‘Stay there,’ I say, my hand clamped firmly to her stomach. ‘And I’ll tell you everything.’
85
Lexie
June
I stay. I am thinking of Tom being here, through a thin, barely there wall. I think I might vomit in a way that feels so different to morning sickness. I gag and she feels it, her hand sticking close to my insides. It feels like she is crawling around them.
Thoughts dash across my brain briefly and urgently. I will fight, I think, I will fight.
I am desperate to claw her off my baby but know that I need to move gently. I know now that Harriet won’t let me leave. I know now that Harriet wants to ruin my life, just as my life is making me happy again. Just as my life is precious. I retch again at the thought of Tom being naked with her. At the thought of Tom laughing at me as I asked him why he had condoms, whose were those knickers. He is worse than a cheat. He is an abuser. He has lied to me, laughed at my valid questions, made me think I was losing my sanity. He has made me doubt all that any of us have in the end: our own mind. Cutting through my terror, I feel a surge of rage.
Fertility issues alter you. They’ve altered me, in ways from which I am sure I will never come back. And this is the way they have managed to seep under the skin and change Tom. Fertility issues have turned Tom into a person who betrays, who lies, who plots. Who watches someone he loves think they’re going insane and allows it to happen.
I knew something happened in the spring. I knew – and I chose to let him get away with his denials. How fucking pathetic does that make me?
And now, even though she has taken Tom and ruined us, Harriet has come for more.
Then, just like that, she moves her hand and walks slowly and deliberately into the kitchen. I pick up my phone again, to tell someone – anyone – to get me out of here but she is over my shoulder behind the sofa, yanking it from my palm before I have even realised she is back in the room.
‘I’m having an amaretto and Coke!’ she says, Party Harriet coming into my line of vision with a huge grin. ‘Want one? I’m sure just a single won’t harm the baby.’ She cocks her head to one side. ‘And it might help with the shock?’
I ignore her and try to breathe now that the baby and me have been left alone for a few seconds. I will try to give you anything I can that could help you, baby, shore you up. Breath: that is all I have to offer.
‘Just more tea, then,’ she yells, a statement of fact this time. I will be staying, that isn’t in question.
‘Do you miss not drinking?’ my neighbour asks, re-entering the room and swishing her ice cubes around her glass. She dabs a drop of Coke off the side of her glass, licks it off her finger.
She asks her question casually, as though we are friends, chatting about pregnancy guidelines. I think of her, pawing me, pawing my baby. My skin crawls.
I shake my head, glance again at the door, inhale and give the baby more breath, more breath, more breath.
There’s a pause.
‘I suppose you drink a lot, socially,’ I try, to calm things down. ‘I hear you often, with your friends having parties.’
She smiles a weird smile, puts her drink down on the coffee table on top of a copy of The Stage newspaper.
Then she leaves the room and comes back with another pot of bloody camomile.
‘Sooo, Tom told me about your fertility problems,’ she says, singsong, next to me on the sofa again, too close.
She puts both hands back on my stomach, mimicking an over-familiar colleague invading your space in a meeting. But this is something far more sinister. Get off my baby, I am screaming internally. Touch me, hurt me if you want, but get off my baby.
I understand the meaning of breathlessness for the first time. I need to gulp air, like it is water on a hangover.
‘Right,’ I gasp again, inhaling the word. ‘What did he tell you?’
She waves her arm around dismissively.
‘The hospital trips, when you took that drug that didn’t work.’
It’s a feeling of betrayal that I have never even come close to. Her hands press more firmly on my stomach. And I think, you put us here Tom, you slept with this woman and this is what has happened. I feel weak, when I need to feel strong, and I focus everything on not passing out. I cannot. God knows what Harriet will do if I can’t fight back.
When I look at her eyes, there’s nothing there, and I know I can’t make a human connection. I can’t get out of this by making her feel empathy, or even sympathy.
86
Harriet
June
I look at Lexie and continue to speak.
‘The decision to do IVF, how that would affect you both, if it was really what he wanted?’
I’m making it up now but it doesn’t matter. I have enough from the hospital letters I intercepted to mean that when I fill in the gaps, it’s convincing. I’m riding on a wave. Lexie looks weakened, frail.
‘And of course, the effect that it had on sex. How you were doing it to order. How it was mundane. How he didn’t enjoy it.’
Lexie looks at me for a long time before she takes a deep, audible breath, like someone has taught her at yoga or at therapy, and goes to speak.
‘Oh God, Lexie, shut up,’ I say before she can get her words out.
‘What?’ she says, sounding shocked that I would be so rude.
It amuses me that she thinks rudeness is the worst I have to give.
My last drink was about 80 per cent alcohol and it’s hit me now. Lexie, in her jeans and her cosy, friendly jumper, is blurry.
‘I said shut up,’ I say, louder, the room swaying. ‘Your yoga breathing, your baby. You’re smug. I hear you, with your boyfriend and your friends and your family. You are so fucking smug.’
‘You don’t have family?’ she asks, closing her eyes briefly, putting her hands to her temples, to her face. ‘And I know … I know you have friends.’
Her voice shakes. I take my hands from her belly and stand up, I see her body un-tense. Too soon, Lexie, too soon. And oh God, she’s pushing me now with words.
‘I don’t have family.’
The room spins and she pushes, pushes harder.
‘Parents?’ she says, gathering her focus, like Naomi with her head to one side, giving me advice. ‘Maybe you could call them if … things are hard? My parents are abroad, too. We’re not the closest but we FaceTime.’
‘I speak to Tom when things are hard.’
I see her hand shaking. She closes her eyes again.
‘You speak to Tom?’
‘Yes.’
She nods, slowly. And then she does that breathing again, holding on to her stomach.
A familiar wash of rage is coming over me. Don’t patronise me, Naomi. Don’t steal the life I should have had, then pity mine. I rip her hands from her belly.
87
Lexie
June
I think, in the second or two that Harriet’s face changes, about what she might do to me. To my child.
I am on her sofa and she is standing over me, muttering to herself, ferocious. Then suddenly she is focused again.
‘All that post of yours over there?’ she says, proud. ‘I took that.’
Do you want congratulations? I think. Feedback on your work? But I am too afraid, too weak, to say anything close to this out loud.
‘I played the baby noises through the wall, put the fertility leaflets in your postbox.’
I nod, accepting. What does any of this matter? It’s the past. I have lost everything else now. There’s only one thing left to keep hold of.
‘I sent you messages online.’
I sit as still as I can and keep my eyes down. She still stands. Hands – for now – off my baby.
‘Why?’ I whisper, feeble – buying time. But also, because I genuinely want to know.
‘Because I wanted you gone, wanted you out, so that Tom and I could be together,’ she says. ‘I know Tom wanted that, too. We were developing feelings f
or each other. I thought if I could drive you insane, that would speed things up.’
I think about seeing her that time in the hotel when Leo didn’t turn up and I suspect that she was even responsible for that, the puppet mistress of my life at a time when I was easy to wiggle into position.
Grinding me down, down, further and further when I was low anyway and easy to bury. Making me more undesirable for Tom, more self-pitying, more unappealing.
The room becomes blurry and I cling to the sofa, trying to stay alert. Trying to stay on guard for my baby.
Think, Lexie, think. I need to get out of here, somehow.
Now, Harriet is saying snippets of words – Mom, Naomi, Luke – as she stares at her hands.
She looks at me, sits down and takes my hands away from where they had gravitated to – across my baby again. Less gently this time, more force. I can hear my body screaming; she has walked into the hospital ward and I am fighting with her for the Moses basket.
I glance at the door but I know she has locked it; I heard the click, the familiar sound the same as my own door, earlier. Except my click keeps me safe. Harriet’s click does the opposite.
‘I want you to read a story,’ she says, wide-eyed as I feel sweat pouring down my back. ‘About what happened the last time somebody stole a man from me.’
And then she instructs me to Google her.
‘Come on,’ she laughs. ‘We all know you’ve done it before. Don’t pretend you don’t know my surname. I certainly know yours.’
I enter in her full name on the iPad she passes to me, hands shaking, fingers leaving damp on the keys. The first page is her professional website, a few work interviews I’ve already seen.
I look up at her. And?
‘Keep going,’ she instructs, looking down.
It’s like being with my kidnapper. I would do anything she said, anything she wanted.
‘Keep going,’ she says again.
Nothing of note. I look at her blankly.
‘Oh! wait,’ she sighs, theatrical. She throws a hand to her face. ‘You’re probably searching for my other surname.’
She takes the iPad off me. Types. Hands it back.
‘Young woman charged after scalding love rival.’
I read the story and in the background, her voice is muttering words again. Naomi, Luke, stolen, life.
This Harriet is American.
This Harriet is in her early thirties.
This Harriet lives in London.
There is no picture, but I don’t need it.
This Harriet is our Harriet.
I lose my footing as I try to stand, stumble to run and leave, and Harriet blocks me so that I am up against a wall. Sorry, wrong pronoun: I am up against my wall. Any hint of gentleness is gone now, and she is firm and strong as she slams me backwards into the hard surface.
‘Why do you get to be the one who is happy?’ she says, pinning my hands above my head and smirking that now familiar smirk. ‘Why do you get to be the one who has everything?’
She thinks I had everything and she is taking everything back. She came for Tom, my love, and she got him, and now she has come for my baby. I scream now, loud and animal.
I look at the keys again and know it was her who has been crawling all over our home.
‘Did Tom give you keys to our flat?’ I whisper, head back against the wall as she holds me there. I am feeling faint, vague, just when I need strength.
She nods.
A shiver runs through my whole body as I think about them having sex in the bed in which we tried so desperately to conceive a child.
I thought that our flat was just a shell, a place we would eventually pack up and leave. But in this moment it feels like when she walked across the floor of our home, she stripped me naked.
‘Look at the rest of the pictures, if you like,’ she says and hands me a pile of photos, stepping away from me so I am leaning now, catching my breath alone against our wall.
Anything to distract her, anything to appease her, and so I do, slowly sifting through forty or fifty pictures of my home, my things, my clothes spread out on my bed and worse – Harriet wearing them. I think of all the moments that it has crossed my mind that the pillows looked odd or the toaster in a different place to normal and thought, Lexie, get a grip. Who would bother stalking you? Who would bother making a play for your life?
She takes the pictures off me as I get to the end of the pile. She looks again at my stomach.
88
Harriet
June
Once something is done, once you are something, does becoming it for a second time make any difference?
Sometimes I wonder if what I did to Naomi was a desperate attempt to show Luke that I could do something independently without him, something he would never have signed off on. Or maybe something snapped when he left me and I found some fire. Enough to take something from him, after he had torn so much from me. I wonder if his biggest anger afterwards wasn’t what happened to Naomi but simply knowing that I had taken some control. Well, I learnt from the best, Luke.
Because he knew he could dominate me; that he had the power. He always had it and he was so unused to handing it over. When I wouldn’t let him go, it scared him, and when I went one step further and scarred Naomi’s right cheek like that, it enraged him. How could I have taken on his role? Started navigating our story, instead of riding along in the back seat flicking through a magazine, grateful that I had been asked along?
But now I know what it’s like to have the power, it’s kind of addictive.
I want to take the best bits of Lexie’s life away. I want to dilute the perfection.
Then I could bear to hear through the wall, if I knew it wasn’t idyllic; if I knew that she was struggling and stumbling, too. She could keep her friends. If I could take the rest away.
89
Lexie
June
It’s in that moment, as I am looking through the pictures that Harriet gave me, that something changes. Because Tom may have changed through fertility treatment. Tom may now be a cheat, and a liar, and an abuser, and he may even be unfit to be this baby’s dad.
But on what planet would Tom let Harriet have his keys? At a push he may have cut her some, but to give her his, crap keyring included, then to have to tell me that he had lost them? My mind may not be at its most lucid, but it can cut through this particular piece of bullshit.
And once it does that, other questions seep in.
Could she have learnt about our fertility problems from the post she stole, rather than from Tom?
And why would Tom let Harriet wear my clothes and pose for pictures in them? That’s not what you do when you’re having illicit sex with your neighbour. Instead, that is the behaviour of a stalker, acting alone, gathering evidence she’ll use in some way, somehow, some time. Because if she went to our flat to see Tom, where the hell was he as she slipped her too-long legs into my jumpsuit?
It’s enough: there’s doubt. I am unsteady and vulnerable but this isn’t over. My family might be salvageable; my baby certainly is. I look around and suddenly I’m awake.
Our flats are small, Harriet’s a mirror of mine. I take in everything. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to slam a door behind me and ride out a few minutes until I can yell loudly enough for help or get through to someone on the phone that’s in my bag.
We are in this together, Harriet and me, as we have been really all along.
I feel my own heartbeat, hammering, terrified, inside my chest and think about the tinier, calmer one that is beating alongside. This baby can’t be harmed now. This baby has worked too hard to get here.
And what if Tom is still Tom? I need to get to him, at least, and ask questions. We have been through too much for me just to give up on him, if there is any doubt. Think, Lexie, think.
But suddenly, there is no room for thought. There is nothing but Harriet, flinging her body on top of mine so that I fall backwards into the sofa. I cry
out. Since I’ve been pregnant I have barely allowed myself to graze up against a work surface. Now, there is Harriet, a whole large human, holding me down with her arms. Her eyes are fire and she started this and knew where it was heading so she has all the power. I try to move but she has the advantage and I am frozen, too, with terror. This baby, this baby, this baby that we worked so hard for.
‘Hurt my face,’ I beg. ‘Like you did with her. With Naomi. Hurt my face, hurt my face, hurt my face.’
Because my face doesn’t matter now. Only one part matters.
But she isn’t interested in my face. Instead, she raises her knee to my stomach. That’s her focus, her knee attempting to go into my belly with its tiny curve, over and over, and I am bending, arching, so that it is as unreachable as possible.
This is what she wanted, I realise. She wanted Tom, yes, but she also wanted to make sure that I couldn’t have a life that I was happy with; to make sure that she didn’t have to hear any more happiness through the wall of her joyless flat. Harriet is fuelled by pure, nasty envy. I know because I’ve felt it, too.
I glance around for a key, but in that moment Harriet finally meets my eye and I know, don’t I, where Harriet’s and my story goes next.
She says with no emotion, ‘She didn’t have any make-up on, either.’ Naomi.
I know then, too, that this has been a long-term campaign. That she is a sociopath – perhaps even a psychopath – and that Tom has more than likely been a victim, too. Fuck, Tom. Be home. Hear this. Do something.
‘Please!’ I shout, desperate, words turning into sobs. ‘Don’t hurt this baby.’
But Tom isn’t home. And now it is probably too late to apologise for doubting. Too late for anything. I think of Naomi and I know Harriet won’t stop.
I have no idea how I will escape, no idea how my tiny foetus and I will get away from my feral neighbour.
Through the Wall Page 26