by Fiona Gibson
Will flinches and moans again. God, I’m going to have to deal with this. ‘Will,’ I whisper, crouching beside him, ‘are you okay?’
‘Urrrr,’ he mumbles.
‘You need to get up. You can’t sleep here. One of the kids’ll see …’
He hugs at the stair. ‘’S’all right. Did you email him then?’
‘What?’
‘Him. Fraser. Did you say he can see her?’ He fixes me with a glazed stare.
‘I did reply,’ I murmur, ‘but let’s not talk about that now—’
‘Why not? We need to, it’s important!’
‘Shhhh,’ I hiss at him, terrified that Rosie will overhear. ‘I know it is, but we’re not discussing it now, on the stairs, when you’re off your face. You must be kidding. Come to bed, Will. I’ll get you some water—’
‘I did something bad,’ he cuts in.
‘Yes, I know, I saw—’
‘No, you didn’t, you don’t know …’ What is he on about now? Maybe him smooching with that woman was just the warm-up, and he went off and did it with her in the downstairs loo or out in the garden or something. Or even in the shed! Which would be horrific, obviously … but right now, all I care about is shovelling him off to bed.
‘Come on, Will. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ He remains inert. ‘You’re going to wake everyone up,’ I hiss.
‘I’m sorry,’ he warbles. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Charlotte …’ Slowly, I manage to coax my now trembling husband up into a sitting position.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got you,’ I whisper. ‘Now try to stand up …’
Obediently, he stands. His eyes look strange – unfocused and not quite there – and he’s sweating profusely. There’s been another spillage, I realise now, down the left leg of his trousers. It all adds up to a highly attractive package. Trying to contain my annoyance, I manage to guide him through to our bedroom and onto the edge of our bed, where he sits, head bowed, looking down at his shoes. ‘Will,’ I murmur, ‘how much did you drink?’
‘Not much. Just a bit.’
‘But you look completely out of it.’
He grimaces and flops back onto the bed. ‘I’m having a really bad time.’
‘What d’you mean? What have you done?’ I peer at his face, wondering if it will ever regain its normal, healthy hue.
‘Tommy said it’d be fine, he still does it on special occasions—’
‘What,’ I snap, ‘shag strange women in downstairs bathrooms?’
He gawps at me, uncomprehending. ‘I didn’t …’
‘What did you do, then?’
‘I took an E.’
It takes a moment for this to sink in. ‘You took an E? For God’s sake, Will! What is this, 1988?’
‘No, but Tommy said—’
‘You’re a bit too old to succumb to peer pressure,’ I exclaim. ‘Do they do this regularly then, with Zach and his friends in the house?’
‘No, they’d all gone off to some other party—’ He stops abruptly and lurches off the bed, clattering to the bathroom where he retches loudly into the loo.
I scurry after him – he’s left the door wide open – and find him propped unsteadily against the washbasin. ‘Dad?’ Rosie is standing in the doorway now, her face stricken. ‘What’s happening? What’s wrong with him, Mum?’
Delph appears beside her in a tiny vest and pair of pink knickers. ‘Ew, God, has your dad just puked?’
‘It’s nothing,’ I say quickly. ‘He’s fine, girls. Just go back to bed …’
Ollie’s door opens and he pads towards us, rubbing at an eye with his fist. ‘Is Dad sick? Has he caught what I’ve got?’
‘Go back to your rooms,’ I say firmly. ‘Come on, there’s nothing to see—’
‘Has he got a fever?’ Ollie wants to know. ‘Maybe you should take his temperature …’
Hmm, where could I possibly stick the thermometer …
‘Sorry,’ Will mutters. ‘Sorry, everyone. I’m fine. I’m just a bit, uh, tired …’ He glowers at me, as if I’m the one who’s guzzled class As and vomited, then he totters out of the bathroom and stumbles downstairs, mumbling, ‘Just leave me alone.’
With a shrug, Ollie shuffles off to bed. I look at Delph, then at Rosie, who are making no move to go anywhere. ‘Mum?’ Rosie mouths at me. ‘What the hell’s wrong with Dad?’
‘Is he pissed?’ Delph asks with a smirk.
‘No, he’s not pissed,’ I reply.
‘What is it then?’ Rosie demands.
I rearrange my face in the hope of conveying an expression of extreme calm. ‘I’m not sure, darling, but it’s nothing to worry about. It’s probably just something he ate.’
*
We are driving. Or, rather, I am; Will is huddled in the passenger seat, his face a strange colour that I don’t know the name of. It’s a sort of peaky, greenish-grey, like something from a Farrow and Ball colour chart. Bone or Elephant’s Breath. I think Tricia might have chosen it for their back door. And it’s fine, for woodwork, but not so great for a face.
I don’t know where we’re going but we had to do something. We couldn’t stay in the house, with the kids gawping and firing questions and refusing to go back to bed – and on no account do I want Rosie and Ollie finding out that their father has been merrily chomping down ecstasy. The fuss they made, about me nibbling one measly little herbal bun … what would they make of this? All I could think of was to throw on some jeans, plus a sweater over my pyjama top, and explain that I was taking Dad out for ‘some air’. I bundled my dazed, frightened husband into the car and drove him away, as if he were a fretful baby who was refusing to go to sleep.
‘Where are we going?’ Will mutters.
‘I don’t know.’ I glance out to my right. An elderly man is leaning against a wheelie bin, smoking, and a young couple are wandering along arm in arm.
‘Are you taking me to hospital?’ he asks in a small voice.
‘No. Unless you think I need to? Are you saying you need your stomach pumped? Because I’m sure that could be arranged, Will—’
‘No thank you,’ he snaps. We slump into silence as he lowers the passenger window. Looks like he’s perking up a little. It was only an E, after all, which I presume to mean singular, so maybe it’s wearing off already. Let’s hope it doesn’t have any worrying side effects. While I don’t profess to be up-to-date on such matters – witness my ‘pot’ faux pas – I assume it was manufactured in someone’s kitchen in Britain rather than smuggled into the country stuffed up someone’s arse. But what if it was? What if it’s travelled through an entire digestive system? I stop at red lights and study Will’s face. He looks, whilst not the epitome of rude health, not quite on the brink of death either. ‘Maybe we should go home,’ he suggests flatly.
‘In a bit,’ I reply. ‘Let’s … oh, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing, Will. Look – that café’s open …’
‘Looks horrible.’
‘Yes, well, I’m not feeling too fussy right now. I’m not exactly insisting on a Michelin star. Let’s just go and have a cup of tea.’ Perhaps, I reflect as I park in front of the café, I’m just a tedious, Ovaltine-sipping middle-aged woman who needs to take a look at herself. He thinks: party time! Gimme drugs. I think: what I’d really love now is a nice hot beverage.
The all-night café has yellowing polystyrene ceiling tiles and smeary red Formica tables. At 3.17 a.m. it is devoid of any other customers. We are served by a man with a mop of black, oil-slicked hair and a strong whiff of cigarettes on his breath. ‘What d’you want?’ he asks.
A cup of tea and a divorce. ‘A pot of tea please.’
‘Right. And you?’ He darts a look at Will.
‘Just-a-glass-of-tap-water-thank-you.’
The man frowns. ‘That’s all?’
‘Yes thank you,’ Will says wearily.
‘It’s just, you can’t sit here for hours drinking tap water …’
I lean towards Will. ‘Maybe have s
omething to eat. Something plain. It might settle your stomach …’ I grab the sticky laminated menu and quickly scan it: virtually everything is fried. What does Rupert say the word ‘fry’ conjures up? ‘Greasy, artery-clogging and frankly pretty horrid.’
‘How about tomatoes on toast?’ I suggest, as if Will is incapable of deciding for himself.
‘What kind of tomatoes are they?’ Will asks the man.
He peers at Will. ‘They’re tomatoes.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘They’re tomatoes,’ the man mutters, ‘out of a tin.’
‘Oh,’ Will says bleakly.
‘Sounds great,’ I say over-enthusiastically, feeling more and more like Will’s carer by the second, and turning back to him the instant the man has gone. ‘What kind did you think they’d be?’
Will shrugs and fiddles with the greasy pepper pot.
‘It was hardly likely to be some rare breed pedigree thing garnished with fresh basil.’
He blinks at me. ‘You don’t get breeds of tomatoes. They’re not cattle, Charlotte. You get varieties.’
‘Sorry,’ I say hotly. ‘Anyway …’ I clear my throat, grateful that café man has disappeared into the kitchen, ‘you said earlier that you did something bad …’
‘Uh?’
‘At Sabrina and Tommy’s. You said you did a bad thing and I assume it wasn’t drawing on the walls or pulling someone’s hair or—’
‘I told you,’ he hisses, leaning towards me, ‘I took that … stuff.’
‘Yes, and apart from that, I happened to look out and see you dancing.’ I am aware of blinking rapidly.
‘What?’
‘I mean, when I say dancing, you were actually clamped together with some woman, virtually having sex.’
Will looks aghast. ‘What are you on about?’
I inhale deeply as our drinks, and Will’s tomatoes on toast, are plonked down in front of us. There are splatters of pinkish juice all over the plate, suggesting that the tomatoes were thrown at the toast from a great height. ‘I saw you, Will,’ I add as the man marches off. ‘I know it sounds pathetic but I happened to glance out and there you were, doing this hot, sexy dance with a woman …’
‘I don’t do hot sexy dancing,’ he barks, causing the man to snigger from behind the counter.
‘No, I didn’t think so either but I saw it with my own eyes. It was hot, Will. Steaming. It’s a wonder you didn’t melt your trousers …’
He is staring at me. I know I should stop, and that the café man is standing there, smirking openly at us. But I can’t.
‘Leather doesn’t melt,’ Will mutters.
‘Was it Sabrina? Is that who you were dancing with?’
He shakes his head vehemently, like one of those velvety toy dogs you see in the backs of cars. ‘You think I fancy Sabrina?’
‘I have no idea, Will. Maybe you do!’
‘You’ve gone bloody insane,’ he declares.
I sip my weak tea. ‘She is very attractive. And it’s fine, if you are attracted to her. I mean, at least I’d know …’ I tail off.
‘I definitely wasn’t dancing with Sabrina.’ He lifts his glass of water with a quivering hand. ‘At least, I don’t think I was.’
‘Well, I saw you with someone …’
‘Yes, you’ve said that. I think we’ve established that fact.’
‘So who was it?’
Will sighs. ‘Look, it’s all a bit hazy, okay? Can we stop discussing this now, please? I’m not feeling too good.’
I glare down at his untouched snack. There are two plastic bottles on our table: a red one for ketchup and a yellow one, on which someone has written in fat black felt tip SALAD CREAM. Will is studying it as if it were a fascinating artefact in a museum. A Roman condiment, perhaps. His face softens, and there’s a flicker of something in his eyes – regret, perhaps, as if he might be on the verge of saying sorry, and let’s forget it and just go home … And maybe, I think, I’ve misread the whole situation, and all he was doing was messing about. So what if he took a stupid drug and danced like a lunatic? We all do mad things sometimes. What about me, getting myself covered in creosote?
‘Will?’ I say tentatively.
He wrenches his gaze away from the table. ‘Can you believe it?’ he says.
‘Believe what?’
‘That.’ He jabs a shaky finger towards the yellow bottle.
‘What about it?’
‘They actually have salad cream here.’
I gawp at him. Thankfully, the man has disappeared again. He doesn’t strike me as someone who’d take kindly to having his sauces mocked. ‘So?’ I ask.
‘Who has salad cream in this day and age?’
For some reason, this throwaway comment enrages me far more than it should. ‘It’s just a dressing, Will. Some people like it, you know. I mean, it’s not an illegal substance.’ Unlike some other things I could name.
He shrugs. ‘It’s disgusting.’
‘No it’s not. My parents always had salad cream. Still do, probably, and it’s perfectly okay for them. In fact, if I had a bit of lettuce in front of me right now I’d drown it in salad cream, and bloody delicious it’d be too!’
He reels back in his chair. ‘Jesus, I only—’
‘It says a lot!’ I exclaim. ‘It really does, Will. You have no idea what it says about you …’
‘What the hell—’
‘Your attitude towards salad cream,’ I rant on, ‘gives away more about you as a person than you realise, and it’s not very flattering—’
‘My attitude to salad cream?’ He is staring at me now, clearly having recovered from his chemically-enhanced adventure. In fact, he’s actually smirking at me, after nuzzling some woman’s sticky-out tits and throwing up in our washbasin in front of our kids, and a visitor, who’s a personal friend of Marc Jacobs by all accounts. Without stopping to think what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed the salad cream bottle, pointed it at Will like a weapon and given it an almighty squeeze.
‘What the fuck, Charlotte!’ He leaps up and stares, dismayed, at his T-shirt. It’s splattered with yellow goo. The retro creamy condiment is dripping slowly downwards, and there’s a little daub of it on the front of his trousers, as if a bird has plopped there. Grabbing my bag, I pull out my purse, slam a tenner on the table and march out of the café, with my husband in pursuit.
‘You are fucking crazy,’ he snarls as we climb into the car.
‘Probably, yes.’
‘You’re a bloody child. You’ve never grown up, that’s your problem—’
‘And you’ve behaved perfectly maturely tonight,’ I snap back.
‘What about you? I seem to remember you getting pissed in the garden with Liza and Sabrina and bashing your head on the door. When did you last see me so drunk I fell over and hurt myself?’ I cannot respond to that. I just drive on, my knuckles shining white as I grip the steering wheel. My mouth tastes foul; I think the milk in my tea was off.
‘At least I’m not injured,’ he adds piously. No, but you may be, before the night’s out.
I am so furious now, I can hardly breathe, let alone utter actual words. How could I have imagined myself with him in a saucy shed situation, cushioned only by a sack of chicken manure fertiliser? I actually thought it might be sexy, doing it with him in a small, enclosed space filled with spiders. Christ, I wouldn’t get naked with him now if we were offered an entire floor of the Savoy. Anyway, he’s probably getting his excitement elsewhere. I bet dancing wasn’t all he did tonight. What does he enjoy? Foraging. Maybe that’s what he was doing. Foraging about in that woman’s pants …
The flat London sky is beginning to lighten. ‘So,’ he blurts out, ‘did you email him back?’ My stomach lurches.
‘Email who back?’ I ask, knowing precisely who he means.
‘Your ex.’
I nod. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Is Rosie going to meet him, then?’
‘I suppose so,’ I say quietly. ‘In
fact, she’s said she wants to …’
Even without looking I can sense his expression changing. ‘What – recently?’
‘Yes, just before I set off for Bournemouth …’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he exclaims.
‘Because … I knew you’d be upset.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Charlotte – this is massive. It’ll change our whole lives. Didn’t you think I should know?’
I inhale deeply, catching a vinegary whiff from the salad cream. ‘Yes, of course I did. And I know I should’ve told you straight away. But at the moment – well, for a while actually, but especially since you left work, I’ve found it really hard to talk to you …’
‘So it’s my fault then,’ he snaps.
‘It’s no one’s fault,’ I reply, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘It’s not about blaming anyone. It’s just happened, like we always knew it would. And she’s asked about Fraser before, you know that—’
‘Yeah, just innocent, childish questions—’
‘But she’s not a child anymore,’ I cut in, my eyes filling with tears. ‘She wants to meet Fraser, to find out what he’s like …’ I pause. ‘It’s only natural, Will. I mean, we’ve talked about this, and we said we’d help her to find him and deal with it together …’
‘That was different,’ he says flatly, and I realise now that of course, he’s right: he was fine about Rosie meeting Fraser in theory. But it’s not in theory anymore; it’s real. We fall into silence as I turn into our road and park in front of our house. It occurs to me, as we stomp indoors, that this probably wasn’t what Sabrina had in mind when she said we needed a date night.