The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

So it seemed to him later, when the night’s events had to be reprised. He wanted to cry on the shoulder of the ambulance crew and say, only curiosity and mild lust led me on, and a sort of childish defiance, and the fact that it was there for me, on a plate, do you know what I mean? He said, I meant to ask her to be French. Probably she wouldn’t have been, but I didn’t think she’d fall over like that … I mean, how would you? How would you imagine that? And kneeling, kneeling on the glass.

For the first day or so he was not coherent. But nobody was interested in his state of mind; not in the way they would have been, if he had been in custody for killing his wife in some more obvious way. A doctor explained it to him, when they thought he was ready. Long QT syndrome. A disorder of the heart’s electrical activity, which leads to arrhythmia, which leads, in certain circumstances, to cardiac arrest. Genetic, probably. Underdiagnosed, in the population at large. If we spot it early, we doctors can do all sorts of stuff: pacemakers, beta blockers. But there’s not much anyone can do, if the first symptom is sudden death. A shock will do it, he said, or strong emotion, strong emotion of any sort. It can be horror. Or disgust. But, then again, it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, he said, people die laughing.



WINTER BREAK



By the time they arrived at their destination, they could no longer recognize their own name. The taxi driver stabbed the air with his placard while they stood gawping up and down the line, until Phil pointed and said, “That’s us.” Little peaks had grown over the T’s in their surname, and the dot on the i had drifted away like an island. She rubbed her cheek, numbed by the draught from the air vent above her seat; the rest of her felt creased and gritty, and while Phil bustled toward the man, waving, she picked the cloth of her T-shirt away from the small of her back, and shuffled after him. We dress for the weather we want, as if to bully it, even though we’ve seen the forecast.

The driver laid a hairy, proprietorial hand on their baggage trolley. He was a squat man with the regulation mustache, and he wore a twill zipped jacket with a tartan lining peeping from under it; as if to say, forget your sunshine illusions. The plane was late and it was already dark. He flung open a rear door for her and humped their bags into the back of his estate car. “Long way,” was all he said.

“Yes, but prepaid,” Phil said.

The driver plumped down in his seat with a leathery creak. When he slammed his door the whole vehicle shuddered. The front headrests had been wrenched off, so when he swiveled his body to reverse he threw his arm across both seat backs and stared past her unseeing, an inch from her face, while she examined his nostril hair by the giddy flash of the car park’s lights. “Sit back, darling,” Phil told her. “Seat belt on. Away we go.”

How suited he would have been to fatherhood. Whoopsie-daisy. There, there. No harm done.

But Phil thought otherwise. Always had. He preferred to be able to take a winter break during the school term, when hotel rates were lower. For years now he had passed her newspapers, folded to those reports that tell you how children cost a million pounds before they’re eighteen. “When you see it set out like that,” he’d say, “it’s frightening. People think they’ll get away with hand-me-downs. Half portions. It doesn’t work like that.”

“But our child wouldn’t have a drug addiction,” she’d say. “Not on that scale. It wouldn’t be bright enough for Eton. It could go down the road to Hillside Comp. Although, I hear they have head lice.”

“And you wouldn’t want to deal with that, would you?” he said: a man laying down his ace.