tuesday, august 13, 2013

morning

i watched tom getting ready for work this morning,putting on his shirt and tie. he seemed a littledistracted, probably running through his schedule forthe day—meetings, appointments, who, what, where. ifelt jealous. for the first time ever, i actually enviedhim the luxury of getting dressed up and leaving thehouse and rushing around all day, with purpose, allin the service of a pay cheque.

it’s not the work i miss—i was an estate agent, nota neurosurgeon, it’s not exactly a job you dreamabout as a child—but i did like being able to wanderaround the really expensive houses when the ownersweren’t there, running my fingers over the marbleworktops, sneaking a peek into the walk-inwardrobes. i used to imagine what my life would belike if i lived like that, the kind of person i would be.

i’m well aware there is no job more important thanthat of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn’tvalued. not in the sense that counts to me at themoment, which is financial. i want us to have moremoney so that we can leave this house, this road.

it’s as simple as that.

perhaps not quite as simple as that. after tom leftfor work, i sat down at the kitchen table to do battlewith evie over breakfast. two months ago, i swearshe would eat anything. now, if it’s not strawberryyoghurt, she’s not having it. i know this is normal. ikeep telling myself this while i’m trying to get eggyolk out of my hair, while i’m crawling around onthe floor picking up spoons and upturned bowls. ikeep telling myself this is normal.

still, when we were finally done and she wasplaying happily by herself, i let myself cry for aminute. i allow myself these tears sparingly, only everwhen tom’s not here, just a few moments to let itall out. it was when i was washing my faceafterwards, when i saw how tired i looked, howblotchy and bedraggled and bloody awful, that i felt itagain—that need to put on a dress and high heels,to blow-dry my hair and put on some makeup andwalk down the street and have men turn and lookat me.

i miss work, but i also miss what work meant tome in my last year of gainful employment, when imet tom. i miss being a mistress.

i enjoyed it. i loved it, in fact. i never felt guilty. ipretended i did. i had to, with my marriedgirlfriends, the ones who live in terror of the pert aupair or the pretty, funny girl in the office who cantalk about football and spends half her life in thegym. i had to tell them that of course i felt terribleabout it, of course i felt bad for his wife, i nevermeant for any of this to happen, we fell in love,what could we do?

the truth is, i never felt bad for rachel, evenbefore i found out about her drinking and howdifficult she was, how she was making his life amisery. she just wasn’t real to me, and anyway, iwas enjoying myself too much. being the otherwoman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point denyingit: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wifefor, even though he loves her. that’s just howirresistible you are.

i was selling a house. number thirty-four cranhamroad. it was proving difficult to shift, because thelatest interested buyer hadn’t been granted amortgage. something about the lender’s survey. sowe arranged to get an independent surveyor in, justto make sure everything was ok. the sellers hadalready moved on, the house was empty, so i had tobe there to let him in.

it was obvious from the moment i opened the doorto him that it was going to happen. i’d never doneanything like that before, never even dreamed of it,but there was something in the way he looked atme, the way he smiled at me. we couldn’t helpourselves—we did it there in the kitchen, up againstthe counter. it was insane, but that’s how we were.

that’s what he always used to say to me. don’texpect me to be sane, anna. not with you.

i pick evie up and we go out into the gardentogether. she’s pushing her little trolley up and down,giggling to herself as she does it, this morning’stantrum forgotten. every time she grins at me i feellike my heart’s going to explode. no matter howmuch i miss working, i would miss this more. andin any case, it’s never going to happen. there’s noway i’ll be leaving her with a childminder again, nomatter how qualified or vouched for they are. i’mnot leaving her with anyone else ever again, not aftermegan.

evening

tom texted me to say he was going to be a bit latethis evening, he had to take a client out for a drink.

evie and i were getting ready for our evening walk.

we were in the bedroom, tom’s and mine, and iwas getting her changed. the light was just gorgeous,a rich orange glow filling the house, turning suddenlyblue-grey when the sun went behind a cloud. i’d hadthe curtains pulled halfway across to stop the roomgetting too hot, so i went to open them, and that’swhen i saw rachel, standing on the opposite side ofthe road, looking at our house. then she just tookoff, walking back towards the station.

i’m sitting on the bed and i’m shaking with fury,digging my nails into my palms. evie’s kicking herfeet in the air, and i’m so bloody angry, i don’t wantto pick her up for fear i would crush her.

he told me he’d sorted this out. he told me thathe phoned her, they talked, she admitted that shehad struck up some sort of friendship with scotthipwell, but that she didn’t intend seeing him anylonger, that she wouldn’t be hanging aroundanymore. tom said she promised him, and that hebelieved her. tom said she was being reasonable, shedidn’t seem drunk, she wasn’t hysterical, she didn’tmake threats or beg him to go back to her. he toldme he thought she was getting better.

i take a few deep breaths and pull evie up ontomy lap, i lie her back against my legs and hold herhands with mine.

“i think i’ve had enough of this, don’t you,sweetie?”

it’s just so wearing: every time i think that thingsare getting better, that we’re finally over the rachelissue, there she is again. sometimes i feel like she’snever, ever going to go away.

deep inside me, a rotten seed has been planted.

when tom tells me it’s ok, everything’s all right,she’s not going to bother us any longer, and thenshe does, i can’t help wondering whether he’s tryingas hard as he can to get rid of her, or whetherthere’s some part of him, deep down, that likes thefact that she can’t let go.

i go downstairs and scrabble around in the kitchendrawer for the card that detective riley left. i dialher number quickly, before i have time to changemy mind.

wednesday, august 14, 2013

morning

in bed, his hands on my hips, his breath hot againstmy neck, his skin slick with sweat against mine, hesays, “we don’t do this enough anymore.”

“i know.”

“we need to make more time for ourselves.”

“we do.”

“i miss you,” he says. “i miss this. i want more ofthis.”

i roll over and kiss him on the lips, my eyes tightshut, trying to suppress the guilt i feel for going tothe police behind his back.

“i think we should go somewhere,” he mumbles,“just the two of us. get away for a bit.”

and leave evie with whom? i want to ask. yourparents, whom you don’t speak to? or my mother,who is so frail, she can barely care for herself?

i don’t say that, i don’t say anything, i just kisshim again, more deeply. his hand slips down to theback of my thigh and he grips it, hard.

“what do you think? where would you like to go?

mauritius? bali?”

i laugh.

“i’m serious,” he says, pulling back from me, lookingme in the eye. “we deserve it, anna. you deserve it.

it’s been a hard year, hasn’t it?”

“but?.?.?.”

“but what?” he flashes his perfect smile at me.

“we’ll figure something out with evie, don’t worry.”

“tom, the money.”

“we’ll be ok.”

“but?.?.?.” i don’t want to say this, but i have to.

“we don’t have enough money to even considermoving house, but we do have enough money for aholiday in mauritius or bali?”

he puffs out his cheeks, then exhales slowly, rollingaway from me. i shouldn’t have said it. the babymonitor crackles into life: evie’s waking up.

“i’ll get her,” he says, and gets up and leaves theroom.

at breakfast, evie is doing her thing. it’s a game toher now, refusing food, shaking her head, chin up,lips firmly closed, her little fists pushing at the bowlin front of her. tom’s patience wears thin quickly.

“i don’t have time for this,” he says to me. “you’llhave to do it.” he gets to his feet, holding out thespoon for me to take, the expression on his facepained.

i take a deep breath.

it’s ok, he’s tired, he has a lot of work on, he’spissed off because i didn’t enter into his holidayfantasy this morning.

but it isn’t ok, because i’m tired, too, and i’d liketo have a conversation about money and oursituation here that doesn’t end with him just walkingout of the room. of course, i don’t say that. instead,i break my promise to myself and i go ahead andmention rachel.

“she’s been hanging around again,” i say, “sowhatever you said to her the other day didn’t do thetrick.”

he gives me a sharp look. “what do you mean,hanging around?”

“she was here last night, standing in the street rightopposite the house.”

“was she with someone?”

“no. she was alone. why d’you ask that?”

“fuck’s sake,” he says, and his face darkens theway it does when he’s really angry. “i told her tostay away. why didn’t you say anything last night?”

“i didn’t want to upset you,” i say softly, alreadyregretting bringing this up. “i didn’t want to worryyou.”

“jesus!” he says, and he dumps his coffee cuploudly in the sink. the noise gives evie a fright, andshe starts to cry. this doesn’t help. “i don’t knowwhat to tell you, i honestly don’t. when i spoke toher, she was fine. she listened to what i was sayingand promised not to come around here any longer.

she looked fine. she looked healthy, actually, back tonormal—”

“she looked fine?” i ask him, and before he turnshis back on me i can see in his face that he knowshe’s been caught. “i thought you said you spoke toher on the phone?”

he takes a deep breath, sighs heavily, then turnsback to me, his face a blank. “yeah, well, that’s whati told you, darling, because i knew you’d get upset ifi saw her. so i hold my hands up—i lied. anythingfor an easy life.”

“are you kidding me?”

he smiles at me, shaking his head as he stepstowards me, his hands still raised in supplication. “i’msorry, i’m sorry. she wanted to chat in person and ithought it might be best. i’m sorry, ok? we justtalked. we met in a crappy coffee shop in ashburyand talked for twenty minutes—half an hour, tops.

ok?”

he puts his arms around me and pulls me towardshis chest. i try to resist him, but he’s stronger thanme, and anyway he smells great and i don’t want afight. i want us to be on the same side. “i’m sorry,”

he mumbles again, into my hair.

“it’s all right,” i say.

i let him get away with it, because i’m dealing withthis now. i spoke to detective riley yesterdayevening, and i knew the moment we started talkingthat i’d done the right thing by calling her, becausewhen i told her that i’d seen rachel leaving scotthipwell’s house “on several occasions” (a slightexaggeration), she seemed very interested. shewanted to know dates and times (i could furnish herwith two; i was vague about the other incidents), ifthey’d had a relationship prior to megan hipwell’sdisappearance, whether i thought they were in asexual relationship now. i have to say the thoughthadn’t really crossed my mind—i can’t imagine himgoing from megan to rachel. in any case, his wife’sbarely cold in the ground.

i went over the stuff about evie as well—theattempted abduction—just in case she’d forgotten.

“she’s very unstable,” i said. “you might think i’moverreacting, but i can’t take any risks where myfamily is concerned.”

“not at all,” she said. “thank you very much forcontacting me. if you see anything else that youconsider suspicious, let me know.”

i’ve no idea what they’ll do about her—perhaps justwarn her off? it’ll help, in any case, if we do startlooking into things like restraining orders. hopefully,for tom’s sake, it won’t come to that.

after tom leaves for work, i take evie to the park,we play on the swings and the little wooden rockinghorses, and when i put her back into her buggy shefalls asleep almost immediately, which is my cue to goshopping. we cut through the back streets towardsthe big sainsbury’s. it’s a bit of a roundabout way ofgetting there, but it’s quiet, with very little traffic, andin any case we get to pass number thirty-fourcranham road.

it gives me a little frisson even now, walking pastthat house—butterflies suddenly swarm in mystomach, and a smile comes to my lips and colour tomy cheeks. i remember hurrying up the front steps,hoping none of the neighbours would see me lettingmyself in, getting myself ready in the bathroom,putting on perfume, the kind of underwear you puton just to be taken off. then i’d get a text messageand he’d be at the door, and we’d have an hour ortwo in the bedroom upstairs.

he’d tell rachel he was with a client, or meetingfriends for a beer. “aren’t you worried she’ll checkup on you?” i’d ask him, and he’d shake his head,dismissing the idea. “i’m a good liar,” he told meonce with a grin. once, he said, “even if she didcheck, the thing with rachel is, she won’t rememberwhat happened tomorrow anyway.” that’s when istarted to realize just how bad things were for him.

it wipes the smile off my face, though, thinkingabout those conversations. thinking about tomlaughing conspiratorially while he traced his fingerslower over my belly, smiling up at me, saying, “i’m agood liar.” he is a good liar, a natural. i’ve seen himdoing it: convincing check-in staff that we werehoneymooners, for example, or talking his way out ofextra hours at work by claiming a family emergency.

everyone does it, of course they do, only when tomdoes it, you believe him.

i think about breakfast this morning—but the pointis that i caught him in the lie, and he admitted itstraightaway. i don’t have anything to worry about.

he isn’t seeing rachel behind my back! the idea isridiculous. she might have been attractive once—shewas quite striking when he met her, i’ve seenpictures: all huge dark eyes and generouscurves—but now she’s just run to fat. and in anycase, he would never go back to her, not aftereverything she did to him, to us—all the harassment,all those late-night phone calls, hang-ups, textmessages.

i’m standing in the tinned goods aisle, evie stillmercifully sleeping in the buggy, and i start thinkingabout those phone calls, and about the time—or wasit times?—when i woke up and the bathroom lightwas on. i could hear his voice, low and gentle,behind the closed door. he was calming her down, iknow he was. he told me that sometimes she’d beso angry, she’d threaten to come round to thehouse, go to his work, throw herself in front of atrain. he might be a very good liar, but i knowwhen he’s telling the truth. he doesn’t fool me.

evening

only, thinking about it, he did fool me, didn’t he?

when he told me that he’d spoken to rachel on thephone, that she sounded fine, better, happy almost, ididn’t doubt him for a moment. and when he camehome on monday night and i asked him about hisday and he talked to me about a really tiresomemeeting that morning, i listened sympathetically, notonce suspecting that there was no meeting, that allthe while he was in a coffee shop in ashbury withhis ex-wife.

this is what i’m thinking about while i’m unloadingthe dishwasher, with great care and precision,because evie is napping and the clatter of cutleryagainst crockery might wake her up. he does foolme. i know he’s not always 100 percent honestabout everything. i think about that story about hisparents—how he invited them to the wedding butthey refused to come because they were so angrywith him for leaving rachel. i always thought thatwas odd, because on the two occasions when i’vespoken to his mum she sounded so pleased to betalking to me. she was kind, interested in me, inevie.

“i do hope we’ll be able to see her soon,” she said,but when i told tom about it he dismissed it.

“she’s trying to get me to invite them round,” hesaid, “just so she can refuse. power games.” shedidn’t sound like a woman playing power games tome, but i didn’t press the point. the workings ofother people’s families are always so impenetrable.

he’ll have his reasons for keeping them at arm’slength, i know he will, and they’ll be centred onprotecting me and evie.

so why am i wondering now whether that wastrue? it’s this house, this situation, all the things thathave been going on here—they’re making me doubtmyself, doubt us. if i’m not careful they’ll end upmaking me crazy, and i’ll end up like her. likerachel.

i’m just sitting here, waiting to take the sheets outof the tumble dryer. i think about turning on thetelevision and seeing if there’s an episode of friendson that i haven’t watched three hundred times, ithink about doing my yoga stretches, and i thinkabout the novel on my bedside table, which i’ve readtwelve pages of in the past two weeks. i think abouttom’s laptop, which is on the coffee table in theliving room.

and then i do the things i never thought i would. igrab the bottle of red that we opened last night withdinner and i pour myself a glass. then i fetch hislaptop, power it up and start trying to guess thepassword.

i’m doing the things she did: drinking alone andsnooping on him. the things she did and he hated.

but recently—as recently as this morning—things haveshifted. if he’s going to lie, then i’m going to checkup on him. that’s a fair deal, isn’t it? i feel i’mowed a bit of fairness. so i try to crack thepassword. i try names in different combinations: mineand his, his and evie’s, mine and evie’s, all three ofus together, forwards and backwards. our birthdays,in various combinations. anniversaries: the first timewe saw each other, the first time we had sex.

number thirty-four, for cranham road; numbertwenty-three, this house. i try to think outside thebox—most men use football teams as passwords, ithink, but tom isn’t into football; he quite likescricket, so i try boycott and botham and ashes. idon’t know names of any of the recent ones. i drainmy glass and pour another half. i’m actually ratherenjoying myself, trying to solve the puzzle. i think ofbands he likes, films he enjoys, actresses he fancies. itype password; i type 1234.

there’s an awful screeching outside as the londontrain stops at the signal, like nails on a chalkboard. iclench my teeth and take another long swig of wine,and as i do, i notice the time—jesus, it’s almostseven and evie’s still sleeping and he’ll be home in aminute, and i’m literally thinking that he’ll be homein a minute when i hear the rattle of the key in thedoor and my heart stops.

i snap the laptop shut and jump to my feet,knocking my chair over with a clatter. evie wakesand starts to cry. i put the computer back on thetable before he gets into the room, but he knowssomething’s up and he just stares at me and says,“what’s going on?” i tell him, “nothing, nothing, iknocked over a chair by mistake.” he picks evie upout of her pram to give her a cuddle, and i catchsight of myself in the hallway mirror, my face paleand my lips stained dark red with wine.