by Dawn Goodwin
The radio was still playing away to itself, a cacophony of sales pitches and adverts rather than music, and I wondered whether I should turn it off. Then my mind flitted to what we would drink. I walked over to the fridge and opened it in a futile search for a bottle of wine. Nothing but healthy salad, fruit and vegetables – very dull. I would have to tap into Tom’s wine collection. It was the expensive stuff, but he probably wouldn’t notice. Or maybe there was something in the booze cabinet that would suffice.
Only once I was happy with my surroundings did I text Scarlet back:
Great idea.
I agonised about following it up with a smiley face or a kiss, and settled on
Ron x
at the end instead.
In what felt like a lifetime, which I spent staring pathetically out of the window watching for her, but was actually only ten minutes, Scarlet turned up in a cloud of flowery perfume and smiles.
‘I had hoped to bring something, but my booze cabinet is alarmingly empty,’ she said unapologetically as I opened the door. ‘Then I thought to myself that a woman like you must have an interesting booze cabinet yourself, so I’m sure we can rustle up a cocktail or two.’
She had changed into a bright floral tunic over purple leggings with knee-high boots, and looked as fabulous as ever. I was still wearing the jeans I had left the gym in, teamed with a pale cream blouse under a beige cardigan, and I felt drab and colourless next to her.
I closed the front door and went to show her through to the kitchen, but her confidence made it seem as though she knew exactly where she was going, her eyes sweeping every room as she went. She ignored the photo still lying on the carpet, stepping over it just as I had done.
‘This is lovely – very open and light,’ she said as we moved through to the back of the house.
‘Thanks, I love this room in particular for that very reason. There are no shadows or dark corners,’ I replied, taking in the open-plan kitchen and dining area, with its crisp white walls and dark wood floor. At the end of the room by the play area, folding glass doors let in maximum light from the garden and picked up the teal accessories dotted along the countertops.
Scarlet pointed with one long manicured finger at the tall glasses on show in a cabinet and walked straight over to pull two out. I took a seat on one of the white leather bar stools tucked under the breakfast bar.
She busied herself with the ice machine on the front of the fridge freezer, loading each glass with crushed ice, before scanning the room and locating the booze cabinet in the far corner of the dining room. I couldn’t say for sure what she would find in there, since it hadn’t been opened in a long time. She crouched down and took an inventory of the multi-coloured bottles, before pulling a few out and bringing them over to where I sat. She passed me a dusty bottle of champagne to open – ‘You do the honours’ – while she poured a measure of what looked like limoncello into each glass. I studied the label of the champagne and had a niggle of a thought that Tom and I had been saving it for something important – something to do with Grace – but I couldn’t place the details. I tore open the foil strangling the neck of the bottle and attempted to free the cork from its metal cap. The cork resisted at first, then gave way with a small explosion. Scarlet took the fizzing bottle from me and topped up each glass.
Passing one over to me, she held hers up and toasted, ‘Here’s to new friends.’
I chinked glasses with her, smiling but hesitating.
‘Tut, tut, Ron, you have to drink after a toast, otherwise it’s bad luck,’ she scolded.
‘Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong all this time,’ I said sardonically before taking a healthy swig of the cocktail. The cool, lemony fizz on my tongue was reminiscent of childhood sherbet and I liked it immediately. I went in for another gulp.
‘Oh, I love this song!’ Scarlet suddenly erupted from her seat and went to turn up the radio. It was a new song by a band I had never heard of, but the chorus was catchy and I found myself shuffling in my chair to the beat as Scarlet twirled across the floor with her arms outstretched, the glass still clasped in her hand. I wanted to ask her to put the glass down as sprinkles of cocktail dripped onto my immaculate floors, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment, so I rolled my head from side to side in an attempt to loosen the tightness in my neck and tried not to focus on the drops as they fell in front of my eyes like nervous ticks.
I took a few small breaths and another swig of the cocktail, put the glass securely on the breakfast bar and swung myself off my chair, determined to loosen up. Then I was swirling around with her and we were giggling like teenagers.
The song ended and, out of breath, I slumped back into my chair and drained my glass. The immortal sound of David Bowie then floated out of the speakers, reminding us to be heroes, and the atmosphere shifted again.
Scarlet immediately refilled my glass, followed by her own, her hands as quick as a gunslinger. My previous vows to lay off the booze were easily forgotten.
Sitting watching her, I realised that I still knew very little about her. Our conversations up until now had been superficial and frivolous.
‘You know, I envy you,’ Scarlet said.
‘Why?’ I replied, not sure if there was a punchline to follow.
‘Well, all this…’ She waved her glass around, indicating the room. ‘All this domesticity.’ She almost spat the word, like it was completely foreign to her. ‘You’re settled, seem to have it all. I’m more of a wild card, a bit of a floater, but one day I’d like all of this.’
And right there was the main difference between us: I was settled, domesticated, perfectly house-trained, like a family pet, while she was the stray who wandered free and only had herself to please. Before I met Tom, I would like to think I had been drifting down the same path, with life stretching out before me, full of promise and mystery, and I was determined to grab it with both hands, but then I chose the path that led to marriage, a home and a family and I had donned the clothes of the perfect housewife and mother. Looking back now, part of me wished I had played it less safe.
‘It’s all a façade,’ I said. ‘I feel like I’m just hanging onto it all by my fingernails these days. Most of the time I’m about ten seconds away from violence.’
The air grew heavy as my mind started to wander to the photograph still lying face down on the hall carpet, which I couldn’t bring myself to touch. I could feel Scarlet’s eyes boring into me.
‘Right, top me up again!’ I burst out and jumped up to turn the volume of the radio up another notch now that Bowie had finished serenading us. ‘We’ll have no more serious talk today.’
*
By the time Tom opened the front door late that evening, looking worn out and resigned, I was slumped in an armchair with the remnants of countless cocktails in a warm glass in front of me. I grinned drunkenly at him and looked around for Scarlet, hoping to introduce her.
‘Hey!’
‘Hi. You okay?’ he said warily, eyeing the glass in my hand, no doubt thinking, Here we go again.
‘I’m more than okay. My friend Scarlet is here and we’ve had such a laugh. You’ll love her – I think she’s gone to the loo, but I can’t wait for you to meet her,’ I said, looking around eagerly.
Tom frowned, then left the room to hang his tie over the hall banister.
I pushed up out of the chair, swaying on my feet, and followed him.
‘Scarlet!’ I called out. There was no answer. Then I noticed her bag and red coat were missing from the peg. ‘Oh, she must’ve left already,’ I said, confused.
‘You didn’t notice she’d left? How many have you had?’ Tom asked, disapproval radiating from him.
‘I… er…’ I thought back: one minute I remember laughing and dancing; the next I was in the armchair. Clearly the cocktails had sneaked up on me. There was a black hole in my memory that had swallowed the last few hours.
‘Jeez, V, is this becoming a habit? You were pissed the other day too. I
don’t mind you having a bit of fun now and again – God knows we both deserve that – but getting pissed all the time doesn’t help,’ he shot at me. He bent down and picked up the photo from where it still lay at our feet. ‘What’s this doing here?’ His face was pale and tight.
‘I found it in my gym bag. I don’t know how it got there…’ I replied, my buzz fully evaporated now.
He couldn’t look at me, but retreated up the stairs, taking the photograph with him.
‘And it’s not all the time!’ I shouted, then stumbled into the kitchen.
The debris from our impromptu session littered the countertop – empty crisp packets, chocolate wrappers (which I didn’t remember eating), an empty bottle of Bacardi and various mixers, lids off. We had moved on from the champagne when the bottle was finished and had hit the harder tack apparently. There was also an empty Martini glass standing in a pool of melted ice, with a tell-tale ring of red lipstick on the rim. No wonder my memory was patchy.
I sat on the stool at the counter and picked up the glass, my thumb tracing the lipstick. Then I noticed the gold lipstick case hidden behind the Bacardi bottle and opened it: the red lipstick that Scarlet had lifted from the department store. I looked at my reflection in the oven door and saw traces of the colour on my lips. Come to think of it, I had a vague recollection of laughing about the whole episode.
Using the glass as a mirror, I reapplied the lipstick to my lips as carefully as my shaky hands would allow, then stood back to admire myself. The face looking back was distorted, unfocused and covered in shadows, but I felt dangerous and edgy, like how I imagined Scarlet felt when doing something outrageous.
I listened to the quiet in the house, the occasional thump from above as Tom readied himself for bed, and knew that I should be joining him, maybe reaching out to him in the dark, but my feet wouldn’t move. I found myself dreading the walk up the stairs and chose to stay where I was for a while longer.
The overhead LED lights were suddenly too bright and I leapt up to turn them off. In the darkness I resumed my position on the stool and just listened, trying not to think or feel too much. But I couldn’t help it. My head was spinning and images of life before flooded through my mind. A barrage of people and places. I thought about Scarlet and began to make up theories about her life – where she has been, who she has loved – since I didn’t know much of the truth. I could picture us, years from now, growing old disgracefully, wearing inappropriately high heels and getting into trouble, and I loved the idea. I didn’t want to play it safe anymore; I wanted to break out of the prison I had locked myself in all those months ago. I was tired of the whole charade of my life and of hiding in the past while the rest of the world moved on.
I heard the toilet upstairs flush.
Who was I kidding? In a few years, Scarlet would’ve grown tired of me and my baggage and I would still be sitting here, in this house, alone with my memories and culpability. By then, Tom would have moved on too – and Grace… My head bowed under the weight of my thoughts and the tidal wave of alcohol.
What felt like a lifetime passed. I could feel absent tears on my cheeks. Eventually I stood up and headed towards the stairs, knowing full well that sleep would be hard to find tonight. As I passed the hall mirror, I caught a glimpse of myself with the garish lipstick still painted on my lips. The case itself was still clenched in my fist. I put it down on the hall table, then raised a hand and smeared the red lipstick across my mouth with my thumb. I considered myself for a moment, now more clown than starlet, before navigating the stairs to bed.
*
Scarlet and I started to see more of each other while Tom was at work. The days fell into a new routine. I would head out of the door and filter into the steady stream of hassled parents and dawdling children as we marched in line to the school gates over the road. The mums around me would be rushing and fussing, but I found the chaos calming. At the scene of the handover, as small children brushed off their mum’s kisses or ran back for an extra hug, I would stand back and soak it all in, letting the unconditional love regenerate me for the day. Then I would take my time returning to a quiet, empty house, before doing an hour or so of unnecessary cleaning and tidying or going for a run, pushing my lungs to breaking point and enjoying the desperate breathlessness. At 10 a.m. I would make a cup of tea and open the lounge windows wide to let in the sounds of the children in the playground at the school, the laughing, shouting and frivolity acting like a soporific drug.
A knock at the door and Scarlet would be standing there, all smiles and bright colours, and the rest of the day would be spent swapping stories of our youth, discussing the trivialities of the celebrity world – always her topic of choice – and generally passing the time as superficially as possible.
I was careful to spread out the amount of alcohol I was drinking, so that Tom wouldn’t have any more ammunition against me. That wasn’t to say we didn’t drink; we did, in copious amounts. The alcohol kept us loose and relaxed. I found myself consciously leaving enough time in the afternoon for it to work out of my system before Tom made his increasingly later trips home in the evening. Thank goodness he didn’t see my Ocado delivery receipts; the clatter of wine bottles as the driver carried the bags in would be a giveaway of how much we were getting through, not to mention the weight of the recycling bin on rubbish collection day. I was getting clever at hiding the bottles out of sight.
Felicity remained tenacious in her attempts to get me out of the house, but I avoided her as much as possible, not answering her calls or the door, avoiding eye contact when I saw her in the street. I figured she’d get bored soon enough and move on to trying to fix someone else. I needed space from what had developed into a parasitic friendship. The more space I had, the less I wanted to see her.
In contrast, Scarlet was becoming the air I needed to breathe every day. Our conversations had covered careful ground until now and I was reluctant to be completely honest about my home life, but as the days built, I found I wanted to confide in her. Talking to her was easy. It wasn’t a battle for attention that any exchanges with Felicity would evolve into, because we didn’t try to outdo each other. There seemed to be no judgement or criticism, no playing games. It helped to think that no matter what I said, she would have said, thought or felt worse herself, and such freedom of speech was a rare feeling for me after years of tiptoeing on eggshells around Felicity.
Our conversations also helped me to feel more accepted and happier than I had for some time and a weight started to lift from my shoulders. As the days wore on, I began to confide in her more about Tom and my hidden relief that he was choosing to work late rather than subjecting us both to excruciatingly silent evenings. There were still things I didn’t talk about, like where we were a year ago. That could wait.
The week after our cocktail binge, Scarlet arrived as usual and we opened our first bottle of prosecco at about 11 a.m. I would’ve been content to stay inside, but Scarlet pointed out that because the previous week had been so grey and lacklustre, it would be a shame to waste what was proving to be a bright day full of the contrived promise of autumn. She decided we would take our drinks into the garden and she was right: the sky was an endless cornflower blue, there was a hint of warmth in the air, but the trees were turning golden, ready to try and survive another winter.
As soon as we stepped outside, I looked around embarrassed. Once my pride and joy, lack of attention meant that the garden was now a shadow of its former self and sadly neglected. The grass was long, with bare, muddy patches from the blasts of sun and rain over the summer; weeds poked through whatever shrubs had leaves; and many plants needed deadheading and pruning. For the first time, I noticed all the colour had drained from the garden palette.
Surprisingly though, Scarlet said, ‘Look at this amazing garden!’ Part of me thought she was taking the piss, but the expression on her face was the opposite of sarcasm. ‘So much space and potential here! I love getting my hands dirty. I could get stuck in and help
you with this, if you want? It can’t be easy staying on top of it.’
I tried looking at it from her viewpoint rather than through my own self-critical eyes. It was long and narrow, but the overgrowth gave it a woodland feel, the kind of haven where children could make dens and secret hideaways. Grace had often asked Tom to build a treehouse in the bottom corner against the fence, where the trees met overhead, but he hadn’t followed through and it had been ages since anyone had been out to enjoy any of it.
‘That would be great, thanks. I used to spend time gardening with Grace when she was younger, explaining to her where vegetables come from and planting wild flowers, but I’ve neglected it lately. Entirely your fault, of course,’ I replied, smiling at her but feeling a shadow creep over me. ‘I’m hoping the wild flowers will look after themselves so that there may be some colour showing through when spring comes around again.’
‘This summer was punishing in many respects,’ she replied. ‘Well, we can start tomorrow – but today we drink!’ She raised her glass in a flourish. ‘To the promise of winter, and whatever lies ahead.’
‘Hear, hear!’ I replied, chinking my glass to hers.
She started to look around her more attentively, from the overgrown trees along the fence to the rosebushes running along the edge of the shaped and bordered lawn. To the right, set back from the lawn on a small stone patio, stood a large outdoor table covered in a tablecloth of dead leaves and dirt. Next to this was the trampoline, cloaked in spider webs. Grace would have a fit if she saw that and wouldn’t go anywhere near it until they were all removed.