I hesitated, thinking how to broach the subject. ‘Suzi – are you sure everything’s alright? I don’t mean to pry, but you just seem – I don’t know. Stressed?’
She thought about what to say for a long moment.
Tell me, I urged. Go on, confide in me.
Suzi sighed. ‘Oh, it’s just – it’s hard sometimes, being stuck out here.’ She turned to me, earnest and open. ‘I’ve lost so much. My friends, my job. I don’t know what I’m meant to do all day! Cook and clean. But that’s just drudgery, isn’t it! I mean . . . some people like it but . . .’
‘You feel put upon,’ I prompted. I so wanted her to feel she could talk to me. It was clear there were things she was keeping to herself, that were eating her up inside.
She bit her full lip. ‘A little. Is that terrible? Nick works so hard.’
‘I’ve always thought it’s easier to go out to work, in some ways. At least you see people. Not just the same four walls.’
‘Your husband,’ she faltered, and I tensed. ‘What was he like? What did he do? Do you mind me asking?’
I walked a few paces more. ‘He was a manager. Nothing exciting. But he was – well, it’s hard to describe someone you were so close to. He was full of life. Ambition. Dreams. I loved that about him.’ I had been that way myself, once, before I lost it all.
She shook her head, as if breaking our connection. ‘I shouldn’t complain, really. I always wanted to have time to paint. But this place. I’m so worried about the winter. Do you think it will be awful?’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I lied, thinking of the snow that often piled up in the narrow lanes round here. If Suzi was going to get away, she had even less time than she thought. Maybe it was up to me to help matters along a bit.
Suzi
It was restful, walking with Nora, my belly jutting out beneath my inadequate coat. She wore her old Barbour jacket, and sensible walking boots, and seemed to have no expectation we would talk as we set off over the frozen field, squelching in mud. I had the stupid dog with me, of course. I usually let him off the lead once we were away from the road. Sometimes he disappeared for ages, or even got lost in the bushes, and I would have to crawl about trying to find him and his pathetic wuffing. I worried what this meant for the baby, if I couldn’t even get my dog to behave.
Every tree was bare, and my breath streamed out in front of me. I was glad of Nora’s silence because my head was a mess. The visit to the doctor, the tension with Nick, your continued absence from my life. What was I going to do? I needed to make a plan, a way to find you, because I couldn’t go on like this. But I was so afraid, of getting caught, of overturning my life, of what Nick would say if he knew. And always, at the bottom of everything, was a coating of guilt and shame. I had done this. I had brought this all on myself.
Our affair took me by surprise. Even after Damian, that awful drunkenness, the smell of piss soaking into my good handbag, I didn’t think I was the kind of person who’d do such a thing. Damian had been an accidental collision, like scraping your car into a gatepost. But you – no matter how much I excused it to myself, no matter how guilty I felt, it was deliberate. I knew exactly what I was doing, and still I walked into it open-eyed, like someone strolling through a doorway.
You told me afterwards that you weren’t even going to have a drink that night. You were tired, bored with the medical conference and the tiny cups of coffee and the plates with the clip alongside for your glass. Seeing me in the hotel bar it was a spilt-second decision, the kind you make between breaths. The kind that changes your life without you even knowing.
Our bodies are wiser than we are. You knew this from your work – the effortless drip of hormones, the calibrated mechanisms in our brains. I think they took over for us. I was sitting alone at the bar, having the one gin and tonic I’d allowed myself. At twelve pounds a go, I knew Nick would query it, and I was still getting used to having no money of my own, a month after we’d moved to the cottage. I was still trying to make sense of what my life had become, a non-working wife in the country. Of the mess I’d left in my wake at my old job. Perhaps that was why I did what I did. You came over; we smiled in the mirror of the bar. I saw you reflected, a man of forty-ish but trim and fit, close-cropped dark hair, black-rimmed glasses, expensive suit. I sipped my drink self-consciously. You asked for a whisky, a fifteen-year-old Ardbeg, glancing at what I had, daring me into it though we hadn’t yet spoken. Who was going to talk? I felt the moment stretch like elastic, and then I suddenly became afraid you wouldn’t, as your chit came to sign – I took note of your room number, 255 – so I said, ‘Good choice.’
You leaped on it. ‘A whisky woman?’
I shrugged. ‘Bourbon, really.’ An exaggeration; at best it was my third-favourite drink.
‘Good choice,’ you echoed, raising your eyebrows. ‘At the conference?’ Looking at my lanyard. Or maybe at my breasts, which were in the same area.
‘One of them. There’s about three on at once.’
‘Which are you?’
I did a little jokey wince. ‘The child within – art therapy for repressed memories.’ Surprising that Nick even let me go. Perhaps he felt he’d won an easy victory, getting me out of London, or maybe he saw it as my commitment to a new life, a new career. Or perhaps he’d just no idea what I was really like, what I could do if given my head. A horrible expression, that – it means letting loose the reins of a horse, knowing you can always pull it back if it goes too far.
You grimaced. ‘Sounds messy.’
‘Yes. You?’
‘The pituitary gland – friend or foe?’
I laughed. You said later it was intoxicating, and all you wanted to do was make me laugh more.
‘Actually, that’s one of the keynotes,’ you said. ‘The event is called Endrocon. I’m a gynaecologist. No jokes, please.’ You showed me your badge, the logo a drip of fluid, and the name Dr Andrew Holt. Of course, that wasn’t your name, but I didn’t find that out till later. Was it a warning sign even then, that you didn’t correct my mistake?
‘Andrew.’
You looked down. ‘Oh! Yes.’
I refused to be impressed that you were a doctor. ‘Is that hormones?’ I wanted to show I knew the word endocrinology, despite my cheap print dress and the tattoo on my wrist. You lowered your eyes.
‘Some women say everything is hormones.’
I smiled reluctantly. ‘Some men say it’s just cold in here.’ There, I’d made an erection joke, we were definitely flirting. You looked again at my badge, lying over my chest, moving as I breathed.
‘Suzanne.’
‘Suzi.’ We linked eyes. Yours were so blue, cold and pure as glacial lakes. I couldn’t breathe, a sudden warmth spreading through my veins. It was all that clichéd and that fast. I can’t do this, I thought. Not again. But, you know, it’s so much easier the second time. Even the guilt felt familiar, worn-out, as if I only had so much capacity for it.
‘Suzi?’ said Nora, as we tramped along the country lane.
‘Oh, sorry, I was miles away.’ I had to stop drifting off like this. I had to act like a normal person, an expectant mother. I had intended at first to tell her about the trip to the doctor, but realised I didn’t know how to explain it. Whatever way I spun it, Nick came out like a concerned partner, and me like an unstable madwoman. ‘The house is just over the hill.’ I’d promised to show it to Nora, the ruins of the old country home our cottages had once been tied to. It had been bought by a hotel chain before the last recession, but never developed.
Within minutes of walking, the space and silence had done their work, and I could feel myself relax. It was so hard, trying to be normal around Nick. It was hard even when you were still around, waiting for the phone to ring with some revelation, waking at night poleaxed by guilt and panic. Worrying every time Nick got an email or text message, asking myself was I sure I’d wiped my iMac history and changed my password after he saw me keying it in that one time. Now, since you’d gon
e, I worried about other things. The baby coming, what would happen then. Who it would look like.
Remember when you surprised me on my walk that time? It was so risky. What if Nick had been with me? That was when the dog jumped up and ruined your trousers. Sorry. I almost didn’t mind the idea of getting found out by then. It would mean she might let you go. I was braced for the fight with Nick. I’d even worked out what I might say: You moved me here without asking, you made me quit work, you kept me a virtual prisoner . . .
It was a nice fantasy, walking in the frosty woods, the dog’s barks echoing in the silence. That you might be just around the corner, not gone from me. We made our way up to the house, and I began to look around. You could sometimes find things growing in the kitchen gardens. I’d brought a squash home to Nick once. ‘Look! Foraging!’
‘I don’t know,’ he’d said. ‘Someone might get cross.’
‘Er, who? It’s not like a hotel chain are going to bother if I take a few bits of veg.’
It was the kind of fake-rebel act that Nick would have once said he loved about me. Funny how the things people love at first are the things they end up hating.
I had a look about the kitchen beds, while Nora went on ahead to inspect the ruined house. The greenhouses had cracks in the glass and missing panes, tools left about as if abandoned in a hurry. I found what I thought was rosemary poking through in one bed and rubbed it between my fingers, releasing the sweet smell. I ripped up a few stalks of it and put them in the pocket of my coat. There wasn’t anything else, though I could see what looked like root vegetables coming through.
I wandered up to the house, the windows gaping blind, birds rustling in the walls. It was all impossibly romantic, Rebecca and Jane Eyre rolled into one. I peered into one of the windows, expecting to see it as usual, littered in ivy and branches and bird droppings, the floorboards rotting away.
Someone was there.
I staggered back – was it you? Come to find me? No, of course it was just Nora, standing still in the middle of a room, looking up at the sky.
‘Nora!’ I called, trying to hide the fear in my voice. ‘You scared me.’
I could hear her feet crunching on fallen branches. I wondered how she’d got in. The door was usually shut, though I’d never tried it. Or perhaps she’d hopped through a window.
She was staring me in the face through the ruined wall. She seemed different – not as warm as on the afternoon I’d spent in her home, drinking tea, sharing confidences. Then she bent her head back, looking at the lid of the sky, white and flat. ‘Do you know The Tempest?’
‘Er . . . a little. From school.’
She said something that must have been a quote. ‘The bit about the cloven pine . . . I always thought that a horrible image, don’t you think? Trapped for ever. Looking up at a little bit of sky.’
I said nothing. My hands were cold and shaking, so I shoved them into my pockets.
Then she said, ‘Suzi. When you asked me about – my husband. There’s something I wanted to tell you. When we first met, he was . . . with another woman. I’m always ashamed to tell people that.’
Why was she telling me this? Did she know? ‘Oh?’ I managed to get out.
‘I realise now I shouldn’t be. Yes, we met in less than ideal circumstances, but that relationship was dead, and he and I – we were so happy until I lost him.’ She was crying suddenly, her face twisted and ugly.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t judge me?’
‘No. Of course not.’ I’m the same, Nora. I’m the same. I nearly told her then, and the yearning to speak the words was so strong I could almost feel them piling up in my mouth. But I had gone all this time telling no one, and I knew any leak could be catastrophic. All the same, I might have, because there is nothing so lonely as a secret you can’t share, if I hadn’t realised at that moment that Poppet was gone.
Elle
She’d been so good for years now about not wallowing in the past, but the appointment with the doctor had made her weak. All kinds of memories were returning, flashes slipping through the walls she’d built over the years.
Ellie! I’m frightened!
No, she wasn’t going to think about Sebby. Or Mother, or Father. But all the same she found herself going into one of the spare rooms – a room that should have been filled with toys by now, soft pastels, chiming music boxes, plush fabrics – and taking down the box from the top of the fitted wardrobe. It was an old shoe box, from a pair of Jimmy Choos she had once worn on stage, always afraid she would trip as she made her way out. He would never look in there – he had no interest in what he called ‘girly’ things. Inside were photographs. A handful had survived, and when she fled Elle had swiped them, because now they were all she had. The only proof that these people had existed.
The pictures had the faded look of seventies shots. There was her mother as a young woman, so slim she would almost disappear if she turned sideways, stylish in flared trousers and a silk blouse, always with a cigarette in hand. One of her good days, when she laughed and smiled, flitted about the house like a butterfly. Invited people over, too many for the downstairs lounge, people from Elle’s father’s work and the village and anyone she’d ever met. Not one of the bad ones, where she screamed and threw things, the time she’d cut off Elle’s hair while she slept because it was ‘slutty’, the time she’d shut the piano lid on her hands to stop the noise. Elle liked the cigarette one because it was proof, if anyone ever asked. See, she smoked all the time. It’s hardly a surprise what happened, is it? Her father, whose face she could barely remember, so little had he been around. And Sebby, his dark eyes under a straight fringe, staring up at her. It was Sebby she ached for most. Too easy to imagine a little boy of her own, looking just like him, calling her Mummy. He would have been thirty-four now. Perhaps a father himself. Then a later picture, herself stiff and formal in a piano competition, long dark hair down her back. It would have been 1992. One of the last ever taken.
A noise made her jump. Was he back already? No, it was the noisy family next door, manoeuvring out one of their many cars, music blaring. She pursed her mouth in annoyance, and tidied the box away, creeping downstairs as guiltily as an addict. She hoped he would be home on time that night – she needed him close, to feel he was solid and alive and still hers. But seven o’clock came, and then eight, and then nine, and still she was alone.
Suzi
‘Tell me again what happened,’ Nick said, pacing in front of me, grim-faced. I wondered what time it was; somewhere around ten, I thought. The whole day lost in a panic.
I was on the sofa, my ankle propped up on a cushion. ‘He just disappeared. I let him off the lead like always, but he was . . . gone. I don’t know.’ Tears pricked my eyes, yet more guilt. I had lost Nick’s dog, on top of everything. Poor Poppet had done nothing but love us, adore us, and I’d lost him. ‘Then I slipped and hurt myself. If Nora hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened. I didn’t even have my phone, it’s died again.’ Nick had been out searching for hours, calling Poppet’s name, and had come back frozen and angry. Very angry with me. ‘I’m sure he’s just run off,’ I pleaded. ‘He’ll find his way.’
I saw as Nick’s face twisted that he genuinely cared for that idiot creature, more than he did for me it seemed, since he hadn’t even asked how my ankle was, just was the baby alright. I found myself unexpectedly sad as well. The house was too quiet without Poppet’s barking and panting, dashing across the floor avid to see me, even when I’d just been in the loo for two minutes. Surely he was just lost. He’d come back to us. ‘Those will help find him, I know they will.’ I nodded to a stack of Missing Dog posters on the table, which Nick had already printed up; a grainy phone shot of the dog, his eyes turned red by the flash, his tongue out. Idiot.
Nick rounded on me. ‘There are gangs, you know. They steal dogs to order, sell them on.’ He’d even rung the police. From the mood he’d been in when he hung up, I gathered the
y hadn’t been as responsive as he’d hoped.
I could hardly countenance the idea of someone stealing Poppet. ‘He’ll be OK. Someone will have him.’ Or else he’d been hit by a car, dying even now on some cold road, confused and frightened. I didn’t want to think about that.
‘Christ, it’s late. I need to go to bed.’ Nick ran his hands over his face. His dorky nylon rucksack already stood packed by the door. Water bottle, packed lunch, carry cup – he was such a model citizen. ‘You’ll be alright looking for Poppet on your own tomorrow? Wear proper shoes. You have to be more careful, you know – it’s not just about you now.’
I shrugged. I didn’t know the answer to that. It turned out there were varying degrees of alright.
That night, in bed, I found myself once again brooding about the first time we met, back in May. Not even that long ago, but it felt like years. The moment when a normal person, a happily married person, would have finished her drink and gone to bed, alone. So many choices I’d made that night, sending things one way and not the other. Ending up here, pregnant, afraid, stricken by a loss I couldn’t even tell anyone about. Having the second drink that you offered me, for example. I was quite drunk by then. It was like being Shoreditch Suzi again, slumped over the table jawing about something, rubbing my leg against Damian’s where no one could see, smoking outside in the cold and grasping his wrist to light my cigarette. She’d been fun, Shoreditch Suzi. In the end, after what happened, I’d hated her.
Then, going back to your room. The bar was empty and they’d cleared our table three times. You said something about a hip flask of something oak-aged and I got up with an embarrassing alacrity and we were in the lift. I remember leaning in towards you, drawn as if by wires, breathing you in, head spinning with the warmth of your skin, your aftershave. A feeling that was better than a drug, eroding all my guilt and shame.
Even the next morning I could have ended things, chalked it up to a drunken mistake. Another one, just like Damian. Instead, I went along with the slick advice you gave me, your firm kiss on my mouth like the stamp of a seal on a letter. ‘Put my number in your phone,’ you said. ‘Use a woman’s name, someone made up, and maybe an initial, like it’s a work thing.’
The Other Wife Page 6