Chapter 4
FOUR
I came home ready to start prepping the lasagne right away, hoping it would be a nice surprise for my semi-gracious hosts.
I often imagined that there was a dial above people’s heads reflecting their opinion of me.
I always tried to keep that dial in the green favourable direction with my hosts whenever I could.
But as soon as I wandered through the front door of the house, shoes in my hand, I realised I had stumbled into one of their heated arguments.
It was the way the air seemed to hang looming and heavy in the entryway.
Maybe Ben had found Bill’s cigarettes, or maybe Bill had found a red sock amongst the white washing, or it could be the thing I often heard them argue about: me.
I had noticed that Ben was far more diplomatic with Bill than he had ever been with me in their ‘discussions’, as they liked to downplay them as.
Previously, I had always been the one trying to calm Ben down and de-escalate things, but now, with Bill being such an unstable, pedantic firecracker, it seemed Ben had taken on a different, more peacemaker role in arguments.
Funny how we change in couples, isn’t it?
I wondered, not for the first time, why Ben could never be that person for me?
I could hear Ben trying to talk Bill down in the kitchen in as measured and calm a tone as he could manage, while Bill continued barking angrily back at him.
I knew better than to eavesdrop; the few times I had – and realised that most of the time it was Bill complaining laboriously about my personal hygiene – hadn’t exactly been soothing for my delicate and rather sensitive soul.
So, I decided to make myself scarce and quickly headed for the shed.
I started to creep down the narrow corridor of the house: the kitchen to the left, study to the right.
My route to the shed ran straight on, down the hall, through the living room, and out into the garden.
If I could make it there unseen, I could hunker down until this all blew over.
The lasagne could wait for a day where I didn’t feel the house was about to spontaneously combust with the supernova heat of Bill’s rage.
‘Oh hey, Ruth,’ I heard Bill say through gritted teeth and an overly syrupy tone. I hadn’t made eye contact, so I just kept walking through the hallway toward the front room.
‘Hey,’ I replied quietly, hoping I could reach the door to the garden before he caught me.
‘Bill, don’t,’ I heard Ben grumble from the kitchen as Bill walked through the kitchen doorway, following me.
‘Hey,’ Bill repeated, more audible frustration in his tone now. I pulled my hand away from the door handle and sheepishly turned around to face him; my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my hoodie. I was this close to making it out to the shed unscathed.
‘Hey, so, the wall in the shed with all of your photos, why, why, Ruth, why has it got bigger?’ he demanded, his hands moving furiously, gesticulating in every direction possible.
‘And why are you using Sellotape to pin up stupid snippets from serial killers when I specifically told you it was newly painted?’
Are you kidding me? What was he doing snooping in the shed? I know it was technically his property but still, is a girl not allowed some privacy?
‘You said “no Blu Tack”?’ I protested weakly.
‘Sellotape is not better,’ Bill snapped. ‘Actually, I think, it’s worse. So much worse. Do you know how much the paint will be chipped?’
I gulped silently, feeling the very depths of my stomach constrict and tighten as I inspected the laces on the shoes in my hand rather than make prolonged eye contact with Bill.
I hated arguing, desperately. All I wanted to do was roll over, admit I was wrong and give up.
I couldn’t bear to be shouted at by anyone, especially Bill.
He had a way of making me feel so small, tiny and insignificant.
I suppose I should describe Bill to you, so you have some semblance of what he looked like; I imagine the picture in your mind is quite different to reality.
He was tall, bull-necked and muscular, the kind of muscular that hid its six-pack beneath a thick layer of fat.
When I spoke of a man so fastidious and pedantic, you might picture someone short, an almost more rodent-like reincarnation of Mussolini, but Bill was nothing of the sort.
He was a big man; his frame was so broad he made a bottle of Fairy Liquid look almost dainty in his hand.
‘I’m sorry, Bill, okay? I’ll take it down,’ I said meekly.
‘Oh, you’ll take it down? Great, are you going to repaint the marks too?’ Bill snapped, his anger bubbling and frothing. ‘Do you even know what shade it is?’
I realised that now was probably not a good time to tell him that he had a poppy seed lodged in his tooth, staring back at me like a third pupil against the white of his molar. It was the one eye on his face that was currently not seething with rage.
‘Bill, that’s enough,’ Ben said sharply from behind him.
‘Stop defending her all the time, Ben,’ Bill shot back to him venomously. ‘I know you used to be married, but for goodness’ sake. Do you know what kind of guy lets his partner’s ex stay in their house? An idiot, that’s who, an idiot. You, you, Ben, you’ve made me a complete and utter idiot.’
‘Well…’ I began, finally raising my gaze to meet Bill’s, feeling the flood of angry words, that were permanently swirling and festering in my chest, threatening to launch off my tongue.
But I clamped my mouth shut before I could say them.
I’ll admit, it was only the thought of a house-share with a bunch of raucous graduates that stopped me from saying how I really felt about Bill.
I never had had the courage to ever be truly honest with how I felt about that.
In some ways, I never really felt like I had courage full stop.
‘Oh, ho ho,’ Bill fake chortled. ‘What were you going to say, Ruth? What were you going to say?’ he taunted. Ben stepped forward, grabbing Bill’s arm, but Bill slapped his hand away brusquely. ‘No, no. Tell us, Ruth?’ he insisted.
‘Nothing,’ I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper.
I locked eyes with Ben and saw the clenched, tight jaw and the flicker of anguish, maybe even a modicum of guilt in his eyes.
Look, I didn’t really understand most people or their funny little reactions to things that, to me, seemed irrelevant, but I could just about understand Ben; I could read it in the way his face would always seem to change and twist. I could tell that Bill’s outburst wasn’t really about me.
Don’t get me wrong, this kind of outburst wasn’t unusual for Bill – the man could get furious over someone putting forks in the knives section of the cutlery drawer – but today, there was more pain and fury in his voice than usual, like there was something else that had upset him judging by the way that Ben was holding back.
There had been a whole conversation that I wasn’t privy to.
I’d thought more than once about telling him to ‘have a wank and get over it, flowerpot boy’ during one of his many meltdowns, but that seemed like the equivalent of dumping a petrol station’s worth of fuel onto a forest fire.
‘Right, I’m going to the shed,’ I said as assertively as I could, even though my voice still quivered as I spoke.
It was more like pulling the ripcord than actually trying to create any kind of firm boundary, but I’d rather play naked Twister with all the residents of a care home than stay in this conversation any longer.
The truth was, ever since I was a little girl, I’d been a bit of a coward.
Greta always seemed to have enough courage for the both of us.
If I had to have a confrontation, I’d much rather do it from behind a computer screen.
I knew that this was something of a personality flaw, but I needed to steel myself.
I often wondered if it came to it, would I be able to meet the TellTale Killer face to face to take him down?
It’s not as if we’d be having a nice chinwag over a cup of tea.
But I realised long ago that I’d somehow been born with a complete absence of bravery.
I snapped open the back door and trudged out, hoping Bill wouldn’t follow to continue the taunting. From what I could tell, behind me, I think Ben had managed to hold him back.
‘We can’t keep going on like this,’ I heard Bill say, and then, I think I almost heard the sound of him starting to sob, but I was already inside the shed, door shut, the curtains closed, my headphones on and eyes fixed on the crime wall before I could hear any of his whimpers.
I glanced at Toast, who, mercifully, wasn’t humping anything at present.
However, that was only because she had managed to flip herself onto her back, her limbs occasionally twitching in the air.
I reached down and set her right again, avoiding any bites to my fingers in the process.
I could understand where Bill was coming from to an extent; if I had just painted a wall, I’d be annoyed too by a few small chips in the paint.
But honestly, I was sure he could remember the shade he’d used by memory, something like White Mist or Frosted Clouds, whatever absolute mundane bland vanilla nonsense he’d used.
Though, I had to remind myself that Bill’s world was much smaller than mine, I guess.
He didn’t know what it was like to lose someone the way I’d lost Greta; he didn’t understand that going through something so tragic, carrying so much guilt, meant you felt like you would never get to move on from your grief.