‘Well, Jesus,’ I fire back, ‘that’s useful. Thanks for nothing.’ As soon as I’ve said it, I regret it. The intimacy of the morning pops and vanishes. Francis leans back in his seat, eyelids hooded darkly, and turns to stare out of the window. ‘I’m sorry,’ I start to say, but I don’t know how to continue and Eddie is still yelling, drumming his fists on the side of the buggy for emphasis, and the words are drowned and suppressed.
By the time we get off the bus, Eddie’s tantrum has died down into the occasional hiccupping sob. We walk down the road towards the house in silence. The sky has clouded over and my muscles are tight and clenched. I force myself to smile at Francis, shuffling next to me. ‘That was stressful,’ I say lightly once we’re inside. ‘Sorry. Let’s just have some lunch, yeah?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Francis says distantly, reappearing from the lounge. ‘I’m just going to pop up the road to get some juice, OK?’
‘Don’t go.’ The words leap to my lips so swiftly I don’t have the chance to consider them. ‘Please.’
He looks at me, frowning, arms folded across his chest. A beat of silence, the tension stretched between us. ‘So I can’t even go up the road now? You want to police me twenty-four seven?’
‘No …’ I search for something else to say, but nothing comes.
‘It’s fine,’ he says, but there’s a coldness in his tone that wasn’t there before.
I watch him walking slowly away from the house, head down. My mental timer clicks on. If he’s less than fifteen minutes, it’ll probably be all right. On autopilot, I make Eddie a sandwich and then settle him down for a nap.
Twenty minutes. Twenty-five. Half an hour.
It’s almost two hours before he returns and, when he does, he stumbles straight to the bedroom, drags the curtains across the window and collapses on the bed. There’s no point shouting but I do it anyway. I stand in the darkened room with tears streaming down my face and call him every name under the sun, and none of them makes the slightest bit of difference at all.
The bell outside Carl’s flat doesn’t work, so I stand outside and text him. I’m here. X. Seconds later, I hear the sound of a door opening inside, then footsteps coming quickly down the hall. He pulls me into the dimly lit hallway and kisses me hello, kicking the front door shut with his foot.
‘Evening.’ Already I’m relaxing, unable to stop smiling as the trauma of the day fades away into nothing. He never says he’s pleased to see me, but he doesn’t need to, and it’s infectious. He’s wearing a faded red shirt and a pair of black jeans. I think about telling him he looks sexy, but perhaps I don’t need to, either. These days, it seems we can read each other’s minds, probably because we’re usually thinking the same thing.
‘Come in,’ he says, taking my hand and leading me back into the flat. ‘Do you want the guided tour? Not really.’ He answers himself, grinning. I have time to take in polished wood floors, sparse, pale furnishings, bare walls. Then I’m in his bedroom and the door has shut tight behind us. In here, there’s not much to see. If I walked in as a stranger, I wouldn’t be able to pick up too much about the person who lived here, and perhaps that’s the way he wants it. He’s private, watchful. I’ve often seen the way he looks at people, as if he’s coolly sizing them up and drawing his own secret conclusions. He doesn’t look at anyone else the way he looks at me.
‘I can’t believe it’s only one more week until you go,’ I say. We’re standing very close together in the centre of the room, his hands on my waist. ‘I’m going to miss having you in the office.’
‘I’ll miss you, too.’ He narrows his dark eyes, passing a hand over the side of his face, considering. ‘But it’s not like we won’t see each other.’
‘Of course.’ The truth is, we haven’t spoken at all about what will happen when he leaves, beyond the vaguest of references to us having to wind things down eventually. I say it, but I’m not sure I mean it yet. It’s easy to believe that these encounters exist in a little pocket of space and time outside judgement and reality. I can’t imagine them ending. I can’t imagine any other option. The future is blank space, closed off. The thought gives me a brief trickle of dread and I put my arms around his neck to ground myself.
‘We should speak about it,’ he says, understanding my silence, ‘but maybe not yet, hey.’
‘Right.’
I don’t want to talk any more just now, not about anything, and he picks up on it straight away. Instead he kisses me again, pressing himself up against me, sliding his hands up my body, taking the material of my dress with them and unpeeling it over my head in one swift movement. His hands are warm on my skin and I hear myself gasp as his lips trail over the path they have taken, making me shiver. My fingers are working at the buttons of his shirt, fumbling impatiently with them one by one. He puts his hand over mine, stilling me. Say please. His mouth moves almost silently and I whisper the echo back.
Slowly, he moves his hand away, and I’m finishing what I started, running my hands over the muscles of his chest and pushing the shirt off his shoulders as he unclips my bra and then takes me up in his arms without warning, throwing me hard down on to the bed. He stands over me for a moment, looking down.
‘Come here,’ I say. ‘Please,’ and he lies down on his side beside me, propping his head up on his hand.
‘Dangerous times,’ he says, his breath hot against my neck. His hand is sliding down my body again, hooking into the side of my knickers and pulling them gradually over my thighs, pushing them away. He doesn’t take his eyes off me and, in this moment, I want him so much the rules I have made about us not crossing this boundary yet crumble up into dust. I reach for the buckle of his jeans, tugging at the belt. He stops me again, shaking his head. ‘Oh, no,’ he says quietly. ‘I don’t think so. You wanted to wait, didn’t you? So we’re going to wait.’
I bite my lip hard, saying nothing. We’re kissing again, and I’m pushing myself into the heat and hardness of his body, wrapping my legs around his waist and scratching my nails across his back. I know he likes it, but he pushes my hands away, shaking his head again. He reaches down to the side of the bed, scoops up a scarf that is lying there, and then, before I know it, he’s forcing my arms up above my head and tying my wrists together quickly and efficiently, smiling as I gasp. ‘There,’ he says when he has finished. ‘Got you where I want you now.’
We stare at each other and it feels like it’s too much to bear, too intimate, like a crushing weight on the heart that knocks the breath from my body. His hand is between my legs and he’s stroking me softly at first, then harder, slipping his fingers inside me, and I don’t care if the neighbours hear the noise I’m making because there’s no control here, not any more, and I’m raising my hips off the bed and he forces them down with the flat of his free hand. It hurts, and I can’t tell if I like it or not, but it barely even matters, and for a few burning hot seconds there’s nothing in my head and I’m looking into his eyes and I’ve completely forgotten who I am.
Later, we get dressed and go out into the dark and sit drinking for a while in a crowded, red-lit bar. We speak about work, about our plans for the rest of the weekend. There’s no effort and no restraint and, despite everything, I can’t resist the delight that is sweeping its way through me. It’s too easy, too seductive. It wants me, and every cell in my body wants it back.
At the station, we stand at the back entrance against the low brick wall and hold each other tightly, my face pressed against the side of his neck. God, he says quietly, I want to fuck you, and the word sends surprise jolting electrically through me – as if my body is remembering that it can be used for something other than an insult, a means of telling me to get lost and leave someone alone. Excitement pulses through me. I lace my fingers through his, gripping on to his hand. I can’t speak, but I know he understands.
‘It isn’t just that, though.’ He pulls back slightly. ‘You know that, right? I really—’ He stops, half frowns in confusion, takes a short breath.
‘I really care about you,’ he says, and for all the dampened-down restraint of the word he has used, there’s something behind it that makes my heart constrict.
We stand there a little longer, watching each other. His eyes are kind and liquid, drinking me in. We kiss goodbye, and as we do there’s a sudden weird lift of vertigo … the brief, queasy realization that I’m in way over my head. I’m no longer sure what is happening here, or if I can contain it, and if there was a moment when I could have reined it in, then I guess I didn’t know it when I saw it. And now it’s too late.
Sometimes, these days, I find myself in the mood for destruction, and there’s nothing I can do about it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past couple of years, it’s that most possessions mean nothing. It doesn’t matter if you break them or tear them or burn them. They’re replaceable. Most of the time, I don’t bother replacing them, which shows how much I cared about them in the first place.
There’s a real power in that moment when you hold something in your hands and you know you can do what you want with it. There’s so much in life that comes on you hard and without warning. If you can carve out a little space of your own agency, and if that stops you from going insane, surely that’s a good thing. So I don’t beat myself up about it. Worse things happen at sea.
Today, the urge arrives and I go to Caroline’s wardrobe and fling open the doors, pulling all the skirts and dresses from their hangers on to the floor. It’s a production line, with a workforce of one. I use the large metal kitchen scissors, and their sparkling silver blades flash satisfyingly and methodically in my hands. It doesn’t take long to build up a rhythm. Cut and slice, back and forth, material distorting and multiplying, until all that’s left is a heaped-up multicoloured pile of useless fabric. Acrylic and polyester, silk and velvet. The cheap and the precious, all mixed up together and reduced to the same level.
The buzzing in my head dies down when it’s done and the tightness across my temples relaxes, but it still doesn’t feel as satisfying as it should. Perhaps it’s because no matter what I do, none of it seems to get me any closer to her. I can’t get to the heart of her. I’m living in her house, inside her life, but still the greatest connection I feel is when I see her words flashing on a screen, hundreds of miles away. I get to my feet and dust off my hands. Time to write another message.
Away
Caroline, May 2015
I SUPPOSE I wanted to see where you lived, the message reads, but not to see you. Hope that doesn’t sound rude, or frightening. There are things that have been on my mind for a while. I know this is strange. I don’t want you to worry too much. You have to do what you have to do.
I read it several times, finding it more frustrating every time. Each sentence builds a new layer, and I can see the links that loop from one to the next, but at the same time they’re bizarrely unconnected. A series of thoughts with all the important parts left out, and little hooks designed to snag and confuse. What things? How much worry is too much? What has to be done, and who has to do it? I could stare at these words all day and continue to tie myself up in knots.
This was always the way it was with you. You prided yourself on being so straightforward and simple, but the real meaning of what you said was buried maddeningly deep. I used to think that if I listened hard enough, concentrated long enough, then out it would pop in a flurry of stars, like a white rabbit from an inverted conjurer’s hat. But I never found the mental flourish that would produce it, and it seems I still haven’t.
I want to reply straight away, but I force myself to put the phone aside and carry on with my make-up. I smooth foundation up and over my cheeks, working it into the corners of my eyes. In the unforgiving stream of sunlight that falls across the mirror, I look tired and older than I am. Forty-five, not thirty-five. I reach for the eyeshadow, drawing the brush across my lids, first covering them in pale grey then highlighting the sweep above my eyelashes with a darker shade. My face seems composed of sections. I’m painting by numbers, colouring it in. I draw a black line of eyeliner and stroke mascara across my lashes then fill in my lips with pale pink lipstick. I’m unpleasantly reminded of the way I used to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, back when things were at their worst, assembling this precarious house of cards.
Things are different now, I remind myself. Francis came back at just after nine last night, subdued and monosyllabic, but still himself. It shocked me, the level of relief I felt – the ease with which I had plunged back into expecting the worst. All evening, the words my counsellor once said to me had circled round my head. It’s a long road. And that uncertainty will always be there. This is the reality of it, when you live with any kind of addict. It will be up and down, and when it’s up, you will never be entirely sure that it will be this way for ever. Some people can cope with this, and some can’t. Sometimes it seems that I’ve spent the past two years waiting for the answer to the unasked question behind these words. Can you cope with it, Caroline? I still don’t know, and I’m starting to think that I’ll be dead before I find out – and then I’ll have answered the question by default, through limbo rather than decision.
I snatch up my hairbrush and brush my hair methodically, dragging the brush through the tangles. My thoughts are working overtime, buzzing insistently in my head. Part of me is wondering if I should walk out of this house and take the first train back home. I imagine walking in through my front door and finding you there, looking you in the eye. Even the thought gives me a rush of longing and terror. I can’t do it. Shouldn’t want to.
I look back at the message. Once again, I have the sense that something doesn’t feel right. I still can’t think of any reason you would want to be in my home without me there. Although, of course, it isn’t only mine. With a throb of disquiet, I wonder if this is the closest you can get to my life with Francis, with Eddie. When we were together, it was entirely sealed off. You rarely asked about it, and I always thought it suited you to pretend that we existed independently, in a hot little bubble of excitement and desire. Just as it did me. But perhaps you feel differently now … perhaps you have turned into someone else.
As the thought flashes across my mind, I can’t help testing it, prodding it, questioning if this might be right. It’s been a long time, and so much has happened since that terrible night when I last saw you. I picture you again, and now I’m imagining you rifling through my husband’s things, trying to get beneath his skin. Picking up his clothes, looking through his papers. Trying to understand our marriage, trying to understand why I’m still there. Trying to work out how happy we are, and wondering if I deserve it, after what I put you through.
I could talk to Francis. The thought rises up, fresh and tantalizing. But when I think about it, it feels as crazy and undoable as placing an atom bomb at his feet. If a couple of emails can rock my equilibrium so much it leads to the scene in the museum yesterday and the silent watchful night we’ve just experienced, lying side by side, not speaking, as night became day, then there is no way I can go to him and inform him that I think you are currently living in our flat. I’ve worked too hard. I haven’t come this far to fuck it up. And for the first time, I feel a surge of anger race through me – at you, and at myself and the fallibility of my own defences.
Riding the wave, I pick up my phone again and tap out a response to the email. I don’t know what you expect me to think. It’s been almost two years. I have no idea why you’re really doing this or why you even want to be in touch with me at all after what happened. I don’t understand it. I want you – and before I can finish the sentence my thumb has skidded impatiently across the screen and the message has been sent. Staring at it in horror, I swallow. I want you to leave me alone. That’s what I meant to say. What I wanted to say. I hit reply again, but now I find I can’t do it. By itself, it looks too stark, too certain. I can’t be sure it’s how I really feel.
That sentence wasn’t finished, I write. Just in case you were getting ideas above your stat
ion. Reading that last line over, I wince. No. That sounds light and flirtatious, the opposite of how I’m feeling. I delete it. It doesn’t matter, I write instead. Hit send again. The message is useless. Ridiculous.
Throwing the phone down, I put my face into my cupped palms and breathe inwards, then shakily out again, trying to steady myself. Relax. Calm down. But of course, the only one who ever really relaxed me was you.
As I raise my head, the bedroom door swings open and Francis puts his head cautiously round, edging inside when he sees me sitting at the dressing table.
‘Hi,’ he says, leaning back against the wall. He looks tired, too, but not hostile. ‘Look, we should talk. I’m sorry I disappeared yesterday. I knew it would worry you, but I needed to get away and think. I knew if I stayed it would just end up in a bigger fight, and I didn’t want either of us to say anything else we didn’t mean.’
He pauses, as if to allow me the chance to point out some of these things, but my mind is still spinning and I can’t remember anything I might have said. He sighs, leaning forward away from the wall and coming to perch on the edge of the dressing table.
‘I shouldn’t have said what I did,’ he said, ‘about you and Carl.’ The name falls like a stone between us, making me blink in shock. I can’t remember the last time he said it. It must be months. ‘I really don’t think about it that much,’ he says quietly, ‘any more.’
I remember the hurt that twisted his face as he said those words to me yesterday – the speed and alacrity with which they seemed to come, as if wrenched up from some private and carefully cultivated well of resentment. I have no doubt that there are many more, patiently living out their time in the recesses of his mind, awaiting their turn in the spotlight. But his words are all I need right now to be grateful, and I lean my head against his side, closing my eyes as he rests the flat of his hand on my hair. ‘That’s OK,’ I say into his shirt. ‘I’m sorry, too. Let’s just try to forget about it, shall we? Move on.’
The House Swap Page 11