Don't Let Him In

by Lisa Jewell

It’s the home of a Gen X man who has made good decisions, made a success of his life, piled his building blocks one on top of the other with precision and care. But also, the home of a man who made one really bad mistake that his wife and his family are going to pay for, over and over again.

He was fifty-four. He was killed by a stranger. Pushed onto the tracks. Under a train.

The life and soul. Always the life and soul, Paddy Swann. The man who pushed him was called Joe Kritner.

Paddy Swann was the most uncomplicated human being in the world, and then, two weeks ago, a very complicated person used Paddy Swann as a character in his own very complicated internal story and pushed him under a train. And now he is dead.

If I did not kiss her on her lips in the morning, then she would wonder… and I don’t want her to wonder. If she starts to wonder at the little things, then she will eventually start to wonder at the bigger things. So, I manage the little things forensically to make sure that everything is the same. Until it isn’t.

Fictional pensions too. For the fictional future that we will be spending together.

The picture of the future I have painted for us is so exquisite that I almost wish it could be real.

So easily pleased. Most women are. Because most men are just so utterly dreadful. I don’t understand why men don’t realize how little effort is involved in making women happy and how many benefits there are to making women happy.

I have access to absolutely every last aspect of her existence. And she to mine. Or at least to the traces of mine that she knows about. I am a compartmentalized man—I have to be. In order to give women what they want, I need to juggle things, and juggling things necessitates secrets and, occasionally, lies. I can’t give her access to everything. Obviously.

My wife pretends that everything’s fine, but of course it isn’t. Nothing will ever be the same following that visit from the police, and even though they have not found enough evidence to bring harassment charges against me, the backdraft of it lives on in this house, in the space between my wife and me.

I gulp, silently, as I stare at her. She suddenly looks beautiful again, the light catching the hazel streaks in her hair as she lifts her head and says, “For you to leave, Jonathan. For you to just leave.”

He’s talking and he’s talking, and there are words and words and words, and they keep coming out of his mouth, but not one of them explains the lack of a simple I’m not coming home tonight, I’m so sorry text. It takes longer to eat a stale croissant than to send a message like that.

I garner sympathy, I foster team spirit, and then I find ways to extract money. Money, quite often, that my wives did not know they were able to access until I told them exactly how, when, and where.

“But we… Jesus Christ, Damian, we had a fucking funeral. Your kids were there, at your graveside, they did speeches, bought suits. Where have you been, Damian! Where the fuck have you been?”

This man who lies and stares deeply, unwaveringly, into her eyes as he does so. Whose body language does not betray him. He lies with passion and self-belief, this man. He lies like a man who has never been caught out in a lie, who thinks he is invulnerable.

It’s a photo of Nick Radcliffe. Except the name in the caption under the photograph is not Nick Radcliffe, it’s Justin Warshaw, and he’s not described as a restaurateur, but as a life coach.

I learned a lot about how to balance it all out so that it always swings back in my favor. I pushed this woman and I pushed her, and still she wanted to be with me rather than without me.

I have killed her, I have killed my wife, she is dead and her body sits slumped against the wall next to my other wife, my first wife, who is panting like an overheated dog and staring at me imploringly, waiting for me to answer.

I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt a bit that she’s proud of a fictional version of me and not the real me—the me who has spent vast swathes of the last thirty years visiting women around the country, being paid to make them feel good about themselves.

I have never felt how I feel about Martha about any other woman. I do not want her to smile for another man, feel in awe of another man, be impressed by another man, have any interest of any description in being in the presence of any other men for the reason of their status, achievements, or talents. Especially not this man. This man who once spoke to me as if I was trash and who has somehow, despite being the same age as me, leapfrogged way ahead of me into the life I’ve always wanted for myself.

I want to be himself. The one who turns the heads. Who sleeps at night knowing that he has created something, built something. Why does everything I try to build crumble on impact with reality? And is it too late for me to start building something now?

You would think, possibly, from the sorts of things I’ve done, that I inhabit a dark place. You would assume that people who do dark things must think dark thoughts and have dark dreams and feel blackness all around them. But no, not at all.

There it is. All of it. She’s got him. He’s lying to his wife and he’s lying to Nina. He’s lying to everyone about everything, and Ash finally has him pinned down, limb to limb, inescapably. But now what? She needs a plan. She needs a strategy. She messages Jane from the train back home and tells her everything.

“I know,” she says. “What can you say? It’s one of those things. There’s always been something fragile about Ash, an ongoing fantasy, like she was living inside the pages of a novel.”

During police questioning, Joe Kritner had talked about the big “Silver Man” who had made him do it. He’d shown them the money he’d been given—fifty pounds in shiny ten-pound notes. The Silver Man had talked about a bomb. A terrorist attack. The Silver Man had told him what to do.

I suppose you’d like to hear from me, directly, about how it feels to walk into that place, that space, with all those women looking at me, all those faces, those eyes, those expressions of distaste, dislike, fear, curiosity, rage. Well, the first thing I can tell you that I feel is like a fucking idiot.

You all wanted me, I want to say. You all had gaping voids in your lives, and you all invited me to fill them. I did not force one of you to choose me. Not one of you.

“Beloved only child. Given everything. But nothing was ever good enough. Loans and more loans, until your poor parents were almost bled dry. Your mother changed her will because she was scared you were going to kill her in her sleep. Your parents were scared of you. You made their lives hell with your superiority complex, your insistence that they pave your way with gold. And then when you found out about the will change, you arrived at your mother’s door blue with rage, you screamed into her face so loudly she swore she was being berated by the devil. She changed the locks the day after your father died. She was terrified that you would come back and finish her off. But she loved you so much, your mother. She adored you. Until the day she died.”