‘I told you, I’m not fucking hungry.’
‘Wow,’ Kate said.
Jake shook his head, uncomprehending.
She left, without apology or humility.
‘I guess today took more out of her than we realised,’ he said as he put the potato back into the fridge.
He had an everlasting capacity to think the best of people and sometimes she wished he wouldn’t.
‘Maybe,’ Kate said. But there was a deep, silent part of her lying buried within that knew something was wrong. She poured herself another drink and ignored the creeping disquiet.
Now
24
Jake is home.
Sitting on the hallway floor next to Marisa, Kate knows not to make any movement towards him. She has only just managed to calm Marisa down, to get her to put the knife on the hallway table and to untie the rope around Kate’s ankles. She does not want to do anything to upset this precarious equilibrium. Next to her, Marisa is whimpering, her shoulders hunched forward, her head curled in as if she is collapsing internally, like those buildings you see on slow-motion newsreels, imploding from the inside out. The initial terror has passed and Kate now realises that they are dealing with a person who is not in her right mind and that anything they try to do has to be carried out with extreme caution. She is deathly calm. The most important thing is the safety of their baby. Everything else can be sorted out after that.
She stares at Jake, willing him to understand.
‘What the fuck …?’ he says, taking in the scene: the two women sitting with their backs pressed against the skirting board, the kitchen knife, the rope, the damp patch leaking across the floor, the bloodied smear of Kate’s tooth on the patterned tile.
‘Are you both OK, oh my God, oh my God. Is the baby OK? What’s happened? I’m going to call the police.’
He drops his briefcase and his keys and he is about to rush to Kate’s side when she says ‘No, Jake,’ as coolly as she can manage. ‘Don’t call anyone.’
He stops, stunned by an invisible current.
‘Look after Marisa,’ Kate says. ‘She’s upset.’
Marisa is sobbing now, but the sobs are melting into each other so that it sounds more like wailing. She is struggling to catch her breath because she’s crying so hard.
Kate looks at Jake again in desperation, trying to impart meaning in her steady gaze, trying telepathically to convey the seriousness of what is happening.
He seems to get it. Or at least a version of it.
He kneels down beside Marisa and puts his arm around her.
‘You’re all right,’ he says to her. ‘You’re safe. You’re all right. It’s all going to be OK.’
Marisa leans her wet face against his shoulder and her hair comes loose from its elastic. Her grubby T-shirt gapes open.
‘Oh Jake,’ she says, gulping in air. ‘Why have you done this to me?’
‘I … what have I …?’
He looks at Kate over Marisa’s head. She smiles at him shakily. ‘Trust me,’ she mouths.
‘Marisa thinks we’ve been having an affair,’ Kate says out loud, keeping her voice as firm and clear as she can. Her tongue slips into the gap left by her tooth and she slurs the final word.
‘Youhavebeen,’ Marisa says, rocking against Jake’s chest. ‘I saw the texts. I’m not stupid.’
‘Marisa is upset because I’m the lodger,’ Kate says, slowly so that Jake can get a sense of the shifting landscape. She has made the split-second decision to go along with Marisa’s story in the hopes that it will keep her stable for long enough to get outside help. ‘That’s why she followed me to work that time.’ She pauses, making sure Jake is with her. He gives a tiny tilt of the head and she knows that he is. ‘And I said we can sort it all out when Jake gets back.’
Marisa stops crying and raises her face to Jake.
