She’s just a woman. Not the devil I’ve imagined – calculating, merciless. The truth is much harder to swallow. I stare into her eyes and I think about all the times I’ve imagined what I would say if we came face to face – the cutting streams of vitriol, the words that would stay with her for the rest of her life – and I realize now that, if I ever saw her, I can’t trust that they would come out, and maybe I’d end up saying nothing at all.
The quality of the light in this room is sharp and strange. Sun shining through the thin curtains and brightening the air. There’s an ache in my head, but my limbs feel limp and relaxed, finally at peace, because at last I realize that I’ve had everything the wrong way round and I know what to do now.
Away
Caroline, May 2015
FRANCIS SLAMS THE front door an instant before I reach it, and I have to fumble with the key, forcing it into the lock then hurrying into the hallway, trying to work out which way he has gone. I find him in the kitchen, standing with his back to the door, his fists clenched on the worktop, staring intently at the wall.
‘Francis,’ I say, my breath catching in my throat.
He wheels round and I can tell at once that he is angry, angrier perhaps than I have ever seen him – his jaw set in a grim, unmoving line, his mouth twisted with disgust and suspicion. ‘What?’ he says roughly. ‘You’ve finally come to tell me what the fuck’s going on?’
Any vague, desperate hope I might have had that he didn’t recognize the man who had been standing across the road from him a few moments before evaporates. He’s seen you, and there’s no avoiding this. ‘Francis,’ I say again, ‘I know this must be a horrible shock. I promise you, none of this has been done to hurt you.’
He stares hard at me, unmoved. ‘What is he doing here, Caro?’ he asks, then stops, shakes his head roughly. ‘No,’ he says. ‘What are we doing here? That’s what I really want to know. Is this some kind of sick game? Coming for a little holiday across the road from your lover? Sneaking out for a quick shag whenever my back’s turned? Is this the sort of thing that turns you on?’
‘Of course not,’ I stammer. Heat is flooding my body, making my head spin. ‘He’s not my lover, not any more. And I promise you, I didn’t arrange this. I had no idea he lived here, I—’
‘Interesting,’ interrupts Francis scornfully. His tone is harsh but contained. I would rather he were shouting expletives at me, losing control, but that isn’t his style. ‘So the fact that when I pop out for a minute to put out the bins I bump into him is just an amazing coincidence. Of all the houses we could possibly have stayed in across the entire country, we just happen to rock up a mere ten metres or so from his. Extraordinary. It’s the kind of thing that makes you believe in fate, doesn’t it? Like it’s written in the stars that—’
‘Please, stop.’ I take a deep breath, preparing to speak, but the enormity of it – of ploughing back into the past and spilling out the ugly truth of that night at Silver Birches to him, and everything that has come from it and led us here – overwhelms me, and I close my eyes.
When I open them, I see that his expression has changed. He isn’t sneering or contemptuous any more. His face is twisted with worry and confusion, not knowing whether to be hurt or angry or something else entirely, and there’s a vulnerability to it that is painful to see. ‘I don’t understand any part of this, Caro,’ he says. His voice is still angry, but quieter; he’s trying to give me space to talk.
I force myself to look at him steadily. Although I know I will have to give him what he wants eventually, I don’t think I can do it right now. I can’t tell him the truth when he’s already on the edge, when his world has been so savagely rocked.
‘I don’t understand it either,’ I say, and I don’t blink.
He looks back at me for a long moment, trying to read my expression. ‘Then it’s him,’ he says simply. ‘He’s engineered it in some way.’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
Francis gives a quick exhalation of frustration. ‘I don’t see any other explanation.’
‘No,’ I say again. ‘It makes no sense. He doesn’t want me here. You saw him just now – he didn’t want to speak to me. He just turned around and left.’ A stab of hurt, lightning fast but unmistakeable. I push it away, but something of it must show on my face, because his own expression twists with sudden pain.
‘Do you still love him?’ he asks.
I’ve half expected it, and I realize that, for days now, I’ve been silently asking myself the same thing; turning over our memories, prodding them to test the sharpness of the hurt, letting them suck me back in. The denial I know I should give rises fast to my lips, but I hold it back. He’s right – he deserves this honesty, even if I’m not sure I have the answer to give.
After a long while I say, ‘I still miss him. I’m not sure I can tell the difference.’ I pause, thinking. Francis is listening intently. ‘I don’t know him any more,’ I say. ‘But there’s something I can’t seem to let go.’
It can’t be what he wants to hear, but Francis doesn’t seem angry. If anything, the look in his eyes is one of pity. Somehow, I’ve drawn closer to him, and my hands are reaching out for his and my fingers are locking around his own. I press my face into his chest, listening to the quick thump of his heartbeat against my forehead. ‘I still love you,’ I whisper, but I’m not sure he hears. ‘You know that, right?’
After a few moments, he pulls away. ‘Well, that’s the thing about you, Caroline,’ he says lightly. ‘It’s never easy to tell when you’re lying.’
I bite my lip but have the sense to stay silent. He glances at the oven, and I realize that the pasta sauce he was cooking on the hob is smoking, reduced to a sticky, volcanic mass. Francis reaches out and turns it off. He passes a hand over his forehead, gives a sigh.
‘I can’t handle trying to make sense of this any more tonight,’ he says. ‘I’m going to bed. I need to lie down.’
I think about the packing I have started, the desperate need I felt earlier to get back; about Sandra prowling through our home. I already know that I can’t force him to make the journey to Leeds tonight, not after everything that’s happened. ‘OK,’ I say quietly, swallowing down my discomfort. One more night. Already, I’m counting down the hours. ‘I’ll come up soon.’
He nods, then moves towards the door.
The night passes slowly, punctuated by drifts of light, uneasy sleep. I lie watching the shifting shadows outside the window, the gradual strengthening of light through the curtains.
In this quiet space, it’s as if nothing has happened. You, Francis, Amber … they’ve all receded and there’s nothing left in my head but the pictures I’ve been blocking out for years and which are finally breaking through my defences. Whenever I lose my grip on consciousness for even a few seconds, the girl is there – walking softly through the room, threaded through the thin line between reality and dreams. Her long, dark hair blowing out behind her, her green scarf slung over her shoulder. It replays again and again, this procession, and the split second which I have never been sure if I have imagined or not: the wide-eyed moment of connection as she spins round in the instant before we collide and everything explodes in a burst of splintered glass. And the impact wakes me, jolts me brutally up and out of this strange space of memory into the dark bedroom, until the next time. Over and over again.
At some point, I must fall asleep for more than a few minutes, because when I open my eyes again it’s daylight and Francis is no longer next to me. Instead, there’s a note lying on the pillow: I’m going out for a walk to clear my head. I won’t be more than a couple of hours. Just need some time alone. I’ll see you soon. My heart drops. I have no idea what he’s thinking or how he’s feeling, how the long night might have warped our conversation the evening before.
I drag myself out of bed and get dressed then wander aimlessly down to the kitchen. I stand quietly for a few moments, wondering what to do. It’s bizarrely silent and still – a shaft
of sunshine piercing the windowpane, minuscule dust-motes shimmering faintly in its light. When my phone beeps it sends a brusque jolt of shock right through me. I snatch it up and look at the screen. The message is from a number that isn’t in my phone, but as soon as I see the digits I recognize them.
If you want to talk, we can. I’m on my way now to the Garden Café on Castle Street. Come if you like.
Somehow, I’m not surprised. Perhaps because the message is so typical of you, so familiar in tone, that it doesn’t feel unexpected. You haven’t changed; the way you’ve framed it in terms of what I might want, as if your own desires are irrelevant, or maybe non-existent. Back then, I found it charming and thoughtful at first; then, later, frustratingly oblique. I never really knew – still don’t – if what you wanted matched up with what I wanted, or if that mattered to you at all.
I’m already out of the house, walking swiftly down the street and turning out on to the main road towards the street you’ve named. I walked past the café a couple of days ago, dimly registered its dark green walls and soft-hued lighting. I remember noticing two leather sofas, tucked into the back corner and shielded from the rest of the room, and I already know that’s where you’ll be.
It’s only when I’ve turned on to Castle Street and spy the café towards the end of the road that it even occurs to me that I didn’t have to come – shouldn’t have come. I could have sent a polite, dismissive message back, suggesting that there was nothing between us that needed to be said, or simply ignored it. These options were there, and yet they weren’t.
I’m pushing open the café door and turning towards the sofas at the back, and as I see you there – hunched over a newspaper, your head dipped intently over a page I know you aren’t reading – there’s a sliding sense of inevitability, the pieces clicking into place and the knowledge that this was always going to happen one day, and why not today?
I stand in the doorway a moment, watching you, drinking in the sight of you at close range. You’re taller than I remembered, your face narrower. You look older, your features somehow more defined. Your hair is shorter than it was the last time I saw you. You’re wearing a dark green jacket I’ve never seen before and, despite all the differences, you fit exactly into the picture in my head that the years had blurred. It clicks into place with a sense of rightness, as if you had never been away.
I’m only a couple of feet away when you look up and your dark eyes meet mine. Without meaning to, I smile, and you smile back. It’s a strange little twitch of instinct, a throwback. For an instant, it’s as if the past two years have been erased and we’re right back where we were, perhaps in June of 2013, at a time when being together was sweet and precious.
Something in my face must change, because you blink, your expression rapidly turning to awkwardness and confusion. ‘Hi,’ you say, motioning for me to sit down opposite you, and stupidly, I feel the threat of tears rising and stinging along the bridge of my nose because your voice is just as I remember.
I slide into the seat. We’re sitting face to face, and the low light casts shadows across you, hollowing out the skin beneath the ridges of your cheekbones, throwing the line of your jaw into stark relief. I realize that I’m barely blinking. There’s a hunger growing inside me, the violence of which surprises me – the desire not to miss an instant of this, the knowledge that it’s important and that I’ve been waiting for it for so long I can’t afford to let it go. I can feel myself trembling with adrenaline; not knowing how to process this, unable to look away.
We sit in silence for a few moments, and then you sigh and push your hands out across the tabletop, palms down; a gesture of defeat or supplication. ‘This is fucking strange,’ you say simply. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s going on. Tell me honestly, did you follow me here?’
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I can see why you’d think that, but no, Carl, I didn’t. Even if I had known where you lived, I wouldn’t do that. Not after all this time.’ Not ever, I think, but I don’t say it. You know as well as I do that I could have done anything back then, half crazed by your absence, and that it was only fear that stopped me.
You look at me hard, your eyes glittering and liquid in the soft lamplight. I’ve never been on the receiving end of it before, this cool appraisal of yours that I’ve seen you employ with others many times. I don’t like it. ‘OK,’ you say finally. ‘It seems like a big coincidence, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t say it was a coincidence.’ I take a breath, and I don’t know where to start; can’t do this here, so unprepared and with so little knowledge of what I want to say. ‘You know the person whose house I’m staying in? Number 21?’
You frown, jolted. ‘Well, no, not really,’ you say almost instantly. ‘I don’t know anyone on the road well. Why?’
I take a deep breath, and I realize that there’s no point in prevaricating, and that the truth is all there is now, with no reason to hide it away. ‘I’ll tell you,’ I say, and almost at once there’s a sense of release.
I tell you about the message I received, inviting me to exchange houses; the series of prompts and memories that began almost the instant I arrived; the emails exchanged and the dawning realization that what I had thought was one thing was quite another. I tell you about the woman in my house, and why she is there. I tell you that we have both been wrong in thinking that we could close the door on the past and lock it away, because it isn’t only our past we have been dealing with, and it isn’t only ours to turn our backs on.
You listen in silence, letting me talk. A couple of times, you look sharply at me, your eyes widening in fear or surprise, but you don’t speak until I have finished, and even then you let the silence stretch for a good half a minute.
‘This is a lot to process,’ you say blankly at last. Absently, you scratch the stubble on your chin, and I know exactly how it feels under your hand, the physical memory leaping to life with unbidden clarity. ‘I realize that’s an understatement. But it is.’
I try to imagine myself in your position – how it would feel to have the information that has been drip-fed to me in agonizing stages dumped into my lap in the space of a few sentences. ‘I know,’ I say.
‘I have no idea what to do,’ you say, as if to yourself. ‘I can’t—’ You exhale, almost impatiently. ‘I can’t think about this now. I haven’t thought about any of this for months. Years.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ I say, although as soon as I’ve said it I realize I can. You know how to switch things off: pack them away in their box and throw away the key. It’s a gift.
‘I don’t mean that I didn’t care about what happened,’ you say sharply. ‘I was in prison for three months, you know. I had time to think about it then. And believe me, I did. It focuses the mind, being somewhere like that. It was …’ You trail off briefly, frowning. ‘It was like the worst kind of groundhog day, the same soul-destroying routine over and over again. So there wasn’t much to do but think. I even used to dream about it, you know – the impact, the blood. The sight of her on the ground. But when I finally came out, I thought to myself, I’m damned if I’m going to ruin my life over something I can’t change. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t care about it,’ you say again, and there’s a brief, sharp pause before you meet my eyes, and the next words come out as if you’re not aware you even meant to say them. ‘Or about you,’ you say.
‘You never replied to my messages.’ I can’t help saying it. I think of that last long love letter I wrote to you, and all the emails I sent for weeks afterwards when I realized I had no way of knowing if you had read the letter or not. I put tracking receipts on those emails, and I know you read them. You read every single one. Sometimes, over and over again. But you never replied.
‘That’s because I meant what I said,’ you say carefully. ‘It had to end there. You know that. I know you thought I’d change my mind, but I couldn’t help that. I knew I wouldn’t. And I didn’t.’
Your tone is defensive but tinged with
pride. You’ve always considered it one of your most admirable qualities – this single-mindedness, this ability to stick to your guns. No one has ever told you that, just because you can stick to something, it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Or if they have, you haven’t wanted to listen.
My eyes are stinging and I force them open wide, knowing that the tears will fall if I blink. I’m trembling, thinking of myself hunched over the table in the middle of the night, scribbling the story of our affair out on to those yellow lined pages, desperately trying to find the words that would force a response, that would make you miss me so much you couldn’t help but want me. Something stirs in the back of my mind, some nebulous suspicion. ‘Have you kept the letter I sent you?’ I whisper.
Your face shadows, and you look briefly uneasy. ‘I did keep it,’ you say. ‘Even when I moved here, although I don’t really know why. But I don’t know where it is now. I haven’t looked at it in months. I guess it’s in my things somewhere.’
I can’t say for sure that you’re wrong, but I feel it in my bones. All the little details, the ones that no one but us would have known. The pale pink roses in the bathroom, the song playing on the radio, the picture of the park where we lay together. When Amber told me about the things that had gone missing from their home, she could only tell me about the things she knew existed. There’s a kind of mental click, an internal calibration as the last piece of the puzzle slots smoothly into place. I try to imagine those yellow pages in Sandra’s hands, and I can’t feel anything but pity.
The House Swap Page 25