Mainly I was looking for Simon. The compère （clearly not the right word for such a solemn occasion but the man was wearing a suit with gold braiding and looked like a bingo caller, so I’m sticking with it） announced at the start of the ceremony that if anyone felt overwhelmed they should feel free to go out into the garden for some air. As a result, there was a stream of people heading for the door throughout the ceremony, only to come back wafting tobacco down the aisle. The constant back and forth meant that Simon was visible only half the time. I got a good view of him during the playing of an Adele song, as he heaved his shoulders and grabbed the neck of a young man sitting next to him in a fairly aggressive way which made the other man look faintly uncomfortable. It’s a huge cliché for sure, but grief is not good for the skin. He really did look ten years older. I can only see Simon in a detached way, there is no true human link between us, but it nearly made me feel a sliver of sympathy for him. Then again, seeing him fall apart over the loss of a loved one also provoked a new sense of fury. Men often say they are feminists only when they have a daughter of their own and are forced to see women as equal human beings. Simon could only experience sadness and vulnerability when someone he loved had been taken from him. My mother died and he knew I had been left alone in the world. For me, there was nothing. He had the luxury to pick and choose who he held close. Well, now he didn’t.
A week later I was sitting at home reading the papers while picking at a Danish pastry. One a week, a stupid rule I initiated to test my limits of self-denial. I opened up the Saturday supplements to find a diary item about Simon, which spoke of worries from friends about his mental health. Ah, mental health. The get-out clause for all bad behaviour. The friends were unnamed of course, but the quotes were revealing. Simon was ‘paranoid and reclusive, muttering about enemies who were out to get him’。 Not wrong, but it made him sound satisfyingly unhinged. Apparently he kept telling people that his daughter had definitely been murdered, despite police assurances that they were satisfied it had been a tragic accident. How awful it must be to know in your bones that those around you were being picked off one by one and to realise that you must therefore be next. Even worse, it seemed like nobody was listening to him – a terrible thing for a powerful white man to experience. I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to really savour the prospect that Simon would begin to fear for his own safety. All along, I had only concentrated on the sadness he would face when I killed his loved ones. This panicked paranoia was an added bonus. It made me wonder whether his innate selfishness meant that this fear was actually stronger than any grief he felt. Exploring it further, I decided that it was. A man like my father would feel the loss of his family, but he’d be absolutely shaken by the idea that he might be in danger. A wife and daughter could be replaced – he would hardly be the first 50-something man to start another family in middle age – but his sense of safety was being tested for the first time. I felt so cheered by this realisation that I ate a second pastry in celebration.
*
At the time I thought that this moment in my life was glorious. Now I look back and see only how terrible it was all about to get. I had scored six names off my little list. Six down, one to go. The pressure had lifted and I began to cultivate some form of a life. I upped my running, took time to read a few of the books I’d been piling up on my bedside table, and even went on a few dates. Nothing much was doing in that department, because really who wants to carry on seeing a man who has vintage Playboy posters in his living room? People think that buying something and calling it vintage puts them a cut above. But old Playboys are still wank mags, just in faded colour. And men who order dirty martinis are not men who’ll be playboying anywhere near me.
Anyway, the dates were not the highlight of that period. The wonderful thing was the feeling of a load lifting. I am stubborn. It’s good to admit one’s flaws. And that stubbornness meant that a plan I conceived as a child was one I felt sworn to carry out well into adulthood – to the detriment of everything else. If I hadn’t decided that revenge was a path I had to charge down, I know my life would have been unthinkably different. Unthinkable mainly because to really consider what it could have been like is painful. It feels a little weak to admit that, but it’s true nonetheless. As a result, I’ve never thought about it much. I’ve never thought about the career I could have had. I wanted to be a journalist at one point, which I imagine would’ve ultimately meant a life similar to the one I have now – deceit and drinking. I’ve never thought about the possibility that Jimmy and I could’ve built a life together without me holding him at arm’s length while I completed my own private quest. I’ve never thought about how deliberately small I’d made my life, always filled with anger directed at people who never thought of me at all.