Honey, I’m Home!

Lisa Tuttle

A transplanted Texican now living in a cottage above a sea loch in West Scotland, Lisa Tuttle has made the domestic sphere her arena for horror, producing fictions which focus on the terrible things people do to other people. Her collection of short stories, A Nest of Nightmares, was selected as one of the hundred best horror books of all time, and her novel Familiar Spirit is unforgettably creepy. In ‘Honey, I’m Home’!, as in much of her recent work, domestic concerns are overlaid with a bizarre and surreal touch of humour. She has spent her whole life running away from the scenarios of I Love Lucy and Leave It to Beaver, but recently acquired a house, a husband and a daughter. She knows all the words to ‘He’s a Rebel’ and ‘The Boy I Love’, has watched every episode of the late lamented Miami Vice, and wants to know when it’s going to be repeated. And so do we, but perhaps not for the same reasons …

A

s soon as she got home Gina turned on the television for company. She’d started doing it while living alone in New York, and although she wasn’t as paranoid about living alone in London - that was the idea of the move - the habit persisted. She watched it hardly at all; it was wallpaper. Last week she’d succumbed to a salesman’s spiel and had a satellite dish fixed to the side of her building. The new channels she paid for offered more to choose from, but little of it choice.

Much of the ‘entertainment’ was imported from America or Australia and distinctly past its Best By date.

Standing in the kitchenette slicing chicken, mushrooms and zucchini for her dinner, feeling her usual faint regret that there would be no one to share it with her, no lover or husband soon to walk through the door, Gina was aware of the television playing in the lounge behind her, and heard it call, in a voice from her childhood:

‘Honey, I’m home!’

Memory tagged it instantly: Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver. She marvelled at time’s magic which turned any boring old sitcom into a cultural classic.

Then somebody grabbed her by the waist, and she screamed. At the same time she twisted in his grasp, half-turned and drove her fist straight into his midriff. It was a response drilled into her by years of self-defence classes, but this time, the first time she’d done it for real, in her fist was a long, very sharp kitchen knife, and it went straight into the living body of Ward Cleaver.

He let go of her, looking surprised and sorry. Her eyes went from the kindly face, as familiar as a member of her own family, to the black knife handle protruding from his belly, and she couldn’t have said whether guilt or disbelief was the stronger emotion.

‘Gosh, honey, what’s wrong? Did I forget our anniversary again?’ With a visible wince, he grasped the handle and pulled the knife out. He laid it down on the counter and patted himself gingerly where she had stabbed him. Except she couldn’t have stabbed him really. There was no blood on his white shirt, no rent in the cloth. She looked at the knife and could see no blood on the blade. Maybe her usual sharp chopper had been replaced by a stage prop. When she tried to pick it up to check he grabbed her hand.

‘Easy,’ he said, half-laughing. ‘Truce? I’m sorry, whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.’

His hand holding hers was solid and warm and very real. She stared at him, grasped at a mental straw. ‘Is Beadle about?’

‘Huh?’

‘Alan Funt? Candid Camera?’

He shook his head. ‘It is our anniversary, isn’t it? Why don’t I take you out to dinner. Wherever you want, price no object. Okay, honey? Waddaya say.’

She said yes. She was so befuddled she forgot to turn off the television set when they left, and would have forgotten to lock the door if he hadn’t reminded her.

‘This is London, you know. Have to be careful. Not like back home.’

‘It’s worse back home,’ she said sharply. ‘London isn’t full of people carrying guns, or psychos who’d rather kill the people they rob than let them live.’

‘Whatever you say, dear.’ Ward Cleaver’s face, like his voice, was good-humoured, handsome, warm, yet somehow blank. She didn’t think there was anybody home behind the eyes. She hoped he wasn’t a psycho. Was he a robot? Were those Disneyland kind of things that good now? But how did it get into her apartment? And why?

Her choice for dinner was the Café Pelican in St Martin’s Lane. It was a place she often went for drinks, particularly in the summer, and there was a good chance she would see someone she knew. London might be a big city, but the world of publishing was more like a small town. Think about changing jobs or get too interested in a married colleague and suddenly everybody was talking about it. Although she still traded on the aura of Manhattan sharpness with which she had won her first London job, Gina suspected it was wearing as thin as her accent by now. She didn’t care. This was home. She had never found the husband she had hoped for, and dating wasn’t any easier in London, but she had her own flat, a job she liked, and lots of interesting friends.

‘If I’m so happy, why am I hallucinating?’

‘What’s that, dear?’

He hadn’t gone away. He was still beside her in a carriage on the Northern line. She broke into a cold sweat. What if she wasn’t single, didn’t have a career, didn’t live in London. What if this refugee from an imaginary 1950s America was really her husband, and they had two sons, Wallace and Theodore. And she did the housework in high heels and pearls. She moaned softly. It wasn’t possible. Please, let it not be possible.

They got off at Charing Cross and walked up past the opera house, towards the café. Her heart lifted. There, sitting at one of the tables on the pavement was someone she knew, an editor at Gollancz in conversation with a rumpled, seedy-looking individual, undoubtedly an author. His name flew away without alighting; Gina’s concentration was fixed on her friend when she introduced Ward.

‘Hello, Ward, nice to meet you.’

No reaction at all. Gina could not contain herself. With the barest sketch of an apology, she dragged the other woman off to the ladies’ room.

‘What’s up?’

‘Doesn’t he remind you of someone? Doesn’t he look a lot like … Ward Cleaver?’

‘I thought you said that was his name.’

‘But don’t you remember Leave It to Beaver? No?’ Gina groaned. She’d grown up on the series, but that was in another country, and besides … ‘ Just answer this: was there a man in my life the last time I saw you?’

‘I don’t think so. No, definitely not. You were talking about putting an ad in Time Out. Is that where he came from?’

‘No. I don’t know. He just turned up and … there’s something strange about him. I can’t explain.’

‘Mmmm. Well, be careful. I’d ask you to join us, but I’m afraid I’m on my last drink. I really have to get home to the boy.’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right. I’m not afraid of him - he’s just … boring.’

‘They’re the ones you have to look out for. Whatever you do, don’t let him take you home.’

‘Oh, no!’

After dinner (which was, thanks to Ward’s conversation about the life he presumed they shared, the most surrealistically boring meal of her life) Gina tried to lose him in the crowds at Leicester Square, but he stuck like a limpet. She realised that even if she lost him now he’d turn up at the flat later since he believed it was his home. Anything she said which disagreed with his version of reality he treated either as a joke - chuckling indulgently - or as an understandable expression of womanly pique.

‘I know you’re mad because I forgot our anniversary, honey, but I’m trying to make up for it.’

‘It’s not our anniversary.’

‘Is it your birthday? Come on, honey, give me a break, you know I can’t remember dates.’

‘It’s nothing! You’re nothing to me. I never met you before today when you turned up in my apartment! Can’t you hear what I’m saying?’

‘Aw, honey, just tell me what you’re so mad about.’

‘Stop calling me honey!’

When they got home Gina leaped up the stairs like a gazelle and managed to get the door shut and locked with him on the outside. But Ward had his own key and he used it, chuckling indulgently at her cute, wifely tricks.

‘I give up,’ said Gina wearily, sinking down on the sofa. ‘What do I have to do to get rid of you, put on the ruby slippers and click my heels together and say there’s no place like home?’

Ward stood smiling fondly down at her. ‘You’re right, honey, there’s no place like home. I’ll sure be glad when we can get out of London and back to the boys and our own house.’

Gina shuddered. ‘I don’t suppose a bucket of water would wash you away?’

‘Would you like a drink, honey?’

‘That’s not a bad idea. There’s some Scotch up over the sink. A little water, no ice.’ She watched him as he went to fetch it. He had a nice build on him, she had to admit. Maybe he had his uses.

When he returned with her drink, she scrutinised his face, remembering that, as a child, she had thought him handsome. There had even been a time - she’d forgotten until this moment - when she’d imagined she would grow up to marry someone just like the Beaver’s father. As the old memories came back she began to thaw, and as she took the first warming swallow of Scotch she turned a genuine smile on the man in front of her. Maybe he really had come in response to an unarticulated wish, to fill her subconscious desire.

‘Sit down, why don’t you. Make yourself comfortable.’

He fidgeted and tossed back his drink. ‘Mmm, strong stuff!’ He turned away to set down his glass and then yawned exaggeratedly, balling his fists and stretching his arms out at his sides. ‘Man, oh, man, am I tired! That city really takes it out of you. Think I might just get ready …’ His voice trailed off as he went into the bedroom.

Gina smiled after him, feeling a definite spark of interest. ‘Yes, dear, why don’t you get ready for bed, and I’ll join you.’

There was a shout and Ward reappeared, glaring. ‘What did you do with the beds, for Pete’s sake?’

‘What?’

‘The beds! There’s only one bed in there!’

‘One that’s big enough for two.’ She smirked.

‘But we always - you know I can’t -you always say you can’t sleep with anybody else in the same bed.’

‘I don’t always say that. Do I always say that? Well, maybe I don’t feel like sleeping tonight.’ She was enjoying herself.

Ward was definitely sweating. She’d seen that look on his face before, when his high-heeled, aproned, screen wife ran mental circles around him.

‘I’ve got to get some sleep tonight because… because I’ve got a meeting, yes that’s right, a meeting, very important, in the office, first thing tomorrow morning.’

Gina shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do. I only have one bed, as you can see … honey. Unless you want to check into a hotel.’

‘Oh, no, no, no need for that… I’ll sleep on the couch!’

‘You can’t sleep on the couch. It’s not even big enough for me to sleep on. You’re way too tall. You’d put your back out even trying.’

‘Urn… the floor! That would be good for my back, yeah. Perfect. I need something hard - that mattress is much too soft. Right. I’ll sleep on the floor.’

‘You can sleep in hell for all I care,’ Gina said. She was tired of this game. If he was that nervous about sex, where had the two boys come from? She could just imagine June, who had probably never lost her figure, turning up one day with two little bundles. There was a special on at the hospital, two for the price of one! Back when Gina had watched Leave It to Beaver for the first time she had believed babies came from hospitals like bread or ice cream, untouched by human hands. She looked at her ‘husband’, terrified at the prospect of a night in the same bed with his wife, and remembered another childhood fantasy caused by the ambiguity of adult language. In overheard, barely comprehended gossip, as well as in the Confessions magazines read by the babysitter, unmarried women got into trouble - which meant pregnant - by ‘sleeping with’ men. Maybe Ward, too, thought sex was something that happened while you slept. Maybe for him it did. She had to sympathise. The prospect of fathering another Beaver was worth going to any lengths to avoid.

She got up and walked away from him to turn off the television. She had just realised it had been left on all evening. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, and turned back to face him. ‘You -’

He was gone.

Ward?’ She already knew from the way her voice sounded when she called that she was alone in the flat, but she checked out the bedroom and bathroom, just in case. Then she looked at the silenced television set. That simple? She laughed with relief.

But old habits die hard, and the very next evening, as soon as she came in, Gina turned the television on before hurrying back to the bathroom for a shower. Ward Cleaver was an imaginary character, better forgotten, and although she was feeling vaguely sexy she certainly wasn’t expecting company when she emerged from the bathroom wearing only a light cotton wrap, her hair turbaned in a fluffy white towel.

‘Hi, honey,’ said the man on the bed.

She let out a blood-curdling scream. A few seconds after fear, recognition kicked in. ‘Ricky?’ she said weakly, clutching the robe to her breast.

‘Sure,’ said the man she recognised as Dezi Arnaz, a.k.a. Ricky Ricardo, from I Love Lucy. His face took on a scowl of distrust. ‘Who else you expecting except your husband? You expecting maybe somebody else? Somebody I don’t know about?’

She didn’t think about it, her voice fell into the high-pitched, husband-placating cadences of Ricky’s wife Lucy. ‘No, of course not, no, how can you say that, Ricky? You just startled me, that’s all. I didn’t hear you come in. I thought I was all alone.’

‘Yeah? Well, you’re not all alone now. You happy to see me? Come and show me you’re happy to see me, querida.’

Ricky, it became clear, was not made nervous by double beds, nor did he think they were only for use by the terminally tired at bedtime. Sex with him was pretty sensational. Gina was very late for work the next day. First she overslept, then Ricky wouldn’t let her up.

‘Look, I’d love to stay in bed all day, but I can’t,’ she said, laughing, gently disentangling herself from him. ‘I have to work.’

‘Why? Do it later, do it when I’m at work, tonight. I don’t mind a little dust.’

‘I’m not talking about housework - I mean my job.’

His face darkened. ‘Job? Don’t I make good money, my wife goes out to work?’

‘It’s nothing to do with you - I mean, it’s my choice, I like my job - I had it before I met you - why shouldn’t I have a job?’ To her own amazement she heard herself babbling as if it mattered what he thought, as if she must, at all costs, placate him.

‘Ricky Ricardo’s wife does not have to work,’ he said sternly. Then, more gently, sweetening it with kisses: ‘I don’t want you to be out there working for strangers, wearing yourself out. I want you here, making a nice home for me.’

‘But - but I’d get bored here alone all day.’

‘You don’t have to stay in all the time. I’m here in the mornings. In the afternoons you can come to the club and watch me rehearse, or go out shopping. I know how you love to shop! Don’t waste your time on some silly job.’

‘But, Ricky -’

‘No buts!’ He landed a playful slap on her bottom, and she jumped. ‘Go cook my breakfast, mujer, I am starving!’

She went out as if obediently to the kitchen, but really to turn off the television. She felt guilty doing it, and knew she would miss him, but it meant she was able to get dressed and go out to work without having to cook his breakfast.

It wasn’t so easy to cancel out the memory of him. She hadn’t had sex that hot for a very long time, and although her uncharacteristically meek response to his typical machismo worried her, she reminded herself how simple it had been to get rid of him.

After work she went out for drinks and dinner with a friend, and she deliberately did not turn on the television when she got home. She thought about it, though; she thought a lot about Ricky. The memories were especially poignant when she was alone in bed. It wasn’t fair, dammit. Why shouldn’t she have a little fun? When it was as easy as turning a television on or off - could it really be that easy? She got up and went to find out.

There was no sign of I Love Lucy or The Lucille Ball Show or any American sitcoms from that era on any of the channels. She wondered if that meant she would have to wait until the right programme was playing or make a choice from what was available. One channel had a group of real people sitting in a studio having a serious discussion about sex-aids. Another was showing a French movie with English subtitles.

There was something with sinister music that looked like an American made-for-TV movie, something that was either a soft-core film or an ad for chocolates, Sell-a-Vision, boxing, talking cats, dancing cows, a very old Western and championship darts. She wondered if what was on the screen was related to the men who turned up in her flat. She hoped not. The French movie seemed her best bet for sex (the chocolate ad didn’t feature any men), but without the use of subtitles communication would probably break down long before they got to bed.

Restless, horny and bored she prowled her flat, looking in the refrigerator, picking up books and setting them down, deliberately ignoring the TV.

‘Come on, Ricky,’ she muttered, praying that it would be enough to want him to get him. She wondered why Ricky had turned up in the first place. If desire - her desire - was involved it didn’t make sense. She was ready to believe that Ward Cleaver had been summoned by some deeply buried but still potent wish for the loving husband, two kids and house in the suburbs which had signified happiness in her childhood, but - Ricky Ricardo? Come on! She had never found him sexy - she would not believe she found him sexy now except for the memories of her body. But subconsciously, if Ward represented the safe, non-sexual side of marriage, then Ricky, a musician and a foreigner with a mercurial temper, might stand for the more exotic and sexual possibilities in a marriage. Wasn’t it, after all, the lure of the artistic and exotic which had drawn her to publishing, and to London? Maybe the start of her whole career could be located in those childhood hours spent watching, through a haze of boredom, I Love Lucy.

What else would she learn about her own desires? Who would be the next character to appear - Fred Flintstone? The thought made her shudder, and she cast about desperately for some other televisual memories. She had been an ardent fan of the old Dick Van Dyke show; Rob Petrie might have been a bit of a bumbler at times, but she’d had a crush on him, and measured herself sadly against his wife, the cute, pert Laura (Mary Tyler Moore). She tried to revive her old enthusiasm for Rob, but then she wondered if the Petries were not, like the Cleavers, a twin-bedded couple, and gave up. It was no good. Perverse her desire might be, but she wanted Ricky.

She went to bed, leaving the TV on. She was barely asleep when Ricky woke her with a kiss and the welcome warmth of his body.

She had meant to avoid a replay of their last argument by getting rid of him first thing in the morning, but he woke before she did. Then he insisted on taking her out to breakfast at the Ritz. At least there she was able to pay a visit to the ladies’ room and secretly call the office. She claimed a touch of flu and said she hoped to be in on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. After a long weekend of playing Lucy she thought she’d be eager to return to real life, but she hadn’t realised how much, when she was with Ricky, his reality became hers.

She couldn’t bring herself to turn off the television. On Tuesday, she lied about a doctor’s appointment and managed to get to work on time. On Wednesday another lie got her out the door only an hour late, Thursday the same, and by Friday, at work right on time, she was congratulating herself on how easy it was to keep Ricky in the dark. She’d been in her office less than an hour when she got a phone call from Jill in reception saying, mysteriously, that there was someone waiting downstairs to see her.

‘Well,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Send him up. Who is it?’

‘He says he’s your husband.’

Jill knew perfectly well Gina wasn’t married.

‘Oh. It’s all right. I know who - I’ll come down and see him, Jill. Thanks.’

She knew it was going to be trouble; she didn’t realise quite what kind. ‘I can explain,’ she said, and then Ricky grabbed her and - to her complete and helpless disbelief -turned her over his knee and spanked her. With a slipper. Shouting triumphantly in Spanish the while.

She wept. Not in pain - although it was surprising how much it did hurt - but rage. He hugged and kissed her then, her tears his proof of victory, and took her home in a cab. She let him, she had to let him, because she couldn’t stop crying and, anyway, she needed time to figure out how the hell she was going to explain this one to Jill. And not just Jill. It would be all over the building in five minutes. How could she go back? How could she ever face anyone at work again?

He had planned it that way, of course. The public humiliation was meant to ensure that she would stay home where he wanted her. He seemed to think it was what she wanted, too. Maybe, if she had been Lucy, he would have been right. But she wasn’t Lucy and didn’t want to be. He was taking his clothes off, as if the spanking had been their customary foreplay, when she turned him off.

Gina extinguished Ricky in the white heat of anger, but no regret or calmer reflection would make her summon him back. It was time to be sensible about this. For some reason, or none at all, she’d been given a powerful gift, and it was up to her to use it wisely. She supposed it must have something to do with the satellite dish. In the old days (she reflected) there would have been a fairy or a dusty old shopkeeper to mutter a cryptic warning if not tell you the rules, but these days it was all so impersonal, caveat emptor and no one but yourself to blame when the magic did you in.

This time she would wish for a man she wanted now, not just in her childish subconscious. It made perfect sense that the man of her dreams should be found on television. It was television more than anything else, more than movies or rock’n’roll, that had shaped her sexuality, had given her the images and the vocabulary of desire. Other people her age talked about movies, but she’d never seen anything but the occasional Walt Disney film until she was old enough to date, and by then the pattern would have been well-established. Popular music had stirred strange longings in her soul, of course, but those longings were directed not at the unimaginably distant musicians, but at actors, the men whose faces she gazed at, intimately close, night after night in the half-dark of the family room. (The Beatles were an exception; but she’d only fallen in love with the Beatles after seeing them on The Ed Sullivan Show.)

Gina stretched out on the carpeted floor. The silence was eerie. Silent, it didn’t even feel like her apartment. On a weekday morning even the usual noises from her upstairs neighbours were missing. Uneasy, she got up and switched on Radio Two. Even real life should have a sound-track. Returning to the floor, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to the time when she had been madly in love with Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin, unable to decide (just as she had always been unable to choose just one favourite Beatle) which of the men from UNCLE she preferred, Napoleon with his suave charm or Ilya with his icy cool. Yet now that she thought of them, neither alternative was very appealing. It was all new and thrilling when she was twelve, but in the years since she’d been out with enough bed-hoppers to have the measure of Solo, and she’d broken her heart against icebergs like Kuryakin enough to resent all that unreciprocated effort.

She was no longer a girl, and the world had moved on.

Napoleon Solo would seem as ridiculously out of date and sexist now as Ricky Ricardo.

The problem with finding a contemporary TV lover was that she never watched TV any more except for movies and the news. All right, and Eastenders, sometimes. But she didn’t like anybody on that show; the characters were, without exception, loathsome in varying degrees. Wicksy had been fanciable once, but she’d gone off him well before he’d been written out of the script; the only other halfway attractive males in the series, all long gone now, had been villains. Anyway, for all she knew the magic only worked on American series.

Thirtysomething should be more her style. She had watched it, or parts of it, from time to time, but while the women were OK, the men were not. Hope’s husband at least was good-looking, which was more than she could say of any of the others, but he was an irritating, egocentric whiner.

There were a lot of good-looking guys on Twin Peaks, but they were all weird. And there had been too many dead women on that series to risk getting involved.

She wondered if that was a contemporary equation - safe and boring or attractive but dangerous - or if it had been ever thus. It seemed an awfully immature attitude towards sex, but maybe the television idea of romance was inescapably adolescent. She tried to remember the last time she’d found any character from a television series sexually interesting, let alone compelling, and then remembered Frank Furillo from Hill Street Blues. There was a man to make her heart beat a little faster. Not only sexy but nice. She considered his eyes, his laugh, the way he moved, and then she remembered something about his character which made her sigh in a different way. He was a recovering alcoholic. She had played partner to one of those before - also a ‘pizza-man’. That had been one of the several last straws before she left New York, and she had sworn never again.

Familiar music impinged upon her consciousness, jarring, percussive, a popular track from several years back, carrying a freight of memory.

She sat up and stared at the blank screen while the radio played the theme music from Miami Vice.

It came back in a rush: the curious, guilty pleasure of it, like eating a whole batch of brownies, delicious and comforting and yet sickening. Something she could never talk about. For those few months, one night a week, she had a secret, a pleasure waiting for her, like having someone to go home to. She’d get in from somewhere, maybe a union meeting, maybe a disappointing tryst in a pub. Sometimes she’d be a little drunk, sometimes she would pour herself a glass of white wine, sometimes she’d have a packet of fish and chips, sometimes she would have been crying. She’d turn on the television and curl up in the comfy chair with her wine or her chips and gaze at the screen entranced by the brilliantly coloured, designer vision of Florida. She knew Miami wasn’t like that - it certainly wasn’t where her grandparents lived - and she knew cops didn’t dress like that, but watching Miami Vice she was as uncritical as any dreamer in her own dream.

What was the name of the character played by Don Johnson? Sonny. Sonny something. King of the wild frontier.

Gina smiled, sank back on the carpet and closed her eyes, remembering. Sonny Crockett. How many years ago was it? Three? Four? It was the time she was hung up on Lane, and it must be nearly three years now since she’d seen him at all. They used to go out for drinks and talk for hours on the phone. Mostly they acted like pals, but sometimes they were like lovers, edgy and flirtatious. He was married, so of course he couldn’t be interested in her, she thought, and so her crush on him grew, unspoken, until he started telling her things about his marriage that she didn’t want to know. As he seemed more interested in her she began to question her own interest in him; getting to know him better she liked him less while becoming more involved - it was all very emotionally confusing and exhausting.

What a relief it had been to go home and forget all that, to feel straightforward, uncomplicated lust for someone she didn’t know and would never meet. Someone who would never burden her with the secrets of his soul, complaints about his wife, the problems of his childhood, his health worries. Someone who was fit and strong and unattached, with a smashing wardrobe and his own boat.

For nearly an hour every week she was able to forget Lane, forget work, forget money worries, forget being lonely or being in love and simply be warmed by the sunlight, the jewel colours, and Sonny Crockett’s sexy smile.

That was what she wanted. A smart, funny, tough, slightly scruffy fashion plate. A man of the eighties, he would expect his girlfriend to have her own demanding career rather than wait at home for him all day. He probably wouldn’t be around all that much himself, since he was usually working undercover to bust evil drug dealers and mob kingpins. As far as women were concerned he was neither a Don Juan nor emotionally retarded. He lived by himself but sometimes fell in love.

Heart pounding hard, Gina got up, turned off the radio and turned on the TV, then went into the kitchenette, thinking of that bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge. Would it be jumping the gun to open it now? He might not turn up for hours. Or, of course, he might not turn up at all, in which case at least she’d have the wine for comfort.

Why not, it was nearly lunchtime. There were eggs and cheese for an omelette, lettuce and tomato for a salad, and the wine to make it special. She got eggs, cheese and butter from the refrigerator and put them to one side on the counter. She took out two glasses and uncorked the bottle. She had just put down the corkscrew when she felt a presence behind her. She smiled and leaned back as his arms slipped around her waist, inhaling the scent she already seemed to know.

‘Perfect timing,’ she said as his cheek scraped hers. She’d forgotten the designer stubble. She felt his grin against her mouth as she turned. ‘You’re perfection,’ he said, and then gave her the best kiss she’d ever had.

‘Can lunch wait?’ he asked.

‘Mmm-hmmm.’

‘Good, ‘cause I can’t.’

Having said that, though, he made a detour on the way to the bedroom and spent what seemed an unnecessarily long time going through her CDs in search of the perfect mood music.

‘Don’t you have any Whitney Houston?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘Gloria Estefan? Sheena Easton?’

‘Suzanne Vega?’ she suggested.

‘You gotta be kiddin’.’

‘Carly Simon? Look, does it matter? We don’t need music’

‘I think you been sleepin’ alone too long,’ he said, very gently, shaking his head at her unsatisfactory recordings. Gina knew a moment of disbelieving despair: this was worse than high school, it was worse than junior high school, to be judged and found lacking for her taste in pop stars. She shot a glance at the television set, deciding she would pre-empt him rather than suffer rejection. Then, with a tiny grunt of satisfaction, he found something he liked, slipped it in, and they continued to the bedroom. As his hands, his mouth, his body moved against hers it was to the rhythms of Tina Turner steaming up the windows.

And Gina was in heaven. He was better than her dreams. It was all very much the way she used to imagine sex would be, before she’d learned otherwise.

After they’d made love he cooked a perfect omelette which they ate from the same plate, sitting cosily together on the floor, not far from the television which flashed unregarded pictures, the sound turned down.

Thanks for takin’ the time off work,’ Sonny said. ‘I wish all my lunchtimes could be like this.’

‘Why can’t they?’

‘Only in heaven. Listen, if you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t think it has anything to do with you and me, know what I mean? This case I’m workin’ on is heatin’ up. So you might not see too much of me for the next couple of weeks.’

‘Well, the door’s always open …’

‘What did I tell you about that? Keep it closed and locked.’ He put his arms around her and grinned. ‘Anyway, I got my own key. The problem is time. This case…’ he shook his head, his face briefly grim. ‘Never mind. When it’s all over maybe you and me could take the boat somewhere, get away from it all. Could even call it a honeymoon - maybe for real. Think you could go for that?’

‘I think I could,’ she said, managing to keep her tone as casual as his.

‘Good deal. I gotta move.’ He looked at her tenderly, touched her mouth with a finger. ‘Hasta la vista.’

Gina was in a daze of physical happiness, loose and relaxed as she began to clean up the kitchen. She wondered if it would really be a couple of weeks before she saw Sonny again, or if time would be compressed the way it was in an hour-long drama.

‘The door’s always open,’ she murmured, thinking of the television in the room behind her. ‘I’ll never turn it off again.’

She heard the slightest sound, a footfall, from the other room, and looked up in surprise.

‘Honey, I’m home.’

The voice was a stranger’s, yet somehow familiar, falsely falsetto. The adrenaline of fear was shooting through her veins as she turned and saw them.

One was short, white, with thinning hair and a lived-in, almost ravaged face. She had seen him somewhere before -maybe she had known him when he was younger? - but she couldn’t quite place him. He was wearing a nasty-looking suit and a skinny tie. The other, in an understated tracksuit of the most pristine white, was young, black, and quite startlingly beautiful. She had seen that face before, on posters, on album covers. Everybody had.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. Her fear vanished in astonishment.

The beautiful one smiled like an angel. It was the other one who spoke. ‘I think you know that, my lovely.’

The London vowels teased at her memory. He must be an actor, she thought. Confused, she shook her head. ‘But - I didn’t want you. There must have been a mistake.’

The man in the nasty suit nodded. ‘And you’re the one who made it.’

The beautiful one laughed. It was an utterly mad laugh.

A little over the top, thought Gina, as objectively as if she was watching this on television. Real villains aren’t like this, and it’s impossible to take rock stars seriously when they try to act.

Then she felt herself freeze as she understood. These weren’t actors, these weren’t people, they were characters who had come from the same place as Sonny. And she knew very well why they had come.

‘Your boyfriend hurt a friend of ours, rather badly,’ said the white guy. A part of her mind was still scrabbling to come up with his name. He’d played drums once, hadn’t he? ‘And I’m afraid that, in return, we’ll have to hurt a friend of his. Tit for tat, you know.’

‘Tit for tat,’ said beauty, and shrieked.

If this was a movie Sonny could return unexpectedly, in the nick of time, to save her. But this wasn’t a movie, this was series television, and everybody knew the fate of the hero’s girlfriend in a TV series. The hero had to be available, free to begin again with each new episode. She should have been smart and stuck with a sitcom husband. They might be dumb, but they were safe. The price of loving a hero was death.

Unless she could get to the television and turn this episode off.

The white guy took a step towards her. ‘Nothing personal, lovey,’ he said in a world-weary voice.

Instinctively, she moved away. Two steps backed her into a corner. It was, however, the corner where she kept the knives. She remembered the knife’s lack of effect on Ward Cleaver, but he was a character from an old-fashioned sitcom for whom death by stabbing was unimaginable. These men obeyed an altogether different set of rules.

So she snatched up a carving knife. But they had been waiting for it, and now acted in concert, far swifter and more brutal than she could ever be, and had the knife away from her before she could even scream.

‘Little girls shouldn’t play with knives,’ whispered the mad one into her face. ‘They could hurt themselves. They could even kill themselves.’

Desperately, staring at those too-familiar faces as if hypnotised, she told herself that this was not happening. They were not real. If they weren’t real, they couldn’t hurt her, not really. But even if she had been right - and if right, what about Ricky’s spanking? - the knife that one of them now held was as real as her own agonised body. She might try to deny it, but she knew what was going to happen before it did.

Table of Contents

Start