by Rosie Fiore
I had this picture in my head of how families should be, and I went all out to make it happen – a beautiful home, lovely meals and the same person waiting at the school gate every day.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, my redundancy hadn’t been fair. I’d thought I was doing so well, and I couldn’t understand why, of everyone in our department, it was me who got the push. It wasn’t until two or three years later, at the Christmas party, that Chris’s PA, Millie, got pissed and told me I was the best marketing manager they’d ever had. ‘Off the charts!’ she slurred. ‘Best ideas, best results. The best!’
‘So why did they let me go?’ I asked.
She winked and said, ‘Old boys’ club. Chris and Sam did a deal, didn’t they?’
I got her another glass of wine, and she told me you’d persuaded Chris to let me go so I could look after the girls and you could have your promotion. She threw up after that, and I held her hair back in the ladies’. Deep down, I’d probably always known you’d done something like that.
I knew then that I needed some kind of self-protection plan. But it was so difficult, and I got increasingly worried. I tried to stay employable. I kept going on those courses, tried to keep up to date with marketing trends and innovations. But every course I did, the other people got younger, and I felt more and more out of touch. I turned thirty, then thirty-one, but the people I studied with were still so young and ambitious. Assuming I didn’t go back into full-time work while the girls were still at school, I’d be forty-five when I finally got back into the workplace. And in our field, full of hardworking young things, I might as well be a hundred. I’d be useless.
Then you started piling on the pressure to have a baby of our own. I knew I didn’t want to, but my instinct was to please you. I nearly gave in. So nearly. But I knew that if I did, I’d be slamming the last door shut forever.
I knew what you’d say – what most people would say. That I wouldn’t be closing the doors of opportunity; that I’d be going through a door and entering a whole other world of possibility, of family and child-rearing, and what a noble and worthwhile pursuit that was. But the point was, it wasn’t my possibility. I had never, ever wanted to have a baby of my own. It wasn’t my door to go through. It was yours. In my eagerness to please you and the world, to be the good girl, I’d almost lost sight of myself.
I think that’s what happens to the good girls. They devote their lifetime to pleasing others, and they never stop to think about what pleases them. What they want. They create a persona that perfectly fulfils a role, and they never pause to say, ‘What do I want? Who do I want to be? How do I want to look? What work do I want to do? How do I want to have sex? What lights the fire in MY heart?’ I was staring down a long, dark corridor, which led towards a future I would never have chosen for myself.
I tried to talk to you about it, but you probably don’t remember. I tentatively mentioned that I was worried about my career possibilities passing me by. I said that it concerned me that I’d never really travelled. You said that I didn’t need to work, that we were doing brilliantly financially. You said we could travel together when the girls were grown up; you joked and said, ‘We’ll be too old for backpacking. We’ll have to be those old farts who go on cruises.’ I was a good girl, of course, so I didn’t argue or push the point. But the sense that I was trapped began to overwhelm me.
And then, of course, I became aware of your extracurricular love life. I suppose you thought you were so cautious, but you left all the obvious clues – receipts in your pockets, the stench of perfume on your shirts, even a naked photo on your phone. All so obvious. So tacky. So careless. I knew if I confronted you, you’d cry and turn your beautiful blue eyes on me and tell me it meant nothing, and you’d be telling the truth. And in fact it was the sheer meaninglessness of it that made it so insulting. That you’d risk everything for a shag.
Then, one day, I dropped the girls at school and went for a long run. I ended up far from home, in Highgate. I paused to catch my breath and buy a bottle of water, and I happened to glance in the window of an estate agent’s office. Alongside the ads for million-pound houses, there were pictures of apartments – white walls, blonde-wood floors. Empty. Clean. Flooded with light from their big picture windows. They were the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. I imagined getting my keys for a place like that, walking through the door with just a bag. Flinging all the doors of possibility open and starting again.
It was a game at first, making my plans to disappear. I fantasized about how I might do it. I thought about how we leave an electronic trail wherever we go, so I started to think about how I could avoid doing that. I’d need cash, as I wouldn’t be able to use a card. I’d need a new passport and a new identity. I’d need separate bank accounts and a new electronic profile.
It was purely theoretical until that night in the hotel. That was the first time I realized how serious you were about us having a baby and how much pressure you were willing to exert to make it happen. It wasn’t up for negotiation at all, was it? I knew if I stayed, sooner or later you would make me do it. And that was the point where my plans got real.
I started saving cash, bit by bit, until I had enough to buy a small tablet computer and a pay-as-you go mobile with an unregistered SIM. I started a new email account in the name of Helen Day. I got a post-office box at that mailbox rental place on the high street. I applied to change my name to Helen Day by deed poll, and once I had those documents, I was able to open a bank account in my new name. I set up a LinkedIn page and started applying for jobs. It took a while, but eventually I got the job with SSA. I told them I needed a month before I could start. I went down to Greenwich, and I found my flat. I told the landlord I was getting divorced. With my existing credit profile as Helen Cooper, I passed all the checks, but he was happy to give me the lease in my new name. I ordered everything I would need online, and on that day in May, I walked away from our life and into my new one.
I moved into the flat of my dreams, an empty white box. It was deliberately like that, and it still is. Because this is my third go at starting my life, and I can’t get it wrong again. Every choice I make needs to be deliberate. Every career move, every item I buy, every opportunity I accept needs to be because it’s what I truly want, not because someone else tells me it’s the right thing. Not because I’m doing it for the greater good, or to please someone.
I’ve gone back to the dreams I had as a teenager – carefully planned career moves, then my own company, and lots and lots of travel. At the moment they’re all I have, but I’m refining those goals all the time.
I am so sorry, Sam. It may not seem like it, but I do love you. I love you and I see you for who you are. You are not an opener of doors. You’re as much a closer as Lawrence was. You’re just stealthier, and you’re selfish. You close other people’s doors to open your own, and I couldn’t let that happen to me anymore.
So I left to save my own life. It hasn’t been easy. I have missed you and the girls every minute of every day. I still get twitchy at six o’clock every evening, worrying about whether the girls are getting a proper dinner. I worry about who does Miranda’s hair for dance, and whether Marguerite has stopped saying ‘wabbit’. I miss them so much, and I wish I could have seen Miranda’s birthday disco and the Harry Potter cake.
I know you will never be able to forgive me, but over time, I hope you might be able to understand.
You know what I am, Sam, I’m all or nothing. And I can’t be all, so I have to be nothing.
All my love,
Helen
Lara
I was mostly okay. I had moments of pure fury where I wanted to throw things (and I did – I threw all of Sam’s clothes and bits and pieces into a bin bag and chucked them away). I shed some tears, in the privacy of my room; not for Sam, but for the fool I’d been. I’d always kept my guard up after Marc, but Sam had completely taken me in. I’d even done my best to fight for him, like the gullible idiot I w
as. I apologized to Mum and Frances for the trauma of Friday night, and I was sorry that Miranda and Marguerite were upset, but mostly I felt a sense of relief. I knew where I stood, and we could pick ourselves up and get on with our lives again.
I didn’t see him at school on Monday morning, which was a relief, and I knew the girls would be at after-school club so there was no risk of seeing him in the afternoon either. I would see him at some point, obviously, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. On the whole, though, I was definitely okay. It could have been so much worse.
On Monday evening at about six, after I’d given the kids their tea and while I was getting ready to go to work, the doorbell rang. My heart sank, which must be a sign that I was really okay. ‘Please don’t be Sam, coming to grovel,’ I thought. And it wasn’t.
It was Tim, standing on the doorstep, grinning nervously. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I know it didn’t work out too well the last time I tried this, but I’m looking for Sam. He’s not at home.’
‘Well, he’s not here,’ I said. ‘Try Helen’s place.’
‘What?’ Tim’s eyes widened with shock.
‘Helen. Sam found her, and it’s apparently all going to be okay and they’ll be playing happy families in no time.’ I tried not to sound too bitter.
‘What?’ Tim repeated, and I swear I saw him sway on his feet.
‘That’s all I know. Sorry. He found her and they’re getting back together. Sorry. I know it must come as a shock—’
‘I have to go,’ he blurted, and he turned towards his car.
‘Tim. . . wait!’ I said. ‘You look freaked out. Don’t you want to sit down for a moment?’
‘No,’ he said, and when he looked back at me, his eyes were wild with panic. ‘I have to go now. Sorry.’ And he sprinted down the path, jumped into his car and roared off down the road.
Sam
When I started reading, I thought it was a love letter – a promise of her return. When I reached the end, I knew it was a goodbye. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the closely printed pages. But I know where she is, I thought. I can go and see her and persuade her that she’s wrong. That she’s got me wrong. That she can have her dreams and still be with me. I can—
And then I remembered that she’d posted the letter, instead of giving it to me. Why had she done that? To buy herself time. She’d given herself three days. It was possible I was already too late. But I had to try. I stuffed the letter in my pocket and went and grabbed the girls. Taking them to Mrs Goode’s was an act of sheer desperation. There wasn’t anyone else I could leave them with. Not Lara, obviously, and it would have taken too long to take them to my mum and dad’s place.
Initially I thought I would drive, but once I’d dropped the girls off I realized that trying to cross London from the north-west to the south-east in rush hour could take hours. Coming back from Helen’s on the train on Friday evening had taken just under an hour. It was interminable, but the safest option. I left my car where it was and ran to the station.
As we rattled along from stop to stop, my skin crawled with irritation. The inaction was killing me. I took out the letter and began to go through it again. In my first feverish reading, I had missed so much. As I went through it more slowly, something leapt out at me and made me pause.
It was right at the end, where she talked about missing us. She mentioned the disco and the Harry Potter cake. I’d never told her about that – mainly, I suppose, because of the link to Lara. So how had she known about it? And then I remembered something she’d said on Friday night, at dinner, about my carrying bicycles up three flights of stairs. It had niggled at me, but I couldn’t work out why. Now I understood. I’d given her our address after we’d had that conversation. I had told her we had a flat, but not where. How had she known we lived on the third floor?
As I changed trains at Bank and started on the long journey to Greenwich, a last, heart-crushing thought occurred to me. The earring in her bathroom cabinet. Helen’s ears weren’t pierced. How arrogant I’d been to imagine that I was the only person who had been inside her flat.
I paced up and down the train carriage like a demented person for the last few stops, and practically wrenched the doors open at Greenwich. I hit the platform running, and I didn’t stop till I got to Helen’s door. I pounded my fist on the buzzer, even though I was almost certain it was hopeless.
‘Helen!’ I shouted. ‘Helen!’
The door to the shop next door opened, and a man stepped out. He had long grey hair and little round glasses.
‘I’m sorry for the noise,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for my wife.’
‘Are you Sam?’ he said, and I stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘I’m Brian, Helen’s landlord.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s gone, I’m afraid. But she asked me to let you upstairs. She said she left some things there for you.’
He reached past me and unlocked the street door, then handed me the bunch of keys. ‘Just drop them in on your way down,’ he said. ‘I was sorry to see her go. She’s been a lovely tenant.’
I took the stairs two at a time, and let myself in to Helen’s flat. It was hard at first to see whether she was gone or not. There’d been so little in the flat to start off with. The futon was still there, although the bedclothes had been stripped. And then I saw that there was a row of cardboard boxes in the kitchenette, neatly labelled ‘Charity shop’ in Helen’s handwriting. I lifted the lid on one; it had all of Helen’s kitchen equipment in it. The wardrobe was empty of her clothes.
She had left a small selection of objects on the kitchen counter, with a Post-it affixed in front of them. ‘Sam’. There was a box, which contained her wedding rings and the watch with the brown leather strap that I’d given her for her last birthday. And there was her little tablet computer and mobile phone. I tapped the power button and the tablet lit up. It had very little on it – she’d wiped her email account, her web history and any documents – other than one folder of photos on the desktop. I opened it.
There was a picture of Miranda at my parents’ house, on her birthday weekend. Another of Marguerite, wobbling along on her bike. One of me, on the sofa in my flat, a beer in my hand. Miranda turning cartwheels on a beach, hair flying around her head like a halo. So many pictures.
The door opened, and the landlord put his head around it.
I looked up. ‘Where did she go?’ I said brokenly.
‘Canada. For work. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s, er. . . someone else here.’
I nodded. ‘I know. Let him in.’
Brian stepped aside, and Tim walked into the room. Brian withdrew, closing the door behind him. Tim looked pale and out of breath.
‘When?’ I said.
‘A few months after she left. She contacted me by email first. She begged me not to tell you. She was so desperate for news of the girls, and of you. She needed to know you were okay.’
‘And you listened to her?’
‘She told me she was definitely never coming back, and that if you knew, it would torture you. And then you started seeing Lara. . .’
I shook my head and looked down at the pictures on the screen.
‘Why? You didn’t even like her. She didn’t like you.’ But even as I said that, I knew it wasn’t strictly true. It was quite possible that Tim keeping his distance from Helen may have had another cause.
‘I’m sorry, Sam.’
‘It was Helen. The unrequited love you talked about. Giving love without expecting anything in return. It was Helen. But you did expect something. Did you get it?’ I reached into the box where Helen’s rings and watch lay and lifted out the single gold earring. ‘You did, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ said Tim. ‘Maybe you would have done something like that, but I wouldn’t, and neither would Helen. The last thing she needed in her life was another man.’
‘Well, she’s gone now. For good. I hope you’re happy,’ I said viciously.
/> Tim didn’t say anything. He stood and watched me, his face full of an inexpressible sadness. Behind him, through the window, I saw the sun sink below the rooftops, staining the clouds a deep red.
Miranda
Mrs Goode made us a tea of fish fingers and salad. Marguerite loves fish fingers, so she didn’t cry or whine, even though Dad had just dumped us on some strange woman we hardly remembered. Mrs Goode wasn’t too fussed about table manners. She didn’t even seem to mind when Marguerite picked up her fish finger in her hand and dipped it in a great puddle of ketchup. After we’d eaten, Mrs Goode said we could go outside while she tidied up, and then we’d watch something on the telly.
We both wandered out into the back garden. Marguerite started picking daisies out of the lawn. I went over to the fence. There was a pile of bricks and a few old ceramic plant pots. I stacked up the bricks and put a few of the plant pots upside down on top.
‘Come here,’ I called to Marguerite, and together we climbed up to peer over the fence into our old garden.
The grass was long and shaggy, and there were quite a few dandelions in it. There was no one outside and the patio doors were closed. It looked different. There were new cushions on the chairs, and a brightly coloured cloth on the table. From where I was balanced, I could reach out a hand to touch a branch of the tree we used to climb in our garden, so we could look into Mrs Goode’s house. But I couldn’t go in. It was like looking into an enchanted garden, but I didn’t know the words of the spell that would allow me to enter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SIX MONTHS LATER
Sam
‘What do you reckon? Salad or vegetables?’ I asked.
‘Salad,’ said Miranda ‘I’ve got lots of cress in the greenhouse, and we’ve got nice tomatoes. Granny likes those.’
‘What about potatoes?’
‘Potato salad!’ suggested Marguerite.