Chapter Thirty-four

They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Psalm 69:21

Thursday 1st November: Angie Merill saw the car when she arrived home at 185 Longhill. Baxter's car. He'd not been home for days. No word from him. Not that he'd gone missing. He'd been seen about town in his old haunts - in the bars. He just hadn't phoned her.

Angie let herself in with her front door key. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel the thump. Not with guilt or fear but rather from the shear adrenalin rush of this moment of crisis. Which was what it was in Angie's eyes. She had no idea how Baxter would react when she told him. Violence was a given. Would he rape her? Possibly. She would accept any degradation but she believed nothing would break her resolve.

She found him in the den. He didn't look up when she came into the room. She hated this room like a hole in the head with its bright walls and garish prints. She wondered whether he really enjoyed the Warhol pictures. She'd have thought a Remington more his taste. But then Andy Warhol had the chic cachet, the prestige. Was it all sham, the life of this man she had once loved? He looked strangely morose. He grunted in acknowledgement of her presence without raising his languid brown eyes from the empty glass he was nursing. "That you Angie?"

"Yes Baxter, it's me."

"Fetch me a whisky babe."

"You know something Baxter?"

"What?" His voice turned sullen.

"You don't want a wife, you want a servant." She took the glass from his hand and stepped catlike across to the bar. She ignored the ice tongues and picked up the cubes one by one with her slender fingers. In her mind this was the last time she'd do this for him. She was making it personal, like performing a ritual. She carefully counted the ice cubs as she dropped them into a fresh glass, a heavy cut crystal tumbler. Four fingers of Chivas Regal. She handed the glass to Baxter, then sat opposite him, watching him. As he raised his glass to his lips she said it. "I'm leaving you Baxter."

"Uh huh," he said without looking up.

Curiously she felt the anger rise like bile inside her. "That's all you can say after all this time?"

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

Now at last Baxter looked directly at her and she noticed how red his eyes were. Had he been crying? No, not possible. It must be the booze. Whatever. It aroused no sympathy in her.

She studied the man who had been her life and whom, now, at last, she was leaving without compunction. "Nothing," she said. It was what he meant to her now after all. "Nothing," she said again.

And she turned and left the room - forever.