I did two years at boarding school then fled to London. At university, I was the only one without a ‘home’ to go back to in the holidays or for weekends. Sure, I could fly to Canada, but not for a two-day stint to fill up on macaroni cheese. Not to get my white washing done. Not to coddle myself in a blanket in my old bed and feel like a child again. Not to ask my dad sheepishly if he could look at my electricity bill because I didn’t know what the hell it meant.
‘You can come to me,’ said my brother, Kit, but that meant a student dive at the other end of the country with five blokes and a pubic hair mountain next to the bath.
I loved him for offering. Not enough to brave that bathroom.
So what I needed from a partner wasn’t chaos or abandonment or erratic behaviour. What I needed was goodness, reliability, someone to bring me toast in bed and book me a taxi home. It’s what Tom and I have always done, both of us, for each other.
‘I’m Tom,’ he said as I set the tray of shots down on the table in front of us. He put his hand out and I teased him for the formality and his slight poshness.
I mocked his Surrey accent, laughed when he told me later that he kept a diary that he had written in most days since childhood and downed a pint mimicking something I had read about called a ladette.
Then, when he stayed around, I felt my body relax, and I ordered the drink I actually wanted and talked to him for four hours, until the lights came on, when he walked me all the way to my front door and even carried my shoes.
I introduced him to my friends three days later. A gaggle of girl-women at a birthday dinner. I was three glasses of wine in and just starting to believe I had passionate views on obscure Nineties indie bands, when I saw Tom having an in-depth conversation with my flatmate, Alana. I smiled, tipsy and happy. He had arrived and slotted right in.
After that it’s as blurry as most things are after 9 p.m. when I was twenty-one. There was dancing, there were fifteen people all shouting the same song lyrics and there was kissing, kissing, kissing in Soho at midnight.
A couple of months later, I sat around his family’s giant dinner table, his mum dolloping extra portions of lasagne on my plate and calling me honey, and my grin wouldn’t take a break.
I glanced across at Tom, smearing garlic bread around his plate. I looked at his dad, nipping out to the kitchen for another bottle of Chianti in his slippers. I smelled melted cheese and scented candles and heard the sound of Radio 2 coming from the kitchen.
‘You’re lucky, you know,’ I said later when Tom and I were squeezed awkwardly into his single childhood bed. ‘Having a family.’
‘You have a family,’ he replied, adjusting his body in the tiny space.
But we’d have rather done this than slept separately. Sleeping separately would have felt like torture.
‘Kind of,’ I replied.
I hadn’t told him much about my own family yet. But even in our best days my family hadn’t been like this family. Tom’s mum squeezed me tight as soon as she met me; I always had the feeling that my own mum was recoiling if I hugged her. Not that she didn’t like it; just that she genuinely couldn’t cope with it. Meals weren’t a comforting event, they were functional: people did their own thing, turned up and grabbed a sandwich.
This version of family was the one I wanted, long term. Tom, tipsy on the red wine, nodded off next to me, and I lay there looking at him and thinking, I wonder if it’s you I’ll have children with? And wondering what our family would look like. Knowing, already, that it would look like tight hugs and lasagne and sheepskin slippers heading to the kitchen for another bottle of that Chianti.
Tom is still here thirteen years later; still, to me, incredible. But even Tom is just one person and one person can never be enough to carry a whole life. What a pressure I have been applying to him, what a heavy, heavy weight.
13
Harriet
January
I am on a 7.38 a.m. train out of Liverpool Street, because Tom is on a 7.38 a.m. train out of Liverpool Street. I shiver; the day is pure January. Dark, cold. This feels like 3 a.m.
I waited for the door to close as he left the flat then I took the stairs, quickly, as he jumped in the elevator, and followed him out. Half an hour ago, I walked behind him onto the platform, pulled my scarf tighter around my neck, saw the destination he was heading to on the screen and everything went blurry.
Of all the places Tom could be going to on location for work this morning, I was following him to Hunstanton, the pretty Norfolk seaside town. The place where Luke and I got engaged.
On the train, I sit four rows behind him and burrow into my scarf to conceal myself – although, worst-case scenario, I figure, there’s no law that says a person can’t get the same train as their neighbour. Coincidences happen all day, every day, everywhere. They’re the basis of brilliant novels, and films, and stories. Look at my history with Hunstanton and how I am now heading back there, for starters.
I watch him and see the defeat in his shoulders. I see him sigh heavily. I see him stare out of the window for the whole journey, even though there is a book on his lap, even though it is barely light. There is a lot to be learnt from watching a person alone, doing nothing. I used to do it in hospital. It helped to pass the time: seeing if I could tell who were the dangerous ones, the violent ones. The ones, I suppose, who were the most like me. The ones who were capable of terrible things, as I was capable of terrible things.
I look around at the other commuters now, thinking what judgements they would pass if they knew about those terrible things. Could you tell what I did, if you stared for long enough? What would people learn, if anyone cared enough to watch me?
‘I care, Tom,’ I whisper to myself. ‘Look how much I care.’
He stretches his arms above his head in a yawn, unknowing, oblivious.
When Tom steps off the train, meets colleagues and shakes their hands then heads off to work, I leave him to it. I can’t follow further or loiter on the edge of their small group. But it has been enough. Just observing him. Gathering information for what might come next. Being in his company.
Before I get the train home, I swerve left and take another trip: it’s down to the beach, takes me down memory lane, too.
What peace, I think, as I stare out to sea. The sand has that miles-to-the-water Britishness. You want to swim? Fine, but you’ll have to earn it with a long trudge.
I look around. Beach huts the shade of party balloons have found fame since the social media bloggers turned up, desperate to tick off their daily dose of beauty. Hunstanton’s beach huts didn’t feel so ubiquitous when Luke and I were here. It made them quainter.
I walk on. Perfect tableaus are everywhere I look. A shaggy dog, braving the sea when all humans goosebump at the thought. Parents hugging hot coffee. Families taking out optimistic picnics. Later, their pictures will say they were happy eating the ham sandwiches; the reality was that they were happiest when they started speeding up the motorway towards their central heating and duvets.
I am watching all of them, nosy and cold with my nostrils the only body part I will allow out of my scarf. Things get hazy. I don’t know which of these people are here now and which of them were here then, when he did it.
It is four years almost to the day since Luke rooted one knee into the sand, wobbled slightly then sniped under his breath at the man who walked past and said with a grin, ‘I’d do it quickly mate, it’s freezing.’
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked, the familiar phrase sounding faintly amusing to me although I knew I couldn’t laugh: that wouldn’t be right for this scene. Luke was still snarling slightly at the guy who had ruined our moment.
His hand was ice as I held it and my eyes squinted into bright January sunshine. I felt my whole body shiver despite it because it was still winter and I hate the cold.
A boy was crying for ice cream nearby and I knew Luke’s teeth would hurt at the idea. Gulls squawked and waves crashed and everything smelled of sea air.
‘Yes,’ I said quickly before he said a word. I felt victorious. I felt validated that I had taken a gamble on him and moved away from my family and done all of this work to be better. And I felt, finally, like Luke must love me. That the charming, engaging man I had seen at the beginning was the real Luke. That he had just been under pressure lately, taking it out on me because I was closest. But he was still smart, still funny, still beautiful. The knowledge was as physical as the bracing wind.
Luke was on his phone twenty minutes after he proposed, looking at sports results, trying to buy some gig tickets from a friend, but mine stayed in my pocket: I didn’t need any distraction. I just stood there in the biting wind, smelling the vinegar from the chip shop, feeling it all.
‘What if we invite David over?’ I had blurted out, my confidence peaking. ‘Tell him in person?’
I missed David to the point that I felt it in my stomach, in my bones. He still hadn’t visited. This would be the perfect excuse.
Luke looked up from his phone.
‘Are you serious?’
I regretted my words already. This perfect tableau, ruined by my idiocy. I felt my body temperature shoot up like I’d just stepped off an air-conditioned plane into summer in the Mediterranean.
‘After the way your brother’s been to me the whole time we’ve been together. You don’t think that would be hard for me? To have him stay in our home? Turning you against me?’
I wished desperately that I could go back in time, take the words back.
But still, I had no idea what he was on about. My mom and dad might have been wary of Luke, sure, but David? David saw the charm that a lot of people saw in Luke; David had idolised him.
‘You’d probably break up with me by the time he went home.’
I gave in easily, desperately. I was horrified that I had started this conversation and wanted only for it to be over. I didn’t mention David again and after that, I stopped contacting my brother so often, too. What if he was trying to split Luke and I up? Things were getting confusing. I couldn’t really be trusted to know.
On the train journey home, Luke didn’t speak one word to me, despite my stroking his arm the whole way and making unending, desperate small talk.
Later, I messaged my parents to tell them our news but ignored their calls in response. I knew that hearing what they had to say about us being engaged would bring me down.
But the voicemail did it anyway.
‘Just checking though, Harriet – you are sure, aren’t you? You are really sure?’ said my mom after the obligatory congratulations and a pause. I ignored and deleted her message and after that, the distance that had manifested itself since I emigrated stretched even wider.
I didn’t tell Luke what my mom had said. He would blame me for painting the wrong picture of him, for somehow making them feel that way, and he was being frosty enough with me anyway after our row about David. Until, suddenly, there was a surprise trip to Copenhagen booked and the dial pinged to the other side: I was forgiven.
‘Let’s celebrate our engagement!’ said Luke, euphoric, high.
See, I thought, see – there’s the charming version. There’s the man who sparkles.
I nodded, grinned, kept quiet about the inconvenience to my work schedule and to everybody I was going to have to let down, since I hadn’t been consulted on dates. I just felt relieved that he had thawed.
In Denmark, we left the hotel to the shocked faces of reception staff, who believed we should stay indoors. It was minus thirteen, while the hotel had fluffy cushions and a sauna.
‘It’s so cold, though,’ said a concerned manager, shaking his bald head and shivering at the thought. ‘It’s so cold. Even for Copenhagen.’
‘We’ll survive,’ said Luke sharply.
I winced. But I kept quiet: the one time I had brought up his rudeness to strangers, we had had a huge row.
‘Because I stand up to people when they don’t do their jobs, Harriet?’ he had said. ‘That’s not rudeness. That’s just not being pathetic.’
At the Little Mermaid, a bronze statue coated in white snow, we paused for twenty seconds, ticked it off, walked on.
‘It’s so cold,’ said a passing tourist to us amiably. ‘Even for Copenhagen.’
The man held his partner’s hand. I reached for Luke’s but he shook me off, told me it was too awkward to hold hands in gloves.
We waded back through wedges of snow to the café that served hot chocolate as real chocolate on a stick, melting into your milk, making the powder we stirred into water at home look like an abomination.
I took off my scarf, ordered my drink.
‘It’s so cold, though,’ I said, faux-serious as we sat down. ‘Even for Copenhagen.’
But Luke wasn’t laughing. My stomach lurched.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said, playing with the packets of sugar.
Our order arrived.
I looked deep into the sludge of my drink as the milk darkened. I picked up my spoon to stir and saw my hands shaking. Had I done something? I tracked back desperately. It had been going so well, but evidently I had messed up. Idiot. I steeled myself.
‘Do you want children?’
First, the relief that it wasn’t something bad. But then, the question itself. I was young and I was in love with Luke and with my job. Did children sleep through pianos playing at midnight? If I had a child, would I have the energy to compose in the evenings, which was when I worked best? Working was what had made London feel doable. I was turning down job offers, gaining a strong reputation. I was working on more lucrative projects; being approached for big-name musicals.
Luke had complained about it, how ‘obsessed’ I was with my job these days, and I wondered sometimes if that was making him snappier. Maybe it was my fault and I was neglecting him. So I had agreed on this holiday to put an out of office on and ignore work calls, despite the short notice. But it was hard. It was a part of me and I was happy. I wasn’t sure about placing limitations on that.
I knew, too, that I was prone to depression. I knew that in life I wobbled and wasn’t sure I had the stability to hold up others.
But at that moment, holding onto Luke’s arm with one hand and drinking pure liquidised chocolate with the other, I felt like I was being shored up by love and sugar and as stable as I had ever been.
Perhaps, I would feel surer too, in us. I panicked, always, that Luke would leave me. I looked around in restaurants and saw that woman, that woman, all the other women who would be better suited to him. I glanced and saw him looking, too.
If Luke wanted children with someone like me then someone like me should be grateful. I should have all of the bloody children he wanted, grow them in my womb immediately. I should shut up, as he often told me, and stop thinking and agree.
‘Yes,’ I said tentatively, but he didn’t hear the hesitation.
Instead, he was immediately manic, gripping my hands and describing this huge family, four or five kids, all of us travelling together.
‘Imagine it!’ he grinned, that intense eye contact that people found so beguiling. That I had described to people when I first met him. That was one of the many things that made me feel so adored, at first, so important. ‘Swimming in the ocean and skiing down the slopes in this cute little line.’
This idea bedded into my mind until it became the clearest, most perfect thing I could imagine. This would make us whole; make us too busy for the bad times.
In October that year, with Luke in agreement, I took my last pill and we started trying for a baby.
I told my mom, surprising myself. But it had been so long since we had something to pull us close together. I longed for my parents, despite my attempts to block the feelings out. The idea of a grandchild, I thought. That might change things. Do something more tangible than an engagement. Reset mom’s thoughts on Luke and me. Glue my family and me back together again.
‘Luke and I have decided to try for a baby,’ I told her in
one of what were now our very occasional phone calls.
‘Well that’s lovely,’ she said, but I heard the tone in her voice and regretted my words already. There was a long pause and I could hear her debating. Should she say it? Keep quiet? Was she pushing me away further, if she said what she really thought? ‘But I thought you were definite on not wanting them? Have you changed your mind?’
I stayed silent, furious, on the other end of the phone. Because I knew what she was getting at.
‘You mean that you think Luke pushed me into it, right?’ I hissed. ‘Why are you always, always having a go at Luke?’
She was silent then, for a second.
‘Because I don’t think he’s kind to you and I don’t think he’s right for you,’ she said gently.
I put the phone down on her then, not for the first time. After that, I began to ignore most of her calls.
Then Luke and I started trying for a baby here, in this flat, where I now live alone, next to a happy couple and their happy life. And what do you know? They are trying for a baby, too. They live my old life and I live my new one.
Before my flat was empty, it was full. Before it was lifeless, we lived life, planned life, hoped, here, to make life. We cooked joints of beef, sent scents out into the hallway that said ‘We are here, we are popular, we are rich and full and greedy.’ We chose colours together, put up pictures. We put plants on the windowsills that are dead now, withered.
Whatever our imperfections were, whatever anyone else would have judged them as, I could live with them. They were worth it for what was presented to the outside world. For my value, when I came in this package. Isn’t that what matters now, anyway? Behind closed doors can be flawed, as long as Facebook says joy.
Luke and I planned to turn one of the rooms in our flat into a nursery, as Lexie and Tom will soon. Luke presumed I would give up work and I presumed that I would do whatever he wanted, so we left it there, even though the thought of not composing made me feel nauseous and unanchored.
Through the Wall Page 5