It must be five minutes before I manage to straighten up and walk on. I tell myself not to be stupid. It was a moment in time, with no significance. It means nothing.
By the time I’m back at Everdene Avenue, it has started to rain lightly and I put up the collar of my coat and duck my head down. If Amber is looking out of her window, then she’ll still recognize me at once. But there’s no swinging front door, no plaintive call across the street, and I quickly unlock the door of number 21 and slip inside.
My heart lifts with relief when I see the note scrawled on white paper in the middle of the kitchen table. Gone to supermarket to pick up some stuff and might swing by the cinema on the way back to see if there’s anything on this evening that we might fancy seeing. Back by four. F. At least I have another hour or so to collect my thoughts. But I can’t seem to settle for long, and before I know it I’m prowling restlessly through the house once again, going from room to room and staring at the barely there possessions – searching for any clue as to how you live, what you’re like, what you care about now.
The more I cycle through the faceless rooms, the more my helplessness grows. This is pointless; I have already done this search, back when I found the aftershave bottle. There’s only one place I failed to look: the little cabinet under the desk in the study, which was locked. At the time, I let it go, but now the conviction grips me that I need to look inside. I hurry to the study, cross to the empty desk and drop to my knees beside it. I tug at the drawer, but of course it’s still locked. I peer underneath, run my hands across the floor in search of a key, then I look around the rest of the room, meticulously combing every nook and cranny I can find. The key isn’t there.
Frustrated, I kneel back down and pull again at the drawer. I can feel the resistance, but the mechanism is a cheap one, rattling against the strain. Frustration surges up inside me and, before I have time to check myself, I set the flat of one hand on the cabinet above the drawer and use the other to yank the handle hard, once, then again. The catch rips and breaks, and the drawer is sliding out fast and smooth on its rollers, opening up what’s inside.
It’s a single wallet folder, green and unlabelled. I reach in and pull it out, opening it and taking out the contents. Several sheets of paper, printed from the internet, with some scribbled, illegible annotations in dark pen. I glance at the first sheet, and my throat seizes up. It’s a printout from 192.com of every household in the UK that is registered under Francis’s and my surname, and picked out in yellow highlighter is our own Leeds address in full.
I can feel my heart hammering as I spread out the other sheets on the floor in front of me. A photograph from a property website of the block we live in, advertising one of the other flats for sale. The homepage of the company where I now work, along with the Team page, where my own face smiles out blandly from the thumbnail photograph. A few screenshots of my social-media profiles, locked down and basic as they are. It’s all public information, but the collection of it, the fact that you’ve bothered to print it out … it feels quite odd. Invasive.
On the final sheet, I see the profile I set up months ago on the house-swap site: the photographs of the inside of our home, the chatty description of its location and the invitation to contact me. It had never occurred to me to wonder how you found me on the house-swap site, but now I realize you must have set up a Google alert or something similar on my name, my address. It’s what anyone might do, if they wanted to keep abreast of something. But even as I try and rationalize it, I’m aware that there’s a world of difference between something and someone, and especially the kind of someone I am to you. A world of difference between attention and obsession.
My head spins, and I’m pushing the papers shakily into a pile, forcing them back into the folder and shoving it into the drawer again, as if, in another moment, I might be discovered. I lean against the desk, thoughts buzzing.
Next to me, my phone is blinking, signalling a new email. I sent so many messages yesterday, caught up in disbelief and confusion, and you didn’t reply to a single one. Until now.
The message is brief. Don’t worry. I’ve been keeping myself busy. Scrolling down, I realize it’s a reply to one of the angrier emails I sent: What’s the point of all this? How are you occupying yourself there, in my flat? What the fuck are you actually doing? Your response is cryptic, brief and anonymous. It seems hardly worth the effort of typing. And then I notice the attachment.
I open it, my breath coming fast and shallow. At first, I don’t understand. It’s a picture of the hallway, taken in low light, from the far end by the kitchen. There’s nothing distinctive about it, no sign of activity. Then I see the photographs. They’re hung up just as I’d left them, but they’ve been altered somehow. Then I see. My own face has been cut out of them, leaving only black space.
The shock of it stuns me for a second, my head reeling with sudden lightness. There’s something so systematic about it, the effort it would have taken. Sinister precision. I gaze at the photograph, trying to understand. Why would you do this? Something is troubling me about it, something beyond the obvious surrealism of the act. With a rush, it comes to me that it’s the fact that it’s my face that has been removed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve still been clinging to the thought that whatever is driving you to conduct this whole performance, it must be underpinned by love. I could have understood a symbolic removal of my husband, a desire to cut him out. But this isn’t love; it’s the opposite. You’re telling me that you hate me.
Home
Caroline, June 2013
WITHOUT REALLY MEANING to, Carl and I have established a kind of rhythm over the past few weeks. We message each other sporadically throughout the day, just to share the odd funny story or moan about our workload, and in the evening he usually texts me at about eight, after Eddie is in bed, when we’ll chat for half an hour or more. I find myself waiting for these texts, compulsively glancing at my phone throughout the business of making dinner and navigating Francis’s unpredictable moods. When Carl gets in touch, I retreat to the bedroom and carry on the conversation there. Francis has generally passed out by the time it’s under way in any case, and even if he hadn’t, I’m rapidly growing to believe he wouldn’t care. The invisible lifelines of connection between us are shrivelling and draining. One by one, they’re dying and dropping away, and I’m not even sure if he knows it or not.
I’m at my desk, working on autopilot, shuffling rows of data and organizing figures. It’s brainless activity, leaving my mind free to wander. I flash back to the previous evening – Francis and me sharing the sofa, conversing amicably enough about the weekend ahead. These patches of normality, when we manage to get through a few hours of civility and he behaves in a way that passes for average, are few and far between now, and they don’t have the effect on me they once had. I used to clutch at them like the last clumps of grass and earth grasped at by someone tumbling off a cliff. I know they won’t last – that even as I hold them they’re crumbling into nothing in my hands and, like it or not, I’m still falling.
The messenger icon flashes at the base of my screen, and I smile, knowing what the message will contain. Sure enough, Carl is confirming the plans for tonight, telling me he can’t wait. Friday night is always reserved for the two of us these days and today is only Wednesday, but I’ve said that I need to work late, and he’s coming to the office to meet me after hours. It’s a risk, one we haven’t taken before. Coupled with the knowledge that I’ll be seeing him twice this week, it feels like a shift. I’ve been thinking more and more the way I felt the other week when I left his house, when I first tentatively started to consider the possibility of leaving Francis. I haven’t said anything to him – won’t do, until I’m sure I know what I want – but I can feel these thoughts within me every time I’m with him, a secret growing and blossoming out of a tiny seed. I can’t yet think about Eddie, or about sitting down in front of my husband and telling him I intend to walk out on him exactly when it s
eems he needs me most. But he has never not needed me, and he doesn’t seem to give a fuck about what I need myself. The thought gives me a surge of anger. I shake my head and, with a jolt, I realize I’ve been calculating the figures on my screen wrongly, not concentrating at all.
See you at half six then, I type back to Carl, pushing everything else out of my head. I’ll be waiting …
You better be, he writes back.
My fingers hover over the keys, and I think about saying something dirty, spilling out a fraction of what always runs hectically through me in the lead-up to our meetings, but in the end I just type a kiss and close the window. I can’t afford to get too distracted yet if I’m going to finish everything on my desk on time. Ironically, it’s him who has bred this self-control in me. He’s good at holding me off, making sure that we get through the week balanced on this delicate tripwire of desire, never peaking too soon. At first, it didn’t come naturally to me: I wanted it all, as fast as I could have it. Now I understand the pleasure of delayed gratification, and I find myself doing the same.
At six o’clock, people start to peel away one by one, calling farewells around the office and packing up their stuff. Soon, it’s only Steven and me left. As the boss, he’s often last to leave. He’s frowning over a presentation, clearly rehearsing it, lips moving soundlessly. Every so often, I glance at him, wondering if I should text Carl and tell him to wait somewhere nearby.
‘Should I lock up this evening or are you staying late?’ I ask him at last. With a start, he looks up, noticing the empty desks.
‘Oh. No, I didn’t mean to stay late,’ he says vaguely, and starts collecting paper into piles, pushing down the lid of his laptop. ‘You’re not coming, then?’
‘No, I’m staying on,’ I say quickly. ‘Got a bit to get through still.’
‘OK.’ He pulls on his jacket, then stands looking at me, bag slung over his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
‘Yes!’ I look up, smiling brightly, looking straight into his eyes. ‘I’m fine. Why?’
Steven scratches his chin. ‘I’m not sure. You just seem a little – I don’t know. Nervous. Not yourself.’ The words fall awkwardly from his lips, and his face clouds in embarrassment. We don’t have the sort of boss-to-employee relationship that generally covers personal observations and, when I think about it, I’m not sure that he knows who ‘myself’ really is, not on any deep level.
‘I’m fine,’ I repeat. ‘Just a bit tired and stressed, that’s all.’
‘Right.’ Steven nods, then ducks out of the door, clearly relieved to be escaping this conversation. I sit alone in the office for a minute. My heart is pounding, and I’m suddenly hot, as if I might faint.
I get up and go to the bathroom, swing the door open to stare into the little mirror hanging on the wall. My cheeks are flushed and vivid, my eyes shining darkly. Steven is right. I’m not myself. The woman in the mirror has a power and a presence I haven’t felt for years. I remember Jess last week, stopping to look at me when we met at the station with an expression of almost quizzical surprise. I have to admit, this seems to suit you. Combing my fingers through my hair, I stare at myself. These days, I veer from misery to ecstasy with frightening speed and irregularity. If this is what suits me, I’m not sure what sort of a person that makes me.
The door opens behind me and I swing round to see Carl slipping inside, slamming it shut behind him. He runs his eyes quickly over my buttoned-up white blouse and my short black skirt, the bare legs in high heels. We’re walking fast towards each other and, as we collide, he wraps his arms around me tightly and my whole body relaxes into him. We kiss slowly, deeply. We’re standing in front of the long window, in full view of the offices opposite, but there’s no one around.
‘Do you want to take your jacket off?’ I murmur at last.
He laughs, glancing down. He hasn’t even taken the bag off his shoulder. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Hello.’
‘No need to apologize.’ I unbutton the coat for him and slip it off, letting it fall to the floor. ‘Do you want a drink?’
He shakes his head, prowling around the empty desks, looking at the place where he used to sit. ‘It’s weird being back here. You know, I almost bumped into Steven on the way in. Saw him coming down the road and had to duck down a side street until he’d gone. That would have been embarrassing. Oh, errrm, hi. I was just …’
‘… Just passing,’ I finish off, giggling. These near-misses should concern me, but part of me can’t help feeling excited at the thought of discovery. I want to broadcast it – want them to understand it, understand that it’s real.
‘Mmm,’ he says, watching me. ‘You like that idea, don’t you?’ and he’s crossing the room and lifting me up into his arms. I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me through into the meeting room and lays me down on the desk, his shadow blocking out the light as he bends over me. His hands are sliding up my thighs, stroking my skin. ‘No knickers,’ he murmurs. ‘Naughty girl’, and he’s pinning my arms down and keeping his hand locked hard around them, the other hand fumbling impatiently with his belt now that the waiting is over and he knows we both want the same thing. He’s on me in an instant and the force of it drives me back on to the wood, the rhythm of our movements scraping and thudding against the small of my back – and it’s going to hurt tomorrow but his breath is hot on my lips and I’m seeing stars as I close my eyes and I don’t care at all.
We lie around in the office afterwards for another hour or so, half dressed, lounging on the makeshift bed we’ve created on the floor. The sun has dropped and the light is warm and dim. I’ve switched on the television above the desk, but the sound is turned down to an almost inaudible hum; I can see the images cycling out of the corner of my eye, a blur of shifting light. He’s staring up at the ceiling, his hand threaded through my hair and tugging gently at its strands every so often, and I realize this, too, has become a routine of sorts. We’ve fallen into our own ways of being together, without even trying.
‘Are you sure it’s all right about the 8th?’ he asks at last.
I roll on to my front, throwing my arm across his chest and looking up into his eyes. ‘Definitely.’ We’re going away for the night together – a small hotel called the Silver Birches in an anonymous town that he booked weeks ago as a stop-off en route to his friend’s thirtieth-birthday celebrations the next day. When he first floated the idea that I might join him, I was equally attracted and terrified. Even now, despite Francis’s apparent lack of interest in my movements, I can’t imagine stepping this far out of my life without it being discovered. Whenever I think about it, though – no need to get up and get dressed at the end of the night and go out into the cold, and the intimacy of waking up with him there in reality and not only in my head – excitement beats a pulse through me, and there’s no way I’m going to back out now.
‘Well, good,’ he says. ‘If you’re sure. It’s not that I don’t want you to come. As you no doubt realize. It’s just that I don’t want you to do anything too risky.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I assure him. ‘I can’t wait.’ These words fall often from my lips, and his. It seems we spend our lives in a permanent state of poised expectancy and, when it lifts, our time together is so temporary that I’ve blinked and it’s gone, driven back to the same old state of anticipation, as if I’d never left.
He sighs, shifting beneath me. ‘And, you know, after that,’ he says, ‘we’re going to have to start scaling this down, you know. Things can’t go on like this for ever, can they?’
‘I know.’ It’s automatic. We have been saying this for a long time, and 8 July has become a marker in the sand – a kind of last hurrah before we start to unpeel the bonds we’ve spent months making. Now, more than ever, it seems senseless. I think about saying so, to suggest the idea that things may not have to be this way, but the time doesn’t seem right and something silences me. ‘I don’t want to,’ I say instead.
‘I know you don’
t,’ he says. ‘It’s not going to be easy for me either. But there’s not much choice, is there.’ It isn’t a question. He’s said this kind of thing before, several times. Last time, he went further. I’ll be thirty in a few years, and what have I got to show for it? I’m living in a flat share with no girlfriend and I’m seeing a married woman with a child. When this is over, you’ll have him to focus on, but I’ve got nothing. I’ve got to live my own life. I need to get on with it, without you. And I had recoiled in near-shock and surprise, the hurt written across my face as clearly as if he had shouted it, and he had placed his hand over mine, apologizing silently, but not taking it back.
We lie there in silence for a while longer, and sadness filters through the room like smoke. It’s seeping in more and more when we’re together, this indefinable melancholy that colours every look and touch. We used to spend our time laughing like teenagers, entertaining each other effortlessly. It seems we’ve conducted everything on fast-forward. In five months, we’ve aged ten years, already sensing the shadow of separation.
He turns on to his side to face me and moves my face towards his. Even as it’s happening, I’m thinking that I’ve never been kissed so carefully – with such attention, as if he’s trying to imprint the way our lips fit together on to his memory. I know what it means. I don’t want to lose this. The desire is primal, and I push myself up against him wordlessly and hard, willing him to read what’s in my head.
‘We’d better get out of here,’ he says after a while. It’s not what I wanted, but glancing at the time, I see that he’s right. I nod silently and reach for my clothes.
It’s barely half an hour before I’m home, but it’s already getting dark, and I realize I’ve stayed out later than I thought, later than I would plausibly be working. I brace myself as I turn the key in the lock, but as soon as I enter the hallway I hear the sound of Francis’s snoring coming from the lounge, uneven and jagged.
The House Swap Page 16