I hesitated. I recalled as she spoke that there was a murder case some years ago in which a man had tricked his wife into writing a suicide note and then killed her. I could hardly cite this as a reason for refusing to cooperate, and I didn’t seriously suspect her of any murderous intention, but I was sure it would be extremely unwise to put such a potentially compromising document into her irresponsible hands. I quickly invented another reason to decline: ‘For the same reason I wouldn’t use that website where you enter all your personal details and a computer program calculates the day you will die.’
She looked taken aback. ‘You mean, you’re afraid it might come true?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Have you been tempted to commit suicide, then? Why?’ She had dropped the tone of badinage. Her blue eyes were intently focused on me, waiting for my answer.
‘I’m gradually losing my hearing,’ I said.‘There’s no cure. Eventually I’ll be stone deaf. It’s very depressing.’
‘Gee, yeah, I can imagine but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘I never came across a case where somebody killed themselves because of deafness,’ she said.
‘Beethoven came near,’ I said.
‘But he didn’t.’
‘No. He still had all that marvellous music inside him which he wanted to get down on paper. I don’t have any marvellous music inside me. I don’t have any marvellous anything.’ I was almost persuaded by my own story, moved by the pathos of my imagined plight. Alex anyway was convinced.
‘Hey,’ she said, putting her hand over mine on the table. ‘Sure you do.’ Her fingers were cool and soft, like Dad’s. I was startled, but did not remove my hand. She wore a sapphire ring on her middle finger which seemed to reflect her eyes. ‘You have a lot of knowledge, Desmond, which you can share with people like me,’ she said, in a lighter tone, withdrawing her hand.
We talked for a while about my past research - or rather I talked. She was charming and receptive, and I have to admit that I enjoyed her company, forgetting the embarrassment and worry she had caused me in the past few weeks. I bought her another cup of coffee and myself another tea, with two portions of carrot cake. But when I glanced at my watch and said I had to be going she reverted to the mood of her entrance, and said with a conspiratorial smirk, ‘I’ll leave first. Don’t forget your umbrella,’ reviving the memory of her email prescribing her ‘punishment’, and its sequel. Neither of us had mentioned that episode, and it was as if by not registering my disapproval I had acquired some virtual complicity in it. I smiled feebly and stayed obediently in my seat as she gathered up her bag and her scarf and did up her coat. ‘Thanks for the coffee and cake,’ she said. ‘And if you change your mind about the suicide note -’
‘I won’t,’ I said.
‘Well . . . I’ll be in touch.’
About what, I wondered. I had come to the café with the intention of bringing our relationship to an end once and for all, and failed again. I watched her make her way between the tables to the door, and to my dismay she paused briefly to greet a young man sitting on his own with a laptop open on the table, who looked up as she passed. Absorbed in our conversation, I hadn’t noticed him come into the café. After Alex had gone out he glanced across at me, and I stared him down. I wondered if he had been observing us, and whether he had entered the café in time to see Alex cover my hand with hers.
Tonight, after writing up our meeting, I began idly drafting a pseudicide note - not with any intention of offering it to Alex, but as a stylistic exercise. It was addressed to Fred of course, but just deciding on the form of address was difficult. Fred or Winifred? Dearest or Darling? In the end I decided on Dearest Winifred, the intimacy of the epithet balancing the formality of the full first name, which seemed more appropriate to the occasion than ‘Fred’. Imagining what had brought me to the point of preferring extinction to the continuation of consciousness was easier, for I had already thought of it in conversation with Alex: a drastic acceleration of hearing loss, leading to almost total deafness. Everything I suffered now - frustration, humiliation, isolation - multiplied exponentially. Barely