Julia's Secret

by Valerie Attard

  “You know what?” he repeated again in a firmer voice.

  “I know everything” Julia whispered barely audibly and then as an afterthought she added “I know your secret.”

  “My secret?” Ben was looking as perplexed as ever. He was talking to her as if she was Laura’s age and was incapable of comprehending any complexities.

  “Julia, what are you trying to tell me? What secret are you talking about?”

  Julia looked at his expressive eyes. Why was he making things so hard? She knew that she could read pain in his eyes. Yes his eyes were also filled with pain. He too was suffering in this situation.

  Julia breathed in deeply. Her tears were drying up on her cheeks and she seemed more focused now, but the situation still seemed so surreal, as if she was watching a movie of her life from afar. A spirit hovering high above, looking down at her body and that of her husband talking to one another as if it was the most normal thing to do.

  Her voice was even softer when she spoke and finally said

  “I know about Sophia.”

  Ben was straining to hear what Julia had said. Julia wasn’t sure whether he had actually heard what she said.

  “You mean Sophia, your friend?” Ben asked, he was sounding slightly exasperated.

  “Yes, my friend.” Julia replied with a large emphasis on the last word. She hoped that her tone sounded highly ironic, but she wasn’t sure whether she had conveyed this irony successfully.

  The clocked ticked on. Ben was clearly thinking of what to answer, like in some kind of viva-voce examination where the reply could indicate a pass or failure. In the end he asked:

  “What do you know about Sophia?”

  Julia gave him a look full of fury and hatred. Her voice shouted out angrily:

  “I know about you and Sophia.”

  The utterance of these words had finally brought the secret she had known about for all these weeks out into the open and Julia broke down sobbing. Her sobs were interrupted by her loud hiccups and the same phrases which she kept repeating again and again “you and Sophia”. She sounded like an old, musical box which had got stuck on the same notes. She felt herself shiver as if she had stood outdoors in the cold air for a long time. She wished she could take back the words she had spoken, she wished she could go back to where they were before, him carrying on with his affair, and she pretending that she didn’t know anything about it. But now it was too late. Things were never ever going to be the same. She looked at Ben. She was relieved that he had not stood up and started shouting at her; however, he was not crying or showing any kind of emotions. He was just looking at her transfixed as if he was staring at a painting in an art gallery.

  “Please calm down and stop crying,” he pleaded in a soft voice.

  Calm down? How could she? How could she calm down when her whole world had just imploded? She had just been swallowed up in that void she had fought all her life against. Her world had been torn apart so that she no longer knew what was hers and he was asking her to calm down? She fought to control the tears but they seemed to have a mind of their own, rolling down her cheeks one after the other in a secret competition to beat the dripping tap. Julia felt the top of her shirt get moist from the tears being absorbed by the fabric. Through her blurry vision she looked at Ben. In all the scenarios she had imagined she had never pictured this reaction. He looked so calm and composed, like some beautiful, Greek statue. His face seemed to reflect her pain. There was pain in his face too, but she had not expected him to remain so quiet. She had expected him to shout, to get angry or to cry and plead and beg her to stay. She was unprepared for this silence. The silence screamed louder than any burst of anger could have done. It was there in the room like an invisible stranger sitting between them, smirking at both of them knowing that it was the master of the situation.

  Ben kissed her gently on the forehead. She hated him for doing this. It was something that he had done in the past. Had it always irritated her so much? Or was it just that everything that Ben was going to do or say now going to irritate her? How long would it last; would it ever go away? Would she always look at Ben and feel hatred and anger and pain for what he had done to her?

  “Julia what do you mean by Sophia and me?”

  Oh God, please help me. Julia felt a sense of panic rise up inside her. Did he expect her to tell him that she had seen those dates on his computer? That she had stumbled on his perverse log of the dates in which he had fucked her friend? How cruel could he be? Did he want to see her break down even further? Was it all about control after all? Had he controlled Sophia in all her vulnerability?

  “I know that over the past year you have been having an affair with Sophia.”

  She half expected Ben to reply back ‘Sophia who?’ in a sing-song childish tone as if they were on the nursery playground playing ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ However, Ben did not reply back in this tone. The expression on his face had changed. She couldn’t read it. She didn’t quite understand it; however she was sure that it was one that portrayed a seriousness she had never seen before. It was worse than she had expected. He was definitely going to leave her. His face said it all. It was stiff and sad and serious all rolled into one. It was a face of sorrow. It was the face of the Virgin Mary weeping over Christ’s body. The face of a soldier who had experienced the atrocities of war, the face of a parent who has lost a child, the face of a bride jilted at the altar or that of a woman being told she has a terminal illness. It was the face of doom, it was this face that looked deep inside her eyes as if trying to search inside her soul and finally spoke softly:

  “Sophia is dead.”

  Time seemed to stop. Julia was paralysed with shock and fear. What had he just said? It couldn’t be. There must be some mistake. She had misunderstood. Her throat was dry and when she opened her mouth to speak her voice was a croaky whisper. She sounded like one of the witches in Macbeth.

  “Sophia died?”

  “Yes, Sophia is dead.” He uttered those horrible words in a tone that seemed too factual and calm.

  Julia couldn’t understand; she experienced a déjà vu of a time in her childhood where she had tried to grasp a mathematical theorem which had been far beyond her grasp. How could it be? How had she died? When? Was she with Ben when it happened and this is why he knew? Frantically Julia tried to recall the last time she had seen Sophia. It was weeks now since she had last gone to visit her. She couldn’t think of her last visit. Was it even months ago? She began to panic trying hard to remember dates and occasions in a frantic attempt to recall the last visit. She couldn’t do so and she felt the panic increase inside her threatening to unleash itself like a ferocious beast. She felt her hands trembling and she began to shiver. Was this the ending she had hoped for? Was this what she had wished for deep down? Sophia was no longer part of the equation; she had been erased out completely. This thought caused the panic inside her to erupt into streams of emotional outbursts. She was now shaking all over and tears were falling continuously down her cheeks. She felt faint and her vision was blurred. She wasn’t sure whether this was because of the tears obstructing her vision or whether she had gone into a state of shock. Like a hypothermic patient she couldn’t control the shaking in her limbs. She couldn’t feel Ben’s hands holding hers any longer; although he was at arm’s length away from her he seemed to be miles away.

  How could she go on without Sophia? She needed Sophia despite everything that had happened? Was Ben as desperate as her? How could he be so calm in the face of this trauma? The sinkhole was growing and she felt herself sink deeper. The air around her seemed heavy as if she was in the midst of a fire. She felt she couldn’t breathe any longer. Maybe she had stopped breathing and had passed out with the shock. But no, here she was still at the kitchen counter. Ben was still here waiting for her to calm down.

  All the questions she had yearned to ask Sophia would now be left unanswered. She could only turn to Ben for the answers she had been desperate for. She looked
at Ben. He seemed to be her reflection in a weird distorted way. His body mirrored hers perfectly. His legs were tucked under the tall stool. His hands outstretched holding hers; but whilst she was a trembling emotional wreck he sat there motionless. Her cheeks were moist with tears but his were stone dry. Julia couldn’t read any of his emotions. He could have been a mannequin propped up on a stool. How could he remain so cold? Was he that heartless? Julia looked up at his eyes. They were the same eyes she had fallen in love with. They were kind and full of love. His eyes were caring eyes lost in the emotionless body. How could he react like this? Julia wanted to scream and shout and cry and lash out all at once. She wanted to release a hysterical outburst. At least this way she would not have to think of the pain inside her heart. Each beat of her heart seemed to be pumping lethal poison inside her so that she felt herself become weaker. The nightmare she had been living over the past weeks had ended only to have thrown her into an even worst dream.

  What was Ben thinking? Was it all a facade? Why was he doing this? Was he reacting in this manner to protect her feelings? It would have been just as bad if he broke down sobbing for Sophia as this would have shown Julia just how much Sophia meant to him. Was he as distraught as she was? How could he be otherwise? He had slept with Sophia, so there must have been something between them even if it was just a physical chemistry. These questions felt like a deluge filling her mind so that it couldn’t function properly.

  Julia mustered up the last remaining strength she had; she walked over to the kitchen sink her paces unsteady as if she were drunk. She felt suffocated, she needed to get away, she needed to break away from Ben. A voice inside her was telling her to run, to run away from it all. Her instinct had kicked in; millions of red alarm bells cried out “danger”. Julia steadied herself, her hands clinging tightly to the edge of the kitchen sink. Her knuckles stood out white and bony. They were the hands of a skeleton. They were the hands of the dead. That was how she felt. The life had been completely drained out of her. Her spirit had deserted her. She filled a glass of water. The water was like an elixir: it quenched her parched throat. She felt it calm her bubbling blood and soothe the volcano erupting deep inside her.

  Julia tried to draw her mind away from picturing the lifeless Sophia. She imagined her spread out on her double bed, a vial of poison by her side like Shakespeare’s Juliette. Or had she overdosed on sleeping pills? Had the guilt and pain of what she had done eaten away inside her, so that she could no longer live with the guilt of what she had done? Julia wanted to scream out for the whole world to hear her that she would have forgiven her. Maybe not now, not with all the pain that Julia was dealing with but she knew that Sophia would have returned to her sooner or later. Their bond was chipped but not broken it would have stood even this test.

  “Was... was it suicide?” she finally stuttered.

  Ben had turned to face her. He too stood up and came next to her. She tried to block out the rest of his body focusing on his eyes. They were the eyes of truth, the eyes of love, the eyes who would remove the pain inside her.

  The seconds ticked by, Ben stood immobile in front of her. He gently wiped her wet cheeks with his strong fingers and softly stroked her hair. His actions were so tender. He almost seemed afraid to speak and she knew that he was thinking of what to tell her to water down the impact of what he had to reveal. This was her Ben, always calm and composed, never rash and unpredictable as she often was.

  Finally, he drew her close almost as if he would hug her but he stopped mid-way so that his lips were close to her ear. In a gentle voice he whispered into her ear:

  “Sophia died in a traffic accident.”

  Ben paused as if giving Julia the time to digest this information. Julia looked back at him with a look of sheer puzzlement and confusion.

  “A traffic accident?” she repeated softly as if trying to force the words to sink in. How could Sophia have died in a traffic accident when she never left her house? Was this yet another side of Sophia she had never seen? Was this just one of Sophia’s many secrets? Had she started going out in the past few weeks when Julia had stopped visiting her? Had she tried to reach Julia herself? Or was it Ben she had been going to see?

  “When?” her voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible. “When... when did it happen?” she stuttered.

  Ben kept his eyes focused on her as if he might lose her if he broke eye-contact. His hands were firm and strong around hers. She recalled a flash back of when she must have been around four or five and her father had broken the news that her kitten was not really hibernating and that it would never wake up. She could visualise the bad news descending upon her like a cloud of locusts’ ready to eat her alive. They were all around her so that they covered her skin and she could barely stand up with their weight on her body. Their buzzing sounds were a large crescendo so that she strained to hear what Ben was telling her.

  “It was over a year ago. It was a few days before Christmas.” His words burnt right through her with the force of their meeting.

  “No, no you’re lying. Shut up, stop it. What are you inventing? I know; I know everything. I saw the files on your laptop. I saw all those dates when you met Sophia. I read everything. I know, I know.” Her voice was rising a notch with every word she uttered.

  “Julia there is nothing between us; there has never been anything between us. I have been keeping a note of the days when you mentioned Sophia. I have been keeping a log of your obsession with Sophia to track your regression. Since her death you kept pretending to meet up with her, mentioning her...”

  Ben kept on speaking, but Julia was no longer capable of listening to what was being said. Julia felt the world around her collapse like a pack of playing cards. The locusts rose in a swarm obscuring her vision so that she was enveloped in a dark mass of noise and blackness. She couldn’t see Ben anymore; she couldn’t hear him any longer. She was no longer in the kitchen. The familiar was now strange and frightening. She was on the edge of a precipice and she was falling, falling, falling into a deep dark lake. Julia opened her mouth to gasp in air, she needed air to fill her lungs which were about to implode with the strain and as soon as her lips parted she let out an uncontrollable scream. It was the scream of despair, of terror. An unending sound which filled the air around her, it drowned out the horrible sound of the locusts and transcended everything. It was the last cry of a dying man and the first cry of a new-born baby all rolled into one. It was a cry of realisation and consciousness, as well as the force of a cry that pushed her into the realm of unconsciousness so that she passed out limp and lifeless on the hard parquet flooring.

  Chapter 29

  Julia felt her eyelids fluttering like two tiny butterflies which had just descended onto a flower. She strained to open her eyes. Her body felt weak and exhausted as if she had just run a marathon and her throat felt dry and sore. For a moment she couldn’t recall where she was, but then, through half closed eye lids, she realised that she was on her bed at home. She strained to open her eyes and tried to focus on the familiar surroundings.

  “How are you feeling?” Ben asked her in a voice full of concern.

  Julia turned slightly to the sound of Ben’s voice. Ben was sitting beside her.

  “You passed out... I had to carry you upstairs... but you will be better soon, it will pass,” he continued without waiting for her reply.

  Julia shut her eyes firmly and like a young child engrossed in a game of hide and seek started counting in her head, in an attempt to drown out Ben’s voice. She didn’t want to see Ben, she didn’t want to hear Ben, she didn’t want to focus on her immediate environment; she just needed to shut herself off from everything and think. She needed to think about what had just been revealed. She needed to think about the horrible reality. Where should she start? Everything was so blurred and confused. Her thoughts kept impinging upon one another, so they were not linear but cascaded upon her in a jumbled mess like a huge pile of clothes being taken out of the washing machine. She
kept recalling the terrible words again and again in her head like some sort of mantra. Sophia was dead she had died over a year ago a few days before Christmas. Ben had known all along but now the ball was in her court only she knew how the story had ended from there. Julia shuddered with the impact of this realisation. What did this mean? It was insane, it didn’t make any sense. Was she crazy?

  A voice inside Julia seemed to be giving her the last pieces of the jigsaw. Sophia was never beaten up. It was not a domestic fight. All these months she had believed in something that was just a figment of her imagination. Her imagination had built up a fictitious scenario. Sophia had died in a traffic accident. She hadn’t survived the horrible attack Julia had always pictured. Her mind strained to recall that dreadful night. She didn’t have any proof of what had happened after the accident. She hadn’t imagined it. Sophia had turned up at her doorstep or had she imagined this? Julia tried to remember whether she had spoken to the children about it, whether they had seen Julia; but the more she tried to remember the more she realised that the search was futile.

  But surely there had been more. What about all those visits to Sophia’s house? What about Sophia’s mother? Julia remembered the shock she had felt at seeing the ‘For Sale’ sign on Sophia’s front lawn. She felt sick when she realised the sense of it all now. If Sophia had died it made sense that a few months later her house would be put up for sale. It made sense that she had seen Sophia’s mother leave the house. With horror Julia realised that Sophia’s mother had not been there to visit her daughter or had she? Had she also seen what Julia had seen? What would happen if Julia went back to the house? Would she ever see Sophia again? She felt the tears well up inside her at the thought of this.