Through the Wall

by Caroline Corcoran

  How was any of this fair, I thought, after everything I have managed and accepted, and all the work I did to be good enough? And the injustice propelled me round to his friend’s flat, drunk by then, mostly on alcohol left behind by Luke. His stuff was still at our place too, so that while he could bask in the anonymity of a friend’s spare room, I walked around stepping over trainers, glimpsing a photo we had taken in the Peak District, moving his mayonnaise to one side in the fridge.

  I only had to open a kitchen cupboard and there were things I didn’t eat, only Luke, or to go into the bathroom to see a plug blocked with his hair, or find a can of his deodorant. He had left me with all of this. It was an act of such supreme cruelty that it could take my breath away every ten seconds, and that’s what I went to tell him, for once. Now, what did I have to lose? But Luke didn’t answer his phone and I needed him to know he had to take his stuff, now, get it out, get out, so I could breathe.

  I banged on the door and he wasn’t there and that angered me more. Finally, at 11.30 p.m., he arrived back with the friend he was living with, a guy who had previously been my friend, too, and who now couldn’t look me in the eye as I sat on the doorstep, shivering and with something approaching a hangover in a T-shirt I had slept in for three nights.

  ‘I’ll see you in there, mate,’ his friend said to Luke, a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

  I looked at that hand, envied it. While I might have struggled with friendships, Luke – able to be that charming, smart version of himself that he’d been in our early days – made friends easily.

  ‘Well, there’s my first question answered,’ I said, my neck craning up at him as the start of a rain shower dripped onto my espadrilles. ‘Yes, you are okay.’

  We continued the conversation back at our flat because it was more private. Despite it all, I felt excited as soon as he came in through the door because he was a presence in our home again and that was right. I felt, oddly enough, like I might even be able to sleep if he would promise not to leave until I woke.

  As Luke sat down on the sofa and moved aside a chocolate wrapper, his eyes rested for a split second on the bottle of amaretto, emptied out now, in the wastepaper bin. I flushed. He did his drinking with friends, at parties, talking. I did mine alone, at home, weeping. Never had the divide between us been so obvious.

  Still, I felt suddenly calmer because he was here and so he couldn’t be elsewhere. I didn’t have to think about him and wonder what he was doing. Was this how parents felt when their children are sleeping upstairs safely, versus when they are out there in the world and there’s a relentless low-level anxiety?

  ‘Harriet, what is there to talk about?’ he said, sighing impatiently. ‘This is getting tedious. You break up, you go out, you get drunk. You spend time with friends. I’m just doing what normal people do.’

  He said it all pointedly, the subtext being what he had told me many, many times: that I had no friends, that I wasn’t normal.

  ‘Please don’t leave me here on my own in a country I’m not even from without you,’ I sobbed. ‘I have no one.’

  I kissed him then, which I’m not proud of, and in the end we had the most terrible sex. Sex I knew the next day that I’d kissed him into, but similarly that he shouldn’t have participated in by taking advantage of my state – and that felt layered with every shade of awfulness.

  I lay there at 5 a.m., awake, savouring him being there because I knew he wouldn’t be again but hating how different it felt, and when he left it was awful all over again.

  Something stuck in my mind that someone I worked with once had told another colleague.

  ‘If you want him back, you’ve got to look as if you’re not a mess and pretend you feel amazing,’ she said. So I did.

  A couple of days later, I got dressed, put on more make-up than I’d ever worn, tried to carry off heels and went to his office. I phoned him from outside and when I saw his face, I felt such internal self-loathing that it was physical. My chest ached and my lips went dry.

  ‘Harriet, what are you doing here?’ he snarled, guiding me away, ashamed, when I should have been the one who could turn up at his work because I was the central person in his life.

  We ended up in a side street. My feet hurt. I suspected the left one was bleeding.

  ‘I needed to see you,’ I said, smiling the unhappiest smile there is, the one of a desperate person trying to make someone believe they are joyous.

  ‘But you can’t come to my work!’ he shouted, disbelieving, alarmed.

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to come to your work,’ I explained. ‘But at night I know you’ll be at the pub.’

  ‘You could have texted me. Called me. Arranged to meet up with me.’

  He was right. I couldn’t quite remember why I hadn’t done that. I was severely sleep-deprived. And slightly drunk.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, suddenly remembering. I rustled around in my bag. ‘I brought your post,’ I grinned, holding my haul out victoriously.

  Anyone could see that most of it was junk but technically, technically, it was his post and I needed to give it to him. This visit was crucial.

  He took it out of my hands.

  ‘Couldn’t you just … forward it?’ he said, biting his lip. It was an expression – nervousness – that I had never seen him exhibit towards me. ‘I gave you the address.’

  I stared at his nerves, mesmerised.

  ‘Oh sure, but I was passing,’ I said in my best breezy voice, despite the fact I was hopping from foot to foot.

  He glanced down at my shoes.

  ‘Harriet, you can’t do this again, you know? I have a meeting. I was in a meeting.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ I said with a high-pitched laugh. ‘Noted. Point noted. But we can still be mates, right? I’ll maybe drop round to the flat in a few days if work’s not suitable. As mates?’

  He didn’t say anything, just backed away into his building.

  Then he stopped dead, a few metres away from me, and turned around.

  ‘Harriet, are you … going somewhere?’ he asked cautiously.

  Caution! From Luke. I was transfixed, again.

  ‘Yes,’ I laughed. A laugh as sad as the sad smile. ‘To surprise my fiancé at work.’

  41

  Lexie

  February

  Tom and I are in one of those situations where you feel like you’re playing a part, saying your lines, doing an impression of yourself.

  ‘So, depending on your postcode, you would be entitled to either one, two or three rounds of IVF,’ says the consultant, matter-of-fact, flicking between sheets of paper. ‘We’ll check that in a minute.’

  I’m thinking about my twenties, all those nights out, drinking buckets of wine, laughing, and how this is a different world.

  Those people couldn’t know me now; couldn’t know this. Unless they were going through things like this, too? Was everyone dealing with real events and we were all just glossing over it with flippant jokes in too-loud bars? How did I not realise that was what the world really was?

  ‘But for now, we will try a drug called Clomid. It might just help to kick-start things for you.’

  But I’m already thinking about my bank account and how much is in it, and how much IVF it could buy if this Clomid doesn’t work and we need more rounds than the NHS can give us. It couldn’t buy much IVF. I’m thinking about Anais and her free, accidental baby. I’m thinking about conversations I had with my parents when I was nineteen and I brazenly told them I didn’t want kids. I’m thinking about years of contraceptive pills and what a fucking waste of time they were.

  I’m thinking about fifteen things at once, anything but this, and I need to focus. The consultant is handing me a prescription but I can’t make out the words.

  ‘I’ll make you an appointment for a few months’ time,’ she says. ‘Then if the Clomid hasn’t worked, we can talk about what comes next.’

  I’m drowning. A few months’ time? If nothing’s worked by then
, surely I’ll have sunk without trace.

  But Tom is being our rational arm, literally with his hand held out. He’s shaking the consultant’s hand, thanking her and ushering me out into a blast of cold air. I’m shocked by it and it takes me a second to remember that it’s February.

  When we have picked up the prescription, we go to a coffee shop.

  ‘Well,’ says Tom, being Tom. ‘That was positive.’

  I’m silent with the shock and it takes me five minutes to respond.

  ‘What if we can’t have kids?’ I say, holding my hot chocolate with two hands but not drinking. I’m shaking with hunger but nauseous.

  Tom downs his espresso.

  ‘There’s no reason why we can’t,’ he says. ‘The doctor said that. It’s just that we are struggling to get pregnant again naturally, but with Clomid, or if that doesn’t work, these two rounds of IVF …’

  My brain is everywhere again. I’m thinking of famous couples who are in their forties without kids, friends of my parents who have lots of dogs but no children. I had assumed it was a lifestyle choice, but is this what happened to them? Is that sometimes where this path concludes?

  ‘With all of that we stand a better chance,’ I say. ‘But for some people it just never works. And we only get two chances of IVF. What if neither works? Then what?’

  ‘You’re doing that thing again,’ says Tom. ‘You’ve even quoted it at me. You’re catastrophising.’

  ‘I can’t see Anais,’ I say suddenly, panicked. ‘I cannot see Anais. I can’t go to her catch-up dinner.’

  Everyone else, again.

  What does everyone else matter here?

  And yet they do, don’t they, they always do.

  An Instagram post with a scan picture matters, even though it could be sent from a home of misery and rage.

  A ‘baby on board’ badge on the tube matters, even though it could have come after ten rounds of IVF and many more miscarriages than I have had.

  I don’t know how to live among all of that.

  Pretending? Acting? Hiding? Acknowledging? I don’t know which verbs to choose. I don’t know how this works.

  Tom looks at me and I’m back in the room; back in our conversation.

  ‘Forget about the dinner with Anais. You’re leaping. We can ditch the dinner.’

  But then my mind is running away again.

  Was it easier before social media? Or did envy poison anyway? It just came at you via a different route.

  Tom has taken hold of my shoulders and I think, honestly, at this moment, I believe, he is breathing for me.

  ‘One step at a time,’ he says.

  I catch a woman in the corner looking over at me from her laptop with pain au raisin crumbs on her chin and I have the same feeling that I had about Harriet the other day: it’s okay for you. It’s so absolutely okay for you.

  I don’t have the energy to get up and walk out and Tom, my partner, almost has to carry me. I have no choice but to believe him when it comes to Rachel. There is no space in my head to doubt Tom right now. No space to deal with anything else. No potential to deal with this alone. No possibility, at this moment, of being able to carry myself.

  42

  Harriet

  After I visited Luke at work, I felt euphoric. We had spent time together and although – of course – it wasn’t perfect, I had loved seeing his face, being in his life, taking up a segment of his day, so that when his hours were assessed in his subconscious at the end of the evening, I was there. I had a role.

  I texted regularly, trying to observe the rule that I’d heard from the girl at work. I was good, I was fine, I was happy. It was a mantra. I texted pretending I was at a gig I thought he’d like – I’d Google what was on and check reviews – or about items of his I’d found in the flat.

  I had spent so many years trying to please Luke that I was a professional. I had tricks, ideas, skills and I put them all to use. But this time, they didn’t work.

  I’d gone past wanting his things to go away; now, I wanted them to stay forever, because how could he ignore me then? I had his parts. I slept with his pyjamas still in the bed and sprayed his deodorant every morning. I watched TV programmes he was into, so I could message about them. Before they would have been passes, ticking his boxes. Now, he was barely interested. I was no longer being assessed; he didn’t care what I did.

  And then, the killer blow.

  I’m going to come round on Saturday to collect my stuff. Mate’s got a van.

  I lied and said I was out, but the next time he was insistent.

  We need a clean break. I’m coming over at 2 p.m. If you’re out, make sure you leave the key in the old place.

  This was boxing practice and I was floppy now from the pummelling.

  I cried then. It lasted for a long time.

  When Luke did come to collect his things, he brought a buffer in the form of his mate Stu, owner of the van and avoider of my eyes. I shuffled around awkwardly, pointing out obvious piles of Luke’s things that no one needed pointing out and perching on the side of the sofa, wondering what specific movement I would have to do to make Luke miss me.

  ‘Did you get the spice mix from Morocco out of the cupboard?’ I said, hopping up, and Luke, now Stu’s fellow avoider of my eye contact, shook his head.

  ‘You cook more than me, you might as well have it,’ I pressed.

  I knew that without Luke, a life of grilled cheese awaited me. The liveners in our life, from the nights out to the spices, all came from Luke.

  ‘It’s fine, you have it.’

  ‘I think I have some printouts of photos of Portugal if you want them?’ I said.

  ‘Keep them,’ he replied, emotionless, heaving a box of clothes up onto his shoulder and calling the elevator again as Stu arrived huffing up the stairs.

  He said something to Luke about trying to get fit and they murmured to each other like friends do as I laughed loudly, awkwardly, trying to insert myself into the joke. Luke flashed me a scowl to tell me to back away. I was cowed, then, like the old days.

  As he went downstairs with his boxes and Stu followed closely behind, I had an idea. I was planning to snap one of the prints of us in Lisbon that I had mentioned with his phone, which was lying on the side, and set it as his screensaver. A farewell memo. A jolt.

  Except that when I picked up his phone there was a message on his home screen from a girl named Naomi, which said simply:

  I had a lovely night too. And yes, dinner on Tuesday sounds good x.

  43

  Lexie

  March

  I see the back of a blonde woman’s head disappear hurriedly up the stairs as I get in the lift. It may be Harriet but again, I don’t get a proper look. Is she avoiding being in a lift with me?

  I stare at the beige carpet to avoid looking in the floor-to-ceiling mirror and think. Is Harriet elusive? She doesn’t sound elusive when we hear the raucous parties that intimidate the hell out of us as we sit drinking tea in our slippers, or the loud singing through the wall. And the other day I swear I caught a glance of her in that fancy hotel for the meeting I never heard back about, but it’s odd how rarely I catch a look at her. I guess this is just London.

  My brother has always found it hilarious, the mysterious neighbour who is more real to me on Google than in real life. The idea’s so incomprehensible to them in Yorkshire, where on the right there is Ruth, mowing the lawn and telling them about her back problems, and on the left there are the young parents who ask advice about their baby twins’ nipple-biting habits.

  Occasionally, I’m envious. I love the anonymity of London 90 per cent of the time, but lately there’s a loneliness that’s new to me and someone to make small talk over coffee with – someone who didn’t know me before – appeals. Would it be weird to knock on Harriet’s door? I shake my head, because of course it would.

  I put my shopping away and log on to my email, only for my main copywriting client to have messaged me telling me that they
can’t give me any more work.

  I go online and see Anais announcing her pregnancy with a scan picture and multiple emojis.

  Tom walks in and immediately logs on to do something important for work, without even taking his jacket off, and I’m resentful that he looks urgent.

  What does anyone need me urgently for?

  I go to the kitchen cupboard. The nurses told me that if we do need IVF, I should lose a little weight, but that’s still down the line. For now, there doesn’t seem much point. I shovel in the crisps without even sitting down.

  44

  Harriet

  The next Tuesday, I watched the door of Luke’s office from my spot next to a falafel shop. Inhaling cumin until he came out wearing new jeans.

  Dating! He was available for dating when I was barely available for showering. At the junction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Old Compton Street, Luke checked his phone and smiled. I felt a rage I didn’t recognise in myself. I was used to burying reactions. Anger – from seeing this life that he was building without me, with its dates and its funny texts and its happiness – was a new thing.

  And yet, at no point did it occur to me to walk away and stop torturing myself. To build a life of my own and exist independently from whatever they were doing. At no point did it occur to me that what Luke and I had had been far from perfect anyway, or that what Luke did to me on a regular basis wasn’t kind, or good, or humane.

  At no point did it occur to me that that anger I had just glimpsed would lead to me being curtailed and locked up in an institution.

  All I focused on was getting Luke back.

  For now, though, I had to dive behind a queue for a burger pop-up because Luke had turned around to look for something. Shit. I had just about got away with turning up at his office; he would never let me get away with following him. I pictured him seeing me and my legs began to shake. Fury was gone, replaced by the much more familiar fear.