My voice had weakened, then faded into nothing. Hearing myself verbalise what he had done to me suddenly made the sheer enormity of it all too real. I let him drop to the floor and he curled up into a sobbing, bloody ball. I gawped at him like he was a strange, injured creature in the last throes of life. I questioned how I could have been so foolish as to have loved something that worthless.
I needed to get out of his house and stop breathing the same polluted air as him. I headed towards the back door, his wheezing growing quieter with every footstep.
I could have left him there to remain in his stink, but deep inside me, I knew it wouldn’t have been enough. I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him.
His swelling, blackened eyes were already reduced to slits, so he was only aware of my shadow when it hovered over him. Even when he watched me take the bread knife from the sink, he didn’t try to protect himself.
I slowly pulled back my arm and plunged the blade into his stomach once, twice, then a third time. It took surprisingly little effort. His face remained expressionless but the physical trauma forced his body bolt upright. There he remained conscious, but still.
I stood back to share his final moments. His last few shallow breaths merged with the sound of gases escaping through his wounds. He didn’t try to clutch at them or fight for his life. He simply waited five long minutes before life drained from his carcass and his neck lapsed limply to one side.
We both knew what I had done was right.
I reacted to the events of the night with clarity.
Beth’s family had removed almost every stick of furniture from her house when she sold it, so he had little to furnish his new hovel with. I searched each room for something suitable to put his body into. But all he possessed were empty takeaway containers, beer cans and free newspapers. It was a pathetic legacy.
I wiped his blood from the floor with newspapers and dirty towels. Then I bundled his body into the boot of his car. I drove through the village, passing our house, before I turned off the headlights and navigated by memory the lane by the woods.
I grabbed the spade and torch I’d taken from Dougie’s garage and headed deep into the copse. The ground was frosty and hardened, so it took sweat and determination to dig. But after an hour, his makeshift grave lay ready for him. My arms, weakened and jarred by fury and determination, made dragging his bulky frame to the hole arduous, but I persisted until I’d rolled him into the earth.
I threw the stained towels and papers in, and without giving him a second glance, I shifted the soil back into the hole, trampled the ground to an even level and scattered fallen leaves to disguise my movements. I used an old blue rope that lay on the ground near the dried-up pond to mark his grave.
I left his car in a notorious area of town with the keys in the ignition, then caught two nightbuses home. I made my way to the bridge where I’d take the kids pretend-fishing, and washed his filth from my hands in the water below. And with my adrenaline spent, my physical pain began to manifest itself as sharp bolts of lightning. They ran from my knuckles up into my shoulders and made my chest tight. The letters I’d type to Roger and Steven on behalf of Dougie, explaining his sudden move home, could wait until morning.
With my fists locked tight, I could barely extend a hand to brush the tracks of my tears from my cheeks and chin.
27 April
I longed to hear Catherine confess and beg for my forgiveness. Because only then might she understand how far from my old self I’d shifted since I’d heard her and Dougie together.
She had asphyxiated the ‘me’ she thought she knew. Now she only lived with an impression of Simon Nicholson: a man so anaesthetised and glacial, the fluids inside him ran cold. I would never be the same man again.
I was so detached from everything that had happened before that week, I’d wiped Dougie from my history. Even having my best friend’s blood on my hands had failed to humanise me. My actions were justified, I knew that. I had the strength to do what my father should have done to the many lovers Doreen had humiliated us with.
But dealing with Catherine was a different matter. I reckoned I’d gain more satisfaction from slowly snuffing out her flame than from any physical retribution. I wasn’t sure how I’d do it, but somehow I would eke a confession from her. Then I’d make her hang with uncertainty for weeks while I pretended to make up my mind about our future.
And once she thought she could see a glimmer of hope in my open, forgiving arms, I’d abandon her and make sure my children and all her friends knew exactly what she had done. They would hate her like I did.
But I underestimated her. While I was allowing her to believe she had got away with it, she suddenly blindsided me.
14 May
I may have terminated Dougie’s life, but he’d found a way to live on, inside my wife. Inside all of us.
It hadn’t been enough for him to decimate our marriage while he was alive. Even one mile away from my house and six feet under the ground, he still rubbed salt into my open wounds.
Catherine wore the cloak of a troubled woman the night she put the children to bed early and ushered me into the dining room.
‘We need to talk about something,’ she began nervously, ‘and I’m not sure how you’re going to react.’
She dabbed her cheeks with a paper tissue before she spoke again.
‘I’m pregnant.’
Then she leaned over the table and took my hand in her devil’s claw.
‘I’ll need your help and it’ll mean cutting back on some of your hours at work, but I think another baby could be just what we need.’
It was the last thing I’d expected to hear – another hammer blow to my fragile ego. I knew then she could never be honest with me. I’d have to rethink my plan to punish her.
‘So what do you think?’ she asked.
‘It’s great news,’ I lied, and she immediately released the rest of her crocodile tears.
It was obvious that the evil seed inside her bore no relation to me. On the few occasions we’d made love, I’d had to summon up all the powers of my imagination to become aroused. It was soulless, remorseful sex between an adulterer and the wronged, and it never resulted in me climaxing.
Yet she was willing to pass her bastard off as mine now her lover, to the best of her knowledge, had cast her adrift and returned to Scotland.
I recalled her panicked eyes when Robbie had asked when Dougie was coming to dinner again. She neither lifted her head nor questioned me when I told him he wouldn’t be. It made me wonder if she knew that I knew. But if she did, she played her cards close to her chest and said nothing. Inside it must be killing her, never understanding quite why he’d dumped her. I took some satisfaction in that.
She’d upped the ante and had been overcompensating for her wrongdoings by using every calculating trick in the book not to appear the desperate housewife. She’d wait until I arrived home from work late so we could eat together; she forced her way into every aspect of the children’s lives and redecorated our verminous bedroom by herself.
On occasions when she thought she was alone, I’d see her skulk into the garage. And as I peered through the cobwebbed windows I’d witness her kneeling on the dirty floor, crying. I hoped she’d never stop.