My head rushed with blood and adrenaline, making me dizzy for a moment, and it took several deep breaths to get my feet feeling solid ground beneath them. This was crazy. Truly crazy. My face and the tips of my fingers were cold, my blood drawing back inside.
I think, looking back, that was the worst moment for my sanity. There were worse things to come, far worse, but at least by then I knew it was nature that had gone crazy, not me. Standing there at the bottom of the high street, I felt almost as if someone had slipped a small dose of LSD into my drink, unsure of what was real or not. I’d taken the drug once and that was enough. I liked to keep a grip on reality, to believe in what I could touch and feel, not just wild imaginings. I pushed my legs to walk and I tried to calm my thinking down as I turned up Vicarage Walk, strolling past the rows of houses, some showing the flickering lights of televisions reflecting large shapes on sofas, some with their curtains drawn despite the evening light. I shoved my hands deep into my pockets to warm them.
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Maybe it was insane, but something was happening here. Silently, I listed the evidence. Chloe not eating and putting on three stone. Her personality changing. I rushed past that part in my head, not wanting to blur my thoughts with the fear I felt for her and for me. I remembered the disturbed and distracted demeanour of Mr. Brown earlier that afternoon. He’d said Peggy wasn’t feeling too well, either. Neither was Bill/Bob’s wife in The Crown. And the streets were pretty deserted. Definitely abandoned by the fairer sex, at least. And more than all that, there was the conversation with Dr. Judge. If I was going insane, then at least I had him for company. What had he said? We’ll have to wait and see. It wasn’t a comforting prospect. Not for me and Chloe and our unborn child. Maybe his lying to Chloe had been a kindness after all. I stared at the pavement, not needing to see into any more lives, and trudged forward into the falling darkness.
Finally, I found myself outside our little cottage and quietly let myself in. I didn’t like the small wave of relief that I felt when silence greeted me and I realised that Chloe was already in bed. Getting a can of beer from the fridge, I cracked it open and went into the dark sitting room, leaving the lights off and flicking on the remote control.
Sophie Rayworth was delivering the news, and the can stopped inches from my mouth as her image glowed in the gloom. She was at least a stone heavier than she had been the last time I’d paid her any attention. Easily. Maybe more. I wasn’t normally that great a judge of women’s weight, but recently I’d become more of an expert. And was it my imagination or did she seem distracted, a little vague? She stumbled over two lines in the few moments that I watched. Not
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exactly her normal slick professional self. I wondered if she’d be giving us the ten o’clock news the next day, or would that show be “closed due to sickness?”
Turning the TV off, I leaned back into the armchair and shut my eyes, my temples throbbing with an oncoming tension headache. No great surprise there. I’m not sure how long I sat there like that in the silent dark, but eventually my thoughts and the headache became too oppressive and I sleepily climbed the stairs to our bedroom.
Without brushing my teeth, I peeled off my clothes as quietly as I could and climbed into bed. Chloe was sleeping curled up on her side, facing the other way as I lay on my back, gazing up at the ceiling hidden in the dark.
“Hold me, Matt.” Her soft voice cut through my thoughts and into my heart. That was my Chloe speaking.
Rolling next to her, I wrapped my arm around her body, ignoring its unfamiliar feel. She pulled my hand up so it was under her face.
“I’m scared.”
I pulled her close and said all I could that was true without admitting my own fear.
“I love you, Chloe.”
The next morning was Saturday. When I finally opened my bleary eyes, still heavy from a fitful night’s sleep, I realised the bed beside me was empty. Ignoring the vague thudding that was left of my headache from the night before, I called out her name, then listened for any sound of movement below. There was nothing. She’d gone out. Whether that was a good thing or bad, I didn’t know, and rather than just lie there with only
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my morbid thoughts for company, I decided on a hot shower to blast away the cobwebs.
Outside, the sun was shining brightly and I opened the bathroom window a little, the spring breeze refreshingly cutting through the steam erupting from the hot jet of water, and despite everything, I felt my spirits rise. My headache lingered and my mouth felt as if it were covered in fur, but there was a hint of summer in the air, and that always made me feel good.
By the time I was dressed and coming downstairs, I was whistling and sure that whatever was going on, they would be sorting it out, and before we all knew it everything would be back to normal. The rustling of plastic bags escaped from the kitchen and I followed the sound.
My whistling stopped in the doorway, the dampness of my hair suddenly cold against my head, my scalp bristling with goose bumps.
“Morning, Chloe.” I tried to keep my voice normal, but I heard the shake in it, and I’m sure if she cared, then she would have, too. Jesus Christ, what had happened to her? After those first two words, I just stood and stared, watching as she shuffled about the kitchen. I don’t know if she even noticed my shock. She was bigger. Much bigger than she had been yesterday, and I had to resist the urge to laugh in shock. I was scared of where that laugh would lead. Madness? I didn’t feel that far from it. Where was my Chloe in all of that excess fat and flesh? It was like looking at a nightmare distortion of the girl I loved.
She was wearing some floral tent of a skirt that she must have just bought, pulling my jogging bottoms out of a plastic bag and tossing them carelessly on the
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floor by the washing machine. Had they been that tight on her that she’d had to buy new clothes? Her upper body, bloated and shapeless, was covered with a large white T-shirt. God, she looked like some tragic reject from a reality TV show, the weight ageing her before her time.
Shaking myself, I took one of the shopping bags from her.
“Here, let me help.”
The bag was half-f and heavy.
“Fridge.” Her voice had more of that gravelly tone I’d noticed the previous evening, and I nodded awkwardly, pulling open the door. She was tipping a bag onto its side, and it looked like small wrapped parcels of meat. What the hell had she been buying?
Reaching into my carrier, I started to empty it into the fridge. More meat. I looked at the labels. Liver. Kidney. Heart. More liver. Tongue. More heart. We never ate this. Not even liver. My fingertips tingled with disgust.
“Jesus, Chloe. What have you bought all this shit for?” Unaware of her presence next to me, I stared at the shelves that I’d filled. She must have gone to more than one butcher to get all this.
“Couldn’t you have just got steak and sausages like normal?”
Her growl made my skin crawl, and startled, I spun round to find myself staring at her face, pale in the reflected light of the fridge. The low animalistic snarl turned into a hiss, her mouth open, the sound coming from deep in her chest. I heard a low moan, for a moment not realising it was coming from me, frozen to the spot as I stared. My fear seemed to satisfy her, and the horrible sound ended, a twisted smile filling her
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face. As my headache roared back to life, sharp and nauseous, I wanted to cry. One of her front teeth was missing. Oh, Chloe. She touched my arm and I shivered inside, my stomach churning.
“I just need some protein, Matty.” As she spoke, I caught glimpses of the black and rotting insides of her mouth, and I wanted to recoil from her, pull away, but I couldn’t.
“For the baby. I was lucky. It was nearly all gone.” Her eyes were glowing too brightly in her pale sweaty face, and suddenly I felt tired, tired in my bones, the pain from my head running straight down into my spinal column. I needed to get out of the house, right now, straightaway. My voice seemed to be coming from far away.
“I’m not a great fan of this kind of stuff. I’m going to go to Budgen’s to get something for me.” As excuses went, it was at least believable. There wasn’t any food in the house. I hadn’t felt much like eating recently, and when I had, I’d just grabbed a takeaway.
She nodded approvingly before taking her hand away, and I almost fell backwards, my legs like jelly. My fingers fumbled to pick up my wallet and keys from the breakfast bar. God, my head hurt.
Chloe was heading slowly into the sitting room as I opened the back door. She smiled unpleasantly over her shoulder. “Don’t talk to any strangers.”
I let the closing door be my answer.
I didn’t find the spring air quite so revitalizing anymore, and rather than going down to the small supermarket, I decided to walk up to the big Tesco in Wolverton, a mile and half away. The confines of
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Stony Stratford-so long a comfort zone in my life-were becoming claustrophobic, and I turned my back on it, my feet heavy in my trainers. Half my head was numb with pain, but it thankfully eased as I finally passed under the old bridge that signalled the boundary of the town, and I took in several deep breaths, relieved to have my thinking clear.
The streets were quiet, the odd car or bike passing me, but no sign of any other pedestrians. I’d seen a couple of people moving around Stony, but it seemed that no one was strolling up to Wolverton this Saturday morning apart from me. On either side of the road were fields, and they seemed to watch me silently as I trudged up the mild incline. Although my headache seemed to be going, I was sweating with exhaustion. How could I be so tired? There was too much strange shit happening way too fast for me to keep up.
Pushing myself onwards, I did my best to ignore the pain in my limbs. There was just too much to think about already, and at least the jabbing, sharp attacks to my head were going.
By the time I got into the old railway town I was recovering slightly, but my soul still ached at the sight of the nearly empty supermarket car park. I laughed pathetically at my lack of surprise and stepped through the sliding doors into the cool, brightly lit store. As the door shut behind me, my headache dropped away a little more; it was still there, but it was at least tolerable.
Picking up a basket from the tall stack at the entrance, I began to wander up and down the empty aisles, the tinny music filtering from above adding to the eeriness of the ghost town atmosphere. I felt like I was shopping in the middle of the night, not
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eleven-thirty on a Saturday morning. My shoes whispered noisily as I walked, my eyes no doubt as wide as a child’s.
The meat counters were all pretty much empty, some vac-packed bacon and frankfurters left unwanted on the shelves, the machinery humming hungrily as it kept them cool. Staring into the sterile shelving, hopelessness seeped into me. It seemed that Chloe wasn’t the only one wanting protein today. I didn’t care about the lack of meat. I found that since Chloe came home, I’d gone off the stuff. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I was going to have an appetite for anything much in the near future.
The deli and cheese counter were closed and although there were no “due to illness” signs up, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Not that there were many geniuses out and about to do the math. Going past the chiller, I took out a pizza and put it in the basket, adding two pints of milk. The sight of all this food was making my stomach turn, the image of Chloe’s rotting mouth making unwelcome visits in my mind, but I couldn’t go home with nothing. The idea of doing anything that might upset my girlfriend didn’t appeal to me.
Turning away from the endless mountains of food, I headed into the toiletries section and grabbed two packets of paracetamol and the same of ibuprofen. There weren’t many left on the shelf. It seemed that meat wasn’t the only product in demand on this unusual weekend. Not wanting to wait until I’d paid for them, I ripped into the paracetamol and dryswallowed a couple.
“Matt. Hi.”
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Jesus. The sudden voice jolted my jangled nerves. The pale face next to me attempted a smile and it took me a moment to place it, before it came to me. Mark. God, I hadn’t seen him in ages. He lived just round the corner from here and we’d been to school together. We also used to play in the Stony pool league together. He wasn’t a bad player and a good laugh to boot. He wasn’t looking so amusing now, his eyes strained and bloodshot. I squeezed his shoulder.
“Hey, mate. How are you?” I glanced down and saw that his shopping basket was almost identical to mine. One meal’s worth of food, tea bags and painkillers.
“You got a headache, too?”
He nodded very slowly, his mouth twitching slightly, as if he had to force the words out. “Shelley’s not well.”
Now there was a surprise. “Neither’s Chloe.” My own head pounded a bit harder. “You want to talk about it?” I stared at him, waiting for an answer. It was about time someone started talking about it, and it may as well be us over a cool beer.
Mark’s hand shot to his head as he flinched, and the nod I was sure had been coming stopped. Leaning forward, he whispered painfully.
“Maybe later. Maybe when she’s asleep.” His face contorted slightly again. “It doesn’t hurt so much then.” Wobbling, he almost lost his balance and I grabbed him, keeping him on his feet.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
He nodded. “I have to go now.”
He scurried away, disappearing around the corner before I could call him back. I stood there for a few moments, staring after him. What had he meant, it
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didn’t hurt so much when Shelley was asleep? Absently adding another packet of pills to my basket, better to be safe than sorry, I made my way to one of the two checkouts that was open and emptied my meagre load onto the conveyor belt, then stared down towards the exit. There was no sign of Mark.