Lover

by Anna Raverat

  * * *

  Louise Phelps answers her phone straightaway.

  “This is Kate. Adam’s wife.”

  “Hello,” she replies, sounding nervous.

  “I found the emails between you and my husband. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing,” she says. “Nothing is going on. We were emailing, and I suppose the emails did get a bit flirty, but nothing apart from that.”

  “But you did see each other,” I assert.

  “Yes, just once—”

  “Did you have sex with him?”

  “No! No! I promise you, no. Nothing like that at all.”

  “Does your husband know about this?”

  “No. He doesn’t and if he found out he would never forgive me. Please don’t tell him. It was stupid and I am really, really sorry.”

  She sounds wretched, and young. I feel suddenly very tired and very bored. Maybe this isn’t a crisis. Maybe it is just a colossal pain in the arse, something we have to get through, like admin—a big pile of marriage admin.

  * * *

  The emails brought back memories of us fighting, years ago, over another work colleague. Before the children were born, when Adam worked at an advertising agency in Soho, there was a group who used to do lunch and after-work drinks together—innocuous, until I started to hear the name Sara a bit too often and with a bit too much enthusiasm, which in itself would have been OK, but one weekend when I was away one of the group invited the rest to lunch at a country pub and Adam took Sara on the back of his motorbike. We had a huge row and it was uncomfortable between us for a while, but a few months later he moved jobs and the motorbike ride faded into the horizon. I try to remember the last time he took me out on the back of his motorbike.

  “Are you in touch with Sara?”

  “Who? Oh, her. No. Not at all. Look, Kate, it was just a stupid email flirtation and that one drink—”

  “—with Bob and Tim,” I supplied.

  Adam nodded.

  “So where were Bob and Tim sitting?” I asked.

  “They were sitting next to each other and we were sitting next to each other.”

  “And did you stay like that or did you move around?”

  “Stayed like that, pretty much.”

  “So basically you were talking to her the whole night.”

  “Basically, yes.”

  “And what did you talk about?”

  “Work, mainly. She’s not working now, since she had the baby, and she’s been quite down—postnatal depression.”

  “You want me to feel sorry for her?”

  “No, I’m just saying—”

  “Because I DON’T feel sorry for her—”

  “I know.”

  “She knows you’re married.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s married too.”

  “Yes,” says Adam quietly. He’d told me about that motorbike ride with Sara years ago, but he had hidden this thing with Louise Phelps and I had uncovered it and was he now being sincere? Tone is important. Also, it’s important to call things correctly, but in this case it was difficult—not quite an affair but more than a flirtation; possibly Adam’s term “inappropriate friendship” was the nearest, but it sounded so silly that I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Adam had always teased me about being a pedant, and I would correct him: not pedantic but precise, and although this was part of the joke it really did feel important, because finding the right word can be very settling—like telling, or being told, the truth.

  “You kissed her.”

  “Very briefly, just a peck.”

  “Yes, but on the lips. She’s postnatally depressed and she lives in rural East Kent, Adam. Of course she thought you were Prince Charming—the big boss in the big city making big eyes at her.”

  Fury balloons up inside me and just as quickly the air escapes, my anger shrivels, and I stop shouting because in fact I do feel a bit sorry for Louise and because Adam isn’t the big boss anymore and actually it’s possible that he is depressed too. He didn’t leave his well-paid, secure job to satisfy a burning desire to set up on his own; he left because he couldn’t stand it. He started to complain about his work more and more. “It’s bullshit,” he would say, frustrated, and his situation gradually worsened until he came home from work one day and lay down on the sitting-room floor in his mac and suit and tie and cuff links and shiny shoes—it was a collapse, really—his leather briefcase beside him like a brick. I knelt down and stroked his hair, helped him up off the floor, hung up his coat, unlaced his shoes and loosened his tie, sat him on the sofa and held him. I told him he didn’t have to do that job anymore; we could sell the house, leave London, and live differently, because nothing was worth him feeling that way.

  His despair, him being lost in it, was frightening. After Hester was born, I stopped work to look after the girls, so we relied on his salary. We talked about what we could do, where we could go. We discussed moving to Cornwall, but when we thought about actually living there all we could imagine was closed fudge shops in February, so we decided to stay in London. My parents are still in Yorkshire in the home my brother and I grew up in; Adam’s live in Nottingham. We couldn’t imagine setting up in those places either; relocating and starting again anywhere would take a whole lot of energy that we just didn’t have.

  Three months later he left his job and we set out on a new life—except it was the same as the old one, with far less money. Adam didn’t get happier and things between us became harder—instead of plotting his escape together we argued more and more, which was understandable given the pressures of having a young family, not enough money, and getting his business up and running. I told myself that it would take a while to adjust. That was three years ago.

  In The Happy Couple: How to Make Long-Term Relationships Last and Thrive, Dr. Janis B. Rosenfeld and Dr. Michael Abrahams MD say any crisis can be weathered if the relationship is strong enough. I believe them. Their top three indicators of a fit and healthy relationship are talking, spending time together, and satisfying sex. I want a marriage like they describe, but ours is limping along badly and I can’t blame it all on a pretty ex-colleague from rural East Kent. Drs. Rosenfeld and Abrahams say that sometimes it takes a crisis to bring about change. Unfortunately, they don’t define “crisis.” I’m not sure Louise qualifies, though Adam’s collapse on the sitting-room floor probably does. In any case, according to their criteria, we’re in trouble.

  “We don’t talk and we don’t spend time together,” I say.

  “We are now,” says Adam.

  “And we hardly ever have sex.”

  He sighs. We are both quiet.

  “You know that book I’m reading?” I ask.

  “Which one?”

  “The one about long-term relationships—in that, they say that something like this can actually be good.”

  “How?” The incredulity in his voice makes me smile. If he thinks things are terrible, then maybe he’s not hiding anything. Maybe it was a simple fuck-up, an error of judgment caught just in time, a problem that can be fixed.

  A noise comes from the children’s bedroom—a sleepy whimper that we both know will grow into a cross child if it is not attended to immediately.

  “I’ll go,” says Adam.

  While he’s upstairs, I just sit. I am hollowed out by exhaustion, ready to collapse inward. I feel myself give up the fight. I see the spines of our photograph albums, wedged in on the shelf above the TV. Not long ago I finally got round to adding snaps from a fortnight in Crete we’d had when Milla was eighteen months old and I was pregnant with Hester, our best family holiday. We’d booked last minute and found a one-bedroom villa in a lemon grove, set apart from a network of larger villas around a swimming pool. From the shade of the trees we watched the world go by. The owner was a tall, strong man in his sixties with a deep tan and long, thick white hair and beard. He would water the plants, taking his time, trimming the grass where needed and, with the sharp side of
his shovel, cutting away the rogue branches sprouting out of tree trunks. The courtyard was lined with large terra-cotta pots and raised beds: more lemon trees, roses, geraniums, jasmine, and camellias. The cleaning lady worked quietly; all you could hear was the creak of her sandals. Early each morning she would sweep the dropped blossom into scented heaps.

  Our tiny cottage was the cheap option but we loved it—or I thought we had. That’s when Adam first started to complain about his job; was he unhappy even then? He would take Milla to buy bread for breakfast; I’d set the table with orange juice and coffee, butter and honey, and they’d come back with Milla carrying a warm loaf, proud and delighted. Most days we’d take a siesta after lunch, snoozing together on the big bed in the sunlit room.

  Nowadays we go to bed separately. I try to remember when that started and when we began having arguments about money, which I would like to write off as surface but which go deep into who we are and how we live. Most nights I go upstairs first, Adam waiting until he assumes I am asleep. Often, very late, he folds laundry and hangs up washing. He moves carefully on the landing, but there’s a creaky floorboard in front of the airing cupboard that always wakes me up. I lie in bed listening, waiting, but when he’s finished folding clothes he goes into the study and quietly closes the door.

  In the mornings I catch him in the kitchen as he’s busying about refilling Charlie’s water or getting out cereal or taking things over to the dishwasher. Sleep-softened, I put my arms around him, nuzzle and kiss him, and he’ll squeeze me. “Hug me with both hands,” I say, and sometimes then he will put down the bowl or the box or whatever he’s carrying and hold me properly.

  * * *

  Upstairs the toilet flushes, and I hear the familiar weight and timing of Adam’s footfall as he comes back down.

  “It was Hester, she kicked her duvet off again. Maybe we should get her one of those sleeping-bag things you told me about.”

  I nod.

  “You look knackered,” says Adam.

  “Thanks,” I say, but I can’t muster any real pique because I know he doesn’t mean it like that.

  “I don’t mean it like that,” he says gently. “Shall I make you a cup of tea?”

  I listen to Adam moving around the kitchen, the soft pad of his socks on the tiles. He’s unpacking the groceries—I can hear the tall corner cupboard open, tins knocking against bottles, fat bags of pasta rustling as he shoves them onto the shelf, the cupboard closing and now the rush of the tap. I imagine the amber light as I hear the click of the kettle being switched on. The cupboard door creaks as it opens because the bottom screw needs tightening, the lid clatters on the work surface as he takes a tea bag from the old gold tin that I like. A little tap of wood on wood as the door closes again, a spoon clinks in a cup and the background noise of the kettle—a sort of air-shuffle—gradually loudens and obscures other sounds. The steam will be rising up past the pile of paper on top of the fridge, which includes shopping lists, bills and bank statements, and a letter from the school about a trip to the Museum of London with a permission slip that needs signing. I can be in the room without being in the room. I switch on the TV; it’s the news. There’s a story about a would-be terrorist whose dastardly plot was sniffed out by a dog at Heathrow and not a police dog either but a lay-dog owned by a member of the public, and now this dog is a hero.

  Adam comes in with the tea in my favorite cup, a gesture that is not lost on me but I don’t acknowledge it. From the kitchen I hear the low, comforting thrum of the dishwasher. He sits down on the sofa at a strange new proximity—usually when we are in the middle of a row there’s at least a meter between us, but tonight Adam puts himself only half a meter away. It’s another gesture, and this time I do respond, because if he is prepared to sit in the gulf between us then the least I can do is throw him a line.

  “Have you heard about this dog?” I ask.

  “Yeah, brilliant, isn’t it?”

  “The girls will love that story,” I say.

  “I told them about it today, they did love it. Milla wants to train Charlie.”

  “To do what?”

  “Anything. I said we could try getting him to beg.”

  “I should try getting you to beg. For forgiveness.”

  “I will—I am,” he says, faltering—he thought we’d left the war zone.

  “Charlie’s a bit old for training, isn’t he?” I say, instantly regretting the forgiveness comment. Maybe I should just give the guy a break. If we can manage to talk to each other, to show some affection, things will be all right.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Adam. “He used to fetch a stick and walk to heel, remember?”

  “Not really,” I say, because Charlie has always been unbiddable. When I met Adam, Charlie was young and sleek. They came as a pair. Adam used to bring him to work, where he would bound through the office, knocking over wastepaper bins and eating food from unattended desks, which some people found endearing and others found annoying. I was in the second group, but it wasn’t enough to put me off Adam, and over the years I’d grown fond of Charlie.

  “I’m taking Charlie into Hester’s class this week,” says Adam.

  “That’s good,” I say.

  The newsreader announces another item: “A hotel in Yorkshire has been used as a camping ground by a group of Eastern Europeans…”

  Hearing the word “hotel,” I perk up and lean forward. The TV shows a hotel room, emptied of bed and other furniture, full of one-man tents, the kind you see on footage of mountain expeditions, low, neat, and narrow; eight little tents in two straight lines.

  “The hotel manager told reporters that he thought nothing of it when a couple asked for an extended stay and insisted on a ground-floor room. Little did he know that at least eight people were living in the room using the sash window to come and go, conveniently screened from view by a large rhododendron. By day, the migrants roamed around the area seeking casual work, picking up shifts in the mills, traveling in an old van from factory to factory.”

  The television shows the van, a white Leyland DAF with no windows at the back.

  “Blimey,” says Adam, “they don’t make those any-more.”

  “But what really shocked local people is what happened at night.”

  The camera shot changes to show the moors, wide and bleak in the December rain. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.

  “Uh-oh,” I say, “if this is about murders I don’t think I want to hear it,” but I don’t turn off the TV.

  “At night, the group came here above the industrialized outskirts of the city to hunt sheep. Local farmers say at least fifteen sheep were killed.”

  We see the interior of a large warehouse. There’s a close-up of a mattress knifed open, foam fluffing out like sheep’s wool, springs like spilled innards. “Wow,” I say, “they gutted the bed as well.”

  “Police came close to catching the gang but at the last minute the hunters dropped everything and disappeared.”

  There’s a shot of the old white DAF, parked and abandoned on the edge of the moors.

  I sink back into the sofa, unsure whether I am horrified or impressed. I turn to Adam to see what he made of it. He’s fallen asleep. I should not be surprised but I am, and disappointed. The sofa feels like moorland.

  But no, I say to myself, come on—he’s had a stupid midlife-crisis-flirtation kind of thing but he finished it of his own accord without going really badly astray. He hasn’t been knocked over by a car, we haven’t had to leave our country or hunt for food in the wild. Here he is, asleep on the sofa, our two daughters safe in their beds. I don’t want to lose him, or rather—I want to find him again, to wake up and find him there, really there.

  I rouse him. He struggles to wake, but he does—I can see the effort he is putting into bringing himself back.

  “I am really, really sorry,” he says, and I know he is not talking about dropping off.

  “I know,” I say.

  He pulls me closer, puts
his arm around me, kisses my head.

  “I love you,” he says, and a bit of hope rises inside me—maybe we can find some shelter after all.

  “Come on,” says Adam, “let’s go to bed.”

  4

  Milla is building a wall of cereal boxes around her bowl, a barricade against my breakfast, which she says is smelly and disgusting. I am not actually having yogurt and banana this morning, but either she hasn’t noticed or she likes her fortress anyway. Possibly I overused yogurt and bananas when she was a baby. And avocados. And I should never have mashed them together, despite what it said in Your Beautiful Baby and Toddler—Food for the Foundation Years. We all have different things for breakfast, which my own mother thinks is crazy. “It’s the only meal of the day that could be really simple and no work at all—everyone could have the same thing out of the same box.” Although I don’t remember breakfast being this simple in my childhood. Milla, who is six, is fond of cereal. What she really likes is chocolate cereal, but I only allow that on Saturdays. Hester, who is four, prefers porridge, so I make a tiny pan every morning. Adam, who is forty-two, has tea and toast. I watch Adam butter his toast and wonder if the thing with Louise Phelps came about because he is unhappy. Maybe he really is having a midlife crisis. I don’t get a chance to follow this thought and see where it leads because the doorbell rings. Family time in our household is characterized by many things begun, few finished—not just thoughts but fights, films, sandwiches, games, drawings—and we don’t seem to be able to put anything away either. Adam answers the door, thanks someone, and now there’s a ripping noise.

  “What’s that?” I call from the kitchen.

  Hester jumps down from her chair and runs through to the hallway.

  “It’s my new brochures and business cards,” Adam calls.

  Hester runs back in with a glossy brochure for Adam’s business.