I look on it as payment for my time. I flashback again, this time to me straddling him and bouncing up and down, feigning enjoyment. It’s like that saying, if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you drink a bottle of vodka and fuck a stranger and you can’t remember it, did it really happen and could you have enjoyed it?
Like so many of the others, there’s a picture of his wife and kids in his wallet. I look at it for a split second and he stirs. Is this what happened with you and those women? Did they suddenly see a picture of me and Charlie and Laura and know about us? I freeze, tiptoe across the bedroom. I open the door and shut it gently behind me. I hurry down the stairs and raise my phone to my face as I go through the reception area.
It’s weird, really. I never see any of these men again. I don’t sleep with them all. No. If I manage to get a small memento in the bar I just leave. They could probably find me if they look hard enough. I seem to spend a lot of what I think of as my in-between time in the bar of some Premier Inn or another. In-between because it’s somewhere in the fuzzy boundary. The bit where the worst of my pain resides – the deep visceral pain I feel for my babies. I rely on the rationalisation that they’re not going to tell anyone what really happened, are they? How would they explain that to their wives?
When I turn the key in my front door ten minutes later, I see a white postcard on the mat. There’s a police crest on it and a note that they called around last night. Of course they did. You know me, Jack. And I know you. That would be your next move. You can’t come around here yourself because of the restraining order. So you would call the police. You’d want to make a big deal of it to make me look madder. I’d anticipated this so it doesn’t worry me.
An hour before I must be at work, so I clear up the debris from last night – smashed glasses from my clumsy drunkeness and the empty vodka bottle – and move the briefcase and the holdall to the buried box at the end of our garden, a fire pit that I’d long ago covered up and grassed over the lid; it’s where I keep all my souvenirs. Watches, wallets, before I figured out that a missing wallet was quickly noticed. Much better to delay their guilt and inconvenience as long as possible by making it debatable as to whether they had actually been robbed or just lost or spent everything while they were pissed. All the token items I’d taken from women I thought you were seeing. The perfume. A wheel trim. Yes, it sounds crazy but I was trying to keep my family together.
I pull up a small raised flower bed and remove the piece of soil-covered wood underneath. Of course, I’m fucked if anyone finds this. But really, why would anyone look there? The hole is deep and I’d made a box in it out of some scrap wood left in the shed. A bit damp, but not to worry. It all fits in, and I drop in the remnants of last night’s little foray into my other self.
Everyone’s got a dark side and a light side, haven’t they? Problem with me is when I drink I become someone else. Mild-mannered researcher by day; crazy, hoarding, seeker of revenge by night. Never the twain shall meet. Hopefully.
When everything is back in its place I sit on the edge of the flower bed and call the police. DS Lorraine Percy. She answers on two rings.
‘DS Percy speaking. How can I help?’
She doesn’t know it yet, but she can help me a lot. She’s my communication route to you.
‘Oh. Right. This is Caroline Atkinson. I found a card behind my door when I got up this morning.’
‘Yes. Thanks for calling back. We had a report from your ex-husband that you had a holdall of his that was wrongly delivered.’
I sigh heavily for effect.
‘Mmm. His cases were delivered to my house. But I called the delivery company and they picked them up again. They did call back to check.’
‘So you haven’t got the holdall?’
‘No. Look, would you like to pop round and check? I’m not setting off for work for a while. I mean, after what happened before ...’
She pauses.
‘Yes. I’ve read your file. All right. I’ll pop round now, with a colleague.’
‘Thank you. I’ll put the kettle on.’
I end the call and go and clean my teeth. I think about the journal and that guy last night. I only remember snippets, but I’d arrived completely trashed at a local bar and he’d jumped at the chance. All politeness and paying for drinks, but his hands were everywhere. No. It wouldn’t have been like that for you. You would have been upfront about being married. You would have made them feel special, as if they were so fucking wonderful that you had cheated on your wife for them.
I hurry back downstairs when the doorbell rings. I look around at the boxes, looming over me, and smile. She’ll think I’m crazy. But everyone’s got to have a hobby, haven’t they? I let her in. She’s short and compact and stern-looking in her black trousers and jacket. She’s come alone.
From the first moment she steps into my hallway she’s shocked. A pile of Thomson Locals tip over at her feet and she looks to me for guidance. I show her through to the kitchen, where I’ve made a space amongst the section with all the small white goods. Toasters, bread makers, waffle irons. I don’t even like fucking waffles.
She opens her notebook.
‘Right then, Mrs Atkinson.’
She sounds bored, like this is just duty. I smile.
‘It’s Dr Atkinson, actually.’
‘OK, Dr Atkinson. As I said on the phone, your ex-husband has made a complaint that you have his property.’
I look around.
‘Please. Have a look. Whatever it is, it should be easy to spot in here. Unless it’s in an Amazon box.’
She doesn’t laugh. In fact, she looks horrified. She follows my gaze and frowns.
‘You can get help with this. You don’t have to live like this.’
‘Yes. And I will. But it’s taken me a long time to recover from my divorce. Things are getting easier. I’m hoping that this won’t be a setback. I don’t really want any contact with my ex-husband, you see.’
She’s nodding and writing it all down in her little black book.
‘So you say you rang the delivery company? Did you ring them straight away?’
‘When I realised what had happened. And they came as soon as I got home from work to pick the cases up. I honestly can’t see why he’s being like this. I didn’t ask to have them delivered here. And I’m sure you have more important things to investigate than a missing bag?’ I pull my cardigan around my shoulders. ‘This is just time-wasting. And to be honest, it’s brought back memories. Set me back.’
She bites. Her head tilts to one side and she’s in sympathy mode.
‘Look, I wouldn’t usually be around here investigating this sort of thing. It’s just that your ex-husband has instructed his solicitor and he says there are personal documents that could be used for identity fraud. So …’
I stare at her just long enough for her to blink.
‘I’m sorry. I just don’t have the case.’
‘Well, that’s all for now. Look, if I just have a little look around I’ll be able to go back and tell him that it’s a mistake and … Well, just promise me that you’ll see someone about all this.’
She makes her way through the dreamcatchers and candleholders towards the lounge. It’s piled up with dinner services and cutlery near the door, then unopened novels and self-help books further in. She cranes her neck to see into the corners and suddenly turns to face me. We’re a little bit too close to each other and I’m glad I scrubbed my teeth.
‘So how do you afford all this?’
I’m still thinking about your bent fucking solicitor, and how he’s insisting the police take this further than a fucking crime number. I stare at her and we connect.
‘I’ve got nothing else to spend my money on. Nothing else at all.’
She’s read my notes and seen my entire file. She knows my children are gone. She knows exactly what I’ve lost. She turns and lets herself out.
I go to work and sp
end all day researching the trigger point for people to snap. A bit like in that film with Michael Douglas. Falling Down. A lot of people who have committed shoot-em-ups were interviewed about what made them do it. The obvious flaw in this is that they’re probably going to say whatever makes them appear in the best possible light, because psychopaths are liars and do have a sense of what they have done wrong, they just don’t believe it. And they just don’t really care. Not deep down inside. So lying is of no consequence to them. More second nature, isn’t it, Jack?
When I get home I go up the garden and retrieve the journal. I thought that I’d made my decision. It had upset me so much that I knew the only sane thing to do was to get rid of it. But it’s too compelling. The knowledge that I was right all along makes the suffering worthwhile. Even though it’s torturing me, I open it and read it again.
High fucking Fidelity? You were always a War and Peace man. You liked to tell everyone that you had read Dostoevsky. You hadn’t, but you had read every Martin Amis. And Will Self. Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of lad lit. But it just isn’t you.
The more I read of the journal, the more I see that you moulded yourself around those women. If they liked classical music, you’d take them to the Proms. If they liked rock you’d buy concert tickets. It was clear that you went to massive lengths to make them feel special. Even more than I thought. Special. You didn’t want me. You wanted them. Special.
I reach for the vodka again. But the cupboard is bare and I’m dry. I could go out to the off-licence and buy some cheap stuff but I’m not cheap. Somehow I need to work out what I should do and how I’m going to get my mind off your fucking cheating. I almost throw the journal across the room, but I know that’s pointless. My phone rings and it’s your mother. Of course it is.
I leave it to go to answerphone because I know what she’s going to say. I watch the message icon flash on the screen and then I press play.
‘Caroline, it’s Missy. I’ve had a call from Jack.’
Of course she has. If you can’t get to me through the police, then you’ll send in the fucking cavalry. Who you convinced that I was totally insane. Although Missy didn’t need much convincing.
‘I hope this isn’t any more of your nonsense, Caroline. You need to think about the consequences. For the children. For all of us. If you’ve got that bag, give it back to him. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
The children. She’s complicit in this. Every time I think about what happened I start to cry. I feel delirious with grief. She gets to see my beautiful children every day and I can only watch them from a distance. I do, though, I make sure I see them every day that I can, even the bad days. The more I think about it, the more I realise that I need to do something about it. It’s not right or fair. And I miss them more than life itself.
So I close the journal and open my laptop. I check my Facebook messages and check your page, as I do every day. You’re absolutely unable to make your Facebook private because who would worship you then? You need the adulation, clearly. You’ll have weighed it up carefully. The chances of someone – me – stalking you against the opportunity to tell everyone how wonderful you are and how perfect your new life is. A no-brainer.
Naturally, I click on your friends list and slowly, letter by letter, type in Christine Dearden. There she is. Staring lovingly into her husband’s eyes on their wedding day in her profile picture. I try another one. She’s there too, with her three kids. I open the journal again and look through your list for most of your ex-girlfriends. All spectators to the demise of our marriage, which they contributed to.
Still wishing you Happy Birthday Jack and still liking your posts. Whereas I was barred from your life. Julie Carson lives in a beautiful architect-designed home. Spotless white. She’s a marketing director. I wonder if their husbands know what they did? Had an affair with a married man? Slept with you in the full knowledge that you had a wife? There’s no reason why they shouldn’t know. They made me suffer, so why shouldn’t they suffer now?
High Fidelity. You like that. You like the premise. But, like you said, there’s too many of them. Well, how would you like it if I helped you out, Jack? If I hunted down each of your exes and made them aware of how much I had suffered?
I get my car keys and drive down to the local PC World. Like always, it’s a toss-up whether I make it to where I’m going or just to the Tesco booze department. But, by ten o’clock, I’m the proud owner of a top-of-the-range notebook. Large memory, small enough to be portable. Long battery life. I drive to the centre of Manchester and park up on Dale Street. The laptop’s partly charged when I switch it on and it searches for Wi-Fi. Searching, searching, searching until it identifies a nice, anonymous cloud network. Manchester Free Wi-Fi. An hour of free internet time every night.
I sign up as Monica Bradley. The name just came to me out of nowhere. I make a Facebook account and a Twitter account and search Facebook for an anonymous face. Someone the opposite of me, dark and sultry. Someone attractive, with lots of friends and an open profile that I can steal photos from. Sally King from Halifax will do. I give Monica a relationship. Married. For four years. She went to our local school and she’s got a degree in computer science.
I send friend requests to some of your friends and some from my own friends list. I send one to myself. My real self.
Then I drive over to the university. A security guard waves me through when I explain I’ve forgotten some seminar papers that I need to copy for tomorrow. I go straight to the print room and take the journal out of my bag. I carefully scan each page. Each receipt. Each condom wrapper. Each narrative on how you scored them and why you scored them. Where you met them. What each woman’s ‘speciality’ was. Pictures of you together.
I always get a split second where I doubt myself. Wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Usually self-preservation, knowing that no matter how wrongly accused I was, if anything else happens I’ll end up in Holloway. But, like every other time, it’s diffused. This time my fear is reframed when I’m about to scan a photo of you and Alicia Turnbull. It’s one of those sickly-sweet end-of-the-bed poses, her head upside down. All black underwear and legs in the background. The background of my bedroom. Our bedroom. That’s my bed she’s lying on. My blue dressing gown hangs on the back of the door and that’s my mini Tiffany lamp on the bedside table.
You fucked them in our bed. Somehow I didn’t think it could get any worse. I look at the date on the photograph and my head’s spinning. Two days before your twenty-eighth birthday five years ago. Two days before we went out to the Yang Sing and then came home and made love in that bed. You must have been thinking about her all the time. Laughing at me. I quickly scan the picture and finish the rest of the pages. I pull the flash drive out of the machine and push in my staff key to reset the counter to zero. As I walk away from the university, ‘Shout Out to my Ex’ is playing in my head and a High Fidelity cheating bastard playlist is forming – but this time it’s revenge instead of apologies.
Back in the car a flutter of excitement flows through me and I look at Christine Taylor, née Dearden’s profile again. At least I have the advantage of knowing exactly what she looks like. Like you, she seems to be unable to keep anything secret. Apart from the things about her that her husband doesn’t know. Maybe she’s still doing it? Sleeping with other people’s husbands? Well. We’ll soon see, won’t we?
Chapter Four
It was difficult to sleep in that room, knowing what you’d done in there. I haven’t changed a thing and now I wish I had. All I could imagine was your laughter and her touching my things.
But I need to start from the beginning if I’m going to do this right. With Christine. Because I couldn’t sleep, I had a chance to think about where I could get free Wi-Fi. The university, obviously, but that was too obvious. Too me. Monica Bradley with her high-powered job in computer science wouldn’t hang out there. I need somewhere that couldn’t place me, or at least place me in the wrong location. About 3
a.m. it came to me. Wasn’t there Wi-Fi on the trams now? And the buses. I could run Monica Bradley’s life on public transport.
So after I have my coffee I go down the garden to the hole. It’s a misty morning and at least I don’t feel hung over. But I do feel that you must pay for what you’ve done. You’ve ruined my life. I lay awake reasoning with myself that I could move away, start again. But it’s an overwhelming task. I’d have to sell our house and move all the things I had bought. Besides, I couldn’t leave. My life stopped a year ago, but that doesn’t mean that someday things can’t just turn around. All I need to do is show everyone that I was right and you were wrong and then I’ll have a chance of getting Charlie and Laura back.
Lots of people have misunderstood the situation. They think I’m upset about you and your philandering. They don’t understand what has happened here and they tell me to let it go. Let it go. Let it fucking go! Don’t they think I’ve tried that? I gave myself all the advice that I would have given someone in my position. Have a break. Go on holiday. Move house. Get rid of all their stuff. Ice cream. Watch sad films. Cry it out. Sleep. Care for yourself.
I knew exactly what to do. I did all those things right at the beginning, when I felt like it was the kind of normal split-up some of my friends had gone through.
You had to draw it out, though, didn’t you? You walked away with a piece of elastic that was my heart and pulled it as long and as far as possible until, finally, it broke. I would feel like I was ‘getting over it’, then you would come around again to see the children and drop another bombshell that ended with me in tears and you herding the children out as if you were scared.
The worst one was that time you said you were taking them on holiday. I was fine with it. Well, I wasn’t because I suspected that you were going with your current girlfriend, whoever that was, and I was upset because the children would spend time with her and not me.
I told myself that I was still their mother and no one could ever replace me. It was only for a fortnight. I planned to decorate their rooms while you were gone. Two days beforehand you called me to tell me when you would pick them up. I thought we’d already arranged it and was confused. Midday Saturday. No, you said, you’d need them earlier.
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