Nefarious Doings (21 page)

You’re right, but I would take it even further and say middle age should be all about reflection. We need to take time out and reassess EVERYTHING – career, marriage, friends, relatives, over-dependent grown-up children – and then readjust (or shake off) a few of the manacles so that we can run and jump and dance.

I woke again straight into the awareness of where I was, and why. Even so, the unremitting darkness came as a shock and I blinked several times, struggling to accept that it made no difference. Claimed by the Wine and Cheese Society almost fifty years ago, the wine cellar was two floors beneath the community centre, reached via a staircase that was set to one side of a basement that was itself rarely used. I knew, from the time Darcy served as president, that there were about five solid wine racks and that none were anywhere near the bench to which we were tethered. I also knew that the bench was a perfect place for a romantic picnic, but my mind veered swiftly from that. More relevant was my knowledge that the bluestone walls were below ground level and that even our loudest screams would not make a ripple in the noise levels outside.

‘Fiona?’ I whispered, stretching my legs and trying to raise my bottom off the cold floor. ‘Fiona? Are you there?’

‘That’s a particularly daft question,’ replied Fiona evenly.

‘Something which did occur to me while I was saying it. Are you okay?’

‘Another daft question.’

I knelt, feeling as far as I could along the stone bench, hoping to reach her. I wanted to make physical contact, perhaps even squeeze her shoulder, but the chain was too short. I squatted against the wall and wrapped my arms around myself. I would have done anything to return to that moment where I decided against bringing my cardigan. Or, for that matter, leaving the house at all. ‘What happened, Fiona? How did you get here?’

She sighed, a weary sound that seemed to echo in the blackness. ‘It was my own stupid fault. After I spoke to you on Sunday I went home and thought about what you said, about putting myself first. Did you get my message?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought we could have lunch on Monday and I was going to tell you just enough that you would act as my insurance. I was trying to be clever.’ She made a noise that was half-laugh, half-sob. ‘And then I kept thinking about everything and I thought I need to go
after
what I want. So I rang Leon and, well, he told you.’ She fell silent for a moment. ‘I never really thought I was in any danger from him, especially not sitting in a car. How stupid was I?’

‘Not stupid at all. Did he inject you?’

‘Yes. And I woke up here, just like you.’

I pushed a finger between my wrist and the manacle, just to ease the pressure. ‘Do you know what he used? Will it have any lasting damage?’

‘Does it matter? Anyway, apparently it was just that stuff vets use to sedate animals.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hey, I suppose at least it’s cooler here than outside, with the heatwave.’

‘I hate to tell you this but a change came through. Rain, thunder, the whole works.’

After a while, Fiona spoke in a low voice. ‘What day is it?’

‘It
was
Tuesday, just before six. But I don’t know how long it’s been since then.’

‘Tuesday.’ She breathed in, let it out. ‘I know people die of thirst long before starvation but, um, how long do you think I have? Be honest. I’ve had one drink of water, back when he brought you down.’

I sank onto the floor and hugged my knees. ‘A couple of days?’

‘That’s what I thought. I can already feel it.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ I stared into the blackness, suddenly realising that even with her one drink, Fiona was going to go first and then I would be left in the dark with a dead woman. I did some calculations; probably it would be Thursday for Fiona, and Friday for me. Pity, as I’d had a busy day planned for Friday. Plus my daughter was arriving from London.

‘My blood is beating.’

‘If that’s making you warmer, it might be a good thing. It’s freezing down here.’

Fiona’s clothes rustled as she readjusted herself. ‘What’re you wearing?’

‘Why, Fiona! Are you flirting with me?’

‘Nell, you make me laugh. You really do.’

But she didn’t. My stomach rumbled and I thought of the garlic potato wedges I had been making, and the pork butterfly steaks. I thought of my fridge, filled with food, and the pantry. Biscuits and pasta and bread. Oh, the French bread stick defrosting on the counter! I’d been going to toast it in the oven, and put it in a wicker basket with curls of butter.

‘I don’t suppose you know how my parents are coping?’

‘I believe the council arranged some sort of respite care. Everyone’s worried, you know. There’s a real sense of disbelief.’

‘That’ll soon change,’ she said bitterly. ‘There’ll be a real sense of hatred when they read the note. I can’t believe he’d do that to me.’

I rolled my eyes in the darkness. Did she have no trouble believing he would kill her, but drew the line at the note? ‘Fiona, no-one’s going to buy it. I mean, seriously, if you were going to kill yourself through guilt, would you really chain yourself up with me?’

‘Maybe as extra punishment.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No, I mean the note makes it sound plausible. It says about how things got out of control so quickly, and my hatred of you, and how I was going to chain us together so that I could watch you die. How I was going to throw the key over to our bags so I couldn’t change my mind.’

I thought this through, realising that the drink he had given her on my arrival had no doubt been to delay her death, bring it more in line with mine. Otherwise the note would make no sense. ‘But it’ll just be a typed note, Fiona, which will still look odd.’

‘Except it’s not. It’s all handwritten, and signed.’ She let out another of her strangled sounds. ‘It’s amazing what you’ll do after two days without water, when someone offers you a drink.’

I closed my eyes, digested the information. There was a macabre irony to the fact he
needed
her to write the note and drink the water, and had managed to achieve one with the aid of the other. I rubbed my arms, trying to build circulation. ‘You know that fleur-de-lis lapel pin from the Richard III Society?’

It took a moment for Fiona to digest this. ‘Huh?’

‘The lapel pin from Grace June Rae. I was just wondering – did you give yours to Leon?’

‘What? Why?’

‘Just curious.’

‘I didn’t actually
give
it to him, I left it at his house on a jacket and he just started wearing it. He loves little arty things like that. Loretta said she’d order me another through Grace June Rae because she’d lost hers too. Why? Did she say something? Am I in trouble?’

The artlessness of this last question floored me for a moment. ‘No, it’s fine. Everything’s just fine.’

Silence fell again and I realised that it would continue like this until the end. Bursts of conversation interspersed with long periods of nothing. Time suspended in every way except inside our bodies, where organs would begin shutting down. I already felt thirsty.

‘D’you think there really is a bright light? At the end?’

‘If there is, it’ll be a pleasant change from all this darkness.’

Fiona shifted noisily, her chain scraping across the bluestone. ‘Leon doesn’t believe in the afterlife; he believes in reincarnation.’

‘Excellent – dibs I come back as a rabid elephant. So that I can trample him to death.’ I took a deep breath, rotated my neck. ‘I know, let’s play a game.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Come on.’ I tried to inject enthusiasm into my voice. ‘It’ll help pass the time.’

‘Okay, how about I Spy? I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with B.’

‘Black. I win. So now I get to pick the game. How about …’ I cast my mind over the possibilities. ‘The alphabet game. We go through the alphabet letter by letter naming all the animals we can think of. So each letter has a different winner. I’ll start. Alligator.’

‘Alsatian.’

‘Aardvark.’

‘Leon likes aardvarks. He thinks they’re unique.’

‘In that case I’ll come back as an aardvark so I can sneak past his guard. And then trample him to death.’

‘He likes albatrosses as well. Albatross.’

We played for what seemed like hours, with at least every third animal relating to Leon in some way. But it was nevertheless an inspired idea on a number of levels, not least because Fiona became so irritating that I suspected, after a few days of this, death would look pretty good. At Q we let the game slither into silence and I fell asleep, eventually waking with a stiff neck and cold buttocks. I needed to go to the toilet, badly. I unzipped my cargo shorts and slid them off with my knickers, flinching as my skin touched the frigid floor. Then I manoeuvred out as far as I could go and relieved myself, listening to the trickle hit the cobblestones. It sounded like a piano. Concerto in full pee.

‘You can’t drink urine, can you?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ I had a fleeting moment of panic as I couldn’t locate my pants, struck by an image of my body being found sans bottom half of clothing. I dressed awkwardly, even that small effort ridiculously tiring. I wondered if it was the residue of the injection.

‘Queen bee.’

‘Queen wasp.’

‘Queen ant.’

I fell silent again, thinking. It occurred to me that I could use an earring to carve Leon’s name in the wall. I grabbed my ears and realised both sets of studs were gone. So were my rings. Okay, before I became too weak, perhaps tomorrow, I would use my own blood to write his name on the floor. Hell, I’d leave an epic. Maybe even my column for next week.

‘Your turn.’

‘Ah, quokka.’

‘Queensland groper.’

‘I think I went out with one of those once.’

Fiona sniffed. ‘I only ever went out with Leon. Thirty-three years old and I only ever went out with one man. Isn’t that pathetic?’

‘No,’ I said, not really meaning it. Particularly given that the man turned out to be a homicidal maniac and she still couldn’t stop talking about him every few minutes. I thought about Dustin Craig being Leon’s father, and hoped the whole Oedipus thing would send him around the bend. And I wondered if anyone would ever discover the truth, or whether Fiona would go down in history as a three-time murderer, with me her last victim.
Mother of five felled by jealous rival. Lover devastated. Offspring peeved.

‘Your turn.’

‘Uh, quail.’ I thought of my column, and wondered who would be given the gig instead. How long would they wait? Would there be an obituary, a flood of letters, a feature article?

‘Quahog.’

I frowned. ‘Isn’t that from
Family Guy
?’

‘It’s a type of clam. And I don’t watch
Family Guy.’

I wasn’t sure about the accuracy here but decided that a bit of creative licence was probably not our most pressing concern. ‘Quetzal. It’s a South American bird.’

‘I learnt about quahogs from Leon. He knew all about seafood and that sort of thing.’

‘A real catch.’ I thought about my mother, and how people would flock to the shop to see how she was coping. A hundred conversations, all going quiet as she came near. Then I thought of Petra, who would need to step up to the plate now. Lastly I thought of my girls, something I had been avoiding for hours. Almost immediately I was washed with waves of stomach-clenching nausea. How would they cope? Would this scar them for life? Tears pricked at my eyes, and I felt them fill with fluid I could not afford to lose. Quinn was only thirteen years old. Who would take her on? Scarlet? Ruby? My mother? Darcy?

‘Nell, can I ask you a personal question?’ Fiona’s voice sounded brittle, like sour candy. ‘When did you find out your husband was being unfaithful?’

I let this question hang for a moment, even though I knew the answer like the back of my hand. ‘Thirtieth of April at seven in the evening. We were sitting in the living room having a glass of wine. She rang, and told me.’

‘Tessa Sheridan?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was in the Wine and Cheese Society as well, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long had it been going on?’

‘A couple of years apparently. Although it wasn’t his first affair. He had a fling about fourteen years ago. We split up for a few months over that one.’

Fiona went quiet, and then sighed. ‘It hurts, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

I thought of Darcy and wondered how he would react to news of my demise. Would it interrupt his quest to ‘find himself’? Would she comfort him, in their Gold Coast apartment? Would they drink wine on their balcony and gaze out to sea, occasionally commenting on the awfulness of it all? Would he be just a
little
riddled with guilt?

‘I think it’s worse when you know the other person. If it’s a stranger, you can’t
picture
them together. But if you know her, then it’s sort of relentless.’

‘Yes.’

I ran my hand over the wooden insert of the bench, for a moment picturing Darcy as he had been fourteen years ago, ushering me into this very same cellar, grinning. My mind flicked shut, moved on. Like an old-fashioned View-Master, changing the scene. ‘Maybe someone will come down here unexpectedly. Before it’s too late.’

‘There’s just the two keys. Leon’s got one, which he’s going to pretend I had cut. And Sally Roddom’s got the other, because she’s the treasurer. But she’s off visiting her daughter till after Christmas.’

‘I see.’

‘I give up on Q. Let’s move to R. I’ll start. Rabbit.’

‘In a little while, Fiona, okay?’ I curled away, trying to nestle my back into the wedge of the bench. But everything was equally uncomfortable, with the bluestone so cold it was like ice. Even my bones felt chilled. I flicked the View-Master back because it didn’t make any difference anyway, my misery might as well be the only thing that was fed. And there I was standing by the door, my eyes closed and a huge grin on my face. ‘Now!’ cried Darcy and I opened my eyes to a magical sight. The bench was covered with a cloth and there were candles and wineglasses and a platter of food. Amazingly romantic, so far removed from everything except each other. I had been able to believe, without any doubt, that this was the way it would be forever.