by Anna Maxted
I’m scared because I want this to be the end and I’m scared it won’t be. I’m scared because a few weeks back I rang a refuge and talked to the woman in charge to ask how I could help Tina. She told me about women like Tina. One tale she told me stayed in my head. This woman was married to a man who shoved her down the stairs and urinated on her wounds. He also tied the family dog to a tree in the garden and starved it to death over three weeks. She and her two children, aged four and six, were made to watch. Once or twice they managed to sneak out and feed the dog scraps but this only prolonged the agony. This woman only reported her husband when she became afraid for her kids.
Then she withdrew her statement. The police prosecuted anyway but her husband was bailed to live at home. He kept his job because he was a ‘key worker’ in his firm and negotiating an important contract which his (male) boss was loath to lose. The (male) magistrate decided not to send him to prison as – he said – he was not in the habit of wrecking people’s careers. He wanted offenders ‘rehabilitated’. Eventually his wife fled to the refuge but he traced her and . . .
The knowledge is polluting me. So I tell Tom. ‘I bet Adrian has a good lawyer,’ I say miserably.
Tom replies, ‘Yeah. I bet he does. But, see how it goes. At least we all know about him now. He can’t isolate her any more. And I know this sounds weird, but Adrian strikes me as a man who cares very much about his reputation. And you don’t know what Adrian’s boss is like. And Tina has three brothers. Three. I reckon Adrian’s in trouble. Fuck, if anyone did that to my sister—’ Tom shakes his head. I shrug. I feel so despondent I no longer trust anyone to do the right thing.
‘Listen, Helen,’ says Tom, ‘it’s four in the morning. Luke’s stuck to Tina like a lovestruck leech. They’re not keeping her in, and Luke’s going to stay with her, you can visit her at home, first thing. You can stay here but you’re near delirious. Why don’t I take you home. I’ll sleep on the floor.’ I reluctantly agree. I run to see if Tina minds then sprint back to Tom. A small mercy in a mean world: I see Tom’s found a black cab. He opens the door and I clamber in and sprawl like a rag doll on the back seat.
‘Fuck,’ I say.
‘What?’ says Tom.
‘I hate this,’ I burble, ‘I hate what’s happened to Tina. I did sod-all too late.’
Tom shakes his head. ‘Helen,’ he says, ‘only Tina can see off Adrian. You couldn’t force her. But you stopped her from getting hurt, well, more seriously hurt, tonight. You did a good thing, be proud. You’re a good friend.’ I recoil from his praise because I feel tarnished and undeserving. There will be no personal gain from Tina’s pain. I don’t want it. Tom senses my misery because he says, ‘We’ll all help Tina.’ Then, inexplicably, he grabs my hand and kisses it.
I close my eyes. There is a vague, elusive thought buzzing at my brain but I can’t be bothered to identify and swat it. ‘Wake me when we get there,’ I whisper and fall asleep.
I awake as we pull into my road.
‘Which one is it?’ says Tom.
‘Mm, it’s too dark to tell,’ I say, rubbing my eyes – and louder – ‘If you stop here, please, that’ll be fine!’
We hop out and I spy pebble-dash and realise my flat is the next one along. I am about to open the gate when Tom tenses and I stop instinctively. I peer into the shadows and see a figure slumped on my doorstep. And it is only as the figure jerks and stumbles to its feet that my vague buzzy thought pings into focus and hammers sharp and fast and deep into my still fuzzy brain.
Jasper.
I stand as frozen as a particularly dim-witted pillar of salt while Jasper blinks at me. Then he blinks at Tom, and growls, ‘Who the hell are you?’
Tom replies coolly, ‘No, who are you?’
Jasper says, ‘I’m her fucking live-in boyfriend, you prick.’
Tom drops my hand from his grasp like a dead thing. To Jasper, he says icily, ‘My mistake.’ To me, he says nothing. He whistles at the departing taxi – which screams to a surprised halt – and steps in.
I watch him speed into the night and I know he’s gone for ever.
Chapter 42
BEING THE LEAST attractive teenager in my class (so you can imagine) spectacles were not an option. I spent two years squinting before my maths teacher – a spiteful man if there ever was one – cornered my mother at a parents’ evening and told her I was as blind as a retired bat and rubbish at sums. The next day she dragged me to an optician who asked me to read out ‘the letters’ on a blank white board then mysteriously declared that my eyesight was ‘minus five and a half’.
When, soon after, I was presented with the monstrosity of an NHS pair of glasses I came close to tears. But when I put them on I felt like Dorothy entering Munchkinland. I could see! The world was crisp! It had sharp edges! Trees weren’t fuzzy! They were precise! They had millions of individual leaves! Car number plates! They had numbers on them! The transformation was total and miraculous. After so long living with the vision of a cheap underwater camera, here I was – abruptly blessed with the potent wonder of perfect sight.
And, as Tom leaves my life, I relive that seminal moment where everything looms into focus. All that is blurred becomes clear. But this time it’s as painful as if I were rubbing crushed glass into my eyes. Meanwhile Jasper shouts and shouts, but his words wash over me and leave me untouched.
‘Who the heck was that tosser i’ve been waiting here since one a.m. i told you i lost the key i’m freezing my arse off here where the hell have you been it’s a ridiculous hour how dare you leave me out here all night it’s unacceptable i won’t stand for it i need to change i was walking home from the station and some spotty little oiks drove past in an escort and threw eggs at me this area you live in its like a housing estate who was that git how dare he ask who i am who’s he i want an answer i won’t—’
I hardly hear him. I watch the taxi shrink and disappear, taking all my tomorrows with it. This can’t be real. It’s not allowed. It’s not what I deserve. I stare at the horizon in the hope that Tom will do a Mills & Boon and come beetling back. He doesn’t. Fuck. How can this happen. I take Jasper in out of kindness (mostly) and the toad repays me by scuppering my life. To lose Tom once, ouch. To lose him twice. That’s not carelessness, that’s obscene.
How could I forget that I was sharing my bathroom with the worst flatmate since me? How could my honeycomb brain sieve through the relevent facts and let the queen bee slip through? And Jasper. How could he? It becomes mortifyingly obvious that he fancies living rent-free but hasn’t fancied me for the best part of a year. To describe himself as my live-in boyfriend is not only a wilful contravention of the Property Misrepresentations Act, it is a large, malicious, havoc-wreaking lie.
As my future crumbles, I stand still. As if a sudden move might shake my frozen emotions from their cubbyholes and create chaos, like a thousand ball bearings thrown on a marble floor.
My unspeakable grief will stay put while I deal with its catalyst. Then I walk slowly to the front door – each step is like wading through glue – unlock it and look straight at Jasper.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say calmly. ‘There was an emergency. But wait there. I have a surprise for you.’ Jasper opens his large mouth to object as I shut the door on him. I glide upstairs – thinking how did I ever date a man with a jaw like a velociraptor? – and walk into the lounge where his wicker chairs await. I walk to my pile of CDs and search for a suitable soundtrack. Ah yes. Then I heave open the bay window.
Jasper steps backwards, stumbles over a stray piece of wire embedded in the lawn, and shouts angrily, ‘What the heck’s going on?’
It’s like someone’s pressed a switch on my back marked ‘insanity’. A fusion of shock from Tina’s cigarette burns and Tom walking away. I sing, ‘It’s a surprise! You’ll find out in a moment!’ I survey the devastation that is my new lounge. Jasper’s clothes are strewn over the floor. I press ‘play’, pick up a pair of white Y-fronts and throw them out of the window.
Surprisingly – I was reserve for the netball C team – they hit Jasper full in the face. He looks as shocked as when he first saw me park the Toyota (I am, quite simply, brilliant).
I lean from the window to watch what he does. And, as an anthropological exercise, it’s worth it. Jasper rips the pants from his face and screams, ‘What the heck was that for? You’ – he pauses in disbelief as I retreat inside – ‘Let me in, for heaven’s sake! What the heck are you playing at?’ He soon finds out. I stagger to the window with his suitcase, position myself against the ledge so I’m stable, and sling it out on to the grass. It lands in a large puddle. Jasper leaps nimbly aside to save his head from being crushed.
‘Stop it!’ he bawls. ‘What are you doing, you madwoman? Say something! Why are you doing this?’
He scrabbles frantically about the garden trying to stuff shoes, socks, trousers, vests, pants, and shirts back into the case, and I laugh and sing ‘Ja-spaar! Ready or not?’
He looks up and screeches ‘Noooooo!’ as I fling the first of the nautical paintings into the road like a frisbee. It makes a pretty tinkle as the glass shatters.
I turn up ‘Heart of Glass’ as loud as it will go and – in a mad, bitchy sort of way – crow, ‘I love the sound of breaking glass!’
Jasper drops his college scarf – which hails from a college he didn’t attend – and runs into the road gibbering. He tenderly cradles the bits of gilt frame and I almost feel sorry for him. I drop the other two ship paintings so they land on the flowerbed. Then I trot back to the stereo, pray the neighbours will forgive me, and change the CD. Preferably something upbeat to stop me tailing Jasper’s possessions out of the window. After a minute – during which I can hear squeaks of rage emanating from the front garden – I find what I’m looking for. The music that has the same effect on Jasper as sunshine on vampires. Oh yes. Country music.
Jasper’s wicker chairs fall to their deaths to the tune of ‘Let Your Love Flow’. He begs and pleads from the pavement but no deal. I hum along (even though I know it’s vastly uncool) and – when I find another stray pair of Y-fronts – twirl them around my finger and ping them into the atmosphere while belting out the words to ‘Ring of Fire’. Fatboy, who is washing himself on the table, stops licking, paw mid-air, and stares. I hit a high note and his ears flatten in fright. La la la. Jasper’s wicker coffee table takes flight to a rousing background of ‘Stand By Your Man’.
‘Stop it!’ sobs Jasper, nursing a detached piece of wicker. ‘Turn it off! I’m sorry! Please!’ Reluctantly I blip off the music.
‘Thank fuck,’ gasps Jasper (and everyone else in my street.) I lean out of the window and smile. I am the Ice Queen and loving it. Jasper brandishes the snapped wicker leg and yells, ‘Look what you’ve done! You, you . . . wicker killer!’ I laugh nastily, which makes him stamp his foot. He bellows, ‘Shut up! Oh heck, look at my stuff! Helen! Stop it! You’re being weird! Please! I’ve got nowhere to go! Be reasonable!’ I disappear from the window to retrieve Jasper’s Egyptian cotton which – I suddenly remember – is sitting sodden in my washing machine. I carry it to the sill and drop it on him. ‘You bitch!’ he shrieks. ‘What are you doing?’
I shout, ‘What does it look like, wanker?’ I see the blue-and-white baseball cap slung over a chair, snatch it up, and roar, ‘Catch!’
Jasper leaps into the air, but alas, it lands on a lamp-post. He clutches his head in despair and yells, ‘Okay! Okay! I’m sorry! Please! Let me in! I’ve got no transport! Just till tomorrow?’
I stick my head out and sing, ‘Learn to drive! You’ve got your crap furniture and your pointless hat, now fuck off!’
Jasper strikes a pose reminiscent of Hugh Grant at his most piteous. ‘But where?’ he bleats, spreading his hands wide.
I bellow, ‘I don’t care! Goodbye, Jasper!’ Then I slam the window and draw the blinds. I feel briefly elated – as if the albatross round my neck has eaten the chip on my shoulder and flown off – and blip on ‘Sea of Heartbreak’. I am free. I snatch up Fatboy and whirl him around my de-wickered lounge in a dance of defiance, but he struggles, whines, claws me in the chest, and runs off. Story of my bloody life.
I switch off the stereo and walk into my bedroom in silence. Then I sit on my bed and think of Tom. Tom is gone. What have I done? What have I done? I am seized with dread – a dread of having made the most terrible mistake of my life. I only have one life and I’ve fucked it up! My head swirls with the irony of Tom and me in a taxi zooming away from Tina’s doom towards mine. All I can think is that I was standing at the beginning of the rest of my life and I tripped over the starting line. The tears fall and I clutch my stomach and scream. I scream and scream until my throat hurts (and the person next door bangs on the wall). Then I stare dully at my bright yellow walls and think, what’s the point? I wonder if this is what bereavement is like? To feel that the truth is unacceptable.
I sit on my bed until sunrise and ache from the heart. I tell myself Tina’s pain is worse but the ache throbs worse than ever. I pull the curtains, curl up under the duvet and try to lose consciousness. When sleep comes, it’s a relief. It’s not that I can’t go on. That I can’t live without Tom. People die and the people who love them go on living. And Tom isn’t dead. Just dead to me. So if I said that I couldn’t live without Tom it wouldn’t be true. Of course I can live without him.
It’s just that it isn’t going to be much fun.
Chapter 43
IF I HAD an electrode attached to my toe which buzzed every time I did something stupid, maybe I’d be more efficient at learning from my mistakes. As it is, I make the same idiotic blunders again and again and again and again until I get so sick of the consequences I annoy myself into changing habit. For example, if I get up in the night to go to the toilet and jab my foot on a spike-heeled shoe, it will take a dozen stabbings before I pick the stiletto off the floor and stick it in the wardrobe. If I set my alarm for 7.30 with the intention of going for a run, I have to fall asleep again at 7.31 and be late for work at least nine times before I stop pretending I can face anything other than a pillow before 8.00. Laetitia’s verbal warning also helped.
But Tom and Jasper’s unscheduled meeting was in its own league. I didn’t need a next time. My plans for the next six decades were botched, which piqued me sufficiently to draw up resolutions. Never again would I be caught out by auto error. No longer would I mismanage my life. Fatboy would eat at 8.15 a.m. and again at 7.30 p.m. with a veterinary-approved snack before bedtime. From now on grazing would be outlawed (for both household members). I’d shop at the supermarket weekly instead of paying a daily premium at the corner shop. I’d b- b-ugh, budget. I’d only get drunk on occasions. I’d give more to charity, in particular unglamorous causes. I’d visit museums and Nana Flo. I’d teach myself Italian with a tape. I’d stop picking my lip and learn about car maintenance. I’d drink twelve glasses of water every day and be hydrated.
The list was long and imposing, but that week I was on time for work every day and forcibly courteous to Laetitia, even when she exclaimed, ‘Not again! Your bladder must be the size of a thimble!’ (I bit back the reply, ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen a thimble.’) My flat was pristine to the point that I reached the neolithic stratum in my linen basket. I stopped discussing other people’s relationships apart from to tell Lizzy about Tina (with the heroine’s permission). I listened to the forecast on Radio Four every night and was appropriately attired for the weather. Although if I’d dressed to suit my mood I’d have worn sackcloth. Not even a visit to see Grease with my mother cheered me. Not even when she bought the soundtrack and said, ‘Darling, do you think I’m too old to wear my hair in a ponytail?’ Not even when we went for a pizza and I told her about Tina and she cried, ‘And to think you used to be such a selfish girl!’ As Vivienne’s son Jeremy is fond of saying, Get her!
I even joined Lizzy at her gym and spent thirty-five minutes doing up my laces in the changing rooms and listening to a pair of papier mâché women s
queak at each other, ‘I’m huge, you’re tiny! . . . No, you’re tiny! . . . No, I’m huge! . . . No you’re not, you’re tiny!’ etc. My heart wondered if there was a tiny chance that Tom might listen if I called to explain but my head crushed all hope flat. From nowhere I recalled a rule of baseball – three strikes and you’re out. I’d blown it. By Friday I was as miserable as sin and as dull as godliness. I tore up the list and threw it in the bin. But I still felt dead inside.
On Saturday though, I cheer up. Not much – I’ll categorically never know happiness again and the best I can hope for is to become a rubbish-hoarding recluse – but a little. I ping from suicide watch (metaphorically, as no one seems to care enough to watch me) to common garden depression. The reason for this mood twitch is that I hear from Luke.
Since last Saturday Luke hasn’t budged from Tina’s side. Whereas I haven’t seen her since the hospital. I wanted to visit last Sunday but, Luke informed me, she was resting. When I rang back later, Luke told me that a plain clothes officer had come round but Tina had decided not to give a statement. ‘But why?’ I cried.
‘She doesn’t want to,’ he replied.
‘But she must!’ I exclaimed.
‘We can’t make her,’ said Luke.
‘I suppose not,’ I said sadly. ‘Can I speak to her?’
Luke said, ‘She’s not up to being bullied, so only if you promise not to nag her.’
I promised and was passed on to Tina, although I was a little hurt by this. (Luke thinks I’m a nagger when we’ve never even dated? My reputation precedes me.) Tina informed me she was feeling better. And that the police were probably going to prosecute anyway. And that she had told her family. And that her parents were on their way over. Oh, and that she was almost sure she never wanted to see Adrian again.
Ideally, I’d have preferred Tina to drag Adrian through the courts, for the national press to pounce on the case and broadcast it far and wide, complete with screaming headlines and front page mugshots, and for Adrian to be drummed out of Maida Vale and ostracised from Aquascutum. And to lose his job not because it was bad publicity for the firm but because his male boss would – as he’d ringingly tell the clamouring reporters – rather cut off his own bonus than employ a violent criminal. And for Adrian to lose his job anyway because you can’t work as an architect when you’re spending the next forty years in a dank prison.