A Virtual Affair

by Tracie Podger

  I climbed in the passenger seat of Carla’s car, Dini was settled in the back and she backed out of the drive. I was silent until we hit the Atlantic Highway.

  “Tell me again,” I whispered.

  “Oh, Jayne. I can’t.”

  “Please, tell me again.”

  I hadn’t looked at her. I knew she was crying; I could hear it in her voice.

  “Ben was driving home, they think his car skidded on some ice. I don’t know all the details. He hit his head.”

  “And you think he’s dead?”

  “He’s… He didn’t make it. They got him to the hospital but he didn’t make it.”

  “Who was with him?”

  She didn’t answer me. I sunk in my seat and cradled my legs to my chest. Reality was starting to creep into my thoughts. My son was dead. I cried. I cried so hard my stomach hurt.

  “He died alone, didn’t he?” I said between sobs.

  Again, she didn’t answer and I knew then. While I’d been having the most amazing time of my life, while I’d been in the arms of a man only two people knew about, while I’d been brought to orgasm after orgasm, my son had died alone. The guilt consumed me. I heaved.

  Carla screeched to a halt on the hard shoulder of the motorway just in time for me to open the door and throw up over the tarmac. Exhausted, I slumped back into the car seat and we continued the journey in silence.

  My nerves were jangling as we pulled up onto my drive. Every light in the house was blazing. The front door opened as I exited the car. My mum stood on the doorstep with tears streaming down her face. I ran to her and she wrapped her arms around me. She led me into the living room. Kerry was sat on the sofa with her mum. She stood. I walked towards her and she sobbed into my chest. I sat her down and took the seat vacated by her mother.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. A policeman knocked on the door. I panicked and called Carla.” She was inconsolable.

  While we sat, a policewoman walked from the kitchen carrying a tray of mugs. It irked me that she had been helping herself in my house. She placed the tray on the coffee table then introduced herself as a Family Liaison Officer. I nodded at her.

  “I want to see my son,” I said.

  “I’ll make some calls,” she replied.

  I had no idea what to do. I kept my arm around Kerry’s shoulder and watched people make calls, bustle around as if they knew what to do.

  “Has anyone contacted Michael?” I asked.

  “He’s on his way,” Carla replied.

  “From Japan?”

  “No, he’s at his mother’s.”

  “Casey!”

  “She’s with Michael,” my mum answered.

  “Why? Why is she not here?”

  No one answered me. I was numb. I was cold, so cold that I couldn’t stop shivering. I wouldn’t believe it until I’d seen my son.

  The policewoman spoke to Carla and I was told that I could see Ben.

  “Do you want to come?” I asked Kerry.

  She nodded and I asked Carla to let Michael know. I needed to go, I needed to see for myself. I refused to allow myself to believe what I’d been told, and I refused to cry anymore until the nightmare was over.

  Kerry and I were taken by police car to the hospital. When we arrived I saw Michael pacing. We walked towards him.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he shouted.

  His vicious tone halted me in my tracks.

  “My son died alone. Where have you been?” he asked again.

  The policewoman stepped between us.

  “Why don’t we find out where Ben is? You can discuss this later,” she said. I grew to like her then.

  We were taken to a room and asked to wait. Michael continued to pace while ignoring us, and my blood started to boil. It could have only been minutes, but sitting in the confines of that room with the anger radiating from Michael and suffocating me had me lose track of time.

  “We’re ready for you now,” I heard. A doctor had walked into the room.

  We followed. I wasn’t ready. My head pounded, my palms sweated and my chest hurt. The door was opened and I hesitated. I could see him. I could see my son lying on a bed with a sheet covering him, leaving only his head exposed.

  They had shaved his hair. Why had they shaved his hair?

  I sobbed as I walked forward. I wasn’t aware of anyone else in the room; it was just Ben and me. I closed my eyes as I reached out to touch his cheek.

  “He’s cold. He needs a blanket,” I whispered.

  I could hear someone talking; a clinical description was being given as to what had happened to my son. I didn’t want to listen, I didn’t want to know. My son was dead.

  I ran from the room, passing a sobbing Kerry on the way. I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t help her. I needed air. I felt as if I was suffocating, couldn’t drag enough oxygen into my lungs. In my head, or maybe it was real, I screamed until I reached the front door and ran out into the early morning. I slid down a wall onto the dirty pavement and let my head fall to my knees.

  “Shall I take you home?”

  I looked up and into the eyes of the Liaison Officer. Kerry stood beside her and I forced myself to my feet. I pulled Kerry into my arms but I had no words of comfort.

  Michael strode past and climbed into his car. He roared away without a word to us. When we arrived home, I noticed his car parked outside my house. I also saw my own car parked on the drive.

  As I walked into the living room I felt the hostility. My in-laws stood with Casey between them. Carla stood next to Stefan. Michael stood with his arms folded over his chest and leaned against the window.

  “Where were you, and who is this?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Carla answered.

  I walked towards Casey with outstretched arms; I expected her to run to me. Instead, I watched her take a step back, shielding herself behind her grandfather.

  “So, while my brother died, alone, you were on holiday fucking this man?” She spat the words at me.

  I was stunned into silence.

  “Casey!” For the first time Kerry had spoken.

  “Don’t you ‘Casey’ me. My brother died and she should have been there!”

  “How about you? Or him? Either of you could have got there. You knew, Michael. They told you but not me. I’m carrying his child and you didn’t think to tell me. You sent a policeman here,” Kerry said.

  “Is that true?” I asked. The room quietened. “You knew and you didn’t get to our son? You fucking coward.”

  I flew at him. Years of frustration, of watching him neglect his only son exploded from me. I punch, kicked, scratched, but before I’d managed to do any real damage, I felt two arms wrap around me. I screamed and kicked out as I was pulled away.

  “Baby, shush. Calm down,” Stefan said.

  I heard a bitter laugh. Casey and the in-laws walked towards me; I was still trapped in Stefan’s arms.

  “You’re a slut,” my daughter said before she slapped my face.

  I looked at her. “Get out of my house!” I screamed at them all. “Get out of my fucking house!”

  As they walked away, I collapsed to the floor, a sobbing mess. The only noise in the room was tears and heartbreak.

  “I should have been there,” I whispered.

  Stefan knelt beside me; I scrambled back. I felt dirty, I felt like the slut my daughter had called me. I was fucking a man in secret while my son lay dying. I knew I couldn’t have saved him but I should have held his hand. I should have whispered words of comfort as he took his last breaths. I should have been the one to tell Kerry and not a stranger.

  “You need to go,” I said. I couldn’t look at him.

  “Don’t do this,” he whispered.

  “Please, leave me alone, just for a while. I should have been here, Casey is right.”

  “Casey is not right, Jayne,” Carla said.

  I stood and walked o
ut of the room, covering my ears with my hands. I needed to be alone, and I headed for my bedroom. I locked the door and threw myself on the bed. As I buried my head in my pillow, I cried. Every fibre of my being hurt. I cursed and begged God in equal measure. I wanted to scream, I wanted to wake up and it all have been a dream.

  I don’t know how long I’d been on my bed, but the room had darkened. My throat was sore, my eyes so puffy they hardly opened, and the skin on my face was chapped from my salty tears. I heard a gentle knock on the door.

  “Please let me in,” my mum said.

  I slid my aching body from the bed and crossed the room. As I opened the door, fresh tears fell.

  “Oh, Mum,” I said.

  She led me back to the bed and sat beside me, cradling me in her arms. She rocked me like she had when I’d been a child.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I whispered.

  “I know, darling.”

  There were really no words, what did one say?

  “Will you come downstairs? Maybe get a drink of something?”

  I stood. Every step I took caused my muscles to throb and my head to spin. Exhaustion had crept into every bone.

  Kerry was curled up on the sofa, her mum sat beside her with her hand resting on her thigh. Carla rushed over to me.

  “Come and sit down,” she said.

  I looked around the room. “He’s gone to my house,” she said.

  There was a little part of me disappointed but I nodded anyway.

  It was the guilt that consumed me. It ate away at me like a cancer. My stomach was a cauldron of acid that burned, but I welcomed the pain. It was my punishment for what I’d done.

  As the days wore on I sunk more and more into a world of my own. I stopped speaking, I hadn’t showered and I couldn’t eat. I slept a lot, totally exhausted all the time. I found it hard to walk even, every step was as arduous as running through treacle.

  Carla, my mum, and even Kerry in the end, badgered me to speak to Stefan. He called, he texted, he’d even turned up at the house but I couldn’t see him. As inexplicable as it was, I didn’t want him to see me in the state I was. Yet I made no effort to change that. Nothing made sense. I would look at the people in the room and knew they were talking but I didn’t hear them. All I heard were four words swimming around my head.

  Shut the fuck up.

  Meal after meal congealed on plates that had been placed in front of me. I had no desire to eat. It was enough to sip at the glass of water that was constantly refreshed.

  I would look at the worried expressions on Carla and my mum’s faces and a layer of guilt was added. It weighed so heavily on my heart that I willed it to stop beating. I didn’t want to live. I would wake each morning and cry that I hadn’t died in the night. I didn’t want to live in a world where I was thought of as a slut, where such hostility was thrown my way, and where my precious son was dead.

  “He’s going to leave today. Please, see him before he goes,” I heard Carla say.

  I furrowed my brow. Who was leaving?

  “Ben’s leaving?” I said.

  I watched her look towards my mum. Tears rolled down her cheeks and I shut down before she answered.

  “You need to shower. I want you up. Now, young lady.”

  I looked at my mum. The person I saw was the mum I’d had thirty years ago. She stood with her hands on her hips. I stood, although the effort made me wince. I hadn’t left the sofa in days.

  I followed her up the stairs and into the bathroom. She stripped me of my clothes, my arms were too weak to help. I stepped under the shower and waited for her to turn the dial. Not even the shock of the cold before the water warmed roused me. I stood with my arms hanging by my side and let the water run over me. Through the haze, the blurred vision, I saw a nailbrush. I reached for it. In my foggy brain I had the idea that it would clean the ‘slut’ from me.

  I scrubbed my skin until it was red raw, until it bled in places. I continued to scrub until it was snatched from my hand. I cried; I wanted it back. If I bled, I would be cleansed. I wanted to bleed. I needed to bleed.

  Mum turned off the shower and wrapped a towel around my body. I stared at my arms, at the raw skin and at small dots of blood gently oozing to the surface. It comforted me. The sight of my blood quietened the screaming in my head, its metallic smell overpowered the scent of the slut on my skin. I smeared it up my arm.

  “What have you done?” she whispered. I felt the anguish in her voice like a punch to my gut, and another layer of guilt was added.

  A pair of fresh pyjamas was laid out on the bed. I was helped into them before I collapsed under a clean duvet. I needed to sleep. It was only during sleep that my brain stilled enough for me to remember my son, and I wanted to remember him, every minute of the day.

  I was woken the following day, or it could have been days later, I had no idea, by Carla and my mum. A woman accompanied them. She sat on the edge of my bed and had kind eyes; I distinctly remembered her kind eyes.

  “Jayne, I’m Dr. Hogan. Do you think we can have a chat?”

  I looked at her. “The weather is kind of mild right now, don’t you think?”

  She smiled. I didn’t want her to smile. I felt mean that I had been so rude, and yet another layer of guilt was added.

  I closed my eyes. “My son died. I wasn’t there holding his hand like a mother should have been. Instead, do you want to know where I was?” My voice was challenging.

  “I was having the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. A man, a man no one knows, was fucking my brains out. I’ve been having an affair; I caused the break up of his marriage. My family hates me, my daughter thinks I’m a slut, and she’d be right if she knew what I’d actually done.”

  The words spewed from my mouth, and I couldn’t stop them.

  “I’ve been selfish, self absorbed, and right now, Dr. Hogan, I just want to die. I want to close my eyes and never wake up. I get angry every time I do. How’s that for fucking starters?” The anger in my voice made my mouth acidic.

  “I think that’s a great start. How do we progress from here?” she asked.

  “How do we progress? I have no fucking idea.”

  “You need help to process this.”

  “I need to close my eyes and for it all to be a dream. I need to turn back the clock. I need for my son to walk through that door and it all be a terrible joke.”

  I shut down, conversation over. I turned on my side and closed my eyes.

  I felt the bed move as she stood. The bedroom door closed and I heard whispered voices from beyond. I had no inclination to know what the conversation was about.

  An hour or so later the bedroom door opened again. I sighed, irritated by the disturbance.

  “Jayne, I’ve brought you tea,” I heard. I sat up at the sound of Kerry’s voice.

  “Oh, baby. Come here,” I said.

  She shuffled across the bed to sit beside me. She looked shocking; she’d lost so much weight. I should have been looking after her.

  “Michael is arranging the funeral, Jayne. We need to stop that. Ben wouldn’t want to be buried. Please help me. I have no say here.”

  I looked at her, at the pleading in her eyes. I lowered my gaze to her hand, laid protectively over her stomach, over her child. “I need my phone.”

  She eased herself from the bed and I noticed how large her bump had become. The baby was due in a little over a month and I closed my eyes against yet more tears.

  It wasn’t Kerry that returned to the bedroom but Carla. She sat next to me and took my hand in hers.

  “I’ve spoken to Michael. You can’t ring him, Jayne.”

  “Why?”

  She took a deep breath. “He wanted to report you for assault. I’ve got my lawyer involved because things are going to get nasty. He’s filing for divorce on the grounds of adultery.”

  I was too stunned to speak at first. “He’s the one who had an affair, we’re separated,” I said.

  “It’s one of t
hose quirks, but it doesn’t matter who files for what. I’m going to fight tooth and nail for you.”

  “What do I do?”

  “You need to get up, you need to help me fight.”

  “I don’t have the energy. I think I have flu.”

  “You’ve lost your son. You’re spiralling into depression and no one can blame you for that. But I need you to help us. Stefan calls every day, will you speak to him?”

  “I can’t. I just…can’t.”

  “But why?”

  How could I explain how I felt? I didn’t know myself. I just knew there was blackness in my mind and it was comforting. The screaming, the crying, the thinking had all stopped. I was in a black hole and I wanted to stay there. The darkness surrounded me; I didn’t have to feel. I didn’t have to remember or take responsibility for anything. If I spoke to Stefan it would all come back, and I was scared. I was terrified I’d do the one thing that I actually wanted to do—kill myself.

  I’d thought of dying over the past few days. I would lay at night wide awake and know, if I had the energy, I could walk downstairs and swallow enough pills to stop the hurt—forever. Something always pinned me to the bed, something that shimmered in the moonlight and hung on my bedpost. I just needed a few more days.

  “Please, help Kerry,” I whispered.

  “I will, believe me, I will. I have some medication for you, something for your flu.”

  She held in her hand a small white tablet. I eyed it suspiciously.

  “I don’t need anything for the flu.”

  “It’s an anti-depressant, just to get you over the next couple of days.”

  “Who’s idea was that?”

  “Dr. Hogan thought you needed something just to help with the grief.”

  “I just need help with the funeral. I’ll be fine, I can deal with my grief. Surely I’m allowed to grieve?”

  She sighed and left the tablet on the bedside cabinet.

  “I don’t know what to do, to help.” Her voice sounded small.

  “I just need someone to stop this funeral. Ben can’t be buried.” I was desperate.