The Talk

After all this time, I decided to finally tell my wife what really happened to all those missing girls.

I say "girls", they were young women, of course. Some poncey intellectual with coloured hair will probably say I'm infantilising them. It seems silly to get stuck on that point given what else I did to them. Maybe that's what normal people do. Fixate on a bearable detail as a way of ignoring the unbearable one.

After my fever broke and I started feeling normal again, I had vague memories of saying things in my delirium. I wasn't sure what, or how much or how incriminating, but I had a sinking feeling that it had been incriminating.

I'd agonised about it, insomuch as a man like me can agonise. She was the longest I'd stayed with any one woman. We had children together. Together, they were my camouflage. I was even a little fond of them.

If I told her, I could lose her. That would be unfortunate. I had a plan if she tried to run, to stop her telling the police. "Plan" it's a strong word really, for something so simple, and brutal.

I couldn't live with the threat of it living over my head, though, so we sat down together after the children were asleep, and had The Talk no serial killer wants to have.

To be honest, I was prepared to resort to my Plan anyway, because what if she pretended she didn't believe me? What if she lied and said she loved me anyway and always would no matter what? She could still shop me at any moment. Nobody wants to live like that.

So I told her, and watched her for her reaction. Her mouth was hard and her eyes small and flinty.

"Really, Ted," she said, "You can be so stupid. Do you really think you'd have got away with it so long if it hadn't been for me?"

Behind her, a mop of hair in a nightdress stood at the bottom of the stairs, undoubtedly on the hunt for a drink of water, or a biscuit, or or or or...

It stared at us with wide eyes. How much had it heard?

I sighed. This wasn't how I'd expected my Plan to go.

"Garage, Ted," my wife said in a resigned voice. "I'll not have a mess on my carpet."