PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (25 page)

“Should
be warm enough for you until you want to go to bed.  I am going to go up, I’m
pretty tired.”

“You
don’t want to sit with me for a while?” I ask.

“I
want to go to sleep.”  He turns to me and strokes my head, pets me like a small
dog eager to please his master.  “I will be at the hotel in the morning. 
Arrange Sunday, if you want.”

“On
a Saturday?”

“Yes,
I have to do a few things.  Join me, if you like.  We can eat on the new
deck.”  I nod but there is no enthusiasm in his voice and I think he might
forget about this invitation as soon as he is through the doorway.

I
stay by the fireplace for a while, watching the flames dancing up towards the
chimney.  I look over at the Wexley’s house and cannot hear anything, but the
lights are on downstairs.  By the time I follow him to bed he is already asleep
in our bed.  At least his eyes were closed, and when I speak to him, “Gregory,
are you awake,” I whisper, he chooses not to reply.  I am grateful that he is next
to me, and I tell myself that I can't have everything all at once.  I pick up
my pyjamas and dress in the bathroom in case he is secretly awake.  I do not
want to answer any questions about the growth lines that I have marked on myself. 
Tomorrow morning I will measure the extent of my expanding stomach.  I expect
changes each day, even if they are almost undetectable.  Somebody has to
measure the growth.

I
complete my routines, which have magnified since Ishiko and I spoke this
morning.  I have counted thirty times for hand washing, I have checked the
windows are locked downstairs twenty two times, and I am currently rinsing my
mouth for the third time tonight.  My hands are redder than they have ever been
and seem to scream for attention.  A red warning sign, STOP, they shout, but I
do not listen and for my efforts the open wound on the fleshy triangle of skin bleeds
like a faulty tap, weeping for me in sadness.  I enjoy the process of healing
when it has an outward sign that I can display to the world such as this wound. 
I have always been in the process of healing, but it seems that when that
healing is confined to one’s head it is much less acceptable than an obvious
wound.  The world around a victim of an accident, a cancer, a heart attack,
they rally and fight together to restore the balance of wellness.  When the
illness lies within the soul, the character, the very make up of that person
and what makes them who they are, people are suspicious.  They know deep down
that there is no hope.  It took Gregory a while to realise this, but he did,
and just like Ishiko implies, he abandoned me to my own senseless life.  I do
not know if it is guilt, pity, or a true willingness to accept me again that
brings him here to our bed tonight.  But for now perhaps it seems that he is
able to forget about who I really am, and pretend that I am nothing more than
the mother of his child.  If this is what he is offering me, I will take it.

I
lie awake for longer than I initially expected.  I picked at the wound on my
hand a little, hoping that it would be enough to settle me to sleep, but it
wasn’t so I started on my head.  Although it wasn't causing me any pain, I managed
to open a small bauble of something creamy that when I brought it close to my
nose smelled rotten.  I got out of bed and wearing a fresh pair of latex gloves,
I washed the wound.  When I removed the gloves there was a small coating of powder
that seemed to have congregated in the cracks of my hands and also in the open
wound in a way that had stemmed the bleeding.  I was considering the idea of
either leaving it there or washing my hands when I was distracted by something
happening outside of my window.  It was the Wexley’s.  Although the arguing that
had started earlier had stopped I heard a yelp of helplessness.  I imaged them
sat on opposite sides of the settee, Mary crying, Wexley pleading, begging her
for forgiveness whilst she demands to know who his latest fling was and who the
bloody pearl bracelet belongs to.  I thought about calling Marianne, but having
her arrive now, as entertaining as it might be would be a disaster for my plans. 
It wouldn’t make anything right.  Wexley wouldn’t really understand his mistake
if it culminated in a showdown tonight, and therefore Gregory wouldn’t pay any
attention to it either.  Gregory must see what happens when betrayal seeps into
life, and rather than stamp it out you welcome it and nurture it.  He will see
what is possible. 

When
I hear the door close I get up and look out of the window.  I pull back the
curtain to see John Wexley stepping into his car.  The night is perfectly
clear, a crystal ball of vision, no fog, with the slightest hint of diamond
frosting on the roof of his car.  He scrapes at the window, a small peephole
through the layer of frost.  The gravel shifts underneath his tyres as he
drives away, taking his hopes for a swift return with him.  He will be back,
tomorrow at the latest.  Of this I am sure.  But the seeds are planted and I
will water them so that they might grow into something even more impressive. 

Gregory
will see exactly what happens when you try to fuck me over. 

By
the time I woke Gregory was leaving the house.  I stirred once as he washed and
dressed, and I remember him telling me to go back to sleep.  I drifted in and
out of sleep for the next half an hour until finally I woke with a start at
8:32 AM.  At first I thought that Wexley was back, the raised voices a sign of an
impending argument.  I thought to myself that it had been pretty quick, even by
Mary’s standards.  I jumped out of bed and pulled back the curtains only to see
a scene of quiet, and Wexley’s car was not on their driveway.  Releasing the
curtain from my grip, I turned my attentions downstairs.  The voices were
either coming from the drawing room or kitchen.  They were raised, but hushed,
a sort of scream that comes out when you don’t want to be heard.  A shout
through gritted teeth.  I listen closely, but the voices are muffled.  I cannot
make out the words. 

I
know one of these voices.  One is Gregory.  His voice is firm, and certain.  The
other is the hushed screamer.  The other is the one who is losing control.  I
believe that it is Ishiko, but I have never heard her like this.  It sounds
like a crescendo, a steadily rising orchestral composition of angst and fear. 
Eventually the door slams shut, and from the vantage point that I have secured
on the landing at the top of the stairs I see the front door closing.  Gregory
has left, walking towards his car as I watch him from behind the curtain.

I
return to my bedroom and remove my nightshirt.  I take the measuring tape from
behind the drawer next to my bed, along with the chart that I drew.  I take the
measurements of my stomach, hips, and under my ribs to my pubic bone and jot
them down.  I count an extra millimetre from the ribs to pubic bone, and two
extra in circumference.  It is quite unbelievable that in only one day this has
happened, and so I am forced to consider the possibility that the measurements
are inaccurate.  I turn around so that I can inspect the dotted lines.  It
looks like Morse code, dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot.  There are plenty
of opportunities for mistakes and I am disappointed by my failure to get this
right, something that is
so
important.  I tear up the chart into jagged
shards but it does nothing to calm me like the tearing of Ishiko’s photograph
yesterday.  Feeling determined, I walk, no, I march down the stairs whilst I
cling onto the banister.  I pick up the telephone and call Dr. Abrams but he is
still not answering so I slam the receiver down and enter the kitchen.  I stand
there, still like an ice sculpture but my chest is heaving in and out.  Ishiko
turns to face me, her cheeks as pink as mine.

“I
need a knife,” I say.

“Mrs.
Astor, you.....”

“Don’t
you Mrs. Astor me you fucking dog whore,” I scream at her, realising the
absurdity of my insult.  “Where are they?” I say as I tear open the drawer
nearest to me.  I rifle through the contents but find papers upon papers upon
receipts upon pencils and so open the next and do the same until an elastic
band fires up at me and nearly hits me in the eye but I avoid it before grabbing
another drawer that rattles because it is full of plastic utensils and then the
next which has tea towels in it and smells of old meat and vegetables and then
I see that Ishiko is holding out a knife for me with fear on her face and I
take it from her hand which is shaking and shaking and she is absolutely as terrified
as I am angry and I see that it is a normal dining knife from a cutlery set so I
throw the knife on the floor and it narrowly misses her foot and she jumps up
like somebody fired a bullet at her and I laugh out loud for just a split
second before I control myself and reach for the next drawer which I pull but
it won’t open but I keep pulling and I can hear metal striking against metal as
the drawer shifts and suddenly I realise that I am screaming chanting,
open
it open it open it
over and over again but she is shaking her head so I
grab the nearest thing to hand which happens to be a soup ladle and I strike at
the drawer and I notice now how it has a small padlock on it and that somebody
has locked it shut so I start hitting at the lock for how long I am not sure
but eventually I am disturbed from my focus by Ishiko who is holding a set of
keys and pleading with me but I don’t hear what she says once the drawer is
open because it is full of blades from which I pick a small but useful knife
that is continuous with its handle and is quite a work of art, I notice.  I
take it and the buzzing in my ears stops and I hear Ishiko speak to me and
although I don’t know what she said I still find myself answering and I say,
“why would I do anything stupid,” which doesn’t feel like a question and I
realise now as I am walking back up the stairs that she thinks I am going to
kill myself with this beautiful knife.  I drop the ladle and hear it clatter back
down the stairs, one by one.

It
takes a lot of courage and a lot of wincing because I have told you before that
I am no cutter, and that one time when I was fourteen was just a mistake but
eventually I manage to engrave two complete lines, one around my waist which
joins up on itself and one from my ribs to my pubic bone.  I wash the knife and
put it with the torn up measurement chart into the space behind the drawer with
the CD, ripped photograph, tablets, five apple cores which I have recently
decided to start keeping because I want to monitor my fruit intake because I am
pregnant and my doctor said it was important, a pile of receipts, and various
other items that I find useful and do not wish to list.  After showering, hand
washing, mouth rinsing, and putting a small plaster on my hand to cover the
wound, I perform a substantial clean up from the mess that Gregory left behind,
an activity made tolerable by the distraction of pain from the newly made measurement
marks which are throbbing in a way I hadn't anticipated.  He has left
everything out and there are discarded clothes on the floor.  He has forgotten
the difficulties of living with me in such close quarters.  I am very pleased
that I haven’t felt sick all morning, except for a brief moment during the
longest single cut which was from the edge of my ribs to my pubic bone and
probably wasn't a direct result of morning sickness.  I realise that it is days
since I have felt the urge to vomit in the morning and I smile to myself
because my body is fighting to achieve, to stay well.  What is happening is a true
miracle.   

When
I arrive in the conservatory Ishiko is nowhere to be seen.  There is a boiled
egg on the table, a glass of juice and a pot of tea.  I pick at the edge of
some toast triangles and they are cold and cardboard like.  When I peer out of
the window into the back garden I still cannot see her.  I move through to the
drawing room and see through the front windows that she is kneeling on the
ground as if it were spring.  I scan around and see that there is a ground
frost and I have no idea what she is trying to achieve.  She is wearing a
gardening belt, full of tools for pruning and tinkering.  Secateurs, a trowel,
bin bags, garden wire.  At her side she is carrying a basket.  After watching
her for a while I see her snip off a rose head, not low down as if she was
planning to bring them inside for display.  High up, right underneath the
beautiful bud.

“Ishiko! 
What are you doing?” I call out, pushing the window out as far as it will go.  The
latex gloves that I am wearing do little to prevent the cold attacking my
fingertips and the surge of adrenaline sends a rush of blood towards the wound
on my head.  “Ishiko!”  I see her flinch but she pretends that she doesn’t see
me.  At first.  Then she looks up, takes her secateurs, stares me off square in
the eye before making another cut.  She throws the flower in the basket. 
“Ishiko, stop that!”  She stands up after trimming the tops off another four
buds.  Four beautiful blood red roses beheaded like medieval murderers.   I am
out of the front door before I know it.  “Ishiko, what are you doing?”

“Gregory
asked me to cut them.”  She didn’t make eye contact as she said the words, as
she rolled my husband’s name around on her tongue.  No doubt like everything
else of his that she has rolled her tongue over.  Who did she think she was
using his name so casually like that?  I image that it took me quite some time
to feel relaxed about him like this, that I might just drop the name out to
anybody who fancied hearing it. 

“Mr.
Astor would never ask you to behead the roses like this.  He loves these
roses.”

“He
has chosen to make an exception.”  With that, she stands up and starts walking
back to the house whilst keeping as much distance from me as the pathway would
allow.

“Ishiko,
I am talking to you,” I say, grabbing her arm as my fingers seize up from the
cold.  She flinches.  She is scared.  I see the wire in the basket that swings
my way as her body jolts.  The edge of the wire is poking up, pointing at me as
if it is accusing me, peeping out through the rose heads.  It is as if it is
saying,
they are mine, now.  They belong to me. 
I think about snatching
it up, silencing it, but my next thought is of it in my hands and I am wrapping
it around Ishiko’s skinny little neck like a member of the Mafia might do to a
police informant.  I let go of her arm, dropping her like hot coal.

“Charlotte,”
I hear a man’s voice.  Ishiko smiles at me as if she has been saved, and also
like she is in on a secret that I have no idea about.  I’m getting used to this
feeling.

“Sorry,”
she says, a sly grin extending over the left half of her face.  “I must have
forgotten to tell you that Stephen Jones said he was coming today.  Perhaps he
wants to discuss why you haven’t been at work.  What will you tell him?  I’d
beware of the truth if I were you, that’s if you can remember it yet.”  And she
is gone.

Within
ten minutes he has managed to get himself inside, sat in Gregory’s chair in the
conservatory.  We have exchanged pleasantries regarding the harshness of the
weather and the incredible fog that has been clouding our lives and has only
just begun to lift.  He tells me that pending the survey, which should take
another few weeks, the sale of the final house that I showed, which turned out
to be to my obstetrician, Dr. Jenkinson, is almost complete.  The owner has
welcomed them on a number of occasions to measure up for new curtains and
perhaps a new carpet in the main lounge.  Blue isn’t his colour, apparently. 
He is a doctor, Stephen tells me.

Besides
talking to Ishiko and asking her to prepare a fresh pot of tea, I have barely
said a word.  Stephen is a talker.  It stirs a memory of him regularly holding
court at the office, chatting to potential clients about any subject that came
up.  He always seemed to be an expert.  In fact, I realise that in all the time
I have been sitting here he has not stopped talking once, and that in all
honesty I have little clue about whatever it might be that he is saying.  I
have been nodding along positively whilst all the while my mind was somewhere
else entirely.  It seems that I can remember quite a lot about him, including
the tactics of how to zone out and simultaneously remain in the conversation. 
I guess the strong characters leave an impression on a mind.  Even mine.

I
switch back on when I realise that he is asking me a question.  I check the
clock and eleven minutes have passed.

“What
has been the problem?” he says.

We
are talking about a problem.  Has to be mine.  “Sorry, what?  Problem?”

“Yes,”
he chuckles.  “We have missed you in the office.”  I was hardly ever at the
office and when I was there I was in no way the glue of the group.  I was the
one they would talk to at the kettle to hurry along unavoidable moments.  They
would ask about the house, the hotel, the weather.  Nothing about me.  Nothing
personal.  Too risky.  I was the one that they would check to see if I had
overheard when they were organising a night out to establish if an invitation
was necessary.  I was an outsider.  But yet here he is, talking me up like they
sit around drinking tea wondering where I am.  He is such a salesman, always
regurgitating the same thing, whatever somebody might need to hear to seal the
deal.

“I
am sure you haven’t.”  I play along.  I am giggling like a schoolgirl,
affectionately batting away his
crazy ideas!  HAHAHA! 
I bite my finger
so hard that the dry fragile skin breaks and I suck in the taste of blood, my
latex gloves discarded under the table.  The powder does not taste good.  Ishiko
places the tea on the table.  She is smiling at me in a way that I don’t like. 
It says,
suck it up, bitch.

“Well,
we are just a bit surprised not to have seen you at all, and after the incident
at The Sailing Club,” he trails off, not wanting to add in the details,
“I.....I was worried.”

“Here,
take some tea,” I suggest, forcing a cup on him.  In the background I can hear
the crunch of gravel on the Wexley’s driveway.  Surely Wexley isn’t back
already?  Here to pick up stuff?  Here to make amends?  If only it was that
easy to make up for.....mistakes.

“Thanks,”
he says taking the cup.  “Well, I have to admit, you look well.”  Not what he
was expecting.  Perhaps he expected restraints, a straightjacket, a doctor at
the bedside sedating me, or a priest attempting an exorcism.

“Thank
you.  I am well.”

“I
am pleased about that.  I really am, but,” he pauses again, looks in his tea
cup for a way out of broaching the obvious subject but he finds no distraction there
because after a moment he says, “it leads me to the question of why exactly it
is that we haven’t seen you.  Why didn’t you call me?”