If You Knew Her

by Emily Elgar

  ‘Give me a couple of hours?’

  He nods and takes a step back, and says, ‘OK, shall we say ten then?’

  She nods, vaguely, ‘OK, ten.’ She pulls her foot away, so the door shuts in his face before he can turn away from her.

  At 10.15 a.m. she opens the shed door. Fallen autumnal leaves stick to her boots as she walks across the wet lawn towards the kitchen. Maisie, more awake now, jogs behind her.

  Jack’s already sitting at the kitchen table when she enters, the Sunday papers before him. His eyes flicker up to the clock on the kitchen wall, and she notices with a small flash of satisfaction that he’s sucking his cheeks and his neck looks tense. He’s nervous. Good.

  She hasn’t had any breakfast, and it’s starting to make her feel queasy, so she opens the fridge and finds a Tupperware from Charlotte. She puts a chocolate muffin on a side plate. Jack folds away the papers and she sits down opposite him.

  ‘OK,’ she says, picking at the muffin with her thumb and forefinger. ‘Ready.’ She looks up at him, and he tries to smile at her, to soften her, but she looks back down at her muffin. She’ll cry if she smiles back and she doesn’t want to be the one to cry again.

  He breathes out.

  ‘Cas, we have to talk about this. This can’t go on.’

  She nods, tries to blink the saltiness from her eyes, and looks up at him.

  ‘OK, how do you propose we do that?’

  ‘I want to tell you everything from my side again, and then I want you to figure out if you can forgive me.’

  ‘You said you’d already told me everything, about how lonely you felt, how it’s my fault for spending time with Jonny, the miscarriage, you working so hard, that you’d given in when Nicky, the person I used to call my sister, forced herself on you in some sort of weird jealousy trip against me.’

  Cassie can feel the anger heating her already, rising quickly through her body to her head like mercury in a thermometer.

  ‘Cassie, please. We’re never going to get anywhere unless you actually listen to me.’

  She breathes out. He’s right, of course. She knows she’s being obstructive, but the truth is, she’s still too angry, and there’s a part of her that, it turns out, really relishes being angry; it’s so much clearer than sadness.

  She balls crumbs from her muffin together on her plate and nods.

  ‘OK,’ she says, looking up at him. He’s leaning forward towards her, hands clasped together on the table. ‘OK, you’re right.’

  He breathes out, fully emptying his lungs before taking a deep breath and starting to talk.

  ‘Nicky called me at lunch, said she was coming earlier to surprise you. I thought it was a bit weird, but she said she wanted to make supper for you, have it ready when you got home like she used to. There weren’t any taxis so she called me when she got to the station. I’d had another shitty day and felt like I was going to implode if I didn’t have a break. So I thought I’d pick her up, take her home and do some work while she did whatever she wanted to do in the kitchen for you.’

  ‘But then she gave you a beer and you just couldn’t control yourself.’

  ‘No, Cas. Come on, you said you’d listen. Look, it felt good just to talk to someone, like releasing pressure. I never thought running the company would be like this; I knew I’d be busy but the stress isn’t about the workload. I’m responsible for other people’s families now. If we don’t succeed I have to make redundancies. My dad never made a single redundancy in his whole career, did you know that? Then of course we lost the baby and I felt I shouldn’t feel so sad about it, had no right when it must have been so much harder for you, but you didn’t talk to me about it, you talked to Jonny.’ He pauses, rubs his face with his hands. ‘She didn’t say anything. She just listened to me and then she kissed me.

  ‘I promise you, Cassie, we only kissed that one time. It never went further.’

  ‘That’s not how it looked.’

  ‘Cassie, please, it was all so quick. One minute I was saying how much I missed us, you and me, missed feeling like a team, then next minute she was kissing me and then I saw you and my heart died.’

  ‘Sorry for interrupting you.’

  Jack knows better than to challenge her sarcasm.

  ‘Nicky’s jealous of you, Cas. I’ll bet she always has been.’

  ‘How the fuck can she be jealous of me? No dad, no mum, only a fucking weirdo stepdad and now, thanks to her, a fucking cheat for a husband.’

  Jack props his elbows on the table, rakes his fingers through his hair, and says, ‘Oh god, Cas, please don’t say that, I know you’re angry, you have every right to be, but I’m terrified you’re going to throw everything we have away because of this stupid mistake.’

  Cassie slaps both her palms down on the table as if she needs to wake Jack up.

  ‘She was my best friend, Jack. My best fucking friend.’

  His hands still hold onto his hair and he starts shaking his head.

  ‘I know, Cas, I know, but you have to forgive me.’ He wipes his eyes.

  ‘No I don’t.’

  He looks up at her, his eyes stormy.

  ‘Come on, Cas, don’t destroy our life because of one stupid slip-up.’

  ‘I haven’t destroyed anything,’ she replies, feeling the mercury inside her soar, but then he looks up at Cassie, his eyes contoured in red, and she realises how alone they both are.

  ‘Look, do you want me to stay in the office for a while?’

  ‘Why don’t you stay at your mum’s?’ she says, but she knows the answer already.

  He’s back to shaking his head again.

  ‘You know I can’t tell her about all this; it’d upset her too much. You promised she didn’t have to know.’

  Cassie knows he’s right of course; Charlotte would be devastated, more than even Jack knows, if she knew her beloved son had done exactly what Mike did to Charlotte. No, she couldn’t bear hurting Charlotte like that.

  ‘I won’t say anything to Charlotte,’ she says, feeling Jack’s eyes as they pull up to her face, ‘and you can stay here but I really want you to give me space for the next few days, OK?’

  Jack nods and splutters a small thanks, a grateful smile playing across his lips.

  Cassie pushes the half-eaten muffin away. It tastes bitter; the chocolate roils around her stomach like dirty washing.

  ‘And I think we should focus on getting through Christmas and everything and assess in the New Year.’ She’ll be about twelve weeks by then, and the baby will be safer. She’ll have to tell Jack then, make a decision about her and her child’s future.

  Jack nods, a faint smile cracking his face.

  ‘That’s good to hear, Cas, really, so good to hear,’ before he adds, his voice slipping into poorly concealed jealousy, ‘I’m assuming you’ve told Jonny all about this?’

  Cassie looks at her husband who now seems so ordinary, so much smaller somehow, than the man she remembers marrying.

  ‘Jack, it’s none of your business what I choose to tell my friend.’

  ‘I just thought maybe we could keep it between us.’

  Cassie laughs at him, but it doesn’t feel good. It burns her throat.

  ‘I hope you’re fucking joking, Jack.’

  He goes back to rubbing his face again and suddenly, without knowing she would, she says, ‘I just realised.’

  He looks at her to keep talking.

  ‘This morning, when you bought me coffee, you reminded me of someone and I couldn’t place who it was but now I know exactly who I was thinking of.’

  Jack, anticipating another attack says, ‘Let me guess, I reminded you of a fucking idiot?’

  Cassie smiles. ‘Well yes, obviously,’ she says, but then she shakes her head, almost flirtatious, before a coolness curls itself around her heart again, and she realises she’s completely serious. ‘You reminded me of your dad.’

  Jack’s face drops, heavy as a stone, and suddenly she wishes she could pull Jack tow
ards her, pull the words she just said out of his ear, and bury her face in his chest, tell him she didn’t mean it, bring him back to safety.

  ‘Why? Why do you say that?’ he asks. The lines around his eyes narrow in pain and Cassie notices a flicker, a recognition, pass behind them and she thinks, not for the first time, that at some level he knows about Mike, who his dad really was: a liar who broke his promise to Charlotte every time he booked a hotel room, every time he unbuckled his belt.

  ‘Just because you look like him more now, with the stubble, that’s all,’ Cassie says.

  She shrugs and stands up from the table. Jack stands as well, mirroring her, Maisie in her basket raises her head and Cassie knows Jack’s sadness is morphing, curdling into something more familiar and dangerous.

  ‘You can’t say something like that and just walk away,’ he says, walking towards her in two quick steps. He tries to grab her arm but Cassie’s moved away from him, and he can’t reach her.

  ‘Jack, calm down,’ she says, turning towards the sink. ‘I’m just getting a glass of water.’

  ‘What do you know about my dad?’ He follows her around the kitchen island, vying for attention.

  ‘Jack, all I said is that you remind me of Mike, or photos I’ve seen of him, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, but why are you bringing him up now, when we’re talking about all this? It just seems weird.’

  Cassie runs the tap for a moment, puts her finger in the water to check the temperature. What if she told Jack what Charlotte said, about Mike’s affairs, she wonders. He seems halfway there himself already; maybe it’s time for him to know the truth, maybe that would either save them or finally drop the guillotine that hangs over their marriage. But then she thinks of Charlotte; she’s spent the last twenty years lovingly preserving Mike’s memory for Jack’s sake. Cassie may know the truth about Mike, but she also knows it isn’t her story to tell. She puts the glass under the tap.

  ‘Stop fucking ignoring me!’

  Jack pulls Cassie’s forearm towards him and the glass she’s holding hits the side of their enamel sink and a large shard snaps away from the edge and bites into her hand.

  She drops the glass in the sink, the water still running. A tiny bloom of blood flowers by Cassie’s thumb.

  Jack takes a step back.

  ‘Shit, Cas, are you OK?’ He hands her some kitchen roll, but she shakes her head and sucks the little cut instead. It fills her mouth, the metallic zing of blood.

  ‘Cas, sorry, it was an accident.’

  Still keeping her lips to the small cut she nods at him before pulling away. He’s never grabbed her in anger before. The cut’s tiny, the bleeding already stopped. She holds her hand away from Jack so he can’t see and says, ‘I’m fine, Jack, I’m fine …’

  ‘Are you sure? Let me see.’ He tries to take her hand but she’s backing away from him.

  ‘Please don’t fuss about it, Jack. Just let me go back to my painting like you promised, OK?’

  She doesn’t look at him again, leaving him to clean up the shattered glass, and she walks back out towards the garden.

  The shed door bangs behind her and she catches a movement in the little mirror by the door, her own reflection startles her, weird as a stranger walking too close behind her. She stops to stare at herself, the light-grey jumper, her blonde hair already below her shoulders, unbrushed but still so straight. Like a light on its dimmest setting, the woman in the mirror looks ready to fade away completely. She looks like Charlotte. She flicks her head forward, rakes her fingers through her hair again and again. She pulls off Charlotte’s jumper, and slaps her face between her hands to bring some colour to her cheeks. She flicks herself back up. The woman who looks back at her now is scruffier, less composed, her eyes smeared with old mascara, her hair sticking up at angles like a distressed clown. She smiles at herself because she sees April again, her brave mum, and she realises how long she’s been away, and how much she’s missed her.

  19

  Alice

  I pretend to still be asleep when I feel David get out of bed. I’m working a night shift tonight, so there’s no urgency to leave our warm bed. David starts running a bath; I can smell my posh bath oil, which I know he hates, so the bath must be for me. I winch open one eye and he smiles and kisses me.

  ‘Hop in,’ he says. ‘I’m going to make some breakfast.’

  The bath is a little too hot. I’m still cautious enough to heed some old midwife stories, so I add some cold before sliding in, feeling the water encase me, holding me in amniotic warmth. My belly rises a little above the water; I’m almost nine weeks now. Being busy has had its advantages. I wonder if Cassie had to pretend she was off booze, and how she explained her early-pregnancy tiredness away.

  I make a little wave of water and watch it glide over my belly. My pregnancy (it feels too dangerous to think of it as ‘a baby’) is always on my mind but in a subtler way than ever before, like a secret when the keeping of it is more satisfying than sharing. I listen to David whistling and chinking mugs and plates in the kitchen and I think, maybe now, this morning, is the time to let him know. I could reassure him that this is the best it’s ever felt, that this time it’s different, and try and make him believe it will be different.

  But when I put my bathrobe on and join him in the kitchen and watch him make coffee, he seems so unencumbered – smiles and laughter come easily to him – and I know how that will change if I tell him. He’ll grow shadowy, a fear will settle around us like fine, thick dust, a fear neither of us can express because to talk about it out loud might jinx us.

  The last time it happened, we hardly spoke to each other for a month. I imagined us like cartoon characters, sad stick people with a black cloud hanging over each of our heads, the words ‘what is the point?’ written inside.

  So instead of saying anything, I kiss him on the lips. A news programme on Radio 4 runs through the headlines. At the end of a bulletin about the latest political scandal they play the clip I’ve heard countless times already. Jack’s rounded, deep voice asking for privacy during this ‘most difficult time’.

  I played it to David for the first time last night; he said Jack sounded like a character from an afternoon radio play. I didn’t tell David I knew what he meant; instead I said it was the stress making Jack’s voice vibrato, stretching the pauses in his speech. I don’t know why I defended him. Maybe because I still want to be wrong, I want Cassie’s baby to have one healthy, free parent.

  David changes the radio station, and Jack’s voice is replaced by the clear notes from a piece of piano music. David wants me here, fully here, with him this morning. I have to be fair; I have to try. He’s laid out croissant, prosciutto, melon cut into little pieces, along with freshly squeezed orange juice.

  ‘If we weren’t already married, I’d think you were about to propose,’ I say, pulling out a chair, and picking up a piece of melon with my fingers.

  ‘Shit.’ David smacks his hand to his forehead. ‘We’re already married, aren’t we?’

  I make a ‘you’re an idiot’ face and pick up a croissant.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, pouring us both some orange juice, ‘I know work has taken over recently.’

  David sits opposite me, takes a sip of juice and says, ‘It’s fine, Ali. I get it, it’s important.’ Around a mouthful of ham he asks, ‘So what’s the latest then? Press still sniffing about?’

  The buttery croissant melts in my mouth. ‘It’s easing off a bit now.’ I look at the radio. ‘They’re playing repeats.’ If they were playing the full interview, Jack would be talking now about how Cassie and he enjoyed living in such a close-knit community, how grateful he is for all the support.

  ‘And how’s Cassie?’

  ‘She’s … she’s just the same really.’

  Now Jack would be saying how much they wanted to be parents, how Cassie wanted to be a mum.

  David frowns at me. ‘Alice, what is it? What’s on your mind?’ He knows – of course he kno
ws – that there’s something I’m not telling him.

  I force myself to turn the radio station off in my head.

  ‘There’s just some stuff I keep thinking about.’

  ‘Like what?’

  I might not be able quite yet to tell him about our baby, I think, but I can tell him about Cassie at least.

  ‘When Cassie first came in, Charlotte, her mother-in-law, brought in a bag of pyjamas and stuff for her.’

  David nods for me to keep talking.

  ‘I found a letter, from Cassie to Jack, saying she wanted a break, some time away.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘She’d taken her engagement and wedding rings off. I think she was running away, David.’

  ‘Seriously, Alice?’

  It all sounded so paranoid out loud, not the quiet sense it made in my head.

  ‘I thought she was looking for her dog?’ He pauses. ‘Don’t forget how crazy Bob goes when he hears fireworks. A rescue dog in a new home would be really jumpy, and remember when you thought you’d lost your engagement ring?’ He gets up, pours himself another coffee.

  I’d forgotten about that. I’d left my engagement ring in my jeans pocket when I went swimming one day, and spent the next week pulling the house apart trying to find it. I grab a second croissant.

  ‘And you know, every couple has their tough times, don’t they? The fact that she never gave Jack the letter is telling. Maybe she wrote it for catharsis and never meant to give it to him.’

  My conviction evaporates like a magic trick. I decide not to tell David about Jonny’s eyes, how he looked like a man losing someone he loved, or about the gossiping on the ward about paternity.

  ‘Sorry.’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t know why I’m …’

  ‘You’re just protective, Ali. Of course you are. It makes total sense; the stakes are even higher with this patient than they are normally. I get it.’ He hands me a coffee, and I take a sip; it’s caffeinated so I put it back on the table.