‘I’m fine,’ I say, shrugging. I need him to believe everything is normal between us, need him to not suspect a thing. I don’t want to be homeless before I’m ready.
He takes my arm, not gently but not roughly either. ‘No, really I insist,’ he says, his other hand on my bum.
Something flares in my mind – an instinct, something defensive and protective from way back. An inner voice that once kept me alive. I want to lash out, hit him, scream and bite him, but I don’t. My mind feels dirty and clogged, filled with stirred-up silt, making me not think straight. Then that feeling of déjà vu sweeps through me and I’m thinking about her again, if this is what she has to endure. Does she comply in the same way? Does she smile sweetly, obeying his every word, caught up in his charm, his lies, his fake sincerity? Does she hate herself for it, like me? He’s played the both of us.
‘Come on. Come and eat,’ he tells me, sitting me down at the kitchen table. ‘You’ve lost weight, skinny girl.’
I force a smile and do as I’m told. The room is big but dated – high ceilings and 1970s-style worktops with aluminium handles on the cupboards, a lino floor, a limescale-encrusted metal sink. I pull the crumpled primrose head from my pocket, rolling it round and round between my fingers. ‘I’m eating just fine.’
‘Well, you could have fooled me,’ he says, lifting the lid from a steaming pan. He grabs two plates from the cupboard – brown and orange chinaware. I remember my gran owning similar. And then my dad’s on my mind – Gran’s only son. I was the first to find him. I should have tried to save him instead of gawping and screaming at his lifeless body.
The dizziness comes again then, and not from lack of food. I’m neck deep in freezing water, paralysed, the cold gripping me by the throat, pulling me down. The numbness taking over.
At first, I didn’t know what it was. Didn’t recognise the signs. But years ago, I had time on my hands, so I went to the library, read all about it, used the computers to research PTSD and all the vile, pernicious tendrils that permeate my life. Knowing what it was gave me some kind of comfort. Almost helped me feel alive again.
‘You treat me too well,’ I say, watching him serve out ribbons of creamy pasta, wondering if he can hear my thoughts. I slide out of my coat, while he glances at me from the corner of his eye, a little smile forming through the steam. I go up behind him, slipping my hands around his waist, my chin resting on his shoulder. ‘You’re the best landlord.’
‘And you’re the best lodger,’ he says, swinging round to kiss me.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lorna’s Journal
More sneaking about, but it’s just the way my life is going these days, finding snatched moments to read, leafing through the handwritten pages as fast as I can, trying to make sense of what went on. Except there is no sense. No sense at all because it’s all kicking off again. I know it. I feel it. Sometimes you have to trust your gut.
This time I have the house to myself, everyone is out. But it won’t be long before the front door bursts open and the others are home, the house filled with noise and chatter, the chaos of the evening beginning. And I’ll have to behave normally again, as if nothing’s going on, as if I haven’t done anything wrong, or been sneaking about, or registered a fake account on a dating site. I open the notebook, remembering where I got to, knowing where to pick up.
30 January 2017
I hate to admit it, but I dressed up for him this week. I tried on three different outfits this morning before settling on a dress. A dress! When did I last wear one of those to work? Mark commented, asked who I was trying to impress. Then he grabbed me, dragging me close, kissing me, telling me how good I looked. Part of me wished we could each take the day off work, stay in bed. But the other part was desperate to see him.
‘Just fancied a change,’ I replied, making sure I had that lipstick in my bag, plus my other make-up for a touch-up before his appointment.
‘Mmm, I approve,’ he said, holding me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. I suddenly felt self-conscious; in the couple of photos I’d seen of Maria, she was always impeccably dressed. That one of her and Mark at a friend’s wedding has always stuck in my mind – the clingy red fabric and plunging neckline making her figure look… well, not like mine.
But I appreciated Mark’s comment, that he liked my outfit, and tried to take it at face value. I’m not Maria, and Mark knows that. I just need to acknowledge it too.
‘Oh…’ I’d said, about to leave. ‘What are you doing?’
Mark was rummaging through my handbag. He didn’t stop when I questioned him. ‘Just looking,’ he said, without glancing up.
I waited a moment, in case I’d got it wrong. He was perhaps just after a tissue. Some change. But he opened every compartment, pulling stuff out, as though he was looking for something in particular.
‘For what?’
He stopped then, dropping my oversized bag on the bed. ‘Anything,’ was his matter-of-fact reply. I didn’t understand. ‘We’re both at work five days a week, Lorna. That’s a lot of time apart.’ It didn’t make sense. And to be honest, as I’m writing, it still doesn’t. What was he expecting to find?
So Andrew was on time this week (his lateness last week unsettled me and I was nervous he’d do it again). I didn’t bother saying his name when I collected him from the waiting room, rather I just waited for the eye contact I knew would draw him to me when he sensed me standing close. He was engrossed in something on his phone but looked up as soon as I was beside him. That little smile exchanged; the smile that said there was something else between us now, something else outside of the therapy office – those few illicit moments shared in the coffee shop.
‘I never expected to be alone at this time of my life,’ he said after he’d settled on the sofa, after we’d exchanged a few overly long glances that didn’t need words. I asked him how his week had been, how he’d been feeling, what had been going on with him. Kudos to me for not leaping out of my chair and punching the air when he implied he was single.
‘You sound a bit sad about that, Andrew. As if you don’t like living alone,’ I said. ‘As if perhaps you had other expectations?’
‘I don’t do expectations,’ he replied with conviction. ‘And actually, I don’t live alone,’ he said, switching my brief excitement to disappointment. Anger, even.
‘Oh,’ I said, trying not to betray my feelings. ‘So… so there’s a relationship that’s gone stale? Are you lonely?’
That would be OK, I thought. Something to work with. After all, I’m not exactly unattached.
Anyway, I still wasn’t clear why he’d come for therapy. Relationship issues, I supposed, even though he’d not actually said. In fact, he wasn’t saying much at all about his reasons for being there. But sometimes it goes like that. Half a dozen sessions passing before the real issues surface. Bad relationship choices turning out to be childhood abuse; sleeping problems and anxiety at the core of complex PTSD. Things are rarely what they seem.
‘Yes, I live with a woman,’ he said then – the equivalent to a kick in the guts. (I’m so pathetic). He’d sort of laughed – a laugh that made me think he was hiding something, as if he had a secret. As if he wanted me to find out. To work for it.
Or is it me with the secret?
‘She’s my lodger, actually.’
I felt physically sick then. Sick and stupid. Sick I’d bothered with the dress that showed off my figure, sick I’d freshened up before he arrived, applying the peach shimmer lipstick I’d chosen especially. Sick I’d bought fresh lilies for my office. The flower of death, I’d thought, as I arranged them on the side table. But sick for another reason too. One I couldn’t quite reach, something stuck deep inside. And I felt stupid… well, fucking stupid for everything.
I love Mark.
‘I see,’ I said, not liking one bit that his lodger was a ‘she’. ‘So you have a lodger who you’re in a relationship with but you’re lonely.’ I was making too many assumptions
, of course. Telling him his own feelings. There’s no room for that in a therapy session.
He made an odd face then, as though in his mind the two things weren’t linked. I flagged it, at least, but I wasn’t truly hearing him. I was too caught up in my own stupidity.
‘Yeah, yeah kind of.’ He rubbed the stubble on his jaw, looking pained. ‘But it’s more complicated than that. Or perhaps, actually, it’s really simple. What it is…’ he continued, but stopped short because I interrupted him by drawing in a huge breath, ready to speak. So he paused, gentle smile lines forming around his eyes, as though he was the therapist and I was about to pour my heart out to him. I wanted that more than anything. To tell him how I felt – that he was the most attractive man I’d ever laid eyes on, that already he made me feel safe, wanted, secure. Childlike. I had no idea why. I just knew it. Felt it.
‘Sorry,’ I said, laughing nervously, rolling my eyes in a sort of cute apology. ‘Carry on.’
‘No, no, really it’s fine,’ he said. ‘I was just going to say that in relationships generally, no one ever lives up. And look, don’t get me wrong. Loads of people I know have lodgers these days. It’s easy money, really. Plus the tax breaks.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Lives up… as in?’
‘Expectations again,’ he said. Then an embarrassed laugh, almost as though he had something to be ashamed of.
A switch flicked in me then and I pretty much did everything right after that point. Thank fuck some professionalism finally kicked in once I realised he was involved with a woman, that he wasn’t interested in me. At least one of us had morals. But I couldn’t forget that he’d bought me a coffee, that he’d asked me out for a drink as we were standing outside Shots. Then Mark flashed into my mind at just the right time, as if he was there, watching over me, reading my thoughts. It was all so crazy and mixed up.
After that, I had to fight back the tears for the rest of the session – tears of self-loathing, mainly – especially when Andrew mentioned a couple of past relationships. I hated that, though I hated it more when he mentioned his lodger again. Everything seemed to come back to her. I even wondered if he did it on purpose, to make me jealous. I convinced myself he did. Because that would have meant he liked me.
‘So the woman who lives with you…’ I continued relentlessly. He’d not mentioned her name yet, as if he wanted to protect her. ‘I’m sensing something underlying there, some kind of… I don’t know, tension, perhaps?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, staring at me until I felt forced to look away.
But the real shock today isn’t that I didn’t listen to him without judgement as a good therapist should, or even provide him with any kind of useful help. Nor was it much of a shock that, as he was leaving, with his hand settled in the small of my back, he again asked to meet me for a drink. No, the real shock here is that I actually said yes.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lorna
I didn’t sleep, of course. Not after what I did last night. Seeing his pictures on Double Take was one thing, but actually sending him a message, pretending to be someone else, was pure insanity. Mark was already in bed when I slid between the sheets: softly snoring, oblivious. After I’d said goodnight to Freya, I was downstairs for the rest of the evening, checking my phone, unsettled, pacing about, splashing surreptitious shots of whisky into my glass and sucking mints so Mark didn’t notice the smell on my breath.
I’d stared at the app store on my phone, my finger hovering over the install button for Double Take, convincing myself I could get rid of it at any time, that it would just be a quicker and easier way to check if he’d replied. But when Mark came into the room, I stopped.
‘I’m going to bed, I’m knackered,’ he’d said, sounding flat. I’d nodded and flicked a wave at him along with a half-smile. He looked at me for a second before heading upstairs, leaving me mindlessly flicking through channels, then staring at the wall, wondering what the fuck I was going to do.
He’d come back into my life, stirring up everything, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Eventually, I climbed into bed next to Mark, sleeping fitfully for a couple of hours, watching the clock, waiting for morning.
‘Mark?’ I whisper, touching his shoulder. It’s 5.45 a.m. – less than an hour before I need to get up. ‘You awake?’ He stirs beside me, flopping his arm across my waist. His breathing is steady, content, so I slip the weight of his arm off me and ease myself out of bed, watching him for a moment. When he doesn’t move, I tiptoe across the room and go up the stairs into the attic room, leaving the light off.
With shaking hands, I open up my laptop and log into the site. Alerts immediately pop up, showing me my profile has been viewed thirty-six times and that I have five new messages. I click on the inbox icon, my eyes scanning the list of senders. None of them are him.
‘Mum-mee…’ Freya says, shoving her cereal bowl away and folding her arms. ‘I hate muesli.’
‘Please eat something, Frey,’ I say, passing her a banana. Her little mouth puckers as she peels the underripe fruit, her face following suit when she bites into it. I put a tangerine, a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar into her lunchbox alongside the Marmite sandwiches – the only thing she seems to eat these days – and stuff the plastic tub into her backpack. Her PE kit is still in there from last week, crumpled and in need of a wash. I close my eyes for a moment.
‘I don’t want to go to school,’ she says, kicking the chair and ducking her head as Jack comes in, ruffling her hair. ‘It’s boring. I want to stay with you.’
‘S’up, Smudge?’ he says, sitting down beside her. He pulls her untouched cereal bowl towards him, shovelling up the muesli for himself. Normally, this would make her grab it back and eat, but Freya just sits there, picking at her fingers.
I watch her for a moment, wondering why my little girl has dark rings under her eyes, but there’s no time to ask, barely time for me to gulp down my coffee and grab my work bag.
‘C’mon,’ I call out. ‘Time to leave.’ I open the front door, watching as Jack stuffs his feet into trainers and heads off to the bus for college, leaping over the threshold as he goes. There’s no kiss but at least he calls out a goodbye.
Freya does her laces meticulously, sighing as she grabs her pack off the bottom of the stairs, dragging her feet. She walks out beneath my arm as I hold the door wide, but stops on the top step, bending down to pick something up.
‘Look, Mummy,’ she says, holding up a bunch of wilted flowers. I take them from her, puzzled. They look handpicked – their stalks are all different lengths – and they’re not tied together, just left loose and drooping. A few lilac primroses, some narcissus, something else pale blue that I don’t recognise, flop over my hand as I hold them. They look as though they’ve been there all night. I’m surprised Mark missed them earlier when he left first thing for his meeting.
‘How odd,’ I say, glancing up and down the street. I peer into next door’s garden to see if there’s anything similar, but there isn’t.
‘Maybe it was the fairies that left them,’ Freya says excitedly. ‘Or perhaps there’s a boyfriend that loves you,’ she giggles.
‘Cheeky monkey,’ I say, forcing a laugh, dumping the flowers on the hall table, wondering if perhaps she’s right.
The usual five-minute car journey takes twenty, though it seems like ten times that. ‘Come on, come on,’ I mutter, angry at myself for spending too long up in the study earlier, poring over who’d viewed my profile, making us late.
Not him, I think, feeling abandoned, let down, rejected. Some of the lewd messages I, or rather Abbi74, received flash through my mind. No wonder Cath’s having such a hard time finding someone decent.
We pull up outside the school gates and Freya slowly opens the car door. ‘No kiss?’ I say, swinging round, but she just looks at me with sad eyes, slowly opening the door. I reach out my hand to at least touch her, but she’s out on the pavement, giving me one last glance and a little smile before
the teacher standing at the gates ushers her inside.
Tom sits opposite me, his arms folded across his chest, his expression giving nothing away.
‘So you want to make Tuesday your regular slot now?’ I ask.
He gives a small nod, not looking at me.
‘You’re still struggling with Mondays, then?’
‘Always will,’ he says. ‘Don’t do anything on Mondays. Makes it easier. Kind of.’
‘But I’m sensing it’s not Mondays that are the problem, Tom. You’ve already talked about Sundays, that you couldn’t sleep.’
He nods again. ‘But Mondays are filled with Sundays,’ he tells me. ‘The aftermath.’
I pause, trying to absorb what he’s telling me, what he’s trying to admit to himself. But my mind is elsewhere – on the Double Take app that I plucked up the courage to install on my phone just before Tom’s session began. Because of this, I was five minutes late collecting him from the waiting room. Sandy gave me a look as she glanced up from her screen.
‘The aftermath,’ I repeat. ‘That sounds like what someone might say about an accident…’ I say, hoping it will open something for him.
‘It wasn’t an accident. Accidents aren’t on purpose.’
I hear my phone vibrate in my bag under my chair. Normally, I leave it in my desk drawer well out of earshot, or even turn it off completely. Even a phone buzz can be distracting and unsettling to a client, as if I’m not fully present with them, as if I’m more interested in my life outside the therapy room.
My mouth goes dry as a repeat buzz sounds a few moments later. I ease my foot back so if it happens again, I’ll feel it against my skin. Feel a physical connection, just in case.
Tell Me A Secret Page 12