She didn’t reply. I held her until she fell asleep.

The weekend was fine – we didn’t mention the magazines at all; Emily dumped them in the dustbin outside. Then, on Monday morning, someone banged on the front door. I had just woken up and was lying in bed with a book that I was only half-reading, wondering if I might hear something from Pernilla about my stories. I sat up, images of a wild-eyed Siobhan or a troop of armed police at my door. I’m not sure which would be worse. There was another bang at the door and I forced myself to get up, commonsense telling me it was probably only the postman.

Commonsense was right. The postie handed me a plump brown jiffy bag and a couple of pieces of junk mail. I closed the door and chucked the envelopes onto the side table, then inspected the jiffy bag. It was addressed to Emily, c/o me. How odd. Why would somebody send something to Emily at this address? Then I realised – she had probably ordered something on the Web and used this as her postal address, knowing that I’m usually here in the mornings. Maybe, I speculated, she isn’t allowed to receive personal mail at work.

It didn’t even cross my mind that this could somehow be connected to the magazines she’d received at work. As Pernilla had said to Emily, that was probably just a malicious piece of revenge-mail from an author who’d seen Emily’s signature on a rejection letter. I took the package into my room, dropped it on the desk and went back to bed.

Emily came round that evening at seven. I greeted her at the door with a kiss which made her smile and press herself against me. A minute later, we were in bed, and a few minutes after that I was inside her, her teeth grazing my neck, her fingernails sharp against my arse, heating each other’s winter-chilled flesh and making the headboard bang against the wall.

When I came I saw a flash of white light.

‘Mmm,’ she said, afterwards.

I kissed her, then remembered: ‘Oh, a parcel came for you earlier.’ I hopped out of bed, grabbed it and handed it to her.

She smiled. ‘You bought me a present? Oh, Alex...’

‘It’s not from me,’ I said, wishing I had bought her a present. ‘Didn’t you order something online?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I haven’t ordered anything.’ She turned the parcel over in her hands. Then she said, ‘Can you pass me my T-shirt?’

I did.

‘I feel less vulnerable with some clothes on.’ She pulled the T-shirt over her head, covering her breasts. She looked scared.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

She looked at me. ‘I don’t know who would send me a present here. If it is a present.’ She swallowed.

That’s when I remembered the magazines. A small shudder ran through me. ‘Do you want me to open it?’ I asked. We were both staring at the package as if it might contain a bomb.

Emily said, ‘No, I’ll open it. It’s addressed to me.’ With trembling hands, she tore it open, then peered inside.

‘What is it?’

‘I can’t see yet. It’s in a black bag. Looks like – feels like – a bin liner.’

She pulled the black bin liner out of the jiffy bag. There was, all of a sudden, a strange smell in the room. My heart was beating very fast. I put my hand on Emily’s shoulder and she jumped.

‘Alex! Jesus – don’t do that!’

‘Give it to me,’ I said, holding out my hand, and Emily passed me the package. Slowly, I unwrapped it, and as the packaging fell away, the smell in the room became a stench and Emily screamed, leaping out of bed and running to the bathroom. I could hear her throwing up, but instead of going to comfort her, all I wanted to do was get it out of the room. I opened the window and threw it out. And then I ran to the bathroom myself. I watched Emily throw up the last contents of her stomach. All I could think was, who? Who would do this? And that’s when it struck me, and I felt even sicker. Pernilla’s words came back to me: that it was probably an aggrieved author.

I only know one person who meets
that
description.

Chapter 27

Siobhan

It was a really horrible thing to do. I know. I know. But she deserves it. Why should everything be plain sailing for her, when she’s fat and unattractive, when my own life is a total disaster? I’m aware that Alex, behaviourally, is borderline obsessive (and possibly even psychotic) but he’s actually a very good-looking guy, and for some mysterious reason he absolutely adores her! I don’t understand. He could have been mine. I keep hearing her whiny voice inside my head, saying ‘My boyfriend’, as if she’s licking her forefinger and drawing the number one in the air in front of her, ie. I’ve got one up on you, loser. Urghhhh, she’s so SMUG.

I didn’t plan it. It just happened, in a glorious collision of circumstance. I suppose after sending those magazines (if I was that overweight, I’d want a friendly hint from some kind well-wisher, of course I would. It’s like having BO or bad breath – you need your friends to tell you otherwise you’d never know) the idea of posting things was still fresh in my mind. And it just so happened that I’d had this great big jiffy bag lying around for ages waiting to be recycled. Can’t even remember what came in it – oh, yes, those pink glass cabinet knobs I bought on eBay..

Anyway, I’d just peeled off the label, and was vaguely thinking, shame I don’t have a manuscript to put in this and send off to Patricia, to be rapturously received and lauded to the heavens… when I heard Biggles banging and crashing against the cat-flap, like he’d suddenly gone blind and couldn’t see where the door was.

I got up to look.

‘What are you doing, you daft – ’ But the words stuck in my throat like a fishbone.

With one huge push, like childbirth, Biggles shoved his prize through the cat-flap and jumped in after it, beaming proudly at me.

It was a massive dead rat. One that had been dead for quite some time, by the look of it. For God’s sake, I thought cats wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t fresh, what was the matter with him?

I had to press my lips together to stop myself being sick. I couldn’t even open the back door because the – thing – was blocking it, so I ran over and flung the kitchen window as wide as it would go, burying my nose in the pot of droopy basil on the windowsill.

‘Oh Biggles, you idiot’, I moaned at him. ‘Take it away, please take it away.’

But of course he didn’t. In fact, by the way he was regarding it, I think even he was beginning to think he might have been a little hasty. I can cope with the odd dead sparrow, or even mouse – but this? It was like a horror movie on my very own kitchen floor.

‘I’m sorry Biggles, but I am never going to allow you lick me again,’ I said out loud. ‘Not now that I know where your mouth has been.’ Funny, actually. That’s something I was always quite tempted to say to Phil. But the thought of my sweet Biggles’s jaws clamped around that stinky matted rat fur really did make bile rise in my throat, and I retched. What the hell was I going to do with it?

So I put on rubber gloves, ripped a binliner off the roll, and stuck one hand inside it. Then, with Biggles hovering anxiously around me, and holding my nose with my free hand, I edged gingerly towards the corpse, arm outstretched. The rat had thin hooked claws and its tail was fat, hairless, and much longer than I would have imagined rat’s tails were. Its teeth were, of course, as yellow as my Marigolds. My stomach was roiling and jumping so badly that I had to shut my eyes.

When I felt my hand, through its black plastic and yellow rubber layers, close around the soft body, my teeth clenched, and the only thing stopping me vomiting was the knowledge that if I didn’t do this now, I’d have to do it later. I picked up the rat, and turned the bin liner inside out over it, letting go and feeling its weight thud heavily down to the bottom of the bag.

Then I threw up in the sink.

Now what, I wondered? There was no way I was going to go to the trouble of digging it a little ratty grave – some other predator would probably only excavate it for me later. I couldn’t put it in the outside bin because the bin men had only just been. My kitchen was still smelling really bad, so I wrapped the binliner around the body as many times as possible, and then, for extra protection, slid the whole thing into the empty jiffy bag.

I swear I only sealed it up to stop it smelling. I suppose it was lucky that I had a stapler in the kitchen drawer, and sellotape. But once the bag was closed, I could open the back door, put the thing outside, and air the place out. Because now there was the stench of sick to get rid of, as well as dead rat. My beautiful clean kitchen.

I chucked the rubber gloves into the bin, donned a fresh pair, upended the kitchen chairs onto the table, and mopped the entire floor with a solution of bleach, before throwing away the mop head. Next I poked all the regurgitated peas down the plughole of the sink – can’t remember having eaten peas at all, but there you go – and bleached the sink. Finally I got down on hands and knees and washed the floor a second time with pine Flash and a J-cloth.

Then I made myself an industrial strength gin and tonic, which I drank in the living room, my back aching from my exertions. The drink did relax me, but it also made me quite drunk and, if truth be told, somewhat maudlin. I shouldn’t drink gin during the day. But honestly, I’ve had a terrible time of it lately. Nothing’s gone right. I felt I deserved a little drink or two.

I’d just topped up the gin when the phone rang. Oh goody, I thought. Company. I hoped it might be Jess – she still hadn’t returned my calls from a couple of weeks ago. But it was an unfamiliar woman’s voice.