Bees can't fly

She was surprised to feel nothing as he died. She had imagined and plotted his death so many times that when it finally happened she expected to feel.....revenged; satisfied; exultant; relieved.

But not this flatness, this void of feeling.

He lay across the rug that had filled the space between sofa, armchair and hearth ever since she could remember.It was a bit tatty and grubby with a dark stain in one corner, from a pen that had leaked during homework years ago. No one had cared enough to try and wash the stain out and now it was part of the decor. There was a piece of her that was affronted by his body sprawled messily on the floor; she wanted to tidy up, clean the house of his prescence. Was the wheelie bin empty? No, she couldn't. The police would want him now. A savage satisfaction twisted within her; now he would know what it felt like to be torn, ripped, ravaged, eviscerated. Pathologists would slice, penetrate, brutalize, treat his body as an object.

It had begun when she was eleven years old. Midnight visits; 'are you all right?' or 'do you need a drink?' In the winter;'are you warm enough?'

He had married mum the year before. Confetti, the Town Hall and aunts, uncles and grandparents celebrating, telling her 'aren't you lucky? A new daddy!'Aunty Maggie telling her that now she would be spoiled to death.

Spoiled she definitely was.

She had been prepared, even eager to love him and offered him her heart with wide-eyed innocence. How would he love her? Would it be trips to the park to walk a new puppy? Longed for toys given with pride in his eyes because he had pleased her?

He began by pulling back the quilt as she lay, more than half asleep in her pink pyjamas with red lovehearts printed all over. 'Are you all right?' he would whisper while he ran a hand from her foot to her knee. 'Are you warm enough?' he would ask solicitously as he slipped a hand under her pyjama top. His fingers would slide across the sheet and then cover her again with the quilt. When he left she would be wide awake and paralysed.

Fast forward four years and she was working in the local corner shop on Saturdays and studying hard at school. She was a loner; choosing to work in the school library at lunchtimes and with no friends at all. How could she have?' The girls at school were such innocent children talking about celebrities, clothes and boys. Her conversation would be about fear, pain, isolation and perverse education.

She could not speak.

The teachers barely noticed her; a quiet, compliant girl who left no ripples. The manager at the corner shop tried to be friendly and gave her a bag of chocolate eclairs sometimes, along with her wages. She always thanked him politely and quietly, but she mistrusted his motives. She never ate them; just dropped them in the bin near the shop as she left.

At home she was nursing her mother through cancer, caring for the house and her stepfather. She was constantly tired and moved slowly and deliberately as she washed, ironed, cleaned and cooked. She fell into bed exhausted every night and was asleep in an instant. When he came into the room she did her best to remain asleep, even when her eyes were open. Ignore his hands, don't feel the hard paunch pressing into her smooth, flat belly, don't think about what he's doing or she will begin to scream and never, never stop.

She began planning his death when she was sixteen. Her mother had died four months before her birthday and he had become bolder, demanding more. No one could help her. Who would believe her? The corner shop offered possibilities; weedkillers, painkillers, meat knives. She visualised him writhing in agony as poison ate into his stomach lining or paracetamol poisoned his liver. She imagined the astonishment on his face as cold steel tore across his throat or found his heart between his ribs. She thought of her joy as he fell under the wheels of a passing lorry or as his car tipped over a cliff. In the end she did nothing. She was too young and too afraid.

She endured.

What was her excuse now? It was too late, she was lost. Her reality had been woven through with rottenness until she could not imagine a different way of life. Could she exist without it? At twenty four she gazed at his repulsive body as it lay dead, across the rug. A hand was laid on hers. She looked at the female PC who was offering her tea and sympathy. She took the tea but left the sympathy in the saucer. 'Any idea on the cause?' the PC asked low-voiced to the doctor kneeling on the floor. A grunted reply, 'we'll know more after the post mortem.' The woman turned to her again, 'is there anyone we can call for you? A relative, friend, a neighbour?' She shook her head emphatically. This house was too full already. A woman gasping in agony as the evil canker inside her ate her life. A man who found he could not resist the evil resident inside him. And a young girl crouched in the corner, wearing pink pyjamas decorated with red hearts, sobbing out her grief through her twenty four year old shell. In the end she hadn't even managed to stop him; kill him herself. Just watched him as he had fallen grey-faced and sweating to the floor, his face a rictus of absolute agony. She had gazed dispassionately at his contorted body, watching from a distant corner as her body crouched over his to watch the light and the life fade from his eyes.

She could not even recognise her deliverance.