The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,4

my eyes from her face to look again into the dark vacancy beyond the open cellar door.

She pushed past me and waded into the debris at the top of the steps, groping for a light switch just inside the doorway. At once, she let out a high-pitched cry, so primal it made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. Her horror echoed, bouncing off the stone.

I pressed behind her, shaking, straining to see. The single, dusty lightbulb in the cellar below gave a faint light.

Ralph lay, crumpled and motionless, at the foot of the steps. He looked as if he’d hit the concrete head first, his neck tilted at an awkward angle. His limbs spilled in a heap, one leg bent under his body, the other trailing. I reached for the white-washed wall to steady myself.

Helen flew down the steps, hurtling into the cellar and collapsing over him, running her fingers over his chest, then higher, to his neck, with frantic, clumsy movements. For a moment, she seemed to be strangling him, then I realised why she was pressing her fingertips into his flesh. She was searching desperately for a pulse.

I imagined the marks rising on his skin, white, then red, where her fingers probed. She twisted suddenly and reached for his wrist and her fingertips circled it, again searching for life. My heart stopped, watching, waiting.

Another cry, desolate and heart-rending. ‘Ralph?’ I gripped the doorframe, my knuckles whitening. Sharp flares of pain stabbed my stomach. I crumpled, bending forward, my eyes fixed on Helen, a shadowy shape in the gloom.

She crouched over him, her legs drawn up, sinking her face in his side, her arms spread across the broad bulk of his body. She was wailing, a low guttural howl of misery and pain from deep inside her as she cradled him and rocked herself to and fro.

His hand lay limp, palm up, on the concrete floor. The fingers that had written so much poetry, which had caressed me, curled uselessly into the air.

My knees gave way and I sank abruptly onto the top step. I drew the edges of the shirt around me, shivering now, and put my face in my hands. Everything smelt of him. My palms. The shirt. What had I done? Dear God, what had I done? How could it be? This man who, just minutes earlier, had been strong and pulsing with life, how could he be gone?

I rocked myself backwards and forwards, nauseous, copying her rhythmical movement instinctively, without knowing why.

The soft wailing continued to rise from below, bouncing round the hard walls. She was keening, burying herself in his body.

I stuttered, ‘I’ll call someone.’ I struggled to find breath. ‘An ambulance.’

She lifted her head and stared up the steps. Her eyes shone, ghoulish in the gloom. She seemed to be struggling to place me, to remember who I was, to assemble in her mind what had happened and why I was also here.

I said, ‘He fell against the door. It just—’

‘How?’ she breathed. ‘How could you?’

My insides froze. She turned back to Ralph and lay across him, trying to kiss his forehead, his cheek. I couldn’t bear to look but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. She pushed her hand into his curled one and held it. Then she pushed back and got to her feet, looked around.

I was hunched forward, my body shaking so hard, my feet teetering on the concrete steps. I could hardly bear my own weight.

‘Or the police?’ My thoughts were wild. Who should I call? ‘Maybe.’

‘No!’ She snapped up her head and gave me a look of disgust, taking in my naked legs, my hands, clutching the folds of her husband’s shirt round my chest. A shirt she may have chosen, washed and ironed. ‘Don’t you dare.’

I shrank back into myself. I thought of her daughter, asleep upstairs in her bedroom. Of Ralph’s reputation at school, ruined. Of the scandal once the circumstances of his death became known. It would all come out, just as I’d threatened. About me. About her.

‘It was an accident.’ I saw him again, clawing the air as the door gave way, his eyes wide. ‘He fell.’

She blinked towards the top of the steps, replaying what had happened in her mind.

‘Why?’ she whispered. I didn’t know if she was struggling to make sense of the accident or of his betrayal. She’d never suspected an affair, Ralph had told me. She’d trusted him.

Her eyes landed again on me, huddled on the top