Chapter 26 Now
Now
Dimple
I remember what it was like when I first fell for James.
It was a heady thing unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
I have a distinct memory of walking to work through London Fields on an otherwise ordinary weekday morning.
It was raining, and I had a project overdue at work, and I’d forgotten to spray deodorant under my arms so I was already a little damp in the pits and conscious that it would only worsen as the day wore on.
And it was the best morning of my life.
It’s a real mindfuck very literally seeing the world through different eyes, an intoxicating cocktail of hormones flooding your brain and altering its chemistry.
Going to work felt like going on holiday.
Everything was through rose-tinted glasses.
It was impossible to have a bad day. It was true magic.
This is how I feel now that I’ve given in to the idea of doing something about Will. It’s a strangely euphoric trepidation. At once relieved that there’s a solution to our problems and terrified about what I’m letting loose in myself.
Whether it will be an unfortunate tumble down some stairs or a horrible crash, his proclivity for drink and drugs makes him a relatively easy target.
And it will be different this time; I will be meticulous.
I won’t make intricate plans only to throw them out the window in a fit of temper.
Won’t have to keep looking over my shoulder, like with George.
James will inevitably grieve for a while, but once he’s over it, we can get back to the way we were. But better.
A small voice in my head whispers that I’m being overconfident. That I’ve never killed a man with a clear and sober mind at the steering wheel. But I do my best to smother those doubts. Giving them too much oxygen feels unwise when Will’s elimination feels like my only lifeline.
“You seem in good spirits today,” Dimple says.
Said good spirits seem to be reflected back to me in the friendly squint of her eyes. Or perhaps it’s just my positivity-drunk brain imagining this.
“I am,” I reply, smiling.
I’m not imagining the smile that Dimple returns; that’s for sure. “I’m so glad to hear it. Can I ask what’s put you in such a good mood?”
Honesty, transparency. That’s what I’ve promised myself and Dimple. But this is different. This is premeditated murder, and if I tell her I’m going to do it, she’ll have to tell someone else. I can’t risk that.
An unexpected sadness suddenly surges over me, a gray cloud over my perfect-blue-sky day.
It occurs to me that aside from Claire, Dimple is the person I’m most myself with.
Sure, there are moments I try to avoid talking about things, or want to hold things back, but that’s normal, isn’t it?
No one person bares the entirety of their soul without restriction to any one person. That would be psychotic.
“James and I have been doing well lately,” I say. “He’s making an effort to fight for our marriage.”
Seconds tick by. There are only maybe three or four of them, but they stretch between us, bloated and pregnant. Whatever it is Dimple is thinking in those moments, what it is she almost says, I see her pack away for safekeeping. Instead, she draws out the following.
“So, your blackouts…” The change of topic is so swift that it almost gives me whiplash.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Your blackouts,” she repeats plainly.
“I thought we were talking about James.”
The blank look she gives me tells me that maybe she’s seen through my bullshit. Perhaps an unfortunate side effect of letting her see me so completely; she may now be impervious to my lies.
“Entertain me for a moment, please. We can always return to James later on in the session if we have time.”
I’m wary, but I give her a nonchalant shrug. “Okay.”
“You seem to have found new clarity and understanding around your violent impulses.”
“Yes, that’s fair to say.”
“If your desire to hurt is rooted in the desire to take back power, to enact revenge, then what do you think the reason is for not being able to remember the details of historic violent incidents?”
Each death is interwoven with fog and haze.
It’s one of the things I was most keen to address when I started coming to Dr. Foster; making healthier life choices and keeping my impulses under control while conscious is one thing, but I’m afraid of what I might do if I’m asleep at the wheel.
Dimple knows this. Knows I struggle with why these memory holes exist.
I frown. “We’re dancing around what you want to say again, I can tell. Just say it.”
Dimple offers her hands up in a peaceful gesture. “I’m only curious as to whether you might have your own theories on the matter.”
My nose twitches and my mouth twists. “I assume it’s some kind of dissociative memory loss, triggered by trauma.”
She nods, slender fingers flicking through her notepad. “You’ve said before that you believe you’ve inherited your proclivity for violence from your mother. Specifically, your father’s death.” I note her avoidance of the word “murder.”
“Sure.”
“What was your mother’s response to the event? We’ve spoken a little about yours, but in the aftermath, how did she respond?”
“I’m not sure I follow your meaning.” I do; I’m just being difficult. Suddenly, she feels less like Claire and more like my mother, laying traps with her words to catch me in.
Dimple seems unfazed, although we both know what I’m doing. “Did she seem to experience any forgetfulness? Any blackouts?”
My lips press tightly together. The skin pulls taut, a fissure left in a dry patch splitting open. It hurts. “No, she didn’t as far as I know. But I’m not sure what difference that makes. I didn’t expect something like this would be hereditary. It’s psychological.”
She just stares at me with a lukewarm smile. There’s something off about it, like milk sitting all day on the counter of a hot kitchen.
“So, returning to my question, what do you think might be the psychological factors behind your mind dissociating to such an extreme degree?”
My hackles are up, but I want to answer. I won’t understand what she’s playing at until I do.
“Well, take George, for example. What I did was quite an extreme act. I imagine that on some level, I found the act deeply traumatic, even if I felt compelled to do it.”
She sets her notepad aside on the little round table next to her. “If your mind could insist on rejecting such violence, what makes you think you’re capable of enacting it in the first instance?”
Static crackles through my head, making it hard to think. “What do you mean?”
“The other day, in the bar, you described a feeling of nausea overcoming you at the prospect of more seriously harming the man you met.”
“That’s true.”
“And you say you were afraid of getting caught.”
“That’s right.”
“But you weren’t afraid of getting caught when you stabbed George in his own home?”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to put words in my mouth.”
She taps her pen against her thigh, smiles. “Well, were you afraid?”
“Before it actually happened, and after, sure.” The room is too warm. “But I can’t remember how I felt in the moment, can I? That’s the whole point.”
“Does that not strike you as particularly odd? You were drinking heavily on the night that Marc died and were under the influence of other substances at the time of Luca’s death. Gaps in your memory are easy to explain on these occasions. It’s this one that stands out.”
I run my tongue across my teeth. “Yes, that’s why I’m here.”
Dimple leans back in her chair and removes her glasses. She takes a moment to rub the bridge of her nose before fixing them back into place. She looks me dead in the eyes, the gray of her irises now steel, now flint. I want to look away, but I’m caught in her net.
“Have you ever considered that perhaps you don’t remember killing these men—I think we’re beyond the point of euphemisms—because you did not, in fact, kill them?”
The room feels like it’s sliding away beneath my feet. Someone has tipped my world over, setting it at an angle. My nails are digging into the flaking crust as I attempt not to fall away from it completely.
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it…”
I don’t want to. The static is louder in my ears now, abuzz in my brain.
“Is it possible that you’ve made a mistake in assuming your anger means you are directly responsible for these deaths?”
I shake my head. “For Marc or Luca, maybe I’d get it.
But George—” That rage I’d felt, that I can still feel now, that was clear.
I’d had some wine, but I wasn’t blackout drunk.
I’d known what I was doing when I’d reached for the knife.
“It’s just not possible. Who else would care to bump off all of my exes?
Because they didn’t just drop dead by magic. I mean, who else was even there?”
The last sentence is a desperate throwaway, but I wish I could swallow it back down as soon as it flies out of my mouth. I see the words forming on Dimple’s lips even before she says,
“Your sister.”