Scotch-Brite Classic Sponge Scourers, 10 x Twin Pack, 20 in total
Mariticide, noun. From the Latin ‘maritus’ meaning husband plus ‘-cide’ from ‘caedere’, to cut, to kill.
I was up early so I got to it before she could see. Red paint, this time, which seemed harder to remove than the white. Is that true? Never mind. Either way, it was a good thing I kept those scourers because it took four of them to get it off. It’s a grotty fence, as Tom was always saying, the posts bleached and rotting, cracks stretching between the slats, and parts of the letters – the curl of the G, the bottom of the L – were painted on the overgrown ivy. When I’d finished, I picked off each adulterated leaf.
‘YOUR GUILTEY’
I don’t like it. It’s unnerving. It smacks of mob rule, of a world in which a person who is accused of something, proven or otherwise, is expected to go around with a marker on their back. As if police, court, a trial, jail term (however it pans out), is not punishment enough.
I won’t tell her, of course. She’s had enough to deal with. Bad enough to have spent those nights in the cell at Wandsworth police station; then the misery of the full week at Bronzefield. The terrible food and the screaming, the soap that stripped a layer of skin. I tried to visit, got all the way to Ashford on the train, with the Clarins cleansing milk she likes, but it turns out you need photo ID: a passport or driving licence, and I have neither. (How do people manage? If she ends up going back, I’ll have to work something out.) Anyway, she’s only just settling in here. The last thing she needs now is to feel got at.
Of course, it’s just the daubings of some illiterate or – to be sympathetic – dyslexic. But as I crouched, my back to the street, bucket at my side, I felt unnerved, as if each car that passed was watching. I felt suffused with shame, too, the natural humiliation, perhaps, of anyone forced to clear up someone else’s unpleasantness. And I felt strangely lonely. It was an accident, I’ve told everyone who asked. Innocent. Any jury will see that. Surely. I don’t know why people are so odd.
Once I’d stowed the scourers and the bucket in the kitchen, I came out to find her loitering in the hall, asking petulantly for her breakfast. Normally I take it up to her on a tray, as I always did for Mother, but this morning I hadn’t had time because of being busy with the fence. I shepherded her into the front room while I got it ready. She likes a particular type of granola, but we’re running low (I can only get it by walking down to the big Sainsbury’s) so I supplemented it with some of my Quick Oats. She didn’t seem to notice. She ate without expression, gazing out of the window at the cars and the buses, the children on their way to school. She seemed to be in one of her fugue states. Shock, the doctor said. But I’m never quite sure.
Maudie was agitating to go out, and when I suggested Ailsa join us I didn’t expect her to agree. She hasn’t left the house willingly since she got here. There’s always been some excuse: too tired, or her eyes hurt, or she might see someone she knew. Today the defaced fence must have given an extra force to my words, or perhaps I simply timed it right.
‘It doesn’t do anyone any good to be shut up all day,’ I said and she spun round. ‘OK’: the emphasis on the K, as if she were doing me a favour.
I found her a jacket, one of mine, and a scarf, ditto. She has none of the right clothes with her, all too summery. The jacket, a maroon-coloured puffer, not 100 per cent clean, was bulky and she didn’t like it. Her nose wrinkled and I had to push her arms into it, as if I were dressing a recalcitrant child. The black scarf passed muster. It’s only polyester but it feels like cashmere and, as I searched for the keys in the hall, I caught her studying her reflection in a mirror, lifting her chin to rearrange it at the side of her neck. Some habits die hard.
I stage-managed the walk, of course, making sure to turn right out of the