by Helena Halme
* * *
Liam is in bed reading the The Telegraph on his iPad. He tries to get himself comfortable on the two lumpy pillows, but fails. What is it about these Nordic types that they can't make proper pillows? They were either as thin as anything or lumpy as hell. Once again he curses himself for not stuffing his Canadian goose pillow into the suitcase. Now he has to look forward to two weeks of bad sleep; just what he needs before going back to his hectic schedule at the hospital.
Alicia slips in beside him. She's wearing a long T-shirt, and her legs look thin and muscular beneath it.
A moment after she's settled down to read, slowly turning the pages of her book, Liam hears a low buzzing noise. He tries to ignore the mosquito, hoping Alicia will get up and kill it. She is a local after all, and expert at it. The mozzy does a low fly-pass over Alicia's nose, but she waves a hand absentmindedly and continues reading.
'You're not going to kill it?' Liam says in disbelief.
Alicia puts down her book and looks at him. 'No.'
There's silence while Liam tries to get back to an article about Brexit. Liam is enraged; all the lies, like the increased funding for the NHS, touted by the Brexiteers during the campaign make him furious. The knowledge that the health service will struggle without the easily available workforce from Europe, or the funding for medical research, makes him fearful for the future. Liam knows he's had too much beer and wine, and that he is probably a bit drunk, but the sense that his life is going in the wrong directing seems suddenly terribly clear to him. His country is going to the dogs; he's lost his wonderful son; his wife is now a cold, skinny woman whom he doesn't love anymore, and he is on holiday on some islands in the middle of the Baltic, where he doesn't want to be, with her.
There, he's said it.
The quiet is broken by the sound of more insects, the sole mosquito has been joined by his friends. Liam throws down his iPad on the bed and climbs indiscriminately across his wife's body. The bed is situated against one wall in the attic bedroom, under the sloping roof. He gets up so abruptly that he bangs his head against a thick beam.
‘Fuck!’ he exclaims.
Alicia stifles a laugh. Liam looks at his wife in disbelief. Her face is hidden by the book with a bright blue and yellow cover. One of her romance books, he thinks. What is the matter with the woman? Is she drunk? Alicia knows that he suffers badly from mosquito bites; more than anyone else in the family. Even Stefan had a built-in immunity to them, but Liam gets huge swollen, itchy patches on his skin each time one of the little devils gets to him. Liam turns on the main light in the bedroom and stares at the ceiling, holding a rolled-up magazine he's picked up from the round table by the bed. But now there's no sign of the mosquitoes and there is a silence in the room.
'Oj, that light is very bright!' Alicia says, lowering her book and glaring at him.
The use of the Swedish 'Oj,' which he understands means something close to 'Hey', somehow annoys him. Whenever Liam hears Alicia speak her own language, she sounds like a teenager. A stroppy teenager at that.
Liam turns out the light and returns to bed, being careful not to bang his head again when he climbs over Alicia.
Alicia gives a loud sigh, and Liam suppresses his growing anger.
There's silence again and Liam manages to read two sentences of the article. Then two loud buzzing noises fill the room, and Liam feels a sting in his arm.
'Fucking hell!' he says. 'Now look what's happened, I've been bitten!'
'And how exactly is that my fault?' Alicia says. She's lowered the book and is staring at Liam with those dark eyes. There's a dangerous-sounding calm to her voice, but Liam ignores it. He's had enough. There's blood on his hand where he managed to kill the mosquito, but he knows he'll have a painful and itchy bite on his arm tomorrow. The sting will most probably be inside his skin, which means a more prolonged healing process.
'We wouldn't be here if you hadn't insisted. We could have gone to France, or Italy, or ...'
'Really? And not see my mother and Uffe? You would deny me time with my family now, especially now!' Alicia has raised her voice.
'You could have come on your own!'
Alicia is quiet for a moment and then turns to Liam. 'That would have suited you, wouldn't it?'
Liam looks at his wife's unmade, worn-out face. Her eyes are still the same color of blue they were when they met, but they now have dark circles around them. It was those pale eyes, like shallow lakes, Liam had fallen in love with in Uppsala, at the Swedish university he'd visited as a research fellow. Alicia had been a second-year student, cool and collected for her young age.
'What do you mean?' he now says, looking squarely at her.
'So you can fuck your little nurse while I'm out of the way.' Alicia says the words in a low hiss, so quietly that Liam doesn't think he's heard her right. Her face shows no emotion whatsoever, but her eyes regard Liam coldly. All the warmth from her youth gone.
The buzzing of another mosquito breaks the silence, and Alicia, calmly closing her book, turns around and kills the insect with the palm of her hand against the white wall behind her head.
'Why couldn't you have done that before?' Liam says, trying to smile, to make a joke of it.
Alicia picks up a tissue from a box beside the bed and wipes her hand. She gazes at him with hard eyes, which make Liam turn his head away.
A silence fills the room.
'So you know?' Liam says quietly, looking at the white ceiling between the dark wood beams. He moves his eyes to the foot of the bed where they had folded the dark red quilt that Hilda had proudly shown Alicia. Liam understood it was a new purchase to be admired.
'Yes,' Alicia says. Her voice is low but there's no feeling in it.
'How long?'
'Does it matter?'
'No.'
Six
'I want a baby.'
The words escape from her mouth before Alicia realizes she's going to say them.
Liam gets up and leans uncomfortably against the wall. He turns toward her.
'What did you say?'
Now she's finally plucked up the courage to tell him, because of the Lonkero and wine, and because she knows he must feel guilty about the affair. She must carry on. She also rises from the bed, and picks up a red cushion from the floor to place behind her head. She knows tomorrow morning she'll not be this brave. She takes hold of Liam's arm, but he pulls it away.
'Ouch, that's where the mozzy got me!'
'Sorry,' Alicia says. She sits with her hands in her lap, and continues, 'I'm relatively young, and I know if I begin eating healthily and looking after myself again, I'd be able to ...'
'Stop!' Liam raises his voice. He is staring at Alicia with an incredulous expression in his eyes.
Tears are running down Alicia's cheeks now, but she doesn't want to give up. The thought of having a baby, a new Stefan, has been haunting her for weeks now. It started when she was in the local Waitrose. She’d seen a mother, well into her forties, with gray hair, fuss with her child in a buggy. Alicia, who was laden with bags and trying to leave the shop, couldn’t get past them. When the woman turned around, Alicia saw the child, perhaps three or four months old, with a mop of blond hair and blue eyes, just like Stefan. She stood there and gasped, letting the mother and baby slowly move away, out of the shop.
At home, she stood in front of the mirror and remembered what it was like to be pregnant, waiting for the miracle that was a baby to be born. She had loved the feeling of life growing inside her. Even toward the end of her term, when her back ached and she had to pee every five minutes, the baby pressing on her bladder and seemingly kicking her innards to smithereens, she was more satisfied with her life than she had ever been before, or since.
She had never forgotten the elation when little Stefan, so beautiful with his handsome, perfect asymmetric face, little toes and hands, and wide, innocent eyes, had been placed in her arms. She could do it again; she could even have more than one child before it was
too late.
'I'm only 38 years old, and nowadays women go on to have children well onto their forties,' she says, wiping her eyes.
'Alicia, we don't share a bed anymore,' Liam says quietly.
'But we could.'
'You want to share a bed with me just in order to have a baby?' Liam has grabbed hold of Alicia's shoulders. He fixes his eyes on hers.
Alicia can't read him. Is he angry with her? Or has he been thinking the same? Or is he no longer in love with her?
'You've fallen in love with your little nurse? Is she going to give you more babies, now is she?'
'You cannot replace a child with another. Stefan was ...' Liam lets his hands drop and looks down at them, seemingly unable to go on.
'How can you say that?' Now Alicia is shouting, not caring if Hilda and Uffe hear them.
'Shh!' Liam says and this infuriates her even more. It's her mother and stepfather who live in the house. If she wishes them to hear, it has nothing to do with Liam.
'Stefan was my life! Nothing, or no one,' Alicia gives Liam a stare, making sure he understands exactly what she means. 'No one can ever replace him.'
'Don't I know it!' Liam says and clambers out of bed, over Alicia. He begins to pace the small space, taking two or three steps toward the door and two steps back again. 'I was nobody to you after Stefan was born.'
Alicia stares at her husband. This man, who is so wise, so competent and has been fucking another woman behind her back, has the temerity to be angry with her?
'You were jealous of your own son?'
Liam sits down on the bed. He places his hands, palms up on the white sheet and spreads his fingers out. She can hear him take slow breaths in and out. He's trying to compose himself.
'Of course not. I just knew how close you two were and sometimes I felt a bit left out.' He lifts his eyes toward Alicia. They are now full of sadness. Alicia doesn't know what to say, how to respond. She's still angry, and confused. What is Liam trying to say to her?
'Can you understand that?' Liam adds.
Alicia nods, her fury abating.
They are both quiet for a moment. Alicia can hear the old grandfather clock that Uffe insists on keeping in the lounge in spite of Hilda's repeated pleas to have it removed strike one. She checks her phone and sees it is indeed an hour past midnight. Which makes it eleven o'clock in the UK. Still, it's late.
'Couldn't we start again?' Alicia asks.
Liam looks at her. His eyes are so sad that she feels suddenly bereft. I've lost him, she thinks.
'It's late,' Liam says and lies down on the bed, with his back to Alicia.
It's too late, he means.
* * *
After the row, lying awake next to Liam, who eventually falls asleep after tossing and turning for what seems like hours, she waits for a feeling of loss, or anger, or something, but there is nothing. What is her marriage compared to the death of her son anyway? If Liam is not prepared to have a baby with her, then he doesn't love her anymore. Besides, she cried over Liam enough when she found out about the affair from one of their so-called friends—Susan, a do-gooder who runs a charity cashmere stall at St Mary's hospital, where Liam has his private practice.
Four months ago, on a cold February day, Susan telephoned Alicia and asked to see her for coffee because she had 'something very important' to tell her. Alicia didn't have a clue what the older woman wanted; they’d only become friends because Susan’s late husband had worked with Liam at the hospital. Feeling sorry for her after the sudden loss of his friend and colleague to an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, Liam had convinced Alicia to invite Susan for dinner. Alicia felt guilty for not liking the woman. They had nothing in common. Susan was about 15 years older than Alicia, and was staunchly conservative. She always made a point of asking Alicia about her 'home country', making sure it was understood that Alicia was foreign and didn't belong in Britain. Alicia now suspected she had voted for Brexit. With her cashmere cardigans and pearls, and two children graduated from Oxford, she had the air of being better than Alicia. The dinner had been three years ago, at a time when Stefan's Oxbridge ambitions had been mere dreams, mere possibilities hinted at by his school.
Alicia had met Susan for the occasional coffee since then ('You don't drink tea, do you, dear?' she had said), always at the behest of the older woman. Alicia had even bought a cashmere poncho from her stall; at £105, it wasn't cheap, but Susan had said the purchase was 'a steal.'
The day she told her about Liam, they were at Richoux in St John's Wood, where they always met. The coffee was expensive, but Susan always said she couldn't drink coffee anywhere else. Besides, she said, she only used buses to get into town, because she couldn't abide the underground anymore.
Alicia suspected that contrary to what she liked people to believe, Susan was short of funds, because each time they went for coffee, Alicia somehow ended up paying the check. But she didn't mind that much. In spite of her airs and graces, Alicia was certain Susan was lonely. Her two brilliant children, now grown up, rarely visited her, and she didn't seem to have any other family around. That must be why she was so involved in the St Mary's charities, Alicia had once said to Liam, and he'd nodded, although Alicia could tell he'd not heard a word.
Once they were seated at a table at the back of the café, Susan cocked her head to one side, corrected her gray-blond hairdo and placed her wrinkly manicured hand over Alicia's.
'Now, I'm so sorry for what I am about to tell you.'
She looked kindly at Alicia. Her eyes, which looked as though they’d been heavily made up in a darkened room, had traces of dried mascara under her eyelashes, and eyeliner spread heavily over the upper eyelids.
'What is it?' Alicia was puzzled; usually during their meetings Susan tried to sell her tickets to a charity auction, or once a comedy night, raising funds for the hospital. On several occasions she'd used the excuse of 'something important' to a have coffee with Alicia, only to push her into attending another benefit gala.
'I'm sure it's just a passing fling. Robert had one of those, you know. I did nothing, it was a nurse, just like with your Liam, and it soon passed over. Men are like that you know ...'
Alicia suddenly felt bile rise in her throat, and she thought she might bring up the skinny latte she'd just gulped down. She swallowed hard and leaned over to look at the older woman. 'What are you telling me, Susan?'
'Oh ...' It was as if the old woman had forgotten where she was.
After several tries, Susan had finally told her that she'd seen Liam kiss a nurse in the stairwell at St Mary's.
Alicia had been stunned. They'd just celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary in the spring, and although their love-making wasn't as passionate, or as frequent as it had been in the first few years of their relationship, they still did it. And she thought they both enjoyed it.
'I hope I did the right thing telling you?' Susan had said, her eyes full of concern.
'That's fine,' Alicia had managed to say. 'Sorry,’ she said, and she left without paying, rushing out of the café and onto the street. It had started raining while they’d been inside, and Alicia got soaked on her way to the car, which was parked a few streets away. She got inside her VW Golf, and sat looking at the dashboard clock, listening to the heavy drops fall onto the windscreen.
She thought back to how Liam behaved with her; had he changed recently? He was always so busy, what with his surgeries going on until late in the evening.
'Oh my god,' Alicia yelped out loud.
Of course, all those late nights! For some time now he'd come home and go straight upstairs to shower instead of flopping down on the sofa next to her, as he used to do. When had that started? Alicia tried to think hard, but she couldn't remember. She started the engine and drove home to Crouch End. Inside the house, she rushed up the stairs and went into Liam's bedroom. His wardrobe looked tidily arranged, with suits, jackets, trousers and shirts neatly organized into sections. Alicia began with the suit pockets. Sh
e found train tickets, a few receipts for coffee and meals and a printed sheet for two cinema tickets. She looked at the date, January 23rd 2018, and the name of the film, A Woman's Life. Alicia turned the piece of folded paper over in her hands. The film had shown at the Everyman on Baker Street. She’d heard of the movie, and had wanted to see it herself, but knew Liam wouldn’t have wanted to see an historical French film. It wasn't his thing.
Alicia carried on looking through Liam's wardrobe for further evidence of his infidelity. (If the cinema tickets were any evidence.) Of course, he could have bought them for Alicia and himself, and then forgotten about the tickets in his jacket pocket. She felt calm, unusually so, and wondered if she was in some kind of shock. It wasn't until she was looking through Liam's sock draw by his bed that she began to feel faint. At the bottom of the drawer she found a key, an ordinary key with a fob to a security gate. It was the keyring that confirmed Susan's account. It was pink leather and, heart-shaped. Alicia recognized it as an expensive one from Smythson. It had a tiny engraving in gold lettering: 'To my love, Ewa x.'
Alicia had sat down on Liam's bed and cried.
Seven
When Alicia comes downstairs the next morning she finds her mother fussing over Liam and his breakfast in the kitchen, just as she used to fuss over Stefan. The surge of pain hits Alicia's chest so hard that she has to hold onto the bannister to steady herself.
'Morning,' Alicia's mother says and comes to hug her daughter. Liam doesn't look up. He is reading something on his iPad, all the while eating cereal out of a bowl. Alicia sees it's the kind he likes, Swedish granola that her mother gets in especially for him.