ALSO BY MEGAN HUNTER
The End We Start From
Grove Press
New York
Copyright © 2020 by Megan Hunter
Cover painting © Amy Judd
Cover design: Lucy Scholes, Picador Art Department
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First published in the UK in 2020 by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan
Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: November 2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-0-8021-4816-2
eISBN 978-0-8021-4817-9
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
For Emma
Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a . . . divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster?
Hélène Cixous, Laugh of the Medusa
Bird-bodied, girl-faced things they are; abominable their droppings, their hands are talons, their faces haggard with hunger insatiable
Virgil, Aeneid
It is the last time. He lies down, a warm night, his shirt pulled up, his head turned away. It is the kind of evening that used to make me want to fly through the sky, the kind that makes you believe it will never get dark.
Neighbours are having barbeques: the smell of the meat – sweet and homely – moves across his face. Downstairs our children are in their beds, dreaming through the hours, their doors closed, the late light blocked by their curtains.
We have agreed on a small nick, his upper thigh, a place that will be behind jeans, under shirts. A place of thick flesh, solid bone, almost no hair. A smooth place, waiting.
Jake is not squeamish: he is like a man expecting a tattoo. His hair is getting long, curling over the nape of his neck. His eyes are closed: not screwed shut, just closed, like a skilful child pretending to be asleep.
•
They were colleagues, then friends, and at first I suspected nothing. There were long emails, glimpses appearing on his phone, apparitions. The virgin blue of his notification light in the darkness. Nights where we couldn’t watch TV, because she was calling. Nights I went to bed early, enjoyed the whole bed to myself.
If I went in there – to get something, or turn a light off – I heard his voice sounding different. Not romantic, or gentle, just on show. His outside voice, the one he used with postmen, salesmen, people from work. I thought that was a good sign.
•
I lift the razor up – I have sterilized it, carefully, watching YouTube instructions – and rest it against his skin. I press down, very gently, and then with slightly more force.
•
Jake’s skin was one of the first things I noticed when we met. It was like the skin of a young boy – he was a young boy – someone milk-fed, comfort-raised. Someone who wore large, voluminous boxer shorts. Who slept silently, on his side. Who had a blond head of curls, like an angel. Even his eyelashes were curly. Tears used to get caught in them when we argued. On his stomach, his skin was hairless and as soft as a woman’s. The first time we went to bed, I kissed it.
•
I confronted him once, late at night, in my pyjamas, leaning against the fridge.
Do you want to sleep with her? I asked him. I think it’s best if we’re just really clear about this.
He laughed. I wish you’d get to know her, he said. She’s— He paused, the silence standing in for dullness, advanced age, sour breath.
She’s married, he said, finally. He looked at me, almost kindly. We didn’t touch.
•
I lift the razor and a fairy-tale drop of blood escapes from under the silver. The colours are the brightest I have ever seen: stark and cartoon-like, white skin and sea-blue shirt and dark red, rolling and seeking. He doesn’t make a sound.
I
~
I wonder if people would believe me if I said I have never been a violent person. I have never held an animal’s neck warm in my elbow and cricked the life from it. I have never been one of those women who dreams of smothering her children when they are naughty, who catches the image tracking through her mind like a fast-moving train.
I have never forced myself on anyone, reached into their clothes and tried to milk love from a body. None of that.
Even as a child, I remember the seeping feeling that guilt had, when I tipped my finger over an insect, and another one, and another one. I watched the universe blink, from life to death, flash over as they said a nuclear bomb would. I saw what my finger could do, and I stopped it.
~
1
It happened on a Friday, the boys in their last rhythm of the week, me trying to stay steady for them, a ship in dock, something you could hardly see the end of. I picked them up from school, administering snacks, absorbing shreds of their days, the wrappers from their sweets. It was almost midwinter: the sun was setting as we walked home, dying down against the playing field at the back of our house. Birds flew away from us, crayoned lines across the colours.
Back then, I was always hearing flocks of geese over our roof, feeling as if I lived on a marsh instead of at the edge of a small, rich town. I would close my eyes and feel it: the green ooze of the earth’s water, rising through my skin.
~
If anyone ever finds out, I know what they will conclude: I am an awful person. I am an awful person, and they – the finder – are a good person. A kind, large-hearted, pleasant person. Attractive, with a nice smell. This person – this woman, perhaps – would never do the things that I have done. She would never even try.
~
2
The boys were happy that day; there were no dramas, no small children lying