by J. A. Baker
I slink behind the curtains, my face burning with humiliation at being caught out spying like a small child. I close my eyes and think hard. I visualise Martyn’s old surgery - a Victorian building with an ugly 1970’s annexe that housed the reception area. It once belonged to the local squire and had several outhouses and an extensive garden that is now a huge swathe of concrete. The car park isn’t half as pretty as the lawns and rose gardens were, but a damn sight easier to maintain and way more practical. The faces of all the GP’s at Forge Hill are clear and fresh in my mind, each sat in their respective consultation rooms. There was Robin Wright who had worked there for over twenty years, David Thorpe, a recently qualified young buck who was full of radical ideas on how to change the running of the surgery, Sarah Rushton or was it Rushy? I can’t quite recall. I do remember she had had just returned from maternity leave and teetered on the brink of exhaustion most days, and then there was the new practitioner who. . . My head thumps with realisation and a cold rush of fear races through me. Oh god. How can I have been so blind? He had only been there a matter of days when I. . . Swallowing down a painful lump, I blink back the tears that threaten to spill out. That day - I’ve tried my utmost to blank out all thoughts of that day - the day I went to see Martyn at work. But now it burns fiercely in my brain, bright and hot, lighting up and activating parts of my memory I would rather stayeddormant I slap my palms into my eye sockets and groan out loud. I don’t want to remember. I refuse to remember. And if it wasn’t for this Toby chap, I wouldn’t need to remember. But now here it is, another unwanted recollection, floating around my brain like candy floss, sticking to everything it touches and refusing to budge, making me want to scream out loud with the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t my fault you see. I was simply trying to save my marriage. I had to do something. I had found the evidence linking Debra to Martyn only days ago and was emotionally fragile. She was my friend and I wasn’t thinking straight the day I marched into Forge Hill Surgery and burst into Martyn’s room, bristling with fury. He must have been there, Toby, new to the practice and witness to the lunatic ravings of a doctor’s jealous wife. Fortunately, he hasn’t quite placed me as that barmy lady, who had to be forcibly seated and sedated by her husband. Yet. And if I’m lucky, he never will. If I’m not, and he does remember? I scratch at the sides of my bare arms. If he does remember then I guess I’ll have to deal with that the best way I can. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I continue to tear at my arms, thinking how much of a relief it would be if I had a sharp implement to hand which I could drag up and down my skin. Like waiting and waiting before finally being able to scratch an itch. The release I would feel as blood escaped through the wounds, purging me of all my pent-up troubles, would be unspeakably beautiful. I shiver expectantly. Such pleasure, so liberating. Yet it would change nothing.
Bile rises up my gullet, burning my throat and blood gushes through my ears. I bring my knees up and rest my head in my lap then inhale deeply as I try to stem my breathing, which is now rapid and bordering on wheezing. I have to stop this and continue with my normal day to day life. There’s absolutely nothing I can do in the meantime. For all I know, Toby may not visit again. Or he may come round every weekend. Or he might ring them every single day. . .
Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Jumping up, I stomp across the bedroom into the ensuite, dizzy with fear and dread. I’m blowing this up out of all proportion and need to get a bloody grip. I’ve dealt with worse than this in the past. I can do it. I can deal with this and come out of it unscathed. I just need to keep it together. Puffing out my cheeks I decide to take a couple of tablets to calm my nerves. Just some of Martyn’s tablets, for his depression, to help me keep a level head. I’ve seen how they work for him, turning him from a raving lunatic to a pussycat in a matter of minutes. I open the cabinet and grab two of them, throwing them into my mouth and then stick my head under the tap to gulp back enough water to wash them down. Goosebumps prickle my skin. The ambience in the room has altered. A small but definitely detectable waft of heat filters through the air. He is here. I can feel him. I turn round to see Martyn standing behind me. Tillie scampers round his feet and her innocence stabs at me. If only humans could live like dogs; no questions, no worries, simply accept what occurs as it occurs and do it all with good grace. Every day is a new day; shiny and sparkling and exciting when you’re a dog.
“Where have you been Phoebe?” His tone isn’t exactly accusatory but neither is it friendly. There is an edge to it that scares me, sets my nerves alight. I grit my teeth so tightly it hurts. My jaw clicks painfully as I set my face into a determined position. Here we go again.
“Walking Tillie, then back here. Where have you been?” My question catches him off guard and he narrows his eyes and looks around the room. This happens sometimes, as if his thinking is slightly out of sync, playing catch up with current events. He stands stock still, his hands hanging limply at his sides. The silence is deafening. I watch as his fingers begin to shift slightly. He wiggles them about ominously, the momentum spreading up his arms and over his broad chest. A cracking sound breaks the silence as Martyn rotates his large shoulders and moves his head from side to side, as if freeing up his neck muscles. He glares at me, his eyes full of loathing. And then I realise. His medication. The packet was full. Not only has he not had today’s dosage, he hasn’t had yesterday’s either. And it is beginning to show. This is all my fault. I should be monitoring him more closely, making sure he takes his meds regularly. And I used to, but just lately I seem to find it difficult keeping track of time. My head feels muddled, full of worries about Nancy and Toby. And Martyn. He is a constant source of deep concern. I need to be more careful, be extra vigilant when it comes to his medication. It’s not something I can tamper with. I do that at my peril.
Martyn moves closer to me, so close I can smell the reek of his breath, see the plaque on his unbrushed teeth. “Who were you looking at out there?” he snarls.
I shrug my shoulders and try to brush past him but he shoves me back into the wall, “I asked you who were you looking at?”
This is a split second decision I have to make. To tell him or not to tell him? Whatever I do I have a horrible feeling that no good is going to come of it. I decide to come clean. Lying will only increase my chances of confrontation and besides which, he will find out anyway. Martyn always finds out.
“It’s a relative of Anna’s. I think he used to work at your surgery,” I am convinced the sound of my heart thrashing around my chest fills the whole room. Martyn continues to stare at me. Unblinking. I don’t know how he does that or whether or not it’s a deliberate tactic he employs to unnerve me. He has a proclivity for instilling fear in me. His eyes bore into me, cold and still. The colour of gunmetal
“What relative?”
I nod and keep my expression neutral. Martyn is an absolute master when it comes to reading people. Comes with the territory of being a doctor for so many years and since being pensioned off he hasn’t lost his knack for cutting to the chase and disregarding the unimportant stuff. Even if it’s really important to other people.
“Anna’s brother, Toby. I don’t know his surname but apparently he reckons he knows my face from somewhere.”
“That’s what he said?”
A tiny pulse hammers at my temple as he watches me. A pain shoots through my jaw. I wiggle it and breathe deeply. “That’s what he said.”
Martyn’s booming laugh reverberates around the room. Something tells me I shouldn’t have let this conversation get this far. I’ve got a sickly feeling down in my gut that this isn’t going to end well. It rarely does.
“And he saw you that day didn’t he?”
My breathing is ragged, uneven. I seize the opportunity to ask him, “Do you remember him? This Toby who says he recognises me from somewhere?”
His lip curls up into a sneer and I feel like running away and hiding somewhere until it all goes away. He knows him. Of course he does. What
the hell did I expect? I take a few small, tentative steps out of the en suite, slipping past Martyn and look around at the huge expanse of bedroom. Plain, nondescript. A king size bed, fitted wardrobes and a cheval mirror. Not many hiding places here.
“He did see you didn’t he? That’s what you’re getting at isn’t it? You’re worried he recognises you from that day. Do you remember that day Phoebe? Do you?”
He steps closer to me. I am pressed up against the bedroom wall. Nowhere to run to. Nowhere to go to at all. Trapped in my own home. By my husband. A monster by any other name.
“That day when you turned up at the surgery like a screaming banshee, hollering about me having an affair.”
I’d gone to finish an argument we had had the day previously when I finally realised my husband was sleeping with one of my best friends. After discovering the emails at home, I had confronted Martyn. He had been sat in an armchair in his study reading a newspaper, his demeanour positively jocular when I stormed in, shaky with anger and disbelief.
“Where were you last week? When you were supposed to be at a conference with George?”
He had looked up at me, his pupils slightly dilated, a raw fizz of excitement evident in his expression.
“As you have just said,” he had sighed, “I was away with George and a few other people. At the conference, remember?”
His gaze had bored into me, unrelenting, daring me to dispute his story. I had dug my teeth into the sides of my mouth, nipping painfully at a flap of skin until it hurt so much I had to let it go. A metallic taste flooded my mouth, gliding its way over my gums and down my throat, oily and pungent.
“Okay Martyn,” I had said, trying to keep a lid on my anger, “we can go on playing your little game or you can tell me where you really were. And I mean really.”
I had watched as his lips curled up slightly, mocking, so sure of himself. So fucking arrogant.
“Where do you think I was Phoebe?”
I had stayed silent, too fearful to answer. Suddenly not wanting to know the truth. Time froze in our home that day. Air expanded in my chest. I thought I was going to choke as I watched Martyn’s face break into a deceitful grin.
“Yes, that’s right Phoebe. Whatever you’re thinking I did, I did it. Obviously. If it makes you shut up and leave me alone then I admit it.”
He had shaken his head and turned his attention back to scanning the newspaper and that was the day my world as I knew it, came to a convulsing, grinding halt. I had intended to take a suitcase full of his clothes into the surgery but even that felt too final. Because despite his admission, despite those emails, despite the desperation and the hurt I felt, I wanted our marriage to survive. I really did. And we tried. God knows we tried. He told me he had broken it off with Debra but she simply refused to accept it. She hounded him, threatened to expose their affair, to ruin him. It was a nightmare. And then suddenly one day it all stopped. The relief on my part was immense. I hoped that would be the end of it, but Martyn’s moods continued. He was nervous, edgy. So I decided I would book us a holiday. Just a few days at a guest house in Whitby. Hoped we could get away together, sort it all out, get our lives back on track. How wrong I was.
I turn away from Martyn and not for the first time this week, wish him dead and gone. A pain travels up my jaw and I realise I have had my teeth clenched together tight, so tight I have started to develop a gnawing headache. I close my eyes and steel myself for a raging argument but when I turn around Martyn is wandering off. The moment gone. This is what he does, comes and goes, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake, a whirling vortex of destruction.
I stagger over to the bed, the medication beginning to take effect. My eyelids are stone pillars, gravity and exhaustion forcing them downwards. The final thing I see before sleep catches me in its clutches, is the face of Dr Tavel as he stares down at me, his velvety voice, reassuring and solid, “Remember Phoebe, lying will only make things worse. Tell the truth and everything will be all right.”
Fifteen
Two weeks later
Anna idly flicks through the TV channels before turning it off and throwing the remote onto the couch. Such a waste of a life, sitting watching TV all day every day. She doesn’t know how her two boys do it. They seem to spend half their lives glued to the set. It’s a miracle she actually managed to prise them away from the screen a few weekends back and get them out of the house. That was partly due to Toby’s presence but at least they did something together as a family. A brief visit to Bridget’s grave followed by a walk on the beach with fish and chips on a bench while staring out to sea. A perfect day really. And such a hard day to follow. And it was invigorating getting out of the house, facing the clean sea air. Since Toby’s visit she has nagged Mike into spending more time together as a family and at one point he looked like he might actually be inclined to agree. Tonight’s venture to the pub to take part in the quiz wasn’t quite what she had in mind.
She gets up, walks to the window and stares at the manicured lawns outside. The weeks have passed by in a blur and already spring is upon them. The clematis has started its ascent up the side of the fence and the tell-tale swell of the tulips heads indicate that the worst of the winter is behind them. The sun has even made the occasional appearance through the rain clouds and the sky and the trees carry the whispering, low chatter of early birdsong. And still Nancy remains missing. The original crowds of people that searched for her have thinned out to the point where only one person a week visits the village. An older man in his late sixties with thinning hair and a wobbly gait. Probably her husband. Just a lonely, distraught looking figure who wanders up and down the green, staring off over the river. She can’t even begin to imagine what kind of things go through that poor man’s head. The posters that clung to the trees through the vicious, howling gales and driving rain have disintegrated to almost nothing, her features now no more than a forgotten, indistinct blur. Every now and then, her face appears on the local news and her family have set up a Facebook page to help find her. But by and large, Nancy has all but been forgotten. But not by Anna. She still thinks of her every day. This village is her home. And she somehow feels responsible for this woman’s disappearance. How can people carry on, act as if nothing has happened when Nancy is still out there, waiting to be found? It’s an indignity nobody should ever have to bear and an insult to Nancy. Everybody deserves to exist.
Anna looks at her watch. The boys will be in soon, closely followed by Mike. She has nothing prepared for their evening meal and needs to get sorted. And then after dinner they have the quiz. Truth be told, the last thing she feels like doing is sitting in a pub doing a bloody stupid quiz, especially as she has no female company to chat to. She can always cry off. She imagines Mike’s eye rolling and his comments about how it was her idea for them to spend more time together. But a pub quiz in The Crofters hardly amounts to quality family time does it? They could go on their own, just Mike and the boys. Probably better dynamics anyway. She would justcramp their style. By the time she starts to prepare their meal, she has persuaded herself that the men would be better off without her. She’ll only get the answers wrong anyway. Mike is the brain box and Mason is a whizz kid when it comes to music and media questions. She will be no more than a passive attendee. And Callum is always good with sports questions. They don’t need her.
It’s while she is setting the table that the idea of how she should really spend her evening implants itself in her brain. And no matter how hard she tells herself she should be out with her family, the idea refuses to go away. It remains there, solid and immovable. That day by the sea, out facing the elements did her no end of good. This year she hasn’t been out by the river. Not once. Nancy’s disappearance had put her right off but now she feels a longing to get out there, to embrace nature. It’s now officially spring and she has barely set foot over the doorstep.
They are all jostling for food at the table when she breaks it to them.
“I’m thinking of g
iving it a miss tonight. I’m pretty sure you chaps will have a fine old time without me,” she winks at Mike who is busy spooning out a hefty dollop of mashed potato which he unceremoniously dumps onto his plate, and hopes he doesn’t throw a hissy fit at the idea.
“You sure? Won’t you get bored in here on your own? You hate watching the telly.” His concern doesn’t last for long. Callum reaches over for the meat but Mike is faster, helping himself to two large slices before passing it over to the boys, who both complain about the size of his helpings.
“I’m sure. I was thinking of going for a walk by the river actually. It’s April and I’ve barely ventured outside.”
“A walk at night?” Mason eyes his mother with surprise. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to go during the day when we’re all out and it’s light?” he watches her from behind his long sweeping fringe.
“The nights are lighter now. Besides, I fancied seeing the sunset tonight. It’s supposed to be a real cracker if the rain stays off.” Anna smiles at them and helps herself to a slab of overcooked beef.
“Well,” says Mike, “just take it easy and make sure you wrap up warm. It can get pretty raw out there when the wind gets up. And stay back from the river. It’s fairly fast at the minute.” Anna smiles and eyes his belly. Like he knows anything about weather patterns and river currents. She can’t remember the last time he walked anywhere let alone the river path that runs right past the front of his house.