My voice shook as I stuttered a reply. “I didn’t think that conversation went very well this morning... I hate it when we have those chats. I wanted to see you... I just drove here to see you, talk to you, make sure we're okay.”
He seemed shocked, then calm, as I persuaded him I was in need of his reassurance, that I had only come on a mission of love, and the conversation veered towards things I could do – he offered to meet me in London, told me to get dressed up and come to the FA with him, but the timings were clearly too tight for that. I asked him what number his house was, and with some hesitation he told me. Then he asked:
“Are you actually going round to my house?”
By then I was actually at the house, pulling into the drive. In front of the door there was a silver Golf that had featured on his video. He had bought it for his son and it was decommissioned, awaiting some repairs. That made sense. I got out of the car and walked over to the Golf. On the back seat was a cushion embroidered with the word LOVE, and on the passenger seat a USB cable lay in a tangle. I peered through the stained-glass window by the front door. On the windowsill sat a row of glass and china ornaments that seemed unlikely possessions for a single man. The hall was full of normal furniture for a hall, an umbrella holder, a coat stand, a small table, and on the bottom stair, a pile of clothes, a blue shirt, a pair of shiny black shoes. A door was ajar leading to a room to the right of the hall. My heart raced with inexplicable excitement mixed with fear. This was his house, where I had expected to find him, surrounded by packing boxes, pacing the floor, practising his presentation to the FA. Yet what I found was a fully furnished house with a car in the drive and not a van or removal man in sight. He was still on the line.
“There are no packers here Harry.”
“They must have left.”
“The house is still full of stuff.”
“They were doing the upstairs today. They’re coming back to do the rest tomorrow. What is this?”
My heart was pounding, but I carried on, riding some sort of wave of bravery, with no regard for the riptide that might drag me under at any moment. I was staring at the gap between the door to the sitting room and the door frame. I could just make out a television screen, flashing with images of what must have been a house decoration programme.
“The door to the lounge is open. There’s someone in there watching TV”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?” I regretted the words as they were said. There was a pause full of his anger. I rang the doorbell. No action in the TV room. Either someone had been warned to stay put, or that someone was him.
“So, I must have left the TV on. What’s going on Rachel? Are you going to go through the bins now?”
“Good idea.” Either he was watching me, in which case I couldn’t dig myself in any deeper, or he wasn’t, and he would never know. I lifted the lids and found the usual black bin bags, the normal recycling – papers and bottles. Was that usual though? Daily Telegraph and Bordeaux – could be anyone, or could it? I was perplexed.
“Go round the back, why don’t you. Take a look at the view.” He was goading me now, like the guy in the movie saying “Go on then, shoot me”.
I did as he asked, maybe because I thought he was watching, the terrorist in a Hollywood thriller controlling everything you do or he’ll detonate the bomb. Now I realise that I was providing whoever was in the lounge with the necessary time to escape.
The back garden was just as he had shown me on Facetime, lawn perfectly manicured, stunning views over the Surrey hills. A cuckoo called invisibly from the laurel hedge. Cuckoos are a bizarre birds. How could it be worth all that hassle dumping your eggs with other birds just for a bit of free babysitting. I still wonder how a whole species can display psychopathic behaviour as the basis for their own survival and get away with thit, whereas in the human race it would be seen as an anomaly, a malfunction, or at least something to be swept under the carpet.
Harry was silent but still on the line. I hung up.
Just inside the back door I could see a pair of flip flops. They were black, which to me, on some sexist level, suggested a man, but they were smaller than I thought they would be. I moved closer to the window, my hand forming a bridge between my forehead and the glass to keep out the sun’s reflection. On the kitchen surfaces were the usual bits and pieces, a jar of instant coffee, a sugar bowl, a used mug by the sink. On the fridge, I could see what looked like invitations, photographs, business cards, all the usual paraphernalia stuck by magnets to its shiny front. On a table at the far end was a photograph in a frame of two figures I couldn’t identify, and next to that another one of a baby, a big close up of a grinning face and floppy blonde locks. That must be his son, I thought, but I wanted to see his face, to see Harry’s face in this little boy, to be reminded that the baby had a daddy, and that there was a bond between them that nobody had a right to break.
I tried taking a photo with my phone on zoom and then zooming in on the result, but the picture was blurred. Then, without thinking, I found myself trying the door, which opened easily, and before I knew it, I was inside, standing on soft beige carpet, taking in my surroundings. There was a smell of bacon. I was about to take a step towards the hallway, but a tiny sound from above made me stop in my tracks. I stood rooted to the spot. Overhead there was the scrape of furniture on the floor and then silence.
I waited what must have been a minute or two without moving, except to reach slowly into my pocket and silence my phone. The back door creaked open and I held it still, my hand shaking, before stepping outside again and shutting it carefully. I made my way back to the front of the house as quietly as possible and headed to my car. I thanked God and the universe for not letting the phone ring while I was in there. And now it was time to go home.
I drove away, but stopped a few yards down the road, watching the house because some time, someone would need to come out of there.
At that moment, like a prisoner on the run in the precious minutes when the searchlights fall elsewhere, I went into full investigation mode. For a brief moment, the scales had been lifted from my eyes and I was alive to reality. I looked up the registration of the silver Golf on a vehicle ownership records site, but couldn’t find a name, only the date of purchase and the fact that the brakes needed fixing. I looked up the house on the land registry and found it to be in the name of Mr Daniel and Mrs Joanne Stone. I looked up Seatseller again online, this time on the Companies House register and found that this was indeed the current registered address, but it had previouslybeen listed as an address in Sunningdale. The company had been set up in September 2010 with two £1 shares and two shareholders: Mr Harry Dawson and Miss Samantha Brize. So this would be Sam, the bloke he’d set up the business with.
With my pulse still racing and adrenaline flooding my system, I had to think fast. He had told me the meeting was scheduled for 2pm. I googled the phone number of the FA and asked to speak to the secretary to the board of directors. I was surprised to be put through at all, but within a second, a bored sounding woman answered the phone and I scrambled for words, settling in the end for directness.
“Do you happen to know if a Mr Harry Dawson is having a meeting with the board this afternoon?”
There was a pause.
“Nothing here in the diary.” Another pause. “But then I wouldn’t be able to divulge that information.”
She already had, as far as I was concerned.
I called Grants’ Estate Agents, and they confirmed they had had nothing for sale in that road for the last six months at least.
The roller coaster had reached its peak and was in free fall; the ground had been pulled from under me. I drove to Roses café where I smoked 3 cigarettes in succession, telling Jess everything. She has always been a bit of a philosopher, a stoic optimist and believer in relationships as the healing environment for childhood wounds. “We can’t learn to trust in theory, we need to practise it.” Was her mantra. Togeth
er we had lived through romantic successes and failures, mostly failures, but she and Jason were solid now, and she attributed that to the ethos she upheld having paid off over time. She hadn’t run away when things got difficult. And here I was about to do exactly that, so she was going to set me right again.
“I’m talking to him on the phone and he’s at home watching the house getting packed up, then when I turn up at his house 45 minutes later, he’s apparently at Waterloo Station.”
“He could have easily got to London in that time.”
“But what about the packers? They weren’t even there. The house was full of stuff.”
“Maybe they had gone, maybe they had cleared the upstairs like he said.”
“Where was his motorbike, his car?”
“I don’t know. At the garage? Like he said they were? Didn’t he say the other night that the bike needed the seat adjusting and his friend was doing it?” She remembered more than I did. Perhaps I was losing my mind. I fought that thought.
“I heard a noise. There was someone upstairs.”
“You think you did – it could have been your imagination. Sometimes we hear things we expect to hear, almost to confirm our own fears.” I was small, mistaken, deluded.
“And the house has never even been on the market. I called the agents,” I said weakly, tears rising behind my eyes again.
“It may have been a different branch, and didn’t you say it was off the books or something?”
I inhaled deeply on my cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. She was still looking at me with the kindest, most loving gaze any human being could bestow. Her heart was holding hands with mine. I wanted to believe her, almost felt I’d let her down if I didn’t. My faith in Jess was unquestioning. Trained in psychology, NLP and no doubt all sorts of other things, she had a view on life that was enviable. Everything that happened was meant to teach us something and I had to endure, experience, absorb what was happening in order to learn my lesson, whatever it might be. But I was resisting now. I had a feeling this was a lesson I might have already learnt, and that now was the time to recognise that and step away.
“I’m scared Jess. Something’s not right. I know you said we had a good connection and I thought we did too. We get on so well, we laugh, it’s beautiful, but he’s lying to me and I don’t know why. He says he isn’t, but he is, I know he is, and now you make it sound like he’s not and I think I’m going mad.”
Jess nodded with all the earnestness of someone who really truly believes you. When someone believes you, you believe them back. That’s just what happened then.
“Honey, this is all part of the journey. You aren’t running away, you’re staying and finding out, you’re trusting instead of escaping. You are amazing, Rachel. Stay with this and you will experience so much growth, so much development. Harry is teaching you something, and you are teaching him something. Relationships are where the learning happens, remember.”
I did remember. She calmed my hysteria, and my tears dried on my face. I went home and tidied the house in the frantic way you do when you feel things are out of control. Harry texted something at 1.55 and I thought – why aren’t you practising your presentation to the board? Then he texted again at 3.30, no mention of how the meeting went. I asked. He just said fine.
I had just finished teaching when the phone went. He was outside the Wetherspoons in New Malden. He had a surprise for me.
“I just need to see you baby. I don’t like it when we fight.”
“I will be there. Give me 5 minutes.”
I’m not sure where the doubts went, the anger, the fear, the hysteria, but one look at his blue eyes and big smile and I was all his, one hundred and fifty percent, as they say on Love Island.
“I just need to tell you something first.” I had hardly sat down, but I needed to get it out before I had a drink and changed my mind.
“What’s that, baby?”
“You can’t stay at my house tonight.”
“Ok!” He put up his hands in mock defence. “I wasn’t expecting anything, just wanted to see you. What’s up with you? You look shaken up.”
“I am a bit, after this morning.”
“But why? I thought I explained it all to you.”
“It was just a shock. I thought I’d find you there, with all the boxes, and there was no you and no boxes. Makes me worried you’re lying to me about something. Did the packers really come?”
“Baby, it’s all fine. It’s all true. If you went down there first thing tomorrow morning you’d find the packers there. Honest.”
“Okay.” I took a sip of my wine. He had bought a bottle but I could barely manage a glass. I got up to leave. Sadie would be back home from rehearsals any minute and I wanted to be there. He caught my hand, looked into my eyes.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“And I know.” He meant he knew I loved him too. I didn’t put him right, but I never said it back.
“Are we good, baby?”
“We’re good.” But I had noticed the shirt he was wearing. It was the one I’d seen that morning on the stairs of his house, and now I knew who had been watching TV with the door ajar.
Chapter 15
Pitfalls
Relationships are full of pitfalls, but the best bit is getting through the bad times, laughing at yesterday’s issues, repackaging them in today’s newly acquired self-knowledge. I haven’t necessarily mastered the art of laughing at myself but it’s on the list.
But humour is a subjective thing. What amuses me doesn’t necessarily amuse others, especially if they, like me, haven’t perfected the art of being taken for a ride. Texting humour is even trickier. Love affairs have ended over an e-mail written too casually being taken too seriously, and even a strategically placed emoji can be overlooked by an over-sensitive recipient. I regularly found myself on both sides of the fence, but it didn’t seem to make me any more careful. Usually, a decent explanation and apology can go a long way to build bridges, but that was not the case here.
I was making tea in the kitchen the next morning when I noticed Harry’s first message of the day.
Morning. How are you?
I hesitated. I imagined him sitting in his house, the house I now presumed to be his parents' house, conscious of the storm we had sailed through the previous day. He was checking in to see where we were, if there was any damage to the hull, and whether repairs were required. My instinct was to show him, with as much humour as I could muster, that the structure of HMS Relationship was intact. But that humour misfired, with horrific consequences.
Marvellous, but I can’t see any packers...
His reply was instantaneous.
Are you at my house?
I ignored his question, asking him instead
Where are you???
I read his answer, hearing his voice in my head, and glad it was only words on a screen, without volume or tone.
What is going on Rachel? FFS. My mum’s there
I ignored his call which followed immediately, and just texted back:
Only joking
Well I’m not laughing
The minutes that followed were torture. My tea went cold, I made another cup and that went cold too. I looked at our messages over and over again. I was an idiot. Why had I thought that this was a good idea? At no point had he given me any indication that he could laugh at himself. We had never reached the point of looking back at a misunderstanding and taking responsibility. Harry wasn’t a forgiving person. Then I thought – but this is me being me. I am the person that laughs at the past, that can make a joke out of the trials of yesterday to pave way for new beginnings, and why is that wrong?
I knew the answer to that. It was wrong because it was wrong for him, and anything that was wrong for him would sooner or later be wrong for me.
The phone rang again half an hour later and when I steeled myself to answer I had my first taste of Harry’s rage. He made a point of telling m
e this was the nice version, that he’d calmed himself before calling me and I didn’t want to know what he was like before. He'd used his ten minute wait rule before getting back in touch, and I ought to be grateful for that. He’d had to leave work, he was worried for his mum’s well-being because she was sitting in the house waiting for the packers. He had told her to go round to the safety of a neighbour’s house, because he was suddenly afraid I was a crazed bunny boiling nutter rampaging through Surrey. Having walked out of the office in fury, he was now heading home to let the packers in himself, fuming, raging. He said I should tell my friends what I had done, to see what they thought of my disgusting behaviour, that I should take a hard look at myself, that he was rethinking how he felt about me, that I had triggered something that wasn’t going to just go away and there would be consequences.
I sent a desperately placatory message back, contrite, remorseful.
His replies were unrelenting.
The packers turned up and there was no one here so I have had to pay for their time today and they can’t come back till the weekend.
I was back where he wanted me. I see that now. I just said I’m sorry
You’ve really fucked things up for me you know.
Then an hour later, as I sat huddled in the corner of the sofa staring at my phone, wanting to take it all back, be different, be better, he rang back, said we should put it behind us. He asked if we were good, and I said yes.
On WhatsApp that afternoon he was back to his old self, briefly. We talked about plans for the upcoming weekend. I had been invited to spend a day sailing with Caro and James and there was room for one more. It had been agreed I could bring Harry. The others were curious to meet him. It made sense that I should stay over in Godalming on the Saturday night, so that it would be a shorter journey down to the river Hamble the next morning. Staying at his place was just an idea, brewing, as yet unspoken, and I hadn’t worked out where we would sleep if all the rest of the furniture was getting taken away that day by those elusive packers, but my opportunity to suggest it came when he texted me saying he wanted to see me, to get back to good, I expect.
The Delusionist Page 10