In an instant, everything has changed. I know this sudden exit is a prelude to violence later on, and I imagine gripping and punching and suffocating. For an instant, I imagine her death.
“Oh God,” she says shakily, struggling to articulate the words. “I didn’t tell him that I’d gone to the audition . . . I thought that when he saw Single White Female, he’d realize what a fabulous film it is and be pleased that I’m doing something similar. Something that could be totally brilliant for me . . .” She curls up into a fetal position, making herself tiny, and I make a mental note—she’s being honest. For the first time, to my face, she’s blaming him and not me! I think she’s sobbing now, silently, her face hidden, and it’s hard to believe that the evening has fallen into this state; it’s gone so suddenly from pretended conviviality to utterly broken.
I kneel beside her, placing my face so that it touches the back of her head. Softly, I say, “He can’t do this to you. You can still leave him. . . .” I’m about to tell her that I’ve read her letter, that I know Felix might kill her at any moment. But she turns, leaps up and screams at me, a frenzied, piercing screech: “I will not leave him! I will not! Just shut your fucking mouth!”
She stumbles towards the bedroom and even in this moment of crisis, I’m heartbroken by her beauty, her physical fragility. Those thin white legs, thin hips.
Now she’s locked in the bathroom and I feel that we’re reliving the scene from early in the summer, when Felix stormed out in search of fizzy water. Except then he was faking it—this time it’s all too real. I’m in a heap at the foot of the bathroom door, and I call out, “I’m staying here. I’m not leaving you alone with him.” Then I haul myself up, pacing the bedroom, desperately searching for something of Tilda’s to eat. My shaking hand grabs a red lipstick in a gold case, and I chew off the end and swallow. I see in the mirror that I’ve made a ghastly crimson mess of my teeth.
29
Two hours later, Tilda and I are lying in her bed. She’s sleeping gently, and I’m listening to the even tones of her breath, wondering how she can sound so peaceful when her life is being torn apart. Like me, she’s wearing just her underwear, and I carefully pull down the duvet, trying to check her skin, though it’s hard to see by the feeble light of the bedside lamp. I think her shoulders are fine, devoid of blemishes—her skin is milky white, her bones making smooth contours, like soft stone. Like the contours of the lamb’s skull, years ago. Her back, too, is clear, apart from the mole on her left shoulder. I want to inspect her arms and thighs. But I don’t want to wake her, so I inch the duvet down gradually, and she doesn’t stir. I see maybe one little ink-spot bruise, and I think I can make out scratch marks too, on her forearm, which is thin and speckled with freckles and fine blond hairs. I wish I could see the other side, her inner arm.
I pull the duvet up, so that she isn’t cold, and I stroke the golden hair that is lying across the pillow, and try to bury my face in it without disturbing her. I breathe in her smell, which is thick and heady, and I think of childhood, of eating her hair and her teeth. Carefully, I shape my body so that it is like a protective shell, following the outline of her back and her legs, and for a while I close my eyes, and allow my breaths to follow hers, in and out, in and out. Then, I roll over, away from her, because I need to check, and I feel under my pillow, or rather, Felix’s pillow, and I’m reassured as my fingers slide along the cold hard blade. I’ve placed a kitchen knife there.
I glance up and see the clock. It’s two fifteen. I suppose Felix isn’t coming back tonight, and I turn to face Tilda again, feeling calm and sleepy. On the memory stick, Tilda wrote that Felix made her feel lit up inside, like some dreadful wound had gone away—and that’s the way I feel now. Or rather, I don’t feel healed exactly. It’s more that I feel complete. Just Tilda and me together. Felix safely out of the house.
I’m drifting off to sleep, wanting to stay like this forever. But I’m jolted out of my complacency by a noise. The door to the flat being opened, Felix returning after all, and I sit bolt upright, my hand under the pillow. My sharp movement wakes up Tilda, just as Felix enters the bedroom. He looks pale and wasted, and he steadies himself with his hand on the wall. He’s been drinking.
“Get out, Callie.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Fucking get out! Leave Tilda and me alone!”
He lunges at me, grabbing me by the arm, yanking me out of the bed. I pull the knife with me, and it brushes against his side, swiftly and lightly, like I’m an artist tracing a line with a red-inked pen. Seeing the blood seeping through his shirt, he grips my arms, holding them up above my head, slamming me against the wall, repeatedly, so that my head thumps on the edge of the window frame.
“Drop the knife!”
I don’t, I grip it even harder—but he wrenches it from me, with one clean wrench, and throws it clear, onto the floor. He puts his head close to mine, eye to eye, against the wall, and hisses, “You’re insane. What the fuck? Now get out of here now.”
Tilda is watching, with horrified pale eyes.
“For God’s sake, Callie. Why the knife? What are you doing?”
“I need to protect you. Look at him! He’s mad with anger . . . you’re not safe.”
The room is filled with a dreadful, painful silence—the three of us frozen in our space, looking at one another, unable to articulate our fury. Felix is heaving, loud desperate breaths, and he forces his words out: “We all need to be calm, and to talk . . . Something terrible and strange has happened here, and we need to work out what it is.”
“Tilda?” I’m wanting more from her. I want her to come clean.
“Felix is right.” She gets out of bed, wrapping herself in a woolen throw, stumbling across the room in flamboyant distress, like she’s playing Medea or Lady Macbeth. She inspects Felix’s wound, licking her finger, smearing it along the thread of blood.
“You’re okay, thank heaven. . . . It only needs a plaster. Callie, you’ve crossed a line. We need to talk about it; let’s go into the other room.”
I grab the duvet, pull it around myself, and the three of us go and sit on the sofas. Felix is slumped forward, his head in his hands. He’s failing to get his emotions under control, and there’s no way I’m going to leave Tilda alone with him. I’m in the corner of a sofa, cocooned in the duvet, hugging my folded-up legs, thinking about how to explain the knife. Tilda’s looking at me like she’s amazed by my behavior, and I’m once again on the point of saying that I read her letter. But I stop myself, realizing that if I confess, she’ll evict me in disgust, not caring what the consequences will be for her. So I fake a confused face, and say, “I don’t know what happened. . . . I don’t know why I did it.”