Three Steps Behind You (25 page)

A miracle
.

I’ve done it
.

Closeness, always
.

Or just this: Helen is dead
.

Rejoice!

Adam is wifeless
.

Rejoice!

It was confirmed at 3 a.m. this morning. Adam called me from the hospital. The car hit her when she was on her way back from her oil-painting class. It didn’t stop. She was left as a blur of reds and browns. So I hear
.

They say that on the phone, you can tell if someone is smiling. I tried to frown. I don’t know if Adam was convinced
.

He should have been smiling too, for he is released
.

Because this means: Adam and me for always. Like it always used to be, like it was meant to be. The queen is out of the castle
.

It’s like the ‘rape’ consummated our union. I made this happen, I did it, with the power of my love. This, you see, this is the elixir I was talking about. No reason to stop with the reward of last week’s adventure. Now, I am eternally blessed. I will console Adam with myself – and I know, now, he will take me. His life, our lives are transformed by this release
.

Not like when we got out of Feltham. This release will bring us as closest as closest as closest can be
.

A shame about the baby? Maybe. But one Adam is enough for my world
.

My aunt is well again. I can return
.

23 February 2007

I didn’t expect the police to be so interested in my return
.

But apparently, they always look at those closest to the deceased first in cases of hit and run. I told them that Helen and I were not close. So they asked if I hated her. I wasn’t about to tell them the truth. Besides, it is not Helen that I hated. Just her closeness to Adam. Before I could even go round and visit Adam for a drink, the police were at my door, wanting me to help them with their inquiries
.

Adam was the first on the list, of course. He had a pretty solid alibi – out partying with colleagues, photos all over Facebook. Being with my aunt wasn’t such a good excuse. Particularly when they wanted her address. I asked if they were seriously going to trouble an old lady with MS, given it would take her about an hour to get to the door. I’d just got her rested and a bit better again, I said. I didn’t want them troubling her. They asked if they could call her. I said she didn’t have a phone
.

Besides, I said, what is my motive here?

They couldn’t answer that
.

The lawyer that Adam had given me asked if they were going to charge me. I thought that was a bit bold. They could easily have said ‘yes’. But they let me go. ‘For the time being.’

I went out for a drink with Adam and the lawyer afterwards to celebrate. At least, I was celebrating. Maybe they weren’t. There was a lot of talk of funerals and what music they should choose. Adam looked like he might cry, but he didn’t. In fact, I haven’t seen him cry yet, not since I heard him, on the phone, after my visit. He had red rims round his eyes though, like there had been tears. I wish the lawyer hadn’t been there. I need to seize these few days with Adam, while he is accessible in his grief, so that he remembers I am the one who will replace Helen. He perhaps felt that when I hugged him. But he moved away when I stroked his arm, while we were talking. Probably just because the lawyer was there, though. For the sake of appearances. Instead, I just had to hold tight to the memory of touching him. I touched my own arm, under the table, and remembered his skin. I’ve been remembering it all evening. Hopefully, soon, when we meet without the lawyer, I can feel it anew
.

I don’t think it’s the last I’ll see of the police. The problem is, the car that hit her was one from our garage
.

26 February 2007

One of them – DC Pearce – is obsessed with me. I see him looking at me all day. Even when I am in the backroom, and he is out the front, supervising one of the uniformed people in carrying away our files and copying our computer drives, I know he is watching me through the door. He has worked very hard on designing himself. If he stepped into a cartoon called ‘The fat, balding, cigar smoking yet dangerous detective’ then he would already be perfect. No one would need to re-illustrate him. He reminds me of the Agatha Christie books we read at Feltham, that one week, before they realised that the subject matter probably wasn’t appropriate, and that the cosy drawing rooms were probably depressing people. So then we got stuck with
Anne of Green Gables
instead
.

To annoy DC Pearce, I stare right back at him. Through the door, through the window, even when I am back home I stare at him in my mind
.

I think he thinks he will intimidate me into a confession
.

But where is the crime here?

27 February 2007

DC Pearce was even at the funeral. Not visibly, of course. But I know what they do, the police. I’ve seen the films
.

First, they lurk at the back of the church. So all the time during the service, when I was sitting at the front with Adam, I knew we were being watched. I stopped myself holding his hand, like when Dad died, although I did pat his thigh when he made an exploding noise like a suppressed sob. The readings were made real to me again, like at that earlier funeral, by the replacement of ‘Christ’ with ‘Adam’. Or just He. When Dad died, and God left with him, the vicar told me directly in the funeral sermon that ‘He will guide us, our saviour, our all’. I knew he was right. Adam was my saviour, now I’d lost my father on earth and on high. I realised it, that day, in church. But the vicar was wrong about us all sharing Adam. He was just mine. At Helen’s funeral today, the vicar knew about Adam too. ‘He will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death,’ he said. And, ‘For to me, to live is Adam and to die is gain.’ I forgot about DC Pearce for a while. But then Adam read a piece straight to me, about sheep and staffs and anointing him with oil when we are sitting down with his enemies. I tried to deter him from sending me messages when DC Pearce was watching, but he ignored my mouthed warnings and continued. I could feel DC Pearce writing notes at the back. He must have been hiding behind one of the pews at that point, so that Adam couldn’t see him
.

I know their tricks outside, too. They stand on the edge of graveyards, watching, waiting for the culprit to do something that will give them away. I tried to throw the earth in the least triumphant way possible. That took a lot of self-control, but my back was prickling with his eyes so I had to. Adam didn’t know we were being watched, so I told him. He looked round to see. He is so naïve and uncorrupted. I told him that looking was a waste of time, that the watchers were hidden, and that the thing to do was just look innocent. He said he was innocent. I said we all, really. But he got the message, because he looked down gravely at the earth, and didn’t look up again until all the ground was filled in. I did the same. I wanted to make sure Helen was well and truly buried
.

After the funeral we went into the rose garden, me and Adam alone. I kept a respectful distance behind him as he went in, but I knew he wanted me there, because when I finally closed the distance between us, he was smiling. He said he wanted a moment alone, before it was time for the wake. It’s a good phrase, wake, in these circumstances, when it is Adam’s time to be awoken. I told him that, in the garden. He didn’t hear me, because he carried on fingering a rose. They weren’t very good roses – more thorn than flower. Like Helen. Adam didn’t hear that either. So I took his hand and told him he was not alone. He slapped me on the back and told me he was grateful. Then he said we should go and get awoken. He laughed as he said it, like it was a joke, but we both know how serious it is, for us, for our future
.

I knew too that he was thinking back to my parents’ funerals, Mum’s first, then Dad’s. To the time afterwards, when I went back to his house with him and his parents, when we knew I’d be staying there, for a while. I wanted to suggest that I could now reciprocate, that he could come and live with me. Or I could come and live with him. But that either way, he wouldn’t be alone. I knew he knew that offer was there, if he wanted it, though, so I didn’t need to voice it. And then wouldn’t have been the time
.

At the wake I kept my distance from Adam, so that DC Pearce wouldn’t suspect. That’s a mistake novices make at funerals – if they’ve been having an affair and murdered the spouse so they can be together, they send each other bright-eyed looks when they think no one is looking. Then they disappear into the bathrooms and fuck each other. When they get out of the cubicle, they find the police there, and suddenly the game is up
.

So instead, I spoke to a boring girl in a red beret that made her look like a fat pixie, while we ate lobster quiche. I think her name was Nicole. We didn’t talk for the whole wake, because she vanished for a bit, but then I spotted her again with Adam a little while later, without her beret, so I waved. Neither of them waved back. I moved onto the beetroot crisps, alone. Save for DC Pearce, of course
.

28 29 February 2007

No, it’s not a leap year. But I wanted a secret, hidden day, an extra day, for Adam
.

[Should I really be calling it a secret day? Won’t that put readers off, when this is published as my story? No. No I think they will like it. A sense of discovery. They are real voyeurs, these readers, and I am their agent of provocation.]

So here, in this window between time, this day of my creation, I am thinking back over some other, hidden moments, that are just our own
.

- The time in Mr Hughes’ maths class when Mr Hughes made fun of the answer I’d written on the blackboard, and while I was up there embarrassed and ashamed at being exposed as stupid, Adam caught my eye and rolled his eyes in the direction of Mr Hughes. Suddenly I knew that I was protected. It was much better than a public display of support because it meant I had the courage then to stand up for myself. I told Mr Hughes what I thought of him, and I got detention, but it didn’t matter, because Adam was there with me. In spirit
.

- The time I went round to his house, before I started living there, and his mum showed me up to his room, and I asked what he was up to. He said he’d been having a wank, and I was welcome to grab my own magazine and sit in the corner with it, if I wanted, but really it was a private activity. So I did what he said. Adam himself didn’t masturbate, but he was probably tired. He just looked at me. Everyone at school was really pleased for me when they found out, because they kept coming up to me and asking, ‘So you really went over to Adam’s house and wanked in a corner?’ Then they laughed unreservedly when I said I had. They sat next to me at lunch, and everything, asking me questions. Adam let me have my moment of glory, and didn’t try to sit next to me. That was fine. I knew we’d have more private moments. I guess this is a more public moment, less secret, but nobody was in the room with us. They didn’t know the atmosphere. He told everyone in our residential unit about in Feltham too, once, the night I had the worst beating. It was only an hour before we were due to be locked up. None of the wardens noticed because Marco and his gang didn’t touch my face. That night, Adam had to hug me with my hands. I enfolded myself in his arms, although he wasn’t physically there in my cell with me. No one was. He kept me from the precipice. I have him to thank
.

- Adam’s birthday in Feltham. I made him a card, and I signed up for cookery so I could bake him a cake. Marco’s crew called me lots of names I’d never heard of, but he ate a piece, when they weren’t watching, and said it was all right
.

- My birthday in Feltham. Adam remembered, which was sweet of him
.

- The night before Adam started his first job. I knew he would be nervous, so I went over there to calm him down. He didn’t have the big house in West Hampstead, then – that came when he started living with Helen. He was just living in a grotty basement flat in Streatham. We bonded while I ironed his shirt for him. The iron made a hole in it, but it wasn’t even big enough to put a finger through, plus it was hidden when you put a jacket on. Adam didn’t make a fuss. He said he knew I was trying to help. He needed his sleep, though (lots of it – it was only 8 p.m. when he started yawning) so I left him to it, went back to the car wash, for the night shift
.

- The day I told Adam I’d moved to North London. I know he really appreciate being told that, despite moving in with Helen, he wouldn’t lose my friendship, because he went silent. At some moments, there is just so much emotion that you can’t speak. I stayed on the phone, silently communing with him, until he felt ready to hang up
.

- And of course, our biggest secret moment yet. The one so secret, that Adam doesn’t even know we shared it. And he must never know we shared it. He must think we have come together naturally, not know I was the one who made him cry. [I’ll need to edit before I send this book to publishers. Somehow, he mustn’t know it’s him. Or maybe, maybe this book is secret too, always. A shared moment in time with Adam. Do I want to publicise it? It would be hugely successful, I know that: but what price sharing our lives in that way? What of the retribution, the loss of friendship? Perhaps, by then, we will be so close, and I will be so acclaimed, that he will brush it off, as we lie next to each other, in the rose garden. Or more likely, not. Perhaps publish another book first.]

So many more moments to come, now that Helen is gone. Adam will be so grateful, to have me
.

1 March 2007

Spring. Hope. Birth. Death gone, only living. Apparently
.

2 March 2007

I’ve been wondering whether I should have a book launch. Not for this book, necessarily, which has already had its launch, in the event itself with Adam. And I suppose book two already had its anti-launch, with Adam and Helen’s wedding. But book four, whatever that is, that needs some kind of exciting launch event. Some kind of gathering. Adam will need to be there, of course, to see my glory, to know I am worthy of him. I’m not sure who else. My publisher, yes, whoever that will be
.