As he’d walked back through their front door, he’d known she was there. He could see her dress strewn on the stairs.
“Louise?” he’d called, trying to sound nonchalant, like he didn’t know anything was wrong. “What happened with Alice?”
Down the hall he could see the living-room light was on, the door half-closed and foreboding, not in retrospect but in the moment, like he knew what he was going to find before he walked down the corridor. As he’d pushed the door open and looked into the room he hadn’t taken it in at first. He hadn’t seen his wife’s body inside the crumpled dressing gown slumped in the chair, hadn’t seen the empty pill packets. Hadn’t seen or hadn’t wanted to see.
And then everything had sped up, he’d run over to her and grabbed her, tried to pull her to her feet. He thinks he was speaking, shouting, crying, checking she was breathing, saying her name over and over as he held her under the arms, lifting her from the soft chair, her head flopping listlessly around, almost like it wasn’t attached. She’d felt heavy, much heavier than she should have, she’d always been so slight, but she’d felt like a bag of cement. He’d wrestled his phone from his jeans pocket while still trying to hold her, not willing to let her go, wanting to squeeze her and kiss her and hug her and tell her it was all going to be all right, that he was there for her and he was so, so sorry.
The ambulance and hospital had all been a blur, the stomach pumping, the questions, the endless questions he couldn’t answer, the endless night dragging on alone, not knowing how much had gone into her system, when she’d taken the pills. It was vital to know when she’d taken them, to know what might have been absorbed but he hadn’t known, he hadn’t been there, he hadn’t been there.
“I wasn’t there,” he’d told the doctors over and over, omitting to tell them where he had been instead, that he’d been with someone else.
Guilt is a terrible thing. Maybe that’s what the end of their marriage came down to in the end. Adam has spent all these months blaming Louise for what she did and for the fact she’s never told him why, never opened up to him about Jarvis or told him that she’d found out he was her brother. But that was only part of the story, he now realises. His guilt for being with Jarvis, for staying to hear him out while Louise was downing bottles of pills at home – that’s what’s been eating him from the inside out. It was luck that had led Adam home in time to save Louise with no lasting damage. Just luck, not judgement, not divine intervention, chance. How could he ever have lived with himself if he’d been half an hour later? What would he have told the kids?
* * *
Since that night, Adam’s life has unravelled completely anyway. He thinks things would have been different if he’d given it a go with Jarvis but it wasn’t a choice, was it? Now he’s sitting alone in his kitchen, slightly drunk, nursing a head injury and wondering what on earth to do next. He doesn’t know where Louise has gone, but with the kids at school the house feels eerily quiet as he sits finishing the bottle of red they both started. Her glass, nearly full, sits opposite him, a physical reminder of her disdain for him. Could he have done things differently? Was there ever any chance of a different outcome for their marriage? What if he’d actually listened to Jarvis that night, what if he’d said yes? What if he’d made more of an effort to understand that everyone has their reasons, even for lies as big as Jarvis’s. He wasn’t a bad guy, he’d made bad decisions. But aren’t they all guilty of that? Wasn’t attempting suicide a bad decision on Louise’s part? Wasn’t falling in love with Jarvis a bad decision for both of them? None of them came out of this cleanly, nobody was blameless. Maybe that’s the thing nobody wants to recognise: there’s rarely a single person to blame for most things, life doesn’t happen in a vacuum, everyone partakes in it, playing their parts. So people find someone, anyone, to blame when things go wrong. Well, Adam’s done with the blame game, it’s pointless, it never has a winner.
Too late now anyway, things have gone too far. Looking around at the kitchen, their family home, the scene of mundane domestic life for so many years, Adam feels claustrophobic, like he has to escape, to get out in the fresh air. Not after Louise, he doesn’t want to see her, doesn’t want to continue pulling things apart when she won’t open up to him. What time is it? Are the pubs open yet? Maybe a pint, a little time out to think, to cool down. Maybe they’ll both see things differently with a little space from one another. He stands up, steadying himself against the table as another wave of giddiness overtakes him. Once he feels stable again he heads out, forgetting to grab his coat from the banister at the bottom of the stairs as he slams the front door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After her suicide attempt – she can call it that now, somehow giving it a label helps her, makes her own it more keenly – things were never the same with Adam, Louise now realises. When they got home from the hospital, they’d both been silent. Not quiet, not subdued but absolutely silent. Adam had simply looked after her, not asking anything of her, not asking her reasons, not pushing her for explanations, not pushing her for anything. And she’d loved him for it. All of a sudden, she’d felt an enormous need for him again, like she had when they’d first got together after Tom. He brought her duvet down and she lay on the sofa watching films. He’d bundled the kids off to his parents and he’d brought her water and soup. He’d sat with her head on his lap, stroking her hair. And he hadn’t asked, he hadn’t pressurised her.
After a few days, watching a black-and-white daytime film and listening to his heartbeat as she lay on his chest, he’d simply said, “You won’t try again, will you?” His voice had sounded strange, vibrating slightly, quivering.
“No,” she’d replied, snuggling into him more deeply, desperately, pushing any thoughts of Jarvis from her mind. For two weeks after that night, she hadn’t left the house. Adam had simply dropped everything to look after her and she’d held him close, day after day, wondering how she could have forgotten the man he was so fundamentally. When she’d felt strong and in control, she’d started seeing his kindness as a weakness. When he’d taken over when the children were born, when she couldn’t cope, she’d seen that as weakness, too, she now realises. But kindness and selflessness aren’t weaknesses, they’re nothing of the sort. They’re the strongest things anyone has to offer another person.
“I’ve told Jarvis I can’t go running anymore,” Adam said to her after few days. “Thought you’d prefer not to have any visitors for a while.” And she’d nodded, gulping back the acid as it crept up her throat at the mention of his name, but glad she wouldn’t be required to make up a lie as to why she didn’t want to see Jarvis – not yet anyway.
When she was finally ready to venture back into the outside world, she was terrified. As she’d stepped outside, Adam holding her hand, she’d been in a state of panic: would she bump into him? Would he come into the café? Would he try to see her again? Would he call the police, even? She’d held a broken bottle to his neck, for God’s sake.
But then, as they walked down the hill, she’d seen the for-sale sign on the garage and his flat. She’d seen the removal vans. As they walked past, Louise had started crying, sobbing and clutching her husband’s arm. Adam had asked her what was wrong then, of course. But she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t.
And so months passed and Adam never mentioned Jarvis moving away, but she supposes he had other things on his mind, what with his wife attempting suicide. But he’d never pressed her for an explanation and she’d never felt able to offer one. So they carried on as if nothing had happened and while she felt differently about Adam, while she valued him more than she had since the children were born, she noticed a change in him. An emptiness appeared that she hadn’t seen before, not even after Tom. Some days she could see it overwhelming him so much that he could barely speak. And she wanted to help him, she did. She wanted to be able to take the pain away for him, to explain what had gone wrong and where their problems stemmed from. But she couldn’t. How could she eve
r tell him that she was planning to leave him, that she’d wanted to run away with his best friend? That she’d felt their lives were so grey and lifeless that when a man – any man – arrived and offered a spark of life, she took it. How could she explain to her husband that when they’d met Jarvis she’d felt more alive than she had in years and he’d offered her a new direction, a new purpose and she hadn’t cared about Adam in the slightest. All Adam had ever done was look after her and take care of her when she needed it, even if she hadn’t realised that at the time. And how had she repaid him? By wanting to screw her own brother.
She would never tell Adam, even if she knew that decision was hurting him and destroying their marriage. Some secrets couldn’t bear the light of day because they’d burst into flames and engulf everything in their path. They had to remain in the darkness, even if it was suffocating there.
After a while, she noticed Adam had begun drinking a little too much, a little too often – and she did nothing. She watched from the sidelines, going to work, throwing herself in to the café, ignoring Adam’s slow descent. It’s his way of coping, she told herself. And for a while, that was okay. His drinking was moderate to begin with, but time passed and it progressed. They stopped speaking about anything of real value, they were two people sharing the same space, awkward in each other’s company at best, tense around each other at worst.
For months, they went through the motions. Then she’d had the phone call from the hospital, when she’d had to go to the police station with him to report a mugging he’d received at 10am, drunk on gin and she’d known their marriage was over. Everything had gone too far and he needed to fix himself. She couldn’t do it for him. Wouldn’t do it for him. She couldn’t give him what he needed, not now, not ever.
* * *
So here she is, walking the streets of Brighton, not sure where she’s going or why, wanting to be away from him, to be outside in the fresh air and free. She rounds the corner past Browns bar, heading towards Ship Street, wandering aimlessly, perhaps weaving her way down to the seafront when she hears singing; a woman singing at the top of her lungs.
Louise looks around, expecting to see a busker with a hat and a guitar, common on Brighton’s streets. Instead she sees a beautiful woman wearing a long blue mac, like an old 1950s detective might, coupled with massive Jackie Onassis sunglasses. The woman isn’t busking, she’s standing on the corner, smiling at Louise as if they know each other.
Louise scuttles past, head down, heading towards a café down the street. It is trendier than Louise’s, more ‘Brighton’. The two guys behind the counter are clearly stoned off their heads and one of them has the patchy red flaked skin on his cheeks of someone who partakes way too much. Nonetheless, it’s got a friendly vibe to it, warm, wooden interiors, dim lighting and loads of speciality teas and coffees on the menu, despite the fact most people are genuinely boring and monotone in their tea- and coffee-drinking tastes. She wonders if they sell much of the speciality stuff, or if it’s part of their brand, of their ‘We’re so cool and stoned and relaxed’ façade. Louise orders a coffee and takes a seat.
“You okay, love?” a voice asks pleasantly. Louise glances at the empty seat next to her as a woman sits down, a wobbling Earl Grey tea slopping onto the table as she does so. It’s the singing lady from the street with the enormous sunglasses.
“I’m fine thanks,” Louise replies quietly, angling her away so as not to make eye contact.
“Oh, my mistake, love. You don’t look all right, that’s all.”
“Excuse me?” Louise replies, looking at the woman indignantly, ready for an argument, ready to tell her what’s what. But the woman is smiling at her and she looks kind, not mad. She looks like someone who cares and for some reason, Louise doesn’t snap at her, she doesn’t tell her to mind her own business. Instead, she bursts into tears, something she rarely does, especially not in front of strangers.
“It’s okay, love,” Jackie O says, reaching out to her and touching her lightly on her shoulder; comforting but not intrusive, the perfect balance. “It’s probably not too late to fix things, you know. Not yet.”
* * *
“I’ve made such a mess of things,” Louise finishes, sipping her Americano. “When I think about it, I’ve never given him a chance. First he couldn’t live up to Tom, then he couldn’t live up to Jarvis and then, when I finally saw what I had in him, I couldn’t open up to him the way he needed me to.”
“Things are rarely one-sided, Louise.” Jackie O smiles, nodding at Louise to continue.
“Well that’s it, that’s the whole sordid mess. You know, I’ve never said it out loud to anyone before. Not once. I filed it away like it never happened.”
“You could tell Adam,” she says. “He might surprise you. What have you got to lose?”
“I don’t know if I want anything from Adam anymore, even if I did tell him. Things have gone too far.”
“Have they? If that’s true, why are we having this conversation?”
“I’ve no idea, I don’t even know you.”
“Shall I tell you something? Maybe the most important thing you’ll ever hear? It’s about time you gave Adam the benefit of the doubt before it’s too late. Tom is only interesting because he’s dead. Jarvis is only interesting because he’s a fantasy, an illusion of a life more exciting. But it sounds like Adam has always been there, he’s always been real – and that’s why you don’t value him.”
“I don’t think that’s fair…”
“What’s fair got to do with anything?” Jackie O asks, almost like she’s cross. Louise feels like she’s completely misjudged the situation. Of course this woman isn’t the full ticket, of course she’s not. She was standing on a street corner singing at the top of her lungs but not busking. What on earth is Louise doing sitting unloading all of her problems on her for?
“Look, I’m sorry, I’d better go,” Louise says, standing up.
“It’s not too late,” the woman says again, earnestly. “You’ve got time to change things, Louise.”
“You’ve been kind,” Louise says, feeling panicked to be in this woman’s presence, wishing she hadn’t let her into her life, even for a few fleeting moments. Now, the woman feels dangerous, like she could unbalance things even more than they already are.
“I’d better go,” Louise says again, looking at the darkening clouds outside and grabbing her bag and putting it on her shoulder. “Try and beat the rain.”
“Don’t try to beat the rain.” Jackie O stands up, walks past Louise, towards the door of the café, opening it up as the rain starts to pour down outside. “Just accept that sometimes you’re going to get wet.”
With that, Jackie O strides out into the downpour with her arms outstretched, leaving Louise standing alone by her table and half-filled coffee cup. She sits down again, looking at her mobile phone on the table in front of her. She wants to call him, she realises. She owes him that. All the times he’s looked after her when she needed it and he needs her now. If the only way to fix him is to open up then she’ll do it. She’ll tell him everything. But not yet, she needs more time. She finishes her coffee and orders another. Then she leaves the coffee shop and walks down to the seafront, standing staring for a long time at the burnt-out remains of West Pier, derelict, rusting, but somehow still beautiful, somehow looking like there may be life left in its broken remains yet, that it could magically be reborn from its own devastation, bigger and better than ever. She walks up the hill, weaving her way through different streets and parts of town, reminding herself there’s still novelty in everything, there are still surprises. When she finally arrives home it’s afternoon, nearly time to pick the kids up. She lets herself in the front door and shouts for Adam.
“Adam, you there?”
No answer.
“I’m sorry about this morning, I am. Let’s talk. Let’s talk.”
No answer. She walks into the living room and stares at the enormous canvas print hanging on their living
-room wall. Louise hones in on her own smiling, windswept face. Beside her, Adam isn’t looking at the camera, but instead at her, eyes filled with…what? Hope? Sadness? She doesn’t even know. How long since he’s looked at her like that? Matthew is on Adam’s right, his arm around his sister’s shoulder, grinning cheesily at Jarvis holding the camera. The green white hills and the sea in the background are shimmering in the sunlight, a twinkling reflection of the mood of the afternoon. This moment, captured, perfect, pointing to a glorious future for the family. A future that no longer exists. Filled with a sickening clarity for the first time in years, she grabs her mobile phone and dials Adam’s number. As his voicemail picks up, she can hear her own desperation and hope.
“Adam, I’m sorry,” she says, turning back to the print of their day out at Beachy Head and staring at her husband’s sunlit face. “I…look, please call me back. Please come back. I love you. I want to tell you everything, I want us to open up again, like we used to.” She lets the phone drop into her lap as she sits down in her cracked leather armchair, the same one she slumped into that night all those months ago when she tried to take her own life.
“We can get through this together,” she says quietly to herself. “I do love you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Adam’s standing at the bar he and Louise first took Jarvis to, the first time they got pissed together. He remembers it like it was yesterday. At first he’d been so annoyed with Louise for inviting Jarvis out with them when they were supposed to be spending time together and fixing their marriage. He’s so lost in his memories of that night, the moment their lives changed course, that when he first hears the voice he thinks he’s imagining it.
“Hello, Adam,” it says. He’s missed that voice, despite the heartache it caused them both, despite everything, Adam would do anything for it to be real, for Jarvis to be standing there next to him.
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