Rebecca Tyrrel: Days Like Those

Of all our formulaic rows – the "soda-siphon birthday row", the "garden-furniture row", the "tree at the bottom of the garden row", etc, etc, it's the "1999 attempted murder by antifreeze row" that is perhaps the most arduous to conduct. And that is because, six years ago, in 2002, after three years of fierce accusation and denial, Matthew and I became co-signatories of the Antifreeze Accord. In a solemn and binding agreement, we signed away our rights to ever speak of the unfortunate matter again.

And yet, after all this time, the row is rumbling once more – silently, because of the accord, but rumbling nevertheless. It started up two Sundays ago, when I found a newspaper cutting had been left on my desk concerning the trial at Stafford Crown Court (still under way) of a woman charged with attempting to kill her husband by putting antifreeze in his red wine.

Matthew, for the cutting was clearly left by him, had made no marks on the newspaper: no scrawled comments on the side, no underlining, not so much as an exclamation mark. I read it and then immediately phoned our friend Giles, because he was the person called in one evening in 2002, after an especially long and bitter bout of the "attempted murder by antifreeze row", to broker the accord. I asked him if he felt that by leaving this cutting, detailing the events currently taking place, Matthew was putting the accord in grave jeopardy. "To me," I said, "it is now on the verge of disintegration. Surely Matthew had no right to do this?"

Giles said that he'd be over to sort the matter out as soon as was humanly possible – "How about

****

The facts of our own attempted murder by antifreeze case, briefly put, are these. One morning, early in 1999, Matthew went to his workstation, which in that pre-office/shed era was the dining room table at the end of the sitting room. Staring intently at the computer screen, he reached out a hand for the bottle of Evian on the table, unscrewed the cap, and prepared to swig.

Now, up to this point in the recounting of events, there has never been any dispute regarding the facts. The argument begins over whether Matthew shrank back from gulping from the Evian bottle because (as he claims) he recoiled at the strange cloying smell of the "water" as he pressed the bottle to his lips; or whether (as I insist) he never put it anywhere near his mouth because he must have clearly seen that the "water" was bright blue; the specific shade, in fact, that might be described on a paint chart as Antifreeze Blue.

Why I had decanted some antifreeze into an Evian bottle I can no more recall than why, having done so, I left the bottle on the table at which Matthew used to work. But I am absolutely sure that Matthew was wrong in interpreting my actions as an attempt to kill him.

If I had wanted to kill him, I would surely have decanted the antifreeze into something more opaque than a plastic Evian bottle. Whenever, during the row, I would make this point, Matthew would counter by saying that evidently I intended to use the see-through nature of the bottle – why would I be so stupid when I could have slipped it in his whisky? – as a key plank of the defence.

So much for the first part of the argument, which was never resolved.

****

The second part of the argument (which has now been resolved by the reading of subsequent newspaper reports from the trial going on in Stafford) concerns the effects of drinking antifreeze. I always claimed that, although not especially pleasant to the taste, it was relatively harmless, and that it would never have occurred to me to use it as a murder weapon. Matthew always disputed this and now he has been proved right because the unfortunate husband in the current case eventually emerged from a coma with kidney damage, no vision and unable to speak.

Matthew cannot speak about it either, due to the accord, if not the antifreeze itself, and nor can I, which is why we have taken to miming. Matthew delivers all "antifreeze" cuttings to me when I am at work at my own desk. As he does so, he points and gurns – for instance, he might clutch his lower back, where he must imagine his kidneys to be located, and twist his face into an agonised mask of terror.

On one occasion, after one of these performances, I picked up a blue glove in one hand and a piece of white A4 paper in the other and stared at them alternately in fake confusion to highlight the clear difference between the colours of water and antifreeze. Matthew then steered me from my chair, sat in it, stared with exaggerated concentration at the screen, reached out, picked up my glove and affected to drink deeply from it. He then clutched his kidneys again, and fell to the ground. I left the room, pausing only to step on his hand (coma victims feeling no pain) and went to answer the front door.

****

Giles left at midnight, a new accord having been signed. While he was here we spoke openly of the events of 1999, and I admitted that it was grossly negligent of me to leave the bottle on the table, while Matthew confessed that it had never actually touched his lips.

"Well, let's hope that is an end to the matter," said Giles, putting on his coat, "and, of course, none of us will be needing antifreeze soon, what with this global warming."

"Don't worry," I said, "I have another plan."