The Rival

by Charlotte Duckworth

  My eyes flick towards the corner of our living space – a square box with no discernible decoration or focal point. The ‘kitchen’ – comprising a four-cupboard-wide run of units – sits along one wall. I can see the pizza boxes stacked on the side, grease seeping through the cardboard.

  ‘I thought you said you were going to cook?’ I say, irritated. Does he seriously think that this is impressive, that this is what every woman wants to come home to after their first day in a new job? Is he really that stupid? How have I been that stupid, not to have realized it before? I am suddenly overcome with an almost allergic reaction to his presence. I want him out, now, with his greasy cardboard pizza boxes and his questionably stained pyjama bottoms. My brain fizzes with excitement as I imagine having the studio to myself – what I could do with the place. For a start, I’ll paint the wall behind the sofa – something dramatic, a deep purple. And fill the place with plants. And some proper artwork, take down these hackneyed film posters.

  Gary’s shape swims into my vision, lumpen and unmoving on the sofa. His eyes are red and puffy, and the reason why is clear and unsurprising: a small tin left open on the coffee table, minuscule crumbs of illegal herb scattered next to it. His fingers are stained, his gingery hair slightly too long. Long enough to look lazy. He does not fit in with this picture.

  ‘I don’t make you happy,’ I say, and I know I sound cold, but now I know he’s stoned I’m not sure he’ll care. I’m actually doing him a favour. It’s a liberation, of sorts. ‘Look at you. You’re miserable. You’re wasting your life. What happened to the guy I first met? The one with ambition, the one that moved off his bum in the evenings? Seriously. What about my special cooked dinner?’

  ‘You know why I stopped cooking for you,’ he says. ‘Keeping up with all your faddy diets is exhausting.’ His eyes redden further, and with dread I realize he is about to cry. Oh, please don’t cry, I think. I really don’t have the energy for this.

  ‘Yes, well,’ I say. ‘Like I said, we’ve drifted apart. I’m not happy. I don’t think you’re happy. I’m only twenty-five. I don’t want to continue in a relationship that doesn’t work. I’m sorry. It’s not my responsibility to make you happy. That’s just the way it is.’

  ‘Why are you being like this?’ Gary says, sniffing a little. Thank God he knows not to break down in front of me.

  I turn away from him and rummage for my phone in my handbag.

  ‘Well, fuck you, then!’ he says and I am momentarily impressed by this show of fire. He stands up then, pushing past me and sniffing heavily. He walks towards the bathroom, then stops and turns back. ‘I’ve got nowhere to go! For Christ’s sake, it’s nearly 11 p.m. on a Monday!’

  ‘I’m sure Jamie will put you up,’ I say. I sit down with my phone, to see if I have any emails. I have to learn to stop trying to fix people. Gary is a grown-up, and I’ve tried my best. I really have. He is twenty-seven years old, he has a good job at an accountancy firm, and if he wasn’t so lazy he could have made his first million before thirty. He’s brainy enough – that was what attracted me to him in the first place. Brainy, not too arrogant. A bit tight-fisted, but frugality is never a bad thing. But the lack of ambition. Why doesn’t he understand? There’s nothing attractive, and there never will be, about someone who doesn’t use everything they have, everything they’ve been given, to try to better themselves. He’s just coasting along – working his way up at a snail’s pace, passed over for promotion by the likes of Jamie. Mental note, Ashley: no more falling in love with job titles. They mean nothing.

  I’ve got to start putting myself first. Behave like a man.

  Gary reappears in the doorway with a rucksack flung over one shoulder. He’s put some jeans on, thank God.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he says, pathetically. ‘Is it the pot? I was just bored waiting for you . . .’

  ‘No, it’s not the pot . . . not just that, anyway.’ I’m tired now, and the dull ache of a migraine hovers around my temples, trying to find the right place to take hold. My stupid fib to Helena. I’ve had no caffeine since first thing this morning. How am I going to keep that up tomorrow? I look over at the kitchen, see the tin of Earl Grey waiting for me, calling me. But it’s no good. The decision has been made. No more caffeine. I stand and walk towards the tin, almost forgetting that Gary is still there, looking at me, eyes wide and pleading for an explanation.

  ‘Have you got your period?’ he asks, and I almost burst out laughing.

  That’s another problem. We’ve only been dating for eight months and our sex life has fizzled out and become the odd fumbled quickie before work, or a token Sunday morning session during a ‘lie in’.

  ‘Is there someone at the new job? Is that it? Someone you like the look of?’

  Not exactly, but it will do. I breathe deeply. Cruel to be kind.

  ‘Yes. That’s it,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you, but you’ve sussed it out. I guess you’ve always known me . . . always been able to read me like a book. You’re a wonderful man, Gary. Sure to make someone very happy one day. Just not me.’ I look down, contrite, then meet his eyes again.

  He gasps, his mouth making an unattractive fish-like shape. But finally, it’s done. The mention of another man is enough of a blow to unleash that small fragment of male pride he has left.

  As he turns to leave, I feel a curious but not unpleasant cocktail of emotions: relief, excitement and contempt all at once.

  NOW

  Helena

  Ash and I used to run together. Not often, because she was always faster than me, and although at the start I thought it was a good thing – to let her beat me, to let her feel superior in some way – after a while, I just got tired of struggling to keep up. Of watching her smirk slightly as I panted along behind her. She was always determined to push herself, push herself, to be seen as superhuman, and it sucked the enjoyment out of things. But still, a few times in those early months, we’d pull our leggings and trainers on at lunchtime and set off along the Regent’s Canal. She knew all the routes, had all the gear. All the gear and no idea! She’d laughed at me as I fiddled with my Fitbit, trying to work the damn thing out.

  I no longer have the Fitbit. But the motivation to run is stronger than ever. It’s the perfect morning for it, anyway – clear and crisp but not so cold that the air feels as though it’s setting fire to your lungs with each breath. I used to run for fitness, for weight loss. But now I’ve got no weight to lose, so I run for me. For headspace. Because I have to fill the day, somehow, and everyone keeps telling me how good exercise is for your mental health.

  Jack is on the phone in the kitchen as I come downstairs, dressed head to toe in black Lycra, like a woman in a very unique sort of mourning. I linger on the bottom step. There’s no point in denying what I’m doing as I strain to hear him. The old me would be horrified at the thought of it. But is it so wrong to eavesdrop, in a marriage? You could say that it was a way of trying to feel close to someone, that if you didn’t eavesdrop, then you didn’t care, and surely that was worse?

  ‘We’ve tried,’ he is saying. ‘It’s the only way. Nothing else is working.’

  He is frustrated but polite – whoever he is speaking to has the upper hand, but at the same time he doesn’t respect them, he thinks they are in the wrong. I have been his partner for nearly twelve years, I know everything about him; the subtle cadences in his voice tell me more than the words ever could.

  ‘It’s changed since then! You must realize that. It’s been years since . . . it’s much more effective now. I understand. Of course, of course I do. But . . .’ He gives a sharp sigh. ‘Yes, OK. Well, I’ll talk to her again. OK. I’ll speak to you later. Bye.’

  These last words leave his mouth as he turns from the kitchen and walks into the hall. He sees me, standing on the bottom step, a black ghost with sweatbands, and there’s a second where we both feel as guilty as each other.

  ‘Darling,’ he says, pushing his phone into his pocket. �
��How long have you been up?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘It’s . . . that was . . .’ he begins, but he’s a terrible liar, and so he stops.

  He knows I won’t ask him who he was speaking to. I don’t want the confrontation any more than he does.

  ‘Are you going for a run?’ he says, instead. Back to the comfortable, the familiar, the mundane.

  ‘Thought I’d make the most of the weather,’ I say.

  He’s wearing smart trousers and a shirt, for once, no overalls. He’d usually be in the workshop by now.

  ‘What are you up to today?’

  He pretends to look at his watch but it’s deliberate, he knows the time. City habits die hard.

  ‘I’m going to have a look at a potential shop later,’ he says. ‘Didn’t seem much point getting covered in sawdust beforehand. And I was going to pop out and get some groceries . . . I was worried when you didn’t come back to bed last night. I came to find you in the office but you were asleep on the sofa. I wanted to wait until you woke up, to make sure you were OK.’

  ‘There was another accident. He was so young . . .’ I say. He gives a sympathetic sigh, but I can tell he’s exhausted by my angst. The kind, compassionate, eager-to-help man I fell in love with has gone, absorbed in his new-found obsession with antique hand planes. The old Jack would have been campaigning alongside me, leafleting the local area, drumming up support. But this year has changed him, just as much as it has changed me. He doesn’t care about other people’s lives being ruined when his own is no longer up to scratch.

  Charity begins at home. Her voice, again, always there with another pithy piece of advice.

  ‘It’s the third this month,’ I add. ‘I’m going to phone the Council again today.’

  ‘OK,’ he says, after a pause. ‘If it will make you feel better. But you know I think you should leave it, focus on yourself until . . . Listen, I ought to . . . run. Ha!’

  There’s a genuine smile, a second of normality, of the old life, the good life. He walks towards me and kisses me on the cheek.

  ‘Look after yourself,’ he says, without meeting my eyes, and then he is gone.

  I wait a few minutes, watching through the bubbled glass in the front door as his car reverses slowly out of our driveway. He’s always careful now – he might pretend not to care about the accidents, but they’ve affected him too, in his own way. Once I’m sure he’s gone, I pick up my iPod, strap it to my arm, and set off. I don’t track my progress, because how can I make any progress any more, when my entire life is just running around in circles, looking for answers I’ll never find, like a hamster on a plastic wheel? Most of the time, I just run down to the stream at the bottom of our land, cross it with a jump, and head out into the woods. Where no one can see me and where the only thing that can hurt me is myself.

  *

  Today, for some reason, as I run I think of one of the last times I saw her. Me, squeezed into an office chair, heavily pregnant, my stomach like an overstretched balloon filled with sand, heavy and misshapen. Her, radiant with joy, suddenly taller and slimmer, getting what she wanted. A vampire in a cream silk blouse and navy trousers. That jet-black hair, her strangely thick skin, as though it was made of silicone, not human at all. Pale, always so pale. Those blood-red lips mouthing platitudes, telling David she could handle it, when all I wanted to do was stand up and scream to the world that she couldn’t be trusted. But I didn’t. Because I wasn’t myself; I was a greasy, bloated, sweaty version of myself who hadn’t slept properly for a month. Sleep as much as you can now or you’ll regret it when the baby comes, everyone says. But I couldn’t sleep at all, and their advice only worsened the insomnia.

  I pause to lean against a tree, my heart pounding with exertion as I think of her words to me that day, as she watched me push my chair back and leave her there.

  ‘Don’t worry, Helena.’

  The smile that came after it was a smile of nothingness. A smile that might just as well have been a blank stare, for all the emotion it conveyed.

  And then the final words, the final slap, as I walked away, knowing I was leaving it all behind: my life, my work, my ambition, my everything.

  ‘You just focus on your baby.’

  *

  It’s only in the last few weeks that Jack has felt able to leave me alone for a whole day like this, and even though it’s better than before, when someone was always there, watching over me, I’m not used to the silence.

  I miss him when he’s not here, and wish he wasn’t here when he is. What does that say about me?

  It’s 6 p.m., and too early even for me to go to bed. I’ve cleaned all the bathrooms (what people don’t tell you about having more than one bathroom is that you will spend your life transferring toilet rolls around), put two loads of washing on, made a chicken pie that I froze instead of eating, and tried to distract myself in front of the television. But try as I might, I can’t get the thought of David out of my head. How did he get our number here? Who could have given it to him?

  For the first time in three days, I log into my email account. I used to have a work email, of course, and it was used for everything, for my entire life. It was brimming, overfull, constantly telling me to delete, delete, delete to make space for all the people who wanted to talk to me. But I had to hand it over. So now I only have the Yahoo account that I set up as a teenager – a sad remnant of my youth, with its ridiculous address.

  HelenaSparkles@livemail.com. No she bloody doesn’t. Not any more.

  No one I care about has the address, so I rarely bother to check it, these days.

  But as I log in, I feel sure I will see his name at the top of my Inbox, and there he is, buried between offers from fashionable clothes stores I used to shop in, and organic food delivery companies (for people who think that a potato is somehow better if it comes in a dirty crate and costs twice as much as in the supermarket). He has found me. Or rather, he has found Helena Sparkles, RIP.

  Once upon a time, seeing that name in my Inbox filled me with excitement. The brightest person I’d ever met; the person I was so desperate to impress: David Marlow.

  As the subject line, he’s chosen a word that might as well have been Fuck You: Opportunity.

  I hesitate for several seconds. Is the best course of action to simply delete it unread?

  The cursor hovers over the tiny trash icon next to his name. It’s so tempting. To bin him. To throw him away, both literally and metaphorically. But I don’t. Of course I don’t.

  Instead, I do what any sane person would do and open the email, and I read it, even though I know what the email is going to say. Because this is David, and David doesn’t do small talk, or time-wasting, or surprises.

  From: DavidM@kamu.com

  Subject: Opportunity

  Helena

  How are you? Other than hard to track down. I understand it’s been a tough year, but I might have something that you’d be interested in – that, more importantly, you’d enjoy. Can we talk? Or meet? Give me a ring when you can – number’s the same as before.

  Cheers

  David

  I shut his email. So far, so predictable. As I am pondering my response, I idly go through the motions. The same series of webpages every day, over and over and over. It has become something like second nature – an autopilot task, like brushing my teeth or putting my knickers on. I click, and click again, my eyes scanning, flicking back and forth, finding nothing of interest. The main company page is so corporate now; no mention of the management team. But I still look, every day, just in case. And today I’m lucky. There it is, the hit I am looking for, the satisfactory reward for my stalking. A small two-sentence teaser post on the company’s LinkedIn page. Cryptic, giving everything and nothing away all at once.

  Typical of her.

  Some exciting news coming up at KAMU! Watch this space!

  Rage boils inside me at the arrogance of it, thinking people give a shit.

  Although, of c
ourse, here I am, doing exactly that.

  THEN

  Ash

  Helena leaves the office every evening at 6.30 p.m. It’s taken me two weeks to get a proper grasp of her routine: in at 8 a.m., coffee break at 10.30 (an Americano, black, no sugar), lunch at 12 (usually soup or a wrap at her desk), more coffee at 3 p.m. Sometimes she has a cigarette, most usually on days when she has a presentation with the Americans – she thinks no one notices, but I’ve seen her sneak a lighter and a tab under the cuffs of her sleeves, like you might hide a tampon. I’ve no idea where she goes to smoke – she certainly doesn’t hang around with the twenty-a-day developer team in their wolf-like pack. I’ve joined them a couple of times now, trying to assess whether there’s anyone of interest there; but there’s only one, and his T-shirts smell of soap powder, so he’s probably got a girlfriend.

  It’s an open-plan office, and we’re all grouped in teams of four, facing each other in a kind of starfish shape. Everyone except Helena, who has her own double desk in the corner by the windows. On the face of it, she’s flawlessly tidy – just her laptop, some hand cream and a perfectly organized in-tray on display. But I’ve seen inside her desk drawers, and they tell a different story. She’s a hoarder; all salt and pepper sachets, dried-out highlighters, hairbands and odd coins gathering dust. If you called her on it, she’d give an embarrassed laugh and tell you she just never has time to go through it all.

  From my desk – annoyingly, Freckles sits right next to me, even though she’s on the sales team (she’s on the Dukan Diet, and every morning I have to smell her eating two boiled eggs) – I face her directly, and so I get a perfect view of what she’s up to all day. Today has been like clockwork, so far, but it’s 6.33 p.m. now and she still hasn’t packed up her stuff. Lauren left home an hour ago, which means I’m going to be late if I don’t leave soon. But I can’t. I can’t leave before her. It’s become a thing now. I’m determined to stay, until it’s just me, David and the cleaners left. David notices I’m there, I know he does. And Helena always says goodbye to me in that cheery, slightly patronizing way, yoga mat slung over her shoulder as she heads off to the gym downstairs for her evening workout. She’s not very athletic, though, so I suspect the whole routine is mostly for show, despite her muttering about exercise being the perfect way to clear her head.