The First Wife: An unputdownable page turner with a twist

by Jill Childs

  I wasn’t really listening. All I could think about were the books that had once been so important to her and how strange it must be for her not to remember them, to have lost so much of her past, so much of herself. I couldn’t begin to imagine how awful that must be.

  Six

  Caroline

  I learned to live with it. I had to. I was fighting for my life.

  Most mothers keep records of their children’s early years. Photographs and video clips, the first scribbles and first steps, the impossibly small romper suits and that very first pair of tiny shoes –red, in Lucy’s case. Soft red leather sandals with a tiny Velcro strap. Not too hot for the humid Hong Kong weather, but protection from the hard floors.

  I documented everything I could possibly think to record. It became an obsession. I kept journals, illustrated by photographs, of the days we shared, the places we went, the food she loved, the way she kicked her legs in her highchair and squealed when I brought her food from the kitchen with a theatrical flourish. The way she laughed hysterically when I played peek-a-boo and loved me to tickle her feet.

  These were memories I knew I would soon lose. Five or six months after these precious things happened, however hard I tried to imprint them in my mind, they would be gone. The shapes of the past simply dissolved into the Hong Kong mist and disappeared forever.

  I would stare at the photographs of Lucy, that beautiful smiling baby in her chair, in Dominic’s arms, in my own, and have no recollection of whether it was really her, of where and when the picture had been taken. It might as well have been a stranger’s child who, every few months, I met as if for the very first time, with no knowledge of her past. And so I struggled on, forcing myself to stay up late each evening, making meticulous records of the day which had passed in the hope of preserving it for myself.

  As well as trying to remember Lucy’s babyhood, I kept other notebooks, all of them secret, about my life with Dominic. The emails I’d sent, mostly to good old Sophie back in the UK, formed another repository for my fading mind. If we were at a dinner party and someone related an anecdote, some snippet from our past, if Dominic made some reference to our courtship or early days of marriage, I smiled knowingly but then hid in the bathroom and wrote it all down. I had to believe what they said. I had no way of challenging it. But increasingly, the person Dominic described, my own younger self, seemed a stranger to me.

  There were days I wept from tiredness and the effort of trying to hold back the tide of oblivion which rolled always behind me, erasing everything in its path. It is terrifying to look into the mirror and barely know the person there. I lived with myself as another person might live with a recent acquaintance – knowing only the day to day surface, the present, in constant ignorance and also fear of the secrets of their past.

  The physical episodes, those sudden moments of paralysis, with their intense colours and smells, they too continued. I worked out flippant lines to use on friends afterwards, if they commented.

  Just zoned out, sorry.

  Lucy had me up all night – I’m not quite with it today!

  I made sure Lucy was always safely supported, just in case. In her buggy, in her highchair, on the floor. If she was in my arms, I sat far back on the sofa or chair so she wouldn’t fall if I could suddenly no longer hold her. People adapt. I became a master of subterfuge. I had to be.

  I wanted Lucy to have a normal childhood. I wanted people who knew us to treat me normally, not as a freak. As long as I kept to the same routine, went to the same places, met with the same friends – Becca, Kate and Celia, mostly – I could shield myself. Day to day, week to week, I managed to function normally. These things, I could remember. It was only memories from several months before that fell off the edge of the cliff.

  Did Dominic know? I’d never talked to him about it. At least, I didn’t think I had. I was too afraid of his reaction, of whether he’d blame me. He seemed to despise my poor memory as weakness, as if it were an affectation, evidence that I didn’t really care about the times we’d shared, the things we’d done.

  But as Lucy turned two, something strange happened between us. Something which frightened me. I was already in fear of my sanity. Now, worse than that, I started to fear that Dominic, the man I most loved, the father of my little girl, was conspiring against me, trying to push me over the edge.

  * * *

  It started at a party. Fi, an expatriate friend of ours, threw a champagne party in a private room at one of the Tsim Sha Tsui harbour view hotels. Dominic was the one who wanted to go, not me.

  ‘Don’t worry, if you don’t feel like it,’ he’d said. ‘I probably ought to go. Make an effort. You don’t mind, do you?’

  I shrugged. I had so little energy nowadays. Life with a two-year-old, I told people when I made excuses, although I feared it might be more than that.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘her parties are always a bit much, aren’t they? Remember that all-night bash last year, on The Peak? You said it took you a week to get over it. Remember?’

  There was an odd look in his eyes. A knowing look. I wondered what I’d done last year, if I had a reason to feel guilty. I didn’t remember of course and just laughed and pretended, as I always did, and he let it go.

  When it came time for the party, I had made up my mind to stay at home. Dominic wouldn’t mind. He often went to parties and dinners on his own, straight from work. Lucy was fretful and I was struggling on very little sleep. But in the end, the amah persuaded me, bundling me into my bedroom to shower and get changed and then practically pushing me out of the door.

  As the taxi wound down the steep roads towards the harbour tunnel, I tried to force myself into a party mood. My brooch, a diamante swan, sparkled on my coat. I’d let Lucy pick it out of my jewellery box, to placate her for the fact I was going out. I smelt of perfume from a bottle I’d found at the back of the bathroom cabinet. Dominic must have bought it for me. I didn’t recall. But something in the scent brought back… not exactly a memory but a physical reaction, a tightening of the stomach that could mean nerves or excitement or embarrassment about something I might have said or done in the past. It heightened the sense of anxiety I felt when I attended any social function nowadays.

  My apprehension wasn’t helped by the prospect of celebrating Fi’s birthday. She was Dominic’s friend really, not mine. She was the kind of woman he described as ‘great fun’ – a phrase which always made me feel diminished in comparison. I couldn’t imagine he’d described me that way for many years, if ever.

  Fi was a confident, extroverted English woman and one of the few single career women in an expatriate world peopled by couples and young families. She was smart and driven, working in a Chinese start up as a new business co-ordinator. However hard she worked, she seemed to find the time and energy to tone and groom her body and then party hard.

  She was the same build as me, but where my body felt slack with flesh since Lucy’s birth, her long limbs were toned and strong. Her blonde hair looked as mine might if I threw enough money at it – styled and treated and expensively cut. She seemed to know exactly how attractive she was. She dressed with simple killer style. Stilettos and split skirts, plunging necklines that revealed breasts that had never been compromised by breastfeeding and curves that had never been thickened by pregnancy. I never saw her in the same outfit twice, at least as far as I could remember.

  I took the glass lift to the function room on the thirty-fourth floor, watching the harbour fall steadily away from me. It was dotted with all manner of boats, from the visiting cruise ship, anchored just outside the harbour, to the stubby Star Ferries drawing white lines of foam as they chugged back and forth between the island and the mainland, one of the few constants in Hong Kong’s ever-changing landscape.

  The room was already crowded and noisy with music and conversation. A Chinese waiter in a tux and white gloves offered me a tray of drinks as I entered and I took a glass of champagne, then stood to one side for a moment, f
eeling a sudden rush of nerves. Events like this had become such an ordeal for me. I only recognised people I saw regularly. Beyond that, I was lost. Anyone I hadn’t seen for a matter of months, even if they’d once been good friends or close colleagues, was as unknown to me as a complete stranger. I was in constant danger of embarrassing myself or causing real offence. Usually I stayed close to Dominic’s side and followed his cues, making sure I spoke as little as possible.

  I put the glass to my lips, the champagne ice cold on my skin, and scanned the faces, hoping that Dominic was already here. I took a few steps further forward, searching for him in the crowd. There, wasn’t that Dominic, with those square shoulders, that familiar dark head of hair?

  He was standing on the far side of the room with his back to the crowd, looking out at the extraordinary panoramic view. My stomach fluttered. Dominic. More than ever before, my anchor.

  I started towards him, then stopped and stared. Fi was at his side. Her arm was raised as she pointed out some spot across the island. A thick gold clasp circled her wrist. She turned to him, smiling, her face tilting to his and too close, her lips a deep red smudge of lipstick. Her eyes sparkled. Flirting. I sensed it at once, even at this distance – not tentative flirting, loud and exploratory, but quiet and confident. As if she were already secure in an affair. My stomach twisted and dropped. I blinked and watched, trying to read more from Dominic’s back and failing.

  ‘Caroline!’ Becca, my old school friend. ‘So glad you made it! Kate’s here too, somewhere. We were just talking to Dominic.’

  She planted herself in front of me, blocking my view. I tried to smile, but my lips were too tense.

  ‘How are you?’ Her tone was low and careful, as if we shared some secret about my health. ‘Dominic said you mightn’t be able to come.’

  I frowned. What had he said? Not the truth about my memory, about my episodes, surely. She couldn’t mean that… how much did he know?

  ‘It’s a difficult age,’ she rattled on. ‘I remember when Rachel’s little girl was two – Frances. Now they really were the terrible twos. And threes. And fours.’ She laughed.

  I nodded. So that was all. He’d just used Lucy’s temper tantrums as an excuse for me.

  I said, ‘How’s Rachel doing? Any news?’

  And she was off, chatting about her sister’s new house, two minutes from Manly Beach, and how much their children loved it there.

  I drank off half the glass of champagne as she talked. My hand shook. I wanted to turn tail and go home. But I couldn’t. People had seen me. I had to carry on, to make my way across to Dominic and stick by his side and watch, watch, watch every time that woman so much as glanced across at him.

  By the time I reached him, Dominic was chatting to a male colleague. He opened his arm to me and kissed me lightly on the lips.

  ‘Hello, joy of my life! I didn’t think you’d come.’

  His tone was jaunty. I threaded my arm under his jacket and round his waist. His skin was warm and moist with sweat through his shirt. My husband. My daughter’s father. I pressed against him as close as I could and tipped my face to his, trying to read his expression, looking for guilt.

  ‘Steady on!’ His eyes were amused. ‘How much champagne have you had?’

  He kissed the tip of my nose and lifted my arm away, reached for a passing tray and took some of the canapés being offered by the waiter. I watched as he popped one into his mouth and ate, his eyes back now on his colleague as they resumed their conversation. Work. Some gossip about a man I didn’t know who’d disgraced himself in a meeting. I waited, following his eyes, too uneasy to try to join in. Was he brushing me off? Or was I being paranoid?

  I stayed close to him for the rest of the evening and tried to steady my nerves with champagne. He didn’t chat to Fi again. Every time I looked across at her, she was animated, chatting mostly to the men there, as confident as always. If she watched Dominic, if she glanced over to see if she could catch his eye, I didn’t see it. The champagne blurred my senses. Already I was struggling to remember exactly what I’d even seen and make sense of it.

  We made excuses and left early and I was grateful. In the taxi home, I took Dominic’s arm and threaded it round my waist, then put my head sideways on to his shoulder. His jacket smelled of warm wool and stale cigar smoke and something spicy I couldn’t quite place. Something tugged at me again. Not as fully formed as a memory but a physical stab of something forgotten. I pressed my nose against the fibres and inhaled. Spicy cinnamon. A distinctive, rather unpleasant perfume… that was Fi all over.

  Perhaps it was the champagne or tiredness, but a feeling of desolation welled up inside me. My eyes moistened and when I blinked, the coloured light spilling from passing signs narrowed and lengthened into crazy rainbow streaks, distorting everything.

  I struggled to sit up and turned to him. His face was pale, his eyes flashing in the darkness as he looked back at me.

  ‘Yes?’

  I hesitated, trying to think what to say, loosened by alcohol. ‘I don’t like Fi. Do you?’

  He shrugged and his eyes slid away from mine. ‘She’s alright. She’s good fun. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I breathed carefully in and out, steadying myself. ‘You don’t fancy her, do you?’

  He frowned and withdrew his arm. ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  It wasn’t the reassurance I wanted.

  I pressed on, the words tumbling out. ‘The way she looked at you. I saw her. You didn’t expect me to come to the party, did you?’

  I thought about Becca, my school friend, and the way she’d stepped in front of me and obstructed my sight of them. Was it just a coincidence or had she deliberately blocked my view? Did everyone know what was going on between them? Everyone, except me? My palms became slick with sweat.

  His lips were pressed together, his face turned away from mine, towards his own window.

  I couldn’t bear it. I reached out and put my hand on his leg.

  ‘What? Why are you so cross? Just say I’m wrong, if I am. Say she’s the same with everyone. I just want to hear it.’

  When he turned back to me, his eyes were hard.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve. Accusing me.’ He shook his head and lifted my hand off his leg.

  I winced. I didn’t understand. ‘What? What do you mean?’

  He blew out his cheeks. ‘After what you did.’ His face was flushed. ‘I said I wouldn’t bring it up again and I don’t intend to. Alright? It’s about what’s best for Lucy now. But don’t push it.’

  I sat in silence for the rest of the journey home. I felt sick. My mind raced. I had no idea what he was talking about. What had I done? Been unfaithful to him, was that what he meant? But it was impossible. I loved him. I wasn’t the cheating kind… was I?

  I stared out miserably as the taxi lifted us in its slow, swinging climb to upper Mid-Levels and our apartment block. High-rise residential blocks rose from dark strips of foliage, making rising squared patterns of lit stairwells and the illuminated worlds of families at home.

  Dominic sat apart from me, his shoulders hunched.

  What could have happened to our marriage, to leave him so angry and remote? What had I done?

  Back in the flat, I was too upset to sleep. It was late and the amah had already disappeared to bed in her own quarters.

  I went to sit beside Lucy, trying to calm myself by watching her. She was curled on her side, her hair splayed out across the pillow and her lips parted as she breathed. I turned down the air conditioner a notch and tucked the duvet round her feet. Overhead, the ceiling fan thumped rhythmically round, stirring the moist air.

  When I came out again, Dominic had already gone to bed. I eased open our bedroom door. The room was in darkness. The only sounds were the low cool blast of the air conditioner and the hum of the dehumidifier. He was a still shape under the duvet, facing the wall.

  I whispered, ‘Dominic?’

  No reply. He was either asleep or had no desire to
speak to me.

  I went into the spare bedroom and sat at my desk there. I pulled open a deep drawer and drew out the pile of filled diaries and notebooks, my growing record of our life. I flicked through them, page by page, searching for my own account of a misdemeanour I’d committed, of remorse, of arguments with Dominic. Nothing.

  I switched on my laptop and logged onto my emails and started to check back through those.. Surely, if I’d done something terrible, if I’d committed some indiscretion, there’d be evidence of it?

  I waded through them, sent and received. I didn’t recognise any of the older ones. Emails in which I chatted with friends about the fact I was pregnant. I sounded flushed with happiness and slightly smug as I declared myself fit and well and thrilled with the news. Emails in which I announced Lucy’s arrival with some first photos of her attached. I opened the files to look. They were pictures I knew well. Her scrunched, red face, eyes closed, framed by the folds of a white muslin.

  I did a quick search of the emails I’d sent to Sophie. The list filled the screen at once. I’d written to her often for so many years. I opened one at random from about a year ago and started to skim through it. I knew I wouldn’t have confessed anything embarrassing to Sophie. She only ever got a sanitised version of my life out here. But perhaps, if I’d been in turmoil, having done something dreadful, as Dominic hinted, I might have mentioned someone or something to her?

  As I read, I was struck by a strange sense of violation. It was hard to explain. My memory was poor and I couldn’t recollect either having written the sentences I was reading or the events I was describing. It could be the life of a complete stranger.

  And yet, something was wrong. I stared at the dateline. There were big gaps, periods of months without any emails at all. I stared. Had I forgotten to write to Sophie for a while? I didn’t know. That didn’t seem likely, given our steady stream of emails now but I couldn’t remember. Had we fallen out? Or was it possible that the emails had been sent and, for some reason, I’d deleted them, so long ago that I couldn’t remember? Or had someone else gone through and deleted them? I frowned. What would I want to hide?