I check everything carefully. The knife is in the high cupboard, where it should be. The padlock on the laptop cupboard is secure. But the metal looks ... dull, somehow, as if it has been handled a lot with sweaty palms, as if someone has been clicking through combinations. I love my daughter. But I am pretty sure she tried to poison us both.
When I count the pens and crayons, a pink marker is missing. Worse, when I go to lock them up in their cupboard, I see my list of Murder suspects lies on top of the boxes of crayons. I didn’t put it there. When I pick it up I see that another name has been added, in sickly pink marker.
Lauren, it reads in her shaky printing. This, of course, has been my fear all along.
I curl up on the couch like a woodlouse; blackness nudges the edge of my vision. My stomach writhes. Surely it all came up, surely it’s finished now. Oh God.
Olivia
I know it’s not her time but I’m peering through my peephole anyway. Love is also hope. Grey sky, patchy grass, a triangle of iced sidewalk. It looks pretty cold out there. It’s not so bad being an indoor cat on a day like this.
Behind me the TV plays. Something about dawn streets and walking. Ted leaves it on sometimes to keep me company. Sometimes the set just turns itself on. It’s pretty old. You can learn a lot from the television. I am also glad of it because it drowns out the screeching whine that is my constant companion, now.Eeeeeee, eeeee.
I must have dozed off because I start when a voice speaks to me. At first I think it’s theLORDand I sit up quickly. Yes?
‘We must investigate trauma,’ the voice says. ‘Get to its roots. Revisit it, in order to purge it.’
I yawn. This ted is on TV sometimes and he is very boring. I don’t like his eyes. Round, like little blue peepholes. I always feel like I can smell him when he’s on, which makes my tail tingle. He reeks of dust and sour milk. But how could that be? You can’t smell teds on the TV!
Daytime TV is so bad. I think this is a public access channel or something. I wish I could change it.
I think I should have my own TV show, and actually it would be really fun. I would call itCATching up with Olivia,and I would describe everything I ate that day. I would talk all about my love and her tiger eyesand her smooth stride. I would also investigate the type and quality of naps there are, because there are so many different kinds. Short and deep – I call that kind ‘the wishing well’. The very light doze, kind of half under, which can go on for hours – I call those ‘skateboards’. The sort you have in front of the TV when a good show is playing (NOT this show) and you kind of take in the plot but are also asleep – those are called ‘whisperers’. When you are being stroked to sleep and the rumble of your purr blends with the deep voice of the earth…I don’t have a name for those ones yet. But they’re so good.
Anyway I think it would be good to share my experience and all the valuable thoughts I have. Kind of like I’m doing now, but in a visual medium, because I am very camera-friendly.
Ted
I miss Lauren so much. Now the first shock is over, I know that of course she cannot be the Murderer. Not that she wouldn’t do it, but she couldn’t. She can’t go outside. How would she have got the traps? Laid them, without me knowing? No, it cannot be Lauren. She wrote her name on the list to upset me. She likes to do that.
She has to stay away for now, until I figure out what to do with her.
By the time bug-man day comes around again, I have lost pounds and pounds. I am shaky but I can walk down the street without staggering. That’s good. I have questions.
I start talking almost before he has closed the door.
‘I’ve started watching this new TV show,’ I say. ‘It’s really good.’
The bug man clears his throat. He pushes his glasses fussily up his nose. They are square with thick black frames, probably expensive. I wonder what his life is like, if he ever gets sick of hearing people talk about themselves all day.
‘As I’ve said before, if you want to spend our time talking about what you watched on television – it’s your hour. But—’
‘This show is about a girl,’ I say, ‘a teenager, who has these, well, these tendencies. What I mean is, she’s violent. She likes to hurt people and animals. She has a mother who loves her a lot, and the mother is always trying to protect her and stop her from killing. One day the mother injures her so that she can’t walk any more. I mean, it’s an accident, the mother doesn’t mean to do it, but the girl hates her for it. She thinks her mother did it on purpose. Which is very unfair, in my opinion. Anyway the girl has to live at home because of her disability. And she keeps trying to kill her mother. The mother spends her life trying to cover up her daughter’s violence, and protect her while hiding her true nature.’
‘Sounds complicated,’ the bug man says.
‘I was wondering – if this was happening in real life, could the mother do anything to make her daughter better? To stop her from being violent? Also, is it hereditary? I mean, did the mother make her angry? Or did it come from within?’
‘Nature or nurture? These are big questions. I think I need to know a little more about the situation,’ the bug man says. He’s watching me intently, now, with his round cricket eyes. I can almost see the antennae waving above his head.
‘Well, I don’t know anything else. The show only just started, OK?’
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Do you think it would help, at this point, to talk about your daughter?’
‘No!’
He looks at me. His round eyes seem flat now, like bad coins. ‘There’s a monster inside each of us,’ he says. ‘If you let yours out, Ted, it might not eat you.’
He looks like a completely different person, suddenly. A poisonous beetle, not a safe little bug. I can’t breathe properly. How does he know? I’ve been so careful.
