We stand in silence again, pushing the kids on the swings. I can hear a pigeon coo, and a helicopter flies overhead.
‘Helicopter!’ I say to Johnny, and he looks up.
‘It’s a Chinook,’ Adam says. He points up. ‘The two rotors, the helicopter is called a Chinook.’
‘Johnny loves helicopters,’ I say. ‘And planes and trains and police cars – typical little boy.’
‘Dinosaurs?’
‘Definitely dinosaurs.’ I don’t dare look at his face; just his arms alone are enough to render me tongue-tied. They are tanned, strong arms, a jumper pushed up to show the muscles as he pushes the swing. A few blonde hairs are scattered across his forearm, a stylish clunky silver watch on his wrist.
‘Georgia loves dinosaurs,’ Adam says. ‘She has a good collection of them. Any time you want to come over so the kids can play, you and Johnny are more than welcome. We only live over there.’ He points to the road behind the row of trees. ‘Number thirty-three. Here, I’ll give you my number so you can text to see if we’re free.’ He notices my hesitation. ‘Or not? Hey, I don’t mind. I don’t want you thinking I’m some weirdo from the park. I just thought it would be good to have some adult conversation over a cup of coffee once in a while.’
‘No, no, that would be lovely.’ I pull my mobile out of my pocket. ‘But only if you have tea.’
The kids jump off the swings and start running laps of the park while Adam and I exchange numbers. Adam beams at me, and I feel a little thrill as I enter his name in my address book, a fizz of excitement knowing it’s something David doesn’t permit: a friend he doesn’t approve of. It’s nice to know I have something that’s mine.
We turn back to the children. Johnny has joined Georgia sitting on the grass. She is showing him daisies and he is pulling the petals off them.
‘Daddeeee!’ I hear Georgia call. Adam gives me an apologetic look and goes to join his daughter. She jumps up and grabs his hand in hers, pulling him away.
As I walk over to Johnny, I watch Adam from a distance. He is tall, with broad shoulders, dressed in jeans, trainers and a blue jumper, and the casualness suits him. Some men, like David, are built to wear suits, structure and bleak colours to match their stern expressions and slicked-back hair. Others are better suited to jeans. I wonder what Adam’s wife is like. She would wear Boden, Joules or Jigsaw, hair falling in perfect waves even though she did nothing with it when she woke up this morning. She wears white jeans and stays immaculate all day, even with a toddler to look after. I expect Georgia dines on smoked salmon, lychee juice and hummus, always nutritionally balanced, no chocolate, never any sugar. This wife would smile all the time, be patient and tolerant, understanding towards her husband, putting out at least twice a week and giving blow jobs when she was too tired. Home-made cakes and roast dinners on a Sunday.
Nothing like me.
Through my pondering I haven’t noticed that Adam has already left the park, his long strides following Georgia as she makes a run for home. I stare long after he has rounded the corner and gone out of sight.
Slowly I entice Johnny away from the park and cajole him towards home. Through the door, he runs off to find a train to play with and I take a moment to look at myself in the hallway mirror. Badly dressed, no effort, no make-up, no style. It’s no surprise David doesn’t pay any attention to me, I am a mess.
In my dreams I can look any way I choose, so why not in real life? Why shouldn’t strange men look at me with interest in the park, rather than talk to me out of pity? I give myself a stern lecture. Time to wake up, Annie; time to get your shit together.
I take one final disgusted look, then turn towards the noise Johnny is making in his playroom. Bricks are being turned out onto the floor, bedlam created by a small boy. As I pass the office door, I try the handle out of habit, expecting the usual resistance.
But the handle turns. David’s office is unlocked.
15
I step back from the door, my heart pounding. I can almost feel the adrenaline working its way round my body. I glance around, then try the handle again. It definitely turns: the room is open.
For a moment I wonder whether it’s a trick, a test David has set up for me. He’s never explicitly banned me from going in his study, but as it’s always been locked, it’s never been up for debate. Today, it’s not.
‘Daddy work,’ Johnny says next to me, and I jump. I reach down and stroke his hair.
‘Yes, pickle, it’s Daddy’s work room.’ I crouch down to his height, face to face. ‘So remember, we don’t touch anything when we go in.’
Johnny’s face adopts a serious air. ‘No,’ he says, shaking his head emphatically.
‘Nothing,’ I repeat.
I push the door open and a fine layer of dust is disturbed, scattering in the air. As the light shines through the window, I see it hanging, little flecks of skin and fluff, just floating, with nowhere to go. It’s uncharted territory, a strange world in my own home.
Johnny is tentative at first, and then more confident, taking in the decoration and clutter he is unfamiliar with elsewhere. It is strange to see the level of crap David will tolerate in here, in his own domain, when he expects the rest of the house to be tidy and bare.
Johnny moves around the room slowly, exploring things with his hands as toddlers do, previous warnings forgotten.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ I repeat, and he stops moving, his hands by his sides. I can see his eyes looking at all the trinkets at toddler eye height, shiny prizes to play with and keep.
I stand in the middle of the room and take it in myself. There is a bookshelf I remember seeing before, filled with management books designed to appeal to the super-ego: Be the Man You Were Born To Be and Lead for Respect. A few reinforcing unintelligible management speak: Who Shot the Donkey? and Why Synergies are not Win-Win. Scattered in amongst them are a few novels, masculine MI6 spy types, and then incongruous colourful Enid Blytons: the Faraway Tree and the Famous Five. I pull one out, old and worn, and open the front cover – ‘For my perfect little boy, may your childhood be as joyful as this book’. And a squiggle underneath: ‘From Dad’. I have never seen these before.
Across the higher shelves are glass and silver trophies, all embossed with the company logo. Trophies for winning money and clients, for long service and progression. I open the ugly world globe drinks cabinet and run my fingers over the whisky and the bourbon, expensive labels, all half drunk. Pushed next to the bottles is a small navy-blue metal tin, ‘Cornish Fudge’ embossed on the top, and I pick it up, remembering having given it to David as a silly gift one Christmas soon after we first met. Then, it contained expensive fudge; now, as I open it, I see a plastic packet of white powder, another of small white pills, and a black memory stick. I hold the bag of powder up to the grey light from the window. It looks like most of it has gone. Cocaine? Surely not heroin. And Ecstasy? Those nights when he is working with his colleagues are not as boring as he makes out. I replace the powder and the pills in the tin and pick out the stick. I stare at it for a moment, willing it to give up its secrets, before putting it in the pocket of my jeans.
Johnny has got bored and wandered back to his toys, where he’s allowed to touch and throw. I can just see him through the open door, sitting on the floor, a plastic container of bricks next to him, carefully fitting one on top of another. Standing in the middle of the room, I ponder my next move. I leave and come back with a yellow duster and a can of Mr Sheen. Ruse in place, I continue my search of the room, running the cloth absent-mindedly across the surfaces, slightly disgusted at the level of grime, already rendering it black.
I turn my attention to David’s imposing wooden desk. I know it used to belong to David Senior, but I can’t pinpoint when it made its way in here. I can tell it was well looked after in its day: the wood still holds its polish and the brass handles are shining. I try the drawers in turn. The first two are locked tight, but the last one, a big, cavernous drawer meant for filing, ope
ns easily. It’s stuffed full of papers, with no order or thought, and I prod the piles tentatively, looking to see what’s in there.
I lift out a heap; they look dull. Letters from our solicitor about the purchase of this house, land registry documents, bank statements. I cast a look at one of them, an account with only David’s name on it, and the total is eye-wateringly high. I notice an A4 windowed envelope in the pile, and spot the red cover of a UK passport. I tip the contents onto the desk: old fully stamped ones of David’s, and muddled among them, a pristine one that turns out to be for Johnny, and at the bottom, mine. I look at Johnny’s – the photo is very early on, he looks like a tiny baby – and I wonder when David, or his PA, applied for it. We have certainly never talked about any foreign holidays. He took mine after our honeymoon, said he would put it away for safe keeping, and I gave it up without a second thought. I trusted him. I push the two passports into my back pocket.
I flick through the last of the papers, what look like documents and contracts from his work, all with the usual logo, all expensive, thick embossed paper and deep black ink. I find nothing else interesting so I put them back in the drawer, arranging them in the same higgledy-piggledy way they started out.
A worn and beaten-up cupboard stands behind David’s chair. Like the desk, it is made of a dark wood and in its day it would have had pride of place in a dining room or hallway. It has two doors meeting in the middle, with an intricate design across them, and what looks like an old brass lock. I push at the doors and they give on their hinges, enough to jiggle the two sides of the lock apart. More mess and papers lie inside. A quick check to where Johnny is still occupied with his bricks, and I squat in front of the cupboard.
I sigh. What exactly am I looking for, digging through the minutiae of David’s life, the stuff I don’t normally see? The majority of it is boring and predictable, the paperwork that life accumulates: bills, council tax, P60s, payslips and letters from HMRC. I glance at a few in passing. For all his failings, it seems he pays our bills on time, and certainly earns enough money to cover my pathetic allowance. What does he do with the rest? I wonder.
As I start to close the cupboard door, a pile of letters and cards catches my eye. Stuffed down the back, just barely poking out the top, I can see the bright colours of greetings cards and unmistakable handwritten addresses. I pull them out, one by one, and lay them in front of me. By the end, there’s quite a large pile. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, a few good luck cards, some still in their envelopes, opened roughly, some just out in the pile. Letters the same, some loose, some not even opened, but each with one unmistakable characteristic. All are addressed to me.
16
I stare at the stack of cards and letters, incredulous at the sheer number of people that have tried to contact me. I pick one up: ‘We’re sorry to hear you’re leaving’, it says, full of comments and notes from my colleagues at my old work. I look for a moment at the squiggles and signatures, in a mix of different pens and handwriting. I place it slowly to one side and select another. A group of birthday cards, one inside another, bundled up. Some gaudy and tacky, some tasteful and arty. I flick through and look at the names – Julia, Graham and Ryan, Sue and James, all people I thought I hadn’t heard from in years. A few letters from a friend in Australia; a random postcard from an old lady, a neighbour I assumed had died; Christmas cards and congratulations cards when Johnny was born. Some of the Christmas cards distribute their glitter across the floor; a reindeer embossed in red smiles out with a happy grin. All people I thought had left me, all people I assumed hadn’t given me a second thought.
I grew up lonely. A series of men journeyed through our tiny home, none of them staying for long, but otherwise nobody came to visit. I yearned for the sort of bustle and noise I found at Becca’s, but I never knew how to behave with the affection at her house. Any attention was overwhelming; it didn’t match the way my mother had always made me feel – insignificant and undeserving. I learnt to exist at the edge of the chatter and conversation.
At the bottom of the pile is a bundle of letters secured with an elastic band. Most of them opened and placed back in their envelopes; some untouched. All with handwriting I have known my entire life. I take off the elastic band and pull one out at random, written on light blue notepaper. I glance at random sentences, the words blurring in front of my eyes. ‘I haven’t heard from you in a while’, ‘I hope you and David are well’, ‘I miss you’. It’s signed by Becca.
I sit on the floor, surrounded by the letters and cards from the people from my life before David. Some of them were there when we met and were encouraging and pleased for me. Some even lasted to our wedding. David said it was the natural way: you got married and had a child and moved on from the single life and your friends from before. People accepted that and left you alone. But now I’m not so sure.
My life was never normal as I grew up; I never had normal friends, except Becca. I found my confidence at work. I realised that by taking control of my life, and of the life of the MD I looked after, I could make a difference. I held my head up. I had a purpose. But that part of me disappeared with my job, so when I didn’t hear from my friends, the people in my life, I adopted my old habits. I withdrew. I didn’t bother to contact them. I was too unimportant.
But here they are, scattered around me. This is what normal friends do – they send birthday cards, they send postcards, they try to get in contact with you after your mobile number changes because your husband accidentally dropped the old one in the toilet. These were my friendships and I had let them go, let them disappear.
I think back to the morning after our wedding. Sitting in bed in the honeymoon suite, hair still rigid with hairspray, David turned to me and said, ‘You need to stay away from Becca. She’s bad news for you. Mother overheard her talking to that other friend of yours, the fat one in the pink?’
‘Lisa?’
He was shirtless and handsome, the white sheets contrasting against his tanned chest. ‘Whatever. She said something like “I give it six months”, and then the fat one said you looked like a six-year-old playing dress-up princesses in that dress, and then they both laughed.’
I looked over at the dress, laid out over one of the sofas. A mass of ivory lace and silk, the most beautiful thing I had ever owned, chosen on a wonderful day out with Becca. A lump formed in my throat.
David put his mug down and leant in close to me. ‘You have me now, you don’t need to worry any more.’ He kissed me, his smell a mixture of manly early-morning warmth and coffee; it was everything I had ever wanted.
How has David kept these from me for all these years? Why did I so easily accept that we never receive post to the house? He said it was doing me a favour: one less chore for me to sort out every day. Why did I so quickly agree to redirecting it to the office when David has never done a selfless act in his entire life? How was that good? How was that normal?
The clock in the room chimes, announcing twelve o’clock. I jump, and scrabble around me, picking up the letters and cards, replacing them in their envelopes, trying to remember what went where, putting everything back where it belongs. But I keep the letters from Becca, pushing them into the waistband of my jeans. Quickly I wiggle the cupboard door closed and jump up, standing in the doorway, looking back at the room, seeing it through David’s eyes. Apart from my poor attempt at cleaning, will he notice it has changed? I take a deep breath and close the door, looking around for Johnny. I can hear bashing and banging coming from his playroom and go in search of the noise.
Unchecked, my little boy has done what any self-respecting two-year-old would do – he’s trashed the room. Toy boxes have been upturned, cars on top of trains on top of jigsaw pieces from any number of puzzles. He is sitting in the middle of it all, looking very pleased.
‘Mummy!’ he says, with a big smile. ‘Tidy up?’ he asks sweetly, and places one train into the empty plastic box by his side.
‘My,’ says a voice behind me. ‘What has b
een going on here?’
I pull on my best happy face, and turn to face Maggie. Her keys to my house are still in her hand. ‘Did you forget I was coming for lunch, dear?’ she says with a smile, caustic enough to take off the wallpaper. A waft of talcum powder and floral perfume envelops me as she kisses me, her tissue-paper cheek a good centimetre from mine.
‘No, not at all, Maggie. In fact, we were just tidying up ready for your arrival.’
Johnny smiles, and tips the single train out of the plastic box, back into the chaos.
‘Let’s get you comfortable while we clear up,’ I say, ushering her away from the mess. ‘Now, would you like a cup of Earl Grey?’
As she moves back towards the lounge, I pull my shirt down over the top of the passports and letters hidden in my jeans. I am desperate to take a look, but suddenly scared of what it might mean for my life, and for Johnny’s. I feel my emotions teetering on a knife edge, terrified of which way the stark reality will tip me. But I will ignore it for now. There is time to look later. Time to think then.
17
I pop a plate with a slice of buttered toast and some baked beans in front of Johnny, and return to the hob to check on the soup. Maggie has brought lunch with her – a cuboid of grey leek and potato, rendered solid by the starch. It slides out of the Tupperware with a squelch and wobbles in the bottom of the pan, nervous of its fate. I attack it with a spoon as it heats up, and luckily it returns to something resembling soup, albeit smelling more of floral cleaning products than anything edible. I should be grateful for Maggie’s show of effort, but suspect it comes from a reluctance to eat anything cooked by my own fair hand more than any sort of altruism.
The Dream Wife Page 11