The Second Wife

by Fleet, Rebecca

  She catches sight of herself in the long low mirror on the dressing table, and stops. She has always liked looking in mirrors. It’s not that she’s vain. She takes no pleasure in what stares back at her: the heart-shaped face with its pouty, slightly asymmetric mouth, the blue-green eyes fringed by long, curled lashes, the cheekbones that give the kind of startling definition that means it’s almost impossible to take a bad photo of her. Seeing herself is an anchor, that’s all. Ever since she was very young she’s been prone to a feeling of weightlessness that can attack without warning – a sudden spiralling away from the world, leaving her momentarily unsure of who or where she is. Looking in the mirror brings her back down. Here she is. Her face is grimly familiar. Nothing has changed.

  But for once the sight of herself doesn’t soothe her. Instead she takes in the rumpled clothes, the long expanse of thigh where her skirt has rucked up, the long, caramel-coloured hair damp with sweat and the fine spattering of rain that she’s walked through – and she has the strangest feeling that none of it belongs to her at all. She’s a heartbeat away from toppling down into that dark sense of dread, the one that sometimes waits for her around the corner and sinks its teeth in when she least expects it. Rolling over on to her stomach, she presses her face down hard into the pillow and starts counting to a hundred, but before she even reaches fifty she can feel herself losing her grip and the world switches off again.

  When she next peels her eyes open, sunlight is streaming through the window. She’s still fully clothed, one shoe hanging half off. There’s a sour taste in her mouth like bitter apples. She can smell bacon cooking and hear the sizzle as it turns in the pan. She drags herself off the bed and combs her fingers through the tangled mass of her hair, shaking it out behind her. Sidling to the door, she peers through the crack. The hob that looked like the scene of a murder a few hours ago is bright and sparkling, and beneath the cooking smells she can just pick up the sharp citrus scent of cleaning spray. Rachel is standing there, her hair in a tight high ponytail, dressed in what looks like some kind of Lycra jumpsuit.

  ‘Any left over?’ Sadie asks cheerily. She finds that it’s best to skate over incidents like last night. Part of her hopes that perhaps they seem as hazy and unreal to her sister as they do to her.

  ‘If you want.’ Rachel doesn’t turn around and it’s hard to gauge the frost level in her tone. ‘Thanks for clearing up,’ she says. ‘Again.’ This time the frost is unmistakeable.

  ‘Sorry,’ Sadie says, because it’s very easy to say, even if she’s no longer sure of its value.

  Now Rachel turns around, wiping her hands at her sides and taking Sadie in with a quick flick of her eyes, head to toe. ‘You know, Sadie, I’m less than three years older than you.’ She pauses, as if she’s waiting for her sister to pick up on some unspoken meaning, but Sadie’s mind is blank and it hurts to try and think, so she just nods, and after a while Rachel exhales and turns back to the bacon, easing it out from the pan and slapping it between the slices of buttered bread.

  ‘After this,’ she says, ‘we should go out and do something.’

  ‘You and me?’ Sadie queries. She and Rachel spend a lot of time in each other’s company, what with living in the same house, but they rarely socialize. A quick flash of memory: hours spent wandering around the shops in their early teens, trying on unsuitable and increasingly off-the-wall clothing until they were doubled up in hysterics in the changing rooms, laughing so hard at the sight of each other that they could barely breathe. She’s no longer sure who these people were.

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel confirms. ‘You and me. Going out somewhere, like sisters do. I’ve got nothing much on today, and I assume you haven’t either. So let’s do something.’

  ‘Okaaaay.’ Sadie advances cautiously, taking the sandwich Rachel offers her, trying to divine if this is somehow a trap. ‘Camden?’ she suggests, because she knows that her sister doesn’t like the place; the aggressive individuality of it, the rough diamond feel of the streets.

  There’s a fractional pause, but then Rachel nods. ‘If you like.’

  ‘All right.’ Backtracking now would seem weak, though she doesn’t want to go out at all. Her head feels as if it’s being splintered by a thousand subtle knives and she can feel the arches of her feet aching in protest at the long rambling walk last night. Even the autumn sun at the window is too bright and vivid. She eats the sandwich in silence, feeling the bacon crunch and stick against her teeth. When she swallows her throat is raw.

  ‘Come on then,’ Rachel says briskly. ‘Go and have a shower, and let’s get changed and go. Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Yessir,’ Sadie mumbles, but the sarcasm is lost on Rachel, who has already turned tail and hotfooted it into the bedroom. She’s regretting having fallen in with this plan, and as she drags herself through to the shower and stands underneath the fall of warm water, tipping her head back to wash the grime from her hair, she’s already looking forward to going back to bed.

  Four hours later she’s dead on her feet, trailing round the streets of Camden with Rachel at her side, the whole world suffused in a haze of exhaustion that makes it seem as if she’s walking through a computer simulation, liquid and insubstantial. They have visited some shops, reconfirming their wildly different tastes. They have exchanged soundbites about their equally wildly different lives. Rachel has even tried to suggest a visit back to Durham to see their hermetic parents, who have barely left their house in years, which Sadie has treated with the deadpan scorn it deserves. It has all been painful, so much so that she has coerced Rachel into visiting a pub and downed three large glasses of wine in the space of an hour while Rachel watchfully sipped a single gin and tonic. She had hoped the alcohol would take the edge off but it’s only sharpened her sense of fruitlessness.

  ‘Sadie,’ Rachel cuts into her thoughts as they walk. ‘I know things are difficult. I’d be finding it tough in your position – with no real job, no sense of routine. But you’ve got to start sorting yourself out. You can’t stay in the flat for ever. I’m already scared about what Martine’s going to say when she gets back.’

  Sadie nods vaguely. She’s well aware that she and her sister have different views on acceptable standards of living. It’s odd how something can matter so much to one person and so little to another.

  ‘To be honest,’ Rachel continues, ‘I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this up. I’m tired of it. I barely sleep. You come in at all hours and don’t care how much noise you make. You shout at me and try and pick fights. I’ve had the police round about five times already complaining about your music, or the run-ins you’ve had with people. I’m always having to make excuses for you. The neighbours all hate us. I don’t … I don’t want to live this way anymore.’

  It’s a well-worn speech. Her sister speaks simply, with sadness. Sadie shoots a look at her, and she notices that she looks exhausted, with faint violet stains beneath her eyes and pale skin. For the first time she grasps the edge of something – the sense of what it must be like to worry about someone in the way Rachel does. The helplessness, the impotence. She doesn’t like it, this thing she’s brushing up against.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says eventually. ‘I know, I need to change some stuff.’ She doesn’t really have any idea what she can change or how.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Rachel says, ‘and it needs to be now. It’s scaring me, the way you’ve been acting lately. It’s like you’ve got no off switch. I do care about you, but it isn’t easy, trying to deal with you when you don’t seem to—’

  Sadie never hears the end of that sentence, because all at once they have rounded the corner of the street and he’s there, coming out of the tall black building with the painted letters, kicking the door shut behind him. A stranger in studded leather jacket and black jeans, maybe thirty years old, very tall and olive-skinned, his black hair shaved at the sides and swept into a stiff peak. He’s walking towards them, faster and faster, and in seconds he’s close enough for her to see the
flat gleam of his eyes, dark grey like gunmetal; the contemptuous curve of his lips that softens, as he reaches her, into what seems like invitation. And all of a sudden the world has blazed into colour and all her nerves are on edge, leaping into action with the kind of eagerness she wouldn’t have thought her body capable of just seconds before.

  He thrusts a flyer into her hand, and she takes it. Kaspar’s: the letters dark red and vital against the black background, the downward stroke of the K cutting down like the slash of a knife. She looks up at the black building behind them, and sees that stroke mirrored there, in crimson paint against the wall.

  ‘My club,’ he says. His voice is accented, harsh and exotic. ‘You should come along some time. Yes?’ His eyes sweep over her, unchanging, for an instant. Mutely, she nods. He is so close that she can smell his aftershave, the spicy cinnamon scent of it crawling over her like smoke.

  ‘See you there,’ he says, and then he’s gone, abruptly pushing past down the street. The speed of it has jolted her so much that she has to blink hard, willing the world around her to settle back into its familiar lines. Her head spins. She is more drunk than she thought she was.

  Next to her she can feel Rachel’s eyes on her, sharply assessing and probing. ‘Something wrong?’ she asks.

  ‘No. No.’ The words don’t come out easily; she can barely wrap her tongue around them.

  Rachel glances at the club. ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ she says. There is a brief, tense silence as they continue down the street. ‘And as for him,’ she says, in a tone that Sadie knows is meant to be final and cutting, demonstrating absolute contempt, ‘he looks like seriously bad news.’

  ‘All right,’ she snaps. ‘I don’t care. He’s nothing to me.’ She sets her teeth and clenches her hands into fists in her pockets. She has slept with on average two men a week since she was fourteen years old. They cycle through her life with bland predictability, one much like the next. It has been a long, long time since she has felt this sick, instinctive pull, these tremors of lust racing through her body like speed. It has come to her now with such force that she feels knocked out. Be careful, she thinks. She already knows that she won’t be.

  Late that same night she’s back in Camden, inching slowly forwards in the queue for the club. She slips past the bouncer and inside the heavy black doors, wriggling out of her jacket and flashing the flyer with its promise of free entry at the bored-looking girl behind the desk.

  The girl examines it briefly, then glances up at her. ‘Did you get this from Kas?’ she asks.

  Sadie hesitates, but she remembers the name of the club and quickly puts two and two together. ‘Yeah,’ she says confidently, and as she speaks she notices a letter lying at the edge of the desk next to the girl, the name on it printed in block capitals: KASPAR KASHANI. She commits it to memory, and there’s something bizarrely exciting about this new knowledge, as if already she’s one step closer to him.

  ‘Through you go then,’ the girl says, dipping her head, losing interest, and Sadie nods and moves on into the club.

  Under the hot red spotlights, her white lace dress glows ultraviolet and bright, dramatically picking out the lines of her silhouette. She sees herself in the mirrors as she worms her way through the crowd, and her heart is hammering, sending her giddy with the thrill of the lights, the music, the scent of sweat and marijuana. The bassline throbs through her, making her instinctively sway her hips, feeling men’s hands brush against them as she passes. She rolls a little white pill in her fingers, and pops it into her mouth. Her lips are sticky with thick red lipstick. When she licks them, the sweet chemical taste lingers on her tongue.

  She has spied him already, up by the DJ box, and she keeps her eyes on him. Laser beams pass across his face, casting it in neon light. Seeing him again, she is struck by the iconic familiarity of that face, reminded of posters and photographs – Elvis, she thinks, only darker, with Persian skin and eyes. He is staring out across the crowd, unsmiling. As she draws closer, her eyes trace the muscular curves of his body, pressed tight against a white T-shirt. She is there, right in front of him, not speaking, keeping a few feet’s distance.

  She dances, feeling herself carried along by the heady rhythm of the music, her eyes half closed. She feels his stare alight on her, the spark of recognition, and it sends a shiver down the back of her neck. Sweat trickles down her back. She’s breathing hard and fast, still moving to the beat. When she dares look over, he is still looking her way, unblinking, his strange, hooded eyes inscrutably brittle and cold, and for a moment she feels afraid.

  He speaks to her, raising his voice above the music. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Sadie,’ she says, and she has to come closer to make him hear her. ‘Sadie,’ she says again. She can feel the heat coming off him, prickling around him like a force field. She knows how this goes. How it has always gone. He’ll take her hand and draw her towards him, pull her into a kiss. They’ll go back to some dark back-room and do whatever they want, and then he’ll be out of her system and she’ll move on.

  As he studies her she feels herself trembling, half holding her breath. And then he nods and turns away, swinging back to give her one last cool, appraising look before disappearing into the crowd.

  The morning after that first night she wakes up and her thoughts are instantly full of him: the scent of him inches away from her, that last long look. Kaspar Kashani … The five smoothly flowing syllables of his name drip into her mind in a relentless repeated rhythm. She hears them in his low, roughly accented voice, as if whispered into her ear. The thought of him obsesses her, grips hard and won’t let her go. She sees it again and again in her mind’s eye, that moment when he turned around and walked away from her. The unexpectedness of it, the way it immediately sharpened her desire into need. This has never happened before.

  She wants to talk to someone, and Rachel is the only one there, so she gets up early and joins her for breakfast, ignoring her look of surprise.

  ‘Morning,’ Rachel says cautiously as she pours her cereal. She’s already dressed, in the leggings and crop top she wears for her morning runs, her hair tied up in a neat ponytail. ‘Didn’t think I’d see you before I left. What did you get up to last night?’

  ‘Oh,’ Sadie says, and she hesitates for an instant, teetering on the edge of the precipice before she falls and hears herself say in a casual voice that belies her eagerness, ‘I just went to see Kas.’ It’s the first time she’s spoken his name aloud and the shape of it is new and luxurious in her mouth, sending a brief ricochet of erotic possibility through her body.

  ‘Who?’ Rachel asks blankly.

  ‘You know,’ Sadie says. ‘The guy yesterday, from the club.’

  Rachel sets down her spoon with a clink, her eyes wide. ‘No,’ she says. ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t what?’ Sadie asks airily. She knows she’s making this sound like more than it is, and even that is exciting, the sense that her sister believes that something could happen between herself and him. Still, she shrugs and shakes her head, relenting. ‘Nothing like that,’ she says. ‘The club is pretty cool, though. You should come down with me some time soon, check it out.’

  ‘Right,’ Rachel says doubtfully, raising an eyebrow as she returns to her cornflakes.

  ‘No, really.’ As the suggestion takes root Sadie realizes she means it. She can’t go back there time and time again on her own; it would look desperate, pathetic. And she doesn’t trust any of the women she hangs around with enough to call them real friends, the type who wouldn’t try and hit on Kas themselves or show her up by recounting some embarrassing anecdote that makes her look bad – and there are plenty of those to choose from. Rachel may be straight, but she’s her sister. She knows she wouldn’t want to hurt her.

  She feels a sudden rush of affection, even love, and even though she knows it’s at least partly chemical – the drugs from last night still buzzing round her system – it’s enough to spur her on. ‘You used to go out someti
mes,’ she continues persuasively. ‘Until you got this job. We don’t have to go during the week … just weekends. It could be something we do together.’

  Rachel frowns, and Sadie knows she’s weighing up that ‘it’, wondering whether spending nights in a crowded club while her sister pops pills and cosies up to men is what sisterly togetherness is all about. But eventually she nods. ‘OK, I’ll come with you next weekend. But I’m only coming because I’m worried about you. I meant what I said yesterday. You need to change the way you’re behaving. In the meantime, if I can’t stop you then at least I can be there.’

  ‘Great!’ Sadie says brightly, before she stops and realizes that what Rachel has said actually isn’t that great; it’s depressing and defeatist and sucking the fun out of everything. At least she’s going to come, though, and don’t actions speak louder than words? So she gives her sister a dazzling smile and reaches for the cereal, remembering that she hasn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours and that that must be why her hands are shaking and her heart feels like it’s on fast forward.

  And so they go to the club the next Saturday night, and it’s obvious from the instant Rachel steps through the door that she hates it, but she stays nonetheless. They dance for a while, and Sadie drinks less and takes fewer drugs than usual. She pretends it’s because she wants to show Rachel that she can be responsible, but in reality she wants to keep her wits about her, look out for Kas so that she can be seen behaving in the right way. And up to a point, it seems to work. It only takes half an hour for him to notice her, and when he does he moves swiftly towards her, buying them drinks and asking if they live nearby. Rachel is monosyllabic, her expression shuttered and suspicious, and before long Kas is ignoring her almost completely.