had a key to the house. Abby didn’t know, but he’d taken a copy before returning the original to her when they’d split up. He didn’t use it often, just a few times a year, to sneak in and rummage around in her underwear drawer while she was out, or to lie on her unmade bed and masturbate. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but it helped to ease his pain.
Glancing around to check that he couldn’t be seen, he took out the key and unlocked the door. He stepped inside the house and shut the door behind him, feeling light-headed. His limbs were floppy but his core was solid, as if a thread of steel rope ran through his centre. His blood ran hot and cold. He didn’t know if he was about to laugh or cry, or even scream.
Slowly, he climbed the stairs and stood outside Abby’s bedroom door. The floorboards groaned quietly under his weight. He could hear a faint chanting noise, but was unsure in which room it originated. He pushed open the bedroom door and looked inside. As usual, the bed was unmade; the sheets were in a state that could only be caused by two people fucking. He wanted to close his eyes but he didn’t. Instead he walked into the room, approached the bed, and sat down. He ran his hands over the mattress. It was still warm. He bent over and smelled the sheets. The aroma of sex filled his nostrils: stale perfume, sweat and semen.
He stood and left the room. He followed the landing to what had once been Tessa’s room. The chanting was coming from behind the closed door. There was a sing-song quality to the chanting, like a nursery rhyme.
“Tessa, Tessa, Tessa... bless her, bless her, bless her... come back to me.”
The voice belonged to Abby. He would have recognised it anywhere.
He reached out and placed the palm of his hand against the door. It was trembling. But, no: his hand was trembling, not the door. He was afraid, but he could not identify the source of that fear.
Erik grabbed the handle, turned it, and opened the door.
Abby was naked and kneeling before a large pile of what he realised must be Tessa’s things – clothes, drawings, toys, photographs: all piled up into a conical mass, like a stunted tower of mourning.
“Abby... what is this? What are you doing?”
Loculus, said a voice in his head. He thought of Monty on the back seat of the car, and wondered if he should have brought him inside.
Abby ignored him. She acted as if he wasn’t there. She was rocking backwards and forwards, as if she’d lost her mind. Her skin was streaked with dirty sweat, there was mud and leaves in her hair. Her face was smeared with dirt, like primitive camouflage paint.
She continued to chant the rhyme:
“Tessa, Tessa, Tessa... bless her, bless her, bless her... come back to me.”
Erik walked over and grabbed her arm. She was limp, like a sack of flesh without bones. “Abby!” He pulled hard on her arm, turning her around. Her eyes were rolled up into her head: all he could see was the whites. He raised his free hand and slapped her across the face.
She didn’t respond.
He slapped her again, leaving a red mark on her cheek, and then tugged her, dragging her limp body across the carpet towards the door. Still she chanted; she hadn’t even paused for breath. She just kept saying those same words, over and over, a prayer to whatever dark urban gods she thought might be listening.
Erik felt power flood through him. It wasn’t rage, nor was it hatred. This was a purer force, and it came from somewhere outside his body. Like an alien sun shining down on him, the energy warmed his body, cleansing him like a balm.
“This is it,” he whispered. “This is where it all ends.” He tugged the gun out of his belt and clenched his right hand into a fist around the handle. He brought it down, hard, on the top of her head. The sound it made when the base of the grip struck her skull was like a hammer blow. He hit her again, this time with the barrel on the side of the face. He felt her cheekbone crack. Her skin split and blood spattered, splashing the carpet and even the weird tower she’d made at the centre of the room.
He only wanted to scare her...
Erik was blind. He