“Fuck it . . . you had a knife!” She’s overwhelmed with disbelief.
“I know . . . I know. When Felix went off in that angry mood, I got a knife and put it under the pillow. Just in case . . . in case I needed to defend you. I knew it was crazy. Really. I didn’t mean to use it.” Even to myself, I sound weak.
“You’re unhinged—you know that, right?” Felix is sounding like he might hyperventilate. “I thought we might be able to talk this out, but we can’t. It’s too extreme, Callie, too bizarre. You’ve got to get out of here—I don’t want to see you—not for a long time. You have to leave Tilda and me alone. You realize I could get a restraining order? God knows what you might have done! You need psychological help. I’ll pay for it—you sort yourself out. And, honestly, stay away and get your own fucking life. It’s about time. I’m calling you a cab.”
I look to Tilda for support, but she says, “Felix is right. You have to sort yourself out.”
He starts pacing, working himself up into an increasingly angry state. I can see fear in Tilda’s eyes. But she refuses to be disloyal, and instead she says, “I’ll call the cab,” and she does. I’m sent out into the night, and she is left with him.
30
I didn’t hear anything from Tilda or Felix. No phone call to say they’d fixed me up with a psychiatrist, no offer to make amends. It was a pity, because I wanted to say that I’d dreamed up a solution to our problems in the form of group therapy—maybe under Liam’s guiding hand! In that sort of safe environment we could, maybe, slowly, gently address Felix’s anger and violence and Tilda’s complicity, her twisted, perverted death wish. We could work out protocols for the three of us to get along, maybe try out some kind of role-play. But as the days went by, my family therapy ideas dissipated, and Tilda’s silence became ominous. I was so frightened about her safety that I’d wake in the middle of the night, finding myself in a cold sweat. I couldn’t even be sure that she was still alive, and I kept thinking of the words she had written—he will kill me. I’m convinced of it now.
At the bookshop, I was distracted, finding it difficult to concentrate, and I kept wandering back to Controlling Men, checking the latest news, hoping to see that Joe Mayhew would stand trial for murder rather than manslaughter. Then, two days ago, towards the end of a rare working Friday, as I was half dozing at the payment counter and Daphne was deep into her novel writing, my phone rang and I saw Tilda’s name on the screen. I answered nervously, but could barely comprehend her whispered words. In an agonized, jagged voice she was saying, “Come here, Callie. Come here now.”
“Tilda . . . what is it? What’s happened?”
“Just come here. I need you.” Then she hung up.
A sharp chill ran through me. I blurted something out to Daphne, talking too loud, grabbing my bee bag, running out of the shop on weak legs, turning left towards the minicab company.
At Curzon Street, I buzzed repeatedly until I was let in and I ran up the stairs, finding the door to the flat wide-open, entering in a frantic, fearful state, expecting catastrophe—but all I found was Tilda lying on her sofa, looking slightly drained and sleepy. In the middle of the afternoon, she was wearing a flimsy gray silk nightdress and her hair was messy and unwashed, but other than that, she seemed unchanged from when I last saw her. But then she spoke, and it was obvious that she was afraid:
“Oh, come here . . . I can’t get up.”
I knelt beside her, put my cheek against hers. “What’s happened? What did he do to you?”
“It’s not that, Callie, not this time. . . .”
She pulled herself upright, so that we could be face-to-face. “Oh God, I’m so worried. I’ve been calling Felix all morning and he hasn’t answered his phone. He’s away in the country, at some conference in a hotel somewhere, so in the end I phoned the hotel, and they were so weird . . . they told me that they ‘weren’t in a position to comment about Mr. Nordberg,’ so I practically screamed at them to tell me now whatever it was they had to tell me, but they said that I should stay at home and wait and that ‘someone will inform me of the situation in due course.’ Doesn’t that sound dreadful? Like something awful has happened?”
“It doesn’t sound good. . . . How long ago did you speak to them?”
“Ages ago, about two hours. It’s been bloody horrible, just lying here imagining ghastly things.”
I was about to suggest that I make a cup of tea, but at that second the buzzer sounded. Tilda and I looked at each other, simultaneously clasping our hands to our chests, and I went to answer.
“Hello, is that Tilda Farrow?” A woman’s voice, kind of croaky.
“It’s her sister. . . . Who is this?”
“Is Ms. Farrow at home?”
“Yes she is. Who is this?”
“It’s the Metropolitan Police, may we come in?”
Sergeant Dawn Nokes had a bad cold and most likely a painful throat, but she did the talking anyway, while a young constable, Lyron Wright, stood in the background with a contrived look of concern on his face. Sergeant Nokes made sure that Tilda was Tilda, and asked us both to sit down, and we were side by side on the sofa, as stony and stiff as two statues, while she sat in the white leather armchair, dragging it across the floor to be closer, leaning forward to an unnatural degree. I was focusing on her red nose, raw under her nostrils.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” she said softly. “This morning, when he was staying at the Ashleigh House Hotel, your husband . . . Felix . . . went for a run. Afterwards he was found in his hotel room. He had died, I’m afraid, and it looks like he had had some sort of attack or fit.”
Tilda snapped back angrily, “No. No. That can’t be right. Felix is extremely fit, exceptionally healthy . . . Peak fitness . . . You’ve made a mistake!”
“I’m so very sorry.” Sergeant Nokes put her hand on Tilda’s arm, but she swiped it away just as Constable Wright stepped towards us and said, “Yes, me too.”
Something about his casual manner made Tilda leap up and she threw herself at him, shrieking “No! No! How dare you—get out of here!” She was thumping him with her fists, aiming at his face, so that Constable Wright had to bring his arms up to defend his head. Sergeant Nokes and I pulled her off, and she staggered back to the sofa and put her head in her hands. We couldn’t see her face for her falling hair. Constable Wright looked uneasy.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No worries.” He shrugged. “It’s what people do.”
I sat by Tilda and tried to make the news sink in, but I couldn’t anchor it to any imagined context, any understandable chain of events. “What do you mean, an attack or fit? It’s not possible. He’s thirty-two, way too young for a heart attack. It doesn’t make sense.”
“We don’t know the full details yet,” said Sergeant Nokes. Then, through a hacking cough: “There will have to be a postmortem.”