Behind Her Eyes
: Part 3: Chapter 54

Time marches on, that’s what they say, isn’t it? Tick, tick, tick. It marches through today. This last day. I hadn’t expected it to be tonight. I hadn’t expected to be alone when the final hour came. I’d planned to do it at the weekend when Adam was away and when David was here. Drugged and asleep, perhaps, but here. The stars have aligned for me though, and Adam’s at his father’s and David, well, David is on his self-destruction mission to Scotland. Back to the homeland to clear his conscience. It’s far better this way. Less complicated for one, and this is all about me and Louise after all. David is just the prize in a tug of war. We’re both tired of pulling now. It’s time for the game to end. A loser and a winner must be decided.

The stage is set and everything is ready. I prepare the bedroom and then write my letter and leave it in a sealed white envelope on David’s desk. It’s new stationery – expensive. Only my fingerprints on it. They won’t be able to say David put me up to it. I’ve thought of everything and it all has to be perfect. To look right.

There are still hours to pass, and once I’ve practised everything over and over until I can’t face doing it again, I simply walk around our empty house bidding my farewell to it. My heart races and my mouth is dry. I need the toilet almost constantly. For the first time, I realise I’m afraid.

The rain has stopped and I go out into the cool dusk of the evening and enjoy the prickle of goosebumps on my skin. It calms me. I must screw my courage to the sticking place and I will not fail. The tree branches hang low over the lawn and flowerbeds, but they’re full and alive, and the creeping autumn hasn’t claimed the leaves yet. It’s like a tamed version of the woods on the estate. Left alone, how long would it be until all this trimmed and clipped nature was wild? I feel like this garden. A clipped wild thing. I stay there for a while, savouring the smells and the breeze and the sight of it all, and then, when the evening dips into night and my skin is shivering from the cold, I go back inside.

I take a long, hot shower, forty minutes, maybe more. Time seems to be moving more quickly now, as if aware of my mounting terror, and toying with it. I take deep breaths in the steam to counter my nerves. I am in control. I have always been in control. I will not become a weeping, wailing, fearful woman now, at the end.

I dry my hair, relishing its shiny thickness, and then study myself in the mirror before pulling on my best silk pyjamas. I feel like crying even though that’s absurd, and makes me hate myself a little. I check everything is where it should be, even though I only prepared the room a couple of hours ago and know that it’s all where I need it. Like David constantly checking his passport on the rare occasions we’ve gone away on holiday. I smile at that. The thought of David calms me. This is all for him. Everything has always been for him. I love him so very, very much.

I look at the clock. Ten p.m. In half an hour or so, it’ll be time. I lie back on the bed and close my eyes.