You, Me and Other People

I think of this afternoon, debate lying, and decide against it. ‘It depends on what you mean, but I guess the answer is yes, I’m still seeing Emma.’

Beth’s beautiful head shakes in slow motion.

‘Seeing her … How quaint. Don’t you mean: shagging her and letting her give you the rampant blow jobs that you think you never got at home? Maybe in some of the underwear you bought for her?’

For the second time today, I feel colour course through my neck and land firmly on my cheeks.

‘Transparent, that’s what you are. What could you possibly have to say? To “talk” about?’ She turns back towards the sink, tosses her green tea into it and heads to the fridge. There, she takes out a wine bottle and pours herself a glass. She takes a large gulp from it and speaks with her back still to me. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? Back then, way back whenever, that’s when we should have talked. You could have and should have talked to me then.’

‘You’re right,’ I tell her spine. ‘I’m sorry.’

She stares into the kitchen window. With her back still to me, she asks my reflection. ‘When did it start?’

‘Beth—’

‘I need to know, Adam.’ She turns around. ‘How long have you been lying to me?’

I sit very still. That is a very difficult question, and has so many potential answers that I quickly reason she must only mean Emma.

‘Not long.’

‘How long exactly?’

Though I know the answer to be about five months, I hear my considered reply. ‘Three months.’

She focuses on my eyes, blinks twice and then looks away. I know she’s trying hard not to cry. I watch her take a wedge of paper from one of the kitchen drawers. Taking another mouthful of wine, she waves them at me. ‘Bank account stuff,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to get up to speed with who pays what every month before we talked tonight.’

I feel a deep-rooted pulse develop behind my eyes.

‘There’s over five months’ worth here,’ she continues. ‘I’m not even going to ask you when the last time you took me to Langham’s was, or the last time you bought me something in Agent Provocateur. But, here’s the thing: every lie you tell makes me care less and less.’

My heart hurts looking at her. The pulse is now throbbing behind my eyeballs and I wonder briefly if guilt can present as pure pain.

‘Do you know,’ she turns to face me, her eyes pools of tears, ‘there’s hardly a day goes by where I don’t cry. Sometimes, I’m angry, so angry, that I hate you, and other days I’m just sad.’ She seems to linger over the word ‘sad’.

‘What do you want me to do?’ I hear the resignation in my own voice.

‘Stop lying for a start.’

I sigh, a weary, heavy sound.

‘Do I need to get myself checked out?’ Her voice sounds remote, distant.

I shake my head. ‘I’ve always used something.’

‘Maybe I should anyway. I’ve been sort of ignoring it.’ She seems to be talking to no one in particular.

‘You don’t need to worry, Beth.’

‘I need not to worry about money.’ Her wet eyes refuse mine. ‘I need not to have to worry about losing my home because of your dick. I need time to think about my life without you in it and I need you to think about my needs for once.’

I find myself nodding because she’s right. I can’t think right now about me and where I’ll live when Ben gets back and if I can actually afford to run two homes. A brief image of me living in the White House with Emma and Harold clouds my thoughts and I shudder. I imagine my straightjacket would be crispy white.

As I excuse myself to go to the loo, I hear myself reassure Beth that I will continue to take care of things. I sit on the seat in the downstairs cloakroom, wondering what that means. I’m not sure, but Beth needs to hear what I’m telling her right now and it’s what I want her to believe. So I sit for a while, with my head in my hands, ignoring the red flag waving in it telling me that I don’t really believe it – which can only mean that it’s more lies.

Chapter Eleven

‘Adam told me I stopped wanting him. It was there in the middle of some long spiel of his, like a barbed accusation.’

‘And did you? Stop wanting him?’

I’ve been asking myself the same question since. Carefully, I clean underneath my left thumbnail with my right one. ‘It’s just not that simple. We’ve been married a long time. It was one of those phases where I only wanted to sleep. I don’t think I stopped wanting him as much as stopped having sex for a while.’

‘Did you talk about it?’

I shake my head. ‘I know now that I wanted him to. I wanted him to notice and talk to me, ask me how I felt. Rather than the other way around. It’s always me who does the talking. It’s exhausting.’ I look up. ‘It didn’t last long, maybe a couple of months. We had sex again as soon as I gave in and made the first move.’ I sigh. ‘Of course, I’d lost him by then …’

‘Do you remember a few weeks ago we spoke about your fears?’ Caroline blows her coffee as she changes the subject.

I can only nod.

‘You say things are clearer, so tell me what your greatest fear is, right now, in this space in time?’

I close my eyes and immediately wonder if I can live without Adam, if I actually want to, or is forgiving him again and trying to reboot our marriage an option? The clenching behind my ribs assures me that this is indeed a fear rather than a solution.

‘Taking Adam back, nothing really changing, me just carrying on with my head hovered above the sand.’ There, I’ve said it out loud.

‘Anything else?’ she prods.

‘Leading half a life …’

She raises a questioning eyebrow.

‘What if I can’t move from this small world I’ve created for myself? What if I don’t allow another man near me and, worse, if I did, what if I discovered I had “Go ahead – cheat on me” stamped on my forehead?’

She smiles. ‘You have nothing stamped on your forehead,’ she reassures me, ‘just on your brain.’

I lean forward, pick up the Russian doll she used weeks ago with me and I slowly open the five parts. I caress the tiniest figure, and the fear floodgates are well and truly opened.

‘Personal failure,’ I hear myself say. ‘I know I’m good; my agent tells me just to get on with it – success will come if I work hard. It’s just that inner saboteur constantly waiting to leap.’

‘You’re going to have to find a way to gag her.’ Caroline shrugs. ‘I find that imagery actually helps. Maybe name her too? If you feel negativity creep up on you, visualize her, how she looks, what she’s wearing and then gag her with a cloth – really tightly.’

I’m fascinated. ‘You have an inner saboteur too?’

‘A lot of people do.’ She grins, as if it’s just the most normal thing in the world to be gagging an imaginary part of your head with a cloth – really tightly.

‘So, she’s gagged, you’re successful in your own right, maybe you’re even happy living alone. What do you think you have to put in place to get there?’

My roll grinds to a vicious halt. Me. Happy. Living alone. I like that thought, but still shake my head vigorously. ‘I don’t know …’

Caroline takes a book from her desk, opens it where it’s marked with a Post-it note.

‘“We gain strength, and courage,”’ she quotes aloud from the page, ‘“and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face … we must do that which we think we cannot.”’ She emphasizes the last few words as she shuts the book. ‘Eleanor Roosevelt,’ she says.

Swallowing hard, I put the doll together again and place it back on the table, my head still disagreeing. ‘Whatever that is,’ I tell her, ‘I’m not ready.’

‘Take the doll with you,’ she says, ‘for more positive imagery – if it helps? Her name’s Babushka.’

I stare at the figure, then reach for her and put her in my handbag. Somehow it makes sense, but I avoid Caroline’s eye. Christ Almighty, I’m in therapy with an adult who gags her inner saboteur and names her dolls.

This week, I’ve written half of a song. There is an air of excitement in the loft as I’ve probably written half of ‘the’ song. My devil-like inner saboteur, whom I have now named ‘Lucy Fir’, has been well and truly gagged. Eleanor Roosevelt lives on in my head. I’ve listened to lots of fantastic music, watched some classic movies and somehow tapped into the world of love again. I’ve forced myself, for work purposes, to wallow in love’s glorious potential. I haven’t got a title for the song yet, but it’s about a couple being the right fit. About the fact that they just don’t fit anyone else except one another and that they fall apart without each other. It’s all still first-draft stuff, but I think I’m onto something. I’m just sending a soundbite through to Josh, when I hear the doorbell downstairs ringing persistently.

The sound pulses through the house, again and again.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I mutter, taking the stairs down two at a time. I peer through the spyhole, wondering who on earth can be so determined. My shoulders droop and I rest my forehead on the white gloss door.

‘Stop peering through the thingy, Elizabeth. Open up.’

I pull it towards me.

‘Darling,’ she says, giving me a kiss on my cheek and moving past me, glancing only briefly at my text wall art. ‘It’s drizzling a bit out there,’ she says, placing a long, neon-pink umbrella in the hallstand next to Adam’s cricket bat.

‘Mum,’ I reply. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Meg called me.’ She holds a small kitbag up. ‘I’ve come to do your nails.’

I’m lost for words as she walks away from me. I can hear her unpack what must be manicure regalia onto the dining table before I’ve even shut the front door.

‘Mum,’ I stand in the living room doorway, feeling a prickle of anxiety, wondering what Meg has said. ‘My nails are fine, I …’ I’m trying to find the words that express what I feel but are not – Please leave, Mum. I need to write an Oscar-nominated song. I don’t want to tell you what’s going on in my world. I like to pretend that everything’s all right on the phone. Can you please piss off back to the Cotswolds?

‘Open a bottle of wine, Elizabeth, I’m staying the night.’ Her stone-grey eyes catch mine and her eyebrows arch as if to say, ‘Go on, I dare you. Tell me you’re too busy.’ She says nothing, then continues to unpack an array of tiny, multicoloured bottles.

My husband has left me and I’ve just been up in the loft convincing myself I can earn a proper living songwriting, yet it seems – I glance down at my fingernails – that a manicure is more important. ‘I’ll get the wine.’ I walk towards the fridge, hoping she won’t follow me, and discover the lack of food and abundance of crisps. There is, however, a beef stew I’d forgotten about. Sylvia. I offer up a silent thanks to her.

Having filled two glasses, I place them both on the dining table and take a seat. She’s standing at the bi-folds, staring out into the garden. The tail end of a rain shower spits on the glazing.

‘You’ll have to take up gardening,’ she says, her arms folded across her chest.

I know then that Meg has revealed enough. ‘I was going to tell you.’

‘When, exactly?’ She hasn’t taken her eyes off the lawn.

‘When I felt I could.’ I shrug. ‘It’s only just beginning to be real to me.’

The sounds of Sylvia’s children, rushing into their garden after the rain, permeate the room. I stare at an ancient ring of a coffee cup on the walnut dining table, as my mother takes a seat next to me. She raises her wine glass to her mouth and I can tell she’s fighting tears. She then pulls an antiseptic wipe from a plastic container, leans forward and grabs one of my hands. She uses both of hers to gently clean mine. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

My shoulders move up and down again. ‘It is what it is.’

‘What happened?’ She asks the question as she wipes clean my other hand.

‘How much did Meg say?’

‘She just told me that he’d gone, implied there was another woman.’ Her eyes once again meet mine. ‘Was there? Is there?’

I let her words hang in the air a moment before replying. ‘Yes and yes.’

‘Bastard,’ she whispers, picking out a particularly lurid bottle. ‘Fuchsia, I think. You need brightening up.’

I don’t reply; know there’s no point. If my mother has made up her mind that I need fuchsia nails, then that’s exactly what I’m going to get. She has already travelled a hundred miles. She picks up the file and gets to work.

Minutes later, she speaks again. ‘You’re not alone.’

I tap her arm affectionately. ‘I know that, Mum. Thank you.’

‘We all have crosses to bear. Most of us have faulty husbands and most of us learn to live with them.’

She is, of course, referring to the fact that my father’s first love was alcohol, over and above both her and me.

She squeezes my hand in hers. ‘I loved your dad,’ she says, ‘and he loved me.’

I remember lots of tears; my mother weeping into her coffee cup, her bed sheets, her book … I can’t hide my discomfort, and I shift awkwardly in the chair. ‘He had a funny way of showing it,’ I say.

Mum frowns. ‘Don’t judge.’ Her voice has a hint of scolding to it. ‘I get what you’re going through but … there’s nothing worse in this world than losing a child. When Simon died, a big part of your dad did too. It was after that he changed. He was running away from the hell of it all.’

I start to interrupt but she stops me.

‘This was before people talked about their feelings. There was no such thing as counselling. Grief counselling was what he needed but, to be honest, even if it had been around, he wouldn’t have gone. Instead he drank bourbon to help face the pain.’

I wait until she draws breath. ‘I’m not judging, Mum. I just don’t understand why you’d put up with that.’

‘You were young. And then, suddenly, you weren’t. Why change something that worked in so many ways for us? Besides …’ She smiles and cocks her head at me. ‘We were happy.’

I bite my lip. And my tongue. She’s right. I have never had to deal with the heartache of losing a child. And who am I to judge her when I forgave Adam once before too? I convinced myself we could get past his failings.

‘Can you forgive him, maybe forget about this, and put it behind you?’ she asks. It’s as if she can hear my thoughts, see into my very soul.

‘No.’ My tone is emphatic. ‘I hope someday I won’t care, so maybe I can forgive him, but I’ll never forget how he’s hurt me.’ I do not say the word ‘again’ out loud. My mother doesn’t need to know about the last time.

She nods, doesn’t push the point.

I hear my last words echo in my head and feel a huge weight lift from my locked shoulders. After many weeks of therapy, it’s taken my mum talking to make me say it out loud. I will not be taking Adam back. My marriage is over.

I can almost hear the tiny monkey-nut-size baby Babushka cry. I may finally be back in touch with my core, but it hurts – as if my heart is being squeezed in a vice. The coffee ring on the table blurs as my eyes fill and my mouth begins to tremble. My mother drops my fuchsia hand and pulls me into her arms.

I can’t sleep. Today’s emotions have just been too much. I feel spent, exhausted, but somehow I’m not sleepy. I’m sitting up in bed, my back against the silver-button-punched, fabric headboard, having a conversation online with Sally from Manchester. We’ve kept in touch since we found each other on an Internet forum months ago. For someone whose husband has made mine look like the archangel Gabriel, I’m astounded at her capacity for forgiveness. She has taken him back. She makes no apologies for the fact that she loves him; he’s still her husband and the father of her child. Part of me admires her and part of me feels for her.

‘He’ll do it again!’ I want to shout at the screen, type the words, but I don’t. I wish her well, but secretly believe that ‘her Colin’, as she calls him, will soon be back in the arms of the skinny, solvent woman he was shagging, or someone else just as accommodating.

I stare into space. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe I judge far too quickly, and just maybe I shouldn’t. Then again, I focus on the image of Adam actually shagging his bitch whore girlfriend. I grit my teeth and almost visualize penetration.

Nope. No forgiveness here anytime soon.

Chapter Twelve

I have, since meeting with Matt in Starbucks, wallowed in my own filth for almost a week. All he did then was tell me nicely what a wanker I’ve been and suggest I try and be less of a wanker. Now, we’re back in the same American coffee house, but I have showered, shaved and am dressed in dry-cleaned jeans and a crisp white shirt. I still haven’t figured out how to use the washing machine without getting creased clothes that can’t possibly be ironed.

‘I’m taking a few more days off.’ I’m aware I’m telling Matt rather than discussing it as we would normally do. I blow the steam from my second latte and end up with frothy milk on my spotless jeans.

He nods, staring at me over his steepled hands. For the last half-hour, we’ve redone the whole Granger thing and I’ve been suitably placed on the naughty step.

‘Just the rest of the week,’ I add. ‘I’ll be back on Monday.’

‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

‘Peachy,’ I say, ‘just have to get my head around the fact that my marriage is falling apart, my brother comes back in four weeks and I’ll have nowhere to live. And, oh, you’ve tossed me off an account I brought to the firm.’

Matt inhales deeply. I can tell he’s trying to decide on the right reply. I know there is none, that this isn’t his fault, but I need someone to blame for the Grangers’ betrayal. I’m knee-deep in my own.

‘They’ll calm down after a while, Adam. Let it settle for a bit. Why don’t you take some time away in the sun?’

I don’t reply, but imagine me away sunning myself – on my own. I have never holidayed alone and I don’t intend to start now.

‘Maybe Emma would like to go?’ He seems to read my mind.

She probably would, but the thought of Emma and I playing happily on a sandy beach, her frolicking in a white bikini, does not fill me with the lusty urge I expected it to.

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