Page 52 of Can You See Her?

So I didn’t.

‘Ingrid wanted me to sign her passport form,’ he said, apropos of bugger all.

I looked towards the fence, to where he’d just slid his shifty eyes. ‘Is that who you were talking to just now? Ingrid?’

Now he was looking there too. Both of us staring at the dividing fence like we were waiting for a close encounter of the third kind. And as I’m remembering all this, I can’t stop thinking that by this time, Anne-Marie was dead and I didn’t even know it in any conscious way.

‘I don’t know where Ingrid went,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten to put the date on the form. I filled in the photos on the back but I forgot to sign the form.’

‘Which was it?’

‘Eh?’ Raisin eyes, screwed up at me.

‘Which was it, the date or the signature? Which did you forget?’

‘Eh? What? Both. She was feeding next door’s cat. She passed it over the fence.’

‘The cat?’

‘No, the form.’ He put his hands back on his hips and surveyed the garden like it was about to give up the secrets of the earth. ‘I was thinking of getting the lawnmower out.’

Look at me, I wanted to say to him. Please look at me. I’m your wife and I’ve loved you for twenty-five years and I still do and I’m still here.

But I didn’t. Obviously.

What I said was, ‘I’ve got mince in. I’ll do a spag bol.’

‘Sounds good.’

He was already walking up to the shed; I was already back indoors. I picked up the saucer as I passed the kitchen table – no woman with kids ever walks through her own house without accumulating assorted random items, most often arriving at the top of the stairs loaded up like a kid onCrackerjack.

I glance up, and sure enough Blue Eyes looks perplexed.

‘You’re too young to rememberCrackerjack,’ I say. ‘It was a kids’ show in the seventies. They used to give two kids stuff to hold, pile it on until one of them dropped the lot or it all slid off. You couldn’t see the kids for stuff. Whoever kept hold of it all the longest won.’

She smiles. It’s not a smile of satisfaction, it’s indulgence.Get on with it, woman.

I tell her how I put the cigarette ends into a piece of cling film. How I went into the garage and hid them in the drawer beside the others. Why I did this, I don’t really know, and I’m quite surprised Amanda doesn’t pick me up on it, but she doesn’t – she just lets me carry on. If I had to answer my own question, I’d say I wanted a confrontation at some point, but not then. The world was bearing down on me. The world was a great big globe made of glass. It was heavy and I couldn’t remember anyone giving it me to carry, but I could feel it and it was taking all my strength not to let it drop from my shoulders and fall in splinters at my feet. I was bent double with it. I was breaking in two. It was only a matter of time now.

The lawnmower sputtered, roared.

I got the chopping board out, the big knife, an onion, a carrot. When Kieron was a baby, I would throw that knife at him as he lay in his crib, over and over again, in my sleep, too. That knife sailing through the air. Me throwing it, screaming at my own violence. Love on steroids.

Katie was at the kitchen door, frowning through a full face of make-up, hair done in tiny plaits all over her head like cornrows. She looked like a Premier League footballer in drag. Three A levels: art, English literature and psychology. All As. For this.

‘You’re back,’ she said.

‘No, I’m still out,’ I replied to the back of her head as she rummaged in the cupboard. Not a twitch. Hardly comedy gold, I know, but when had she stopped finding me amusing? What was the exact date?

‘What’s for tea?’ A hard stare, a dead-eye special.

‘Spag bol.’ I nodded at the packet of crisps in her hand. ‘Don’t spoil your appetite.’

‘Oh my God.’ She waltzed out in her cloud of fury, stopped at the kitchen door and turned around, appearing to see me for the first time. And maybe I saw her then for the first time in a while because I remember thinking how beautiful she looked, how young, how fresh – as I had once been.

Her brow knitted. ‘Mum, are you crying?’

I sniffed, tried to smile. ‘No, love. It’s these ruddy onions.’

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