A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

to the mortal sin of playing God, of being a complete arse, of standing in the street and passing judgment on my wife.

      I married Millicent eight weeks after she moved in. A registry office, a few of my friends, and a wedding breakfast at the Rat and Pipe that flowed seamlessly into Bloody-Mary lunch and tequila supper. Neither of us had told our parents, though Millicent’s younger sister Arla flew in from San Diego, got spectacularly drunk, slept with a stranger at the Troy Club, and flew back again the next day.

      ‘Did that just happen?’ I asked, as we left Arla at Heathrow.

      ‘Like a bad version of me, right?’ said Millicent.

      ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Just don’t.’

      So began our marriage of convenience.

      For a time nothing changed. We ate, we smoked, we drank as lovers do. I would lick her to orgasm, slowly, timing the strokes of my tongue to her breathing. She would sit astride me until long after I had come, kissing and caressing me until I grew hard inside her again. We revelled in the carpet burns, the subtle bruisings, the twists and the strains that we casually inflicted upon each other. Edge of worktop, rim of bath, tiled floor and wood-chipped wall – all left their imprint upon her, upon me.

      In cafés we compared our wounds: the grazes on her left wrist; on my right knee. In dark-lit restaurants she would draw my hand to her inner thigh, ask me if I could feel what she felt, that she was tender and abraded. In the aftermath of sex we found the precursor to sex. I liked her as I’d never liked anyone else.

      ‘You like me? You like me?’

      ‘I really, really like you.’

      At this she became serious, almost formal. She took my hand and placed it in my lap.

      ‘No, no, I think it’s more than that.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘You love me, Alex. I actually think you love me.’

      Her words lay heavy in the air: an accusation. I looked at her, made to speak, stopped myself.

      ‘What, Alex?’

      ‘Isn’t it for me to say that I love you?’

      ‘Well, by convention, yes, but you haven’t so far. And I really think you do. You can tell me you don’t, and then, of course, I won’t have to tell you that I love you, which would probably be easier for both of us. But you’re really very sweet to me, and although that doesn’t in itself mean anything, we kind of established that being sweet to women is really not in your nature.’

      ‘Therefore I love you.’

      ‘Would you please drop the word therefore?’

      I lit a cigarette. Tried to think. Offered her the cigarette. She snatched it from me, angry now, dropped it into the ashtray.

      ‘You are so uptight. What’s so hard about saying it?’

      ‘Wait, please. Wait. Wait. Yes. You’re right. I am uptight.’

      ‘That’s it?’

      ‘And I do. I really do.’

      ‘Then say it.’

      ‘I thought I just did.’

      She gave a little shake of the head. ‘No. You didn’t.’

      ‘You said something just now about having to say that you loved me. Do you?’

      ‘Love you? Yes. Yes, Alex, I really do love you. And it kind of scares me. Because I’m in your country, in your apartment – sorry, your flat – living on your terms, and pretty much on your money. The only friends I have here are your friends. I know no one my own age. I have nowhere to go if this screws up. Which of your friends is going to want me sleeping on their floors? Can you name just one person who’d want that? And I know you’ll think I’m being unfair but I kind of wish you’d said it first, because I’m in the weaker position here.’

      ‘I love you.’

      ‘Say it again.’

      ‘I love you, Millicent.’

      She reached for my hand. ‘And now I feel stupid again. I should not have made you say it.’

      ‘Millicent. I love you.’

      ‘Sorry.’

      ‘Stop apologising.’

      ‘Kind of English, right? I fit right in …’

      ‘I love you.’

      ‘I love you. Are we good?’

      ‘We’re good.’

      At first I saw no change in Millicent, nor in myself, but other people must have seen something shift. They began to invite us out as a couple, to the pub at first, but then to parties and to weekends away.

      Those friends I hadn’t dropped seemed genuinely delighted when we celebrated our first anniversary with no sign of a break-up. My female friends began to make room for Millicent, to invite her to bars or to the cinema, to seek out her opinion of books. Slowly, over time, Millicent eased up. There were small changes to her wardrobe. Her breasts jutted a little less, her heels dropped slightly. She was still sharp, but the brittle quality she had had at the start was gone. I no longer had to carry her through London life, to police conversations for slurs on her age or her nationality. I didn’t have to defend her against a hostile world. Millicent got life in London, and it suited her.

      I loved her all the more.

      Millicent handed me a cup of coffee as I entered the kitchen. I put it down by the sink, and held her in my arms. She wrapped herself around me and we clung to each other, rocking gently back and forth.

      ‘I know you have more to tell me, Millicent.’

      ‘I need for you to believe that I would never betray you, Alex.’

      ‘I’m trying. I’m not finding it easy.’

      ‘I know. And I did a bad thing. But I hope when I’ve finished you will see that the worst thing I have done is not to tell you about that bad thing, and that I didn’t betray you. Can you let me get to the end of this?’

      I took a half-step back, took her head in my hands, my palms on her cheeks, my fingers in her hair. I stared into her eyes, trying to find a sign of something – what? But she just looked strung out, a little sad.

      I opened the back door and went out into the garden, sat on the patchy grass. Millicent came out with the coffee cups and sat down beside me. We drank our coffee, saying nothing, not daring to look at each other.

      In the grass beside me a line of ants was dismembering a ladybird. The workers streamed back and forwards along a bare patch in the turf, carrying body parts to an unseen nest. I looked at the cigarette in my hand. My teenage self would have intervened, bringing death by fire. I flicked the ash from the cigarette, and brought the tip close to the stream of ants. It stopped. Ants stood, antennae and forelegs waving in the air, poised as if to attack. Then, perfectly synchronised, the flow of ants began again, making a small detour around the cigarette tip, paying it no mind.

      My telephone rang. Work. I switched it off and put it back in my pocket.

      ‘What are you thinking, Alex?’

      ‘That we really should stop smoking.’

      ‘Really? That’s it?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘OK, so the day I lost the bracelet was about six weeks ago when you were away. Bryce came round and said he’d been expecting company and been let down, and he had an open bottle of wine, and some cold cuts that needed to be eaten. And I told him that I already ate, and that Max was in bed, and that I had to be there in the house.

      ‘And he said the wine was too good to waste, that he paid £65 for it, and he