A Question of Sanity: Chapter 5 A: Aphrodity

Chapter Five

Jake whined.

His nose was against the bottom of the kitchen door and he snuffled along the length of the gap between that and the floor. Jake was worried. Every so often, he’d lift his head and sniff the air but when he’d tasted it, he’d drop back to scent the base again. He couldn’t get very close to the smell but this is where it was closest to him.

It was the not-Ellie smell. Jake has the not-Ellie smell in his nose a lot now. It doesn’t go away for a long time even when he shakes his head; sometimes it makes Jake sneeze. He smells it in the garden, under bushes, and even when he pees on the smell, it doesn’t go. The not-Ellie smell is just like the Ellie smell. The same as the Ellie smell, but not Ellie. The Ellie smell is good and the not-Ellie smell is bad. It isn’t bad like ‘white coat and needle’ man, but bad that makes Jake’s hackles rise. Jake isn’t bad, Jake is a good boy.

Matt was enjoying himself. He’d vacuumed right through downstairs and polished the lounge. He’d cleaned the kitchen until it gleamed and prepared a lasagne for the evening meal. On his way upstairs, he put the palms of his hands together and bowed his head low to Aphrodite. She was a solid bronze statue of the Greek goddess that Ellie had fallen in love with in an exclusive gift shop on Corfu. The celestial lady lived on the table in the hall. Matt paid homage to her on his way upstairs.

He had his head in the bath and his bum in the air as he gave the bathroom a good freshen up. It baffled him why women made so much fuss about housework, it was satisfying. Then he remembered the festering pile of washing, throwing out tentacles in the nether regions of his own bedroom, and amended his thought to the fact that other people’s housework was a little bit satisfying. Sometimes.

As he laboured he sang an old song from the turn of the century, loudly, ‘I like my men like I like my coffee, hot, strong and sweet like toffee.’ After several self-elected encores, he realised that the window was open and he gave it up with a sheepish grin in the mirror. He opted for A Man’s Gotta Do What a Man’s Gotta Do. It didn’t have much in the way of melody or tune, but it was a good manly song for a house-working bloke to be singing.

The bathroom finished, he gave it a squirt of peach air freshener with a flourish and admired his handiwork. In reality, the house looked much the same as it had when he started. Ellie kept it spotless, but to him it was a masterpiece on virgin canvas. Matt was not often driven to have a go at things domestic, and he was proud of himself.

He was coming downstairs, still singing, when he heard the security filter on the front door scanning. It could only be Ellie home, anybody else would have knocked. That’s odd, he thought, she’s only been gone an hour. Something’s wrong.

He stopped on the third step from the bottom, lint duster flung across his shoulder and feather duster held out in front of him like a fencing foil. His other hand struggled with two spent toilet roll inners and a can of Mr Sheen. His surprise at Ellie being home stopped him calling out to her. Ellie home at this time could only spell one thing. Trouble.

The door opened and Ellie walked into the hall. She mimicked Matt’s stance when she saw him on the stairs with his mouth open in surprise. She was the first one to close her mouth, looking back towards the closed door and then towards the kitchen, she met his eyes and stood her ground.

The first thing Matt was aware of was that Ellie was wearing different clothes to those that she’d gone out in. The other thing that hit him was the fact that she gave every impression of not wanting to be seen. She didn’t expect him to still be there and the fact that he was displeased her. But more than that, she seemed almost… it was ridiculous, but Ellie looked scared of him. So many things flew through his brain and one of the split second thoughts took him back to the way he’d yelled at her that morning. It was so out of character for him to lose his temper. The tension and anguish of the last couple of days had got to both of them.

‘Just call me Mr Muscle,’ he said, in an attempt to break the tension, brandishing his feather duster so that particles of dust twinkled in the weak sunlight of the hall. ‘You’re home early, love, is everything all right?’

Ellie looked like a startled rabbit desperate for escape but she recovered her composure and pulled her face into what was a forced smile. Matt had been with her long enough to know the real thing. When Ellie smiled the temperature rose with the warmth she shared, and the sun surrendered behind a cloud of defeat. This was no Ellie smile, just a weak imitation.

‘Ellie, what’s the matter. Talk to me. What’s happened?’ He stopped himself just before adding ‘now’.

Still looking unsure, she smiled again and moved a couple of steps towards him. He opened his arms to her, and as she moved into his embrace he noticed that she was not wearing the eternity ring that he bought for her after they had been together a year. He had been going to surprise her with an engagement ring but when he’d hinted at them getting engaged soon Ellie had said that she wasn’t ready yet. The diamond and sapphire eternity ring was a good compromise. Ellie was delighted and said that the ring, and its symbolism, was all that she could ask for. Maybe she’d taken off her ring because she realised that eternity was, in fact, a very small measure of time and what had seemed so very far away for them was now approaching at a gallop. Matt was shocked to see that her ring wasn’t on her finger. He thought about the moments just before she left. He was sure that she’d been wearing it when she left the house to meet Rob. Where was it? Had she lost it? Sold it? pawned it for crack cocaine? Something else wasn’t right, she felt different in his arms, unyielding. It was as though she didn’t fit him and yet she’d neither grown nor shrunk in the last hour and a half. Why wasn’t she saying anything?

‘Ellie, where’s your…?’

He got no further. He felt movement and stood back to look at her. His mind registered two things. The first was the look of sheer hatred on her face and the other thing he saw was the bronze Aphrodite statue inches from his head.

Matt swerved to the left and the bronze plummeted in an almighty swing to his head. In swaying out of the way, he knocked Ellie off balance and the impact of the blow was deflected and lost much of its power when it hit him. If he hadn’t moved, he would have been killed. As it was, Ellie’s hatred of him was the last thing he was aware of as the lights flickered, dimmed, then went out altogether, taking with them the tremendous pain from the side of his head.

Matt opened his eyes and tried to raise his head. He was on the floor at the foot of the stairs. A fan of crimson speckling spread from the deeper ruby stain on the cream hall carpet. Ellie would be pissed about that. The carpet was ruined. Although Matt knew where he was, he had no idea how he got there. Ellie’s statue lay beside him, he must have knocked it over when he—what? Fell? It was difficult to think with the pain in his head and his consciousness threatening to pack its bags and leave him again. Every time he attempted to move, a wave of nausea slithered over him and left him feeling weak and drained. He mustn’t throw up on Ellie’s carpet; she was already going to go mad about the blood. He tried to call out to her but his mouth was dry. Blood trickled from the wound in his head onto his lips. Some had already caked and it tasted like the back of a tarnished spoon. He remembered Ellie had gone to meet Rob. Something had bothered him about a ring. Her eternity ring, where was it…? He fingered the side of his head. The feeling of finger to raw nerve turned his digit into an electric cattle prod.

He licked his caked lips and grimaced as the disturbed blood came off in a congealing lump onto his tongue. He spat onto the carpet.

His voice was small, the sound not recognisable as his own. ‘Phone, George,’ he managed, the effort of speech making him dizzy. There were no sensors in the hall and the phone connection wasn’t made. He crawled to the study door and pushed it open. This time his voice was louder but the sound that came from his mouth was alien to him. ‘Phone, George…Number 999.’

He was weaker when the computer made the connection.

‘Emergency services. Which service do you require?’

‘I’ve had an accident, need an ambulance.’

The darkness was more aggressive, it wanted to take him back to the world of sleep. Must stay conscious, must stay conscious. He wouldn’t give in to the dark, was fighting it well until his memory came back with sticks and stones to beat him. He remembered Ellie’s face full of hatred. He saw the bronze flying down to take his life, and he called the darkness back from its retreat and begged it to take him away.

‘Sir? Sir? Are you there?’