“No, she said it’s nothing like that. Could be a her-and-Lee issue. She refused to talk about it on the phone. I think it’s something private. She made me promise not to mention it to anyone, including you.” Every time I lie to Adam, I feel a spurt of fear that I have to struggle to overcome. I’m terrified of what I’m doing to our relationship: polluting it with deceit, pushing him farther away with each manipulation. I’ve been living with this dread for too long: maybe one day I’ll push him so far that I won’t be able to retrieve him when I’m ready to be close to him again.
I can’t let that happen. I have to save us.
It’s only when this panic floods my system that I realize I couldn’t bear to lose Adam, and feel the stab of horror that ought to stop me from endangering what we have. If only I could feel it all the time . . . but he’s too embedded in my world for that to be possible. Sometimes I can barely distinguish him from myself and the children; at others his presence in my life strikes me as absurdly jarring, as if I’ve woken up to find I’m living with someone I once met at a bus stop and have exchanged no more than a few friendly words with.
Like when you’re emailing Gavin, you mean? That’s how you feel about your husband—that he’s an intruder—while you’re secretly writing to a man whose presence in your life looks sometimes like a BlackBerry and sometimes like a laptop computer? A man whom you don’t know, let alone love, and shouldn’t need?
I don’t want this kind of marriage. Don’t want to live in a state of permanent threat.
Yet you’ve created the threat, and prolonged it. For the sake of what? Excitement? Adventure?
I’m finding it harder every day to pinpoint where pleasurable anticipation ends and fear begins.
“So you want me to leave work early and go and pick up the kids?” Adam asks.
“Yes, but I need you to come home first—now—and drive me to Rawndesley Station.”
“What’s wrong with your car?”
“It’s missing a side mirror. Long story,” I say briskly. “I’m going to leave it in the garage with the door unlocked and slightly open—the police are coming around later to have a look at it.”
“Nicki, what’s going on?” Adam sounds worried. “Have you had a crash?”
It would make sense to tell him as much of the truth as I can afford to, but I can’t bring myself to mention Damon Blundy, the CCTV footage, being taken to the police station by two detectives. I’ll have to think of another story, but not now. I need to get to Melissa before the police work out that I gave them the wrong number for her and track down the correct one.
“I’ll tell you on the way to the station, but . . . please, can you set off now?”
He agrees, as I knew he would.
It will take him at least half an hour to get here.
BlackBerry or computer? I prefer to be sitting at a desk, for Gavin. It helps me to think more clearly. Our spare room has become my cyber-adultery office.
I run upstairs to the computer.
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 10:39:24
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
The police? At your front door? Are you serious? Why would the police come to your house?
G.
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 10:50:02
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Nicki, are you there/OK? I am concerned. I don’t want to have to call your local police station and ask if they’ve got you in custody!
G.
From: Nicki
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 13:43:15
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Yes, the police really did come to my house and take me back to the police station with them. It was about Damon Blundy—my car was seen near his house so they wanted to talk to me. I am now back at home and fine.
I hate to be argumentative, but . . . what you said before about Damon Blundy was silly. Yes, some people are evil, but that in no way proves that Damon Blundy was, so don’t say it in a way that makes out it does. That’s as stupid as saying I don’t know that Barack Obama isn’t a vegan, since, after all, some people are vegans. It’s possibly the weakest argument I’ve ever heard.
N x
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 13:46:05
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Why so defensive on behalf of Damon Blundy? Is it compulsory for me to like him?
G.
From: Nicki
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 13:50:33
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Did I say it was compulsory for you to like him? No, I said that to point out that some people are evil in a way designed to suggest this proves something about DB is a dishonest, and daft, way to argue. Which it is. And so is accusing me of saying something I never said.
Do you have trouble reading and interpreting words? If not, I suggest you reread Damon Blundy’s columns. He almost always argued for truth or goodness of some sort. My take on him (which you will probably do your best to misunderstand) is that he was embarrassed by his desire to make the world a better place and so did his best to hide it under surface outrageousness.
Sorry if I’m sounding harsh. I’m probably being unfair to you, and if I am, I’m sorry. The police-station thing wasn’t fun. I’m not in the calmest frame of mind.
N x
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 13:56:07
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
What exactly happened at the police station?
You’re not being harsh. Or rather, if you are, I assume I must deserve it. And I do love your bizarre analogies.
I admire your fierceness. When the war starts, can I be in your unit?
G.
From: Nicki
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 13:59:04
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Bizarre analogies? What do you mean? Please tell me exactly why you said that.
N
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 14:02:35
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Just “N,” no “x”? What have I done wrong now?
Bizarre analogies? Barack Obama being a vegan!
G.
From: Nicki
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 14:07:23
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Barack Obama being a vegan is only one analogy. You said, “And I do love your bizarre analogies,” plural, as if a) I have come up with quite a few, and b) you’ve been fond of and familiar with this tendency of mine for a while. What other analogies have I ever put in my emails to you?
N
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 14:09:07
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Nicki, what are you getting so steamed up about? I don’t get it.
G.
From: Nicki
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 14:10:04
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
Husband back—have to go to London.
N
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 14:23:19
To:
Subject: Re: Distress si
gnal
Are you on the train? Email me, please.
G.
From: Nicki
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 14:56:04
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
No, I’m in the Avis Rent-a-Car office in Rawndesley. The trains are buggered today.
I don’t know why I’m answering you.
N
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone
From: Mr. Jugs
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 15:02:08
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
What have I done to piss you off? Please tell me.
G.
From: Nicki
Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 15:15:31
To:
Subject: Re: Distress signal
“When the war starts, can I be in your unit?” Ring any bells?
N
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone
“NICKI. IT’S YOU.” MELISSA’S voice is swallowed by the roar of traffic behind us. She and Lee live on a main road in Highgate, in a modern brown three-bedroom maisonette that looks like a chocolate bar with windows. Adam and the kids and I used to live five minutes’ walk from here, in a shabby, gardenless Victorian terrace that we couldn’t afford to renovate.
81 Enfys Road. Home.
Standing on Melissa’s doorstep, I feel like someone returning from the dead. I miss this noise. I need to move back to London, as soon as I can. That would cancel everything out, as if none of it ever happened. It would bring me back to life, if anything could.
I try not to think about what has happened most recently, about what I believe I’ve proved to myself beyond all reasonable doubt. Gavin . . .
Stop. You can’t fall apart now. Don’t think about Gavin, King Edward, any of it.
It doesn’t work. I tried all the way here, in my rented car. Push the thoughts away and the numb horror is still there. Worrying away at it intellectually is probably better for me: questioning, trying to recall as many details as I can. At least it feels like doing something. But not now, not here. I have to force myself to stop.
Focus. You’re here to sort out the side-mirror problem.
“It’s me, in Adele mode,” I say to Melissa, blinking back tears. “Hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited, but . . . I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”
“What’s Adele mode?”
“‘I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited’—Adele’s most famous lyric. You do know who Adele is? The singer?” Melissa probably doesn’t listen to pop music anymore. Lee doesn’t much like any kind of music—he never has. Noise of any sort agitates him.
When we were teenagers living on the same street in Wimbledon, Melissa and I used to call around at each other’s houses unannounced all the time. Since she’s lived with my brother, she prefers to see me by arrangement only. I’ve become something she likes to be warned of in advance.
As she stands aside to let me in, her eyes are full of something more complicated than “hello and welcome.” It’s the same mix of emotions that I see in Lee’s eyes when he greets me, and in my parents’: vigilance, nervousness and, the dominant note, hope: that everything will be all right even though Nicki is here and Nicki is trouble.
Melissa is so much more a member of the Redgate family than I am; she’s the anxious, obedient daughter my parents should have had.
“Lee back yet?” I ask.
“No.”
“Good. I need to talk to you alone.”
Melissa rolls her eyes. “Oh, not this again, Nicki. If you’re going to beg me not to tell Lee—”
“Lee’s the last thing on my mind at the moment.” Beg? Is that how she sees me: permanently on my knees in her saintly presence? “It’s the police I need you not to tell. I wouldn’t ask, but it’s kind of an emergency.”
She stops. If she’s having second thoughts about letting me get as far as the kitchen, it wouldn’t be the first time. She holds up her hands, flat, fingers stiff and extended. As if she’s trying to push something away. “The police? Again?”
I flinch. “Forget last time. The only thing I hoped you’d do then was listen. I needed to talk to someone and you wouldn’t let me tell you—”
“Oh, so you are dragging this up again?” Melissa says angrily. “Can’t you let it go? It’s my choice. You should respect it.”
I wish she’d at least offer me a comfy chair before starting with the shoulds and shouldn’ts. We’re still in the hall, which is as perfectly smooth and rectangular as every other space in Melissa and Lee’s house. There’s not a curve in sight—not a cornice or alcove anywhere to disrupt the lines. Each story is a rectangle made up of rectangles, and so is the building as a whole. So are the four identical houses attached to it; together, the five form an uber-rectangle that looks as if it’s serious about subjugating, if not flat-out annihilating, all the circles, squares, ovals and triangles in the Greater London area.
Adam said to me once, “Nicki, all houses are made up of straight lines. Don’t you think you might be . . . projecting slightly?”
“I don’t want to get into our usual argument again,” I say to Melissa. “I’ve got a favor to ask you. You can say no if you want, but at least make me a cup of tea and let me ask.” I gesture toward the kitchen.
Melissa stays where she is. “And I can tell Lee?”
Her question makes me gasp. I must look like what I am—someone whose life has been blasted apart, again, after an email correspondence with a man I don’t know, again—and all Melissa cares about is whether she has my permission to report back to my brother about me.
“Tell Lee twenty times if you want to,” I say. “Have you got a Dictaphone? Record my request and your refusal so that you can play it back to him later.”
Melissa nods. I have said the right thing, albeit snidely, and am now allowed access to the second stage of conditional welcome: refreshments—in theory, at least. I’d be foolish to take anything for granted until I’ve got a mug of PG Tips in my hand. I’ve got through to kitchen level on a couple of previous occasions and then been ordered to leave before the kettle’s boiled.
I follow Melissa down the hall, clamping my arms against my sides as I pass the shelf of meticulously aligned ornaments: a clear glass heart-shaped paperweight, a white ceramic angel and a wooden boat. They’re precisely spaced so that the one in the middle is equidistant from the other two. Whenever I’m within touching distance, I imagine sweeping them off the shelf with my elbow and sending them crashing to the ground. One day, the fantasy might not be enough for me.
Not safe yet. Just outside the kitchen door, there’s a framed studio photograph of Lee and Melissa beaming joyously, like people who have never met either Lee or Melissa, with their heads touching in a way that suggests they’d ideally like to be conjoined twins.
These are the kind of horrible thoughts I can’t help having when I’m inside the rectangle of rectangles. Hard edges, straight lines and sharp corners—in this house, that’s how you blend in, how you survive. Even when you stare down at the varnished wooden floor because you can’t bear to look anywhere else, the floorboards remind you: straight edges, hard lines . . .
I manage to walk past the conjoined-twins photograph without pulling it off its hook and stamping on it, but I can’t help tormenting myself by looking at it for longer than I need to.
The gleam of teeth from matching smiles . . .
I’ve never believed it when people say that married couples start to resemble one another physically, but since Melissa and Lee got together, she has taken on several aspects of his style. She’s still as dark and olive-skinned as he is blond and pale, but her once-unruly long hair is now short and tidy, and she wears only plain, solid colors, never patterns anymore.
I can remember Lee becoming hysterical at age fi
ve, when Mum tried to put a stripy cardigan on him. “It’s messy!” he screamed. “There are things on it! Take it off!” Mum did, straightaway. Everything that frightened Lee as a toddler was immediately removed by our parents: patterned clothes, bananas, books with scary pictures in them, the cuddly penguin in his bedroom that apparently shrieked at him at night while everyone else was asleep, the bicycle he fell off and couldn’t forgive.
Mum and Dad would have performed a similar life-improving service for me if they’d been able to, except in my case it was trickier. I didn’t mind what I wore or ate and wasn’t scared of any of my toys or books. I wasn’t a fussy, high-maintenance child like Lee. Nothing made me unhappy apart from the other members of my family, and Mum and Dad could hardly remove themselves from my orbit. They didn’t realize they needed to; they thought I was the problem.
Perhaps they were right.
I sit down at the glass-topped table in Melissa’s kitchen, my least favorite room in her house. It looks as I imagine a morgue would look if morgues had yellow jars labeled “Tea,” “Coffee” and “Sugar” on their windowsills: white tiles on the floor and on the walls; stainless-steel appliances, sink and taps; chairs with thin metal legs that make me think of insects from science-fiction films and scrape horribly against the floor if you shift in your seat even slightly. There’s a clock on the wall that’s past its best; its tick sounds louder and more intrusive every time I visit, like the string of an instrument being plucked hard and then left to settle.
I always sit facing away from the clock so that I can see out of the window. Still I can’t escape the geriatric ticking and always half expect Melissa to place an exam paper down on the table in front of me. I would fail, of course.
Being here makes me long for my own kitchen. For both my kitchens: the one in Enfys Road that I left behind, and the one in Bartholomew Gardens where Adam is now, preparing his and the children’s supper. I can see him clearly, even though I can’t see him at all. He’s taken off his jacket and shirt and put on a T-shirt, probably his Rolling Stones one. He’ll have the radio on, and he’ll keep muttering about how boring each station’s offering is and changing the channel at the same time he’s holding an uncooked meatball, which he’ll squash accidentally and blame on whichever pompous presenter or inane DJ has annoyed him most recently. This will lead to not-entirely-serious grumbling about the BBC having no right to be government-funded when it’s so blatantly substandard.
Woman with a Secret Page 10