Will Gavin still be checking, three weeks and four days after he last heard from me, or will he have given up by now? If it had been the other way around and he’d suddenly stopped emailing me, how soon would I have stopped looking to see if he’d written?
The phone’s ringing as I pull up outside my house. I grab my bag, lock the car door and fumble with the front-door key, knowing the call will be about Ethan. Something’s happened: he’s sobbing, locked in a bathroom stall. Or there’s a problem with his gym bag—something’s missing. How sure am I that I put all the right things in?
Let him be OK and I swear I won’t email Gavin, or even think about it any more.
I run into the living room and grab the phone, wondering why I persist in offering God these phony deals. If He exists, He must be reasonably intelligent—maybe not academic-intellectual clever, but powerfully intuitive, and with a deep understanding of people. He must have spotted the pattern by now: I never stick to my side of the bargains I make with Him. Time and time again, He goes easy on me and I think, Phew, and forget about what I promised I’d do in return, or invent a loophole to let myself off the hook.
I pick up the phone. “Hello?”
“Is that Mrs. Clements?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“It’s Izzie here, from Freeth Lane. We just met, when you came in before?”
“Is Ethan OK?” I resent the time it takes me to ask: endless stretched-out seconds of not knowing.
“Oh.” Izzie sounds surprised. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I snap.
“I assume he’s all right. I haven’t heard that he isn’t.”
“So you’re not phoning about Ethan?”
“No.”
I exhale slowly as I fall into a chair. “Right. So what can I do for you?”
“It’s Sophie.”
Sophie, who’s never problematic in any way, who I don’t need to worry about. I take her well-being for granted. I feel as if my heart has been lobbed at the wall of my gut, feel it sliding slowly downward, flattened by dread.
The children of guilty mothers, hostages to karma, always in imaginary peril that feels so real, so asked for . . .
“She’s been sick,” says Izzie. “She seems fine now, and she says she wants to stay for the rest of the day, but it’s policy to let parents know.”
“I’m coming in now to see her,” I say. “Tell her I’m on my way.” I’m not taking the word of Lobotomy Izzie when it comes to the health of my daughter; I want to see for myself if Sophie’s well enough to stay at school. Which means driving the round trip, yet again. And then again at the end of the day, either to pick up both children or, if I bring Sophie back with me early, to pick up Ethan. Fleetingly, I consider collecting them both now to save me having to drive back to school later for the fourth time in one day, but then I realize I can’t make Ethan miss gym, not after I’ve taken in his bag; he’ll be looking forward to playing football or cricket or whatever it is, expecting the rest of his day to unfold predictably and without incident.
I decide that I’ll be brave and try the Elmhirst Road route again. Getting to Sophie as quickly as possible matters more than my fear. If the sand-haired policeman is still there, I’ll stay calm and pretend not to recognize him. Or maybe I’ll wink at him. I can imagine Kate Zilber doing that. Winking isn’t illegal. He wouldn’t be able to warn me or threaten me. A wink proves nothing, and in any case, there has been nothing to prove since I turned good.
THE ROUTINE WHEN SOPHIE and Ethan get in from school at the end of the day is always the same. Panting and groaning, they shrug and wriggle their way out of their coats and shoes in the hall, as if divesting themselves of chains that have bound them for decades, before making a dash for the living room and slamming the door. They have an urgent appointment with the television that nothing would induce them to miss.
I am left to pick up the discards from the hall floor and throw them, in a big pile glued together by wet mud from the soles of football boots, into the coat cupboard; it’s mess relocation rather than tidying up. Adam is patient and always waits until the cupboard’s interior is indistinguishable from a compost heap before he complains. When he does, I either say, “I know. Sorry—I’ll sort it out tomorrow,” or I snap, “If you don’t like it, do something about it,” depending on my mood.
The CBBC channel starts to chatter midsentence. That’s my cue to pour the juice and make the toast. Once they’re on the kitchen table, I call out, “Snack’s ready!”
“Bring it in here!” Sophie yells. She is more vocally militant than her brother, who is happy to be represented by her in all parent-child disputes.
“No!” I shout back.
“Yes! Remember, I was sick! I feel a bit weak!”
“You were sick—you’re not now!” Nor was she when I arrived at school to check on her; she looked at me as if I were crazy, told me she had no intention of coming home with me and turned back to her friends. I left empty-handed, a person-with-children temporarily without her children, just as I was this morning in the library parking lot. It was only on my fourth and final trip to school that I came away with what I wanted: Sophie and Ethan in the backseat, and an overwhelming feeling of relief. I can’t fully relax unless they’re under the same roof as me; that’s been true since we moved here from London.
Kate Zilber’s right: I should probably get some therapy. I’m too anxious. Once, waiting to collect the children at the end of the day, I started to have palpitations because a man looked at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable: a long-drawn-out superior smirk. He’s one of the school’s most pleased-with-himself Flash Dads. I often see him leaning against his expensive-looking blue BMW in the part of the playground where the showiest parents always wait. His hair is subtly streaked. It looks deliberate, which I know I shouldn’t disapprove of, but I do. There are some things men just shouldn’t do, and streaked hair is right up there alongside cosmetic pubic-hair removal. Though I’ve never seen his child or children, I enjoy imagining them as rebellious teenagers, covered with tattoos and piercings that spell out, “My dad’s an utter cock.”
“Please, Mum!” Sophie yells from the living room.
I could refuse again, but what’s the point? I’ll give in eventually; I always do. I don’t know why I bother going through the daily ritual of putting the plates and glasses down on the table in front of two chairs. I think it’s because I like the idea of my children coming into the kitchen and chatting to me, so I create the conditions that will make it possible. Seeing the toast and juice neatly laid out on the table makes me feel like a proper mother.
We don’t have many rules in our house. The few we do have—like no eating in the living room—are broken every day. Adam thinks it’s stupid and inconsistent to ban things we disapprove of and then allow them to happen anyway. I’m torn. I admire people who don’t allow themselves to be constrained by rules, and cheer inwardly every time my kids demonstrate that they have no intention of obeying me.
If I believed myself to be a fine, upstanding pillar of the community with a strong moral code, I might feel differently. Who am I to tell anyone how they ought to behave?
I take the toast and juice into the living room. Sophie tells me to “Shh” before I’ve said a word. Her eyes are glued to the television screen, as are Ethan’s. I say, “Thank you, darling mother,” loudly before leaving the room.
“Yeah, thanks, Mum,” says Ethan. Three whole words. Amazing. He and Sophie tend to lose the ability to speak for about an hour and a half after they get home from school. They find their voices again at suppertime, after which we usually can’t shut them up until bedtime.
Having delivered the snack, I pull the living room door closed behind me and hover in the hall, not sure what I’m going to do next. I have a strong suspicion, but that’s not the same as being sure.
I should get to work in the kitchen. The dishwasher needs unloading and reloading before I can
start cooking.
I shouldn’t, definitely mustn’t, email Gavin.
But you will. You’re about to.
Breaking other people’s rules might be commendably independent minded, but breaking your own, which you made willingly, to protect yourself and your family? What kind of fool does that?
I want to continue to believe in the fantasy that I have a choice, but it doesn’t feel true. The decision has been made, in the shadowy part of me that logic never reaches, where a force far greater than my willpower is in charge.
I look at my watch. Adam will be home in about half an hour. If I don’t do it now, I won’t have another chance until tomorrow.
Too long to wait.
As I run upstairs to our spare room, which houses the family computer, I wonder how I’ve managed to resist doing this for so long. Three weeks and four days. Until I saw that policeman again today, I was finding it easy to be good. The shock of my first meeting with him was all the motivation I needed. I don’t understand why a second almost-encounter with him has driven me in the opposite direction.
You can still do the right thing. Sending one quick explanatory email for politeness’s sake isn’t the same as starting it up again.
It’s what I should have done all along, instead of my cowardly vanishing act.
I close the spare-room door behind me, making sure I’ve shut it properly and not just pushed it to, and sit down at the desk. This will be the first time I’ve opened my secret Hushmail account since my first run-in with the policeman. I’ve been scared of discovering that Gavin’s emailed me, scared I wouldn’t have the strength to delete his message without reading it.
I type in my password, my heart beating like the wings of a trapped bird in my ears and throat, and prepare to confront my greatest fear: an empty inbox. What if he hasn’t been in touch for the whole three weeks and four days that I haven’t contacted him? That would mean that he was never as keen as I thought he was.
Good. It’s good if he’s not keen. It’s good because we’re over.
Though we never agreed on it in so many words, we operated a strict “turns” system throughout our correspondence, both of us always waiting for a reply before emailing again. No exceptions. Did Gavin stick to the pattern and take my lack of response to his last message as a sign that I was no longer interested? Would he give up on me so easily? Surely he’d have wondered, after I didn’t reply for a whole day—and then another and another—whether his last email went astray. I would have, in his position.
My finger hovers above the “return” key. If I press it, I’ll know within seconds.
I can’t do it.
I push my chair back from the desk, afraid that I’ll press “return” by mistake, before I’m sure I want to.
You don’t have to look. Ever. Turn off the computer, go downstairs. Forget about him.
No. I won’t take the coward’s way out, not this time. I’ve done that already today, more than once. Despite vowing that I wouldn’t, I avoided Elmhirst Road when I went back to school to check on Sophie; I went via Upper Heckencott again, there and back. I did the same both ways when I went to collect Ethan and Sophie at the end of the day, though on each of the four journeys I lied to myself right up until the second before I chickened out.
I slide the wheels of my chair closer to the computer. The eleven asterisks that represent the hidden letters of my password are still sitting there, in the box. My password is “11asterisks.” I’m still proud of myself for thinking of that: the password that in attempting to conceal itself does the opposite—reveals itself so brazenly that no one would ever guess.
Wincing, I press the “return” key before I can change my mind.
I gasp when I see my inbox. There are seven unread emails from Gavin. Seven.
Thank you, thank you.
No point pretending this surge of excitement is anything else. Even a talented self-deceiver like me wouldn’t swallow that one.
I’d have given up before I wrote the seventh email, however distraught I was. Gavin didn’t.
This is it: why I lie, and keep secrets, and take crazy risks—for this feeling. No chemical could give me the same buzz: the thrill of being so wanted, so sought after.
I start to open the messages, one by one. They were all sent within four days of my decision to break off contact with Gavin: four on the first day of my silence and then one on each consecutive day after that.
Hi Nicki, I’m writing to check that my last email to you didn’t go astray. Let me know. G.
It’s pathetic, isn’t it, me worrying because you haven’t emailed me for a few hours? Don’t want you to think I can’t last a day or even several without hearing from you, but you know what it’s like—once a pattern’s been established, any disruption to said pattern causes concern. And did you realize that we’ve emailed each other **at least** twenty times a day since we started? G.
PS—in case you’ve forgotten when our exchange started, it was February 24. You made a reference once to deleting all your emails from me, for security. I deliberately kept shtum (not wanting you to think I’m careless about security, which I’m not) and I don’t know if you assumed that I delete all your emails after reading too, but I don’t. I keep them. I reread them. They mean a lot to me. I hope that’s OK with you. That’s why I wasn’t upset by the idea of you deleting your side of our conversation, because I’m keeping it safe at my end. Don’t worry. I promise you no one but me will ever see it. G.
PPS—feelings, eh? They complicate things, don’t they? I hope I haven’t freaked you out by writing about what can only be described as noncarnal matters. I won’t make a habit of it, I promise. Let me know you’re OK and aren’t sick of me yet, and I’ll go back to talking mainly about your nipples, I promise. (Well, I might cover a few other parts of your body, to be fair. In my emails and, in due course, with my own body—I hope.) G.
No, no, no. This is wrong.
I feel dizzy, disorientated. I want and need words from Gavin, but not these words. This doesn’t sound like him. This sounds too much like a real person, someone I might know or be friends with. Gavin has always sounded like . . .
What?
Like something automated. Short toneless sentences, short paragraphs. Like an android giving erotic instructions. The kind of written voice that disembodied words on a screen might have if they had a voice.
And that was exactly what you wanted, wasn’t it? What does that say about you?
In due course with his own body? Did he really mean that? Do I want him to mean it?
Gavin and I arranged to meet once, in May, after agreeing we were ready to take things to the next level. Then he had to cancel; he didn’t say why. After that, neither of us mentioned rearranging. I didn’t mind. Secretly, I was relieved. If we didn’t meet, that meant that what I was doing wasn’t as bad. If I thought of him as unreal, one-dimensional, a computer program generating words designed to elicit a specific physical response, then I could almost persuade myself that I didn’t really have another man in my life, one who wasn’t my husband.
Still wrong.
Not as grievously wrong as a physical affair, though. Maybe. And the emails were enough. God, they were so much more than enough: endless, detailed, graphically descriptive orders from a man I’d never met, whose face I’d never seen, not even in a photograph. None of my real-life lovers has ever been so uninhibited in the words he used or the things he asked and expected me to do—and nor was I ever so . . . pornographic, for want of a better word, with any of them. Gavin swept away all my inhibitions by ignoring them completely, refusing to acknowledge they existed and simply repeating his demands. Eventually, I stopped bothering to mention that I was too shy and simply did as I was told.
And loved it. Craved more and more of it.
All I know about Gavin is that he’s English, in his midforties, married with no children and works from home. That’s what he’s told me, anyway. I suppose any or all of it might not be true.
I didn’t and don’t really care. All I cared about was the way he made me feel. On two occasions, his insistent explicit words alone were enough to push me over the edge—just the words and my imagination, and not even a brush of a fingertip. No other man has ever had that effect on me.
Not even King Edward.
Whom I swore I wouldn’t allow into my mind again. That’s why Gavin: to block out King Edward. Amazing, really, how well it worked.
Until now.
I am gasping for breath, though I’ve done nothing physically strenuous. I grip the desk to steady myself.
Think about Gavin. Not . . . anybody else. Gavin.
The blank tonelessness of his words was an important part of the attraction. So different. And yet three of the four new messages from him that I’ve just read—all but the first one—don’t sound like him at all. Did my abandonment panic him so much that his online persona slipped?
I promise you no one but me will ever see it . . .
I won’t make a habit of it, I promise . . .
I’ll go back to talking mainly about your nipples, I promise . . .
Feelings, eh?
A shudder rocks my body. I don’t want Gavin’s feelings or his promises. King Edward gave me feelings and promises, and they counted for nothing in the end. And I don’t want amusing banter and wordplay from Gavin either. Adam jokes around. So did King Edward. I love witty men, normally. I mean, I used to.
You still do love Adam. Never forget that.
Gavin has never been funny, warm or affectionate before. It’s the reason I felt safe in my dealings with him. I wanted and needed him to be avid but not caring, never emotional. I can’t stand to think of him as a vulnerable man whose heart I might have broken.
I don’t want to think about him any more today—it’s already too much—but I can’t log out, not without reading everything.
I open message number five:
Nicki, seriously, are you OK? I’m starting to indulge in paranoid worst-case-scenario delusions here. Has your husband found out about us? Have you found out something about me? Are you in a hospital, with no access to email? G.
Woman with a Secret Page 3