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  Since Monday, then, Lizzie had worn the peg and sniffed menthol and eucalyptus. She had taken to standing in the shed where whiffs of her living husband were still in the air. There were three or four moments of pure denial this week when all senses agreed Jacob was still alive. She smelled him that same afternoon in the shed, and then felt him as a breath at her neck at the kitchen table on Monday and Tuesday night. She even thought she’d seen him, briefly, in the garden, first thing on Wednesday morning, crouching over his hole.

  Lizzie knew these were phantoms, but the trickery was enough, so far, to keep her from the paralysis of shock. She had gone up to the bedroom, once, on Tuesday afternoon, to pack a bag. She’d gone to the mirror and saw a tired woman of fifty-three, but her face bore no obvious trace of what she had done. Instead she saw a woman looking headstrong for once in a wispy enclosure of light hair. There was nothing to admire in the mirror, there was absolutely nothing to like; but the face was a face like any other, and altering her perception of it out of self-pity was an indulgence she’d never pursued either. The body of her husband would be consumed, the house cleaned and rented out, and life continued, without sensibility, in Scotland.

  2

  Actually she hadn’t bludgeoned him to death. She’d hit him once on the top of the head. Then she’d swung the spade with both arms from the side and hit him on the back of his head so that his brain shot forward in his skull.

  He went down on the grass, falling stiffly like a toy soldier. Lizzie watched his body thud. Then she walked across the grass to get the axe from the back of the shed door. It was easy. She went back into the house and took the rubber gloves and the bin liners from the cupboard under the sink. She fed the dog, and remembered the white twisty ties in the drawer of miscellaneous items. She shut the drawer carefully, and walked backwards through the kitchen, into the garage, then closed the garage door behind her and locked it. It was very quiet out in the frosty garden. The spade and the axe, which were to be her tools, were lying out there beside him, as if put down for her by an imaginary friend, and the landline phone and the mobile on which she might have called the police were locked inside, on the table in the hall.

  For the first cut she’d kept herself very still and focused. With her fingers she made a gap between his sock and jeans. The axe whistled through the air as she brought it down on the bit of white above his sock and she heard it clunk against the bone. She gave it another go, drawing the axe back up through the air and slamming it down this time, slicing through, so that his foot came away from the body; blood spilled out onto the frost, and she bent down to peel his sock off.

  She wrapped his foot very tightly in the bin liner; pressing the foot and ankle into a corner of the bag and pulling the material flush around it. Then she made a knot very close to the back of the ankle, so that there could be no trapped air.

  11. It might be useful to keep a little record. How did he die? Was it during a row? On a scale of 1 to 10, what sort of a row? What, or who, was also involved? What about the neighbors?

  12. Are you on a street or out in the country?

  13. Did anyone hear you?

  14. Any neighbors who might be particularly susceptible to melodrama? Be mindful of determined, pursed lips and/or ashen faces, and beady eyes on a cold suburban street. Anyone out there unaware of the depth of their own anger, or unable to experience it in any sort of appropriate way, will be dreaming of a situation like this. It could keep them alive for years.

  15. The world is full of parasites.

  16. Keep your curtains closed.

  17. Did you also chuck china, glass, or try to kick down a wall? Was the dog involved? Lashing out at animals during an argument is common, particularly when losing an argument to a passive-aggressive other.

  18. Is there an injury of your own that you must also attend to now that he is in the freezer?

  19. Did you get kicked, whacked, slammed in a door or throttled? If so, be vigilant. You don’t want to find yourself being examined in hospital for a broken finger while there is human flesh in your teeth, throat and stomach.

  She left the body bleeding over the hole and took the foot to the house and into the garage. She put it in the freezer, in between the petits pois and the spinach. Then she went one step further in her organization and fetched a white label from the same drawer of miscellaneous items in the kitchen. She wrote on the label, RIGHT FOOT, then pressed it onto the bag and put the freezer lid down.

  Straight back outside, and all his clothes came off then, his blue corduroy trousers with the faded knees, his black T-shirt and thin jumper; even his soft old tartan boxer shorts were carefully folded in a pile. She dragged him with the other leg so that she could take more of the stump off over the hole. Then the axe came down above the wrinkled right knee, where the skin had gone soggy. She took the axe up into the air and brought it down again into the bottom of his femur. This time the bone resisted, grabbed the steel and held. Lizzie felt something in her stomach then, a heave, and a rush of sweat to the temples and to the upper lip. She felt the panic, and her fear of the panic; so then she straightened up a little, holding the axe like a golf club while she took a big steadying breath.

  She closed her eyes and pulled the axe out of the slit in his thigh, laying it carefully on the grass. Going to the shed for the saw, she put her gloved wrist to her upper lip knowing she was smearing blood all over her face.

  But her legs had been working and she had known how to get the saw from the shed and stride back across the lawn. That was the strange thing. She had known how to carry on.

  Jacob had pointed out quite early on in the marriage that Lizzie had an inability to be present in the moment. He said she didn’t notice things. Not with all of her senses. On the contrary, though, all that oxygen made her feel high and alone out in the woods—so much so that coming in to curl up with the dog often felt like the sensible thing to do. It was pitiful, he said, how she never wanted to go to London, or do anything. They never went anywhere. He’d shouted: “Why can’t we just throw the dog in the car and go hiking?”

  She placed the ridged blade of the saw in the wound she’d made with the axe. The bone was thick and heavy—he’d not been good at sports—and she heard it splinter as the saw moved backwards and forward in the wound. She had deliberately not thought of the fleshy bits or the cutting feeling or the muggy butcher’s smell in her nostrils. She knew then—out on the lawn that morning she really understood—that things could be boxed up in the mind, and there wasn’t any pain to be managed but her own.

  20. Notice that little lift inside when you put the hand in the oven, as when putting new-season lamb in on a cold night in March.

  21. Parboil a handful of new potatoes to be crushed into the tray with the juice of a lemon and some mint leaves from the garden.

  22. Resist the urge to put in a lot of garlic. Cook as normal.

  23. Spare time can be spent thinking about where you are going to go when this month is over. Remember that you might be able to do this in less than a month. It could take a week. You have given yourself a month so as not to feel distressed.

  24. Give yourself breaks. Little treats. A can of Coke. The odd cigarette. Hot-water bottles. Bubble baths. A decent bottle of wine.

  25. It is going to take you less than a month. Think a fortnight. Think three weeks max.

  Back in the kitchen, Lizzie took the hand out of the oven and tipped it straight onto a plate. She breathed and looked, but she couldn’t leave it like that, with the skin all black and blistered, and the fingernails still on. Even with the potatoes crushed, and gathered nicely around it. Which actually made everything worse; the potatoes so fresh and small, and the hand charred and risen up, with the fingers flattened at the ends and curling in a bit in a weak, shriveled claw. Even after she’d sprinkled the mange-tout like camouflage, it was still Jacob’s right hand. She took the vegetables away, slid his hand off the plate, and put it back on the chopping board. Then she took the m
allet and gave it a big smack, so that the back of the hand burst open revealing sinews of white meat and sharp, popping veins. Lizzie gagged and reached across for his spinning wedding ring, and then she leaned back, and closed her eyes.

  26. Heap broken bits onto a plate and make a stack with mange-tout and baby corn.

  27. Dollop a great spoon of red-currant jelly, and add another sprinkle or two of best-quality sea salt.

  28. Carry your plate to the table and sit on a chair. Put wine on the table, and a newspaper or magazine. Strategically place a colorful coffee-table book (that one you have of woodland birds?) so that you can keep your eye on the pictures.

  29. Turn the radio on (you won’t be at the stage yet where sounds are like a scraping sensation in your ear) or grab a felt-tip to scribble on the paper while you eat. All you need to be doing is arranging things in such a way as to make the eating of human flesh a little bit easier. As you eat, therefore, you might like to read the words aloud, or riotously pull pages out of the magazine and focus your hearing on the rip.

  30. Alternatively, look down at your plate, at what you are doing, and try to understand. You will want to vomit. You can do that, and then eat. Chances are that if you look now you’ll be better off later. You’ll have begun the emotional processing. Better in the long run. Much better than if you look away in the scary bits.

  31. Listen, though, looking away is a reflex. It’s normal, and human, and absolutely fine. It’s what we do all the time. You don’t have to adopt the warrior pose while the pieces are in the oven, or sit like Shiva. Remember, a Buddhist wouldn’t do this. Or anything like this. What you are doing is more challenging, more stressful than anything anyone has ever done before.

  Lizzie used her knife and fork at first, with a spoon set out for sorbet after, but the cutlery was put down after a minute or two, and the dog given the odd tidbit under the table. She nibbled her husband’s roasted fingers, as if from a rib, and she cracked the smaller bones of the thumb while frowning hard.

  She watched the clock. It was almost nine. The heating had gone off, but the radiator was still warm. Under the table, Rita was sitting up and alert. From time to time she shifted on her paws, knocking her skull on the wood as if to remind Lizzie that she was still there.

  32. Begin a stockpot. Peel and roughly chop one carrot, one onion. Chop one stalk of celery and soften carrots, onions and celery with black peppercorns, dried bay leaf, fresh parsley stalks, a sprig of fresh thyme.

  33. Let the stockpot simmer on the stove for a few days. Let the bones get nice and soft, then simply lift them out with a ladle and purée in a blender before returning to the pot.

  34. As you work through the freezer you can simply add leftovers and season. You will build up something really delicious and flavorsome that you could use perhaps for a final meal.

  3

  Lizzie tipped the hand bones that were left on her plate into the stock—she was using the old casserole dish—and then she stacked the plates on the side. The stock was a bit smelly, so she opened the back door to let air into the kitchen, and she waited there, in the doorway, while the food inside her went down.

  After the sorbet, she sat for a while at the table, looking at the tiny ceramic geese with their heads bent forward over the sill. They’d come in a set from her shipbroker boss before she’d got made redundant from the office in Guildford, and she’d painted the scarves with a tiny brush from some pots of ceramic paint. Twenty years on from art school, and she’d felt like a fool doing that, and Jacob had sniggered when he’d come in to see what she was doing.

  Lizzie climbed up onto the sink in her slippers and shoved the little geese to the side with her foot. She reached up for the curtain pole and pulled the end off, stepping back into the basin and letting the curtains slide to the floor. The curtains had come from his parents’ house. Like so much else here they were old and musty and unloved.

  LP was short for loo paper. It was also Lizzie Prain. Not that it mattered. But had he meant to include her on his list? Had he been thinking of something to buy for her, some little trinket perhaps to show her he’d been thinking of her and wanted to reconnect? More likely it was loo paper. Or because he had something to say. “Tell LP I’m going to London this afternoon to see Joanna,” for example. Not that he’d have bothered to say anything if that was the case. He never had. He just went and thought nothing of it. There was nothing left. There had barely been anything there at all. Beyond their mutual need for someone, something, to cling to.

  You could see from the fridge how things had been: empty, pretty much, and the shelves smeary and old. They’d not been gregarious. Or had people round. The ceilings were low, and the house, on its dripping bend in the lane, was too small, they’d felt, for entertaining. And it wasn’t signposted well. It wasn’t his fault, of course. He’d been given the house by his aunt Jane, who’d left it to him in her will. Happily, he’d come down from the north of England, with a box full of punk records and some old curtains, to take it on.

  Lizzie took the old jars from the fridge, rinsed them at the sink, gave each a good wash with her fingers, and then placed them in the recycling box by the back door. The rubber gloves came off with a snap. Being practical was paramount. First thing in the morning, she thought, she would go round the house adding things to the box.

  35. Keep a pad of fresh white paper on the table. Or a ring-bound notebook. Make lists of things you will need in the fridge. You’re trying not to spend money, but do bear in mind that you will crave quite bland things after a few days. Porridge oats? Rice? Look for these in the cupboard and put them on the sideboard to counter the feeling of meat. Millet is known for its calming, grounding properties. There’s a health-food shop in Farnham. Why not pop in there and pick up a bag of millet? You could combine it with a visit to the bank to discuss the joint account.

  36. A bit of crisp celery might be nice.

  37. Lemons.

  38. Clementines.

  39. Keep the kitchen clean at all times. Evidence needs to be removed moment by moment. Put cigarette ends in the bin. Clean up after yourself. Put dishcloths in the dishwasher with the dirty dishes so that they can be thoroughly cleaned in very hot water. Wipe down the work surfaces.

  40. Put the dog’s bed in your bedroom if it helps you to feel less alone.

  41. You are, by the way, at this moment in your life, completely alone. Like wandering in the Antarctic of human experience.

  42. Worth remembering next time you feel the pang.

  43. This is only loneliness.

  44. And it will pass.

  She wouldn’t actually say that she’d done him a favor. His depression had brought him closer to death on several occasions than she’d ever been in her own life, but it wasn’t clear if he’d ever really meant to do himself in.

  There was the time she’d found him trying to hang himself from a tree by standing on paint cans he’d put on the wall at the bottom of the garden. Possibly he’d been doing it for attention. He’d looked back at the house to see her standing in the kitchen window. Then, after a while, he’d given up. He’d let his neck out of the noose and come back in, smiling, to put the kettle on.

  He’d not been able to understand his own moods. He’d pushed the downs into weird crazed little ups with a vicious smile and eyes bright and hard as buttons. An instantaneous walling-off. And one of the things Lizzie felt she might get on eating him was insight into his character. When the freezer was emptied she thought she might be able to write down at least one thing Jacob had learned about life through living with her. Patience wasn’t one of them. Not the sort that was revealed in conversation when people stopped thinking and speaking about themselves and simply sat there listening. Or nodding, as Lizzie had often done while Jacob talked. Patience, like generosity, came as much from an ability to feel love for a person as it did from a need to be loved in return, and she wasn’t sure that, once they’d moved in together and settled—she in a house that gave her s
helter from the bewildering world, he to a routine of meals made on time and a person to help him out—they had really needed to feel each other’s love. In the beginning, of course, it hadn’t been like that. They’d needed to feel the love to know they were doing the right thing in being together. They’d both been fierce: he in his misanthropy, she in her pragmatism. But then, like most people, they’d taken whatever it was that had brought them together for granted. Or stopped, for all the inexplicable reasons others did, being able to show it. Lizzie hadn’t been particularly patient or generous with him either. She’d rarely commented on his pieces. When he’d not liked something she’d cooked, she’d put it in the fridge and served it up the next night—exactly the same format—just to make it known that fussy eating wasn’t an option in her kitchen. If he didn’t appreciate her efforts to experiment then he might as well go hungry. She hadn’t been patient, either, with the trips to London in the car.

  They didn’t have children, and even though they’d agreed on their wedding night, face to face, under the covers, that they now had a duty of care to one another, he had later reneged on that, and said that leaving at any point, if one felt trapped, was absolutely essential, and that they should both just feel able to go. Up until the redundancies and the thing with the noose and the paint cans and the fetching in of the punk records from the shed, Lizzie had felt that she loved Jacob, if not intensely, then quite fairly. He’d given her shelter and opened up his home, and if things had gone a bit weird from time to time in the first two decades, the rest of the time they’d been all right—not talkative, but not despairing either. She’d watched a lot of television; and he’d fiddled about in his shed. There had been the occasional disappearance: his “walkabout” wandering off into the night with a rucksack of supplies. It wasn’t exactly testing terrain, but toughing it out in the cold beyond the wall at the bottom of the garden had nonetheless stirred something in him. The first time he’d gone off into the woods for two nights, he’d come back excited to see her, and had come up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. That was rare. She’d stepped back on his toes, and then hung her apron up and gone alone to the Dog and Duck in the village, sitting up at the bar, where she’d ordered a bottle of wine and read a magazine with her raincoat tied around her waist. She’d not been able to express herself. It wasn’t just him. And she had wanted to have sex that night. Out of relief that he had come back and the twinge of pleasure she’d got when he wrapped his arms around her waist. They must have been young, in their thirties then, and she’d gone instead to the pub in a huff and listened to Teri behind the bar talk some rubbish about Spain.