Suzi
When we first moved down, I had raised the issue of a second car a few times. ‘A little runaround’ was how I put it, though I had no idea where I’d picked up a phrase like that.
Nick had frowned. ‘It’s so wasteful having two cars. Think of the environment.’ And I had subsided, chastened.
That night, galvanised by fear, I resurrected the battle, which he must have thought long won. The word in the snow had rattled me enough to do what I’d always sworn I wouldn’t. This wasn’t just a mix-up with the home-control console, or my imagination – someone was doing this. Whoever it was had found me, all the way out here in my isolated cottage, and wanted to hurt me. I had to tell someone what was going on.
‘I want to go to London tomorrow,’ I announced, when I’d placed his dinner – pheasant breasts with celeriac mash – in front of him. I stayed standing, without serving any for myself.
‘What?’ He reached for the salt without even tasting the food. ‘Why?’
‘I’m just so stuck here, Nick.’ It was five miles to the nearest station, too far to walk. I fantasised about the station a lot. Only a tiny branch line with a freezing waiting room, not even a coffee stall, it represented escape. My lifeline to London, and my old self. Except I couldn’t get there.
He turned that same face to me, the baffled one, that said – I give you all this and still you’re not happy. ‘Stuck in your lovely house, with all the time you wanted to paint?’
‘No, I know, it’s just – I miss my friends. I want to see Claudia.’
‘I got you the dog for company.’ The unspoken accusation. And you lost him. You didn’t care. Scrape scrape scrape went his fork against the plate. Forming the food into neat piles, squares of meat and vegetable. ‘Honestly, I think you’re better off without those people. You know how bitchy Claudia is. And she hates kids, she’s not supportive of our choices. She’s only visited once in all this time.’
I stared down at the table, the grain of the reclaimed wood. Was he right? Was Claudia, who I thought of as my best friend, not even that bothered about me?
‘I just – she invited me for lunch.’ Not true, as it happened; I would have to invite myself.
‘A boozy lunch?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that really appropriate?’
‘I never mentioned booze. Anyway, I need to do some shopping for the baby.’
‘I’ll get you anything you need.’ He picked up the salt again. I watched the flakes fall on to the food like the snow outside, holding fast still. A flare of panic – would the trains be running? Would a cab come out here?
‘I need maternity clothes. You can hardly try them on for me, can you?’ I put in a little laugh to soften it. ‘Anyway, I’m going.’
What could he say to that? He couldn’t actually stop me. That would be a new line to cross. He said, ‘It’ll be expensive, with the train and taxi. Aren’t you going to sit down?’
‘Oh, I’m not hungry. It’s too early for me to eat, I told you. Anyway, pregnant woman aren’t supposed to have game.’ He’d never stipulated we had to eat together, just that his food should be ready when he came in. I moved behind him, wiping the counter, and could see he was irritated, having to turn his head to talk to me. ‘If we had a second car, I wouldn’t need to spend on cabs.’ How easy that would have made things with us. I could have gone anywhere to meet you, though I suppose he would have checked the mileage.
Nick sighed. ‘Not this again. Don’t you care about the planet?’
‘One car won’t make a difference.’
‘Tell that to our baby,’ he said, banging down the salt cellar. ‘What if everyone had that attitude? He’ll grow up in a world flooded by climate change.’ We didn’t know the baby’s gender yet, but I’d noticed Nick use this pronoun a few times.
‘And yet you drive your car,’ I said airily. The counter was clean, but I went on wiping.
‘There’s no other way to get to work! Suzi, what’s the matter with you tonight?’
‘Oh, nothing’s the matter, darling. Just having a logical conversation. You know, if you don’t like driving, we could always think about moving back to London. Keep this place as a weekend bolthole.’ Bolthole, another term I could not remember ever saying before.
I’d pushed things far enough for one night. Nick gave me the same hurt, confused look, then went back to eating his mash in silence. The next day, I found fifty pounds in notes left on my bedside table, enough for the taxi and train but not a lot else (he was right, it was expensive to go to London). As I counted it, I thought about the other women who wake up to find cash on the nightstand. There wasn’t much difference between us.
I almost didn’t make it to town – the taxi was twenty minutes late, grousing about ice on the road, and then the train was delayed by snow on the rails. But I did make it. Claudia worked in the centre of London, near Old Street. As I lumbered out of the Tube, I was assaulted by the city – the noise, the blare of traffic, the smells of petrol and food and the homeless man camped out near the station. I dropped a pound into his cup, mumbling some kind of apology. Here, among the rush of life, my fears seemed absurd. Complaining that I didn’t know how to use my expensive speaker system? That I was alone, in a beautiful house, with no work to do? That my dog had gone missing, through my own carelessness? But the word in the snow. That was real. As I wearily crossed the city, I was shocked to find Christmas decorations up already, reminding me that time was marching on. Nick and I had barely discussed what to do this year. I had a horrible feeling he wanted his mother to come.
When I met Nick five years ago, a punt on an unpromising online date, I had felt smug, home free, panting on first base. I didn’t look at anyone else. We sailed through cohabiting, in our private world of two. My career flourished. I put on two stone. I stopped painting. So we got married, because that was what you did when you were this happy and you already joint-owned a blue retro toaster. On my wedding day, as Claudia helped me into my dress, so tightly boned I couldn’t breathe, she had whispered a question in my ear. Are you sure, babe? Petulant, I’d insisted I was. And now I had to find a way to tell her – I had been wrong.
Claudia hadn’t wanted to meet, I could tell. She’d said: I don’t know, babe, weekdays can be tricky. We don’t really take lunch. But I insisted, too far gone for pride. I had to talk to someone who wasn’t out there, marooned in the countryside. Someone who knew the old Suzi, not this new, housebound, whale-like version of myself. So we were meeting in a restaurant near her office – she’d more or less forced me to pick the place, with her vagueness and slow replies. When I got there I saw it was all wrong: too shiny, too much glass and steel, and noisy, the kind of place voices roll off the walls and back again.
Claudia was eight minutes late, pushing open the door with her elbow, tapping at her phone. I waved when I saw her, too hard. She threw me a distracted smile and kept typing as she sat. ‘Hello, darling. Sorry. Manic day.’
‘We should order.’ I slid the menu, a sheet of heavy crinkled paper, across to her. I’d looked it up online and chosen my food already.
Minutes ticked by as she cast her eyes over it and back to her phone, menu then phone. I signalled for the waitress but her eyes slid off me. Claudia looked at her watch. ‘I don’t have long.’ I remembered us at university, the hours we used to waste in cafés, jawing over the boys in our lives, making a pot of tea last for hours. How had we ended up like this? My closest friend – the work ones had all ditched me after Damian – and she didn’t have an hour spare for me.
I was torn between getting the waitress and needing to start talking in the limited time I had. Eventually, I pushed a loud ‘excuse me, can we order’ in her direction, catching curious glances. She took our orders without writing them down, causing me an irrational spike of anxiety.
‘Thank you. Sorry.’ Claudia smiled at the waitress. I felt she was trying to make up for my rudeness, and I wanted to cry. ‘So!’ Claudia’s voice was bright when the sullen wa
itress left, her long dark ponytail swinging. ‘How’s the country life? Can’t believe how big you are.’
‘Oh, it’s – you know. Quiet. I feel like I’m dead and buried sometimes.’ I forced that same laugh again.
She looked at me quizzically. She was wearing wide navy trousers, seventies-style, and a cream silk blouse. Her nails were done in dark red gel – I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had my nails painted; another thing that was supposedly toxic for the baby. One was still torn and black from shutting the garden gate on it. I hid my hands under my napkin. Claudia said, ‘Everything’s OK, right?’
It wasn’t. I’d had an affair, and my lover was dead. I was pregnant, probably with his baby. I opened my mouth to say something – I didn’t know what – then caught a glimpse of her kind, worried look, a moment of focus amid her distraction, and was horrified to feel my nose start to sting.
‘Oh babe! What is it?’
‘Nothing! God, so stupid. Pregnancy hormones.’ People were looking. I dabbed my eyes on the napkin. ‘It’s just hard. Leaving everything behind.’
‘Well, I’m sure. But I thought that’s what you wanted? A fresh start?’
‘I . . .’ It was what Nick wanted. What I’d maybe sometimes said in passing might be nice, but I didn’t mean it. How terrible it was when someone took you at your word. ‘It’s not what I thought. It’s so isolated. I can’t even get to the station unless I ring a cab – no Uber, nothing like that.’
‘God,’ murmured Claudia, the thought of no Uber clearly horrifying her.
‘Nick’s out at work all day, and I’m alone in the cottage. It’s just so quiet. I suppose you get used to the traffic and foxes and drunks shouting outside your window.’
‘You want that, you come to mine any night of the week,’ she said, rolling her eyes, though I knew she loved her tiny flat in Angel, so small she’d had to have the sofa custom-made.
‘God, they’re slow here,’ I said, as she checked her phone again. ‘Sorry. I should have picked somewhere else.’
‘It’s fine. But tell me, are things alright with Nick?’
I shrugged. ‘He works a lot. I have to ask him for money, and he expects me to cook and clean and all that, for when he comes home.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘God, really? That’s a bit retro, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose when I’m at home all day . . . He used to cook a lot, in London.’ Sometimes I felt like we’d been totally different people here. Like the Nick and Suzi who lived in the countryside were clones of us, with other personalities. Which was the real version?
The food came, Claudia’s tiny, artful salad, my steaming bowl of pasta. She ate three bites then picked up her phone again. ‘God, things are just mad. The pre-Christmas rush, you know. I’m sorry, darling. Why don’t you ring me one night, we’ll chat properly?’
With Nick listening to my every word.
‘Sure. I’m sorry, I’m fine really. Just hormonal, like I said. And kind of lonely.’
‘That’s to be expected, with such a big move. Your life has changed, Suze! That always feels weird.’
‘Yes. You’re right.’
For the rest of our brief lunch, I asked questions about her love life – hot and heavy with some guy from Tinder who didn’t even have a bedroom, but slept under the stairs in a shared house; her job – ‘Salma’s breathing down my neck about the hot spring skirt length, and I am so bricking it I called A line instead of mini’; and her social life – Zumba, circus skills, gin tasting. I felt about a hundred years old. She left not long after, dropping a kiss that barely grazed my skin. I’d offered to pay, since she was in a hurry. ‘Thanks, babe. I’ll get the next one, yeah?’
I didn’t think there would be a next one. And Nick would see the charge on the debit card and ask why it was so high, why I was treating Claudia when she had a job and I didn’t. He’d ask what we ate. If we ordered wine. I was exhausted just thinking about it.
When I’d paid – an eye-watering amount for what we had – I lumbered back out. I didn’t need to leave for another two hours to be home for Nick. The thought of rushing back to the quiet, insulated cottage made me gasp for breath.
We weren’t far from my old office here, near Liverpool Street. Claudia and I used to grab drinks after work, back in the old days (less than a year ago!). Before I’d fully formulated a plan, I found that my puffy, flattened feet were already carrying me there.
I was spooked, being in London. It was too easy to imagine my former self loping round a corner, late, in high heels, on my phone, my trademark silver rings flashing. I hadn’t been able to get them on in months, my fingers were so swollen. The office looked the same, the place I’d come to every day for three years, even on weekends sometimes. My hand flexed with the muscle memory of keying in the entrance code. Was it the same?
I looked at my watch – it was just 1.30 p.m., since Claudia and I had rushed our lunch. I remembered that Damian ate late, a continental affectation, and that he liked a smoke break outside. Maybe if I waited, he would come out.
I felt like a private detective on a stake-out, except I was so frumpy and pregnant I wouldn’t have been able to pursue anyone at speed. I was surprised, then pleased, that the owner of the Italian café across the road still recognised me. ‘Miss! Where you been all this time?’
‘Oh, I moved to the country,’ I said awkwardly.
His bushy eyebrows went up. ‘Why you wanna leave London?’
Well, I didn’t, Mr Café Man.
The aroma of coffee was like a drug, but I made myself order green tea. Nick was always nagging me to drink it for the health benefits, but the grass-clippings smell made me gag. I warmed my hands on the cup, staring at the door of the office across the road, the trendy lower-case letters spelling graphix box (stupid name), afraid I would miss him. I was also worried I might see someone else from the office, after I’d left under such a cloud. I could still remember the glances when I walked in the day after the alley incident, the way conversations would fall silent when I passed the break room. People knew what I’d done. It was possible someone had even told Nick. I’d driven myself insane trying to work out who – easier to walk away and leave the whole mess behind me.
Damian came out after about twenty minutes, already lighting up a fag before the door swung shut. His lanyard looped about his neck, bare arms in rolled-up shirt sleeves. My heart leaped up as my stomach lurched, and in the café I gathered my things and my bulk, trying not to rush but also not wanting to miss him. The lights at the pedestrian crossing took ages. I hoped he wouldn’t see me before then, so I’d have to do that awkward wave-and-walk-towards thing. Maybe he’d go back inside. We hadn’t left things on good terms.
As it happened, I was close enough to tap his shoulder before he saw me – because he didn’t recognise me at all. I saw it bloom in his eyes.
‘Jesus! Suzi?’
In other circumstances, I might have enjoyed his shock. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
Nora
I waited outside the council buildings for almost an hour. I had never been to Sevenoaks before and found it a small, pretty town, full of expensive shops and red-brick cottages. It was freezing, an icy wind nipping at my fingers and face, but I didn’t care. I had a purpose again, a new plan. None of this confusion, this backing out of what I’d steeled myself to do.
Eventually, on the dot of 1 p.m., Nick came out. He was bundled in a long black coat, with a scarf I could tell was expensive tucked around his neck. Leather gloves, the kind stranglers wore. He didn’t see me. No one notices frumpy middle-aged women, which was what I’d let myself become. Grief had etched lines into my face, and I’d allowed my hair to go grey. I’d put on weight, letting sugar and fat fill up the emptiness inside me.
I followed Nick all the way from his office down the high street. My heart raced, afraid that he might turn and realise he knew me, but I had a bobble hat pulled low over my face and had put on several extra jumpers to change my sha
pe. With this rudimentary disguise, I was able to position myself just one person behind Nick in the queue for the café he turned into. It was a fancy place, serving mixed salads and falafels in waxed cardboard boxes, ethically sourced coffees and teas and matcha, whatever that was. I used to think I was sophisticated, travelling the world as I did for concerts. But I rarely saw more than auditoriums and airport hotels, and in the years I’d stayed obediently at home, the world had moved on.
Nick ordered a chicken box, with three types of salad, and a juice made with carrot and apples. That was strange, because I knew he made Suzi pack him a lunch every day. Often she forgot, and had to race from bed while he was in the shower, going down to the cold kitchen with her bare feet and heavy belly. He must have been throwing the lunches away. His bill was twelve pounds, and then the woman in front of me was served (skinny cold-brew coffee), and suddenly the boy behind the counter was staring at me.
‘Can I help you?’
Nick was right nearby, looking at his phone as he waited for his order. I couldn’t speak. I waved a hand to indicate I hadn’t decided yet, and stepped back, behind him. Nick didn’t glance up, and from this angle I was able to see his phone. Camera footage – it looked like a home security feed.
With a shock so great I almost knocked the cold-brew woman flying, I saw that he was looking at video of his house. Suzi’s office. A little box in the corner said ‘live’.
‘Order for Nick?’ said the girl behind the counter, heart-breakingly young, with clear brown skin and dark curls.
Nick stepped forward, leaving his phone for a second on the high table he’d been standing by. He exchanged a few words with the girl – flirty, I thought, in passing – then moved over to the cutlery and napkin counter. I had seconds.
‘There you are!’ A woman had come into the café and greeted Nick. My first distracted thought was that she looked like Suzi, pale red hair and white skin, wearing a trench coat. ‘You ran off without me.’
The Other Wife Page 11