The House Swap

by Rebecca Fleet

  I suggest that Mark responds to what she’s said, but he shrugs again and mumbles something about doing his best. We go back and forth for another twenty or thirty minutes this way – a bizarre counterpoint between trying to get blood out of a stone and battling to hold back a tsunami. Kirsten’s had enough. They’re finished. It would have more power if it weren’t the hundredth time she’d said something similar, and it’s clearly lost all its force on him, if it ever had any at all. I don’t think he’s drunk right now. Just in the fog. It comes to much the same thing.

  ‘You know something,’ Kirsten says at last, when she’s exhausted the litany of Mark’s wrongs. ‘I was watching telly the other day and that old clip came up of Princess Diana talking about her marriage. You know, when she says there were three people in it so it got a bit crowded.’ She’s crying now, although none of us is acknowledging it and she doesn’t reach for a tissue or make any attempt to wipe away the tears. ‘And I thought, bloody hell, I’d rather that than what I’ve got right now. There’s only one person in this marriage. It’s the opposite of crowded. It’s – empty.’

  The last words are jerky, half drowned by the uneven rhythm of her tears. Mark glances over at her, and I think I see a flicker of something in his eyes, the first stirrings of some kind of understanding or compassion. I know I should pounce on it and push at that door. But something in her words has set something off in me and my moorings are suddenly lost and I’ve forgotten who I am and why I’m here … and all I can think is that they’re doing one better than we are because I’m not sure there’s anyone left in my marriage at all.

  We push on through the next ten minutes, but the bleakness in my head is unfurling, suffocating everything else. I’m watching their mouths move and responding on autopilot, barely even sure of what I’m saying. A glass partition has risen between us. Thick, impenetrable. The pale yellow walls of the counselling room are fuzzing and shimmering like static on a screen.

  I get them out and, when they’ve gone, I go to the desk drawer and pull out the envelope from the back. I said I’d have nothing until this evening, but trying to hold back this tide is impossible and all I want is for this spreading numbness to stop and check out for a while. I shake a few pills out and swallow them. I used to keep track of my daily consumption, set it to a certain mg and didn’t take more, but these days I have no idea what the limits are, and I stopped counting long ago. Besides, like I said, days don’t have much meaning any more. Some are longer than others, and something tells me this is going to be a fucking record-breaker. Better be prepared.

  I’m not sure how long I stay in the clinic before I remember the parked car and the double-yellow line. When I do, I heave myself up from the armchair and lurch out of the room and down the stairs on to the street. Fresh air. It shakes me out of my head and, all of a sudden, I wonder if I should be driving right now. Just like this morning, though, there doesn’t seem much option. Can’t leave the car there for ever. I’m walking down the road towards it and, as I do, I’m thinking about the fact that choices seem to be things that happen to me rather than things I make for myself, and I’m on the verge of some thought that feels significant and profound, but it slips out of my grasp. I feel it a lot, this trembling sense of being on the edge of something important that never comes.

  There’s no ticket on the windscreen – it’s a petty victory but I stick two fingers up to whoever should have caught me out. I sling myself into the car and turn the key in the ignition, steer it carefully out on to the main road. Only two or three minutes in, I realize I’ve made a mistake. The road is blurring in front of my eyes and my hands on the wheel feel like they’ve been slicked in oil. Signs and lamp posts rush up on me at the speed of light, then veer away and disappear. It’s a computer game, a virtual nightmare.

  Slow the pace. The arrow on the speedometer tells me I’m crawling along but, from the rushing in my head and my ears, it’s hard to be sure. I fix my eyes on the centre of the road. I know this route so damn well I could do it with them shut. Might be easier. Cars are flashing and beeping as they overtake me. It must be only ten minutes until home – maybe fifteen. Not long, but my heart is pounding and, all at once, I’m staring down the barrel of a gun and I’m more scared than I would have thought someone who didn’t have much left to lose would be. I’m swallowing down panic. Clenching my hands on the wheel. And then it comes out of nowhere – a car cutting up from the right at the roundabout, and I realize too late that I should have given way, and I’m dragging the car blindly to the left and shooting forwards with no idea of what I’m doing or if it’s safe, the horn blaring in my ears and an ache spreading across my shoulders and, somehow, miraculously still alive.

  I pull into the next lay-by and get out of the car. There are tears on my face. The air is sweet and clean. I lock up and walk the rest of the way home. I’m chillingly sober. It’s like the pills drained out of my system the instant I swerved the car. Words are falling like rain in my head and I’m telling myself: Enough now. Can’t do this any more. Scaring myself. Time to get clean. So many times I’ve said these things, only for them to fall down like dominos the instant a breath of trouble touches them. Not this time. Not this time.

  I stumble through the front door and into the lounge. Caroline is on the sofa, knees drawn up to her chest, her face intent on the lit screen of her mobile. I’d forgotten she had a day off. She’s texting, and she doesn’t see me at first. When she does, the colour drains out of her face and she stuffs the phone into her pocket and glares at me hard, like she’s not sure who I am. She’s texting him. That Carl guy, from her work. I’m not an idiot, and I worked it out long ago, but I’ve found it increasingly hard to give a shit about anything much lately, and the sum total of my thoughts on it so far has been that it’s hardly a fucking big surprise. Easier to write her off as a faithless slut than think about it properly, but right now all I want is to move forward into her arms and feel her cheek warm against mine and have her tell me it’s all right.

  ‘Caro,’ I say, and the instant I open my mouth I realize I’m not sober at all, far from it. My head has tricked me again and now the words won’t come out.

  She’s looking at me with disgust written all over her face. ‘You didn’t even go to work, did you?’ she says.

  ‘No,’ I say. I mean that she’s wrong, but it doesn’t sound right. The room is dipping and spinning around us. I’m trying to remember how many pills I took in the clinic and why this feels so different and so strange.

  ‘You bastard,’ she’s saying, her voice thick with tears already, because they’re only seconds from the surface these days, no matter where we are and what we’re doing. She’s run out of things to say as well, but that doesn’t stop her. She just says the same ones over and over again, and I want to tell her that I understand and that I’m finally on the same page, but I can’t decide how to say it. My thoughts are swelling and popping in the air like bubbles.

  ‘We should talk,’ I tell her, but for some reason it enrages her and she swipes at me with a half-closed fist, yelling something I can’t catch and bursting out of the room, slamming the door before I even have a chance to take in what’s happening. I hear her in the hallway, scrabbling for her shoes, sobbing and banging her fists on the wall, shouting like she’s gone insane. It sounds crazy, but I envy her. She can burn it out. She’s so fucking good at being angry, and all I can do is stand here and wonder how the hell it all went so wrong so fast.

  The front door slams and I’m alone in the house. My hands are shaking, and it isn’t just the pills. I’m replaying that instant on the road in my head, the way the car jerked out of control. Still can’t believe I’m alive. And now I’m wishing I’d taken my hands off the wheel and closed my eyes and I can’t understand why I didn’t. I’m moving uselessly forward into the room, and I can see that Caroline’s left her handbag slung next to the sofa, and before I know it I’m opening her wallet. I don’t have much left this month. I’m going to need it.
I pull out the two ten-pound notes I find there. Stuff them into my pocket. And fuck yes I feel like a bastard. But there’s no change there and all it does is dig the writing on the wall in a little harder and deeper – and at times like this it’s like it’s written in blood, carved right into my own skin.

  I’ve taken to sitting in the window seat in Caroline’s lounge. It’s a vantage point on to the main road, three floors below, and although the view is pretty industrial and bleak, there’s a strange sort of relaxation in watching the cycling rhythm of cars and passers-by. It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m not sure how long I’ve been here. I’ve been thinking about how to reply to her latest message, not getting too far. I thought I’d enjoy seeing her suffer, but the reality isn’t what I expected. It’s like trapping a butterfly under glass and only seeing once it’s up close that maybe it wasn’t as beautiful as you thought, anyway, and that, now it’s where you want it, the point of it has almost gone.

  I’m staring down on to the street, barely seeing, when I dimly register something strange – a point of stillness in the churning procession below. The scene snaps into focus and I see that a woman and a young child are standing at the foot of the building. The child is pointing upwards towards the window I’m sitting at, his mouth moving with words I can’t read. He’s wearing a blue school blazer and grey trousers, and his fair hair is neatly parted in the middle. There’s something in the heart-shaped curve of his face that keeps me looking, and I’m going to the photographs in the hall and examining them closely, pressing my face close to the glass and trying to match up what I’m seeing with the mental picture of what I’ve just seen. It’s him. Eddie.

  The urge is strong and primal, blanking out thought. I drag my shoes on, snatch up the key and run down the three flights of stairs towards the front entrance. By the time I’m there they’ve turned away and they’re walking slowly down the road. The woman – Caroline’s mother, it must be – is clutching tightly on to the child’s hand, and the sight of them brings a rush of something so complex and undefinable it brings tears smarting to my eyes.

  I follow them down the road to the bus stop, hanging back out of sight. They wait there for a few minutes. Eddie’s sitting on the red plastic bench, kicking his legs back against the glass and singing some loud, rambling song of his own invention. When the bus arrives, the woman takes his hand again. They climb on board and settle down into their seats, and as the bus pulls off I could swear Eddie looks straight at me for an instant, his eyes wide and clear. And although I know it means nothing to him, it feels like something has changed for good. I’ve moved into his orbit. He’s seen me. My image is locked away for good in the crevices and caves of his memory, and no one will ever be able to pull it out.

  Away

  Caroline, May 2015

  I’M LISTENING TO Eddie down the telephone line, trying to piece together the funny, breathless narrative of what he’s been doing today. I can visualize the way he’s sitting on the staircase, one leg draped through the banisters, and balancing the phone awkwardly in the crook of his neck, muffling his words.

  ‘I miss you,’ I say. His voice is at once distant and near and the scent of the peppermint shampoo I use on his hair is suddenly in my nostrils and I want him here with me.

  ‘I miss you,’ he parrots back, in his clear, uncomplicated lilt. I clutch the phone to my ear, listening to the sound of his breathing, trying to work out what he is thinking. ‘Are you and Daddy coming back soon?’ he asks.

  ‘Three days,’ I say. ‘Not long at all.’ This is not how a holiday is meant to be. Living on countdown – ticking off the days until you can return home.

  ‘Nanny’s got biscuits,’ says Eddie distractedly. ‘They’re chocolate ones. Do you think I should have one? Would you like one, Mummy?’

  ‘Well, I’d like one,’ I answer, ‘but I can’t really have one, can I, because—’ As I speak, I realize that Eddie has cast the phone away and made off in search of the biscuits. His footsteps echo down the corridor, fading into silence. I hear him laughing, protesting in response to my mother’s half-hearted chastisement. I strain my ears to hear their conversation for a few more moments, then I give up and hang up. A minute or so later, a text comes through. Sorry! Lure of chocolate digestives too strong. Give us another call later, or tomorrow, if you like. All fine. Mum x

  I imagine them settling down together in front of the television or a board game, and how it would be if I could step out of this room and into theirs – into the warm, orange light of the living room with my mother and my child, the strong and simple bonds between us. Closing my eyes, I’m almost there. And then I’m thinking about how it would be to walk into my own home … unlocking the front door and entering the hallway and seeing you by the window, turning around to greet me, and moving forward into your arms to be kissed. The feel of your stubble roughly on my face, and the tight grip of your hands around my waist, pulling me smoothly into your body to fit me there like a key clicking into a lock.

  The picture jolts and sparks, blacking out. I’ve had these thoughts about you at times over the years – haven’t been able to avoid it, whether or not I wanted them. But I’ve never felt this complex mixture of emotions; desire and fear muddled up together. There’s a part of me which still can’t help but be excited at the idea that you’re back in my life, even in such a bizarre fashion. But another part – a growing part – is telling me that this isn’t the way it should be, and that there’s something wrong, dangerous even, in what’s happening here, something that I still don’t fully understand.

  I glance at my phone again. You still haven’t replied to my last message. Yesterday evening when we got home from Brighton I drank too much, setting myself up for a restless night, and at three in the morning I was prowling around this kitchen, sitting at the table in the dark and typing thoughts to you that I never sent.

  As I think of it, a horrible doubt grips me and, quickly, I scroll through my emails, exhaling in relief when I see that the message remains in my drafts. I don’t recognize my own words. Why haven’t you replied? Why are you doing it like this? Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to write?? You have no idea how much I missed you back then, how much I needed you – I thought it was going to kill me. And now you’re back but I didn’t think it would be like this and I don’t know why

  The message ends there, an unspooling thread suddenly and brutally cut. Staring at it in horror, I wince. I must have been drunker than I realized.

  I can’t help thinking of what Francis said to me last year, in the early days, when he was just starting to wake up and understand, about how recovery can only be taken day by day. At the time, I found it depressing. But that means I’ll never relax, I remember saying. If every day is the first day for you, then there’s no progression. But now I’m thinking that it’s taken only forty-eight hours for my own addiction to feel like it’s spiralling out of control, taking me with it. And almost two years has counted for nothing at all.

  Day one, I think. Start again.

  ‘You all right?’ The shock of Francis’s voice makes me spin back round. He has appeared in the doorway, scanning me warily. Things have been strained again since the drive back from Brighton, which we made in near-silence, him in the driver’s seat, steering the car calmly and efficiently through the falling dusk, me staring out of the window and watching the scenery flashing by, barely knowing where we were, and too afraid to close my eyes because of what I might see.

  Making an effort, I drag myself back. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘Have you thought about today?’ he asks. There’s the faintest hint of challenge in his tone. So far this week, he’s been in the driving seat, in more ways than one. Our movements have all been orchestrated by him. He’s called the shots, and now he’s wondering if I’ve got any loaded, and if I care enough to fire them.

  I consider throwing out one of the ideas I’ve toyed with: a trip to the Aquarium, an exhibition at the British Museum I thought he
might appreciate, a visit to the cinema. I can’t seem to settle on a thought. ‘Well, I was thinking of going to a meeting this morning,’ he says after a pause. ‘There’s a local one at ten.’

  ‘Here?’ I ask stupidly.

  ‘Yes,’ he says mildly. ‘Believe it or not, they have addicts in Chiswick, too.’

  ‘Right. Yes, of course.’ Francis has been attending Narcotics Anonymous with varying degrees of frequency for the past two years, and it shouldn’t surprise me that he wants to go to a meeting. When I think about it, once I get past the unease that he needs this even when we’re supposed to be on holiday, I find it reassuring.

  ‘We could do something in the afternoon,’ he volunteers. ‘If you want.’

  ‘Yes,’ I answer quickly. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Would you,’ he says, his green eyes raking me with sudden coolness. There is no questioning lift in his voice. It’s drier than that, a faint echo of scepticism and suspicion.

  ‘Yes,’ I repeat, softening my voice. I can tell he’s searching for some clue that will tell him if I mean it, but it must be hard to find, because after a few moments he just shrugs and turns away.

  After he’s gone, I make myself a coffee and try to relax in front of the television. I can’t concentrate on the unfamiliar daytime soaps and talk shows and, after a while, I switch it off, but when I do I’m unsettled by the silence and the faint noises that break it: the occasional creak of floorboards or the rattling of pipes. It’s as if the house is breathing, shifting minutely around me. I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye, and my whole body tenses before I realize that it’s my own reflection in the mirror across the room. I take in my appearance, hunched in the corner of the armchair, my face pinched with concern. Abruptly, I get up and go to the kitchen, but it’s no better. Everything is too still – the carved, claw-like drawer handles, the open mouth of the sink gaping in a fixed, sightless smile.