Love Me to Death Read online

  ‘I’m about to start decorating,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘So it’s a bit of a mess at home.’

  He thought about the plastic sheeting he’d put down in the back room, all prepared in case he needed it. If he couldn’t get her to take the pills then he would get her in the cellar another way. It was important to be prepared. He put his hand in his pocket and squeezed the bin bag with his fingertips. His knife was there too. He was ready.

  ‘It really is a lovely night,’ she said as though she didn’t care what was about to happen.

  He looked up, but didn’t see it. All he could see was the whiteness of her skin under the moonlight.

  ‘Camel Toe,’ he said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The paint colour. Something like that. Oh no, Caramel Glow I think it was. The decorating.’

  She laughed. ‘I always said you were funny. They never believed me.’

  ‘Who? Who have you told?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Who knows about this?’

  She frowned. ‘You ashamed of me, is that it?’

  Her hair was messy as it blew in the wind.

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Come down this road, I want to show you something,’ she told him, and pulled sideways. He tried to laugh, but it sounded like a cough. He didn’t like her taking over. ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘The Winking Man, I want you to see him.’

  As they got further down the road she stopped in front of a bronze statue of a soldier outside the church. He was painted jet-black and leaning on a rifle in his right hand with his legs open. He looked like he could step right off the concrete podium.

  ‘Stare him in the face,’ she said.

  That was the last thing Mr Anderson wanted to do. He wondered if it was a trick, if she was the one playing games. The bushes behind it moved in the breeze as though there could be people in them and he thought about the other women from work. All laughing at him. Thinking that this was all a big joke.

  ‘Do it. It’s funny. He’ll wink at you,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Go on.’

  He didn’t want to do it, but he wanted her on his side so that she’d come home with him. ‘Statues can’t wink.’

  ‘Do it,’ she said, laughing. ‘We’ll do it together. You’ve got to really stare at him to make it work.’

  Noreen grabbed his hand and squeezed it. It wasn’t clammy or sweaty. She’s comfortable with me, he decided. As he fixed his eyes on the statue the moonlight glinted off the darkness of his shoulders. The more he looked, the more his face became real and in one dark second he did it; he actually winked.

  ‘Jesus.’

  She pulled him close and screamed. ‘Weird, isn’t it?’ she laughed.

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘We used to do this every night when we were kids. On our way home from the pub. Me and my best friend.’

  ‘The pub? How old were you?’

  She put her hand in her pocket.

  ‘Fifteen maybe. Half the girls at school were in there.’

  ‘The easy ones.’

  It just came out. She gave him a look and moved away.

  ‘That’s not nice.’

  ‘True though.’ He tried to bring it back with a smile. ‘Nice young girls don’t go to pubs.’

  He knew that was true. It was what his mother had always taught him.

  ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘I mean, just because you were like that then, doesn’t mean you’re like that now. People can change.’

  ‘I was never like anything.’

  ‘Nice girls don’t go to the pub,’ he said. ‘Not when they’re fifteen,’ he corrected himself.

  Noreen sighed. ‘Maybe they were right about you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girls,’ she replied.

  ‘From work? So you lied? You did tell them.’

  ‘I don’t lie. The only person who knows about this is Kevin.’

  Mr Anderson’s eyes widened. ‘Kevin who?’

  ‘The waiter. Kevin. We’re friends.’

  Mr Anderson was annoyed. ‘Kevin’s not an Italian name.’

  ‘He isn’t Italian.’

  ‘More lies!’

  She frowned.

  ‘I’d rather walk the rest of the way back on my own,’ she said.

  ‘But I’m taking you to my house.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s where we’re going. Through the field over there.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, that’s where I’m taking you,’ Mr Anderson insisted.

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do. Kevin was right. He said you weren’t right.’

  ‘You were talking to him about me?’

  ‘He looks out for me.’

  Mr Anderson frowned. The waiter had ruined it. Anything he was going to do he couldn’t do now. He had seen his face and this could easily come back to him.

  ‘This is pointless. You might as well go back to your own house.’

  ‘I wasn’t coming anyway. I’m not one of the easy ones. Well, not tonight anyway,’ she said sadly. ‘Thanks for dinner. It was different.’

  Mr Anderson looked over at the path leading through the field and wondered if he could just do it there instead.

  ‘What can I do to make it better?’ he said, with an attempt at a smile.

  ‘You should try being less…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Less tense. Anyway, see you,’ she told him, before she started to turn away.

  Mr Anderson grabbed her hard by the arm and she pulled back, pushing him off her. Her strength surprised him.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Walking you across the field.’

  She took a step back and looked more angry than scared. It was a mistake to choose her, she wasn’t right. He never would have thought it of her. She was strange.

  ‘Touch me again and I’ll break your nose,’ she told him.

  ‘What?’

  She pointed a finger at his face. ‘Stick to your little boys, Simon.’ The way she did it reminded him of his mother.

  He started to follow Noreen, but changed his mind. It had all gone wrong down this road and he hadn’t imagined she’d do so much blabbing. He didn’t like the idea that she’d been talking about him. The thought of that waiter watching him made his mouth go dry. She wasn’t the person he thought she was.

  He crossed over the road and made the mistake of looking at the statue again. It made him feel cold to the bone, he should have known better than to take her anywhere. It had been a mistake, a big mistake. He watched Noreen turn the corner and glanced over his shoulder to check behind him that the statue hadn’t moved.

  She shouted after him down the road.

  ‘You’re a twat!’

  She was drunk, but he hadn’t expected that either. She was nothing like he’d imagined. She was selfish and she’d ruined everything. Instead of going home he walked towards the A6 and waited for the bus into Manchester.

  23

  As usual, Manchester was busy. The streets were wet with slush and the red-brick buildings were kissed by frost. A group of lads in tracksuits stood around a bench, cans of cheap lager in hand.

  Mr Anderson didn’t like people, but it was good to be among the blank faces and away from Noreen. It was a challenge he set himself. To go to a place that was full of them. People so close that they touched him as they passed and he could touch them too. He could smell the alcohol on their breath he was so close, the lingering perfume and the hairspray they’d used. He thought of Noreen at home, drunk and angry. He could feel the mark on his arm where she’d pushed him away, like a bruise. It was meant to be the other way round. He thought of her going back to the restaurant and telling the waiter all about him. About how he was right. He thought of them laughing. Laughing at him.

  He gritted his teeth. Mon
day was a good night in this club. He’d been before. It was busy and cheap. They let anyone in, in some places he’d get turned away, but here they didn’t care who you were. It was plastic pint glasses and music with a bass that you could feel in your chest as though it was living inside you. This was a life he’d never known, a life he never would have been allowed.

  It was busy as always. Student night always was. The floor stuck to his feet as he walked in, through the people as the crowd grew, the closer he got to the bar. He felt the glances of a few of the people around him, they knew he didn’t belong, but that didn’t bother him. He didn’t belong anywhere. He moved among the bars and pubs quietly and quickly. Just seeing what was out there. If he found someone he’d sit tight in a corner with a drink and watch. He was soon forgotten. He was of no interest to these people.

  The smell of dry ice was on the air; he knew that it would stick to his clothes and hair long after he’d left. It would hang on him as he slept. This was just what he needed after the way that Noreen had been.

  As he looked towards the dance floor he saw a face through the crowd. She had full red lips and bright green eyeshadow, like a traveller, a girl who’d floated in from another place, someone who didn’t belong among the sweaty hot bodies writhing in time to the noise. Someone who knew nothing about him, with eyes that were lost.

  She looked at him and the rest of the room faded into nothing. It was as though they were smeared in Vaseline, just blurred shapes that moved around her. She was young, younger than Noreen, almost a child, with innocence in her eyes that Noreen didn’t have. She had the open mind of youth, the willingness to accept. She would be different.

  He wondered whether to speak to her or to wait. He didn’t want anyone to see him with her, but he wanted to gain her trust so that she’d be willing to talk later. It was groundwork. Important.

  As she walked towards him, he felt a push from behind as someone came through the crowd sending him sideways. He moved back, but she was passing through towards the entrance. The back of her hair, there and then gone, lost among the people. He pushed forwards and tried to get through to her, but there were people everywhere and as he made his way forwards he found himself on the dance floor.

  ‘Watch it, you old perv,’ a young lad shouted down his ear before elbows and arms flung up around him and the gentle hiss of the dry ice from the other side of the room began. The room had turned her into smoke, an apparition taken in seconds.

  He caught a glimpse of her through the door and made his way towards it, unsure if she’d left or gone upstairs. That was it. He looked and yet she did not re-appear, as though that vision was all he was going to get. There were girls everywhere. Lips wet with gloss and red with lipstick and bodies that were made to be in magazines. It was too much. Tonight had been exhausting. He wasn’t really looking for a girl. He was looking for a woman or maybe a boy.

  His perfect woman would end up on Cage Hill, under the Cheshire moon with the musky smell of stags in the air and the crack of antlers through the trees. They never agreed to what he wanted though. He knew that he couldn’t persuade them to come with him. He would do what he had to do though. Sometimes there were things that just had to happen and he wasn’t able to stop that. It was just the way that it was. Noreen was still on his mind. He knew where she lived. He thought about going to the house and knocking on the back door to see if she answered. Pushing his way inside and forcing her to come to the house, showing her the cellar. Insisting on it. It was a reckless thought and stupid. He hated that waiter.

  He drank a glass of Coke and hung around on the balcony, looking down on the crowd, wondering if the girl would come back. He felt someone staring and glanced to the side at the couple opposite. He didn’t fit in here and he knew it, but there was something about it that brought him back. The youth, the smell, the energy and the way that he could slide among them and almost taste them – so many faceless bodies, winding together to become one. They had lives that he would never understand. He hated them and yet, there was something about their heat, the smell of them and the closeness that made him wonder what it would feel like to be like them, just once.

  He knew who was to blame. One person. His mother had moulded him into something unique. He was starting again though, and as he pushed through the crowd towards the main entrance, he knew that things needed to change.

  A girl was sitting against the building near the taxi rank, head lolling over into her chest. He thought about going over to her and trying to get her home, putting her in a taxi with him, but he couldn’t risk it. It wasn’t the right thing to do. The Noreen night had made a mess of him and he needed to get home.

  Manchester made him anonymous. There were so many people around that he could get away with anything here. In his pocket was everything he needed. He knew what he looked like though. He was too old to persuade them to come with him. If he could have followed the girl with the freckles on her nose then he might have risked it. He could have found out where she lived, but no. He was not going to do anything stupid. Tonight was a total failure. He walked past the taxi rank and towards the bus stop. He didn’t want to get home quickly. He wanted it to take as long as it could and he decided to walk.

  A group of girls walked over the road towards the Palace Theatre, hair sprayed up, dragging a mate behind them. He looked back towards the one slumped outside, but there was someone else with her now. They started to sing as they got into the middle of the road, awful voices, more like shouting and he was glad that he was away. This wasn’t the night for him.

  At the bus shelter two people were stood up, faces stuck together and hands down the back of the jeans. He walked on and kept going. Walking past the homeless sat by the cash machines and the drunks leaning on bins outside the takeaways. Outside the music shop, a bald man stood staring at a guitar in the window, swaying drunk, oblivious, as Mr Anderson passed.

  The night was fresh and crisp as he kept going. It would take an hour and a half to get home, but he didn’t care. He didn’t worry going past the deserted parks and the scruffy terraces and high rises. He just kept walking, face forwards, oblivious to anyone else. A robotic walk towards the suburbs. He’d slept outside a few times in summer, in the park near the halls of residence, but it was far too cold for that tonight.

  As his feet took the one, two, three, four, steps and more on and on towards home he was blank inside. As black as the night. Thoughts of the family filled his head. The beautifully crafted figure with the blue shirt, so carefully stitched and then, his mother’s face. He saw himself pushing her off something. One hard push and then she could have gone, out of his life for good, so much earlier. He pictured her falling, down and down. He wasn’t sure if it was this or Noreen’s wine earlier that gave him a hazed feeling. He indulged the thoughts.

  He wanted to find someone. As he continued through the streets there was no one. Nothing. It was a night of disappointment. He thought about the bed in the cellar. The metal frame and thick chain that he’d wrapped so carefully and bolted to the floor. Noreen was not to be trusted; she had told the waiter about him and he’d only just managed to save himself from getting caught again.

  As he turned the corner, he saw a small sliver of yellow material from underneath a pile of cardboard down the side of the alley by the kebab shop. A canary-yellow, unmistakably bright, covered up by old boxes, but he would have known it anywhere. There was the same yellow tent; he knew it. He stopped.

  Mr Anderson looked behind him. There was no one else around. The air was biting cold. He walked slowly into the darkness, while the moon glinted off the frost on top of the bus stop opposite. It was beautifully silent.

  He took the bag from his pocket and held it tight in his hand and felt a rush of adrenaline as he got closer. With a flex of the fingers he was ready. Mr Anderson looked up at the buildings on either side; the windows were black, empty offices with no one inside. It was a good place. He slid the knife out of his inside pocket and out of its cover. T
he boy was at the bottom of the alleyway in between the bins and under a sheet of cardboard. As he got closer, he recognised his face as he slept. He could easily have walked by if it wasn’t for the small strip of colour that had caught his eye. Perhaps it was going to be a good night after all.

  A sound of coughing came from behind as the man from outside the music shop stopped to eat his kebab at the end of the street. As he tried to hail a taxi, sauce dribbled down the stubble of his chin and he wiped it off with the back of his hand.

  Mr Anderson stood there in the darkness, watching the man devour the meat, bits of salad and bread dropping from his mouth onto the pavement. As the man pushed the food into his mouth, Mr Anderson gripped the bin bag in his hand and kept the knife down by the side of his leg. His excitement was building. Perhaps he would take him too if he came nearer. This was going to happen no matter what. Someone in a passing car shouted ‘bald bastard!’ and the man walked on, leaving a trail of food on the concrete behind him. The road was deserted again.

  Mr Anderson waited until he could no longer hear his footsteps. The alleyway was oddly peaceful. The bin bag crinkled, thick and heavy in his hand, but the boy did not stir. He’d been right to wait. This was the moment. The air was crisp and fresh and he glanced around in case the drunken man had come back, but the alleyway was encased in darkness and he’d long gone. The shadows made dark blocks on the surrounding buildings and the hum of distant traffic was as constant as the cold breeze whispering through the alley.

  Mr Anderson moved closer with the knife in one hand and the bag in the other. The soles of his shoes made a gentle squeak as he walked. There was a strong smell of alcohol as he got to the boy. His mouth was slack open and ready. It was him – the same thick hair and crinkled forehead. He was covered in bin bags and the remains of the yellow tent. His skin looked almost purple in the half-light. If it wasn’t for the occasional snort, Mr Anderson wouldn’t have known if he was alive. The boy’s eye was bruised and a thick cut ran down the side of his dirty cheek. As Mr Anderson eased into position – he knew he was just in time.

  Mr Anderson inhaled and got ready. The blade of the knife caught the moonlight and glinted silver. The need was like raging hunger and the compulsion to complete his work came down fast, like a thick black curtain. There was nothing else now; there was only this.