The SECRET TO NOT DROWNING

by Colette Snowden

  I leave the house and I’ve remembered the cake and the sun is shining but as soon as I get in the car I realise that I have no idea where I’m going. I thought I knew before I left the house but now I have no idea and I switch on the engine and start driving but I’m just driving round hoping that I might spot the place. In the end I have to stop because I’m crying and I’m getting nowhere and I know I’m never going to find the place. So I stop and I decide to eat the cake since I’m not going to make it for lunch. So I open the box and eat the cake and the address is written on the bottom of the box. It was underneath the cake all along. So I drive to the place and dash inside but she’s not there. She’s not there and people are staring at me because I have cake all down me and I’m dropping crumbs all over the floor.

  “Up you get,” He says.

  It feels like it can’t possibly be morning yet. I’m so tired and it’s so dark.

  “How can it be morning already?” I ask, hauling myself out of the bed.

  “It’s not,” He says. “It’s just time for you and me to have a chat.”

  My mum has gone to bed. He’s waited for her to turn in, finished the second bottle of wine and then come in to wake me up.

  We go downstairs and He asks me if I want a cup of tea. He puts the kettle on and we stand and listen to it boil. He says nothing and I don’t want to interrupt Him. It boils and clicks off and He does nothing, so I make the tea and He says thank you. And then He starts.

  “What can you see that’s wrong in here?” He says.

  I look round the kitchen to see if I can spot what He’s talking about. I look round where I’ve cleared away the plates, wiped down the surfaces, swept the floor.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Look again,” He says. “See if you can spot the bleeding obvious.”

  So I look again. The light is still lit on the dishwasher. I put it on before I went to bed and it hadn’t finished by the time I went upstairs. I try that. But that’s not it. Yes, it’s bloody stupid. Sure, it’s a fucking fire hazard and we could have all been frying in our beds thanks to me, but that’s not it.

  I see the piece of kitchen roll I used to wrap round my finger when it was bleeding. It’s still in the sink, all wet with my blood still on it. I walk over and pick it up.

  “That’s disgusting,” He says.

  And I just say ‘sorry’ because I don’t know what else to say. I put it in the bin and hope that’s an end to it. But that’s not really it either.

  “What about this?” He says. And He hands me the tin with the rest of the cake in it. I just take it. I am standing in the kitchen in my pyjamas holding a tin full of cake and I just don’t know what I’m doing here. It must be about one in the morning and I’ve got about two seconds to figure out why He’s handed me the cake.

  “So?” He says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you keeping it for?” He asks me. “Why on earth haven’t you put it in the bin? Are you saving it to poison us with all over again tomorrow?”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I say. It might not get me a fast track to the fast lane of the WI but it could still give Mr Kipling a run for his money. I don’t say that last bit out loud but even the bit I did say was nil points, wrong answer. I should have just kept to ‘sorry’.

  “You thought it wasn’t that bad, did you?” He says. “You liked it did you? Eh?”

  I want to say ‘it’s only a cake, get a grip’, I want to say ‘fuck off and make your own cake next time,’ but what would be the point?

  He takes the lid off the cake tin and picks up a knife. He cuts the cake up into pieces. Not pieces so much as bite-sized chunks. Then he hands it to me.

  “Eat it,” He says.

  “I can just throw it away,” I say, “It’s no big deal.”

  But it’s a big deal to Him, apparently. It is a big deal when your wife feeds you raw cake in front of a guest in the house, He says. It is a big deal when your wife is purposely giving you shit to eat that she knows will make you ill. “If it’s no big deal, then why don’t you just eat it?” He says. And He’s almost whispering so as not to wake my mum. He holds it out to me and punctuates his words with the tin full of cake thrust towards me. “Just. Fucking. Eat. It.”

  So I eat the cake. It’s one in the morning and I’m in my pyjamas in the kitchen eating cake. It’s a big cake with only three slices missing. Only two and a half slices gone really, since my mum had such a small slice. It’s mushy and slightly bitter from being undercooked and it’s sticking to the roof of my mouth but He’s not going to let me off with just some of it. He stands in front of me while I eat every last little bit.

  So I take myself back to my childhood self. I am nine and my mum is frugal – some might even say mean – with treats because my dad has left and money doesn’t grow on trees. And neither does cake. So one angel cake opened on a Sunday after tea has to last all week. But when I’ve cleared everything and she’s not looking I might just be able to sneak into the kitchen for an extra, extra-slim piece of cake and she’ll be none the wiser. My nine-year-old self would love the chance to eat all the leftover cake. My nine-year-old self can’t believe my luck. And I find that I can chew and quite enjoy it while I look contrite. I am tired and I just want to sleep but cake won’t kill me. Who ever got tortured to death by cake?

  When I’ve finished He takes the tin and tells me to hold out my hands. So I hold out my hands and he pours the crumbs from the bottom of the tin into my hands and tells me to eat them too. When I’ve finished he says:

  “Look at the state of you, you’ve got cake all over your face. Go up and get yourself cleaned up. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  So I’m wiping my face with a flannel and looking at the stupid cow in the mirror and thinking out loud to her: You stupid cow. Why don’t you just tell Him where to stick the stupid fucking cake?

  And I can’t look at her then. The crying makes her face so ugly. All red and blotchy. Mouth all contorted. What am I doing? How did I get here? No wonder that baby didn’t want to stay with me. No bloody wonder. I feel like I could cry my body inside out if only I had the energy. But I haven’t. I feel worn out. I feel woozy and just too tired to cry any more. So I brush my teeth for the second time tonight and as I put my toothbrush back in the little pot on the sink I challenge myself to some kind of rebellion. I tell myself not to leave it at that. Don’t let Him win outright. Do something to fight back. But all I can think of is that I won’t ever bake a cake again. How pathetic is that? The only rebellion I can muster is to deprive Him of homemade cakes. As if He’d care. As if He’d even notice.

  I want to lie down and sleep for a million years.

  Instead, I lie awake in the bed listening for the sound of Him coming upstairs and trying to be still enough that He’ll think I’m already asleep. I can’t sleep, how can I sleep? But I can make sure I’m not crying when he gets here. If I slow my breathing right down and keep totally still He might just think I’m asleep.

  He knows all the tricks though. He knows I’m not asleep. Or anyway, even if He thinks I am He doesn’t care. I hear Him closing the living room door. I hear his feet on the stairs. I hear Him peeing loudly into the toilet and then leaving the bathroom without washing his hands. He gets into the bed letting the cold air in and comes all the way across onto my side.

  “Are you awake?”

  I don’t answer. Maybe if I just say nothing He’ll give up. He doesn’t.

  “Are you awake?” He says louder. And I can’t even pretend to be asleep any more because even if I had been asleep He would have woken me up.

  “How’s your finger?” He says, as though a cut on my finger is the worst thing that’s happened to me in the last twenty-four hours.

  “My finger is fine,” I say.

  “Hey,” He says, “I’m only asking. I know you’re hormonal,”
He says, “I know you’ve been through a lot in the last week or so.

  “I’m just trying to look after you. You needn’t have cooked tonight if you didn’t feel up to it. We could have got take-out. You could have asked me to cook. That’s why I came home early, to help you get ready for your mum. I have been trying to help but you make it a bit difficult for people to help you sometimes. I did step in to finish the dinner when you hurt yourself, though didn’t I? I do love you.”

  I say nothing and He can’t stand the silence.

  “You push yourself too far,” He says. “You push yourself too far and then end up getting everything out of proportion. You didn’t need to make a cake. You could have just bought one. But, oh no, you had to go and make one and it had to be perfect and we all had to sit around pretending it was perfect even when it wasn’t.

  “You could have poisoned all three of us with that bloody cake,” He says. “Why can’t you sometimes just admit to yourself that you’re not Wonder Woman and buy a fucking cake from the supermarket like everyone else?”

  He pauses again for a response. I try not to say the word, and it makes my throat burn, but sometimes it’s easier just to stick to the script.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry.”

  And He thinks I’m sobbing because I can’t believe how silly I’ve been. But I’m just crying because I’m so angry with myself for saying sorry. For walking straight into the sorry trap and being completely unable to stop myself. In a parallel universe somewhere maybe there is a Marion who doesn’t apologise. Maybe she tells Him to make his own fucking dinners from now on and means it and never steps foot in the kitchen ever again. Good luck to her.

  In the meantime I am here in this bed with his arms around me, crying more and more because I can’t stop crying. I am telling myself to stop. Telling myself that once I stop crying this time I will never let Him see me cry again. Never ever. Not in a million years. I tell myself that this is the last time He will see me cry but I don’t believe it. Even I don’t believe it.

  And then He tells me that I look lovely when I’ve been crying. It’s his usual preamble. He’ll rub my face with the back of his hand. He’ll run his fingers down my neck, over my shoulder and down my arm to my hand then He’ll guide my hand towards Him so that I can feel just how lovely he thinks I look. I let Him. I play along with his whole seduction routine until he gets to the bit when He says:

  “Are you OK?”

  And instead of just saying ‘yes’, I say, “Not really.” I say, “It’s taken it out of me, all that stuff at the hospital, and I didn’t sleep much last night and I’m bleeding and everything.”

  He might have persevered had it not been for the bleeding. He smiles at me sympathetically but his whole body recoils from me.

  “I’d better get a tissue,” I say, moving to get out of the bed, “I’ve got snot everywhere.”

  And that does it. Blood and snot together is much too much for Him to deal with and He turns over to go to sleep with a whispered, “Sleep well,” and not so much as a peck on the cheek.

  So I wander off to the bathroom and blow my nose on a piece of toilet paper and drink a glass of water from the not very clean toothbrush holder. I dare myself to look in the mirror. She has red eyes and her skin is a bit puffy but it’s still me. I am in there somewhere and just to remind myself I press down hard on the finger that I cut when I was peeling the carrots.

  It hurts. It bleeds again and I can still feel it.

  12

  I’m sitting on the sofa with my legs curled up under me keeping everything crossed for a happy ending.

  But I know there won’t be one.

  This is one of those Hollywood tearjerkers from years ago. One that pretty much everyone has forgotten. Not a classic. Not a notorious turkey. Just one of those films that have faded into the past along with all those black-and-white starlets who look a bit familiar but you couldn’t actually name them with any real confidence. I don’t even know what the film’s called. I didn’t see the beginning. I don’t even care what it’s called.

  It’s watchable, it’s good in fact. But this sort of thing is out of fashion. There’s just me and a thousand grannies retreating to the sofa for a Friday afternoon alone with a packet of biscuits and some smouldering looks from Stuart Grainger – or maybe it’s Alan Ladd. Whoever he is, he’s torn between leaving the love of his life with her nasty husband or rescuing her from his clutches and standing by her as she faces the shame of running off with another man. Maybe he should just sort her out with a bank account and a plane ticket then it would be win/win. For her at least. But there’s no point talking to the TV, or even willing him to work out a happy ending. He’s been on to a loser from the start. And sure enough, the minute he finally gets his act together and helps her escape the marital home the husband finds out, picks a fight with him and poor old Stuart, or Alan or whoever he is, ends up in the dock for murder.

  But she’s standing by him. She’s there in the courtroom keeping everything crossed too. I’m not the only one still keeping hope alive that there might be a happy ending. And she’s looking pretty good for a woman whose boyfriend has just killed her husband. No mascara panda eyes for her. She’s all suited and booted and she’s had her hair done and everything. Not like me. I’m curled up on the sofa in a pair of jeans that are ripped at the knee, my grandad’s old Aran cardigan and my much-loved kingfisher-green legwarmers.

  My legwarmers have never seen a ballet class: the nearest they’ve ever got to any strenuous activity is when I used to dance round the room in them when the kids from Fame were on the TV. But they were there in the 80s and everyone wore legwarmers pushed down round their ankles over their jeans whether their legs needed warming or not. Not everyone had a pair in such a great colour but everyone had a pair. Now they don’t. I bet I’m the only person I know who has a genuine pair of teenage legwarmers. But I love them. They take me back to a place when looking great was as simple as pulling a woollen tube up over your jeans, scrunching it down and tucking it into your ankle boots.

  He hates them. He says they should never have been allowed in the first place and it’s ridiculous for me to wear them now. He says it’s self-indulgent nostalgia for me to keep them and I should just throw them away. He’s thrown them away before now and I had to retrieve them from the outside bin, all damp and stinking of potato peelings. He doesn’t know I got them back. They are contraband legwarmers. I can only wear them when He is out. I can only wear them when it’s just me and a packet of biscuits and Stuart Grainger and this stoical woman who is clutching the railing dramatically in the courtroom but doesn’t cry in case it gives her away.

  And there it is. Happy ending officially off the cards completely. He’s been sentenced to death and she’s in a cab leaving the courtroom clutching the letter he told her to read if he was convicted of murder. And they do that thing where you hear her voice as she starts to read it in the back of the cab but then it changes to his voice, declaring his love, telling her she’s not to blame and asking her to leave and start a new life far away. He’s enclosed a cheque with the letter and the address of a friend who can help her. He’s thought of everything and she gives up being stoical now and just cries into her dainty little hanky and asks the cab driver to take her to the station. The End in big fancy letters, followed by a full cast list. It was Stuart Grainger – at least I won’t have to wonder about that for the rest of the day. And strangely, I’m not crying. I’m unmoved by her drama and his imminent death. I was bothered while I was watching it but now that the credits are rolling I find that I couldn’t care less. I can feel nothing for anybody, not on the TV, not even if they were in my own living room. All I can think about is my little baby and how my mum has gone home and I am going back to work on Monday so it’s all officially over. The End, run the credits, nip to the loo in the ad break, put the kettle on. Move on.

  My mum
left a day early, making excuses about a toothache that she’d have to nip in the bud. She rang the dentist from here and had to be home to see him today otherwise it would be two weeks. Fair enough. Thank the Lord. It was a relief actually. I did a dutiful show of looking a little upset about it, not enough to make her feel guilty, just enough to make her feel like I was bothered. In truth, I couldn’t stand any more shopping for nothing in particular. Any more cups of tea – “No, you sit down, I’ll make it.” Any more standing in the kitchen while I was cooking, chatting to me so that I couldn’t concentrate and stirring, turning, fidgeting things on the stove. She decided on a strategy before she got here, I think. She took the relentlessly cheery approach with lashings of take-her-mind-off-it on the side. So I have new shoes and mascara, birthday presents for birthdays that aren’t coming up for three or four months, a freezer full of food and a new hair cut. I have the world’s cleanest bathroom which has been completely cleared of all disused medicines and long-forgotten bubble bath and body lotion gift sets. I have empty linen baskets, ironed knickers and carpets that are freshly vacuumed. Even under the sofa.

  Now that she’s gone I feel like moving the sofa and crumbling a biscuit over the carpet then pushing it back into place. But I have eaten the full packet of biscuits. I am having a private little rebellion that no-one will ever know about but me. I have not had a shower, I am wearing legwarmers and an ancient cardigan, I’ve wasted two hours of my life watching an instantly forgettable film and I’ve eaten a packet of biscuits for lunch. Perhaps I’ll go and turn down the pages on some books. I might even have a drink of milk swigged straight from the bottle (which I’ll then put back in the fridge). And later, when I brush my teeth before bed, I plan to squeeze the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.