The Man I Thought You Were

by Leah Mercer

  ‘Surname?’ The man shoves his specs further up the bridge of his nose.

  Shit. ‘Um, I don’t know.’

  ‘Come this way.’ He beckons me up the aisle and into a small office that’s crammed with yellowing books. The air is heavy with the smell of old paper and must. ‘Any idea when she might have passed?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. ‘No, sorry. I guess any time in the past sixty years or so?’ I’m not sure if this Margo is related to Mark, if she’s someone he knew, if . . . God, this is so surreal. I feel like I’m groping in the dark, unsure which way to turn.

  ‘Well, this may take a while,’ the man says, ‘but I like a challenge. At least it’s not a very common name, so we might be able to find the person you’re looking for.’

  ‘I’ll wait. As long as it takes.’ I sink on to a hard pew outside the office, every part of me humming with exhaustion. After what feels like forever but is probably only an hour or so, the man pokes his head out of the little room.

  ‘I’ve found a Margo.’

  I jerk to my feet and let out my breath as relief sweeps through me. If it’s the right Margo, then at least she’s no longer living – at least she’s not someone Mark’s with right now. But . . . who is she?

  ‘What’s her surname?’ I ask.

  ‘Margo Lewis,’ the man says. ‘Born 1981, died 2003.’

  ‘Margo Lewis?’ The same surname and just a couple of years younger than Mark? This is definitely the right person, but who is she? Mark rarely talks about his family, but I know he’s an only child, so was Margo a cousin? Or maybe . . . I swallow hard as a thought bubbles up inside me. Could she have been his wife? They would have been very young when they married, but I guess it’s possible. Why on earth wouldn’t Mark tell me, though? I comb through my memories, trying to remember if he’d given any hint of another marriage, but there’s nothing. Mark’s never even mentioned ex-girlfriends . . . It’s just not something we ever needed to talk about. Now, I wish we had.

  ‘Come on.’ The man is shrugging on his jacket. ‘I’m not busy today. I’ll show you where the grave is.’

  I nod mutely and follow him out of the church. Wind whips through the trees, leaves falling around us like crispy confetti. I shudder as I walk between the graves, picturing Mark coming here on his own . . . coming to mourn someone close to him, someone he never told me about. Why? The word seems to echo with every footstep as we crunch down gravelled pathways.

  ‘Here it is.’ The man stops after a few minutes, pointing to a plot. ‘I’ll leave you on your own now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I whisper, barely able to speak as I stare at the gravestone in front of me. There’s nothing remarkable about it: Margo’s name carved in stone, along with the dates of her birth and death. A simple posy of marigolds graces the base, their vibrant blossoms a splotch of colour against the white granite.

  My eyes trace the engraved letters like I can burn them into my soul, pleading with them to tell me something. Who are you? I scream inside my head.

  I lean even closer, as if the stone might respond. Whoever she is – because it does feel like she’s still here, a third person who’s been present in our relationship – she must have been someone very special, very dear to Mark, to exercise such a pull on him all these years later. Someone he loved . . . someone with the same surname who was just a couple of years younger . . .

  I catch my breath, pain slicing through me as the unavoidable knowledge sinks in: Margo must have been his wife – no other answer makes sense. I collapse on to the cold ground, images tearing at my brain, each picture carving itself into the sacred place we’d created.

  Mark, smiling at her in that tender way I thought was reserved only for me.

  The two of them exchanging a kiss as the registrar pronounces them husband and wife.

  Them both cosying up in a flat just like ours, dreaming of their future.

  Margo dying, leaving Mark all alone . . .

  Did he find it too painful to even begin to tell me – me, the person closest to him? I shake my head, wondering if I’m as close to him as Margo was . . . wondering if our marriage is as good. I let out a puff of air, thinking that of course it’s not. If it was, Mark wouldn’t have left. After all, he wouldn’t even be with me if Margo was still living.

  I get to my feet and stare at Margo’s grave, feeling for the first time that perhaps Mark and I are on different pages when it comes to our partnership. I’d always held our marriage in such high esteem, but maybe for my husband it was a kind of consolation prize. Anger flares inside me, and I stride away from the grave. Mark didn’t cheat, but it still feels like he betrayed me – betrayed us – by keeping things hidden.

  I climb into the car, feeling disorientated and lost . . . as if I’m gazing at my life through a different lens and can’t make sense of anything. I’m no closer to finding my husband. If anything, he feels even further away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Anna

  I battle the traffic on the road, my mind spinning. I’m too full of emotion and questions to even speak, so instead of heading to Sophie’s, I drive straight home. I need to get a grip on what I’m feeling – need to sit down and find my way in this strange, shaky world.

  Mark was married. Mark had a wife before me. Mark is a widower. It all sounds so surreal that I can barely grasp it, let alone begin to understand why he didn’t tell me. There must be an explanation for why he held back. Anger hits me and I pound the steering wheel with my hands. God, I’m tired of trying to read my husband’s mind! I thought I knew him, but right now I don’t have a clue what he might be thinking.

  I drag myself up the stairs to our flat and flop on to the sofa, staring around at our home. Did Mark read lots of books with Margo, too? Did he choose the same colour scheme – sleep on the same firm mattress? Did she take the right-hand side of the bed as well – drink her coffee with the extra amount of milk he sometimes slops into mine? Did he kiss her neck in that perfect spot, too? Anger and something like jealousy burst inside me once again, and I roll my neck to ease the tension. I hate that I’m second guessing our whole life together now.

  I lower my head on to a cushion, staring up at the ceiling. Could Margo have anything to do with Mark’s disappearance or is it just a coincidence that he left me after visiting her grave? Did she know his family in a way I never did? Did she even meet his parents, to whom I’ve never been introduced? I never gave much thought to the fact that he kept me at arm’s length from his family. His parents divorced when Mark was in his late teens, and Mark explained that he hasn’t been close to his mother or father ever since – a situation I could completely relate to, since I’m not close to mine, either. The trauma of my dad leaving cast a shadow over our family, and none of us wants to unearth those feelings – and if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I can understand or forgive my mother for failing Sophie and me when my father disappeared. She came back to life once he returned, but it was too late – we’d already learned to cope without her.

  The fact that we both lacked the steady presence of our parents in our lives drew me and Mark even closer together – made us even more dear to each other. We’ve always joked that at least we’ll never have problems with the in-laws. But now . . . Now I wonder if he kept me from his parents because he didn’t want me to know about Margo.

  I drum my fingers on my chest, running through what I do know about his family. His mother went off to Australia after the divorce and his father remarried, making a new life in the commuter belt. The divorce blew the family apart . . . an outcome I can fully understand, even if my own parents are still together.

  It’s unlikely he’s reached out to them, but they are a link to Mark’s past. And right now, I can’t help feeling that Mark’s past has something to do with his present.

  I grab the laptop and crack it open to see if I can find his mum and dad’s contact information, email or otherwise. I click on ‘Contacts’ and scroll down the list of email addresses, thi
nking it’s rather . . . short. A few people from the bank, identifiable only by the domain name; Sophie and Asher; Flora – I smile, remembering how she begged to have an email account so she and Mark could write back and forth to each other. Warmth rushes through me as I recall the two of them sitting here a couple of months ago, with Mark on this very laptop and Flora on her tablet, typing little messages, bursts of laughter coming from them.

  ‘Like peas in a pod, those two,’ Sophie’d said, shaking her head as she’d watched them. ‘He’s going to be great with kids, lucky thing. Asher didn’t have a clue. Still doesn’t, most of the time.’

  I’d nodded, my hand sliding down to my belly, and I remember thinking that my period was due that day and it still hadn’t come. Could this be it? I’d gazed over at my husband, his face creased with happiness, and pictured our child in this place, bringing even more light and joy to our lives. Like Mark, I couldn’t wait to have a baby and give it the perfect childhood I’d never had.

  But I wasn’t pregnant. My period came that night, just as I was about to duck into the loo and take a test. I wonder . . . I wonder if Mark would have left me if I was having a baby. I shake my head as the answer resounds in my mind: no. I may not know everything about him like I thought, but I’m certain he wouldn’t have walked away from his unborn child.

  Right, here’s his father: Richard Lewis. I jot down the email then scroll through the short list of contacts to find his mother, Helen. I stare at the names and tap my fingers on the table, the sound loud in the empty space. What on earth should I say? Hi, I know we’ve never met, but have you talked to your son lately? I shake my head and let out a breath. It feels so strange to finally be making contact with his parents all on my own – without Mark by my side.

  I quickly type out a generic message to each of them from my own email account, asking how they’re doing and if they’ve heard from Mark. I know it sounds strange and will likely open up a whole can of worms, but I don’t have time to faff around. If only I had their phone numbers! I cross my fingers, hoping that I won’t have to wait long for a response. As much as I’m dying to ask about Margo, I don’t want to toss out that question in an email. I don’t know exactly what happened, and I don’t want to give them a reason not to respond.

  I sink down on to the sofa and pick up our engagement photo, waiting for love and certainty to filter through me – feelings that this photo usually inspires. But as I stare down at our glowing faces, the swirling questions and doubts block out everything else, like fog shrouding the sun. My image in the photo morphs into the face I’ve been constructing of Margo, and I screw my eyes shut and turn away.

  I just need to find Mark, I tell myself. I need to find my husband, and then everything will be okay. Right now, though, I’m not even sure I believe that myself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mark

  The noise of buses and cars whooshing past the grimy window assaults my ears, and I roll over in bed without opening my eyes. I don’t need to; I know exactly where I am. This dingy guest house in the bowels of Euston couldn’t be further from our lovely flat in a quiet, leafy road. Images fill my head of Anna and me curled up on the brand-new sofa, indulging in our favourite weekend pastime. Not sex (although we loved that, too): online shopping, in the comfort of our own home.

  After we first bought the flat, we’d open the laptop and cuddle for hours as the wonderful world of domesticity unfurled on the screen in front of us. No need to push through crowds at IKEA or dodge pushy furniture salesmen on Tottenham Court Road – we could make our home our own without having to leave it. Men aren’t supposed to love shopping, I know, but this wasn’t just browsing objects. This was choosing a life, a way to live.

  A way to live that’s behind me now.

  I let out a puff of air, thinking how ironic it is that the dismantling of our world began with a desire to expand it: we wanted a child. It took a few years – almost ten, to be exact – until I was ready to contemplate having a baby. After Anna and I married, I was still too fearful, too worried that, despite my efforts, something would happen to burst the bubble we’d created. I was always watching, always waiting . . . for what, exactly, I didn’t know. I just needed to be on guard – to protect what we had. I knew how it could be yanked away all too quickly.

  But finally, with our life unfurling day after day – each new morning repeating the same comfortable patterns – I began to relax. The tension inside me – the tension that had been there for so long that it felt like an extra limb – started to shrivel, loosening its grip. It would never disappear, I knew that for sure, but perhaps I could risk stretching the barriers of our world even more. The walls were thick enough now to protect a baby. A baby I’d never, ever let down . . . not this time.

  And then, despite our numerous efforts, nothing happened. Perhaps I was too eager – too impatient. The bottle of elderflower pressé was already chilling in the fridge, awaiting the big announcement of a positive test (if Anna couldn’t drink, I wouldn’t, either). We’d begun researching the best car seats, prams and Moses baskets, diving headlong into our dreams for our baby. Sure, we’d just started trying, but it’s never too early to start planning, right?

  Anna didn’t seem worried. It will happen, she told me. We’re still relatively young, we’re healthy – although I’d been feeling so incredibly tired, with weight dropping off me despite forcing myself to eat. But I, well . . . somewhere deep inside of me, I couldn’t help wondering if this was repayment for the past; if this inability to conceive was my punishment for letting go of that child all those years ago, despite the circumstances. That niggling fear drove me to the GP, who half-listened to my concerns while tapping on her keyboard, then she told me she’d do a physical and go from there.

  ‘Go from there’ didn’t exactly lead in the direction I’d expected. ‘Go from there’ destroyed everything I’d built in one fell swoop, the pieces of my life that I’d thought were solid disintegrating into dust.

  I won’t have the child I so desperately wanted. I won’t have my wife by my side. I won’t have the world I carefully created.

  I close my eyes, remembering the moment of diagnosis. I’d hoped – prayed, even, although to what I don’t know – for my life to remain untouched by illness. Through the scans, the multiple tests and the agonising wait for results, I sent up plea after plea for everything to be fine. I should have known that you can’t bargain with life, though. It’ll give you up when it’s ready.

  Primary liver cancer . . . advanced, spread to the lymph nodes . . . four to eight months if I don’t have treatment; six to eleven months with treatment that might slow the tumours’ growth. The words washed over me, each one like a violent wave breaching the dam I’d constructed. I’d done everything I could to keep my life with Anna safe, but my body had betrayed me. The one thing I couldn’t control was myself – and it’s killing me.

  A wave of pain sweeps over me, and automatically my hand reaches out for my phone as if I can connect to Anna right now, before I remember I left it behind. I didn’t mean to – thank God I deleted all the text reminders of appointments and the histories of my phone calls and queries to try to understand my disease – but I was in such a rush to get away before my willpower faltered. I could hardly stand up that terrible night – hardly bear to carry on – but I had to. I had to remove myself from our world – to cut myself off with surgical precision, like a blackened limb to be amputated so the body survives.

  Pain slices through me as Anna’s image fills my head: the curve of her neck, soft and tender, those flyaway wisps waving from her ponytail like a halo. The swell of her arse, so sexy even in the hideous jogging bottoms she likes to wear. The feel of her in my arms, and the scent of fresh soap as I pull her close.

  I couldn’t be further away from Anna now, even though she works nearby. I didn’t want to be this close to her university, but the doctor left little room to argue: this was one of the best centres for my disease, and if I wanted a shot a
t a few extra weeks (months, if I’m lucky), it was where I needed to be.

  Apart from the many doctor’s appointments, the only time I’d ventured out these past few days was to buy new clothes from the shop around the corner. Everything I’d worn on the night I left is bundled up in a carrier bag, shoved to the back of the cheap wardrobe . . . leftovers of another time – another me. I can’t bear to even look at them now, let alone have the fabric touch my skin. I took nothing from home except my keys and wallet, and it comforts me to think of our flat stuffed with all those things we bought, my wardrobe still full . . . as if I could slip back there at any second. I won’t, of course, but I like to picture our world intact, with Anna nestling inside that perfect place. It’s part of the reason I didn’t tell my wife I’m ill.

  My wife.

  Anguish grabs my gut, and I swing my legs over the side of the bed. I know she’ll struggle; I know she’ll hurt. If she’s anything like me – and she is, I know she is – the searing pain will sting her soul, as if a limb was surgically removed. She’d struggle even more with me around, though. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I know first-hand the suffering that comes from watching someone you love die; the horror of knowing that whatever you do – whatever you say – nothing will change.

  I get to my feet, shivering at the cold in the room, and pick up the pen and paper resting on the tiny table that’s shoved under the window. Ever since I left, I’ve been trying to write my wife a letter – a letter to be opened once I’m gone; a letter explaining why I had to leave the way I did . . . that I did it for her. But every time I sit down, the words flee my mind. It’s as if the connection between my brain and my fingers has broken down, the words lodged in my faulty, cancerous cells.

  Cancer. I shiver again, not sure if it’s from the chill in the air or the word itself. It hasn’t quite sunk in, despite the battery of tests and grim conversations. It hasn’t hit me that my life is over, despite leaving Anna and my job. There is something I have to do, though. It’s the very reason I’m even bothering with chemo, in the hope that it gives me some longevity. I’ll never have a child of my own, but there’s a baby I’m desperate to find; a baby Anna knows nothing about – a baby from another life I’ve tried to shut out.