by Sue Watson
‘I didn’t say… an ambulance… I just thought we should have him checked over.’ I’m trying to stay calm. I must keep calm.
‘I’m a doctor. I’ve checked him over – or perhaps you would like a second opinion? Perhaps my “doctoring” isn’t good enough for you?’ he says, staccato, uttering each syllable like he’s drumming it into me. He’s standing in the doorway, holding his glass of wine, Alfie’s injury forgotten. ‘Time for bed,’ he announces and my heart sinks.
To the uninitiated, one might assume he’s asking me to join him in the bedroom to snuggle up in love and kisses, a little gentle foreplay before rolling together in marital bliss. But I know different. And in the middle of my fear and dread of what tonight will bring, I see Caroline. She comes to me at the most difficult times, slipping between the sheets next to us, showing me how he loves her, and how different it is from the way he loves me.
Does he roll in bliss with you, Caroline?
He gestures for me to walk ahead of him and knowing there’s no alternative, but a loud fight that will wake and traumatise the kids, I get up on unsteady legs and he follows me up the stairs one at a time. In spite of everything, I’m usually filled with respect and love for my husband – but tonight I’m broken. Of all the things he’s said and done to me, of all the affairs that are real or suspected, I’ve always known he loved me. But now it seems he might be in love someone else and the more he loves her, the more he’s making me suffer. If she wasn’t here we’d be fine, and he’d love me like he used to and we’d be happy again, but as it is I’m in danger of losing not just him, but my family.
I’ve always been a little scared of him, but the thing I’ve been most scared of is him leaving. I’m sad that he’s prepared to ruin everything we have – our family, the gorgeous home, a future – for someone else. But my real fear is the children. I know losing them is a very real threat, especially if he has someone in his life who can look after them.
They say we go for the same type and though I was never the blonde supermodel, we have our similarities, me and Caroline. Just like her, I was once the single girl making her way through a promising career. My supermarket basket was once filled with champagne and strawberries too, Caroline. Simon always said he was attracted to the way I lived my life, the way I’d dance easily, laugh loudly, fill a room with colour; but instead of sitting back and enjoying the butterfly, he caught it. He framed me like a butterfly, pinning me into his frame, but the pins that hold the butterfly in place are not easily visible, and no one can see I’m being held down. Over the years the butterfly has faded – he’s stripped me of everything that made me what I was, and now he’s left with this dull, colourless woman who’s scared to say what she really thinks. And I can’t dance any more.
It’s hard to reconcile the person I once was with the woman I am now, standing helplessly in my beautiful bedroom with handmade oak wardrobes and gold silk eiderdown. The only reason I get out of bed in the morning is my children; they are my reason to live, and without them I don’t think I would survive.
Things have never been perfect between Simon and I, but until Caroline, my life was bearable, but now I see her curling up on our king-sized bed. She’s lounging seductively on our sofa, arms around the boys, my boys, and she’s in my kitchen serving breakfast. This woman wants to take over my husband, but she’ll also take over my life, my kids, if I let her. Sophie’s appetite will be restored by Caroline’s perfect pancakes, the boys will eat noisily before demanding seconds, and using my pans in my kitchen she’ll make them some more. Now she’s sitting at my dressing table, covering her perfect skin with my favourite perfume.
She can’t have it, it’s mine, and so is my husband.
‘Marianne, we need to talk,’ Simon says as he takes off his tie and hangs it up, and I wonder if he’s going to tell me about her, put me out of my misery. I hope not. I can’t bear to hear it.
For years I’ve felt like I owed him something because he stood by me after what happened with Emily. He could easily have divorced me on so many occasions, but he didn’t – and for that I’ve always been grateful. But now, with thoughts of Caroline stealing my children infesting my mind, I suddenly feel a boiling anger inside, like a volcano smoking, ready to erupt. I hate this woman I don’t know and I’m scared of Simon leaving me for her, and what they might do next. But I’m also scared of what I might do next.
‘You know you need help, don’t you?’ he’s saying as he sits on the bed, still drinking his wine, sloshing it slowly around the glass like a wine taster.
‘I’m fine.’
‘But, Marianne, darling, you’re a mess – you can’t even take the slightest criticism…’
‘If you mean the throws—’
‘Yes, but far worse was the… the hysteria you displayed over a minor bump.’ He turns to look at me, concern on his face. I’m not sure if it’s real. ‘Darling, you must understand, I’m worried about them… with you.’
I feel a rising panic. This threat is never far away. I know he’s concerned about my behaviour around the kids, but he knows the thought of losing them petrifies me.
‘They are fine with me,’ I insist.
‘Darling, you’re not well… tonight’s craziness goes to prove…’
‘Alfie was hurt – it’s not a sign of mental illness for a mother to run to a screaming child…’
‘You completely overreacted, as always, and you’re passing your anxieties on to the children.’
‘And you’re passing your misogyny on to the boys,’ I hear myself say. I don’t know where this bravery (or stupidity?) came from. I just feel angry.
‘Oh dear, you really are losing it, aren’t you? I’m not the one who’s ill, Marianne – and I certainly don’t hate women. It’s clear that your paranoia is back.’
‘Simon, when I last saw the psychiatrist, she said I was doing well. You can’t make a mental illness diagnosis on what happened tonight.’
‘There you go again, putting me down.’
I can’t believe this; he’s twisting everything around. ‘No, I’m not, you just manipulate me, make me say things I don’t mean…’ I start, like I’m reading from a script.
‘No, it’s your illness that makes you say things you don’t mean.’
I realise as I backtrack that my default position has always been to appease him – that way we’ll get to bed at a reasonable time without a scene. But tonight, he clearly has a bone to pick and he’s going to damn well pick it.
‘Why do you take every opportunity to attack me?’ he’s now saying. ‘All I ask is that you respect me. Is it too much to ask, Marianne?’ he asks, playing the victim, the poor husband whose crazy wife treats him badly. Everything always comes back to him.
‘I do… I… I have a great deal of respect, and being concerned about my child when he’s hurt doesn’t equate to a lack of respect for you.’
‘You disrespected me.’ His voice is now raised and I can see he wants to take this all the way; he isn’t going to drop it. ‘Earlier tonight you walked out on me while I was talking to you…’
‘You were talking to me about folding throws… and something more urgent was happening in the kitchen.’ I am careful with my words, but he’s surprised at my retaliation. I know in the great scheme of things I’m not exactly a warrior, but I think he senses the subtle change in me. His affair with Caroline has strengthened me because I know it’s real – I’ve seen it written down – so I’m not mad after all, surely?
He looks at me for a long time and I know he’s waiting for me to offer myself up as the lesser mortal, the broken woman for him to heal. He’s just waiting for me to break, and when I don’t, he stands up and does something I would expect of the boys. He slowly empties his wine glass over the golden eiderdown, then onto the pale gold carpet and leaves the room.
The throws started all this. He sees them as some kind of status symbol. He insisted we bought them for when we invited our neighbour Renee and her husband over
for dinner in the summer. She’s an attractive woman with a talent for interior design, and Simon was very keen to show her our new cashmere purchases before taking her into the garden to look at his roses. At midnight. And I didn’t imagine that. I can’t think about this now – so many women, so many lies, but whose? Are they Simon’s lies or mine? I don’t know who to believe as I sit alone surrounded by the mussed-up covers clouded by maroon wine stains. I’m too exhausted to cry. I just want to sleep. But first I must clean the mess he’s made of our beautiful, expensive bedroom carpet, the one he chose. Simon loves luxurious things in the same way he loves beautiful women, sees it all as proof of his success. I suppose Caroline began as just another objet d’art for his collection, like I was once. But now he has another newer, shinier trinket, I’m not worth showing off any more. I’m flawed like the ruined sofa throws and this once beautiful carpet. I watch the red stain spread slowly into the pale wool and know I’m in the way. Simon never lets anything or anyone get in the way of what he wants – and that scares me.
* * *
I clean as much of the bedroom carpet as I can and put the stained bed linen in the washing machine. Eventually I hear him come back – looks like he’s been for ‘a drive’ again, and I can guess what that means. I give it half an hour and when I eventually go upstairs and climb into bed, he’s already asleep. I think about poor Nicole, his first wife, Sophie’s mother, and for the first time I wonder if the marriage was as perfect as he says. If so, why did she take an overdose? How could she leave Sophie motherless? Simon says she had her demons, an unhappy childhood that led to depression, and I can’t help but think she sounds a bit like me.
I’m itching now to watch the next episode in my husband’s illicit love affair and his loud snoring tells me he’s had a lot of wine and is sleeping like a log. So I attempt to get into his emails from my phone, and after only a couple of clicks, I’m delighted and a little scared to see them open up before me. There’s something equally thrilling and frightening about doing this as he lies next to me in the dark, blissfully unaware that I’m rummaging around in his secret places.
I find emails from the past couple of days and delve into his other life, searching hungrily for things I don’t want to see. Caroline telling Simon he’s the best lover she’s ever had, that she loves his passion, the way he can go on all night and still wake early and bring her blueberry pancakes in bed. Blueberry fucking pancakes! This isn’t the Simon I know; he’s never been in the kitchen to do anything other than eat or tell me I’m doing something wrong.
I hurt as I open another email and see this parallel life going on alongside this one, where everything is different but the same, and nothing makes sense – a whole world uncovered at the touch of a screen. Their most intimate moments and feelings are laid bare before me in the darkness and I flagellate myself with the details. I am devastated to discover that she makes my husband go hard when she passes him in the corridor at the hospital, that he can barely concentrate on what he’s doing in theatre because she fills his mind. Meanwhile, she can’t wait for him to be inside her and thinks about him on her, in her, all over her, and he responds by reminding her how good she is on top, how he loves her breasts in his face and her long legs wrapped tight around him.
I am breathless with hurt as I open up each shared intimacy, each secret, each betrayal. Through their emails I can sit on the end of the bed when they have sex. I’m in the wardrobe, peering from behind the curtains, standing behind them. Watching. I’m the third wheel, the idiot in the room – the other woman. But I’m the innocent party whose life they are destroying with every thrust; every orgasm is shutting down my marriage. #GooseberryWife
I eventually turn off the phone, feeling like I’ve been sliced open. Despite his cruelty, his slaps, his contempt – I am still jealous of her, of the Simon she has and I don’t. I am the wife, I wore white lace, I had hopes and dreams and he’s killed them all, but she’s provided the fatal blow. Most of the time, he can barely say a word to me, but he can write so much to Caroline; each sexually charged word passing between them through cyberspace is more painful than any of his slaps. But the real tragedy is that I still care, I still want him, he’s mine and I’m not ready to give him up, and not sure if I’ll ever be. We roll around in our mutual pain, hurting ourselves and each other, but it’s all I’ve ever known. And I can’t imagine loving anyone else but Simon.
I lie in the dark, going over every line in my head, torturing myself with their words, amazed at the way I want him now. I’m not sure whether it’s reading the depths of his passion or the thought of needing to be touched in the way he touches her, but the ache is intense or similar. I want to make him mine again, repossess him. I touch him on the chest as he sleeps, then move my hand down under his pyjamas. I feel like I’m not in control, like someone else has taken over my body as I grasp him, holding him firmly in my hand. He stirs, and I kiss his neck. I am so conflicted, so drowsy from my pills, but aroused, and when he wakes I climb onto him, pushing him inside me and undulating my body around him. I lean forward, pushing my breasts into his face. Just like Caroline.
He starts to respond, thrusting, grasping my nipples and squeezing tightly. In between bites he’s telling me quietly that I’m a bitch and I have to be punished. And he’s right. I push down hard, thrusting as fast as I can until he groans his release. But I’m not finished, and despite his protestations I keep driving him into me, hissing my own filth back at him. And when I’m done, I roll off, my sweat and his saliva trickling between my breasts. My heart aches and my thighs burn, but I made him mine again, for a brief few moments. And I fall asleep, filled with love and loathing.
* * *
I thought I’d won him back with that one act, shown him that I could be what he needed me to be, that I could be like Caroline if that’s what he wants. Anything to keep us all together, to keep my children safe. Keep me safe.
But the next time I venture into his office and open the laptop, I stand in the clinical space staring at the screen as he tells her how much he ‘adores’ her, how she is ‘the moon in all his stars’ and I’m amazed to feel cool tears sliding down my cheeks. It’s like stepping back in time. I remember him using this exact phrase on me early in our marriage (when he was trying to convince me he hadn’t cheated) and I’m filled with fresh hurt; it oozes from my organs, stings my flesh like salt on an open wound.
I’m not like Caroline. I don’t love pain, but Simon says I need to try harder, that if I loved him I would do as he asks without making a fuss. But she doesn’t have to try – she’s tied up, abandoned in her pain and pleasure, smacked hard, taken quickly everywhere and anywhere. She’s exciting and beautiful. How can I compete with this perfect woman? I long to tear myself away from the emails detailing the night before and how they fucked each other’s brains out. But I can’t leave. I am the voyeur in my husband’s relationship and unable to let go.
‘When can I see you?’ he asks her. ‘I can’t spend longer than a few minutes away, I’m addicted to you, my darling.’ Her response is equally yearning and rather more poetic. ‘I watched you drink coffee this morning, your long, slender fingers circling the paper cup,’ she writes, and I think about his long, skilled hands that open up hearts and bruise them. Those hands have held my own heart in their grip for far too long. ‘I wanted those fingers on me,’ she goes on to say. ‘Right there and then, in the hospital canteen, I wanted your fingers caressing me, inside me, touching every secret part.’ Calm down, Caroline, you home-wrecking slut. ‘I keep thinking about last night. Oh God, I’ve never come like that before.’
I want to throw up. I can almost hear her staccato breaths, reaching a screaming crescendo on that big brass bed, and once more I’m strangely aroused and horrified. These few graphic lines make everything so real for me. As much as I try to tear myself away, I’m drawn back into her bedroom as they lie in each other’s arms, watching like a stalker as she climbs on top. Now I’m caressing her, as she thrusts up
and down, screaming with her as he bites her nipples, and riding him until he explodes, their cries loud in the darkness of my head.
I stop abruptly, click out of the emails, unable to read any more. Anger is the only thing that will make me strong enough to get through this, but my cheeks are still wet with tears. I think again of how we used to be, before the tragedy, before I lost my mind and he gradually gained control until we destroyed each other in our own special way.
Like all marriages there is light and shade and it hasn’t all been bad. Simon and I were close in the early days, decorating our new flat, planning our wedding together. He even came with me to choose my wedding dress. The saleswoman said it was ‘unusual’ for the groom to be involved and potentially bad luck, but we laughed this off. Who else would come with me? My mother was dead, my friends from work and college had moved on. I had no other family; he was all I had. Besides, I wanted him there. I thought it was sweet and I wasn’t superstitious – he was my good luck charm, not bad luck. But the saleswoman spoke to me like he wasn’t there and created an atmosphere. I remember being aware of Simon’s jaw twitching as she asked if I really wanted him to see the dresses I was trying on. I could feel the tension in the air as my hand brushed through various shades of white and cream clouds on hangers. She was ruining my day.
‘I’m paying for it,’ he’d said, ‘so yes, I will see the dresses my fiancée tries on. That’s what marriage is about isn’t it, doing things together,’ he added and winked at me. I glowed back at my knight in shining armour who’d come along to dress me in white lace and whisk me away to a better life. Finally ‘love’ had arrived, and Simon wouldn’t leave me like my mother had, or send me back into care as the foster families had done.
I loved the fitted cream dress with the low-cut top and ruffle, and the saleswoman agreed. ‘You look absolutely stunning,’ she’d said and I turned expectantly to Simon for his approval. But I could tell by his face he wasn’t enamoured and he suggested instead a white one he’d seen in the window, which the shop assistant went off to find in my size.