For Amy

‘Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.’

William Maxwell

Act One

DREAM LOGIC

… Do bats eat cats? …

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

1 a.m.

WHY IS THE door ajar? The front door should not be ajar. 1 a.m. in Angel, fatigue buzzing in Joy’s brain like a trapped fly, and the door is ajar. At a certain stage in your life every single thing gets complex.

She checks her BlackBerry. Nothing new. Not since she checked it in the taxi seconds ago. No email or voicemail or text message from Dennis to explain why the door isn’t closed. As the black cab that delivered her here purrs out of earshot she runs a fingertip along the teeth of her house key, the house key which is now surplus to requirements, and feels sharp little judgements scissor through her thoughts: irresponsible – unsafe – did this once before – left it open when he went to bed – went to bed with late-night toast – Egyptian cotton and he snacks on toast! A tingling, achey sense of irritation takes over, a state which is exacerbated by the very next thing she notices: a pavement-laid present from Zorro, her neighbours’ manifestly incontinent cocker spaniel, a halo of mocking moonlight round its rim.

Lately Joy’s been making an effort to suppress expletives but she feels a few floating up her throat now, heat rising to her ears and eyes and lifting a hint of perfume from her skin. ‘You’re too hard on people,’ her father used to say, and she’s been working on that, being less hard on others and herself, has resolved to pass her last day alive in a wraithlike serene state wearing her most implausible heels and treating strangers to generous wide smiles, but now the door has been left ajar, one hour into this final Friday it is noticeably ajar (wide open, almost – yawning, gaping), and the Atkinsons are unacquainted with the term ‘pooper scooper’, and the air outside her home is a doggy fog of faecal stink, a stink made cheaply sweet by floral tones from her own perfume, and a deep frown is forming on her forehead which even the wispy silken fringe above and always-shining eyes below cannot make unserious.

She swallows down a shit and a prick, settles for muttering tit under her breath. Calling your husband a tit, watching the word become a tiny vanishing cloud in the January air – it’s surprisingly soothing, actually. Already feeling a bit better, standing here. Less woozy. Less of the week’s frustrations, its toast crumbs, clinging to her skin. After a period in the office like the one just gone – an absurdly stretched series of meetings flecked with stress and caffeine; sixteen hours of painstaking discussions about food law and what you’re allowed to inject into chicken breasts; of not-so-furtive glances at her own breasts by men sporting splayed B cups under clammy jaundiced shirts – it feels like a fitting and blessedly succinct coda to her Thursday: Tit.

An animal is passing between parked cars, reddish in the sombre glow of street lamps. Above these street lamps Victorian rooftops wear aerials and a hook of moon hangs in darkness. She keeps her head tilted upward, acknowledging the fact she’ll never see the moon again, determined to appreciate its abstract elegance, then hears the soft spinning of wheels – a bike light illuminating the fox’s face – and reaches out for the doorknob, tired of lingering in the street, the leather of her handbag flirting with her skirt as she enters the deeper gloom of her home. Her objective for the coming hours? To avoid over-thinking, to execute her plan with methodical calm, a quality her employer, naively deaf to the inevitable acronym, recognises as a Tier 2 Soft Skill called Conscientious Office Conduct (‘You need more COC,’ say Joy’s colleagues, ‘the partners love COC’), but somehow it is not –

Cre-aack.

The sound – what is it? – makes her pause.

There is silence as the moment gathers itself in and then, again, cre-aack. Somewhere between a creak and a crack and it – wait – was that different?

Yes.

Different.

Punctuating the cre-aacks she hears a noise that carries more air, a … woo-wooh? Almost like the backing vocals on that Stones track, the one Peter likes, ‘Sympathy for the Whatsit’ – woo-wooh – ‘Devil’. Odd. Frightening. Only she and Dennis use this front door; the bedsit above their split-level property has its own entrance. She hears nothing from up there, never does hear a thing. This weird mix of two sounds is coming from her kitchen, her lounge.

Cre-aack.

Woo-wooh.

Probably nothing … unless … probably nothing …

She slips off her shoes and begins to move, in slow motion, down the hall. The air, even with the front door open, is syrupy with central heating. Flushed, afraid, she acquires a highly inflamed sense of everything ahead of her: the dust-green rug, the shadowy walls, the balled fuzz under the radiator. It makes no sense to be scared. Cre-aack. So what if a psychopathic burglar jumps out and takes her life? He’d be saving her the trouble of taking it herself. Woo-wooh. But if he hurt her, only hurt her …

Hesitates. Thinks about turning back. Wake the Atkinsons up? Return with Zorro?

Then, in the midst of this hesitation, a surge of self-hate: come on; the approaching hours are about courage; the Atkinsons are Latin teachers; Zorro’s only frightening feature is his bum.

One step, two steps, three. Beyond the kitchen doorway now so the sounds are coming, must be coming, from the lounge. She pauses again. Focuses. Calls out Dennis’s name. It arrives as a thin rasp, a match flare in vast darkness. She considers unplugging the lamp. Make it a weapon. Where is her tennis racket? Her tennis racket is normally under the table which holds the lamp that in the absence of the tennis racket may be the best weapon she almost has to hand.

Cre-aack.

If she survives this encounter with the intruder, but nonetheless finds he has stolen her tennis racket, then she will miss her lunchtime tennis game.

Woo-wooh.

Which would be far from ideal, since it was due to be the final tennis game she would ever play, and with finality comes ceremony, and although Joy is on the whole an authentic and unpretentious person the trappings of tradition – the precedents, preambles, kind regards and chauffeured cars that constitute a career in law – have made ceremony a part of who she is. And she is Joy, still Joy, despite her doubts of late – the niggling sense that she’s in the wrong skin, that even her feelings are borrowed or false.

With adrenalin blundering through her body she finds her attention snagging on the puzzlingly banal question of whether, if the burglar takes her racket (but not her life), she should cancel tennis with Christine, should instead do a final gym workout with her personal trainer at the office, but she had hoped to be in the company of a friend and she doesn’t want in any way to disappoint a friend who has been as good to her as Chri—

—A-AACK.

Louder now, and the volume brings unexpected clarity, the two sounds less tangled than before, and Joy thinks, Joy concentrates on the present problem, and finds it funny, really quite funny, that one sound should seem so breathily human and the other more like a piece of furniture sort of creaking and – could it be –

She feels, somewhere in her fear-fogged brain, the silent glide of a fresh idea.

WOO-WOOH.

The noises. The noises are. The noises are surely something to do with Dennis’s new fitness thing.

She exhales. Jesus. All well. Christ. Ever since he took his sabbatical from the university, Dennis – safe, dependable Dennis – has been spraining muscles in front of fitness DVDs, sipping drinks that have the consistency of wet cement. Older men. They should come with a health warning. He was young enough when she married him, but no one explained that the gap would seem somehow to grow, that for men past forty every year is a dog year bringing flatulence, paranoia, regular naps and vigorous barking up the wrong tree.

CRE-AACK.

Joy has formed the mental picture now: he will be doing some kind of ridiculous late-night breathy I-don’t-look-forty-five woo-wooh-ing midlife-crisis tricep dip with his heels digging into the costly carpet and his weight leaning back on the cre-acking Jacobsen sofa and she can live with this scenario, she can tolerate it, for it is a scenario that does not involve her going to the trouble of unplugging the lamp and murdering a burglar hours before Hanger’s attempt to present her with partnership, ask her to sign the papers, try to take from her a capital contribution, tie up her finances, make the business of dying as tricky as the business of living has, with relentless quiet persuasive force, proved itself to be. She wants to go as planned, in the afternoon, on the anniversary of the day her life most fully fell apart – with the least fuss possible, with hardly any fuss at all.

In the tempered darkness of the hallway a memory starts to flicker. Sees herself, and her nephew, in a tent. A tent pitched in the middle of the dining room in her previous home, hastily assembled on the carpet in the hope it would make the child’s bottom lip wobble less. He was missing his parents, wasn’t he; camping with friends in the South of France. As both babysitter and tent-pitcher she found she had a lot to learn. Designed to be a free-standing structure, it nonetheless needed improvised guy lines to remain in place – lengths of string tied to bookcases and table legs which went periodically slack as, excited by the torch beam Joy rolled around the sloped walls, the child unsettled the fibreglass frame. ‘Auntie Joy can I perform the torch?’ he said … those words or words like them … a curious precision to his question. His role as a tiny god controlling light and dark made him giggle for a while but soon, growing bored, he asked for more cereal …

Motionless amid the continuing cre-aacks and woo-woohs, exchanging stares with a pair of discarded glasses on a console table, her own fear has segued into boredom. Nothing more dreadful than discomfort awaits her, the aggravation of debating unlocked doors and early-hours exercise. The cycle of fault-finding and grumbling is loath-some yet habitual, somewhere safe she can snuggle into. It’s the same with Dennis’s exercises, she supposes. He is doing them before bed because they whittle the day down to a manageable scale and shape. And there are worse habits, if she’s honest. Take the guys at work, guys who’ll probably sneer when she’s gone (Couldn’t cope! Too much pressure!). Guys like Peter, who likes to end each day gazing in that mirror by the burly Coke machine, his self-regard so intense you can almost hear it sometimes, a waveband fizz, a twiddle of excited static. At least Dennis doesn’t do mirror-love, is merely trying – in a vaguely manly fashion – to keep fit.

As verdicts go, ‘tit’ was perhaps a little harsh.

Except that. This is strange. As she leans her head forward and relaxes her posture, to squint past the glasses and the table edge, into the submarine light of the lounge, something new comes into view. A scrap of material on the carpet, its colour muffled by shadow. And is it – are those – knickers?

1.10 a.m.

‘WELL THIS MUST look bad, Joy-Joy. Not that I, well, I do to a degree – yes – admittedly this must look bad.’

Dennis says this standing, hands on hips, head slanted to see her.

‘I mean to say, I recognise this is, somewhat, a departure from the norm.’

He says this naked, except for the socks on his feet, and the condom growing slack on his penis.

‘She turned up, by she I mean, ha, this very lady still crouching … and we were just having an innocent drink to pass the time (it would have passed anyway, of course, goes without saying, gin and tonic and lime), but you’ll excuse my imprecision in situations such as … and you’ll see I have somewhat accidentally –’

‘Tripped dick first into her vagina?’

His Adam’s apple bounces to accommodate a swallow. ‘You have a way with – always did – words, but what I was going to say is that we –’

Bastard. Not listening to this bastard. Standing there explaining with his buttocks clenched. Pouchy-buttocked bastard with his girl in the living room. Nubile girl on all fours on the Jacobsen – the Jacobsen! – shiny hair dangling down like the leaves of some nice thing, tree, nice young sun-soaked birch tree, and her buttocks all firm, faultless, poised beneath the bastard’s pelvis and that yuk Jesus black banana thing lodged inside her and him still trying to explain as the condom yawns – harassed, wrinkled, ready for retirement.

‘You are um,’ he continues, ‘staring at this lady’s … rear, Joy-Joy, sorry, sorry, shouldn’t keep using our real … Rude to stare, and all that, ha ha.’

Joy knows that all objects of desire look vile when the appetite’s not right – oysters are gloopy hellish things when what you want is cake – but she’s always considered dildos to be, from all angles, repulsive. The girl’s litheness makes this one seem particularly sinister: a torture instrument, or the oversized valve on an inflatable doll. He’s not into doll-sex yet, but interrupting an affair with plastic and air would be preferable to this distinctly human betrayal. She has never been a slave to the conventional rules of relationships, but witnessing this, the final phase of their dissolution, is making the furniture twitch and gleam to the cadence of her own pulse.

‘Um, darling? Perhaps you could throw those knickers over and this girl can, perhaps, move from this position and cover her bottom?’

‘I was comparing it to your bottom,’ she says, adrenalin flowing into aggression. ‘Looking fat, of late.’

‘Fat?’

‘Piggy,’ she says.

‘Right,’ he says.

‘A series of fleshy sacks.’

‘Ha! Even with the workouts, you’re saying.’

‘Mini-buttocks and maxi-buttocks.’

‘Hm.’

‘Chinchilla-like.’

‘Chinchilla, right, as in the –’

‘Pet. Fleshy. Overgrown. Grey.’

‘Yes. Yes I see. Comparing your husband to a crepuscular rodent, that’s … I’m sorry,’ he says.

The apology, modest though it is, satiates some of her hunger for a brawl. Objects are beginning to lose their liquid glint; settledness is returning to the room. Does she want to end five years of marriage with a fight? She’s fond of him like you’re fond of a well-worn dress – after the shimmer and tease have gone, it is fully yours, hem-stain and all, making up in familiarity what it lacks in fun – but now he goes and spoils even that, starts breaking the rules, makes her feel stupid, stupid for not linking the cre-acking and woo-wooh-ing to their secret Thursday-night habit, the ritual which while shameful is supposed to be (crucially) shared.

Still patiently poised on all fours, the dildoed guest breaks her silence. Her words come in the lulling voice of a pro who could do this in her sleep and occasionally probably does: ‘Would you like to settle up now, guys, or is this part of the game?’ In one smooth movement that stretches the skin across her ribs she unplugs the dildo to the tune of a disturbing slurp and takes a seat, knees together and feet apart, arms mirroring this coyness so the four thin limbs make a letter X.

‘Darling,’ Dennis says, ignoring the interruption, ‘fancy a G and T, perhaps, as a peace offering, darling? We have chopped limes and ice over there.’

‘On the Noguchi coffee table. Thank you for that. Thanks. You were supposed to cancel her, Dennis. Awful day, you know, hectic. I thought you were a burglar and then … I thought it was your exercise routine.’

‘Well, in a way –’

‘Don’t.’

‘It is Thursday night, you know. This is our night, Joy-Joy.’

‘And if one of us wants to cancel?’

There is a pause, his eyes catch the melting ice, and as if softened by this sight his voice returns quieter than before. ‘That’s the rule. I know that’s the rule. And I did try to cancel, once I knew you had all that stuff going on with your case. But I didn’t get round to it this afternoon, Joy-Joy, I was distracted when you called to tell me, I met this amazingly well-known author on the train, you see, and buoyed by that the ideas were bobbing up furiously, furiously, the white heat of creation, it really was, just like when I’m going at the weights and an extra pocket of energy bursts inside my vein and I’m superhuman, super-Dennis, and then the agency said she was already on her way, and she turned up at the usual time, and –’

‘Just get dressed,’ she says wearily, and then, afflicted by etiquette, shifts her sightline to the girl. ‘We’re not normally like this.’ Her words are met with a simple shrug, a gesture which, coming so soon after Dennis’s wordy bid for vindication, seems like an act of astonishing expressive economy. His idle, spiralling style of speech was one of the quirks which once made him charmingly different, an old-school academic in a London full of one-dimensional professionals, dull polished types with cello voices and cello tans. His hesitation, like his floppy hair, made him human. But after nearly five years of marriage, with every eccentricity painstakingly examined, her husband seems – in tonight’s light – less Hugh Grant and more village idiot.

The hired help is out the door with a purse full of fifties when the village idiot finally reappears. In the regularly revamped kitchen, amid the tomato-red fridge-freezer, the yellow-and-green check of the tablecloth, the still life of Valencian oranges hanging where the family snaps once were, he alone has no colour. His appearance of late is a source of irritation but also admiration – irritation at the lack of effort, and admiration for his indifference to flawlessness.

‘Bed, darling?’ he asks, nervously scratching a patch of stubble.

‘No.’

‘G and T?’

‘That tonic stops me sleeping. As I’ve explained.’

‘Wine?’

‘… OK.’

‘And may I enquire which of the delightful –’

‘Red.’

Expensive wine, expensive fridge-freezer, expensive call girls. When, exactly, did they become such avid consumers? In her delicate freighted state the whole house feels like an erroneous impulse purchase, yet another mistake weighing heavy on her brain.

As he pours the Merlot she thinks about telling him. She has lain awake for so many weeks thinking how she might tell him. None of the imagined scenarios featured call girls, sex toys or arguments over chopped limes. They tended towards scented candles, fine food and classical music. She has even gone so far as to construct a fitting mental playlist, taking care to avoid morbid chords, Psycho-style screeches, violin bows quivering on the bridge. She wants to tell him, firmer than before, that she hasn’t felt right for the last few years. Mornings begin with a sick dwindling deep inside. The route to the bathroom is an assault course littered with ghosts. The face that meets her in the mirror is less a face than a random arrangement of regrets – the nose that received an adulterous kiss, the eyes that have let so much slip from sight – and her lips have started to wrinkle and loosen as if in a dark daily fairy tale they’re getting poisoned by the things they touch. With replenishing balm and special gloss she smoothes them down for the day ahead; can, through the effort of smiling, get them taut as the sheets on the guest-room bed. But by each evening they are loose once more, downturned. She wanted to tell him this one night, explain that her suicide would be a rational, muted thing, truer to her temperament than the lurching flash of normal life, but she has run out of time and, anyway, she knows what he would say. Bullshit, Joy, you can’t grant yourself a neat, aesthetic end. You won’t be able to pat yourself on the back afterwards. You can’t perfect death like it’s a room in need of redecoration, or a memorandum in need of redrafting. You’ll make The Lawyer, not The Times. Shakespeare isn’t around to write a play about your last day. History won’t miss you, but I will, and that’s selfish. He wouldn’t put it so succinctly, but that’s the gist of what he’d say.

‘Drink some, Joy-Joy,’ Dennis urges. He is wearing an expression that is childish, stubborn – and handsome, actually. ‘It’ll relax you, and really, really I am sorry about the girl.’

‘She was very young.’

‘Nonsense. Twenties, but no younger, no younger than others we’ve had here. Is it corked? It can make you ill if it’s corked, I read today, did you know that, that it could actually make you ill?’

She shrugs, and finds that shrugging is less potent, somehow, when you’re the one doing it.

‘I’m sorry about the heat, boiler still on the blink, had the front door open to cool the place down and then forgot about it, the door, I suppose.’

‘I’m tired,’ she says, head tipping towards his chest.

‘You work too hard,’ he says, spreading his arms.

‘Other women in the office have children to look after. They’re lawyers and mothers.’

‘Yes, well, granted, but I bet, if I was a betting man I’d bet, that they are either bad lawyers or bad mothers.’

‘And what would that involve?’ she asks, withdrawing from his sweater and the nest he’s built around it. ‘To be a bad mother?’

‘Joy-Joy, come on, you work too hard.’

She works too hard. She has exhausted herself. She never questions Dennis’s reluctance, of late, to have one-on-one sex with her. She never questions her own willingness to let his fantasies, kick-started at some seedy party they attended years ago, intrude on her sense of self-esteem. Before his sabbatical, he sometimes complained that the university campus carried a palpable smell of death, the scent of literary theorists deconstructing his favourite books, and it must be the same with her. She is thirty-three but scarcely there; he can smell the death in her hair; he needs someone who can bring life to their bedroom. She used to think traumas killed you off with the rudeness of pure force, a nail to the brain, but now she views her remembered failures as a degenerative disease, a slow tilting into shadow and cold. The dusky scent of death must account for the way Dennis rolls over instantly, feigns uninterrupted sleep, ‘feigns’ because she wakes each morning to find a clotted Kleenex on his side of the bed, and it is no big deal, she says to herself, both of the morning tissues and the Thursday girls, no big deal. Yet she has become sensitive to the tremors in the mattress. They feel, more and more, like the ground itself is shaking.

‘Did you close the door on your way in, Joy-Joy? I’d better go and – why don’t I? – I think I’d better go and close the door.’

She listens to his footsteps, and the hinge-creak, and wonders how young that girl was, and looks at her watch, and is reminded that Friday has already engulfed her, and when the latch goes and the first gulp of Merlot leaves her lips dry she turns to the sink and vomits.

Being sick on red wine: there are few things worse in the world. It makes you convulse, afterwards, with self-disgust.