Xander looks more and more pleased with himself every time he comes to visit, bringing with him bundles of news clippings, which I’ve now stopped reading. I can’t look at one more picture of Verity with her eyes meeting the camera as the flashes pop in her over-exposed face. I know what it is costing her to hold herself together like that, how inside she will be crumbling and weakening, how all that might be left of her is a ruin.
I think of my garden sometimes. Anna said that we had to tear it all down to rebuild it and make it better and I have to believe that is right. Verity and I might appear as nothing more than rubble at this moment, but I am doing this for the best reasons. Out of this mess I am going to create something truly spectacular, something so much better than what we had.
The police have been to see me a few times about Verity. They go over and over the same questions, asking me to repeat stories about our lives so that it almost feels salacious. They ask me about the things we’ve done together, the promises we made, the connection we shared. They can’t understand why V’s tone was so friendly in the emails she sent, and they go through them line by line, asking me to show them where she is talking in our secret code. Why do you think she didn’t tell anyone about your contact, they ask again and again and I tell them it is because we are in love.
Mainly though they want to know why she rang me on the night of the murder and why, when the police arrived, she was in my arms whilst Angus lay dying on the floor at our feet. Don’t protect her, Mike, they say, sounding like Xander, she’s not worth it.
Sometimes, after these interviews, I feel guilty, not because she didn’t do all those things, but because I could never have imagined a moment in which I wasn’t laying down my life to protect V’s. But I’m starting to see that is a very simplistic way of thinking. My life belongs to V as hers does to me. We do not exist without the other and as such we can’t be parted, we can’t go off on different paths. We have to stay together, whatever that means and whatever it takes to get us there.
It’s odd to think I’m only down the road from home; Clapham to Wandsworth Prison is only a brisk half-hour walk. I can’t see anything other than sky from my small, high window, black birds circling like vultures in the grey clouds. But still I can trace the route between here and home, walking the streets so thoroughly in my mind I can almost feel that wonderful ache in my legs when I stop. There is nowhere near enough exercise given to us in here. No wonder the men all scream and shout and spit and swear. Our bodies are useless, leaving only our minds to puff and pant along. I spend hours each day exercising in my cell, even though Fat Terry says he’ll deck me if I don’t shut the fuck up. But we both know he won’t, or more accurately he can’t. His tub-of-lard stomach against my taut muscles wouldn’t stand a chance and he knows it. I don’t even bother to answer him as I dip towards the floor on my hundredth push-up or exhale my breath against the pain of razor-fast sit-ups. I cannot let my body wilt and falter. I have to look good for V in court and I have to be strong enough to save us both.
V said we had a bright future and because of that I always imagine us bathed in golden sunshine. She wanted us to work hard and earn lots of money so we could kick back and relax later on. What is the point, she used to say, of working three-quarters hard all your life and dying of a heart attack the day after you retire, when you can push yourself when you’re young and fit and have fun, then retire early and have even more. I wonder how what is happening now fits into her plans and I wonder if we will still have enough money to live the life she dreamt of when I get out. I don’t want ever to have to use a penny of Angus’s money and I doubt she would either. Thoughts like this can keep me awake at night as I spin through scenarios which see me searching for a job as I approach forty, a blackened criminal record hanging over my head.
Xander says I’m not allowed to write to her or try to contact her in any way. He says it would be very bad for my case if I so much as ask to do so and he’s made me promise not to. Instead I talk to V all the time in my head. I know she’s still angry with me for telling Angus in the way I did and she’s right to be. If I’d just waited a bit longer and let her handle it she would have known how to let him down gently and he wouldn’t have got so angry. He wouldn’t have drunk too much or attacked me and he wouldn’t have made it necessary for me to punch him so hard.
Xander calls this self-defence and he says I must not forget the facts: I was woken from sleeping, Angus was threatening and intimidating, he threw the first punch, I tried to reason with him, I never wanted to hurt him. Say it to yourself every night before you go to sleep, Xander says, remind yourself that you acted in self-defence.
I go over and over the conversation V and I had in Angus’s house the night before the incident. How I said I wished Angus didn’t exist and how she told me she wished things had worked out between us. But how she also told me to go home and wait, how she needed to be the one to tell Angus. How she was not just giving me what I wanted, but also protecting me. She knows me so well she knew I would get angry. I see now that she was trying to save me from myself and I didn’t listen to her. If only I had just understood and left when Angus said she was ill, then by now they would be on the way to divorce and V and I would be living together at home.
That thought affects me physically. It climbs inside me and burrows into my gut like a parasite, so I have to roll on to my side and clutch my stomach. Because we were so close, we were within touching distance of all we had ever wanted, and I had to ruin it.
But I am well practised in ruining things. If I am feeling weak my mind sometimes pounces, dragging me backwards through the detritus of my life. I scramble and scrap, clawing my way back up the hill, but on the way down it treats me to some fine views. Carly of course is near the top, but if I slither further I can watch myself opening the door to those social workers a thousand times, the film scratched and grainy against the pitted inside of my skull. I see myself standing back; I feel the will to protect my mother drain out of me.
She used to come and see me for the first few years I was in care. Controlled visits they were called and they all took place in a room in the home which was shut off from the rest of the house. It was painted a sickly yellow and had peeling stencils of rabbits and bears on the wall. There was a sad plastic tub of toys in one corner and a worn purple sofa running along one wall, under a shelf of books. None of the books ever changed places, their spines sagging under the weight of neglect.