The House Swap

by Rebecca Fleet

  Password for wireless internet: silverbirches

  The words are in soft focus, blurring in front of my eyes, and I can’t push it away any more – the knowledge of what they mean, that night when I last saw these letters arranged in this precise formation and everything changed. I’m reaching for my phone and typing, connecting to the internet. I open my email and I enter the address I was told to use if there was any problem. There is nothing in my head, no space for thought. I type in the only words I can bring to the front of my mind.

  Are you there?

  Then I hit send.

  Home

  Caroline, April 2013

  THE MOOD IN the office on a Tuesday morning is always low-key; the weekend glow faded, and a long stretch ahead until the next one. People chain-drink cups of coffee, hunch themselves over laptops and telephones, mutter to each other unenthusiastically. From his manager’s office, Steven shouts out bons mots and questions at intervals through the open door, trying to inject some life into the atmosphere, but it’s a losing battle. If offices could talk, ours on a Tuesday morning would say that it didn’t want to be here.

  It’s different for me. My weekends at home are more to be endured than celebrated these days; a grim cycle of hope, frustration, disappointment and despair. Coming to the office is an exhilarating relief. Although I try to contain myself, being here floods me with energy. It’s like being drunk, except that nothing is blurred or out of focus – if anything, the world around me is startlingly bright and clear. I can’t focus on my work for more than minutes at a time, yet I’m getting it done faster and more efficiently than I have in years. It’s a distraction, and the quicker I can clear the decks, the more time I will have to think about Carl.

  The instant-messenger icon at the base of my screen is flashing. I open the window, glancing around first to make sure that no one is watching. Pretty slow day, eh. Still, only twenty minutes until …

  Clock-watching? I write back. For an instant, I let my eyes slide across the room. He’s reclining in his chair, staring at his computer with an expression of studied boredom as he stretches out and lazily taps a few words. I glance at my screen. Too right, the message says, and don’t tell me you’re not. As I look up, he does the same, and our eyes meet for a couple of seconds. The electricity of it makes me shiver, and I can barely believe that everything around us is carrying on as normal, sullen and oblivious. Impatience rockets through me. I push my chair back and walk quickly over to his desk, clutching my notebook to my chest.

  ‘Do you mind if we go through those accounts now?’ I ask lightly. ‘I know we said midday, but I want to get to the post office at lunch and I’d be better off going earlier.’

  He stares up at me, expressionless. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Just give me five minutes, yeah?’

  I grit my teeth. ‘Of course,’ I say sweetly. I walk back to my desk and sit down, flipping open the notebook and bending my head over it with an air of studied concentration. Picking up a pencil, I colour in between the lines, shading a pattern. My fingers are slippery with sweat. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that the messenger icon is flashing again, but I ignore it, seemingly intent on my task. I know he’s watching and, sure enough, it’s barely two minutes before he gets up and comes over, albeit at a maddeningly slow pace.

  ‘You know what,’ he says, ‘I think I’m ready now.’ He’s holding his laptop under his arm, his other hand stuffed casually into his pocket. I stand up and walk beside him through the office, towards the turning that leads to the meeting room. It’s the closest we’ve been all morning. He’s wearing the aftershave I like best, and the scent of it collects in the air between us, making my head swim.

  I follow him into the room and close the door, shutting the rest of the office out. He puts the laptop down on the desk, plugs it in carefully and brings the presentation we have planned to discuss up on the screen. Then he turns to me and grins.

  ‘Give me five minutes,’ I say. ‘You—’ but I don’t have time to say anything more because he’s crossing the room fast and pinning me back against the wall next to the door, thrusting his body up on to mine and knocking the breath from me as he kisses me. His hands are holding me tightly in place and I push back against them. ‘No,’ he says, under his breath, increasing the pressure. My stomach clenches with desire and my fingers tighten in his hair, and I’m completely lost in this, wanting him to wrench my clothes away from my body and throw me down on to the floor. He kisses me again, harder. Time shifts and changes. I have no idea how long we’ve been doing this. I don’t want it ever to stop.

  At last, his body relaxes and I feel the tension inside me unwind. He holds me more gently, brushes the hair back behind my ears. His smile starts at the same time as my own, and before I know it we’re laughing quietly together, still loosely intertwined. We kiss for a few more minutes, slowly now, his lips barely grazing mine. ‘You know,’ he says after a while, ‘you’d think this would get old.’

  I nod, because I’ve thought the same myself. It’s been almost eight weeks now – snatched half-hours in this room or on the occasional lunch break, rationed to avoid suspicion; the odd precious evening out. We spend our time sitting around staring at each other like teenagers, talking and joking and kissing. Nothing else. It’s a physical and mental boundary that I don’t dare to cross while we are spending eight hours a day in each other’s company.

  He smooths the crumpled collar of my shirt, his long fingers moving along my shoulder. ‘Steven talked to me again yesterday, about the transfer,’ he says, as if he’s read my mind. ‘Looks like it’s all going ahead. Couple of weeks, and I’ll be working out of the Bishopsgate office. So, you know. No longer colleagues.’ His voice is a mixture of regret and anticipation.

  ‘A bit of space to think. I guess it could have its advantages,’ I murmur.

  ‘It could.’ He tightens his grip on me again, just slightly, but it makes me push myself up against his chest, wrapping my arms around him. ‘Only if you want it to,’ he says, his lips against my neck, ‘and if we decide it’s a good idea.’

  ‘We’ll have to see how it goes.’ It’s the closest we come to talking about the future. When I am on my own, I spend hours turning it over – trying to understand what on earth we are doing, what the point of it is, what we want, where it is going. Somehow, when we are actually together, these thoughts crumble into nothing.

  His hands are snaking up underneath my skirt, running slowly up my thighs and stopping just at the place where my skin meets the thin fabric of my knickers. I know he won’t go any further, not here – not anywhere, until I say. Sometimes it seems that his capacity for self-control is far greater than mine. I am constantly battling the impulse to move his hands exactly where I want them, to show him that I don’t want to wait any more. His fingers are stroking lightly across my skin and I lean my head back against the wall, hearing my breath come hard and fast as his mouth finds mine again. He bites down on my lower lip, gently at first, then so hard that I gasp and scratch my fingers across his back, pulling him into me.

  He draws back a little, his dark eyes thoughtful and appraising. ‘You really like this,’ he says, ‘don’t you.’ His voice is low, sending a shiver rushing through me. Silently, I nod. We stand motionless for a few moments, regulating the rhythm of our breathing together. I dip my head down to his chest, feeling the warmth of him against me.

  ‘We’d better go back,’ I say after a while.

  ‘Yeah.’ He shifts against me and sighs. ‘You’d better go first. Give me a couple of minutes to calm down, you know.’

  ‘OK.’ I disentangle myself from his arms, slipping out and away. I glance back for a second, my hand on the door handle.

  He smiles at me, his eyes creasing at the corners. ‘Go put your lipstick back on.’

  I nod, and it hits me again – the bizarre ease that there is between us, the lack of game-playing or confrontation, the happiness. I know it when I feel it, even after all this time. The trust w
e had built as friends has moved unexpectedly and fluently into this new context, and it feels natural and right, despite the fact that we both know it should be wrong. The truth is, I don’t care. All I know is that I need it, and I’m not about to stop.

  At six o’clock, I’m turning into our road and walking towards home, counting the houses and looking for the light burning in the lounge window. It’s cold for April, too cold for the short skirt I’m wearing, but that isn’t why my legs are shaking. I’m replaying the telephone conversation I had with Francis on my lunch break, trying to remember how he sounded. There isn’t a lot to remember because he barely spoke at all. These days, my husband has only two modes of expression: long, rambling monologues which he rattles off so fast they veer towards mania, and veiled, monosyllabic utterances that feel more like crossword clues than conversation.

  As I turn the key in the lock, nausea flutters and tightens inside me, making me catch my breath. It’s insane, to feel this level of trepidation at entering my own home. Gritting my teeth, I stride through the hallway and into the lounge. Eddie is sitting in front of the television, rapt before a Disney video; when he hears me, he waves and calls out a greeting, then returns his attention to the screen.

  ‘Hello!’ Francis is smiling, but my heart sinks. His eyes are too bright, his movements jerky and exaggerated. He’s overcompensating, trying to make me think he’s fine. The disappointment roots me to the spot and I stand unmoving as he springs up from the sofa and embraces me. ‘Look!’ he calls to Eddie, too loudly. ‘Mummy’s back.’

  ‘Not for long,’ I say, slipping out of his arms. ‘I’m going to give Eddie his bath and put him to bed, and then I’m going out again, remember?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Francis says hurriedly, though his eyes cloud with momentary uncertainty.

  I glance at the sofa, trying to see the long white envelope I’ve been checking almost every day since I first found the pills. They disappear at an alarming rate, and then they’re miraculously and inexplicably restored, dividing and replenishing like cancerous cells.

  ‘You don’t seem yourself,’ I say, realizing as I do so that I have no real idea any more if this is true. I have no sense of who this self really is. ‘Look, Francis—’ I take a breath, knowing I have to continue. ‘I know you’re taking the pills again. I think you need to—’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he interrupts, his face creased in confusion.

  ‘You’re denying it?’ My eyes flick towards the sofa again, and I know he sees me look, but he nods.

  ‘Yes!’ he declares, eyes forced wide and unblinking in an effort to convince me. ‘You’re being silly. I’m fine!’

  I open my mouth, then close it again. I know he’s lying, but there’s something so powerful and so grimly familiar about this outright denial, this impenetrable brick wall, that I can’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Fine,’ he says again. His hand is pulling at his shirt collar, fidgeting and scraping. I know this state: the strange hyperactivity that so often spirals into agitation, paranoia and confusion. He lunges forward, tries to kiss me on the cheek, and I find myself shrinking back instinctively, barely able to believe how what I once wanted so much now almost repels me.

  His face briefly twists with hurt, but a second later he wheels away from me and snatches Eddie up from the floor, throwing him into the air and roaring. Eddie loves him in this mood, of course, and as I watch him giggling and shrieking, it strikes me that it’s because he understands it, or thinks he does. The way Francis behaves at these times is like a child, with no adult thoughts or inhibitions.

  I take Eddie quickly from his arms. ‘I’m going to run his bath,’ I say under my breath, avoiding Francis’s eyes.

  ‘Oh dear!’ Francis shouts after me, waving his arms extravagantly. ‘I’ve done the wrong thing again!’ His tone is shifting, turning subtly nasty, but I shut the bathroom door behind me and block it out.

  I run the water and bathe my son, scooping up handfuls of bubbles and smoothing them over his skin. He’s content, chatting away in a nonsensical stream of consciousness about the video he has been watching. ‘The boy went to the wood and there was a bright light and I saw the monster but its eyes were blue and I didn’t remember …’

  ‘That sounds good, sweetheart,’ I say, stroking my hands over his wet hair. The feel of him calms and grounds me a little.

  I dry him and get him into his pyjamas, then we snuggle together on his bed and I read him a story. ‘And the mermaids swam in the silvery sea, and sang their beautiful song,’ I recite. I try to concentrate, but I can’t help thinking of Carl and the things we did just hours ago, the things he said to me and the feel of his hands on my bare skin. It feels strange to be having these thoughts now, with my son curled up beside me, but they’re my talismans, keeping me safe from the other thoughts I could be having.

  ‘Night night, Mummy,’ Eddie whispers when I’ve finished. His grey eyes are large and solemn as I tuck him in, shining in the semi-dark. I gaze into them, and guilt stings my skin – the knowledge that there is so much he doesn’t know, so much that is taking me away from living with him in the here and now, so much time when I want to be somewhere else.

  Tears are threatening, and I lean down and kiss his forehead, breathing in the scent of his freshly washed hair. ‘Goodnight,’ I whisper. ‘Love you.’ He smiles faintly and rolls on to his side, reaching for his favourite stuffed rabbit and burying his face into its neck.

  I watch him for a moment, and unease ripples through me, too familiar to need voicing to myself. I remind myself that he will be asleep in minutes, and that he always sleeps through the night; that I always have my phone switched on; that I have friends no more than five minutes’ drive away if they are needed. That Francis is his father, and that he loves him.

  Softly, I stand up and cross the room, slipping out of the nursery. I realize that I haven’t even taken off my shoes since I came back. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted a quick getaway.

  ‘I’m going now,’ I begin, but Francis is slumped on the sofa, his energy burnt out as fast as it came, eyes closed and head lolling to one side. It’s impossible to tell if he is asleep or if he just doesn’t want to acknowledge me. Either way, it comes to the same thing.

  I stand there looking at him for a full minute, maybe two, searching for the man I fell for so hard that, when we were apart, I used to do little but sit around and dream of him, feeling his absence like a missing limb. These days, it’s when he’s right there next to me that I feel that absence the most. When he isn’t there, I can remember him as he used to be. But when we’re together, there’s no hiding from it – the knowledge that whatever was once there has gone, and that I’m stuck in limbo, inextricably and unhappily intertwined with someone I can’t fix.

  In repose, his face is almost serene. I’ve been unfaithful to you, I say silently. I’m cheating on you. These words have been running through my head for weeks with monotonous regularity. Maybe I’m hoping that, at some point, they’ll unlock something inside me, that they’ll find their force and hit home. So far, it hasn’t happened. I turn away and leave him alone, not bothering to switch off the light.

  I have dinner with Jess in a little pizza restaurant where the smell of oregano and wood-fired dough curls enticingly through the air, then go on for drinks in a hot, packed bar, the tables glinting with coloured candles. We chat about work, our children, things we’ve seen on television. A couple of times, she asks after Francis. The first time, I shrug and say he’s fine, but when she asks again later I can’t help saying that things are no better. She knows more than my other friends do about the way things are between us – has plenty of reasons to believe that our marriage is on shaky ground. All the same, I have never mentioned the pills. I drop hints sometimes, half wanting her to read between the lines, but whenever she begins to, I paper over the cracks as swiftly as they’ve opened up.

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ she says now, her face creased with
concern. ‘Is there anything you can do, do you think? Is he still cutting down on things at work?’

  I nod. ‘I’m not even sure how much he is working at the moment. I mean, he goes out sometimes, but I don’t really know where he’s going.’ I’ve long since stopped seeing the proceeds, in any case. They disappear into a black hole as soon as they’ve arrived.

  Jess looks as if she’s been caught off balance, struggling to understand. I don’t blame her. Before the past couple of years, Francis and I were the most open couple we knew. We spent so much time together there was never any question we wouldn’t know all there was to know about where the other one was and what they were doing. ‘That doesn’t sound good,’ she says.

  ‘It’s not.’ I pause, wondering how much to say. ‘To be honest,’ I admit, ‘sometimes, I can’t see how things are ever going to get better.’

  Jess blinks, her expression shifting with surprise. ‘God,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realize—’

  ‘I’m just feeling down about it,’ I interrupt, suddenly conscious that I don’t want to talk about Francis any more. ‘You know how it is. It’ll probably pass.’

  ‘Right,’ she says slowly. She’s picking wax off the candle between us, her red fingernails flashing in the light. ‘And, um, dare I ask how things are with Carl?’ she asks, her voice carefully neutral. ‘Is anything resolved there?’