by Lucy Atkins
‘No. No. I’m almost at the M23.’
She leaned on her knees, then, and threw up into the ditch.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stared into the prickly hedgerow at the clumps of blood-red black bryony berries and tangled grey trails of old man’s beard. She could hear all the cars on the motorway and it seemed improbable that people were still driving, still going about their business, travelling up and down the roads, keeping appointments, running errands, going to work, when this was happening.
She spat a few times, acrid spittle burning her throat. She could hear Chloe’s tinny voice coming from the passenger seat where she’d tossed the phone. ‘Liv? Liv?’
Marta was up there now, in her house, with her children, right now. That revolting snake. Rage seized her. How could he do this? With Marta? It was such a sad, pathetic, midlife crisis thing to do. It was repulsive. He was old enough to be Marta’s father.
The crushing in her chest intensified and then she felt as if something was covering her mouth and nose, pressing itself over her body, screwing her into a ball. She struggled to stand up but couldn’t; she tried to breathe but couldn’t get any air into her lungs. She felt her diaphragm sucking up and down, helplessly. She was going to suffocate in fury on a grass verge, with hundreds of cars passing below. She was going to die because she couldn’t breathe.
It felt like a long time before she managed to get any oxygen into her body, a few thin gasps of air.
Chloe was wrong. This had to be a mistake.
But she knew it wasn’t. David was sleeping with Marta. He’d been doing so for a while. It was obvious now. She was there, in their home, day after day, standing in the kitchen in the morning, braless, in shorts, or coming out of the shower wrapped in a towel. Marta was young enough to be impressed by David. Her attention would have convinced him that he was still spectacular.
And Dom knew – of course – he must have known for months. He could not look at or speak to David because of it and this was, of course, why he despised and avoided Marta. Poor Dom had been living with this hideous secret, hating his father for it but still somehow too loyal to tell. Or perhaps he was too fearful of what it would do to her to know the truth. It must have been going on for months, right under her nose, in their house. Maybe even in her bed.
She thought about David touching Marta’s body and leaned over to throw up again. Tears streamed from her eyes as she gagged.
The lies he must have told. All the occasions when he and Marta had been away at the same time – she could think of so many now. She’d been so naive. He was even taking a trip the day after the launch to Copenhagen when Marta, too, would be away, supposedly in Bristol visiting friends.
They’d made a fool of her. The humiliation and betrayal felt physically crushing. Things had been bad between them but he wasn’t supposed to do this to her. He was supposed to love her. They were supposed to work this out.
They would never be able to work this out now. Their marriage was over. There was no way she would ever be able to forgive him for sleeping with the au pair. She would never respect him again.
Chloe’s voice sounded deranged coming from the seat of the car. She reached over and picked up the phone again. ‘I’m OK. It’s OK. I’m coming back now. I’ll see you in an hour. I’ll call you. I’m glad you told me. Don’t worry. I’m OK.’ She hung up.
But she wasn’t OK. Everything was collapsing. She couldn’t breathe properly, or think. The room full of beetles, Thoby the dog, Lady Burley’s denial, Uncle Quentin’s pranks and now this – David and the au pair, seventeen years of marriage betrayed for a Danish child. Everything she’d believed in – her marriage, the diary, the beautiful, powerful book she’d written – was fake. Her entire life had just revealed itself to be a towering, toppling lie.
Vivian
The Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London
I did it – not that – but I went. I went to the party this evening.
It is past midnight but I find that I cannot go up to bed. It is partly the thought of the stairs but it is also because I feel certain that I shall be awake all night after the excitement of this evening. This is a good thing as it means that I will not have to face my visitor. She has become so ferocious lately, so full of anger and recriminations, that I fear I shall die at her hands even though they are a product of my own mind.
The library is very cold but I am too tired to light a fire. I have a blanket over my shoulders and I have raised my knee on a stool, but it is painful still. I expect I need to see a doctor.
I thought about not going up to London tonight but in the end I just couldn’t stay away. I did not know if I could step forward in front of the crowd, but I felt I had to witness her brief and teetering moment of glory.
It was a virtuoso performance. Given what she had discovered from Lady Burley yesterday it was a miracle that she could stand up there at all, let alone remain so cool and dignified. But she did it. Her ability to dissemble is extraordinary.
I kept my overcoat on. I wanted to remain anonymous and I did not want to stand out because of my clothes. I do not own any formal eveningwear; I would look ridiculous in a dress. I slipped into the museum just as the speeches were about to begin.
It was a lavish and glittering affair. The Royal College of Surgeons is quite a venue and its Hunterian Museum was jammed full – there must have been at least two hundred and fifty guests. As I watched all the beautiful people rubbing noses with the grisly exhibits, I could not help but feel awed by the number of friends she has. I moved around the side of the room until I found myself a spot in Curiosities, behind the skeleton of an Irish giant.
Nobody paid me the slightest attention of course. Why would they notice a plain and faceless person hiding in the shadow of a giant?
I could see Olivia trying to get up the stairs and I felt a little sorry for her then. Behind that smile she must be feeling terribly overwhelmed. People kept stopping her to kiss her, take photos and praise her. She just kept smiling, holding her glass of champagne high so that it wouldn’t spill. Only those who knew to look for it would see the fear behind the smile and the pallor beneath that make-up.
The speeches were to take place on the balcony, the next floor up. It was far too high. People had to crane to see. She was wearing the eye-catching sulphur dress. I recognized it from the magazine shoot.
A waiter passed with a tray of test tubes that contained a viscous blood-red cocktail. I asked what it was and he said ‘Bloody Mary’, with a note of contempt, as if that was surely obvious. I looked at, but did not sample, the witty doctor-themed canapés as they passed by: quail’s eggs made to look like eyeballs, each on its own little medicine spoon; cupcakes with red cross designs.
Olivia did look spectacular. Her hair was pulled up in some kind of elaborate knot and her lips were painted dark red. Her shoes were very high and I was worried that she might trip on the stairs, but I suppose she is used to teetering on high heels.
Her editor came onto the balcony, tapping her glass. She introduced herself as Joy. I had always imagined Joy to be a tall, skinny and blonde, social X-ray type, but in fact she is Joy Sekibo, a short and powerful-looking black woman around my age, with cropped grey hair and large red and gold earrings.
The room settled down and everyone listened while Joy gave an enthusiastic rundown of Olivia’s talents as a writer, academic, TV star and human being. She then announced that Annabel was number two on the bestseller list already and there was a cheer. I could see Olivia’s dress, a yellow stain behind the specimen jars in the floor-to-ceiling display case that acted as a screen. I could only imagine what might be going through her mind as she stepped forward and thanked Joy. Then she thanked us all for coming to support her. She looked radiant and sounded gracious and witty, effortlessly holding the crowd’s attention. She was used to performing, with all the lectures and talks she has to give. She was used to attention. But beneath the mask, I knew she must b
e in turmoil.
If the truth came out, she would have such a long way to fall. I imagined that slavering pack turning on her and for a moment I felt weak, as if I might need to sit down. I was forced to lean against the giant’s display case and take a few deep breaths.
Perhaps it was the associations that this thought had brought into my mind but I knew then that I could not do it to her, not here. The memory of my own public shaming sickens me even now, five years on. Sometimes, though I want to forget it, I find myself reliving the moment when I first realized what was happening to me on social media, an invisible world of which I had only, until that day, been hazily aware.
I was sitting at my desk, having just faced the disciplinary board, and a young DPhil student put his head round the door. He told me that I was ‘trending’ on Twitter. I hardly knew what Twitter was, let alone what ‘trending’ meant.
Keen to enlighten me, he brought in his open laptop. Somebody I didn’t know had ‘tweeted’ about my transgressions. They called it ‘dung gate’. A lot of other people had already weighed in. It is impressive how vicious people can be in 140 characters. The original ‘dung gate’ comment was ‘retweeted’ 847 times and 568 people had ‘liked’ it. Many had also offered brutal personal comments.
‘You’ve gone viral,’ the young man smirked. I think, perhaps, this handsome young DPhil student was rather enjoying introducing me to Twitter. He wanted me to know how ashamed I should be of what I’d done. It felt like a physical assault. I was breathless, shaking and had to sit down.
Anonymity, I’ve learned, brings out the worst in people.
I focused my attention back on Olivia. She was talking about how she had discovered the diary in a ‘tiny Sussex museum’ and then she described the hard but rewarding work of bringing Annabel to life. I saw her scan the room as she talked and I wondered if she might be looking for me, but I was on the margins at the back, well concealed by the giant.
She spoke movingly about the strictures on Victorian women’s lives, about marital cruelty and the exclusively male institution of medicine. The Royal College of Surgeons, she reminded the audience, did not have its first female member until 1910 and even today only 11 per cent of surgical consultants are female. She even mentioned me at the end, though not by name. She at least honoured that part of our agreement. She called me her ‘research help’.
She was dazzling. Nobody would ever guess that she was anything other than entitled to be standing up there, looking down at her admirers.
She got what she wanted. Annabel is a bestseller. All her hard work publicizing the book has paid off. I have cut extracts out of The Sunday Times and the Mail, and the interviews with Olivia that have run in several women’s magazines and Sunday supplements. I particularly enjoyed her telling one reporter how the diary ‘just fell into my hands, as if Annabel had chosen me rather than the other way round’, how the process of writing was ‘freeing’ and ‘creative’; how she’d modelled her style on fiction, consciously playing with suspense, clues and riddles, but how, ultimately, of course, it’s not fiction at all, it’s fact. Her readers, she said, ‘Don’t want to feel tricked or lied to, they want the truth’.
This week she has been on BBC Breakfast and GMTV, where she, with great wit and dignity, tried on a Victorian corset and revealed that a Hollywood film company has bought the option to make Annabel into a movie.
There have no doubt been intensive social media campaigns but I have not followed those. I will never go onto social media again, not even for this.
Everything she longed for, in other words, has transpired. I feel quite proud of her.
I do wonder if there was any nagging doubt at the back of her mind as the book unfolded. There must have been, but presumably she ignored it and carried on, like the rolling dung beetle that always pushes its dung ball in a straight line, regardless of what lies in its path; going over obstacles rather than around them.
When her speech was over, everyone was whooping and clapping. She looked slightly stunned, and very alone, suddenly, up there on the balcony. I buttoned my overcoat and slipped round the back of the room. To my delight, as I was leaving, I noticed a small case of beetles that had something to do with Darwin, but sadly I couldn’t stop to examine them as I had to get out before she came downstairs.
She phoned me twice after she’d been to Three Elms yesterday. She sounded positively deranged. She has emailed me too – all exclamation marks.
Where are you?! I have been to see Lady Burley. She told me about you – your mother and your childhood dog, THOBY!! This can’t be a coincidence, can it? She didn’t know about the diary. She said there was no diary! What is this, Vivian? Why doesn’t she know about the diary? Is it a hoax? What is this?
I have to go back to London for the book launch now but if you don’t call me back I’m going to come back down the day after the launch and I’m going to wait for you until you agree to talk to me. This ends here, Vivian! I need the truth!!
I sent her a text. Just one line.
Come to tea at Ileford the day after your book launch party, 3.30 p.m.
Olivia
The Farmhouse
Her memory of the hours after the launch was somewhat hazy. David had taken the children home – he’d sent Dom over to tell her this – and she went on to a bar in Lincoln’s Inn. Chloe came, she hadn’t left the party after all, and Joy and Carol and some other people from the publishing house. Emma and Khalil went home, saying they had to get back for the babysitter.
There was heat and hubbub, more champagne, and although she was in agony, overwrought, nerves flayed, she stayed drinking in the bar because she couldn’t go home, she couldn’t face David. She couldn’t deal with the truth. She didn’t have the stamina for that after all the people, all the lying and posturing and pretending.
She’d wanted to obliterate everything and for a while she managed that quite well. Chloe eventually pulled the glass from her hand at about 1 a.m. and led her out to a taxi. She had wept in Chloe’s arms in the back seat and Chloe had patted her back and told her not to do anything silly, that it would all be OK, that she’d call her first thing in the morning.
She vaguely remembered watching David sleeping on the study pull-out bed, and thinking to herself ‘this is the last time I will ever watch him sleep’. His carry-on luggage sat by the door ready for his trip to Copenhagen. She didn’t know how long she stood there for; she was drunk, numb with exhaustion. And then she was in Marta’s room. Marta had already gone. No doubt she was waiting in a boutique hotel in Copenhagen wearing new lingerie. She pulled a suitcase from under Marta’s bed and hurled all the younger woman’s belongings into it, including her dirty underwear and boxes of tampons. She remembered zipping it and hauling it to the window, watching it bounce onto the street below and marvelling that it did not burst.
Then she was back in the study. David was on his front, snoring, oblivious. She scribbled a note and put it on his case:
I have gone to Sussex. You are not going to Copenhagen because you have to look after the children. Marta is not to set foot in this house ever again. When I get back – when I am ready – we will talk about this and you will move out.
She remembered taking ibuprofen and drinking glass after glass of water. She must have changed her clothes at some point because she was in jeans and a jumper. She’d sat in the kitchen for the rest of the night, drinking strong coffee, waiting to sober up, with a dangerous, toxic headache blooming at the base of her skull. As the sky through the kitchen window lightened to pigeon grey, before her family woke, she drove away from London.
By mid-morning at the Farmhouse she was feeling very sick indeed. She slept, face down on the sofa, for four hours and when she woke she was hungry. There were ten missed calls from David, six from Chloe. She showered and changed and stared at herself in the mirror. She had aged ten years in twenty-four hours. She was alone now. Her marriage was over. It had been over for a long time, but she had been too afraid to ad
mit it. Instead, she had lied to herself. She had pretended that this gnawing doubt, this lack of trust in David, was fixable. She had told herself that if she worked harder, paid off their debts, achieved more, then eventually everything would get better, everything would be perfect. But while she was busy polishing the outside, the inside had rotted away. She put make-up on, covering her feverish skin with foundation and lining her already darkened eyes.
At ten past three she got into the car again and drove through the lanes to Ileford.
Vivian
Ileford Manor
At 3.28 p.m. exactly I hear her car coming down the drive, under the elms. It stops outside the front of the house, her boots crunch on the gravel, the door slams.
I go to my bedroom window and look down. She is wearing dark grey jeans and a drapey black leather jacket, her favourite high-heeled boots and a voluminous grey scarf. She has smoothed her hair back into a ponytail. The crown of her head reminds me of the elytra of a beautiful black scarab. She must have had the colour done for the party. Looking down on her, like this, she appears smooth and indestructible. Except, of course, she isn’t. Beneath her elytra the wings are gossamer and fragile, so easily torn.
She looks up, as if sensing me, and I step back from the window. She always does this. It is as if there is an invisible energy between us that she feels, without realizing it. Olivia always knows when she is being watched.
As I come down the stairs I hear her rap on the front door. There is righteous hostility behind the knock and my heart hardens a little as I cross the great hall. I will not welcome her through the front door. I will not allow her to take the upper hand again.
I move towards the kitchen, then down the back passage to the scullery door and out into the rear courtyard. The sight of the well further hardens my resolve. Rooks circle the treetops beyond the outhouses, cawing and croaking. I walk round the side. She is standing with her back to me, raising her hand to knock again.