Trouble By Numbers Series

by Alam, Donna

  Then, more occasionally, I wake like this.

  Terrified. I feel like I’m choking. My nose burns with the phantom sting of salt water and my skin prickles from the burn of the sun. I know it makes no sense, this drowning by empathy, but yet here I cower, coughing and spluttering, desperately fighting to stay alive.

  My breathing is erratic as I swallow mouthfuls of air, struggling to inflate my lungs, able to wipe the tears from my face only as I begin to calm, inhaling large gulps of oxygen. Physically shaking, I force myself back against the pillows and pressing my hand against what I think is my diaphragm. I push myself into the mattress, willing my breathing to catch up with my reality.

  I’m dry. I’m on land.

  I’m not dying. I never was.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Concentrate on the rise and fall of my hands, the birds singing outside, or the lines in the ceiling. Concentrate on anything else.

  Intellectually, I know guilt is the cause. I might not have had a hand in his death, but I feel I’m somehow to blame. I’d stopped feeling invested in my marriage long before he died.

  Once I’m able to push away the terror, I can rein in my thoughts, my heartbeat finding it’s equilibrium, though I feel like I’ve been lying here an age.

  Ivy’s alarm sounds through the thin wall, and a moment later, I can hear her stumbling about her bedroom. It’s mornings like these that makes me thankful she’s a heavy sleeper, but it’s sort of comforting, listening to her start her day. I’m grateful that, this morning, her only morning free from the salon, she’s disciplined enough to set her alarm. This small piece of domestic normality is something to hold onto; something to concentrate on. I’m here—so is Ivy—and I need to appreciate my friends more. Even if their kindness hurts.

  I stretch out my trembling arms, for once not depressed that my fingers almost touch the walls either side of my bed. My breathing is as it should be now, panic reduced though I’m still shaken.

  Fuck it all. I’m so tired of not feeling like me. Sick of being afraid of what the morning might bring. Tired of those around looking at me like I’m about to crumble from the outside in; like at any moment I might implode and collapse. Turn to dust.

  From terrified to angry, I swipe my phone from the small mirrored table masquerading as a nightstand. Flicking through my emails, I notice one from Soraya asking if I’ve time for a chat later today. I sigh, though it’s not exactly bitterness that prompts me to do so, more a small and sudden why. Why me and not her? Why not the stranger on the street? The uncharitable thought prompts a wave of guilt, because without my friends, who knows where I’d be.

  I read once that grief must be tackled in stages, but I can’t seem to get beyond my fearful state. No, that’s not quite true, because I’m plenty angry. Angry that this has happened; that I’ve lost everything. It’s an anger I keep bottled up inside. A rage I can’t express; I’m just so sick and tired of being terrified all the time.

  ‘You want a coffee?’

  Ivy’s voice from the other side of the door pulls me from my own head, away from what I don’t care to share. My throat is hoarse as I answer.

  ‘I’ll make them.’

  I note Ivy’s tone is sleep filled but not unfriendly which, after yesterday, is all I can ask. We managed to avoid each other after our chat, mainly because Saturday turned out to be her busiest day so far. I’m pleased business is going well, especially so soon after opening. I’m also pleased we didn’t sit down to dinner together later that evening. She’d said she had a heap of paperwork to deal with and spent most of the evening glued to her laptop and receipts, whether in truth or just to avoid me, I can’t be sure.

  Out in the kitchen now, I fill the kettle with icy cold water, grabbing the jar of instant from the cupboard above. I miss my Italian built-in coffee machine; I wished I could’ve brought it with me. It’s not the most sensible thought, but out of all the trappings of my previous life, good coffee is one of the things I miss the most. It’s not as though there’s space for an espresso maker in here; the kitchen is barely big enough for its tiny rectangular table setting. We don’t usually eat in here as it’s become Ivy’s office of sorts, her laptop taking up the tiny dining space, while I’m camped out in her office space, I suppose. On the table, piles of paperwork and invoices are piled strategically and weighted with items varying from a garlic crusher to a can of stewed prunes. I guess Ivy must have some method in that madness, though to me it just looks chaotic.

  She didn’t have a lot of money left over after the salon refit, which was seriously seventies in its décor. The flat above the salon wasn’t much better. We’d done what we could to bring it up to date, firstly by pulling up the almost psychedelic carpets running across the entire floor. It was the kind of floor covering with a pattern so mad that, if you stared at it for more than a minute or two, you were left feeling dizzy. I scuff my toe against the kitchen floor, thinking it was lucky for her bank balance we’d discovered fairly decent floorboards underneath the yuck. After an unpleasant day of sanding, Ivy, Nat and I had whitewashed the boards, coating the kitchen units with the same paint. The resulting effect is a little more shabby than chic, but pretty enough, especially paired with the scrubbed pine table and DIY’d white-washed chairs.

  ‘Don’t you own pyjama pants?’ Ivy appears in the kitchen doorway dressed in blue flannel and a Ramones tee, her hair looking like a magpie’s des res. Her frown is directed in the vicinity of my legs causing me to look down at my nightwear, or lack thereof. What I’d thought was an oversized t-shirt has come up a little bit short.

  ‘Could’ve been worse.’ I have a thing for lingerie and flimsy nightwear; or rather, I had a thing for those kinds of frippery. These days, what you see is pretty much what you get. Panties. Tees. Marginally bristly legs.

  ‘Can you make mine a tea?’ she asks through a yawn. ‘And there are sultana muffins June baked in the bread thingy.’

  I turn to pull out the tea canister when my phone buzzes against the kitchen worktop.

  ‘Whozat?’ Ivy asks in her usual candour.

  ‘Junk email, I expect.’ I pop a teabag into her mug. ‘I got a message from Soraya late last night. She’s calling later on.’

  Ivy makes an indistinct noise; a sort of enquiring sound. Something’s definitely a little off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ she repeats, only in a higher tone, doing a fair impersonation of a deer caught in a pair of high beams.

  ‘What’s with the strangled noise?’

  ‘I was just thinking that’s probably a good idea.’ She nods her head vigorously. ‘A really good idea.’

  ‘It’s just a phone call, Ivy.’ Just a phone call I hate making more and more these days. I’ll forever appreciate everything Soraya’s done for me, but it’s like she and I might as well live on separate planets now. I’m indebted to them both—Ivy and her—but for them, I would be living with my mother and her new guy, or maybe worse. Languishing in a foreign jail, maybe. But keeping in contact with Raya makes me sad. It’s almost as if, in the days between our calls, I can ignore my past and just focus on what I have in front of me. And by in front, I mean just that; neither the past nor the future, just what’s right in front of me.

  Pathetic, I know.

  ‘You know what else would be a good idea? If you shaved your legs.’

  I glance down at the prickly appendages. ‘What for? No one sees them.’

  ‘And if a bear poos in the woods, does that mean no one sees?’

  I snort. Ivy is forever getting things back to front, sideways and ass over tit.

  ‘For the sake of Pooh Bear’s modesty, I hope so.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Coming closer, Ivy leans over me. ‘Helps if you flick the switch, see?’ she says, doing just that to the kettle. ‘And you’re supposed to be the clever one.’

  Still smiling smugly, she turns and leaves.

  I dunk a spoon of instant into my mug, resting my hip against the cupboard. As
I wait for the kettle to boil, I absently run my hand against one of the chairs, spotting a corner where the whitewash paint has run leaving an unattractive drip effect. Scratching the lump with my nail sets off a domino effect: the chair wobbles against the uneven floor, nudging the table, and bringing Ivy’s laptop whirring from sleep mode. Unconcerned, I continue my tidying repair when my vison snags on the backlit screen. Ordinarily, I’m not the prying kind. People who listen at keyholes deserve a poke in the eye as far as I’m concerned, but a particular word catches my attention, creating a wave of nausea that almost pushes me to my knees.

  The word is my dead husband’s name.

  Why would Ivy be writing about him?

  The chair grates a little against the floor as I pull it out, sliding my bottom onto the hard wooden seat.

  I really don’t know, the email reads. She’s still pretty fragile and not willing to talk about any of it. The email goes on, stopping mid-sentence after a brief mention of the recent waxing course I’d completed. It’s kind of a jokey judgement, something about getting me to practise on myself, though the underlying message is that I’m hiding from myself.

  I scroll up the page, reading the previous email, the one to which Ivy’s note responds. It’s from Soraya. I had no idea the pair had any kind of discourse since my return, and for a moment, I’m a little hurt. But as my eyes track the email contents, the wave of nausea returns and bile rises to my throat.

  Needs to be told.

  We’re not helping her by hiding this.

  She’s punishing herself and for what?

  ‘Fin, you’re not making Turkish coffee, are you?’ Ivy’s voice catches me off guard, guilt quick to rush to my cheeks.’

  ‘N-no,’ I call back. ‘Unless you want me to.’

  ‘God, no. That stuff’s like drinking tar. What’s taking you so long? Have you gone to milk a cow or something?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I call back, my eyes tracking the words even as they begin to blur across the screen. I hear the kettle boil and click off somewhere in the distance, but I can’t move.

  ‘A person could die of thirst waiting for—’ Ivy comes to an abrupt halt in the kitchen doorway, her expression morphing in that split second from shock to sympathy.

  ‘What is it that you don’t want me to see?’ My voice is sort of distant and unsteady, my thoughts matching. ‘What can be worse than what I’m feeling today? Yesterday? This whole year?’ I realise my words aren’t a reflection of what’s going through my head—they aren’t loud and angry but rather plaintive. ‘I mean, I lost my husband, my home, most of my friends. My place in the world, and for more than a few weeks, my will to live. What else could there be left to hurt me?’

  ‘I wanted to tell you, but not yet. I didn’t think you were ready, not after yesterday’s conversation. We decided we’d wait until after your birthday at least, but Raya—’

  ‘Said I was making him a saint. That I needed to sacrifice his memory on the altar of my self-respect. Who says that kind of stuff?’ I huff a half-laugh because I know the answer. Soraya the ball buster. Soraya the harsh. Soraya the woman who got me out of the country after Marcus died, risking prison herself.

  ‘What is it she thinks I need to see? That you don’t?’

  ‘Yet.’ Ivy walks further into the kitchen and begins to shuffle the prunes and papers on the table. ‘I don’t—didn’t think you were ready. She means well, but she doesn’t know that there are still days where you cry yourself awake.’

  Shame blooms in my chest.

  ‘You didn’t think I could hear you?’ she asks a little sadly.

  Pursing my lips, I shake my head.

  ‘I just don’t know if this is going to make things better or worse.’ Her words are despondent as she pulls out a document wallet concealed under a pile. ‘I was hoping we could keep this quiet until you were back on your feet. Feeling stronger, maybe.’ Her words trail off, her next sentence sounding much the same. ‘Raya found out some stuff . . . recently.’

  She hands me the branded package. Fed-Ex.

  My hands tremble as I pull it from hers. ‘What is it?’ I hold the box so still it’s like it’s explosive.

  Ivy looks uncomfortable, yet her gaze doesn’t waver from mine. Which tells me this parcel is an explosive of another kind. Hers is the kind of look meant to reassure, though not in the it’s going to be okay way. It’s more like I’ve got your back. The kind of look that feels like a cold finger dragging down my spine.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. I just know, well, I know what it means.’ Her expression is more worrying than the package in my hands. ‘I just want you to know it wasn’t my intention to hide this from you. I’d have happily . . . well, not happily, but Raya was packing some of your belongings she’d managed to grab from your house. She was boxing them up to ship, only she found . . .’ She gestures to the package lying in my hands. ‘Those.’

  I tear the cardboard strip and pull out the contents, spreading them out on the table, picking up a folded credit card statement addressed to Marcus and a bill branded Agent Provocateur. Nothing shocking there, other than their prices.

  ‘It was for nightwear,’ I say, picking it up. ‘He—he bought me these on his last business trip.’ Tiny froufrou bits of silver lace and satin, more for the purpose of being peeled off in the bedroom, rather than to be put on to sleep in. As it happens, they were used for neither. I hadn’t even removed the tags. I’d been shocked when I’d found the gift box in the closet as we hadn’t had any kind of intimacy in quite some time. ‘Wonder what happened to them?’ I ask absently, suffering a fleeting, yet ridiculous vision, of George, the gardener of our house in Dubai—the last place we’d lived—wearing the sheer chemise and midnight lace robe while mowing the lawn in the searing heat.

  ‘Expect it’s all in a box somewhere. Maybe amongst the stuff that Raya managed to pack?’ A look of panic flits across her face before she ducks her head, her eyes now glued to the table.

  I pick up another bill; it’s from the same store, dated the following day. Each bill is charged with the same items and the exact same amount.

  ‘There must be some mistake. Is this credit card fraud?’

  ‘I wished it was,’ Ivy almost whispers, her fingers touching my forearm as I empty a smaller envelope. A series of photographs fall to the table and I gasp.

  These are photographs of my husband’s P.A. in the very same chemise and lace robe.

  The fat bitch.

  Eight

  Fin

  ‘So it’s a good job he’s dead, then?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that.’

  ‘But she’s happy he’s not here, right?’

  ‘Well, I suppose, but—’

  From my prone position on the sofa, I listen to Natasha and Ivy debate the merits of my current situation in the kitchen, given this morning’s revelations, in unsuccessfully hushed tones.

  ‘So what’s the issue?’

  ‘Sometimes you’ve got the emotional empathy of a tub of cottage cheese,’ says Ivy emphatically.

  ‘I don’t get it. He cheated on her—more than once if those credit card statements and voluptuous nearly nudey shots are anything to go by—but she’s still sad?’

  Voluptuous is right. His P.A.’s body filled those bits of lace better than my meagre curves ever would. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid.

  ‘Well,’ Ivy tries again, pausing as she probably scans her mind for simpler language. More base terms? Man dead. Fin sad. Maybe she should get out her phone and use emoji’s. ‘Of course she’s still sad. He was her husband and he’s still dead, only now as well as sorrow, she’ll be feeling off her rocker mad. Hopefully,’ she adds. I can almost feel her staring at me through the wall. ‘At some point.’

  Personal fucking assistant, I attempt to fume silently. Very fucking personal. Take down a message Miss Carreras, all the way down to the base of my cock.

  Can you attempt to fume? Force some kind of angry response? W
hy aren’t I cursing and screaming? Wouldn’t that be the best way to process all this?

  ‘If he didn’t have the good sense to die after dipping his dick in all those other holes,’— because, yes, it seems my husband was quite the amateur photographer, though I’m relieved Raya saw fit not to send images of multiple women—‘he’d be wishing he did drown if he was my husband, because honestly, I’d kill the cheating bastard!’

  Such vehemence, but where’s mine? Shouldn’t I be feeling robbed of that satisfaction?

  ‘Shush, for goodness sakes!’

  ‘Calm your farm. He cheated. He was a dog. And now he’s gone. If that’s no’ grounds for celebration, then what is?’

  ‘It isn’t a wake, it’s her birthday,’ Ivy whisper-hisses. Technically, it’s not until next week, but this evening we were supposed to be going out; a meal and a few drinks, not that it was my idea. In fact, when it was mentioned, I think I may have altogether refused the invitation.

  ‘Exactly. Thanks be to fuck we’re finally getting somewhere!’

  I really can’t stand much more of this. For months now, I’ve not known what to do, never mind feel. I’ve barely existed, spending most of my days inside this building’s tiny walls. I’ve tried to stay busy, to help Ivy where I could, if for nothing else than to repay her in some small way. But I haven’t lived. Just existed. Like a scratched CD, I’ve been stuck. I’ve barely engaged with anyone outside my limited circle and I certainly haven’t put any effort into anything personal, beyond what was absolutely required from me. The basics of eating, personal hygiene and stuff. And during this bare existence I’ve cried a fucking ocean. I’ve cowered in that crappy bed, too scared to examine or contemplate what the future might bring, while blaming myself for what he did. But somehow, since this morning’s rude awakening, these feelings have been switched off. Like a light and I’m the opposite of the dark right now. I’m ashamed to say it all makes a sort of sickening sense, though I’m sensible enough to know that Marcus’ final betrayal hasn’t forced me into some kind of recovery. I’m just numb. Comfortably numb and content to remain so for now.