by Tina Seskis
The waiter bustled up, and he had a large ice bucket and a bottle of champagne, and that’s when she knew.
‘Jemma,’ Jamie said. ‘You drive me nuts, but you make life interesting. The thought of you not being in mine is unbearable.’ And then he reached into his pocket and brought out a ring, and it was the most beautifully set diamond she’d ever seen.
‘We’ve waited too long, Jem. Please, will you marry me?’
She looked into his silver-smoke eyes and felt her heart expanding. She smiled shyly. ‘Yes,’ she said.
39
Now
Who is the person I married? Who is he? Where is he? And who, incidentally, am I? What ghastly part have I played in this unimaginable conundrum?
I have so many questions, and I want Jamie to come back, to answer them. I want to ask him exactly why he married me. I want him to look me in the eye and tell me whether he was sleeping with his boss. I want to find out if he’d truly loved me, or if my gamble had failed, and I’d simply forced him into this, after all. I want to know his side of the story at last. Jamie is a mystery to me now, and it’s as if he is far out of reach, and yet near still. I miss him. The longing becomes febrile. I keep throwing up, and yet I need to eat. Maybe it’s nothing more than the stress, and I pray that’s true – this isn’t how I’d imagined becoming a mother. Even Chati heard me retching earlier, when he brought me my supper. He looked so concerned, and I wanted to give him a hug, tell him that I was fine. I feel almost responsible for him, somehow. I hate to leave any food on my plate and so sometimes, when I just can’t manage it, I flush it down the toilet so as not to offend him. I don’t know what I would have done without him.
Dad will be here in the morning, and although it will be good to see him, have someone else on my side, I find I’m going out of my mind tonight. I don’t care any more if there is someone out there, waiting for me. I need to get out. I leave the bungalow via the terrace and run barefoot through the wandering-handed trees onto the dark midnight beach. My head races as I fling myself to the sand, which is colder than I expect it to be. The sky over the ocean is endless, unfettered by green jungly growth, and its star-pocked hugeness is a relief. As I stare upwards, I let my mind track its familiar journey into my romantic hinterland … but tonight it surprises me, slows in a different place. The landscape here is unfamiliar, like getting off at the wrong train stop. Instead of placing myself at the centre of the action, for a change I’m not even present. Tonight I find myself thinking solely about Jamie and Dan, and how they were with each other. There is something not right about their relationship, I know it, and it feels as if it is more than just sibling rivalry. Even the fact that Dan is here on the island feels twisted somehow. I can still see his expression from when I bumped into him earlier. What was he thinking? What has he done? But how could Dan be responsible? He wasn’t even here when Jamie went missing. And anyway, even if it turned out that Dan was involved in some way, would it still ultimately be my fault?
I hear a noise, near me. A cough? Or just a rogue wave? The urge to scream fills my lungs. I cower in the darkness.
Nothing.
I wait, too scared to move.
Still nothing – just hot, salty, night-time air.
I feel so sick.
There is a roaring in my head, like there’d been in the seaplane, as I realize there’s no-one else out here. The presence is closer. Much closer. I lean over, and vomit into the pristine white sand.
40
Nine months earlier
‘Jamie,’ Jemma said. ‘Can we talk about the flowers?’
‘What flowers?’
‘The wedding flowers! What other flowers are there?’ She picked up her glass of red wine and took a sip. The glass was smeary at the top, and she considered sending it back. Then she recalled having read that restaurants were full of germs, even the top ones, and decided not to be a princess.
‘Oh, right … none … What do you want to talk about?’
‘Well, what kind we want, what theme, whether we have the same at the reception as we have in the church.’
‘Jem, darling, we’re not getting married for months. Surely we don’t need to make these decisions now.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but we do. We’re working on a pretty tight time-frame compared to most people, you know. And I thought, as I’ve got your undivided attention right now …’ Jemma watched Jamie slide his eyes away from the giant screen above her head, back to his pint, which he took a slurp of, and finally back to her.
‘Jemma, my sweet,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what flowers we have.’ He saw her face. ‘No, no, I don’t mean it like that, I just mean I know how good you are at that stuff, so I’m more than happy to let you work it out.’
‘That’s just a cop-out, Jamie,’ Jemma said. ‘This is meant to be our wedding, remember?’
‘Well, you’re the one who wanted …’ His face fell as Jemma stood up. ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said quickly.
‘Really?’ she said. Her eyebrow lifted. ‘I’m going to the bathroom. Maybe you can think about your position while I’m away.’
As Jemma climbed the stairs in the centuries-old pub, she felt the ripple of old traumas radiating upwards through the worn-away stone. What was her stress about floral displays compared to all that might have happened here over the years – births, fights to the death, gut-wrenching affairs, lung-bursting sicknesses. And what were flowers, anyway, compared to their own thorny journey to get to this point? Maybe Jamie was right. She was turning into a Bridezilla. But it was mean of him to imply he didn’t want to get married. Why would he be like that? A flicker of fear ignited somewhere beneath Jemma’s ribs. As she dried her hands, the noise from the drier was discordant, unpleasant, and it clashed with the voice in her head, the one that said it was her fault for forcing Jamie into this, leading him to the altar against his will – until, like a dog on a lead, he’d finally given up straining to go in the other direction and had succumbed. It was no good. Did he really want to go through with this? She needed to ask him.
The walk back down the haunted stairs escalated Jemma’s anxiety, made her feel that something was about to go very, very wrong. Perhaps she should have let Jamie come to the pub on his own, instead of tagging along with him. Going on about wedding flowers when he was trying to watch the football and then stomping off in a huff wasn’t cool; it was painful. Were they both going to have to put up with another nine months of this?
Jemma crossed the bar towards Jamie, and as she watched him down half his pint, she saw he had that look he got sometimes, as if she were another species entirely. He knew the rules, did his best to play by them, but still it seemed she confounded him. The institution of marriage confounded him.
‘Hey, Jem,’ he said, as she reached the table. ‘I’m sorry …’
‘Yeah, it’s fine, forget it,’ Jemma said. She shuffled into her seat and picked up her drink. ‘What’s the score?’
‘Nil-nil still.’
‘Fascinating.’
‘Do I detect a bit of cynicism, my darling?’
‘No, of course not. But Jamie …’
‘Ye – es.’
Jemma took a breath. ‘Did you mean what you said about getting married?’
‘No, of course not. I want to marry you, Jem, really I do. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. It’s just, I sometimes get a bit tired of talking about the wedding.’
‘Oh … Do I do it that much?’
‘Well, we’ve decided on the font for the name tags. We’ve bought the guest comments book, the one, after much deliberation, with the cream pages rather than the white ones. We’ve plotted the route between the church and the reception to the nearest millionth of a mile. You’ve made me pick that terrible waistcoat …’
‘Oh God, sorry.’
‘It’s OK. I just don’t want to have to come to the pub to talk about it.’
‘OK, point taken.’ Jemma leaned over and kissed his cheek. He smelle
d of French aftershave, and it made her love him even more. And he must be into it, she thought; he’d even chosen and booked the honeymoon himself, which was beyond a miracle. She finished her red wine, in what she hoped was an impressive single gulp. ‘I wanted to watch the Bake Off anyway. Shall I see you at home?’
‘Are you sure?’ said Jamie, but she could hear the relief in his voice. As she looked up she saw his mate Mark coming in, and her hackles rose. Mark was one of those types who suggested one for the road, and then another, and who nearly always managed to cause a fight between them. Jamie must have given Mark a look, as Mark’s smile suddenly faded and he sidled off to the other side of the bar. Jamie got up and ushered Jemma out of the far door.
‘What’s got into you?’ she laughed, as he gave her a passionate kiss goodbye, and then she realized he thought she hadn’t seen Mark.
‘Nothing, Mrs Armstrong. It’s just I love you.’
She felt a flush of pleasure. He’d never called her that before. ‘I love you too, Jamie. See you later.’
‘Yeah, I won’t be late,’ he said, and then he sauntered across the bar towards his friend.
By the next morning, Jemma’s goodwill towards Jamie had vanished.
‘Are you going to get up?’
No response.
‘It’s gone 8 o’clock.’
Still no response. Jemma felt a rush of rage, as if there were hot air blowing in her face, with sand in it, making her skin livid. She lifted the bottom right corner of the duvet, and flicked it. A wave throbbed through the feathers: white, goose down, from Heal’s. She was in her new navy dress with tasteful white birds on it, her high wooden clogs. She was showered, made up, dressed for work. She needed to leave. Jamie normally left before her, yet he wasn’t even awake. She shook the edge of the duvet again, harder. It rose a good half a foot off him, before settling back like a cloud in summer, as if she’d never done it.
‘Ugh,’ he said. He grunted, turned onto his side, and pulled the duvet fully over him, covering his pale bare shoulders, his sandy head. He started snoring, a low, rasping strangled noise he made whenever he’d been drinking.
‘Jamie,’ she said. ‘YOU ARE GOING TO BE LATE FOR WORK.’
‘I texted Camille.’
‘Oh.’ That unbalanced her attack, and she felt almost foolish for a second. And then she felt even angrier somehow.
‘You said you weren’t going to be late.’
He didn’t reply.
‘Did you hear me?’
Nothing.
‘Jamie!’
She tried to pull the covers off his head. He held on tight. They got into a brief tussle, and a glass of water was knocked off the bedside table.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she shrieked.
‘Leave me alone, Jemma. Go to work.’
‘You said you’d be back! Why didn’t you come back?’
Jamie sighed. He pulled the duvet down far enough to make his eyes visible. His hair was sticking up at broken angles, like trampled-on straw.
‘Big deal, Jemma. I bumped into Mark after you left. We just had a couple of pints.’
‘It wasn’t after I left. Why are you lying?’
Jamie sighed. ‘Jemma, you need to chill out, darling. What’s got into you?’
Jemma walked carefully around the perimeter of the bed, towards the door. The room stank of beer and bodies. No, not bodies – body, singular. His body, and all its effusions. She held her head proudly. She was willing to take the moral high ground, on this occasion, although unfortunately Jamie didn’t seem to have noticed.
Jemma knew she was overreacting. He’d just had a couple of pints with his mate. But he’d lied to her. She needed to chill out. She hated Mark. She took a deep breath and turned back to her fiancé. ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you later then.’
Jamie didn’t reply. He’d retreated back under the duvet. Just one shapely foot was sticking out at an odd angle, as if it wasn’t attached to him. As Jemma passed the end of the bed, she grabbed his foot and yanked it, hard.
‘Owww,’ he said. ‘What is wrong with you?’
Jemma was filled with a shame that was hard to put a name to. She rushed from the room and fled down the corridor and out of the flat, just as the divorced man who lived above them was coming back from walking his dog. Jemma muttered hello and stalked off, head down. Usually she would have been friendly, stopped and patted Buddy, made some comment on the weather, and she could tell that her neighbour had clocked her mood, and she hoped he hadn’t heard her shrieking. She hurried down the street towards the bus stop, and the world felt like it was out of pace with her. She was alone, completely alone, on her boiling island of rage – but why? Because her boyfriend was late home from the pub. No, not her boyfriend. Her fiancé. That terrible word for that terrible thing, the process of being engaged, on a promise, but not yet past the finishing line. Jemma had wanted Jamie to marry her for so long, and they’d been through so much, and they loved each other. What was it that had made her so angry?
As she reached the main road, the cars were whizzing by, and they contained little children in smart uniforms being transported to school, and one day those would be their children, and she would be that mother, and she couldn’t go around digging her pink-painted nails into her husband’s foot and twisting, just because he was late home from the pub.
During her commute Jemma surreptitiously surveyed the other people, and she wondered. Did anyone else feel fury like she felt? There was the full spread of humankind on the number seventeen bus. The plump teenagers in their shiny polyester blazers, eating crisps for breakfast. The City type, in her smart pure-wool suit with her black leather briefcase. The man in stained, worn-out clothes with misery etched through his features, like dirt. The fat woman with a buggy who huffed when she was told to fold it up, but failed to erupt, like Jemma might have done. The foreigners, who had fled their countries and who lived here now, scratching out a living, when perhaps they’d once been lawyers or doctors. Were they this angry at what had happened to them, which was surely far worse than someone being late home from a night out? Or was she, Jemma, simply still enraged by past traumas, which permeated everything, and would do forever?
As the bus thundered on through the city’s brick-lined arteries, Jemma’s heart rate began to slow. She took out her phone to text Jamie. She composed it several times, until finally she was satisfied.
I’m sorry Jamie, I don’t know what got into me. There’s no excuse for my behaviour. Please forgive me. See you later. Jx
Jemma pressed ‘Send’, and then she felt cold and clammy, and terrified. The bus was crowded now, and a woman sat down next to her. She smelled of Poison, which was the perfume her mother had worn, and Jemma suddenly wanted to bury her head into this stranger’s ample breast and sleep, but of course she couldn’t. It was odd how it was always when she felt at her most fragile that she most missed her mother, who’d never been much help anyway. As her journey continued, Jemma sat stiffly in the enforced proximity, waiting fruitlessly for her phone to ping with its message of acceptance of her apology, until at last the bus reached the Gray’s Inn Road, and she had to get off.
41
Now
It’s the morning of the day Dad is due to arrive at last, and I’ve lost count of whether that means it’s five or six days since I last saw Jamie, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the British police want to talk to me again – although they rang me up this time, perhaps reluctant to risk interrupting another yoga session. At least seeing them gives me something to do, I suppose. It pulls me back from emotional shutdown. The unreality of the situation, its malevolent undertones, the not knowing, is finally becoming too much. My world is continuing to slowly close down, like the onset of death. Even the shrill thrill of the phone a moment ago had been a notable event, and that’s how weird and suspended life feels right now. Worst of all, I can’t seem to summon up much fear for my husband any more. It all feels too pointless, too la
te.
I refuse the offer of a buggy, and instead I cycle across the island to the sanatorium. It gives me a legitimate reason to be out, and I’m glad of the activity – it rouses me a little. When we first arrived I loved biking here. It made me feel like a little kid again: just a quick, fun way to get from A to B. Get on. Get there. Get off. No hills, no special gear, no complicated locks to wrestle with; no fear that your bike might not be there when you get back, like in London. The irony almost makes me laugh. I might not have a husband any more, but at least I have a bike. My husband might have been cheating on me, but at least I have a bike. All our lives are in tatters, but at least I have a bike.
I need to calm down, hold it together, especially in front of the police. As I approach the sanatorium, I find myself going through the exact details of how Jamie and I got engaged, and of our wedding day, in case they decide to ask me about any of it. I get the feeling they’ll be going in for the psychological interview today, and I need to get my thoughts clear, my story straight. The irony is that Jamie’s proposal – albeit after I’d put a gun to his head – had been way more romantic than any of the mini-break scenarios I’d dreamed of. When I’d said yes, he’d stood up, come around the table to my side, and held onto me as if he were drowning. He’d said that he’d realized he was happier with me than he’d ever been without me, and that in his book that was the best reason in the world to commit to someone. And I’d thought that was so lovely and heartfelt, I wonder now whether it was before or after he started fucking Camille.
I reach the sanatorium and get off my bike, prop it up on its stand, resist the urge to kick it over. The path to the door is leafy and the sun stipples through it, and as I walk along it, I try to work out what I should tell the police about my relationship with Jamie. Whatever I do, whatever I say, I need to hold it together, not let them rattle me. I need to hold onto the fact that this is my husband here, and it’s not my fault if he was having an affair, and that I’ve done nothing wrong. All I can do is answer the questions they ask me, and make sure I do so in an appropriately wifely way, although I have no idea what that would be in these most appalling of circumstances. But the one thing I mustn’t do is let the police think I’m hiding something, which of course I am.