I feel him breathing deeply, thinking. ‘No,’ he says finally. ‘I’ve got no idea what it would be like. To be honest, I don’t tend to second-guess stuff too much. I just take things as they come. You know – work, family, friends … my life’s not so complicated, really.’
I angle my cheek inwards, resting it against the warm rise and fall of his chest. ‘Apart from me.’
He makes some vague noise of agreement. ‘Our situation, certainly. But anyway,’ he says, ‘there isn’t much point going down that road, is there? Wondering about how we’d be together. As far as I’m concerned, you’re married, so there’s no decision to be made. That’s just the way it is, and I’ve always known that.’
His tone is without malice and the words are rational but, all the same, something in me rebels against the ease with which he seems to be able to shrug the thought off. I wonder, sometimes, if he even realizes how rare this dynamic between us is. He’s barely out of his mid-twenties, and he’s never had a serious relationship; a few months here and there with various girls, nothing that seems to have had a major impact on him. Unable to help myself, I sigh. ‘Well, that was easy.’
‘No,’ he says flatly. ‘It’s not.’
A cloud crosses the sun, and I press my face into his shirt, feeling suddenly cold. ‘Come on,’ I hear him say after a while. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
We stroll around the park, chatting, until it’s time for me to head back to the Tube and pick up Eddie from nursery. Outside the entrance he presses me back against the station wall and kisses me hard, biting my lip and thrusting his hips against mine. Our conversations are forgotten and we’re in the moment together, unable to see past it. ‘Three hours,’ he mutters. ‘Not sure I can wait that long.’
‘You’re going to have to,’ I say, but the truth is that I’m not sure I can either, and all at once lust is pulsing through me so powerfully I can barely speak. My hands are sliding up his back, exploring and teasing. I’m thinking about how it will be later, when we’re alone.
‘I want you so much,’ I tell him, as I curl my fingers around the loops of his belt and pull him hard up against me, and saying it out loud gives me a dizzying sense of pleasure. I’ve never been this honest with anyone. It’s shockingly addictive … so much so that, as soon as he’s released me and I’m walking away from him, all I want to do is run back and say it again and again and again.
Eddie is out of sorts from the minute I pick him up from nursery – scowling mutinously at the ground when I ask how his day has been, fussing on the bus for no apparent reason and dragging his feet all the way up the road. Five steps from the front door he trips and falls on his face, which sets him off into instant meltdown, screaming as if he’s being flayed alive. Bundling him through the front door, I examine his face, but there’s only the tiniest of red marks, barely visible.
‘It’s OK,’ I try to comfort him. ‘You’re fine. It’s all right,’ but it has no effect and he stomps off into the nursery, still wailing. Moments later, I hear the thwack of a toy being thrown against the wall, then a long, high-pitched scream of frustration before he calls for me, over and over. I hurry into the room, but there’s nothing to be done, and when I try to scoop him into my lap he almost growls, his little hands pushing me violently away. Breathing in sharply, I count to ten. My tolerance for these tantrums seems to be getting lower and lower, and my heart is thumping, warning me that I’m losing control.
Setting my teeth, I stride out of the nursery and into the lounge, seeking a few moments’ quiet. Francis is in his customary position on the sofa, slumped in front of the laptop with his headphones plugged in, barely glancing at me when I come in. He’s there, but he isn’t. His eyes are glazed and unblinking, hooded darkly in the light of the screen.
‘Good evening,’ I say sarcastically, though I know he can’t hear me.
With an expression of infinite weariness, he reaches slowly up and plucks the headphones from his ears. ‘What?’
‘That’s a nice welcome.’ In seconds, the relaxation of the afternoon has disappeared. I glance around me at the state of the room. There are toys everywhere, unwashed crockery piled up on the dining table, streaks of dust and dirt across the floor. I know Francis has had no appointments today. He’s simply sat here, surveying the carnage. ‘I’m so glad I came back,’ I spit.
‘No one asked you to,’ he points out, sighing, as if the five words are an unwillingly bestowed gift.
‘Yeah – because I’m sure you’d be coping really well with this situation if I weren’t here,’ I bite back, gesticulating towards the screams coming from the nursery.
He half turns his head, listening, his expression as vacant as if the noise were coming from another planet. ‘It’s you,’ he comments. ‘You make it worse. You wind him up.’ And with that, he screws the headphones back in and directs his attention to the screen again, the frown between his brows deepening as his lips silently move to the music, which must be so loud that it’s shattering his eardrums.
‘Fuck you,’ I hiss, ‘you useless tosser,’ and then I’m turning on my heel and leaving the room, shaking with the adrenaline of it – the way it happens so fast now, the split seconds it takes for any prospect of civility to vanish. My own ugly words are beating in my head, and behind them, the nasty little thought lurks that maybe he’s right. Maybe in some way it’s my own stress that is seeping out, throwing everything out of kilter. I stare around at the chaos surrounding me and I’m filled with hopelessness; the knowledge that the family we have tried to build is all distorted and wrong, and that I don’t know how to fix it.
I calm Eddie down in the end and take him through the ritual of dinner, bath and book, snuggled up with him on the sofa and reading him a favourite story. He’s docile and placid now, watching the pictures intently and cocking his head to soak up the words. It’s as if Francis isn’t in the room at all. With a little tremor of shock, I realize that Eddie’s ignoring him; that, on some level, he knows there is no point in trying to engage.
‘Goodnight,’ I whisper, as I tuck him into bed, switching on the blue nightlight. I linger in the doorway for a few moments, watching as he rolls on to his side and his body heaves in a small sigh. One thing I have never doubted is Francis’s love for him, but I know that the reason I always come back to put him to bed is not simply to see him. I don’t fully trust his father with him on his own. I don’t want to leave him here, not until he’s safely asleep. The realization is bleak and fathomless.
In the bathroom, I have a quick shower, then sit in the bath and shave my legs carefully from top to bottom, rubbing in strawberry shower gel and stroking the razor over my skin. I’ve almost finished when he comes in. When he sees me, he just stands there for a few moments, arms folded, looking at what I am doing. His face is twisted with contempt and disgust. My eyes meet his, and for the first time it hits me that he knows exactly what is going on and exactly why I’m keeping myself smooth and scented. At the very least, he knows it isn’t for him.
‘I hope your friend Milly appreciates the effort,’ he says at last.
I want to say something in return, but I have no idea what, and after a few more beats of silence he turns and leaves the room. My hand is shaking, and when I pull the razor down the length of my leg the blade twists and grazes my skin. I stem the blood with my finger, my head lightly swimming. I need to get out.
Forty minutes later, I’m running up Carl’s road, my new silk underwear sliding beneath my clothes and my phone switched off. He opens the door to me, and the sight of him works faster than any drug. I’m crazily happy, throwing myself into his arms and winding myself around his body. He kisses me hard and I know that tonight is the night. I’ve had enough of agonizing over whether or when it should happen. I want it now and I draw in a breath to say so, but my eyes lock on his and I realize that I don’t need to.
He carries me through to the bedroom – pulling at my clothes and throwing them to the floor, unbuckling his trousers and sh
rugging off his shirt, until we’re naked on the bed together, entangled in a sudden, hot mess of limbs and sweat – and his breath is warm against my neck as I open my legs and clasp them around his waist. He’s inside me in an instant and I barely have time to register the shock of its rightness, the incredulity that we spent so long not doing this. I’m clutching at him, gasping for breath as we kiss, waves of heat breaking over my skin. He fucks me hard and fast, and I’m arching my back underneath him, almost screaming because I want this so much that, even now, when we’re right in the middle of it, I’m thinking about wanting to do it again.
He’s talking to me, whispering things that drive me over the edge into some place I’ve never been, and we’re staring into each other’s eyes and he’s coming inside me, and the thought hits brutally hard and without warning, for the first time – I love you, I love you, I love you.
Afterwards, neither of us speaks for a while. We lie together on the bed. He’s stroking my hair again, in a soft, soothing rhythm. I could so easily fall asleep here, but I know I can’t, and the thought brings tears unexpectedly to my eyes and running down my face.
‘Don’t,’ he says, but when I look up I see that he’s crying, too.
We lie there for a few more minutes. I watch his tears falling and put out my hand to touch them with my fingertips, stemming the flow. And in that moment I realize that he loves me, too, even if he doesn’t know it himself. I’ve never known anything so deeply. I’ve never felt so sure.
‘God,’ he says after a while. ‘This is cheerful.’ And despite it all, we both smile.
We don’t talk much more that night. When the clock hits eleven I get up and get dressed, and he comes with me to the front door to kiss me goodbye. Outside, it’s colder than I expected, and I’m shivering without a jacket as I walk to the station. I put one foot in front of the other, and with every step I’m thinking: I could leave. I could end my marriage. The idea is new and overwhelming. In all this time, I’ve never seriously considered it as an option. But now it’s out of its box and, as I’m getting on the train and straightening my crumpled clothes, reapplying my smudged lipstick, it’s flooding every inch of me and suddenly I’m filled with fierce certainty and I know that I could do it.
She’s found out about Amber and my inbox is full of her. Her name repeats itself down the page, again and again. Some of the messages are brief and tragic, helplessly posing questions I know she doesn’t expect to get answers to. I’ve just been having coffee with your girlfriend. Is this some kind of sick joke? Others are longer, haphazardly designed to try to provoke some kind of reaction. If I ever meant anything to you at all, then you need to answer me and tell me what is going on here. I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do. Please, you have to get in touch and explain this to me before I go completely insane … They ramble on and on in this vein. There are a couple of references to Amber herself and how pretty she is, thinly veiled pleas for reassurance. There’s no control, no thought. Just the contents of her head splashed out messily on to the screen in the hope that I’ll clear them up.
When I read these messages I can’t help but be angry. She’s expressing all this doubt and confusion, but it’s founded on beliefs and judgements she’s made without even stopping to consider. She’s so sure of how it is, so used to seeing the world through her own particular prism, that it doesn’t even enter her head that things may not be as they appear.
I nurse this anger for a while until it threatens to explode, and then I take the long, sharp kitchen scissors again and go to the rows of photographs in the hallway. One by one, I take them down and prise the backs away, lifting out the sheets of glass. My hands are trembling, but this job needs precision, so I sit and wait until I’m steely and focused, my concentration narrowing to the small pocket of carpet before me with the photos laid out in rows. I take each one in turn and I cut carefully into them, digging the points of the scissors into the centre of her face and then snipping outwards until I’ve removed her from the picture.
At the end of it, I lay the glass gently back on each one and replace them in their positions on the wall. Standing back, I see how it looks, and I like it. A series of small black ovals popping out from the frames, conspicuous only by their absence. She’s gone. All that’s left of her is the small, mangled pile of photo print at my feet. I think about throwing it away. But then I remember what she’s said, about how if someone cares about you at all, then it’s their duty to engage with you in some way, and in the end I just leave it there.
Away
Caroline, May 2015
I’M SITTING ON a bench at the edge of the playground, watching children scramble like ants over the blue metallic climbing frame. It’s cold for the time of year and the sound of their shrieking and whooping is jarring, but I don’t know this area and the only other place I could think of was the coffee shop I went to with Amber, where she might easily have appeared. No one without children comes here. Every now and then, I notice the other mothers giving me funny sidelong looks, trying to pinpoint which child I’m attached to. A couple of them are clearly discussing me, sharp, beady eyes gleaming at the sight of a stranger in their midst. Usually, it would make me feel uncomfortable, but today I don’t care. My mind is still buzzing with shock, and everything else is just background noise.
I read over the text Amber sent me a few hours ago. Caroline, I’m sorry I asked you to leave yesterday. It was a shock for me as well as you. It just all seems too much of a coincidence. I still can’t believe it, to be honest. Look, please call me back. I picture her face as we stood in her kitchen – taut, disbelieving, coldly dismissive of my tears. She didn’t ask me to leave; she told me to get out.
She’s been ringing on and off ever since she sent the text. The sporadic bursts of noise coming from my phone are getting more frequent and shorter, lasting only a couple of rings before she realizes I’m still not going to answer and gives up.
I know I should call her back, that I’ll have to talk to her eventually, but I can’t do it yet. There’s too much jumbled up in my head. I look again at that text, the word coincidence jumping out from the screen. She understands that it’s not possible for this to be some bizarre quirk of fate, but she doesn’t understand that I’m not the one who has brought it about. You’ve planned and engineered this, and you must have known there was a chance that this would happen – that my path would cross with hers. I have no idea if you viewed it as a risk you decided to take, or if it was what you wanted all along.
At the thought, I breathe in sharply, feeling pain sear through me. I don’t know why you would want me to see her. Now that I have, there’s no way I’ll ever be able to unsee the images that are cycling through my head like reels of film. The way you might have lingered at your window, watching her move in across the street, sizing her up and liking what you saw. The carefully engineered meeting, the quick, flirtatious glances of appraisal. Just moved in? Let me know if you need anything … The excitement of those first dates, the electricity of your first kiss. Fast-forwarding to the two of you draped comfortably over each other on your sofa, watching TV or chatting about your day. Sat together at her kitchen table, sharing a meal over a glass of wine. Doing the chores on a Sunday morning, hanging up the washing or scrubbing the bathroom. All those cosy domestic things that we never did. And that’s before I even get to the part that hurts most – your hands encircling her slim waist, your lips kissing the hollow of her neck, her legs wrapped around yours and the sound of your voice whispering the things to her that you used to say to me. If I’ve let myself imagine you, in the past two years, it’s always been alone. I’ve been unable to cope with the idea of putting someone else in that picture beside you.
I think of the letter I sent you a few days after I last saw you – the one I scrawled on yellow lined paper I had torn from an office notebook, a ridiculous attempt to spark some nostalgia in you. I scribbled down all the memories and everything they had meant to me, and at the end I told you that
I hoped you would be happy, and that I knew you wanted me to be happy, too. Now I’m not so sure, about either part. The thought of you being happy with her tightens my chest with almost unbearable sorrow, and it’s increasingly clear that you don’t want me to be happy at all. This feels more like torture, as if you want me to be punished.
The idea sets something off inside me, a violent reverberation of unease. I can’t help remembering the last time I saw you; the way I turned and left you standing there, the sight of you standing motionless by the side of the road when I looked back. I’ve never been able to widen out that picture, to let myself wholly remember. I walked away and didn’t look back again. I pushed down the guilt and the pain, smothered it into submission out of sheer desperation. I know you couldn’t have done the same. You’ve had to live it, and I have no idea how it might have changed you.
It’s half past two and I’ve been out for hours. Forcing myself to stand up, I start to make my way back across the park. I turn on to the road that leads back to the house and hurry along, hugging my jacket to my body and shivering in the cold spring wind.
Lost in my thoughts, I am only vaguely conscious of the noise behind me – a rush of sound, a squeal of brakes. And then it’s right there, in a split second of violent colour. A car veering too close to the pavement – cutting so close to me that I feel a shudder of semi-contact, my force field bristling in sudden shock, before it swings away again and zooms off up the street. I fling myself back against the hedge. The car is already out of sight, but my mind and body haven’t quite caught up. It was close. Very close. I’m bending down, my legs weak, and crouching at the side of the road, ducking my head between my knees and struggling to talk myself down.
The House Swap Page 15