Seeing Other People

by Gayle, Mike

  Bella shook her head. ‘I’ve done all I wanted to do.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you think it would be better if we cleared the air?’

  ‘And how would we do that exactly? Would you sit me down and tell me I’m a really sweet girl but that last night was a mistake and I deserve someone better in my life?’

  I felt myself shrinking. I was the worst kind of walking cliché, the kind that was absolutely convinced they were anything but.

  ‘I’m married,’ I said redundantly.

  Bella’s eyes filled with tears and fury. ‘This was a bad idea,’ she said more to herself than me. ‘I never should have waited for you.’

  ‘Then why did you?’ I hadn’t meant the question to sound quite so abrupt. I genuinely wanted to know. Had I made her promises I couldn’t keep? Had I said I’d find a way for us to be together? It was torture not knowing what I’d said or how I’d said it and frustrating that the only person who could help me piece together the events of the night before was the only person who would be outraged and humiliated by my inability to remember it.

  ‘I waited for you because I wanted you to know there were no hard feelings,’ said Bella, no longer able to hide the hurt in her voice. ‘I waited because I wanted you to know that I understood.’

  Playing with the kids at home that night was like waking up from a dream. This was who I really was, not the guy I’d been last night. I was going to put this whole episode behind me, which was easy enough given that I couldn’t remember half of it. If no one ever found out about it how difficult would it be to convince myself that it had never happened? A life lesson would have been learned, no one would get hurt and there would be no chance of it ever happening again so, really, no one needed to know, did they? From then on I avoided Bella, kept my mouth shut and swallowed down every bad feeling that haunted me and everything might have been OK had it not been for the dreams.

  They started not long after Bella’s last day. I dreamed that Bella and I were in a park and she wanted to swim but I didn’t because in my dream I was convinced that I couldn’t. Somehow – I forget precisely how – I fell into the water and felt sure that I was about to drown when I woke up in the darkness, struggling to breathe. I’d tried to get back to sleep but it wouldn’t come and so finally after an hour and a half of staring at the ceiling I got out of bed and went downstairs to watch TV. The following night it was a different dream. This time I was with a bunch of old school friends who I hadn’t seen in years. They all started climbing a tree in the local park around the corner from my parents’ house and even though I wasn’t sure about it I followed after them. Halfway up however I lost my footing and started falling. I woke up before I hit the ground but after that sleep once again eluded me.

  It had been the same pattern every night for the past fortnight: I’d go to sleep and some ridiculous dream would wake me. Recently however the dreams had become more intense and more frequent. My disturbed sleep was affecting my whole life. I was finding it difficult to concentrate in meetings and I’d been driving the kids to the local ice rink when I nearly drove through a red light as a gang of kids was crossing the road. They were fine; I put the brakes on in time for them to scatter out of the way but it really shook me and in the end Penny and I swapped seats at the edge of the road and she drove the rest of the way.

  As a rule I wasn’t superstitious at all. I didn’t do horoscopes, believe in fate or karma and as much as I’d enjoyed studying the works of Shakespeare at university I certainly wasn’t a believer in any knee-jerk pop psychological beliefs that might see me cast as a tortured Macbeth plagued by a troubled conscience. Real people’s minds didn’t work like that. In the past I’d known friends who’d been having affairs, some for months on end, and until the point at which I’d learned of their transgressions I hadn’t been the slightest bit aware of what they were up to. And so when the dreams started I simply wrote them off as the net effect of having been working too hard. The Correspondent had been trying out a bi-monthly supplement to the magazine which I’d been editing in addition to my regular job. So it made perfect sense that I should be having these dreams. I was knackered, hadn’t been eating properly and the poor excuse I had for an exercise regime had all but gone out of the window. The rational evidence was overwhelming and yet even I didn’t buy it. Knee-jerk or not, this was guilt talking, pure and simple.

  Things came to a head after about a month. I’d woken from a deep sleep with a jolt and opened my eyes not knowing where I was. I’d been running. Someone was after me. They’d wanted something from me but I didn’t know what.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Penny face was partially illuminated by the light of her bedside lamp. She was sitting up in bed next to me, a pile of folders on her lap. She’d obviously been working for some time while I’d been lying next to her tossing and turning like some kind of chained lunatic.

  ‘I’m fine, babe. You carry on with your work.’

  Penny wasn’t going to let it go that easily. It wasn’t her style. As self-appointed chief medical officer for the family Clarke the physical and mental health of both the kids and me fell under her remit. You couldn’t get away with any of that, ‘It’s just a flesh wound,’ crap with Penny. You either took your Calpol or you talked the problem out until a solution presented itself.

  ‘You were having another one of those dreams again, weren’t you?’ she diagnosed with her usual clinical accuracy.

  ‘No, it wasn’t that. I just woke up funny, that’s all. I must have heard a noise in my sleep. Didn’t you hear it? Probably that new couple next door going to work. It’s fair enough that they have to leave early but I just don’t understand why they have to be so noisy about it.’

  Penny was completely unconvinced. ‘I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure it was them that woke you? I think you were dreaming.’

  ‘Says the expert.’

  ‘Says your wife who shares a bed with you every night. You haven’t been sleeping right for weeks now. In fact I think the last time you had a decent night’s sleep was the night before that big shoot when you went out with Carl from work and didn’t make it home.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it wasn’t then,’ I said quickly. ‘What is it with women and their ability to always know what happened when?’

  ‘It’s probably the same thing that causes you to remember whole scenes from Star Wars but not a single one of your friends’ birthdays. Do you want to know what I think the problem is?’

  My breath momentarily caught in my throat. I’d never been a big believer in women’s intuition but when it came to Penny and her curious ability to discern the indiscernible nothing would surprise me.

  ‘Go on then, tell me.’

  ‘I think you’re working too hard and you need to get some rest. You’re not looking after yourself properly. Starting from today things are going to change. You’re going to start eating more healthily, going to bed at a decent time and you’re going to book a couple of days off work and stay home and do nothing. That’s an order.’

  In that instant I was overwhelmed by the love I felt for Penny. She was so amazing, generous and resolutely on my side that she put me to shame without even trying. How could I ever have betrayed her? How could I have treated someone so badly who only ever wanted the best for me? I closed my eyes and turned over on my side; I just couldn’t look at her any more. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m going to try and get back to sleep.’

  6

  Regardless of Penny’s kindness or perhaps because of it, the dreams continued to the extent that there were some nights when I hardly slept at all. In the end however the answer to my problem came from a completely unexpected source: a conversation with one of the kids. It was a weeknight and I’d just arrived home from work to hear chaos reigning in the kitchen. Rosie was in floods of tears, Penny was nowhere to be seen and Jack was sitting alone on the stairs in his pyjamas.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Jack ran to me and
jumped into my arms. ‘Mum’s just really told Rosie off and now Rosie’s crying and Mum’s got her angry face on and is sitting in the living room.’

  ‘Why? What’s Rosie done?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said plaintively. ‘Mum sent me upstairs before the good stuff started.’

  To be honest getting flung into the middle of a family row was the last thing I needed given how exhausted I was, but for Rosie to be so upset and Penny to have walked out of the room it had to be really bad and so I sent Jack back upstairs and opened the door to the living room to find Penny standing staring out of the window.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Penny turned around. She’d been crying. She walked over to me and hugged me tightly. ‘I’m such a terrible mother.’

  ‘No you’re not. You’re the best mum there is. Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘It’s Rosie. You know that vase your Auntie Pat gave us as a wedding present? Well Rosie broke it jumping off the sofa after I’d told her a million times not to. I was loading the dishwasher when I heard this almighty crash and I came in here to find it smashed into a thousand pieces. I asked her what had happened and she looked me in the eye and told me that she’d been walking past it and accidentally knocked it over. I told her to tell me the truth, and she insisted that she had and that’s when I completely lost it. You know how much I hate lying, Joe, I can’t abide it and to see her doing it so easily really hurts.’

  ‘Well maybe she didn’t do it?’

  We both turned to look at the pieces of the vase; however we’d seen enough episodes of CSI to know that a vase knocked over by someone brushing past it doesn’t shatter into anywhere near as many pieces as a vase that’s been bounded into by a high-velocity child leaping from a sofa.

  ‘Right,’ I said to Penny firmly. ‘Let’s go and talk to her.’

  I called Rosie down from her bedroom and sat her at the kitchen table. Aware that she was about to get what was coming to her she began sobbing even harder.

  ‘I’m going to ask you once and once only. What happened to the vase?’

  ‘I told Mum already, I walked past it and it must have caught on my clothes.’

  ‘So you weren’t jumping off the sofa?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  She nodded.

  Penny drew a deep breath; she was moving in for the kill. ‘You know this isn’t going to be over until we get the truth, don’t you? You know families work on trust and if I find out in the future that you’re lying to me I won’t ever be able to trust you again?’

  She nodded once more.

  ‘So I’m going to ask you one last time and then we’ll say no more about it: did you knock over the vase jumping off the sofa?’

  Silence. Then a barely perceptible nod of the head. And then it all came out. She was sorry. She never meant to lie. She was just scared of getting in trouble and she promised never to do it again. And as I watched her sobbing in her mother’s arms I understood that when push had come to shove being in a state of truth with her mum had been more precious to Rosie than escaping punishment. Right there and then I knew what I too had to do if I was ever going to have any peace of mind even though the very idea made me feel physically sick: I was going to have to tell Penny the truth about Bella. It was the only way to make things right.

  That night as we lay in bed, Penny deeply engrossed in some book club tome that her friends were forcing her to read and me watching her surreptitiously while pretending to doze, I tried to imagine myself asking her to put the book down for a moment because I had something important to tell her. I imagined the look of concern that would flash across her features and the way she would turn to me without a moment’s hesitation and say softly, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ and how I’d try several times to find the courage to say what needed to be said before finally managing to get the words out. But although I could imagine her immediate reaction – hurt, shock, and humiliation – I couldn’t begin to picture how things would ever get back to normal. Trying to see beyond that moment of revelation into our future together was like staring into a black hole. It just didn’t bear thinking about. The truth was while confession might have brought me some relief it would be the beginning of a nightmare for Penny and I couldn’t bring myself to do that to her. There was only one option for me: I’d have to keep it to myself. I’d have to live with the guilt. This would be my burden to shoulder, not Penny’s.

  That night, having made up my mind to be the best husband I could be, I slept a peaceful, dreamless sleep, my first in a very long time. Things would be different from now on. What was done was done; I couldn’t undo it, but what I could do was change the man I’d be in the future. I made a vow to myself: I’d never betray Penny again and instead I’d dedicate the rest of my life to trying to become the kind of man of whom she could be proud.

  My plan such as it was worked well over the course of the next few weeks, and those weeks turned into months until six months on I found myself at a Covent Garden hotel concluding a highly enjoyable interview with Johnny ‘Wolfman’ Morrison, the once-forgotten Delta bluesman whose career had been resurrected by the release of a new documentary. I thanked Niamh O’Connell, the PR who’d arranged the interview, like a professional and left the hotel room where it had taken place mentally conjuring up ways to structure the article.

  It felt good to be back to my old self again. It felt good to spend a morning chatting with an attractive woman like Niamh and be completely indifferent to the experience. It felt good to have had an even prettier intern in the office than Bella for over a month now and to not know her name or anything about her; but more than that it felt good to be back firmly at Penny’s side, to feel that surge of love for her whenever I looked at her, to know in my heart, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was all I wanted.

  So many things had happened since I’d made my decision not to tell Penny about Bella: Penny’s mum had had to have an operation on her knee; Rosie had been off school with a raging temperature for two days; the central heating had stopped working and we’d been quoted eight hundred pounds to fix it; Jack had sprained his wrist falling down some stairs at school; the car had failed its MOT and I’d been on a two-day trip to Stockholm to interview the creator and lead actress of a new Swedish crime series. It was the hectic nature of family life that made even the most recent of events feel like the dim and distant past to the extent that a day felt like a week and every week like a month. It was no wonder that time seemed as though it was on fast-forward. And while this may have given me the perfect excuse to forget the promise I’d made to myself to do right by Penny, I had steadfastly refused to let anything divert me from my mission. Nothing meant more to me than making her happy and the result of this was a renewed energy between us. Almost as if we were falling in love again – if such a thing was possible for two people who had never actually fallen out of love in the first place. For me at least, it was as though I was seeing her with fresh eyes: noticing all the things about her – her beauty, quick wit and kindness – which I had somehow become indifferent to over time. She was all I wanted, now and forever more.

  I’d been back in my office for nearly an hour working on potential features ideas for the next issue of The Weekend when Penny rang.

  ‘Hey, you? What’s up? Everything OK?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. Are you busy?’

  ‘Just the usual, why?’

  ‘Because I want to take you for lunch,’ said Penny. ‘These past few weeks you’ve been so amazing – getting up early with the kids, buying me presents, volunteering to take Jack and his friends to the never-ending stream of Tumble Jungle/Wacky Warehouse/Bumper Barn parties that they seem to be invited to every week – and I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate you and everything you do for us.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ I replied. I meant it too. I didn’t want credit for these things, I didn’t want anything for them, I just wan
ted to get on and do what was right, but Penny wasn’t having any of it.

  ‘Of course there’s a need! Whenever I tell my friends what you’re like they think I’m making it up! Please let me do this one thing for you. It’s only lunch, nothing special. I just want to spend some time spoiling you for a change. Where would you like to go?’

  I had no choice but to relent. ‘How about I see you in Allegro’s at one?’ I suggested.

  ‘That,’ replied Penny, ‘sounds ideal.’

  Allegro’s was packed with regulars and I had to nod several ‘hellos’ to colleagues from other papers as Penny and I pushed our way past chairs and tables crammed far too close together to reach a free table in the middle of the café which had the benefit of the best view of the dessert cabinet in the house.

  ‘I really don’t understand why you all like this place so much,’ said Penny as she glanced over the laminated menu. ‘It’s just like a million other cafés in central London.’

  ‘I’ll have you know that Allegro’s is an institution in British print journalism,’ I declared. ‘The deals that have been made here over toasted sausage sandwiches and coffee are the stuff of legend. Without this place there would be no news, just page after page of white space interspersed with the occasional line about Jordan and the royal family.’

  I called over a waitress and ordered the sausage sandwich and promised myself I’d go for a run that evening by way of compensation, while Penny opted for a grilled vegetable and hummus pitta.

  Beaming like she was on a first date, she reached across the table and held my hand. ‘I can’t remember the last time we had lunch together on a weekday.’

  Neither could I. ‘That’ll be never.’

  Penny reacted with a good-natured tut and roll of the eyes. ‘You have a memory like a sieve! We used to have lunch together all the time when I worked at ICM. Remember, you used to beg me to meet you for lunch at that little sandwich place around the corner from Victoria station because you missed me so much?’