The builder told me he could start on my plans for a gym and sauna at the beginning of the New Year, but he warned me it would be very disruptive. I was lucky, he said, that I had a bit of a basement so a full excavation wasn’t going to be necessary, but it would still take the best part of six months to complete and involve lots of heavy digging and lifting equipment. I balked at the idea of waiting so long, but he pointed out I would need planning permission and agreements with my neighbours, neither of which I had considered. You can’t just do what you like, he said, shaking his head and handing me a quote which would have bought two houses on Elaine and Barry’s street. For an extra ten thousand pounds he offered to handle the architect and planning permission so I said I would transfer the money later that evening. It felt good to be achieving something and working towards our future. I don’t know what I’d been thinking of before, dragging my heels at making the house perfect for V.
Towards the end of the second week of the honeymoon I was feeling slightly regretful about the tone of the email I’d sent V. I had after all massively betrayed her trust and the normal rules could not be applied to us. I hadn’t actually said the words to V, but when I had written the first email I thought I had been subconsciously comparing her to my mother, which was insane. My mother was a weak and pathetic person who allowed herself to fall into the situations in which she found herself. V was nothing like that and, ergo, what I had done with Carly was as bad to her as if I had smashed her head against a wall. All in all I owed her an apology and so I sent her another email.
Dearest V,
I’m sorry if I sounded angry in my last email. I do understand what you’re doing and I know I am responsible for what is happening now. It’s just that the wedding threw me off balance slightly. It was horrible seeing you with Angus, even though I know it is nothing more than I deserve. In a funny way I feel sorry for him and all you are going to put him through, but there does I suppose have to be collateral damage in any situation such as this.
I just want you to know that I’m here. I can swoop in and rescue you at any time and I am prepared to do anything for you, V. You are, as ever, all that matters to me, my darling.
Please get in contact when you get back. There are lots of things we need to discuss.
I crave you,
Your Eagle.
After I sent the email I thought about my childhood, which is not something I have done actively for many years. When I left for university Elaine made me a box which, when she gave it to me, I planned to throw away at the first opportunity. Somehow though this has never happened and it travels with me, living always tucked somewhere out of sight, at the back of a drawer.
I got it out now and laid its contents along the kitchen table. Elaine had stuck a note to the underside of the box’s lid which I knew by heart, but still read: ‘For all the times you need to remember that you are loved’, she had written in her neat, round hand. Inside there was a photo of me standing outside their house dressed in my school uniform on the first day I left from their house. Another of a barbeque in their back garden: Barry has his top off tending the meat and Elaine and I are in stripy deckchairs, laughing at something he’s saying. There’s an eighteenth-birthday card from them and my letter of acceptance to university. There’re the ticket stubs from the time Barry and I went to Thorpe Park, and Elaine’s handwritten recipe for spaghetti Bolognese, which was always my favourite.
Then there are the other pictures, in which I can’t really recognise myself. A chubby baby on the lap of a small, pretty woman with her hair cut in a bowl and a nervous smile on her face. We look as if we are in a back garden somewhere and there is a tiny round paddling pool in the corner of the shot. A lock of hair in an envelope with my name written across the front, which Elaine told me was found in the drawer next to my mum’s bed. I like to run my finger along this word, written in a small spidery hand that almost looks scared of taking up too much space on the paper. It has made slight indentations in the envelope which makes me think she must have pressed hard.
A dog-eared book called Learn Your ABC whose pages I have turned many times, looking for codes and secret messages I have never found, although there is something familiar about the pictures, like a dream I can only half remember. A tiny, battered red car which I was apparently holding when they took me away, even though I was ten, so it seems unlikely it could have meant anything much to me. And finally a photo of an old black dog which, Elaine told me, was the only decoration in the room which passed as my bedroom in my mother’s flat. Elaine liked to think it had been a pet of my mother’s and she had given the photo to me as she didn’t have anything else to give. But Elaine has always liked to think the best of people and I never wanted to shatter her illusion. Really that photograph was stuck on the wall when I first walked into my room, left by the people before me. I dragged my mattress over to where it was and I would often lie and stare at it, wondering at lives in which dogs not only existed but were photographed. It always gives me a jolt to see it there at the bottom of my box and it always makes a mockery of what Elaine wrote on the lid. But for some reason I never throw it away because sometimes it’s the only thing I properly recognise.
My mother might be dead by now. It is a very strange thought: that she could simply not be in the world and I don’t know. But she was certainly heading that way the last time I saw her. She was in hospital, yellow against the white sheets, her mouth a cavernous black and her eyes so sunken they looked like they would never return. After that I told my social workers to stop informing me when she was ill and they didn’t question my decision. I was at that point taking my A levels and I had a bright future ahead of me and Elaine was with me, so it didn’t look like I needed to be bothered any more. All my mother ever did anyway was cry and apologise and try to take my hand, which repulsed me so much I would have to wash them afterwards. She made little sense and often I thought the kindest thing would be to hold a pillow over her skeletal face.
I was checking flight arrival times from South Africa on Saturday afternoon when there was a knock at my door. I looked up from the screen and could almost see through the door to where V was standing. Because of course it had to be her. My emails had no doubt been all that was needed and she had come straight from the airport to me. I closed the computer and went to the door. But it was Kaitlyn, holding a bottle of wine in her hand.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘there’s a few of us next door at Lottie’s and we’ve misplaced the corkscrew. I don’t suppose you have one.’
I opened the door a bit wider. ‘Yes.’
She followed me into the kitchen. ‘Wow, I really like what you’ve done in here.’
‘Thanks. I’ve got a gardener coming to soften the back.’ I got the corkscrew out of the drawer and held it out to her.
‘Did you choose the colours?’
‘Yes.’ Seeing Kaitlyn in the house was a bit strange, almost like watching a film even though you know it’s really happening.
‘Can I have a look at the sitting room?’
‘OK.’ We traipsed back to the drawing room where Kaitlyn exclaimed at how gorgeous it was. It didn’t seem right that she should see Verity’s house before she did and I desperately wanted her to leave. I could have easily picked her up and deposited her outside the front door, without any fuss.
She walked to the mantelpiece and picked up the photograph of V and me dressed in evening wear, photographed at one of Calthorpe’s Christmas parties. We’re both smiling out at the camera, my hand resting on the small of her back, not that you can see that. ‘So this is Verity?’
‘Yes.’ I had to keep my hands by my side to stop myself from marching over and ripping the photograph from her hands.
‘Very pretty.’
‘Anyway, you wanted the corkscrew.’
She laughed. ‘Sorry, yes.’ We went back into the kitchen where Kaitlyn picked the corkscrew up off the counter. But she didn’t leave. ‘Verity’s not here again then?’
; And it all felt too much. The fact that she wasn’t Verity and she was standing in her house talking about her. ‘No.’
‘Do you want to come back with me? Lottie wouldn’t mind. And you have provided the corkscrew.’
‘No, thanks. I’ve got a bit of work to catch up on.’ I motioned to the laptop on the table.
‘Oh come on, Mike. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’
I tried to smile but it felt like the corners of my mouth were being pulled downwards by some internal magnet.
‘Are you OK?’ Her voice was wonderfully tender. I tried to nod, but it was like the movement dislodged something in my head and I felt my eyes fill terribly with tears. She stepped towards me and put her hand on my arm. ‘Shit, has something happened, Mike?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I said, hearing my voice crack, the allure of actually speaking to another human being about what was in my head too strong to ignore.
‘Sit down.’ She led me towards the table, bringing the wine and two glasses with her. She opened the bottle and poured us both some, sitting down beside me. ‘Now tell me everything.’
I took a gulp of the warm liquid, the very idea of telling Kaitlyn everything too appalling to even consider.
‘It’s Verity, isn’t it? Something’s happened. Have you split up?’
‘No, but we’ve had a row. Or more like a disagreement.’
‘Has she moved out?’
‘Not permanently.’
Kaitlyn sipped at her wine. ‘I thought it was odd how she was never around. What was the disagreement about?’
I tried to sift through everything in my brain to find a way to answer Kaitlyn’s question. ‘Sort of how we should live.’
‘Does she want to get married? Weddings often do that to people.’
I looked up at Kaitlyn, trying to work out what she was talking about and realised she must have meant Verity’s wedding, which I’d told her was her sister’s wedding. My brain was starting to feel like a blender and I reached for the bottle to replenish my glass. ‘No, no. We both want to get married.’
‘Oh.’ Kaitlyn held her eyes on my face. ‘Well, what then?’
‘It’s hard to put into words. I did something when I was in America she’s finding hard to forgive.’
Kaitlyn smiled. ‘Oh right, I get it.’
‘No,’ I said too quickly, ‘I don’t think you do. What I did was irrelevant.’
‘All men say that,’ Kaitlyn said, drinking her wine.
‘No, really, it was nothing. I love Verity. More than anyone. I’d do anything to make it all right again.’
Kaitlyn snorted. ‘God, I’ve heard that before.’ Her tone had hardened and I felt a gap growing between us.
I leant forward with my elbows on the table. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to put it right.’
I felt Kaitlyn’s hand on my back, warming the space it was touching. ‘Was it your first irrelevance?’
‘God, yes. And I would never do anything like that again.’
She was quiet for a while and her touch felt so good I didn’t want her to stop. ‘You’re not like the other City boys, are you, Mike? I don’t know how women stand them. I hear them lie to their wives every day. It’s disgusting.’
‘I don’t understand why people bother with people they don’t love completely,’ I said into the table.
‘That’s sweet, Mike.’
‘I just have to make it right again.’
She sighed. ‘I guess if you two love each other as much as you say then you’ll work it out. You’ll just have to give her a bit of time.’
Her hand dropped and my back felt so lonely I leant back against the chair. ‘But it’s been so long already.’
‘Maybe you need to make a grand gesture or something then. Show her you really mean it.’ She stood up. ‘You know, sometimes, Mike, what you think you want isn’t what you actually want. Sometimes the thing that makes you really happy is the thing you least expect.’ She paused momentarily. ‘Why don’t you come next door with me? It’ll do you some good.’
I looked up at her. ‘No, thanks, really. I just want to be alone.’ And I did. I wanted to be alone with Kaitlyn’s words because they made perfect sense. V loved a grand gesture and I had been a fool not to think of that myself.
She shrugged. ‘OK, well, the offer’s there. Mind if I take the corkscrew?’
‘No,’ I said, standing up as well. She picked it up off the table and walked to the front door, turning to smile at me as she opened it. She looked like she was going to say something else, but the moment passed and she let herself out, clicking the door behind her.
There was something very comforting about the sounds leaking through my wall from Lottie’s for the rest of the afternoon. Something comforting about knowing Kaitlyn was just there, ready to listen with her wide eyes and pale face. She felt like the sort of person you could really open up to and be yourself with and that was like a release after so long holding myself together and always trying to be one step ahead.
As the day drifted into evening and they turned on some music, I thought about going round, but at the last minute I kept stopping myself. Kaitlyn was right, I did need to make a grand gesture and it was important I readied myself for that.
V replied to my emails the next day. I doubted they had gone for much less than two weeks, so it must have been the first thing she did on her return.
Dear Mike,
I was very sad to receive your emails. You sounded so angry in the first and so desperate in the second, and I can’t bear thinking of you in either state. I was worried something like this might happen and I probably shouldn’t have invited you to the wedding. But you meant so much to me once and I was hoping we could still be friends, although maybe that was very selfish of me.
The truth is I love Angus very much. I have never loved anyone like I do him, which I am sure is a terrible thing for you to hear, but it’s the truth. If you want to know the full truth I did meet him a few months before you came back for Christmas last year, although nothing really happened. I was going to tell you and finish things with you, but then you told me about Carly and I used that as an excuse. I am so sorry I did that – it was cowardly and foolish of me. But I can’t pretend I wasn’t hurt by what you’d done. Angus and I hadn’t slept together by then and I was shocked that you could do something like that, as if we meant nothing to each other.
You need to move on with your life. You are a great person and whomever you end up with is going to be one lucky girl. I do still hope we can be friends sometime in the future, but for now you need to sort out a few things in your head. I know I said it to you so much when we were together, but I do still think you would benefit greatly from some counselling. You’ve always blamed yourself somehow for how your mother behaved. But you were an innocent victim and you can’t worry that you will turn out like she did just because you share some genes. Everything you’ve done so far is nothing short of amazing and you should be very proud of yourself. Look forward, Mike, it’s the only way.
Wishing you much love,
Verity
I did a little jig around the kitchen after I read it. Everything I had suspected was true. V had been heartbroken by my sleeping with Carly. She also clearly loved me as much as I did her. She cared about my welfare, she thought about me, she saw herself in my future. What I had perhaps got wrong was the sense that she was punishing me for what I had done. Going over the email it seemed more likely that my infidelity had affected her so deeply she had had some sort of mini breakdown, attaching herself to the first man to pay her some attention (and V was never going to be short of men wanting to do that). She had transferred all the love she felt for me to Angus and convinced herself that this was how she really felt. The fact that she said they hadn’t slept together by Christmas made me dismiss him further. I knew better than anyone how important sex is to V and there was no way she would have abstained that long if she had really fallen for hi
m. No, it was obvious he was nothing more than a stooge and I was going to have to help her see this.
V’s mention of counselling was particularly pertinent here. In telling me I needed it she was really talking about herself. I wasn’t going to mention it, but she had quite a bit of counselling before we met, even afterwards. In fact, she had to take anti-depressants for a while after university. Real life, she used to say, was a shock. I never really got to the bottom of why she was unhappy; I’m not even sure she ever did. She told me once that her therapist thought she carried a lot of expectation from her parents. She was a longed-for and only child, and Suzi and Colin certainly both idolised and pushed her, something I saw with my own eyes: one minute telling her how clever and talented she was, the next remonstrating that she hadn’t done well enough in an exam. She told me that her therapist had told her this constant state of anticipation had heightened her emotions, so that she now associated intimacy with excitement and danger. She needed to learn to relax, he told her; she needed to allow herself to let go.
When she was at her worst, just after graduating, I learnt how to meditate so I could teach her. We would sit on the floor of our flat cross-legged and I would talk her through the moments, helping her to regulate her breathing and calm her mind. Sometimes I would open my eyes and she would be sitting there with tears rolling down her cheeks. When I asked her what was wrong she would say that it was just nice to feel calm, and so good not to feel fear in her veins. Then I would hold her and tell her I would always be there to make her feel better and she would cling to me like she was drowning. Once, she called me on the way to work and begged me to come home, saying she couldn’t breathe without me by her side. And I did as she asked, calling in sick, to go and tend to her.
Our Kind of Cruelty Page 11