I was sitting up in bed, still naked, a little wind-burned by the speed of your leaving. ‘He won’t look,’ I said.
‘They always look. Set up a secret email account and only use that – there’s a browser you can download that deletes all data every time you click out. There’s no need to get caught unless you’re stupid.’ You paused. ‘Oh, and listen, my name’s not Andrew.’
‘What?’ I didn’t understand.
You laughed, not meeting my eyes, told me some story about a mixed-up booking, that Andrew was a colleague of yours at the hospital. ‘When you saw my badge, I just went with it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I blinked in the cold morning light.
You shrugged. But I knew. You had not been sure you’d ever see me again, and it was convenient, having someone else’s badge on. ‘I’m sorry. My real name’s Sean. I promise, it was just a mix-up. I have to go.’ Even then, I had not heeded the warning signs. I wanted you. And so I kept on walking, deeper and deeper into the sea.
That was an idea, wasn’t it? I hadn’t been able to find you on any of the hospital websites, but what about that supposed colleague of yours? What about looking for Dr Andrew Holt? At least, being pregnant, I had the perfect cover for investigating hospitals. Beside me, Nick drowsed so peacefully. The sleep of the innocent mind. Me, I hadn’t slept properly in months, even before meeting you. And now was no different. Feeling the baby press on my bladder, I got up to pee, then crept downstairs, half-wondering if I might go online right now and look for you. But if Nick woke up, he’d want to know why. I couldn’t risk it.
Downstairs, the house looked different in the dark, a hundred LED eyes watching me as I moved through the silent, tidy rooms. A show home was how he wanted it, not a real place where people lived. I couldn’t imagine a baby messing up this space, and yet I could feel it inside me, growing day by day however much I denied it.
Suddenly, I became aware that I could hear something. Music again, but soft this time. The speaker. Some kind of lullaby, Brahms’s maybe. Had I set this? Was there some button, some automatic setting that did all this? I didn’t remember pushing it if so.
Suddenly, I thought back to the day before. The mad idea I’d had, that you could be there watching me, from the trees. It made no sense. Why would you disappear but leave me signs like this? I must have done it myself. But how? I went to the console, trying to turn it off – I barely knew how to work the thing. As the music stopped, I almost passed out at the sound of my name. ‘Suzi. Suzi.’ A soft whisper in the air.
What the hell? I looked around me wildly; where had it come from? It sounded like the corner of the kitchen, but there was no one there. Was it the speaker talking to me, an electronic voice? I stabbed at the thing, the green light bathing my face, hands shaking. Just some setting I didn’t know about, some malfunction maybe, but all the same I found myself making a circuit of the house, testing every door and window. I wished we’d never got all this technology. Somehow, it just made me realise how alone I was.
Nora
I was worried, after what I said to her at the old house, that I’d scared Suzi off. Shown her too much of my real face, under the mask. It had been instinctive. I’d wanted to shout at her, tell her she couldn’t just walk on to someone else’s property and take things – I’d seen her inspecting the vegetables, slipping herbs into her pockets, and I had wanted for a second to slap her. But of course she knew nothing, probably didn’t even understand the laws of trespass. A city girl.
I had to cut her some slack. Never mind the pregnancy: the biggest surprise since I’d come here was to realise I felt sorry for Suzi. There I was, widowed at forty-two, childless and likely to stay that way, broke and living in a tiny cottage. There she was, married, pregnant, obviously solvent, their cottage snug, tastefully extended. She still had the hope of a career in the arts, whereas I’d given mine up years ago. But all the same I pitied her. She was so afraid, so sad. On our walk, stepping along in the silent woods in companionable silence, I found myself wondering for a crazy second if she and I might actually become friends. But how could that be? I had to remember why I’d come here in the first place.
As it turned out there was no need to worry, because the moment at the old house was soon eclipsed by the dog going missing. We had looked and looked around the grounds, listening out for rustles in the bracken or telltale barking, but the animal seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth – no surprise, since Suzi had still taken no steps towards training him. We looked for hours, a deep chill seeping into my bones. We searched on opposite sides of the road, calling into the trees, tramping as far in on the verges as we could. I could hear Suzi’s voice in the cold air, rising up, a note of panic. ‘Poppet. Poppet!’ What a stupid name for a dog. I knew she would never find him like this but I had to at least make an effort, calling his name myself, kicking at the odd bush or hedgerow. Then I heard a scream go up – Suzi.
It took me a while to find where she was. In the gloom of the winter afternoon, the overgrown woods of the old estate encroaching on either side, it would be easy to get lost. I followed the sound of her voice and found her slipped down into a narrow, deep ditch beside the road, clutching her ankle. ‘Nora! Thank God. I fell over. These stupid wellies. Can you help me?’
For a moment, I hesitated. Suzi was helpless. Her pregnancy, plus the slipperiness of the muddy ground, meant she’d struggle to get up. It was possible no one would find her for a while out here. Even a rare passing car wouldn’t hear her out the window. When Nick came home he’d look, but would he think to go this way?
‘Nora!’ A note of panic again. ‘What are you . . .’
I snapped back to myself. ‘Sorry. Just thinking of the best way to move you.’ I braced myself, holding on to a tree branch, and squelched down the muddy side to help her to her feet. She had mud on her face and all along her jeans, and moving her was like dragging a dead weight. How vulnerable she was. If I hadn’t been there, what would have happened to her?
I felt jittery with adrenaline afterwards. I had forgotten what I was capable of, all the different people that lurked inside of me.
Suzi
The next morning, exhausted after falling asleep around six, the birds already cheeping outside like the bloody Hallelujah Chorus, I was just finishing up my list of household chores, which somehow seemed to get longer every day, and worrying over everything like a dog with a bone, when the phone rang. Immediately, I was flooded with terror, as I had been every day since you went. Was this it, the one I’d been dreading? Her. Or another silent call, so unsettling.
‘H-hello?’
‘Hello, dear. Just calling to see how my grandbaby is?’
My heart calmed, then sank. ‘Hi, Joan.’
Nick’s mother, a widow of barely sixty with nothing to do beyond sudoku and haranguing the parish council about parking, called almost every day. Not to ask about me, but about the baby, who wasn’t even born yet. What would she say, Joan with her Radio Times reader offers and her book club, if she knew what I was really like? For perhaps the thousandth time that week, I wondered how I’d ended up here. ‘I was just thinking about Christmas, dear?’ Fishing for an invitation, clearly. I could hardly think that far ahead, though I knew it was coming on fast. I was supposed to be with you now. Not making plans for another year with Joan going through the listings mags and circling every programme she wanted to watch, usually involving Alan Titchmarsh or Jane McDonald. This was not my life, and yet here I was stuck in it.
I felt jangly with nerves, moving back and forward between contradictory opinions like closing one eye and opening the other. Who was doing these things, the phone calls, the music, taking Poppet? You? But why? You wouldn’t. Would you? Were they even real, or was I imagining them, trapped in my own frazzled, lonely mind? I had to find out. Joan’s call had reminded me time would not stop just because I couldn’t decide what to do. With every step I took, I could feel the baby move with me. This was happening. I
needed to act.
First, I checked my secret email account, the one you’d suggested I set up just for you. There was nothing there, just my own plaintive requests for you to call me. Then I went to Google and opened a private browser window to type in your name. It felt wrong somehow – I had never said it out loud, because nobody knew about you. I searched for Sean Sullivan, but there was nothing. Well, there were hits, of course – Sullivan was a very common name – but I trawled through several, realising they weren’t you. Likewise with Facebook. I knew you had an account, because you’d mentioned a few times how annoying you found various behaviours, like people boasting about their run times, or pictures of their kids on the first day of school, but I couldn’t find you there.
Once you had said, ‘Look at all these couples. As soon as they start posting how happy they are, it’s divorce within six months. Like clockwork.’ And some friends of mine from uni had done that – a flurry of sunset-cocktails shots with ‘it’d be rude not to’ and ‘so it begins’ and ‘so grateful for this one’, then voilà, a few short months later they announced they were splitting up. I had wanted to call you straight up and tell you, laugh with you about it. But I couldn’t, of course.
Sean Sullivan consultant. Sean Sullivan surgeon. Sean Sullivan doctor. Nothing. Again, I searched for it with each hospital in the area. Nothing, nothing. My fingers were growing cold in the chilly studio.
Then, I remembered my idea. Dr Andrew Holt – the story you told me, a mix-up in the bookings. He was a colleague of yours, you’d said; some admin person at the hospital had got confused. These temps, honestly. A mad idea began to grow. Was it possible that you really were Andrew? That you’d given me a fake name once it became clear we’d see each other again? I couldn’t believe it. But there was clearly no doctor called Sean Sullivan, no Dr Sullivans of any kind working in the area hospitals. I googled it so fast I spelled it wrong, but there he was. Dr Andrew Holt, Surrey General Hospital, Obs and Gynae. No photo, but it must be him. Or you, maybe? My pulse sky-rocketed. Why did you work in Surrey? I’d always had the impression you lived here in Kent, perhaps further south, Tunbridge Wells or the posh villages around it. If I went there, to the place you worked, maybe someone would know something. It was so thin, but all I had were these vague fragments of you, like a letter torn to pieces. I had to know. I was maybe going to have your child. I owed it to him, or her, to at least try.
I was kidding myself, really, if I’d ever thought I could get away with what I’d done. As the days ticked by, I knew that, really, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t live for years like this, waiting to be unmasked. What I’d done was too bad. So I had to move forward. I had to find you.
I went to the front door, needing air, needing to think. Across the lane, Nora was in her front garden again, weeding. I could hardly believe there were any weeds left in that particular patch, so often had I seen her there. She waved to me, and distractedly I raised my hand. I should go out and look for Poppet again really, I knew, and I wondered if she’d come too. The ground was so wet, I was constantly afraid of falling.
It was then that I glanced into the wooden planter where my slug-ravaged seedlings were growing, and saw what was there, and screamed.
Elle
He was late again.
Things had been going so much better the last week! He’d been home by five, even, one day, and when she asked him why – still covered in flour, her hair unbrushed and make-up unrefreshed – he’d swept her into his arms and asked if he needed a reason to come home early to his beautiful wife. Her heart had soared up like a helium balloon. Maybe there’d never been a woman at all – or if there had, it must be over. She’d won. She’d told herself that if it continued for a week, she’d broach the subject of IVF. She didn’t want anything to ruin this idyll. It was like the old days, drinking a bottle of wine a night, eating dessert with no fear of getting fat. Even making love, and part of her had hoped for a miracle, that a life would spark into being without the need for doctors.
But tonight he was late again. She was pacing. It was dark outside, the orange of the street light spilling into the living room. She’d left the blinds open so she could see his car. She was imagining it so hard that a few times she felt it had actually happened, that she’d heard him turn in, and the relief had settled into her like a drug. But all the cars had been the neighbours. Other husbands and wives getting home, sealing themselves in behind warm yellow windows. A few takeaway deliveries, which normally would have made her tut at how wasteful they were, how lazy and unhealthy, but tonight she didn’t care. Just please let him come home. Come back, please!
She was haunted by images. His limbs flashing white on top of a woman. She couldn’t see the woman’s face but she was young, voluptuous, not thin but beautiful. Her hair colour changed from auburn to blonde to brunette. She made noises of pleasure. Oh yes. Stay with me. And he stayed with her, in whatever hotel they were holed up in – or maybe her flat, maybe she wasn’t married – instead of coming home to his crazy pacing wife. She should try to sit down. Watch TV, like a normal person. She’d once heard one of the neighbours, Chantal, joke about how she loved it when Terry, her husband, stayed out late. It’s great, I can watch my trashy telly and binge on ice cream. Elle could hardly comprehend how it would be to wish your husband stayed out more.
Of course he stays out. Who’d want to come home to you?
Oh shut up, Mother, shut up, I don’t need you now.
Was that a noise? She ran to the window, not caring if anyone saw her. Her breaths were strung out like beads. Yes, a car. It was slowing. But it wasn’t his. She knew the sound of the Jaguar’s engine, its tyres. This was a smaller, cheaper car. And two strangers were getting out. The doorbell rang – the light, uplifting chime she’d chosen for this very reason, to get over her phobia of people calling to the door. Except now it was appropriate to worry. She knew that already, somehow.
She felt her way to the door, not caring that her hands were marking the expensive silk wallpaper. For a moment, she just stood there. If she didn’t open this door, life would not have to change. Everything could stay as it was, a woman waiting for her husband to come home.
It rang again. She opened it, and a gust of cold air blew in. Across the street, she could see a neighbour staring through a crack in her blinds. Nosy.
The woman – dressed in a cheap trouser suit – said, ‘Mrs Sullivan? Mrs Patrick Sullivan?’
And she said, ‘Yes. That’s me.’
Suzi
Nick sighed. ‘I don’t know. Are you sure you should be racing about the place, after yesterday?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, with a firmness I didn’t feel, pushing away thoughts of the dead animal I’d found in my planter the day before, turned inside out, red and raw to the world. ‘Nora said it was a rabbit. Foxes, probably.’ At the time, I hadn’t thought that. I had thought it was Poppet – or a part of Poppet – eviscerated and left for me to find. By whoever was locking me out, playing music at me. Except that was all in my head, most likely. Nora probably thought I was pathetic, a city girl who couldn’t cope with the reality of country life. She had taken the thing away and buried it, while I blubbered on the doorstep. It was all getting too weird inside my head, and so today there was another lie to tell Nick, to explain why I needed money. ‘I heard they have a great birthing centre at Surrey General,’ I told him. ‘I just wanted to check it out, for comparison.’
He looked at me over his yoghurt and fruit. I didn’t normally get up to have breakfast with him, and I hadn’t realised how much of a health kick he was on, how little he ate these days. Fleetingly, I thought of the woman I’d imagined him on the phone to. ‘But you have your hospital all arranged. Is it even possible to move? Are we not in the wrong Trust area?’
‘I just want to see the place. You know, get the best for the little one.’ I hated myself saying that phrase, smoothing my hands over my stomach, but he nodded, softening.
‘Of course. It’s a
good idea to make plans. Ask about their visiting policy, and what the threshold is for using the birth centre.’ He’d done so much reading up about the process, and I knew practically nothing. ‘They have a big IVF unit there. I looked at it, before, when it seemed like we might struggle. We don’t need it now, of course!’ We’d never even discussed IVF – he’d researched it? I wondered how far he could have got me down that path without me actually agreeing to it. Just like with the house. ‘Any word from the doctor about those blood tests, by the way?’ he said, standing up.
‘No.’ I had a vague idea I was supposed to ring up.
‘Well, give them a call to hurry them up. The sooner we get you sorted, the better.’
Meaning get me on to pills, I imagined. I forced a smile. ‘Sure. So I can have the money?’ I would have to go in to London on the train and catch another one out, since there was no public transport between the towns. Out here, not having a car was like being a prisoner.
His face creased in puzzlement. ‘Of course! The money’s yours too, you know that.’ Then why do I have to ask you for it? I had access to our joint account, but there were no cashpoints anywhere near, and the taxis round us didn’t take cards yet. Even if they did, he’d be sure to ask where I’d gone, why, who to meet.
‘It’s just – I hate having to ask for it. I miss having my own money.’
He gave me a look of bafflement. ‘We’re married, Suzi. What I have is yours too. Sometimes I think you don’t understand what being married means.’
There it was, the tick of the bomb in the ground somewhere. I kept very still. ‘OK,’ I said weakly, and took the notes he doled out to me, feeling the greasy paper against my palm. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this up, begging for scraps of freedom every day.
The Other Wife Page 7