Scott is waiting by my car by the time I return to it.
Under my windscreen wiper sits a plastic envelope with a green and white form inside. A parking ticket. In the grand scheme of things, it is pretty insignificant, but if Scott wasn’t standing here I’m pretty sure I would be curled up in a ball on the ground, ticket in hand, howling at the injustice of all of this.
‘Your house keys,’ he says, holding out the slender Tiffany keyring fob that holds five different keys. ‘They fell out of your bag. Normally Dr Bruwood would have called you to return them instead of inflicting me upon you, but he’s absolutely terrified of you now.’
Unbidden, a vision of Dr Bruwood cowering behind his clipboard, quaking in his brown clothes while I rant and rave, comes into my mind and brings a small, vague smile to my face.
‘He said he’s seem some partners get angry before, but he’s never seen anyone lose it like that.’
Our fingers brush together, briefly exchanging heat as I take the keys from him. I used to love those little, inconsequential, accidental touches we shared. They were the tiny but necessary connections we reserved for each other, that reminded us of how together we were. Another thing stolen from me.
‘Are you going to divorce me?’ Scott asks as I return my keys to my bag. I have to bin that keyring now, of course. He bought it for me when he went to New York for work. No doubt shagging that American woman. That is what is so complicated about all of this: there are so many little, minuscule things that connect us that will be reminders of the relationship I thought we had. The keyring, his favourite mug, my slippers he helped the children to choose
last Mother’s Day, even the wooden Bienvenue (welcome) mat that lives outside the front door that we picked up in France the weekend of our fifth anniversary. Our house is crammed with tokens of our life together.
‘Yes, Scott.’
His body crumples a little, his face showing his disappointment.
‘I knew the answer, couldn’t help hoping …’
I lower my gaze to the pavement. His trainers are the ones the girls gave him for his birthday two years ago. I’d seen him looking at them when we were in town and, unusually for him, he hadn’t immediately bought them, so I had, in consultation with Cora and Anansy. We’d presented them to him at his surprise party. It’d been easy to get him out of the way for a couple of hours in the morning and when he got back the house was primed for the party.
‘Do you remember that surprise party we threw for you?’ I say to him. ‘I really wish I’d taken a picture of your face when I told you what was happening.’
I feel him smile at the memory but do not raise my head to see it. ‘How you managed to organise it and invite fifty people without me finding out, I’ll never know.’
‘Cora and Anansy said it was the best party they’d ever had – mainly because of how many sweets they got away with necking. And anyway, they say that about every party, so I shouldn’t get too big-headed about that.’
He touches my arm and doesn’t take his hand away again. ‘It was a fantastic party, you have every right to be big-headed.’
Without making too much of it, I tug my body away from him. His hand lingers in the space between us, obviously wanting contact again. He can’t have it, of course. ‘I don’t really know why I brought that up,’ I say.
‘Sometimes I get reminders of things we’ve done in the past, often little things, and I want to talk about them with you, it feels natural to do that.’
That’s exactly why I did it. I didn’t know that until he said it, but that’s it.
‘The thing about all of this that hurts the most is what I let you do to me,’ I say. He returns his hand to his side, sensing that no more contact is going to be forthcoming. ‘What you said about your mother putting up with anything really struck a chord because it’s what I’ve been doing. I would think something was wrong, I would question you, you would put me down, tell me I was paranoid, jealous, controlling, whatever, and I would shut up, even though I knew that I wasn’t the problem. I trusted you before I trusted myself. Like, when you were shagging that American woman. I knew something was wrong, you were so normal but so different at the same time. I got really down about it and went to the doctor and she prescribed antidepressants. She asked a few questions about my home life but I told her it was all fine because you had told me it was. You had convinced me I was the problem.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the antidepressants?’ he asks, shaken.
‘I didn’t take them. I almost did, but it didn’t feel right to. I knew something was wrong in my world but I didn’t know what so I assumed it was me. I told myself that I would see it through the next couple of months and if it was no better, I’d start taking the tablets. But you obviously stopped shagging her and went back to being you so I stopped feeling depressed.’
‘Jesus, I had no idea,’ he says.
‘Let’s be honest, Scott, if you did have an idea would you have stopped? Confessed? Would you have told me that you were the problem not me? Or would it have become another thing to use to put me down so you could carry on with what you were doing?’
‘I don’t know how to make this better, how to fix this,’ he says, despairingly. ‘I’m doing everything I can think of, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough.’
‘You can’t fix it,’ I say, finally looking up and catching his eye. We hold each other’s gaze, something we haven’t done in so long.
We’ve looked at each other but there’s always been something hidden, a barrier between us; now we are open, now we are honest with each other. ‘Our marriage is over, you know that. There is no fixing it.’
‘I don’t want that to be true,’ he says, sadly, his voice swelling with tears.
My tears are not far away, either. It really is the end for us. I break our visual link and root around in my bag for my car keys.
‘Once I’ve finished the programme and have had more therapy, would it be OK to sort of ask you out even though we’ll most probably be divorced?’
That stops me. ‘You don’t want me, Scott, I’m not enough for you.’
‘I do and you are. No matter what happens next, I’ll never stop loving you. I’m getting help. I’m going to make sure this never happens again.’
‘I believe you,’ I say to him. ‘I know you’re trying and that’s brilliant for you as a person and as a father to the girls, but me … I can’t … I just can’t.’
Scott inhales and exhales deeply several times. ‘OK,’ he concedes, ‘I understand.’
‘You do?
Really
?’ Scott never concedes. He may pretend to because he has bigger fish to fry or decide he’ll get what he wants by other means but Scott never concedes. Even before he became the stranger.
He nods. ‘I don’t like it, and I’m struggling not to try to manipulate you into at least thinking about going on a date at some point in the future, but I’m not going to do that because I understand. And you’re right.’
‘Thank you,’ I reply. I open the car door and get in, but before I shut the door, he speaks again.
‘Thanks for coming today,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry it was so awful for you.’
I give him a short nod.
‘Kiss the girls for me,’ he says. ‘And tell them I love them.’
‘You can tell them yourself. You can take them out for lunch on Saturday, if you want?’
‘Really?’ His face shows a thousand shades of joy and my heart swells at the memory of the man who cried as he held both his daughters after they were born. It swells further at the memory of us taking it in turns to sleep the first month after Cora was born so one of us could watch her because we were too scared to take our eyes off her for even the shortest second. We did it again with Anansy even though we knew what to expect. My heart almost explodes with the memory of the man who said we should have the due date of our first inscribed on the inside of our wedding rings.
I nod. ‘I’ll ask them where they want to go and will drop them off to meet you.’
‘Thank you,’ he says, the happy smile still on his face. ‘Thank you so much.’
I have to leave before I break down. This is the Scott I married, of course. And the other Scott murdered him.
She’s sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, a full glass of water in front of her. She is fully clothed with her dressing gown over the top of her clothes, almost as if she’d meant to get changed for bed but had forgotten to, but still put on her dressing gown anyway. From the light in the corridor I can see the troubled frown on her face as she stares into space, not even acknowledging me as I enter the room.
Dressed in newly acquired pyjamas, I pull out a cream padded chair and sit down opposite her.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask her.
She takes her hands away from the glass, curls them up and places them in her lap as she sits back in her seat. She refocuses her gaze on me and manages one of those close-mouthed smiles of the Not OK.
‘No,’ she says to me. ‘I’m not OK.’ She rubs her hand across her scrunched-up eyes. ‘But old news, old traumas. Or rather, old news that keeps getting added to.’
She refocuses on my face, and a small smile develops on her lips as the mournfulness in her eyes deepens. ‘You’re going to add to that old news now, aren’t you?’ she says.
I look down at the table, ashamed. Thoroughly ashamed of myself because that is what I’m going to do. I can’t lift my gaze from the table. I stare at it, noticing for the first time how it stands out in the kitchen because it is cheap. Not cheap as in ‘cheap and nasty’ – it’s a very nice light-wood veneer – it’s simply not handcrafted and top of the range like a lot of the kitchen. I’m sure it’s from the early days when they didn’t have much money. When they were mainly relying on Tami’s wage to support them.
I feel so completely wretched for what I’ve done, but I couldn’t stop myself. He’s like an addiction, something I am powerless around. ‘I’m weak,’ I say. ‘I’m weak and needy. And I hate myself for what I’ve done. I texted Scott. I needed closure with everything going on, I just wanted to end that chapter of my life properly so I can move on.
‘I begged him to get in touch with me. I needed to hear from him, to hear what he had to say about everything. I couldn’t help myself. I’m so sorry, I don’t ever want to hurt you again, I just wanted to know. There are so many uncertainties in my life right now I suppose I wanted to grasp something that would make me feel as if I was standing on solid ground again. I’m sorry.’
She stares at the glass in front of her. Is she going to glass me? If I were her, I would. I probably would have a long time ago, to be honest. She takes a sip of water, and the way her face grimaces, it’s not water. It’s a tumbler of vodka or maybe schnapps. Carefully she settles the glass on the table.
‘I understand,’ she says. Slowly her eyes move up towards me until they settle on my face. ‘I really do. I understand what it’s like to be addicted to a person, to be weak around them. I was the same with Scott for a long time, so I do understand. Don’t feel bad, OK? Just concentrate on your recovery and getting better.’
She must be angling for sainthood or something. I can’t bear it. I suppose I told her because I wanted a reaction. He’s ignored me, of course, and I wanted some acknowledgement that what I was doing was right, that I was owed an explanation from him. Yes, it’s selfish of me to be asking that of her, but I think I’m entitled to be a little selfish right now. If, when you’re in my situation, you can’t think of yourself a little, I don’t know when you can.
‘You have to leave, you know that, don’t you?’ she says. ‘You can’t stay here any more. My fears have been irrational and they’ve forced me to make unwise decisions and accept the unacceptable.’ She smiles sadly at me. ‘I know you’re scared, Bea. I know you’re terrified for the future, but I can’t take care of you any more. It’s not
good for me. I’m falling apart. I’m trying to hold everything together and it’s stupid. I can’t start to get over what’s happened if you’re here. I knew that and I accepted it. It was killing me, confusing the girls, but I thought I could do it to help you get better. But I can’t do that if you’re going to bring him back into your life. I can’t support you in that. You have to leave.’
I have just been thrown off a cliff. With no warning, no chance to prepare myself, I have been thrown away and cut adrift. The cliff face in front of me is too sheer for me to even contemplate climbing, and that is if I can swim through these rough, choppy waters to make it back to the shore in the first place. She is leaving me alone. She is letting go of my hand when it seemed as if she was
always
going to hold on.
‘If you want, I’ll still come to your appointments with you,’ she says.
But what about the nights of going to sleep knowing I’m not alone in the house? What about hearing the girls charging around getting ready in the mornings? What about taking them to school? What about the feeling of being part of a family? That has been helping me to find my footing in this new world I have been set adrift in. She has thrown me off a cliff and has only flung a toy life preserver as support into the rough seas beside me. I don’t need someone to come to the hospital with me, I need a family around me to help me heal.
‘I’ll go in the morning,’ I say.
‘OK,’ she says. She stands after pushing back her chair, the sound of it scraping at the inside of my ears.
She moves to the sink with her glass and after staring at it for a long, tortured moment pours it away. Rinsing the glass in a dribble of water, she turns it upside down to drain in the sink.
‘Night,’ she says on her way out of the kitchen.
‘Night,’ I mumble back.
I need a family. I’ve always needed a family. That’s why I tried to take hers.
This is the first time I’ve been running since Mirabelle died.
It hasn’t felt right to do it.
The laces feel unfamiliar between my fingers as I double-tie the knot on my left shoe. I always put that one on second. Mirabelle was left-handed so I think that’s why she always put her right shoe on last. You could tell by the slightly less secure-looking bow she tied that one in. First bow you’re always careful, always more conscientious about doing it right. Second bow you get cocky, you’ve done it before so don’t need all that care and attention.