I listen to her moving around the kitchen, briskly filling the kettle, clattering the mugs on to the worktop. Without realizing it, I’ve moved closer to Eddie. He’s crouched down on the floor, cradling the little silvery hamster in his hands, cooing and muttering some babyish private language to it as it sniffs the air. His fair hair falls over his forehead.
‘He’s mine,’ he says clearly, not looking at me but raising his voice so that it’s clear who he’s talking to. ‘I look after him.’
‘I can see that,’ I say. I pause, testing the next words that have come to me inside my head. They gather in the air, like delicate balloons. ‘And who looks after you?’ I ask.
He shrugs, still intent on the creature in his hands. ‘Lots of people,’ he says.
‘Your mummy?’ I ask, and he nods. ‘What would your mummy do for you?’ I ask. And at last he looks up at me, his large grey eyes clouded by a confusion and a suspicion that seem far older than his years, alerted to the fact that something in my voice has changed and that this means something, even if he doesn’t understand what. He stares at me unblinkingly, silently, still and watchful. Blood is pumping in my head, making me dizzy.
‘Would she kill for you?’ I say.
Away
Caroline, May 2015
SOMEHOW, I MAKE it through the lunch, swallowing mouthful upon mouthful of food past the lump of nausea in my throat, and with every bite, I’m thinking of her. A woman without a face I can see, sitting in my home. Someone who knows me better than I can understand.
By the time I have trailed after Francis around the nearby shopping mall, then gone with him for a walk in the park and we make the train journey back to Chiswick, with Francis keeping up a steady, chirpy stream of chatter, it’s almost five in the afternoon. As we walk back from the station, he glances over at me, then leans across and taps his fingertips gently against my forehead. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Anyone home?’
It’s an innocent enough turn of phrase, but it sets me on edge. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I know I’ve been quiet. I’m just tired.’
Francis shrugs. ‘If you say so.’
I look back over my shoulder at him as I unlock the front door. He meets my gaze steadily, unflinching. He knows, I realize, that I am lying. He just doesn’t know what about.
‘Sorry,’ I murmur again, and as I speak I’m aware that I can’t keep going in this tense state of limbo, turning my fears over and over until they become huge and suffocating. I’m going to have to do something. Once again, I think about going home. Now that I’ve seen that profile picture, it doesn’t feel safe being here. I don’t want this woman in my home. I have no idea what she might do.
‘Francis …’ I begin, but instantly I bite my lip. We’ve been here before, and I know I have little chance of persuading him to set off home early. And besides, what would happen if we did? I picture us stepping into our flat together, his look of incomprehension as I try to turf this woman out of our home while telling him nothing. I can’t do it. I have to keep this to myself, and the safest way to do that is to make sure his path never crosses with hers.
All the same, I have to do something. And suddenly, I know what it’s going to have to be, and I know I have to act on it before I lose my nerve and change my mind.
‘You know,’ I say abruptly, ‘I think I need a bath. I’ll feel better afterwards. That place was pretty sticky.’ It’s only half a lie. There’s a strong urge to strip naked, climb into the hottest water I can manage and attempt to purge myself of all the things I know I can’t really get rid of – not now, not ever.
‘All right.’ Francis shrugs, half mollified. ‘Well, you do that and I’ll start getting something on for dinner.’
I pad quickly upstairs and run the bath, pull off my clothes. I don’t get in. Instead, I sit by the foot of the bath and reach for my phone, and I dial the number of my landline. I count the rings, shivering, the phone pressed to my ear. Six. Seven. Halfway through the eighth ring the voicemail kicks in. I hang up, but some instinct makes me dial the number again straight away, and when the same thing happens I do it again.
The third time I call, it rings four times and then there’s a click as the line is picked up. There’s no discernible noise at the other end, except for what might be the quietest of breathing. Drawing in my own breath, I prepare to speak. I haven’t got this far in my imagination, let alone in reality. The silence grows and swells, pricked only by the faint crackling of static. She isn’t going to crack first, but she’s listening.
‘It’s Caroline,’ I say at last.
There’s a pause, a tiny shift of movement at the other end of the line that could be the rearrangement of clothes or a hand brushed across a forehead. ‘I know.’
The voice is soft and low in tone. There’s an evenness to it, as if all the emotion has been flattened out. As soon as her voice stops, I’m unable to recall the way it sounded.
‘I don’t want you in my home,’ I say, and I haven’t even known until now that this is the way I’m going to play it: cold, a little imperious, the outraged middle-class wife and mother. ‘I would suggest that you leave and that you don’t contact me again,’ I continue. ‘I could call the police.’
This time, there’s a little exhalation that sounds like amusement, but nothing else. I realize the stupidity of what I’ve said. This woman has made almost no contact with me, except to respond to my messages. Entering into a house swap is not illegal and, when I look at the facts I could lay out, they’re so intangible I can barely even make sense of them in my own head. Veiled clues and reminders of a past that means nothing to anyone but me. No threats, no intimidation. And besides, she of all people must know that I would never involve the police in this situation, that it’s the last thing I would ever do. She doesn’t know that, even now, when I see a policeman in uniform on the street my mouth dries and my legs threaten to buckle. She doesn’t know that, for months, I dreamed of cool, faceless corridors, cells boxed in by heavy metallic doors. But she knows that I’m hiding, that my whole life these days is an exercise in turning a blind eye to myself. She’s never met me, but she knows me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say then. I can hear the crack of tears in my voice, swallow it down. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ Silence, keen and insistent. She isn’t hanging up. ‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘There’s no point in asking questions,’ she says. ‘When you already know the answers.’
And as soon as she speaks I realize that of course I do know – that there’s only one person who could do this, who could care enough and have the will to see it through. I think of Eddie, the clearness of his grey eyes and the perfect curve of his cheek, the way his face has changed and refined over time and how, if I close my eyes, I can still see him the way he was, a litany of snapshots reeling back through the years to the baby I first held in my arms. ‘You’re her mother,’ I say, ‘aren’t you.’
Silence again, but this time it feels as if something in it has snapped, a tension broken and released, and what is left is a mist of loss and sadness that curls its way down the line and infiltrates my heart, filling me up so that it’s hard to breathe. And now the tears are running down my face and I’ve lost count of the times that guilt and pain have made me cry this way, the number of times I’ve sat alone and tried to force these thoughts away, but I make myself stay quiet because I know that the last thing she wants is my self-pity.
‘You never let go of that man,’ she says at last, ‘did you? You were good at putting everything else in a box. Packing it away, as if it never existed. But not him.’
With humiliation, I think of the messages I sent her when I thought she was you. The neediness that seeped out of them, the desperation for contact. I wonder if she realizes that part of the reason I have been unable to get over you is that, if my thoughts are full of you, they can’t be full of the demons that really haunt me. I’ve needed you and the pain of missing you there in my head, to block them out. But I press my lips to
gether and stay quiet, and after a while she speaks again.
‘Do you believe in justice, Caroline?’ she asks.
‘I …’ The question feels like a trap. Whatever I say, she’ll be able to twist it. ‘I believe in a lot of things,’ I say. ‘Justice, redemption, repentance.’ Forgiveness, I almost say, but I bite it back. ‘But beliefs aren’t always the same as reality.’ It’s the best I can do.
She pauses again, seeming to mull this over. ‘Tomorrow, this will all be over,’ she says eventually. ‘I don’t intend to talk about this to anyone. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to speak to you again. This is the last time our lives will cross.’
It should be reassuring, but with every word she speaks I feel unease growing; something not right, some subtext I can’t catch. And before I have a chance even to open my mouth to reply, she hangs up.
Slowly, I lay the phone to one side, rake my fingers through my dampened hair. The heat from the bathwater is curling up into the room, misting the mirror and the window with condensation. My skin is lightly covered with a film of sweat. I wipe the back of my arm across my eyes and, when I look at it, it’s smeared with streaks of mascara and tears. The conversation replays itself: the sparseness of her words and the meaning glittering in between them, threaded finely through the silence. She knows exactly what happened that night. I have no idea how, but she knows.
My head swims and all at once I know that, if I don’t get some fresh air, then I’m going to faint. I stand up unsteadily and push the bathroom window halfway open, kneel in front of it with my arms folded on the ledge and my face upturned to the bright sky.
After a few moments, I feel more stable, but I don’t move. Instead, I look down at the length of the street, its symmetry and stillness. Sun is slanting off the red-washed roofs, giving them the air of having been recently polished. Below, the gardens unroll in neat little lawned rectangles. I see the shadow first, cutting across the grass, passing swiftly and surely down the road. There’s something in the way it moves that catches me before I even realize I’ve been caught; my heart pounds with recognition and a fresh wave of heat pours across my naked body. The figure is walking with purpose, not wavering or looking back, heading straight to the doorway of number 14.
The sun dips behind a cloud and I press forward, my fingers clenching on the windowsill – and I should have been prepared for this but, now that it’s here in front of me, I realize there’s no amount of groundwork that could have stopped my pulse thumping through me or the tears of an emotion I can’t even name rising afresh to my eyes. It’s you. You’re home.
Home
Caroline, July 2013
CARL IS DOING up his tie in the mirror, watching my reflection on the bed behind him. He’s already late leaving. It was only ten minutes ago that he started getting dressed, and even now he’s suited only from the waist up: white shirt and dark jacket, and nothing else but a pair of black boxer shorts. I know that, if I tried, I could make him stay – a little longer, at least. But my limbs are aching with sexual exhaustion already and, besides, I know this isn’t the goodbye he thinks it is.
‘What time will you go?’ he asks. ‘Fucking hell.’ He fumbles with the knot, letting the tie fall apart again impatiently. ‘Can’t get this right.’
‘Can’t concentrate?’ I ask, stretching luxuriously on the sheets, and he smiles. ‘I’ll probably go in an hour or two,’ I say idly, hugging my secret to myself. Right from the start, I’d decided that I’d be here waiting for him, an unexpected surprise when he returns from the party. I’m not due to pick up Eddie until tomorrow lunchtime, and I’ve got nothing else to go home for.
He pulls his trousers and shoes on and runs his fingers through his dark hair, angling this way and that in the mirror. ‘Better go, then,’ he says flatly. There’s sadness in his eyes as he comes to sit next to me, and I think about telling him we’ll have another night together, but I bite my tongue. I want to see the pleasure on his face when he returns.
‘Bye,’ I say, pulling him down for a kiss and running my fingers lightly over his jacket. ‘Very nice,’ I murmur. ‘You know, I like you in this kind of stuff.’
‘I know, Caro. Believe me, I know,’ he says, wrenching himself reluctantly away. ‘Maybe I’ll send you a little picture later when I get back.’
‘You do that.’ The urge to confess rises up again, but I squash it back down, and he’s backing away towards the door, turning around for a last look, then pushing his way out into the corridor and letting it close gently behind him.
When he’s gone, the room feels emptier than it should, as if by leaving he’s taken all the energy out of it. These walls are thick and soundproofed and, even if I listen hard, all I can hear is a faint hum of static, a tiny suggestion of water moving through pipes. The storm from last night has cleared and the sun is out again, shining through the thin red curtains and warming my naked body as I lie in a shaft of light. I haven’t thought about this part – about what I’m going to do for the next ten or eleven hours until he returns. No car, no shops for miles around. I haven’t even brought a book.
I switch on the television and spend a few minutes looking through the channels, but nothing catches my attention and I can’t focus. Although it’s the last thing I want to think about, I keep coming back to the idea of Francis sitting alone at home, without his wife and son nearby; taking stock of things, thinking about the fact that this is how it would be if we weren’t together and that, on his own, he doesn’t have a damn thing to occupy his time. For a crazy moment, I think about calling him. But I have no idea what I would say, and I dismiss the thought. My mobile is on silent – I’ve deliberately cut myself off from him, not wanting anything to intrude on this time away. Unwillingly, I glance at it, half expecting a barrage of incoherent texts, but there’s nothing. I’m not sure if the feeling that twists through me is relief, surprise, hurt or something in between the cracks of all these things.
Shaking my head, I force myself to get up. I’ll go down to the pool, spend some time swimming and in the sauna, then maybe ask at reception if they have any magazines I could borrow for an hour or two. This enforced solitude feels strange. Once, I would have loved the idea of a day to myself at a hotel, but right now all I want is for Carl to be here. I picture him driving, a flicker of indecision crossing his face, his hands on the wheel turning the car around, coming back to me. I can see it so clearly that when I push open the door and the corridor is empty and still, I am almost surprised.
The hours pass slowly, falling like stones. I check the time every five or ten minutes, barely able to believe that it has moved on so little. I have some lunch in the hotel restaurant, go for another swim, until my hair is saturated with chlorine and I have to wash the smell out in the shower afterwards. I lie back down on the bed and think about last night until I’m humming with desire, and I touch myself swiftly and mechanically, exploding the tension in seconds and putting me right back where I began. I order a bottle of wine and drink it in the space of an hour or so, even though I don’t really want it, just for something to do. It’s nine o’clock by the time it starts getting dark. My head is lightly blurred, and I don’t think I’ve moved in hours.
When I hear the footsteps approaching outside the door, it’s a red alert, setting all my senses on fire. I sit bolt upright. The possibility hits me, dreadful and unforeseen, that he isn’t alone. He’s seen a girl at the party across the dance floor, made eye contact. Kissed her in the darkness of a hallway, offered her a place to stay for the night. I’ve never asked him if he has seen anyone else in the past six months, because I know there’s nothing I could say to justify how I feel when I think about the idea of his hands on some other woman’s skin. I don’t want to have to confront it, but now, in these few seconds when I hear the click of the key-card in the door and see the handle turning, I wonder if I’m going to have to.
The door swings open and he’s standing there. Alone. We stare at each other in silence. The firs
t emotion that flickers over his face is shock, but it’s soon given way to the kind of happiness you can’t fake: his mouth breaking open into a smile, his eyes crinkling with delight and surprise.
He comes forward into the room, places his bag carefully down on to the dressing table. ‘Well well,’ he says. ‘And what are you doing—’ but he doesn’t even finish the sentence before I’ve leapt up from the bed and launched myself into his arms, and I can tell from the way he clutches me to him instantly – the wholehearted force of it, the quick dip of his face into my neck – that he’s abandoned the idea of playing it cool. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ I think I hear him saying, his voice muffled in my hair, and I’m saying it, too, pulling back to trace my fingertips over his temples and take him in, wanting to etch this moment on my memory for good.
‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ he says. ‘You know, it was all right today, but I kept thinking about you, about how much I wished you were there with me, and in the end I thought, there’s no point in staying, I may as well come back and be fucking miserable in the room by myself.’ He laughs, self-mocking. ‘Now I wish I’d come back hours ago. Why are you here?’
‘Because I want to be,’ I say simply, and suddenly it all rises up, my heart in my mouth, and I realize I’m going to tell him that I want us to be together, that I’m never going to turn away and pull on my clothes and leave his room at midnight to go home to another man ever again. I’m going to tell him tonight.
‘Are you OK?’ he asks, because my thoughts have choked my throat and I’m silent, staring into his eyes and trying to read what’s in them, wondering how this will go.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. Restlessness is sweeping through me – the exhilaration of these feelings, after the long, aimless day; the desire to get out, clear my head before I say what I want to say. ‘Look,’ I say impulsively. ‘Let’s go out. I haven’t eaten. We can drive to a pub or something – there must be one nearby. Sit outside. By the river, maybe. Come on,’ I encourage urgently, tugging at his sleeve.
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