What's for dinner

“I thought you’d be late back,” Sally said, “I saw that piece on the news about the murdered girl. Was that you?”

 

I nodded. I wanted to say more, to say that it was me who found the body, or at least the first clumps of flesh that led the way to the rest of the body, like a horror flick version of a paper chase, but I just didn’t have the heart.

 

I was home. The day was over, I just wanted to put it all behind me.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

 

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not hungry.” I said.

 

I didn’t feel like expanding, explaining that the reason I hadn’t eaten all day was that I’d spent the day investigating a murdered girl’s innards for possible clues, and the mere thought of food was enough to make me want to vomit again.

 

“You have to eat,” she said. “You mustn’t let your work get to you, you’ll just fade away. And then where would we be?”

 

I wasn’t up for arguing. Not after last time – she’d stormed out, gone to her mother’s, said I didn’t appreciate her, didn’t appreciate all she did for me.

 

“Okay, but not now. I need to unfurl.”

 

“Unfurl? What are you, a ball of string?”

 

Yes, I’m a bloody ball of string. Tense, knotted, twisted, twirled up, like the innards and intestines of a young girl twisted up on the floor, the unavoidable centre of all things, until forensics had finally taken enough photos to content themselves and I could finally find ten minutes to vomit discreetly in a recently-arrived portaloo.

 

“I thought you wouldn’t have had time to get anything. I’ve eaten, but yours is keeping warm in the oven.”

 

“Oh. Give us ten minutes love, I have to wash and change.”  To make sure there are no traces of blood on my clothes, to wash away the smell of death, to come down the stairs cleaned, refreshed, in a new set of clothes, ready to start the pretence that I’d left work behind me.

 

“I made you something special,” she said, when I descended the stairs. I nodded, smiled, showing my appreciation.

 

Holy fuck! Was this some sort of perverted joke? Was she trying to make me sick? Was she trying to make me divorce her? I looked at her, trying to read what was going on in her head.

 

Nothing, by the looks of things. Offal. A plate of bloody offal.

 

All day I’ve been trying to get the smell of blood out of my nostrils, and I come home to this. The potent tang of livery, bloody mess is unavoidable, forcing itself up my nose like a knife forcing itself through a young girl’s stomach.

 

“I know you love offal. I hate cooking it, just looking at it gives me a turn, but I thought being as you’re working on a murder an’ all I’d do I should do you something special. Something to put iron in your belly.”

 

Good god, she has no idea. Your husband’s spend the day scooping up a murder victims entrails, and you reward him with this, a plate of entrails; kidneys

liver, heart and bacon. Well, at least the bacon I can eat. Two rashers, seeped in offally blood, the worst bacon I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. What sort of world is it where I’m not even enjoying my bacon? 

 

A perverted world. A twisted world. And I’ve foolishly taken a job where I get to wallow in the dingiest mire that humanity can conceive, literally bloodying my hands with the blood and inards of young girls, cut up like a sacrifice, but no god has been appeased today, just the bloody satiation of all that is godless.

 

If you really cared about me you’d make me a salad on days like these. You’d make me a salad every day, just in case I have another day like this.

 

She watches me eat. Part of me thinks she’s trying to make me eat it, enjoying her little joke, but I know it isn’t true. Part of me just wants to tell her; ‘sorry love, I love this stuff normally, but it’s just a bit too much like the contents of the girl’s stomach I found this morning.’

 

But I can’t say that. She’d break down in tears, storm off, maybe leave me for good this time. And even if I could get her to understand, to realise what it is I actually do, to see why I don’t feel like eating offal today, all that would mean is that she’d try to force me to quit my job, the job I love. Another argument.

 

There is no escape. It’s offal or divorce. That’s the grim reality I face. Sometimes there are no real choices in life.

 

I finish the bacon, munch on a big hunk of bread and nibble at the meat, I feel a lung slithering around in my mouth. I try shutting my eyes, but that’s worse, for only one image will come to me, and it’s in unpleasant juxtaposition with what’s in my mouth at the moment.

 

Eventually I’ve eaten enough to satisfy her, at least I hope so. You can never really tell.

 

“I can’t eat any more love, I just don’t have the appetite tonight.”

 

“You have to eat,” she said. “It’s a tough job you do, you need to build yourself up. It’s all good stuff – iron and protein.”

 

Again I think about telling her, but, no. Just the thought of it, the young girls innards, curling on the floor, like offal on a plate.

 

Oh, I’m fine, really. I’ll have my appetite back tomorrow. Days like this you don’t feel like eating much.

 

Meal over, the day’s other horrors over, we load up the dishwasher, pour a couple of glasses of wine and sit down to watch Midsummer Murders.

 

This is what she thinks my life is like, I realise. Maybe, on a bad day you’ll have 30 seconds of bloody body, that you can close your eyes to if you’re squeamish, but mostly just driving round idyllic villages, questioning eccentrics and being fed cake and tea by dotty old women, most of whom turn out to be secret lesbians.

 

If only!

 

Amazingly I fall asleep halfway through the programme, collapse onto her shoulder. And there was me thinking I’d never be able to sleep again.