get to sleep before he starts snoring.
I sip my wine and think about the man I killed, and I am invisible. The television is on, but the sound is on mute. I like the silence. Graham is out, it’s his weekly badminton club night. I run my top lip along the glass and exhale gently, making the glass sing. I lick my lips, enjoying the sharp, citrussy tang of the Chardonnay. It’s a good one, a very expensive wine, in more ways than one. After all, it cost a man his life.
I stare down at my hands. They’re admirably still. No trembling, no aftershock. I am surprised, I would have expected more fear...panic, perhaps. I mean, after all, it’s not every day you take the life of another. But something has changed in me tonight. I would have expected that I would feel nervous, scared, guilty even. Instead, I feel excited. Alive. Powerful even. I don’t recall feeling like this before. I’ve always felt small, insignificant, so this surge, this quickening that the man’s death has triggered is unfamiliar, alien. This must be the rush a drug user feels, and I don’t want it to stop.
I hadn’t meant to kill him, no way, it wasn’t like it was planned. I had only gone out for a pint of milk. For my coffee in the morning. Well, that and a bottle of wine. Okay, primarily a bottle of wine. I had driven further than I needed to, there was a shop closer, but the wine selection at that shop was limited to cheap and nasty over-sugared Australian fizz, so I had carried on driving, enjoying the soporific numbness of driving on dark, quiet roads. I did that sometimes.
I know I should feel some sympathy at least. I know I should, but I don’t. I didn’t know the man, I had no empathetic connection to him, was it unnatural to feel nothing? Yes, sure, I killed him, but if he had died tonight at the hands of another, or indeed of natural causes, how would I have known about it then? If that had been the case, I would have known nothing, felt nothing. As I do now. Well...not necessarily nothing. That sparkling frisson of elation is still with me.
I think that it is extremely unlikely that I will be caught. The damage to my car appears to be minimal and I’m almost positive that nobody saw what happened. The road was very quiet.
And, after all, I am invisible.
Chapter 2
‘How was badminton?’
‘It was alright. A bit quiet,’ Graham grunted.
Graham wasn’t a morning person. Before ten o’clock in the morning, he was grumpy. It couldn’t be much fun for his staff, though maybe he was different at work. Maybe he put on a facade, I’m sure he would for Nikki, at least.
He chomped his cereal as he flicked the pages of yesterday’s local newspaper. I could see moon-like flecks of milk on his chin, nestling amongst a few straggles of wiry hair that he had evidently missed on his morning shave. The slurp and chew of over-sugared flakes of corn echoed in my head, and I clenched my fingers, digging my bitten nails into my palms. I wanted to pick the bowl up and smash it in his face.
‘Can I have another coffee?’
I stared at him, my eyes boring into his bald head. He obviously felt it unnecessary to say ‘please’. His manners had deteriorated in recent years – perhaps he felt that I was just his wife, undeserving of common courtesy. I sighed, and took his cup. I could have refused, could have said ‘piss off and make your own’, but It was easier to make it myself. The coffee machine was my pride and joy – Italian, expensive – and I didn’t like Graham touching it. His fingers were too fat, too impatient, and I didn’t want him to break the machine. Like he had the last one.
‘Daniel still in bed, is he? Shouldn’t he be up by now, he’ll be late for work.’ Graham said, without looking up from the paper.
‘No, he hasn’t got to go in today. His boss is a bit quiet at the moment, I don’t think that he’s got much work on at the moment,’ I replied, but Graham wasn’t listening, he’d switched off after the word ‘no’. I may as well have been a wall. I spoke to the wall sometimes – during one-sided conversations with Graham I would say ‘yes, that’s a great idea,