“I have faith in you all. Can I lick the bowl?”
Carol handed him a spoon, smiling.
“Delicious,” he said. “Absolutely delicious.”
Once the whirls were in the oven, Margaret took Desmond’s vacated seat, and Carol hovered anxiously by the oven, checking the time twice a minute. Geoffrey tried to strike up a conversation about something in the news that day but nobody bit. They’d all learned a while ago that he was just looking for an opportunity to show off. Geoffrey was the sort of man who started a lot of sentences with “See, what you have to understand is…” There was no subject he was not prepared to monologue on for the benefit of the group. Arable farming, EU fishing quotas, a healthy diet, drill music, the Geneva convention, vacuum cleaner technology, the novels of Jilly Cooper (although he admitted to never having read one), stand-up comedy, the future of AI (which he insisted he understood but didn’t have time to explain), climate change, the Japanese economy, the correct road to take to get to absolutely anywhere. Geoffrey was an expert on them all. A nice enough man, thought Carol, but not the sort of person you’d want to be stuck in a cell with. Unlikely anyway, seeing as he’d proudly announced within thirty seconds of meeting her that he was an ex-policeman. Not that that, in and of itself, bothered her particularly. Her gripe had never been with the police: It had been with her victims, the ones who had to die.
But this was pleasant. These were smart people,nicepeople. These were the sort of people Carol was happy to spend the rest ofher days with. They didn’t need to know about her past. What good would that do? Yes, Carol had been a killer, but why should that define her? Some people were so obsessed with identity these days. Carol would see it on social media profiles, people reducing themselves to three or four labels: “vegan, dentist, keen cyclist”; “Welsh, socialist, Manchester United.”
The trouble was, as soon as you told someone you were once a serial killer, it was all they could think about. It was crazy! They could never seem to get past it. Carol would be standing there talking about how she used to like pork but now she found it too fatty or how there never seemed to be anything on the TV anymore or how she’d heard that Americans don’t call Lego “Lego” but “Legos,” and she could tell that whomever she was speaking with was just thinking about her murders.
So if no one else mentioned it, then neither would she. She’d told people in the home that she’d been a secretary and never married. Both were true. No one asked many further questions, and Carol was happy that way.
“Carol, why don’t you sit down?” said Catherine. “All that fretting isn’t going to help. They’ll either bake properly or they won’t. Geoffrey, be a gentleman and budge up for Carol.”
“Really, I’m fine,” said Carol.
“Oh, sorry, Carol. My head’s in this bloody newspaper reading about this bloody government. Did you know—”
“Yes, I’m sure we all know, Geoffrey,” said Margaret. “Now budge up for the lady.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Geoffrey moved along the small two-seater sofa.
Well, Carol had to sit down now, seeing as such a palaver hadbeen made of the whole thing. She took her place beside Geoffrey, with him, in that way that certain men do, spreading his legs wide, oblivious to the fact that this meant Carol had to make herself as small as she could.
“Sorry, Carol,” said Geoffrey. “Take a load off.”
Carol and Geoffrey hadn’t spoken much one-to-one. Had Carol—now she had really to think here—had Carol sat this close to a man in thirty-five years? How absurd. Oh, yes, that god-awful moment when her mother died and the prison vicar had sat beside her on her bed and tried to comfort her when all she could think about was his coffee breath and how, in her younger days, that would have been enough for her to put him on her kill list.
Carol and Geoffrey caught each other’s eye for a brief moment, each assessing the other. Oh God, he wasn’t one of those residents looking for romance, was he? Carol would see them sometimes, pairing off in the bar, slyly heading up to each other’s apartments. Just hideous, the thought of it. Sex was, as far as Carol was concerned, like skateboarding—meant for younger bodies.
Geoffrey took off his reading glasses and looked at her.
“Carol, what’s your surname?”
Was this his attempt at a chat-up line? Showing an interest in something other than his own vast intellect? “Quinn.”
“Quinn?”
“That’s my name.”
Geoffrey put his glasses back on and looked down at his newspaper, frowning, not reading. Carol realized that her time as just another resident was coming to an end.
“Huh. Quinn,” Geoffrey mumbled to himself.
Just then, Margaret jumped up, as much as it was possible for a woman in her late seventies to jump up. “The whirls!”
“Oh fuck!” said Carol, smelling the burning and noting to herself that that was probably the first time she’d used the f-word in this company. Oh well. Keeping up appearances could only last so long.
Three
Geoffrey opened thefront door to his apartment. He’d spent the last half hour tidying up, adding any stray newspapers to the pile on his bedroom floor, rinsing out his microwave meal trays, and sticking them in the recycling bin. He’d looked at the bellows hanging on a hook on his living room wall and thought about taking them down. Would that be considered eccentric? A pair of bellows but no fireplace? You’ve got to have something on your wall, though, haven’t you? They’d been on the wall in his old house for years, and he’d transferred them here without really thinking about it.
“Can I get you a drink? Sorry, I mean, hello, Margaret. Can I get you a drink?”
“Cup of tea? If you’re having one?”
“Should have thought to boil the kettle before you got here really, shouldn’t I?” he said, heading to the kitchen.
