I’m sure you remember me suggesting a counsellor, and the sessions we had with Erin, when we went through how troubled Mom was, and how none of this was your fault. I recall at the time holding you on my lap and telling you over and over how much Mom loved you, and how dark a place she must have been in to leave you, her baby girl – even though you were all of eight years old at the time and almost too big for me to hold on my knees. But now I’ve spoken to her and she’s told me herself how heartbreaking that decision was for her to make.
I guess it wasn’t even a decision, as such. Now that you’re older, I think you can probably understand some of what the move to Sparwood was like for her – the isolation, the boredom, and how that made her behave. I think – and this is pretty much what she told me when we spoke – she just couldn’t see a way forward other than to run away.
I blame myself. Not just for making the move in the first place, although saying no to it would have meant quitting my job and finding another livelihood for us all – but for not realizing how hard it all was for her.
And the years in between were hard too. She’s been to some pretty bad places – practically and emotionally – and had harder times than I like to think about. But one thing your mom told me when we spoke on the phone was that through it all, she held close to her love of you and hoped that sometime she would be able to see you again and be a part of your life. She just didn’t want it to be when she was so messed up, knowing that seeing her would hurt you and confuse you even more. She told me she understood how hurt and angry you would be about what she did.
Honey, I’m going to cut to the chase. She’d like to see you. She’s well now, much more like herself, and she’s living back in Calgary, where you were born. I want this to be your decision, Sloane. If you want to meet up with Linda, I’ll do whatever I can to support you – I can be there, or I can talk to Mrs Klingmann and ask her to have you meet right there at school in her office. Or, if you’d rather not, I’ll understand completely and I’ll pass on the message.
There’s no pressure from me either way, honey. I respect you and I trust your judgment. When you can, give me a call and we can have a talk about it before you decide what to do.
I love you,
Dad
I read the letter through again, but I didn’t need to – not really. I knew what I was going to do. I left our room and hurried to the bank of payphones by the gym, and dialled Dad’s cellphone number. As usual, he answered straight away.
‘Hey, honey. Everything okay?’
‘Sure. Dad, I got your letter. I’ll see her. You don’t need to be there.’
And so, the next Saturday afternoon, I got the bus into town on my own. I’d spent the past few days veering between fear, anger and wild hope, while determinedly concealing that I was feeling anything at all. I’d dressed carefully, in my new low-rise flared jeans, platform sneakers, a skinny vest top and an outsize baseball jacket. I’d plucked my eyebrows to careful arches, except I’d been a bit overenthusiastic and was worried I looked permanently surprised. My hair was in bunches behind my ears.
I was aiming for no-care cool, and fifteen-year-old me reckoned I’d nailed it.
The main street was home to an array of places where my schoolmates clamoured to be taken by our visiting parents: a McDonald’s, a Burger Baron, a Taco Bell and all the rest of them. But I was meeting Mom in Starbucks.
She was already there when I arrived, but I didn’t recognise her. Why would I have? It had been more than seven years since I last saw her, and my memory of her was as dim as half a lifetime would have made it.
I paused on the threshold, holding open the door, looking around for an empty table, until the woman sitting nearest me tutted at me for letting in a draught. And then a woman in the far corner half-stood and gave an uncertain wave.
I realised it was her, and simultaneously understood that she’d barely recognised me, either. The thought gave me a stab of painful, angry pleasure. She missed me growing up. Her loss.
She looked much, much older. Not just the ageing you’d expect through the passing of time, but way older than a woman in her late thirties should have looked. Her hair was cropped short, greying at the temples. There were deep grooves under her eyes and furrows on either side of her mouth. When she smiled in greeting, I saw that her teeth were stained and one of them was chipped. But she was dressed smartly, in tailored wool pants and a knitted sweater, and her face was carefully made-up.
I approached the table slowly, still unsure.
‘Mom?’
‘Sloane.’ Her voice sounded older, too – a smoker’s rasp. There was a pack of Camels on the table in front of her, but the ashtray was clean and unused.
She held out her arms towards me and, after a second’s hesitation, I let myself be hugged. She didn’t smell familiar at all – she could have been anyone.
She had a cup of coffee in front of her. I hesitated again for a second and then said, ‘I’m just going to order. Do you want anything?’
She shook her head and I made my way to the counter. Clearly, she didn’t understand this crucial ritual of boarding-school life: that visiting parents always couldn’t wait to treat their kids to burgers, doughnuts, ice cream – whatever we wanted, and often stuff we didn’t.
But how was she to know? It wasn’t like she’d ever done this before – another reminder of the huge chunk of my life she’d missed.
Aware that my dwindling allowance had to last me another week, I bought a small cappuccino and looked longingly at the blueberry muffins, but said, ‘No, thanks,’ when the barista asked if I wanted anything else.
Mug in hand, I returned to the table, sat down opposite my mother, and waited.
‘You look great,’ she said uncertainly. ‘You’re a proper teenager. I can hardly believe it.’
I didn’t smile or return the compliment.
‘Thank you for meeting me,’ she went on. ‘I know this must have been a shock for you.’
I shook my head. All the things I wanted to say – I’d even practised saying them, in the shower at school and, silently, on the bus on the way here – seemed to have been wiped out of my brain.
‘Sloane, I owe you an explanation. I don’t expect you to understand, but maybe you could just listen?’
I nodded, stirring four sugars into my coffee.
‘Sparwood… It was awful for me. It was like being buried alive. I know I was a terrible mother. I know it must have been terrifying living with me. I’m so very sorry. I can only imagine what it must have been like for you. But I just felt like I had to get out of there – I had to run away. Because if I’d stayed it would have destroyed me, and damaged you. I’m very lucky to be here at all. I was fucked up. I was in a terrible place for a long, long time. But now I’m better.’
I said, ‘You never called.’
‘I wanted to. Believe me, I did. But my life – everything was just so chaotic. For a while I didn’t have a home, never mind a phone. And I felt so guilty about what I’d done, every single day. I wanted to say sorry but I didn’t have the words.’
‘And I didn’t have a mother.’
‘I know.’ Her face fell, the lines deepening. ‘Honey, I know. It’s the worst, worst thing of all the bad things I’ve done. But now I’ve been sober for almost a year. I’m working through the twelve steps. You know what those are?’
I nodded. The previous quarter, a lady from Alcoholics Anonymous had come to give a talk in assembly. At the end, she made us all join her in saying the Serenity Prayer, and I’d never felt less serene in my life.
‘So one of them – the eighth one – is to make a list of people we’ve hurt and be willing to make amends to them. Sloane, you and your dad were right there at the top of the list. I know I hurt you. I know what I did was unforgivable. I just wanted you to know that I know that, and that I’m sorry. And maybe one day I’ll be able to make amends somehow.’
Suddenly, all the words I’d practised were right there in
my head, ready to come out.
‘You left me when I was just a little girl. I loved you and you just disappeared. I had no mom any more. Kids at school bullied me because my mom was a drunk and I had to go and see a shrink. Dad had to send me away to boarding school because you weren’t there to look after me. You ruined my entire life, and you think you can make amends? You didn’t even pay for my coffee!’
I stood up so quickly I almost tipped over the table, knocking over my mug so it smashed on the floor, sending hot liquid splashing over the frayed hems of my jeans. Blinded by tears, I hurried out of there as fast as I could, ran across the street and threw myself into a bus that was just pulling away, before I could change my mind and before Mom could see that I was crying.
Thirteen
I didn’t hear from Myles for two days. I’d like to say that I maintained an icy, dignified silence, but I didn’t. I knew I was being needy and stupid and desperate, but I couldn’t help myself. I texted him and WhatsApped him and called him more times than I could count, but he didn’t respond, and after a bit he turned off his phone. Or possibly the battery gave up, exhausted from ringing and ringing and being ignored.
I didn’t go to work on Friday. I called Rosie and told her I had a throat infection and would work from home. In reality, what this meant was doing almost no work but instead staring blankly at my phone, which returned my gaze just as blankly, and obsessively dialling Myles’s number in between making cups of coffee for the builders, who’d returned from their holidays tanned and apparently bursting with fresh enthusiasm.
I fired off emails to several of the companies Ripple Effect regularly worked with, asking if they’d be interested in Ruby-Grace Miller representing their brands. I contacted a handful of casting directors to find out if they had any opportunities that might be right for Vivienne Sterling, and called Vivienne herself to check that she was okay and to let her know I was thinking of her and putting out more feelers on her behalf. I called a bunch of potential venues for Ripple Effect’s annual Halloween party. And then, weary and sad, I went back to thinking about Myles.
The strangest thing – the worst thing – was not knowing where my husband was. I don’t want to give the impression that I was some kind of helicopter wife, a jealous psycho who rings hotel reception desks when her husband is away with work to check that he’s where he said he’d be, and with who he said he was with.
I wasn’t – at least, I never had been. I’d never had reason to be. Now, though, with no idea whether Myles was in fact in a hotel or staying with a friend or even at his mother’s house or – the thought made me cold inside with horror – even somewhere with Bianca, I wished I was. I wished I’d covertly installed Find my iPhone on his mobile so I could track him down. I wished I’d made him tell me where he was going. I wished I’d reminded him that he was walking away not only from me, but from the life we’d built together, the hope of having a family together. I wished I’d begged him to stay.
I wished, over and over again throughout that long Friday, that Wayne and Shane would knock off early as usual so that I could crawl into bed and cry in peace. But they were unusually industrious, sawing and drilling relentlessly until my head ached so much it was like they’d taken an angle grinder to my skull.
I couldn’t even leave the house, because what if Myles came home while I was out, picked up some clean clothes and left again? What if I didn’t have the chance to speak to him, to say how sorry I was for snooping, to beg for an explanation of his and Bianca’s messages that would set my mind at ease and allow me to trust him again?
As I veered from sadness to anger and back again, one thought never left me: what if this is my fault? I remembered the first time Myles and I had had sex after he’d got back from Lisbon. Physically, it had been the same as always, but in another way it had felt entirely different, more significant. I’d had the sense that this wasn’t just expressing my love for my husband; it had a different purpose.
I wondered if he’d known that – if it had changed his feelings for me. And over the months that had followed, as I started to try harder, reading articles and books about how to increase my fertility, taking so many vitamins I practically rattled when I walked, charting my cycle and taking my temperature and, when it was the right time, jumping on Myles with a passion that he must have known was about desire for something more than just him.
I remembered one time when he’d said, ‘Do we have to?’
It was the first time ever he’d said no to me. The first time I’d sensed that this had become a duty for him – a chore.
Was that what had driven him into Bianca’s arms? Into her bed?
But even if it was – even if he’d felt unhappy, sought comfort with another woman – why her? How could either of them – one my husband, the other my friend – conspire to betray me like that? How could Bianca come into our home, waft around with her paint swatches and mood boards, knowing that she was working like a double agent to ruin my life?
Over and over, in between dialling Myles’s number, I scrolled through my contacts to Bianca’s. But I never pressed the call button. Even stronger than the hurt and fury I felt towards her was a deep, sickening sense of own failure. I’d failed to prevent my husband from straying. I’d failed to spot the signs. I’d let my own friend make a fool of me. And calling her, accusing her, would be laying bare that sense of inadequacy to her as well as to myself.
I played the contents of those messages through my head on an endless loop, trying to think of an innocent interpretation of them. But nothing came to mind at all, and I found myself struggling to remember what the words had actually been. At the time, I’d been so furtive and guilty, and then so appalled by what I found, that it hadn’t occurred to me to take screenshots, or write down what I’d seen, or even commit the words properly to memory. And the more I replayed them to myself, the more confused I became about what I had actually seen.
Only one line remained clear, as if it had been burned into my brain.
I never loved her.
It could only mean one thing: that the past five years, the whole of my marriage, had been a sham.
I looked at the ring on my finger, the gold-plated band with its outsize cubic zirconia. I’d known all along that the stone was ersatz and valueless, but I’d thought that what it symbolised was real. Now, faced with the truth, I thought about ripping it off and flinging it out of the window, or flushing it down the toilet, or at least throwing it in a drawer somewhere.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to. It felt too final, too much of an admission that there hadn’t been some sort of stupid, easily explained mistake.
At last, when it was gone five, Wayne and Shane came upstairs to say that they were done for the day and would see me on Monday. I’d been sitting still for so long, hunched over my laptop and my phone, that it hurt to move. I hadn’t eaten all day – the thought of food made me feel sick.
Stiffly, weary as if I’d run a long, long way, I forced myself to my feet. I made it as far as the bedroom, where I lay on the hot, unmade bed and closed my eyes. Images of Myles and Bianca flashed in front of me, as clearly as if I was still staring at a screen. My husband’s pewter hair; his eyes the dark indigo of a pair of new jeans. Bianca’s perfect, porcelain skin with its dusting of freckles, her pert little ski-jump nose, her razor-sharp red bob.
I remembered seeing the two of them together on the couch in Bianca’s living room, her hand on Myles’s thigh. I knew what I’d seen, and their messages had confirmed it. But I couldn’t imagine them kissing, or naked together; my mind wouldn’t let me.
It wouldn’t let me sleep, either, even though I was aching with tiredness. My brain was in overdrive, jumping from one horrible emotion to the next: grief, fear, jealousy, anger and, above all, shame. I was ashamed of myself for snooping. I was ashamed of myself for having been cheated on. I was ashamed of myself for not realising sooner what was going on.
I was ashamed of myself for wanting more
to torture myself with: more evidence, more proof, dates and times and places where they might have met.
My eyes snapped open and I sat up, looking around our bedroom. One wall was floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, about a third of which held Myles’s clothes. There was a chest of drawers under the window, in which three drawers were his. Under the bed was the suitcase he used for longer trips away, and in the other room were three boxes of files and papers. I’d go through it all if I had to. One way or another, I’d find it.
Whatever ‘it’ was. I had no idea. Still, galvanised, I got up. I was filled with something that most definitely wasn’t enthusiasm, but for the first time that day, the sense of life-sapping despair had left me. I had a purpose. A horrible, furtive sense of urgency filling me, I went to Myles’s side of the wardrobe and opened it.
An avalanche of wire coat hangers fell on top of me with a clatter.
What the… For fuck’s sake! Hadn’t I asked Myles to take those to the charity shop, or the dry cleaner, or chuck them in the bin even if it would destroy the planet, like a million times?
But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d shoved them up on the highest shelf, out of sight and out of mind, waiting for them to fall on someone’s head. On my head. Because he knew that, in the end, he could outlast me. He could put those hangers – there must have been fifty or more of the bastards – back up there as many times as it took, until eventually I would get so annoyed that I’d take them to the charity shop, or back to the dry cleaner, or bin them.
Because, deep down, he believed that dealing with things like coat hangers – his fucking coat hangers – was my job, not his.
Well, I wasn’t dealing with them now, that was for sure. I had bigger fish to fry. I kicked them under the bed and turned, energised by my anger, to the rail of shirts and suits. Steadily and methodically, I went through every pocket. Myles never emptied his pockets – it was another bone of contention, one that had made me rant furiously at him when, for instance, my favourite velvet dress had emerged from the washing machine covered in a zillion tiny fragments of shredded tissue that even an hour of lint-rolling hadn’t been able to remove.
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 12