But applying logic, the financial services side of Richard’s business was dwindling. People were cashing in, not investing, so that was few hundred thousand down this year, and the latest banks collapses were only going to make that worse. Financial services had until recently been one of the world’s biggest growth sectors and Richard, even as one of the industry’s highest-qualified advisors said even he didn’t know where to tell people to put their money, and would rather not advise them at all. But if the insurance side was to become affected too – I knew it wouldn’t be good. That would be hitting the largest chunk of our household income – it was like everything was hitting us at once.
I’d sensed that there was more to come when I had closed the doors on Ilex, but that didn’t mean it made any more sense. For the last part of the journey I changed the radio to a pop station –Cold Play’s Viva la Vida was playing. I turned the volume up.
I slowed down and pulled into the drive. It was then that I spotted something that looked like a package on the doorstep. I got out of the car and went to check what it was before getting the food shopping out of the boot. I picked up the little plastic bag that looked like pale cress, turned it over, and on the front it said Alfalfa Sprouts. On my doorstep, as if by magic, was the Holy Grail of anti-aging. I knew this couldn’t be from Richard because he would have put them in the house. This had to be Maddy’s idea of a lovely gift. A quick call to her and I found out that she’d found them in the local Co-op of all places. I’d been searching far and wide, and they were available only five minutes down the road. I couldn’t believe I’d never spotted them in there. I put them in the fridge, along with the rest of the food shopping, and logged onto Facebook to update my Status. Status Updates were now starting to feel like a compulsory task, rather like brushing your teeth twice a day – it simply had to be done.
12:34 Nicole is feeling a little more relaxed now that the US government has bailed out AIG
After typing it in, I hit the Share button, launching it into cyberspace, and while I was on I scrolled down the Newsfeed, then stopped when I spotted a Status Update from Anthony Hope:
Anthony is lovin’ Ireland…and has found a very beautiful fish in the sea…not throwing this baby back;)
He made it sound like he’d caught a girl. It wasn’t fair – his life appeared so carefree. Unlike mine that felt like it was crumbling around me.
‘What now?’ I asked as Richard re-entered the house with William trailing behind him. ‘William just get back in the car and wait there.’
‘But I…’
‘But nothing, get back in the car. Where’s his red socks?’ Richard now turned his attention to me.
‘Red socks?’ I asked puzzled.
‘Yes red socks, he says he needs red socks today.’
‘Why?’ I was still confused.
‘I don’t fucking know, but he’s just checked his bag and says his red socks aren’t in there. Where are they?’
‘How should I know? They could be anywhere,’ I said trying to rack my brain. Why red socks today, last week it was white socks for PE? But regardless, red or white, I was sure I’d put both in there. Shit! They could be in the wash basket, ironing basket, or any of his drawers, or even on the landing in that pile of stuff that still needs putting away.
‘Will you hurry up! William…I told you to get back in the car.’
‘But I’m going to be late, Daddy,’ William was now starting to fret.
‘Mummy will have them in a minute, please get back into the car and get your seatbelt on ready. Have you got them yet, Nicole?’ Richard was starting to get really wound up, and I was flying from one end of the house to the other in my unsexy, unflattering but incredibly warm fluffy floor length dressing gown that was now making me sweat like a jogging Sumo wrestler wrapped in polythene.
‘I’m just checking all his drawers.’
‘Why can’t you just have a same place for everything, you are such a disorganised person. You’d be useless in the Forces. You’d never know where you left your fucking gun.’
I felt my blood starting to boil, if I was a saucepan my lid would have been on the brink of rising before falling over the edge with an almighty clatter, ‘This is not my fault and, lucky for you, I wouldn’t be able to find my fucking gun, wanker!’ I felt the word graze the back of my throat as I spoke. ‘They’re here!’
I hurled the red socks at him. Richard picked them up and proceeded to slam and lock the door behind him, leaving it to shake in its frame. Every night I got everything ready and I still didn’t get it right, there was always something I missed. The new computerised school-letter thing was starting to do my head in. I’d not bothered to log in again because it was like getting into Fort Knox, it really has got more security checks than a bank account. Facebook was far easier to get in to. Maybe I should have looked lately? Maybe they’d put something on there about the socks. But there was no way on earth I was admitting that to Richard.
Where’s my iPod? It had been in my hand just before Richard came back for the socks. I retraced my steps and eventually found it next to the ironing basket in the utility room. I then made a smooth, cat-like transition, to the treadmill and I managed forty minutes on level fourteen without it feeling too strenuous. I will have thighs of steel, I thought as the rapid club-beat vibrated through my body. When the muscles have relaxed and the heartbeat in a rhythm, exercise was the closest I got to flying with my feet still on the ground. And then, without warning, the iPod made a funny squiggle noise in my ear and started to belt out Abba’s, I Have A Dream. But the lyrics held me from switching it back to my usual music. Instead the words increased my motivation as I blissfully sang along. Singing at full belt, while on the treadmill is what Richard calls painful.
Dripping with sweat, I pulled the earphones out, drank a pint of cold water before jumping in the shower. It had struck me as strange because I would never have thought of exercising to Abba in a million years. I put it down to some technical glitch on the iPod and hoped it wasn’t going to pack up because that would mean that I’d got to suss out setting up a new one. The song remained in my head all day. It’s as though my brain was split in two halves, one side was busily singing away, while the other was functioning on the tasks at hand. I found the lyrics uplifting and optimistic.
Maybe that’s what I needed – some optimism, the wine Richard brought home later that evening helped too. I allowed myself to log onto Facebook before I sorted out William and Elyse’s uniform for following day. With a gulp of wine and the lyrics still swirling around my head I updated my Status…
Nicole thinks there is good in everything I see…I believe in angels, fairy tales and the future.
By Sunday bedtime my future felt like it was going to be very short-lived.
William and Elyse were asleep upstairs. Richard appeared to be asleep on the sofa. I contemplated getting my laptop and logging back into Facebook. But then I heard a bang, like the sound of exploding glass. It made me jump like I had been hit with a thousand volts and it woke Richard.
‘What the hell was that?’ he asked.
‘I’ve no idea. But it sounded like it came from our bedroom,’ I said still feeling jittery.
‘It must be one of the kids messing around and broken something up there,’ Richard said.
We both sprinted upstairs, taking two steps at a time. We checked William and Elyse but they were asleep in their beds, so we rapidly made our way down the landing to our bedroom. Bits of glass shimmered on the window bottom.
Richard pulled up the blind and we stood aghast at the window. It was smashed from the inside. The outside panel of double glazing was still intact.
‘Richard, there is someone in this house.’ My legs felt wobbly with nerves. I need to get William and Elyse out of their bedrooms.
‘You know all the doors are locked downstairs. All the keys are up here for the night.’
‘How do you explain this then?’ I asked picking up a piece of the broken gl
ass. ‘It’s smashed from the inside, not outside,’ I said as though he couldn’t see what I could. I ran my finger along the edge of the glass and cut it. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me this is not happening. Tell me that I’m asleep again are you?’ I sucked my finger. It hurt.
‘No. Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Richard, what the fuck have you gone and done? Have you pissed people off in business, is this what this is all about? Is someone out to get you, me, our kids? Is this what all the phone calls are about? I need to know Richard.’
‘You are being paranoid; there is no one in the house.’ He pulled down the blind again as though hiding it from me would make me feel better.
‘You don’t know that for certain, what if someone stole a key that day they had been tipped back out the kitchen pot,’ I spat.
‘No one took any key from the kitchen that was your stupid head – just like the closed window, just look at your disorganisation with the kid’s uniforms – you do stupid things all the time.’
I knew I was annoying him, but he eventually relented and told me to wait in our room while he woke William and Elyse and brought them to me. I made him check the wardrobes before allowing him to venture out with one of my exercise weights. I hid with William and Elyse in the en-suite with the door locked. I’d taken a plaster from the box on the shelf and wrapped it round my finger. The cut was quite deep and dripping blood. Elyse was still half asleep and leaning against me. William repeatedly asked what was wrong. I tried to stop myself from visibly shaking to keep him calm while we huddled in a corner. The oak door was too thick for me to hear anything that was happening downstairs.
The bathroom door handled moved. Someone was trying to get in. What if Richard was dead? I should have called 999 before locking us in here, I had stupidly cornered us.
CHAPTER SIX
I thought about the computer printout I had found sitting on the kitchen island. I had surmised that it must have been printed by Richard’s daughter or something because Richard didn’t know how to use our printer. What I couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t bothered to show it to me, let alone mention it. It was about imploding double-glazed windows, a relatively rare but baffling phenomenon attributed to the inside panel being warm from central heating and the outside temperature suddenly dropping. I thought back to my reaction the other night. I still felt such a fool for screaming at him when he tried to get the en-suite door open. It did make me wonder whether my over-the-top reaction was a legacy from when we were actually burgled: the large kitchen knife left in the middle of the floor did still haunt me, even though the police had said that it was probably only there to be used to cut through TV wires to get them free.
But why hadn’t Richard bothered to show me the article? He’d not forgotten about getting the glass replaced.
I’d now put the paper in the drawer with the intention of stubbornly waiting to see when he would get round to mentioning it. I thought about the cut on my finger and removed the plaster to see how it was healing. I ran my thumb over it. Apart from it looking a strange grey colour from the plaster I was surprised that there was barely a sign of anything there at all. I smugly attributed it to my healthy green-tea and nuts and alfalfa sprouts.
I switched my focus to something else that had been troubling me:
Anthony Hope is listed in a relationship
The words sat in the middle on my Facebook Newsfeed.
It appeared on the day that I was going to a lap-dancing club for the first time in my life. It was Maddy’s somewhat strange birthday choice for later that evening. So it was a day I was unlikely to forget for lots of reasons.
I sat staring into my laptop in the garden room with a mug of green tea and a bag of nuts beside me. Elyse was busy playing in the lounge, Nickelodeon was belting out on the TV; William was outside kicking his ball at his goal post as usual, and Richard was somewhere inside, I don’t know where, I didn’t care at that moment because I was still hacked off with him for not mentioning the computer printout on imploding windows.
Anthony Hope is listed in a relationship, it was as though the words were in a different text to all those surrounding it, drawing my eyes with the power of a magnet. Some of his friends had commented on it, as they invariably did on his Wall. If he so much as posted a full stop, someone would pop up with a silly remark about it or tell him how wonderful it was; Anthony was far more sociable than me. One friend had asked what she was like and he wrote back, “very spirited” with a wink on the end. The conversation reminded me of my Status the other week: angels, fairy tales and the future. Was this new girlfriend his fairy tale; his future?
This new girlfriend couldn’t be the red head in a recent photo, because he’d only just decided to change his Status. I knew it wasn’t really any of my business who the girl was.
Even so, I couldn’t help myself. I wondered how many times he’d changed his Relationship Status since he’d signed up to Facebook. I was annoyed with myself for even giving it headspace. If I didn’t know better I would say what I was feeling was jealousy. But jealousy wasn’t something I normally felt. I was living with a man married to someone else for God’s sake! I was even proud of not being a jealous person.
Curiosity was killing me and I found myself entering his Wall and found three photos from his Ireland trip. Was this new girl the fish that he wasn’t going to throw back?
The long dark hair, pale skin and blue eyes of the girl staring back at me made her look Irish, somehow. She could have been anything from eighteen to twenty-eight, definitely younger than me; her face still had a youthful roundness, but her features were more grown-up than mine, making it difficult to guess her age from a photo. She looked slim, but could be tall or small. She was definitely pretty – as I had expected – but in a sophisticated way, rather than cute or overtly sexual. She was not prettier than me, just completely different.
Anthony had tagged her in the photos. I clicked on her name to see if her Facebook page was open. But it wasn’t. She had privacy settings on. Her Location said London, but most of her friends were on the Ireland network. She appeared to be Irish, but living in London.
I suppose he could have been with her for a while, and only now changed his Relationship Status because he’d become seriously involved – I pondered all of this as I sipped my green tea; my eyes fixed to the laptop screen.
‘Mummy…I want my Pwincess jigsaw, can you do it with me? Pweeeeease.’
‘Yeah, in a minute, Elyse, I’m busy at the moment, I’ll be with you soon.’
‘But Mummy…’
I continued to scroll down Anthony’s Wall.
‘Can’t you get off that thing? Elyse wants you to do a jigsaw with her,’ Richard had made a miraculous appearance.
‘Yes, I know, and I will be with her in a minute.’
‘That bloody Facebook, I bet you’re on that thing again!’
Oh…God – he likes to draw… – I heard my own sigh.
Someone had asked him if he’d drawn anything recently and it’s not the sort of question you would generally ask someone unless you knew they liked drawing. I loved to draw, but probably, like him, didn’t get the time.
I still continued to work my way down his Wall.
Perhaps I should delete him for my own good.
I spread the pieces of Elyse’s jigsaw over the coffee table for her. If only Anthony Hope was as easy to piece together as a jigsaw for three-year-olds.
I glanced at the utter mess surrounding me. Elyse seemed to be taking the lounge over, with her dolls, pushchairs and kitchen set scattered across the floor. Elyse’s toys supplemented Blue’s diet with a least one piece of edible plastic a day. I’d lost count of how many massacred dolls we’d come home to since having him. I made a mental note that I needed to tidy up at some stage. I didn’t consider it fair that Richard’s sister should be made to look at the mess as well as babysit. But instead I found myself back on Facebook. My attention had drifted away from tidying u
p. I only wanted to see if any more comments had been left about the new girlfriend. While on there the red notification icon popped up in the bottom right of my screen:
Claire is getting to know his / her friends better
A friend had done one of those quiz things. I wondered what she’d answered about me and accepted the App.
Did I do that wrong? I wondered, as I now found myself working through questions about my friends, taking pot luck on my yes or no answers. It came to one on Maddy’s brother – has he ever been arrested? Was it a loaded question? Like I really was going to put in “yes” to that one.
Does Anthony Hope believe in ghosts? Oh shit…No, not that question. Not after the spirited comment left on his Wall. Yes or No? Hmmm…yes. Well…lots of people do. Shit! He was going to get one of the notification things now that I got from Claire. A notification connected to me wouldn’t have been so bad had I not sent that stupid bloody email. But why could I take part in quizzes about my other friends and it not be a problem? Why did it have to be different with him?
Once again, the presence of this man on my Facebook was causing me to question my every action in relation to him. Had it not been for him, I know I wouldn’t have bothered to leave a generic apology on my Status Update for everyone to see; I would have simply forgotten about the quiz. I could still feel myself cringing as I continued picking up toys and placing them into plastic tubs. Once I’d cleared the floor, I stacked the tubs up behind the oak door in the garden room and started laying out my clothes for later. I’d opted for my purple Greek-style dress because I knew from what Maddy had said earlier that she was going for a little black tasselled number.
Past Present Future Page 6