She is descaling a moist piece of seabass into the kitchen sink with the back of a knife. It’s his favourite, blackened bass and fresh peas.
She’s much calmer now. Subdued. Crammed to bursting with emptiness, and a slight blur at the edges of everything she sees. Stomach a little queasy, nervous. Her hands are under control, just the slightest of tremors remaining, but not enough to spoil the fish.
There had always been others he had loved like this. The ones he told her about and the ones he hid. So many of his lies lay buried in her heart, like pins in a cushion scratching. But for now, he was in her bed again, and being so tender. She had returned to the days when their love was still unfulfilled. When hands were held, and kisses given not taken. His lips brushed her eyelids lighter than a moth’s wings against the breeze. The rise and fall of her throat, swallowing silently. His nose devouring the perfume of her soft neck. The slightly choked swell of her chest as she struggled to control her breathing. The same thrill she felt that first day, waiting for him outside the cinema, and the way it grew when she saw him coming, a little late, from the bus stop down the street. And how she called to him across the road in case he did not recognise her. The first fumbled kiss, in the dark, her first. Their everlasting love. And now, with her breaths quickening, it is he who is calling, calling, calling. The name of a stranger. Someone else’s name in my bed. My nakedness called by another name. A different name. Again.
It looked frenzied, but felt right. The way she flayed the flesh from his face with her nails. And he just lay there curled up in a ball and refused to defend himself. Her face glazed over as she unplugged the lamp and beat him with it. Again and again. And still he wouldn’t fight, just rolled tighter. She seemed to descend into a trance. She could hear his ribs cracking gently beneath her. She pushed him out into the rain on his hands and knees, where he lay a long while, clutching his abdomen. She watched for some minutes, then double-locked the door.
And the brass lampstand that did it sits in the bin, preventing the lid from shutting and accusing her from across the kitchen. I’ll spoil him. Try again. God, I hate myself. For letting this happen.
She is filleting the fish now. Deft strokes of the knife hissing through the flesh, parting it from bone.
Rattle of keys. She has relented. The door clicks in the latch. He walks in, tentatively. Approaches her in the kitchen. Puts his arms round her waist from behind. Whispers close to her ear. I’m so sorry. Never again. Promise. She turns to face him. Stares at his penitent face. The scars. The fish in her left hand.
Grandma always used to say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. And I think, through the stomach, passing no bone. The muscle of the ventricular wall contracts once then relaxes. He subsides to the floor.
The filleting knife is still in her hand, creamed with blood much darker than fish.
My name is Sue, you bastard. Not Kevin.