The Fever Tree and Other Stories by Ruth Rendell

shiver went through her. When she went back to him he was sitting up on the sofa, looking at his plane ticket to Paris.
    â€˜The men are coming for the stuff at ten,’ he said as if nothing had happened, ‘and they’d better not be late. I have to be at the airport at noon.’
    She shrugged, She had been to the depths and she thought he couldn’t hurt her any more.
    â€˜You’d better close the trunk,’ she said absent-mindedly.
    â€˜All in good time.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I’ve got a letter to put in yet.’
    Her head bowed, the place where it was bruised sore and swollen, she looked loweringly at him. ‘You never write letters.’
    â€˜Just a note. One can’t send a present without a note to accompany it, can one?’
    He pulled the ginger jar out of the trunk, screwed up her letter without even glancing at it, and threw it on the floor. Rapidly yet ostentatiously and making sure that Betsy could see, he scrawled across a sheet of paper: All this is for you, darling Patricia, for ever and ever .
    â€˜How I hate you,’ she said.
    â€˜You could have fooled me.’ He took a large angle lamp out of the trunk and set it on the floor. He slipped the note into the ginger jar, rewrapped it, tucked the jar in between the towels and cushions which padded the fragile objects. ‘Hatred isn’t the word I’d use to describe the way you came after me last night.’
    She made no answer. Perhaps he should have put a heavy object like that lamp in one of the chests, perhaps he should open up one of the chests now. He turned round for the lamp. It wasn’t there. She was holding it in both hands.
    â€˜I want that, please.’
    â€˜Have you ever been smashed in the face, Maurice?’ she said breathlessly, and she raised the lamp and struck him with it full on the forehead. He staggered and she struck him again, and again and again, raining blows on his face and his head. He screamed. He sagged, covering his face with bloody hands. Then with all her strength she gave him a great swinging blow and he fell to his knees, rolled over and at last was stilled and silenced.
    There was quite a lot of blood, though it quickly stopped flowing. She stood there looking at him and she was sobbing. Had she been sobbing all the time? She was covered with blood. She tore off her clothes and dropped them in a heap around her. For a moment she knelt beside him, naked and weeping, rocking backwards and forwards, speaking his name, biting her fingers that were sticky with his blood.
    But self-preservation is the primal instinct, more powerful than love or sorrow, hatred or regret. The time was nine o’clock, and in an hour those men would come. Betsy fetched water in a bucket, detergent, cloths and a sponge. The hard work, the great cleansing, stopped her tears, quieted her heart and dulled her thoughts. She thought of nothing, working frenziedly, her mind a blank.
    When bucket after bucket of reddish water had been poured down the sink and the carpet was soaked but clean, the lamp washed and dried and polished, she threw her clothes into the basket in the bathroom and had a bath. She dressed carefully and brushed her hair. Eight minutes to ten. Everything was clean and she had opened the window, but the dead thing still lay there on a pile of reddened newspapers.
    â€˜I loved him,’ she said aloud, and she clenched her fists. ‘I hated him.’
    The men were punctual. They came at ten sharp. They carried the six tea chests and the silver-coloured trunk with the gold-coloured clasps downstairs.
    When they had gone and their van had driven away, Betsy sat down on the sofa. She looked at the angle lamp, the onyx pen jar and ashtray, the ginger jar, the alabaster bowls, the hock glasses, the bronze paperknife, the little Chinese cups, and the Lowry that was back on the wall. She was quite calm now and she didn’t really need the brandy she had poured