Marisa’s shoulders relax. She immediately seems calmer. She puts the knife onto the hallway table.
‘Sorry about that,’ Marisa says. ‘I wasn’t going to use it.’
‘I know.’
She smiles at Kate, a cracked smile that makes the rest of her face look lopsided. Her hair is knotted and unwashed and Kate can smell the other woman’s body odour, the earthy bitterness of it underneath her clothes.
‘Oh Marisa,’ Kate says. ‘What’s wrong?’
Marisa’s chest is heaving now and she is slumped in the chair, the tears streaming down her cheeks. She lifts her head, staring out from beneath her lank strands of hair. Kate presses herself against the wall as if she can make herself disappear through sheer force of will. But there is nowhere to go and her legs are still bound by the rope.
‘Marisa, sweetie, please could you undo the rope? I promise I won’t go anywhere, it’s just that I’m a bit uncomfortable.’
Marisa keeps staring at her, her mouth hanging open. Kate is not sure how much she has understood. Marisa seems almost unreachable. How, Kate thinks, how have we let it get to this? How did this happen? Kate keeps up the soft patter, as though she is taming a wild horse, encouraging it closer with soft-voiced encouragement and a sugar lump in the palm of her hand.
‘Please, just untie the rope, darling, and then we can talk. We can sit on the sofa in the kitchen with a cup of tea and we can sort all thisout. You’re not in trouble. I’m fine. I’m not angry with you. Please, Marisa.’
After a few minutes of this, Marisa sits straighter in her chair and scoops up her hair with both hands, tying it in a loose knot at the back. Her face seems clearer somehow, the internal demons kept momentarily at bay. She stands, pressing one palm against her belly as she does so in a protective gesture. She bends to undo the knots in the rope, reaching for the knife to saw through when her fingers don’t work. Gradually, the rope loosens and Kate can feel the blood rushing back to her feet.
‘Thank you, Marisa.’
‘I don’t want to go to the kitchen. We’ll just sit here.’
Marisa slides down to sit next to Kate, her back against the wall. She is so close that Kate can feel Marisa’s hair tickle her cheek and this is somehow more frightening than when she was looming over Kate with a knife. Kate tries to block out the smell and the terror and to regulate her breathing. She closes her eyes briefly, gathering her thoughts.
‘What is it, Marisa?’
‘I know,’ Marisa says.
‘You know what?’
‘Stop it. I’m not stupid. I’m not a fool even if you think I am, even if I’ve never been as clever as you. I already asked you once. So let me ask you again: how long have you and Jake been sleeping together?’
Kate is nonplussed.
‘Six years,’ she says. ‘You know that.’
‘How can you say it so casually? We invite you into our home and this is how you repay me? By breaking up my relationship?’
‘Yourrelationship?’
Marisa nods and, all at once, Kate gets an instinctive flash of understanding that she immediately wishes she could un-see.
‘But … what … Marisa …’ She stumbles over the words. Her voice is hoarse, almost a whisper. It can’t be what she thinks, surely? Marisa doesn’t … she hasn’t … she couldn’t …
‘You’re our surrogate,’ Kate says. Marisa looks blank, as if she hasn’t heard.
‘You’re oursurrogate,’ Kate repeats. ‘Do you understand?’
Then Marisa does the most curious thing. She takes Kate’s hand in hers and starts to laugh, slowly at first but then the laughter gathers pace and becomes a shrill, unstoppable noise.
‘Oh Kate,’ she says, breathlessly between giggles. ‘Kate, Kate, Kate, you poor thing. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m Jake’s partner. We’re having a baby together. You’re our lodger.’
When Kate was a child her father used to drive to a car boot sale on the second Sunday of every month. Sometimes, if she got up early enough, he would take her with him. They lived at the bottom of a valley and the drive would take them steeply up the road on one side of their house, and then back down towards the nearest village. There were few other cars at that time in the morning, so Kate’s father used to speed up as they climbed the hill so that she would feel her tummy flip as the car careened over the other side.
‘Tummy flip!’ she would scream with delight. There was a sort of gleeful terror at the thought that the car could lose control and when it didn’t, her insides seemed to need an extra beat to catch up with the speed of the outside world.
Hearing Marisa speak to her now, and understanding the depth of her mental imbalance, Kate feels her tummy flip again, except this time it doesn’t return to normal. This time, the car never makes it to the other side. Instead, it flies through the air, somersaulting into the tarmac with crashing, fatal force.
