‘Leave him alone? How can I do that to him?’
I threw out my arms, groping for words. ‘Carla, you said yourself that John wasn’t himself before he died. That you were scared he was losing his mind. I think that’s why this is happening. It’s best if you think of John as the man you used to know, and that thing in there as—’
‘No. No, Fix.’ She raised her arms defensively, as if I’d just made an indecent proposal. ‘It’s still him. Even if he doesn’t know that himself, that’s all that’s left of him. I’m not going to just lock the doors and run and hide.
I stared into Carla’s eyes. She meant it: in spades and with no room for argument.
‘Okay,’ I said at last, cursing myself for not having the balls to just shake hands and walk away. You’ve got to have the courage of your lack of commitment: otherwise you just keep getting dragged into the shit that other people leave in their wake. But the ghost of a one-night stand that had never happened was clouding my judgement.
It took a while to get the room to rights. I did the heavy lifting and Carla went around behind me, putting the few intact ornaments back where they belonged, sweeping up the broken glass, throwing out what couldn’t be mended or lived with. After we’d finished, the room still looked like a hurricane had been through, but it looked like it had stayed for tea and genteel conversation. You could tell that an effort had been made, anyway: it was the best we could do with the raw materials.
"The kitchen was completely unscathed, though, which was a huge relief. I eyed the knife rack and wondered what it would have been like to meet the contents of that as I walked through the door. Memorable, anyway: like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but without the perky soundtrack.
‘Does he mainly stay in the living room?’ I asked Carla as she heaped coffee into the Cona machine. She was scraping the bottom of the packet. When she’d finished I took the empty packet from her and dumped it in the bin.
‘Living room. Stairwell. Bathroom,’ she said, tightly. It was obvious that there was a whole catalogue of horrors behind that terse list. ‘I’m safe in the bedroom, and the hall outside the bedroom, and here.’ She switched the machine on, turned to face me, her face strained and earnest. ‘I said that wrong. Safe.