You, Me and Other People (7 page)

‘Adam told me I stopped wanting him. It was there in the middle of some long spiel of his, like a barbed accusation.’

‘And did you? Stop wanting him?’

I’ve been asking myself the same question since. Carefully, I clean underneath my left thumbnail with my right one. ‘It’s just not that simple. We’ve been married a long time. It was one of those phases where I only wanted to sleep. I don’t think I stopped wanting him as much as stopped having sex for a while.’

‘Did you talk about it?’

I shake my head. ‘I know now that I wanted him to. I wanted him to notice and talk to me, ask me how I felt. Rather than the other way around. It’s always me who does the talking. It’s exhausting.’ I look up. ‘It didn’t last long, maybe a couple of months. We had sex again as soon as I gave in and made the first move.’ I sigh. ‘Of course, I’d lost him by then …’

‘Do you remember a few weeks ago we spoke about your fears?’ Caroline blows her coffee as she changes the subject.

I can only nod.

‘You say things are clearer, so tell me what your greatest fear is, right now, in this space in time?’

I close my eyes and immediately wonder if I
can
live without Adam, if I actually want to, or is forgiving him again and trying to reboot our marriage an option? The clenching behind my ribs assures me that this is indeed a fear rather than a solution.

‘Taking Adam back, nothing really changing, me just carrying on with my head hovered above the sand.’ There, I’ve said it out loud.

‘Anything else?’ she prods.

‘Leading half a life …’

She raises a questioning eyebrow.

‘What if I can’t move from this small world I’ve created for myself? What if I don’t allow another man near me and, worse, if I did, what if I discovered I had “Go ahead – cheat on me” stamped on my forehead?’

She smiles. ‘You have nothing stamped on your forehead,’ she reassures me, ‘just on your brain.’

I lean forward, pick up the Russian doll she used weeks ago with me and I slowly open the five parts. I caress the tiniest figure, and the fear floodgates are well and truly opened.

‘Personal failure,’ I hear myself say. ‘I know I’m good; my agent tells me just to get on with it – success will come if I work hard. It’s just that inner saboteur constantly waiting to leap.’

‘You’re going to have to find a way to gag her.’ Caroline shrugs. ‘I find that imagery actually helps. Maybe name her too? If you feel negativity creep up on you, visualize her, how she looks, what she’s wearing and then gag her with a cloth – really tightly.’

I’m fascinated. ‘You have an inner saboteur too?’

‘A lot of people do.’ She grins, as if it’s just the most normal thing in the world to be gagging an imaginary part of your head with a cloth – really tightly.

‘So, she’s gagged, you’re successful in your own right, maybe you’re even happy living alone. What do you think you have to put in place to get there?’

My roll grinds to a vicious halt. Me. Happy. Living alone. I like that thought, but still shake my head vigorously. ‘I don’t know …’

Caroline takes a book from her desk, opens it where it’s marked with a Post-it note.

‘“We gain strength, and courage,”’ she quotes aloud from the page, ‘“and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face … we must do that which we think we cannot.”’ She emphasizes the last few words as she shuts the book. ‘Eleanor Roosevelt,’ she says.

Swallowing hard, I put the doll together again and place it back on the table, my head still disagreeing. ‘Whatever that is,’ I tell her, ‘I’m not ready.’

‘Take the doll with you,’ she says, ‘for more positive imagery – if it helps? Her name’s Babushka.’

I stare at the figure, then reach for her and put her in my handbag. Somehow it makes sense, but I avoid Caroline’s eye. Christ Almighty, I’m in therapy with an adult who gags her inner saboteur and names her dolls.

This week, I’ve written half of a song. There is an air of excitement in the loft as I’ve probably written half of ‘
the
’ song. My devil-like inner saboteur, whom I have now named ‘Lucy Fir’, has been well and truly gagged. Eleanor Roosevelt lives on in my head. I’ve listened to lots of fantastic music, watched some classic movies and somehow tapped into the world of love again. I’ve forced myself, for work purposes, to wallow in love’s glorious potential. I haven’t got a title for
the
song yet, but it’s about a couple being the right fit. About the fact that they just don’t fit anyone else except one another and that they fall apart without each other. It’s all still first-draft stuff, but I think I’m onto something. I’m just sending a soundbite through to Josh, when I hear the doorbell downstairs ringing persistently.

The sound pulses through the house, again and again.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I mutter, taking the stairs down two at a time. I peer through the spyhole, wondering who on earth can be so determined. My shoulders droop and I rest my forehead on the white gloss door.

‘Stop peering through the thingy, Elizabeth. Open up.’

I pull it towards me.

‘Darling,’ she says, giving me a kiss on my cheek and moving past me, glancing only briefly at my text wall art. ‘It’s drizzling a bit out there,’ she says, placing a long, neon-pink umbrella in the hallstand next to Adam’s cricket bat.

‘Mum,’ I reply. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Meg called me.’ She holds a small kitbag up. ‘I’ve come to do your nails.’

I’m lost for words as she walks away from me. I can hear her unpack what must be manicure regalia onto the dining table before I’ve even shut the front door.

‘Mum,’ I stand in the living room doorway, feeling a prickle of anxiety, wondering what Meg has said. ‘My nails are fine, I …’ I’m trying to find the words that express what I feel but are not –
Please leave, Mum. I need to write an Oscar-nominated song. I don’t want to tell you what’s going on in my world. I like to pretend that everything’s all right on the phone. Can you please piss off back to the Cotswolds?

‘Open a bottle of wine, Elizabeth, I’m staying the night.’ Her stone-grey eyes catch mine and her eyebrows arch as if to say, ‘
Go on, I dare you. Tell me you’re too busy
.’ She says nothing, then continues to unpack an array of tiny, multicoloured bottles.

My husband has left me and I’ve just been up in the loft convincing myself I can earn a proper living songwriting, yet it seems – I glance down at my fingernails – that a manicure is more important. ‘I’ll get the wine.’ I walk towards the fridge, hoping she won’t follow me, and discover the lack of food and abundance of crisps. There is, however, a beef stew I’d forgotten about. Sylvia. I offer up a silent thanks to her.

Having filled two glasses, I place them both on the dining table and take a seat. She’s standing at the bi-folds, staring out into the garden. The tail end of a rain shower spits on the glazing.

‘You’ll have to take up gardening,’ she says, her arms folded across her chest.

I know then that Meg has revealed enough. ‘I was going to tell you.’

‘When, exactly?’ She hasn’t taken her eyes off the lawn.

‘When I felt I could.’ I shrug. ‘It’s only just beginning to be real to me.’

The sounds of Sylvia’s children, rushing into their garden after the rain, permeate the room. I stare at an ancient ring of a coffee cup on the walnut dining table, as my mother takes a seat next to me. She raises her wine glass to her mouth and I can tell she’s fighting tears. She then pulls an antiseptic wipe from a plastic container, leans forward and grabs one of my hands. She uses both of hers to gently clean mine. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

My shoulders move up and down again. ‘It is what it is.’

‘What happened?’ She asks the question as she wipes clean my other hand.

‘How much did Meg say?’

‘She just told me that he’d gone, implied there was another woman.’ Her eyes once again meet mine. ‘Was there? Is there?’

I let her words hang in the air a moment before replying. ‘Yes and yes.’

‘Bastard,’ she whispers, picking out a particularly lurid bottle. ‘Fuchsia, I think. You need brightening up.’

I don’t reply; know there’s no point. If my mother has made up her mind that I need fuchsia nails, then that’s exactly what I’m going to get. She has already travelled a hundred miles. She picks up the file and gets to work.

Minutes later, she speaks again. ‘You’re not alone.’

I tap her arm affectionately. ‘I know that, Mum. Thank you.’

‘We all have crosses to bear. Most of us have faulty husbands and most of us learn to live with them.’

She is, of course, referring to the fact that my father’s first love was alcohol, over and above both her and me.

She squeezes my hand in hers. ‘I loved your dad,’ she says, ‘and he loved me.’

I remember lots of tears; my mother weeping into her coffee cup, her bed sheets, her book … I can’t hide my discomfort, and I shift awkwardly in the chair. ‘He had a funny way of showing it,’ I say.

Mum frowns. ‘Don’t judge.’ Her voice has a hint of scolding to it. ‘I get what you’re going through but … there’s nothing worse in this world than losing a child. When Simon died, a big part of your dad did too. It was after that he changed. He was running away from the hell of it all.’

I start to interrupt but she stops me.

‘This was before people talked about their feelings. There was no such thing as counselling. Grief counselling was what he needed but, to be honest, even if it had been around, he wouldn’t have gone. Instead he drank bourbon to help face the pain.’

I wait until she draws breath. ‘I’m not judging, Mum. I just don’t understand why you’d put up with that.’

‘You were young. And then, suddenly, you weren’t. Why change something that worked in so many ways for us? Besides …’ She smiles and cocks her head at me. ‘We were happy.’

I bite my lip. And my tongue. She’s right. I have never had to deal with the heartache of losing a child. And who am I to judge her when I forgave Adam once before too? I convinced myself we could get past his failings.

‘Can you forgive him, maybe forget about this, and put it behind you?’ she asks. It’s as if she can hear my thoughts, see into my very soul.

‘No.’ My tone is emphatic. ‘I hope someday I won’t care, so maybe I can forgive him, but I’ll never forget how he’s hurt me.’ I do not say the word ‘again’ out loud. My mother doesn’t need to know about the last time.

She nods, doesn’t push the point.

I hear my last words echo in my head and feel a huge weight lift from my locked shoulders. After many weeks of therapy, it’s taken my mum talking to make me say it out loud. I will not be taking Adam back. My marriage is over.

I can almost hear the tiny monkey-nut-size baby Babushka cry. I may finally be back in touch with my core, but it hurts – as if my heart is being squeezed in a vice. The coffee ring on the table blurs as my eyes fill and my mouth begins to tremble. My mother drops my fuchsia hand and pulls me into her arms.

I can’t sleep. Today’s emotions have just been too much. I feel spent, exhausted, but somehow I’m not sleepy. I’m sitting up in bed, my back against the silver-button-punched, fabric headboard, having a conversation online with Sally from Manchester. We’ve kept in touch since we found each other on an Internet forum months ago. For someone whose husband has made mine look like the archangel Gabriel, I’m astounded at her capacity for forgiveness. She has taken him back. She makes no apologies for the fact that she loves him; he’s still her husband and the father of her child. Part of me admires her and part of me feels for her.

‘He’ll do it again!’ I want to shout at the screen, type the words, but I don’t. I wish her well, but secretly believe that ‘her Colin’, as she calls him, will soon be back in the arms of the skinny, solvent woman he was shagging, or someone else just as accommodating.

I stare into space. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe I judge far too quickly, and just maybe I shouldn’t. Then again, I focus on the image of Adam actually shagging his bitch whore girlfriend. I grit my teeth and almost visualize penetration.

Nope. No forgiveness here anytime soon.

I have, since meeting with Matt in Starbucks, wallowed in my own filth for almost a week. All he did then was tell me nicely what a wanker I’ve been and suggest I try and be less of a wanker. Now, we’re back in the same American coffee house, but I have showered, shaved and am dressed in dry-cleaned jeans and a crisp white shirt. I still haven’t figured out how to use the washing machine without getting creased clothes that can’t possibly be ironed.

‘I’m taking a few more days off.’ I’m aware I’m telling Matt rather than discussing it as we would normally do. I blow the steam from my second latte and end up with frothy milk on my spotless jeans.

He nods, staring at me over his steepled hands. For the last half-hour, we’ve redone the whole Granger thing and I’ve been suitably placed on the naughty step.

‘Just the rest of the week,’ I add. ‘I’ll be back on Monday.’

‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

‘Peachy,’ I say, ‘just have to get my head around the fact that my marriage is falling apart, my brother comes back in four weeks and I’ll have nowhere to live. And, oh, you’ve tossed me off an account I brought to the firm.’

Matt inhales deeply. I can tell he’s trying to decide on the right reply. I know there is none, that this isn’t his fault, but I need someone to blame for the Grangers’ betrayal. I’m knee-deep in my own.

‘They’ll calm down after a while, Adam. Let it settle for a bit. Why don’t you take some time away in the sun?’

I don’t reply, but imagine me away sunning myself – on my own. I have never holidayed alone and I don’t intend to start now.

‘Maybe Emma would like to go?’ He seems to read my mind.

She probably would, but the thought of Emma and I playing happily on a sandy beach, her frolicking in a white bikini, does not fill me with the lusty urge I expected it to.

‘I’ll be back on Monday.’ I walk away, leaving him gnawing his lower lip.

I shouldn’t be here. I knew it on the drive over. I know it passing her house and still know it when I turn the car around and do another drive-by. It’s something I habitually do a couple of times a year but this – this breaks the mould. This is screwed up … I have no clue why I’m here now, other than the fact that I feel so alone that I need to glance at their lives; catch a glimpse; maybe even stop the car and knock on her door and ask Kiera Granger why the fuck her brothers have sent me to Coventry.

Her home, in one of Hampstead’s narrower roads, nestles between the heath and the High Street. I’m parked a few car-lengths away from the large, double-fronted mews. It’s the kind of house that few of us who work for a living could ever afford; the kind of house that comes from trust-fund money. It sits in a small but manicured garden, two tapered bay trees flanking the glossy doorway.

Feeding on the nerves jangling through my body, I close my eyes and imagine myself walking up the slim flagstones leading to the front door. In my mind, I lift the chrome door-knocker and sound it twice. From memory, it’s large and shaped like a unicorn’s head – sourced, I think I remember her saying, from some antique shop in a nearby cobbled lane. I imagine hearing heels making a clacking sound on what I know to be black-and-white, chequered Victorian tiles. I imagine her opening the door. The years will have been kind to her. Apart from just a few faint lines on the edges of her deep-set blue eyes, she would look the same: straight black hair pinned back in a tight bun framing her face; still beautiful. She’s ushering me into a house filled with the sound of childhood laughter. This home is nothing like the one Ben and I came from, but it does look like the one Beth and I created for Meg.

Beth … Meg … My eyes blink open. From the safety of my driver’s seat, I lean forward, my head on the steering wheel, both of my hands on my thighs. I scrape the earlier milk stain on my jeans with my thumbnail. Opening the window a fraction, I lean towards the outside air, feel it nourish my hungry lungs.

With a final glance, I drive past the house, promising myself I won’t do this again. Instead, I call Tim Granger for the hundredth time. I’m determined, if he picks up, to find out why, after a particularly vicious run in the markets, they felt the need to blame me. Turning the car down Heath Street, I realize after the fourth ring that he’s not going to answer. I hang up, prepare myself to stew in the car in dense London traffic, dwelling on my fragmented life. Neither of the Granger brothers will speak to me; my business partner is humouring me; my wife tolerates me, and my lover seems to want only to sit astride my dick, morning to night – which was fine at first but, at this point, I crave conversation more. I call Meg.

‘Dad,’ she says.

‘How’re you fixed at the moment? Fancy a few days away in the sun, all expenses paid?’

‘Dad, I’ve got exams?’

‘Oh, I—’

‘Of course, I thought you knew that. That you’d care.’

The next sound I hear is a click. I imagine her tossing the phone across the room and I’m suddenly afraid. I seem to be capable of nothing except upsetting people at the moment. The thought of an afternoon sagging under the weight of my own inadequacies makes me bring the car to a stop, do a U-turn and head northeast towards a cemetery in Highgate. I’ll go and see the only people in the world who can’t judge me.

My parents are buried together, side by side in death as they were in life. Almost oblivious to Ben and me, I always thought they should never really have had children. Nearing their plot, I’m aware of the silence. Not a sound, apart from the distant hum of traffic beyond the cemetery’s boundary. It’s early afternoon. Most people are in work so, apart from a few scattered staff, hunched over, clearing brittle leaves from under the shedding trees, I’m alone. The low winter sun has ducked behind gathering cloud, instantly chilling the afternoon.

Automatically, I hunker down and tend to the pots, pulling out a plastic bag that I had tucked behind one of them the last time I was here. I lay it out on the damp grass and kneel on it, tug at a few tiny weeds. From the right, my mother’s voice seems to carry on the wind, filling the quiet. I can hear her telling us how much she loved Ben and me; I hear her ask why I’ve never told Beth the truth.

My hands move quickly and soon I’ve got a small pile of browning plant detritus. My knees squelch through the plastic bag; the latest rainfall, still sitting on top of the mounded earth, trickles over one side of it. I watch as the soiled water seeps through the denim around my knees. Beth would be able to get those stains out, the milk one too. Clothes stains, life stains, Beth always knows what to do.

Again, I hear them questioning me, asking me why, if she always knows what to do, why not trust her way back then? I shudder under my overcoat. It’s like they’ve never left. I feel as I used to, like a chastised child, never able to do the right thing. I smile at the irony – my far-from-perfect dead parents, pointing out
my
lies.

Standing up, I gather the bits into the plastic bag. So much for not being judged. My legs, unwilling to hold my weight, head for a bench close by. Beneath a looming oak, it sits weathered and worn and seems to groan as I slump onto its middle.

I want to flail at the memory of her voice, to lash out at thin air, to have those few staff stand upright to look at the poor sod waving his arms like Don Quixote. I want to yell that she talked utter crap. They never loved me. If they did, they would never have left me. Not like they did. Not like that.

And, as for not telling Beth the truth … Why would I have risked telling this beautiful woman – this person who had turned up in my life with her fun and her laugh and her songs and her words … She helped me to forget. What words would I have used then, or since, when I still can’t say it out loud?

It’s starting to rain as I leave the cemetery. After getting rid of the rubbish, I increase my pace towards the shelter of the car. With my back to their burial ground, my mother’s standard phrase when she was disappointed in me rings in my ears: ‘
I hope you’re proud of yourself, Adam.
’ I laugh out loud. ‘No, I’m not, Mum. What about you? You proud of
yourself
?’

It is ten past ten at night. Julie Etchingham has just been confirming from the television that the human race is still killing one another – from the Gaza Strip to a tragic gun-crazed maniac in a school in Dallas. I’m lying prostrate on the sofa, drained by the day and the relentlessly bad news in the world. When my phone trills beside me, the only reason I look at it is in the hope that it might be Tim Granger returning one of my calls.

I jolt upright at the name on the screen. Shit … My right palm flattens against my mouth. Was I seen?
Do not answer
. I should pick up.
And she could help. She’s a Granger, after all …
I slide the answer icon across the screen. ‘Kiera,’ I say, ‘good to hear from you.’

Her voice has the same timbre it always had – a smooth, soothing sound. Her words, however, are not the words I’d expected to hear. Seeing her name flash on the phone, I thought she might tell me she’d spotted my drive-by, ask me what the hell I thought I was doing. Instead, I hear other words, scary words, and my heart beats so wildly it seems to finally give up and clamp itself to my ribcage. My response, after I’ve listened and before I hang up, is a sloshing jumble of fused phrases where I hope I say the right thing.

As soon as I cut the connection, I rush to the bathroom and throw up. My cheek rests on the ceramic bowl. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Jesus H. Christ …