Ghosts in the Morning (2 page)

I wasn’t angry for long
though
. I understand why he’s doing it. He wants to feel young again, to feel that youthful exuberation that gets harder to come by as life enters the final straight.
He is suffering the effects of that pendulum of mortality that swings inexorably over a middle-aged man’s head, driving them to irrational impulses. M
aybe it’s about the sex too. They say it’s different for men, it’s more of a need.
And, for sure,
I know I’m not that much to look at these days. My
once
cheeky little muffin-tops have
morphed into
full-blown
fat
love handles
. The
baby pounds
that
sat too long on my hips and thighs have got too comfortable. I gave up trying to shift them
a few years ago.

I wasn’t always like th
is. In
days
gone by
I could turn a few heads,
used to get the
odd wolf whistle
too
.
Bit of a looker in my late twenties, some would say.
I think Graham used to think of me as a trophy wife, a pretty bit of eye candy to hold onto his arm at the corporate functions he had to attend.
Not now, though
, no. Now, it’s all Graham can do to stand next to me at the rare functions we attend together. Most times now, Graham goes alone to the corporate functions. I guess it makes it easier if Nikki’s there, too. No chance of my female intuition picking
up on the ‘thing’ between them.

I don’t think Graham enjoys
making love to me
, we
don’t
do it
very often these days
. When we do i
t’s automatic. Perfunctory
.
A few minutes of him wheezing away on top of me, whilst I lay back and decide whether to have fish for tea tomorrow, or
fret about whether
Simon is coping at university, and
if
I should ring him again on Friday, or would that make me an over-protective mother?
I don’t really know why we bother at all, although I think we’re practically at that stage.
To be honest,
I’ve never really liked sex that much. It was okay with Graham when we were first going out
–
Graham
used to believe he was ‘good in the sack’, he actually said that to me once -though I never really believed in all of that. I mean, what
would
make someone good in the sack, surely not the speed that
they
thrust
themselves
into you, like the women in porn films would have you believe? None of it really made sense to me, most of the expectations
surrounding sex
were
completely
unrealistic
. T
o me
,
it was all about degrees of tolerance.

Most nights, though, I’m asleep when Graham comes to bed. It’s easier for both
of
us that way
. I
t means that Graham doesn’t have to feel obliged to talk to me,
or wish me goodnight with an accompanying fake goodnight kiss, and also it means
I can try and get to sleep before he starts snoring.

I sip my wine
and think about the man I killed,
and I am invisible. The television is on, but the sound is on mute. I like the silence. Graham is out, it’s his weekly badminton club night. I run my top lip along the glass
and exhale gently, making the glass sing. I lick my lips,
enjoying the sharp, citrussy tang of the Chardonnay.
It’s a good one, a v
ery expensive wine, in more ways than one.
After all,
it cost a man his life.

I stare down at my hands. They’re admirably still.
No trembling, no aftershock. I am surprised, I would have expected more fear...panic, perhaps. I mean, after all,
it’s not every day you take the life of another.
But something has changed in me tonight.
I would have expected that I would feel nervous, scared, guilty even. Instead, I feel
excited. Alive.  Powerful even.
I don’t recall feeling like this before.  I’ve always felt small, insignificant
, so t
his
surge
, this quickening
that
the man’s death has
triggered
is unfamiliar, alien
. This must be the rush a drug user feels, and
I don’t want it to stop.

I hadn’t meant to
kill him,
no way, i
t wasn’t like it was planned
. I had
only gone out for a pint of milk.
For my coffee in the morning.
Well,
that
and a bottle of wine.
Okay, p
rimarily a bottle of wine.
I had driven further than I needed to,
there was a shop closer, but the wine selection at that shop was limited to cheap and nasty over-sugared Australian fizz, so I had carried on driving, enjoying
the soporific numbness of driving
on dark, quiet roads.
I did that sometimes.
             

I
know I
should feel some
s
y
mpathy
at least
. I know I should, but I don’t. I didn’t know
the man
, I had no
empathetic
connection to him
, was it unnatural to feel nothing? Yes, sure,
I killed him, but if he had died tonight at the hands of another, or indeed of natural causes,
how
would
I
have known about it
then
?
I
f that had been the
case,
I
would have
known nothing,
felt nothing. As I do now.
Well
...not necessarily nothing.
That
sparkling
frisson of elation is still with me.

I
think that it is
extremely unlikely
that
I will be caught.
T
he damage to my car
appears to be
minimal
and
I’m
almost positive that
nobody saw
what happened.
The road was very quiet.

And, a
fter all, I am invisible.

Chapter
2

‘How was badminton?’

‘
It was a
lright. A bit quiet,’ Graham grunted.

Graham wasn’t a morning person.
Before ten o’clock in the morning, he was g
rumpy.
It couldn’t be much fun for his staff, though maybe he was different at work. Maybe he put on a facade, I’m sure he would for Nikki, at least.

He chomped his cereal as he flicked the pages of yesterday’s local newspaper. I could see
moon-like
flecks of milk on his chin, nestling amongst
a few
straggles of
wiry
hair that he
had
evidently missed
on his morning shave
. The slurp and chew of over-sugared flakes of corn echoed in my head, and I clenched my fingers
, digging my bitten nails into my palms.
I wanted to pick the bowl up and smash it in his face.

‘Can I have another coffee
?
’

I stared at him, my eyes boring into his bald head.
He obviously felt it unnecessary to say ‘please’.
His manners had
deteriorated
in recent years
– perhaps he felt that
I was
just
his wife, undeserving of common courtesy. I sighed, and took his cup.
I could have refused, could have said ‘
piss off and make your own’
, but
It was easier to make it myself
. T
he coffee machine was my pride and joy – Italian, expensive – and I didn’t like Graham touching it. His fingers were too fat, too impatient, and I didn’t want him to break the machine. Like he
had
the last one.

‘
Daniel still in bed, is he? S
houldn’t
he be up by now, he’ll be late for work.
’
Graham said, without looking up from the paper.

‘No, he hasn’t got to go in today. His boss is a b
it quiet
at the moment,
I don’t think that he’s got m
uch work on
at the moment
,’ I replied, but Graham wasn’t listening
, he’d switched off after the word ‘
no’
.
I may as well have been a wall.
I spoke to the wall sometimes – during one-sided conversations with Graham I would say ‘
yes, that’s a great idea, thank you wall
’ or ‘
no wall, that’s fine, no thanks
’ – but my mocking sarcasm usually went unheard. It made me feel better, though.

‘Bloody hell, can you believe the brass neck of these
bloody
Ministers. We’re in the middle of a bloody recession – and it is a recession, no matter what they call it – and they go swanning off a business trip to Singapore. Like that’s going to help.
Bloody i
diots.’

‘I’ve never been to Singapore
. I remember reading once that
you get fined for eating chewing gum
there
, is that right?’

‘Eh, what?’ Graham snapped, without looking up.

‘Oh, nothing.’

Graham
tossed the paper onto the kitchen table and went into the hall to pick up his briefcase. ‘Bye then’, he called, then he was gone, the
door slamming. The hinges needed looking at, I
had
told Graham, but that was months ago. I
would
do it myself, but he
never let
me touch his tools.
He e
ven
pathetically
had a combination lock on the tool cupboard in the garage
. I wondered if he kept a stash of girlie magazines in there.

Years ago,
Graham
used to kiss me on the lips before he went to work.
A proper smooch, lips moist and a hint of passion. Love, even. As time passed, this changed
to a
dry
kiss on the cheek. Now, this too had changed.
Now, it was
a shouted goodbye
, or sometimes nothing at all, just the slam of a door that needed fixing.
Did all marriages get to this
point eventually
?
Honeymoon love
m
orph
ing
in
to the
sort of
care felt for a sibling
, then
a gradual, inexorable fading away, leaving a mild
tolerance
that bordered on the fringes of outright dislike. Maybe we were t
oo scared, too set in our ways, to change things
, so we accepted the way of things,
we
accepted a life we would have dreaded when we were young and idealistic. If familiarity breeds contempt, were
all marriages
destined for
that
contempt?

A saucer dropped to the floor.
An unforgiving floor - n
atural stone flooring, top quality
, Graham had insisted on it, despite it costing twice as much as the tiles I had chosen -
so
the saucer smashed. I sat down and glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was far too early for a glass of wine but still...

The man
that I killed
had been cycling. His bike had lights
but they were small
, ineffective, pinpricks in the curtain of the night. The lane was narrow, unlit, there were no street lights in the island’s smaller lanes
.
The man
had all that silly cycling clothing on,
but it must have been designed for the daytime as
the clothes were black
. Or perhaps a very
dark grey
,
but there
only a very faint white trim. I didn’t see all
of
that at first. I just felt a slight bump as my bumper clipped his back wheel.
I braked hard
and quick, but only after my bumper had clipped him.
It didn’t take too long to stop, I hadn’t been travelling that fast. I didn’t like to speed,
I thought of myself as a very careful driver, and besides,
I was wary of being breathalysed
. N
ot that I’d had
that
much
to drink
, but you never knew...