My Husband the Stranger

by Rebecca Done

  ‘None of that changes what happened between you and Alex that night,’ I remind him. ‘Keep talking.’

  ‘Well, I just … I lost it. I couldn’t hold it in any more. I’d just managed to blow sixty grand in less than a year; meanwhile Alex had it all together. And even his bloody ex-girlfriend had dumped me. I felt perpetually humiliated by him. And I just couldn’t take it any more.’

  ‘So you thought – what? That you’d destroy his life, kill him – what, Graeme?’

  ‘I didn’t think anything.’

  ‘Was it intentional? Did you mean to push him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admits eventually. ‘I could tell you no, Molly – but the truth is, I don’t know if I did or didn’t.’

  ‘Were you drunk?’ The words are tumbling from my mouth now as I try, desperately, to uncover the truth.

  ‘No. You know I wasn’t. We were both sober.’

  ‘You’re wrong – I don’t know anything any more!’ I feel the tears rise in my throat. ‘I thought he fell down the stairs in the middle of the night, but apparently not. How can I believe you now, Graeme? How can I possibly believe a word you say, ever trust you again? All along you’ve been making out like you’re on my side. You let me … oh God!’ Furiously, I shake my head, letting loose a few angry tears as inside my rage builds.

  ‘I am on your side,’ he says softly. ‘I always have been.’

  ‘How can you have kept this from me, all this time?’ I explode now. ‘You’ve been lying to all of us, pretending to be the supportive brother, when all along … you’ve been congratulating yourself for getting away with it!’

  ‘No!’ he exclaims, like that’s the worst possible accusation anyone could level at him. ‘I was going to go to the police, tell them what happened. For a moment I thought he was dead, lying there in his own blood, not moving. But then when we got to the hospital they told us he might make it, that he was in a coma, and I was just waiting for the doctors to say – in two weeks or a month, Alex will wake up. Be back to himself by the end of the summer. Something like that.’

  The words sting me deep inside, his recounted thoughts so familiar.

  ‘So I put off turning myself in. I wanted to be by his side. I couldn’t have left him like that.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ I spit, ‘don’t tell me you kept quiet for his sake.’

  Suddenly the silence of the cottage, the closeness of the room, threatens to overwhelm me. I feel the sudden urge to flee through the front door, jump in my car and drive, drive, drive. Who knows if I did whether I’d ever actually stop?

  ‘But then I started to worry that if I was charged with anything, people might think I hurt him deliberately. And if you thought that, or Alex thought it, or your parents, or our friends … I couldn’t have lived with that, Molly.’

  I wipe a scattering of hot tears from my cheeks. ‘But you could live with the lie.’

  ‘Maybe I thought I could.’ Then he puts both hands to his face, turns away from me, and there follows a long silence.

  I swallow, shut my eyes briefly to try and stop myself from picturing it all, so I don’t have to think about the bang to Alex’s head that changed our lives for ever.

  Finally, he turns to face me. ‘Molly … just let me talk to Alex. Explain.’

  ‘Alex said nothing about this,’ I retort angrily. ‘He doesn’t remember a thing.’

  He looks confused suddenly. ‘Then how do you –?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you don’t get to choose any more, okay? You don’t get to have any say in what happens to Alex from now on! You betrayed him in the worst possible way, put your petty resentments above everything else! I know Alex – he would never have been intending to do anything other than help you. He loved you so much – and look how you repaid him! So no – you don’t get to choose what happens now!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Moll,’ he gasps, like my words have winded him.

  I release a shot of disbelieving laughter. ‘That’s it? That’s the extent of your apology?’

  ‘As if an apology would mean anything to you now.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I tell him. ‘It would mean absolutely nothing to me.’

  ‘If you tell Alex how it happened,’ he says, ‘it’ll destroy him. He’s so angry about the accident. He still can’t make sense of it. If he finds out it was me –’

  ‘What time was your fight?’ I ask him suddenly, cutting him off. ‘You know – that night?’

  He doesn’t have to think back. ‘About half past two,’ he says, straight away. ‘You know it was. I called you as soon as it happened.’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t earlier?’

  Graeme looks thrown. ‘Positive. Why – what do you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t … you didn’t send me a text from Alex’s phone?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘At sixteen minutes past midnight, you didn’t text me, pretending to be him?’

  I need to know. I need to know that text was sent by Alex. They are the words I cling to, the way they light up the screen illuminating my heart when everything else is so very, very black.

  ‘No, Molly, of course not. Why –?’

  ‘Get out,’ I say sharply, cutting him off. ‘Go back to London. I don’t ever want to see you again. I’m going to try and rebuild my marriage now, salvage something for the future. Whatever you’ve left us with. And what I decide to tell Alex is up to me.’

  ‘Please, Moll,’ he gasps again. ‘Please don’t tell him. Let me try and do something to sort this all out …’

  He reaches out and grabs my arm, but furiously I meet his eye and shake him off. I don’t want to hear any more. So I simply head into the kitchen and through the back door into the garden, where I stand facing the fields until I hear the front door slam shut.

  From around the side of the cottage I can see his dark form pause, at a loss as to what to do next. He looks left and right before crossing the road, and now the darkness of his shape is slowly retreating inch by inch. I turn back towards the fields, to where the sun is starting to peek through the clouds once again, and I strike him from my mind.

  The only person who matters now is Alex. My husband. The man who has always loved me.

  23

  Molly – present day

  ‘You’re having a panic attack. You’re having an actual, literal panic attack. Breathe. Breathe.’

  As soon as I was certain Graeme was no longer anywhere near the cottage I came straight to Eve’s house. At least Alex is with Darren, so I don’t have to worry about Graeme tracking him down. At least I know that, for the time being, he’s safe.

  Not that I’m even sure what safe means any more, in the context of Graeme. Safe from his temper? Or safe from his influence, his lies – the sort of thing we all unknowingly soak up from those closest to us on a day-to-day basis?

  I don’t want to shock Eve – I really don’t – as I’m so terrified of doing anything that could harm the blossoming little bump in her belly. But as Eve put it when I first rang and couldn’t stop hyperventilating, if no one’s died or nobody’s due to die imminently, she can handle it.

  We are upstairs together in her bedroom; she’s lit a pillar candle infused with some sort of calming herb-scented oil and cleared space for us to sit among all the decorative cushions on her bed. Tom, thankfully, is out supervising the kids in their respective Saturday sporting activities.

  I’ve actually started to shake now with the effort of processing everything that’s just happened.

  ‘Come on, Moll,’ Eve says soothingly, her hand against my back. ‘Talk to me.’

  I exhale steadily, then tell her everything.

  She puts a hand to her mouth. ‘Graeme admitted all this?’

  I nod. ‘Not straight away. Nicola kind of hinted at it. I went to see her, earlier.’

  ‘Graeme,’ Eve breathes. ‘I can’t believe it. He told everyone …’

  ‘… that Alex fell in the middle of the nig
ht.’ I shake my head. ‘What kind of person would do that?’

  ‘Where’s Alex now? Have you told him?’

  ‘No. He’s out with Darren. He should be …’ I swallow. ‘… you know. Safe.’

  ‘From Graeme?’

  I stare at her, wide-eyed. ‘What am I supposed to think, Eve? Graeme pushed Alex down those stairs. He did this to him, and then he lied to us all.’

  ‘You really think he’s a threat to Alex?’

  ‘This time yesterday, I would have said no.’ I pause, shake my head. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, frowning. ‘I …’ But then she trails off.

  ‘What, Eve?’ I press her, because I am desperate for someone to tell me what to do if nothing else.

  ‘Well, I’ve known Graeme all my life, almost, and he’s never struck me as a violent person. I mean, yes – he’s always had a lot of issues, especially after Julia died, but … not violent. Not like that.’

  ‘But he admitted how furious he was with Alex that night, and when I asked him, he said he wasn’t sure if he meant to push him or not. I mean – what am I supposed to do with that?’

  Eve exhales stiffly. ‘Well, at least he’s trying to be straight with you now, I suppose. Small comfort, I know.’

  ‘Three years later.’

  She nods. ‘God, I know how much you must be hurting right now, Moll.’

  ‘Am I sensing a but?’

  ‘I’m going to stick my neck out,’ Eve says, ‘and say I’m sure pushing Alex wouldn’t have been premeditated. Were they drunk?’

  I inhale the scent from Eve’s candle, shake my head. ‘He says not. Alex had one beer a bit earlier.’

  ‘Maybe Graeme lied about how it happened because he was in shock.’

  ‘He said he was afraid of being charged with something. Of losing Alex completely. He said …’ I shake my head again. ‘… he thought he was going to get better.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and it’s almost an expression of understanding.

  I look at her, and I think about it again, consider the question that’s been buzzing around my brain like a bee in a bottle since the moment I walked away from Graeme earlier. ‘What do I tell Alex? How can I carry on knowing Graeme was responsible for the way he is now, and not tell him? His life has been completely destroyed, and Graeme’s the one responsible.’

  ‘Don’t make it about morality,’ Eve says, rubbing my back.

  ‘But isn’t that exactly what it’s about?’

  ‘No. I don’t think it is. Morality doesn’t stand for much now, does it? Yes, Alex’s life has changed, but what good will it do, picking apart how it happened? All that will achieve is Alex possibly getting even angrier with everyone for the lie, blaming all the wrong people, going backwards in his progress, maybe losing people close to him along the way. Wouldn’t it be better to ask yourself, how can we continue to rebuild his life, knowing what we know? And yes, it’s crap that there is someone to blame for all of this, yet Alex is the one who has to suffer. And yes, it’s crap that Graeme lied to us all. But if the last three years have taught us anything, Moll, it’s that life isn’t perfect and it definitely isn’t always fair. You know as well as anyone that life is about playing the hand you’re dealt. And how you want to play it, that’s up to you – but the one thing you can’t do is deal again.’

  I get to my feet and move over to the window. Maybe I am expecting to find answers in a calming view, but Eve’s bedroom only looks out on to the roofs of other buildings. So I turn my back on them to face her.

  ‘You have some choices to make now,’ she says softly.

  I nod, say nothing.

  ‘You have a job offer in London, all this new information to process, decisions about your future with Alex … look, if you needed to go away for a little while – get some headspace – I’d be more than happy to make sure Alex is okay while you do that.’

  I look out of the window once more. ‘Thanks, Eve, but … I don’t think it’s me who needs to go away.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean … I think I already know what I’m going to do. About Graeme.’

  The expression on Eve’s face turns to fear. ‘You’re going to tell Alex?’

  ‘He has a right to know. A right.’

  ‘Molly, please – just think about this.’ She looks stricken. ‘This could have huge consequences. Once you’ve said those words, there’s no taking them back. Who knows how Alex will react? What if he does something stupid?’

  ‘Why should I protect Graeme? He destroyed everything, Eve – he’s responsible for everything about the way we live now!’

  ‘Moll, this isn’t about protecting Graeme,’ Eve says, her final plea. ‘It’s about protecting Alex.’

  ‘Well, I will be protecting him, won’t I? I’ll be protecting him from the one person who hurt him the most.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t mean protecting Alex from Graeme. I meant, protecting him from himself.’

  I stare at her, and finally the thoughts rampaging through my mind collapse where they are, exhausted.

  ‘I really think you should give it some more thought,’ she says softly. ‘Go away somewhere for a few nights, think it through – even if it’s just to your mum’s. Don’t make any rash decisions, you’ve had a big shock. This is a lot to process …’

  ‘No,’ I say, quietly but firmly. ‘I’ve already decided. My mind’s made up.’

  24

  Alex – 21 March 2014

  And then, just like that, mine and Molly’s time in London suddenly becomes a memory, because for the past couple of months I have been able to call Norfolk home once more.

  As soon as the idea first leapt flame-like into life in my mind, I felt excited. Who wouldn’t – an old cottage with bags of potential and no mortgage, plus enough money to do what was needed to make it ours. A tranquil location, room to breathe. Lower living costs. Fresher air. My old army of friends waiting to welcome me home and the girl of my dreams by my side. And at some point in the future – soon, I hoped – a family to call our own. I couldn’t wait.

  We started trying just before Christmas, but every month we’ve been disappointed. It’s the sort of thing people tell you not to stress out about – the most counterproductive advice possible. But of course – because falling pregnant is supposed to be so easy – if it doesn’t happen straight away you instantly assume you have a problem. I never want to sink a few beers more than on the nights (or mornings) that Molly tells me she’s got her period.

  And our housing situation is not ideal either, to say the least – we’re living out of one bedroom, fighting with highly erratic electrics and spending all our free time trying to move the renovation on.

  It’s been hard for her, moving here – harder than perhaps I imagined. I guess deep down I know this wouldn’t be her first choice of place to call home. She would still probably like to be in London – she loves the sound of traffic and trains, of chatter and music and a flight path above our heads. She was brought up on it; it’s in her blood. By contrast, this narrow country lane we now live on and the roomy, neglected cottage we’ve inherited are silent and calm. Silence and calm are just not part of Molly’s DNA.

  We’ve agreed she’ll carry on working at the agency until we fall pregnant, at which point she’ll take maternity leave, with a view to probably not returning to work. They have an excellent package there, so it would be crazy for Moll not to make the most of it. But it’s taking its toll on her – she commutes from home when she has the energy; when she doesn’t (late or cancelled trains, big pitches on at work), she stays with her mum and dad, or sometimes with Phoebe. Adding to the stress of her long hours and endless back-and-forthing, of course, is the fact she hasn’t fallen pregnant yet. Because only then will we have a light at the end of the tunnel, a date we can look at and say, This will all end in so many days.

  Every time I go to sleep in an empty bed, my heart aches for her. I miss ha
ving her by my side.

  And Timothy and Arabella – that’s the other issue that’s been taking it out of Molly recently. Her mum, understandably, was devastated when we announced we were moving out of London – so much so that she actually started weeping into her Madeira cake. And then Molly started crying too, which left Timothy and me sort of staring at each other awkwardly, and I felt like I had to apologize for upsetting everyone, even though deep down I felt that moving to the country to bring up our kids in a cottage without a mortgage and enjoy a slower pace of life was something that perhaps we should all be celebrating. I knew they were desperate to live out their days just round the corner from their only grandchildren, but surely they could see that this was the opportunity of a lifetime for us? It makes me nervous whenever Molly stays with them for any longer than a couple of nights, because she invariably comes back to the cottage slightly unsettled, and laden with gifts and treats you can ‘only get in London’, or having been to the theatre or an amazing restaurant – little reminders of the things we’re missing out on here.

  It exhausts her, I think, to have to keep defending our decision to move to her parents, to keep persuading them that we’ve made the right choice for our future. It would help, I know, if she could fall pregnant – because then we would be sure of it, unequivocally.

  We’re ready, now, for the next phase of our lives. We don’t want to live in limbo any more.

  My new job in Norfolk is pretty good though. The atmosphere is relaxed, the team I work with is great, and we have an interesting range of projects to keep us busy. Better still, I don’t have to start every day surrounded by other commuters, battling to defend my personal space. I drive into our company car park, walk into our building and stretch my legs every lunchtime with a stroll around the city centre. It makes me feel so guilty to think of Molly still fighting the commuting battle each day and night, but she’s adamant she wants that maternity package, and I know it makes sense too. It would be madness for her to leave without it.

  One Friday night, I clock off and head straight down to the little deli at the bottom of the hill near my office. I’m after a decent bottle of red and some cheese for me and Molly (she always comes home on Fridays – Clapham is strictly for weeknights only). She’s been staying at her mum and dad’s since Tuesday, and I can’t wait to see her.