He doesn’t come out, and her head falls forward. There is something about the way she is moving today that seems different; she is heavier, weighed down. I will him to come out to her, but the train jolts and slogs forward and still there is no sign of him; she’s alone. And now, without thinking, I find myself looking directly into my house, and I can’t look away. The French doors are flung open, light streaming into the kitchen. I can’t tell, I really can’t, whether I’m seeing this or imagining it—is she there, at the sink, washing up? Is there a little girl sitting in one of those bouncy baby chairs up there on the kitchen table?
I close my eyes and let the darkness grow and spread until it morphs from a feeling of sadness into something worse: a memory, a flashback. I didn’t just ask him to call me back. I remember now, I was crying. I told him that I still loved him, that I always would. Please, Tom, please, I need to talk to you. I miss you. No no no no no no no.
I have to accept it, there’s no point trying to push it away. I’m going to feel terrible all day, it’s going to come in waves—stronger then weaker then stronger again—that twist in the pit of my stomach, the anguish of shame, the heat coming to my face, my eyes squeezed tight as though I could make it all disappear. And I’ll be telling myself all day, it’s not the worst thing, is it? It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done, it’s not as if I fell over in public, or yelled at a stranger in the street. It’s not as if I humiliated my husband at a summer barbecue by shouting abuse at the wife of one of his friends. It’s not as if we got into a fight one night at home and I went for him with a golf club, taking a chunk out of the plaster in the hallway outside the bedroom. It’s not like going back to work after a three-hour lunch and staggering through the office, everyone looking, Martin Miles taking me to one side, I think you should probably go home, Rachel. I once read a book by a former alcoholic where she described giving oral sex to two different men, men she’d just met in a restaurant on a busy London high street. I read it and I thought, I’m not that bad. This is where the bar is set.
EVENING
I have been thinking about Jess all day, unable to focus on anything but what I saw this morning. What was it that made me think that something was wrong? I couldn’t possibly see her expression at that distance, but I felt when I was looking at her that she was alone. More than alone—lonely. Perhaps she was—perhaps he’s away, gone to one of those hot countries he jets off to to save lives. And she misses him, and she worries, although she knows he has to go.
Of course she misses him, just as I do. He is kind and strong, everything a husband should be. And they are a partnership. I can see it, I know how they are. His strength, that protectiveness he radiates, it doesn’t mean she’s weak. She’s strong in other ways; she makes intellectual leaps that leave him openmouthed in admiration. She can cut to the nub of a problem, dissect and analyse it in the time it takes other people to say good morning. At parties, he often holds her hand, even though they’ve been together years. They respect each other, they don’t put each other down.
I feel exhausted this evening. I am sober, stone-cold. Some days I feel so bad that I have to drink; some days I feel so bad that I can’t. Today, the thought of alcohol turns my stomach. But sobriety on the evening train is a challenge, particularly now, in this heat. A film of sweat covers every inch of my skin, the inside of my mouth prickles, my eyes itch, mascara rubbed into their corners.
My phone buzzes in my handbag, making me jump. Two girls sitting across the carriage look at me and then at each other, with a sly exchange of smiles. I don’t know what they think of me, but I know it isn’t good. My heart is pounding in my chest as I reach for the phone. I know this will be nothing good, either: it will be Cathy, perhaps, asking me ever so nicely to maybe give the booze a rest this evening? Or my mother, telling me that she’ll be in London next week, she’ll drop by the office, we can go for lunch. I look at the screen. It’s Tom. I hesitate for just a second and then I answer it.
“Rachel?”
For the first five years I knew him, I was never Rachel, always Rach. Sometimes Shelley, because he knew I hated it and it made him laugh to watch me twitch with irritation and then giggle because I couldn’t help but join in when he was laughing. “Rachel, it’s me.” His voice is leaden, he sounds worn out. “Listen, you have to stop this, OK?” I don’t say anything. The train is slowing, and we are almost opposite the house, my old house. I want to say to him, Come outside, go and stand on the lawn. Let me see you. “Please, Rachel, you can’t call me like this all the time. You’ve got to sort yourself out.” There is a lump in my throat as hard as a pebble, smooth and obstinate. I cannot swallow. I cannot speak. “Rachel? Are you there? I know things aren’t good with you, and I’m sorry for you, I really am, but . . . I can’t help you, and these constant calls are really upsetting Anna. OK? I can’t help you anymore. Go to AA or something. Please, Rachel. Go to an AA meeting after work today.”
I pull the filthy plaster off the end of my finger and look at the pale, wrinkled flesh beneath, dried blood caked at the edge of my fingernail. I press the thumbnail of my right hand into the centre of the cut and feel it open up, the pain sharp and hot. I catch my breath. Blood starts to ooze from the wound. The girls on the other side of the carriage are watching me, their faces blank.
MEGAN
• • •
One year earlier
WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2012
MORNING
I can hear the train coming; I know its rhythm by heart. It picks up speed as it accelerates out of Northcote station and then, after rattling round the bend, it starts to slow down, from a rattle to a rumble, and then sometimes a screech of brakes as it stops at the signal a couple hundred yards from the house. My coffee is cold on the table, but I’m too deliciously warm and lazy to bother getting up to make myself another cup.
Sometimes I don’t even watch the trains go past, I just listen. Sitting here in the morning, eyes closed and the hot sun orange on my eyelids, I could be anywhere. I could be in the south of Spain, at the beach; I could be in Italy, the Cinque Terre, all those pretty coloured houses and the trains ferrying the tourists back and forth. I could be back in Holkham, with the screech of gulls in my ears and salt on my tongue and a ghost train passing on the rusted track half a mile away.
The train isn’t stopping today, it trundles slowly past. I can hear the wheels clacking over the points, can almost feel it rocking. I can’t see the faces of the passengers and I know they’re just commuters heading to Euston to sit behind desks, but I can dream: of more exotic journeys, of adventures at the end of the line and beyond. In my head, I keep travelling back to Holkham; it’s odd that I still think of it, on mornings like this, with such affection, such longing, but I do. The wind in the grass, the big slate sky over the dunes, the house infested with mice and falling down, full of candles and dirt and music. It’s like a dream to me now.
I feel my heart beating just a little too fast.
I can hear his footfall on the stairs, he calls my name.
“You want another coffee, Megs?”
The spell is broken, I’m awake.
EVENING
I’m cool from the breeze and warm from the two fingers of vodka in my martini. I’m out on the terrace, waiting for Scott to come home. I’m going to persuade him to take me out to dinner at the Italian on Kingly Road. We haven’t been out for bloody ages.
I haven’t got much done today. I was supposed to sort out my application for the fabrics course at St. Martins; I did start it, I was working downstairs in the kitchen when I heard a woman screaming, making a horrible noise, I thought someone was being murdered. I ran outside into the garden, but I couldn’t see anything.
I could still hear her, though, it was nasty, it went right through me, her voice really shrill and desperate. “What are you doing? What are you doing with her? Give her to me, give her to me.” It seemed to go on and on, though it probably only lasted a few seconds.
I ran upstairs and climbed out onto the terrace and I could see, through the trees, two women down by the fence a few gardens over. One of them was crying—maybe they both were—and there was a child bawling its head off, too.
I thought about calling the police, but it all seemed to calm down then. The woman who’d been screaming ran into the house, carrying the baby. The other one stayed out there. She ran up towards the house, she stumbled and got to her feet and then just sort of wandered round the garden in circles. Really weird. God knows what was going on. But it’s the most excitement I’ve had in weeks.
My days feel empty now I don’t have the gallery to go to any longer. I really miss it. I miss talking to the artists. I even miss dealing with all those tedious yummy mummies who used to drop by, Starbucks in hand, to gawk at the pictures, telling their friends that little Jessie did better pictures than that at nursery school.
Sometimes I feel like seeing if I can track down anybody from the old days, but then I think, what would I talk to them about now? They wouldn’t even recognize Megan the happily married suburbanite. In any case, I can’t risk looking backwards, it’s always a bad idea. I’ll wait until the summer is over, then I’ll look for work. It seems like a shame to waste these long summer days. I’ll find something, here or elsewhere, I know I will.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2012
MORNING
I find myself standing in front of my wardrobe, staring for the hundredth time at a rack of pretty clothes, the perfect wardrobe for the manager of a small but cutting-edge art gallery. Nothing in it says “nanny.” God, even the word makes me want to gag. I put on jeans and a T-shirt, scrape my hair back. I don’t even bother putting on any makeup. There’s no point, is there, prettying myself up to spend all day with a baby?
I flounce downstairs, half spoiling for a fight. Scott’s making coffee in the kitchen. He turns to me with a grin, and my mood lifts instantly. I rearrange my pout to a smile. He hands me a coffee and kisses me.
There’s no sense blaming him for this, it was my idea. I volunteered to do it, to become a childminder for the people down the road. At the time, I thought it might be fun. Completely insane, really, I must have been mad. Bored, mad, curious. I wanted to see. I think I got the idea after I heard her yelling out in the garden and I wanted to know what was going on. Not that I’ve asked, of course. You can’t really, can you?
Scott encouraged me—he was over the moon when I suggested it. He thinks spending time around babies will make me broody. In fact, it’s doing exactly the opposite; when I leave their house I run home, can’t wait to strip my clothes off and get into the shower and wash the baby smell off me.
I long for my days at the gallery, prettied up, hair done, talking to adults about art or films or nothing at all. Nothing at all would be a step up from my conversations with Anna. God, she’s dull! You get the feeling that she probably had something to say for herself once upon a time, but now everything is about the child: Is she warm enough? Is she too warm? How much milk did she take? And she’s always there, so most of the time I feel like a spare part. My job is to watch the child while Anna rests, to give her a break. A break from what, exactly? She’s weirdly nervous, too. I’m constantly aware of her, hovering, twitching. She flinches every time a train passes, jumps when the phone rings. “They’re just so fragile, aren’t they?” she says, and I can’t disagree with that.
I leave the house and walk, leaden-legged, the fifty yards along Blenheim Road to their house. No skip in my step. Today, she doesn’t open the door, it’s him, the husband. Tom, suited and booted, off to work. He looks handsome in his suit—not Scott handsome, he’s smaller and paler, and his eyes are a little too close together when you see him up close, but he’s not bad. He flashes me his wide, Tom Cruise smile, and then he’s gone, and it’s just me and her and the baby.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2012
AFTERNOON
I quit!
I feel so much better, as if anything is possible. I’m free!
I’m sitting on the terrace, waiting for the rain. The sky is black above me, swallows looping and diving, the air thick with moisture. Scott will be home in an hour or so, and I’ll have to tell him. He’ll only be pissed off for a minute or two, I’ll make it up to him. And I won’t just be sitting around the house all day: I’ve been making plans. I could do a photography course, or set up a market stall, sell jewellery. I could learn to cook.
I had a teacher at school who told me once that I was a mistress of self-reinvention. I didn’t know what he was on about at the time, I thought he was putting me on, but I’ve since come to like the idea. Runaway, lover, wife, waitress, gallery manager, nanny, and a few more in between. So who do I want to be tomorrow?
I didn’t really mean to quit, the words just came out. We were sitting there, around the kitchen table, Anna with the baby on her lap, and Tom had popped back to pick something up, so he was there, too, drinking a cup of coffee, and it just seemed ridiculous, there was absolutely no point in my being there. Worse than that, I felt uncomfortable, as if I was intruding.
“I’ve found another job,” I said, without really thinking about it. “So I’m not going to be able to do this any longer.” Anna gave me a look—I don’t think she believed me. She just said, “Oh, that’s a shame,” and I could tell she didn’t mean it. She looked relieved. She didn’t even ask me what the job was, which was a relief, because I hadn’t thought up a convincing lie.
Tom looked mildly surprised. He said, “We’ll miss you,” but that’s a lie, too.
The only person who’ll really be disappointed is Scott, so I have to think of something to tell him. Maybe I’ll tell him Tom was hitting on me. That’ll put an end to it.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2012
MORNING
It’s just after seven, it’s chilly out here now, but it’s so beautiful like this, all these strips of garden side by side, green and cold and waiting for fingers of sunshine to creep up from the tracks and make them all come alive. I’ve been up for hours; I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate this, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. I itch all over. I want to shave my head.
I want to run. I want to take a road trip, in a convertible, with the top down. I want to drive to the coast—any coast. I want to walk on a beach. Me and my big brother were going to be road trippers. We had such plans, Ben and I. Well, they were Ben’s plans mostly—he was such a dreamer. We were going to ride motorbikes from Paris to the Côte d’Azur, or all the way down the Pacific coast of the USA, from Seattle to Los Angeles; we were going to follow in Che Guevara’s tracks from Buenos Aires to Caracas. Maybe if I’d done all that, I wouldn’t have ended up here, not knowing what to do next. Or maybe, if I’d done all that, I’d have ended up exactly where I am and I would be perfectly contented. But I didn’t do all that, of course, because Ben never got as far as Paris, he never even made it as far as Cambridge. He died on the A10, his skull crushed beneath the wheels of an articulated lorry.
I miss him every day. More than anyone, I think. He’s the big hole in my life, in the middle of my soul. Or maybe he was just the beginning of it. I don’t know. I don’t even know whether all this is really about Ben, or whether it’s about everything that happened after that, and everything that’s happened since. All I know is, one minute I’m ticking along fine and life is sweet and I want for nothing, and the next I can’t wait to get away, I’m all over the place, slipping and sliding again.
So, I’m going to see a therapist! Which could be weird, but it could be a laugh, too. I’ve always thought that it might be fun to be Catholic, to be able to go to the confessional and unburden yourself and have someone tell you that they forgive you, to take all the sin away, wipe the slate clean.
This is not quite the same thing, of course. I’m a bit nervous, but I haven’t been able to get to sleep lately, and Scott’s been on my case to go. I told him I find it difficult enough talking to people I know about this stuff—I can barely even talk to him about it. He said that’s the point, you can say anything to strangers. But that isn’t completely true. You can’t just say anything. Poor Scott. He doesn’t know the half of it. He loves me so much, it makes me ache. I don’t know how he does it. I would drive me mad.
But I have to do something, and at least this feels like action. All those plans I had—photography courses and cookery classes—when it comes down to it, they feel a bit pointless, as if I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. I need to find something that I must do, something undeniable. I can’t do this, I can’t just be a wife. I don’t understand how anyone does it—there is literally nothing to do but wait. Wait for a man to come home and love you. Either that or look around for something to distract you.
EVENING
I’ve been kept waiting. The appointment was for half an hour ago, and I’m still here, sitting in the reception room flicking through Vogue, thinking about getting up and walking out. I know doctors’ appointments run over, but therapists? Films have always led me to believe that they kick you out the moment your thirty minutes are up. I suppose Hollywood isn’t really talking about the kind of therapist you get referred to on the National Health Service.
I’m just about to go up to the receptionist to tell her that I’ve waited long enough, I’m leaving, when the doctor’s office door swings open and this very tall, lanky man emerges, looking apologetic and holding out his hand to me.
“Mrs. Hipwell, I am so sorry to have kept you waiting,” he says, and I just smile at him and tell him it’s all right, and I feel, in this moment, that it will be all right, because I’ve only been in his company for a moment or two and already I feel soothed.
I think it’s the voice. Soft and low. Slightly accented, which I was expecting, because his name is Dr. Kamal Abdic. I guess he must be midthirties, although he looks very young with his incredible dark honey skin. He has hands I could imagine on me, long and delicate fingers, I can almost feel them on my skin.
We don’t talk about anything substantial, it’s just the introductory session, the getting-to-know-you stuff; he asks me what the trouble is and I tell him about the panic attacks, the insomnia, the fact that I lie awake at night too frightened to fall asleep. He wants me to talk a bit more about that, but I’m not ready yet. He asks me whether I take drugs, drink alcohol. I tell him I have other vices these days, and I catch his eye and I think he knows what I mean. Then I feel as if I ought to be taking this a bit more seriously, so I tell him about the gallery closing and that I feel at a loose end all the time, my lack of direction, the fact that I spend too much time in my head. He doesn’t talk much, just the occasional prompt, but I want to hear him speak, so as I’m leaving I ask him where he’s from.
“Maidstone,” he says, “in Kent. But I moved to Corly a few years back.” He knows that wasn’t what I was asking; he gives me a wolfish smile.
Scott is waiting for me when I get home, he thrusts a drink into my hand, he wants to know all about it. I say it was OK. He asks me about the therapist: did I like him, did he seem nice? OK, I say again, because I don’t want to sound too enthusiastic. He asks me whether we talked about Ben. Scott thinks everything is about Ben. He may be right. He may know me better than I think he does.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012
MORNING
I woke early this morning, but I did sleep for a few hours, which is an improvement on last week. I felt almost refreshed when I got out of bed, so instead of sitting on the terrace I decided to go for a walk.
I’ve been shutting myself away, almost without realizing it. The only places I seem to go these days are to the shops, my Pilates classes and the therapist. Occasionally to Tara’s. The rest of the time, I’m at home. It’s no wonder I get restless.
I walk out of the house, turn right and then left onto Kingly Road. Past the pub, the Rose. We used to go there all the time; I can’t remember why we stopped. I never liked it all that much, too many couples just the right side of forty drinking too much and casting around for something better, wondering if they’d have the courage. Perhaps that’s why we stopped going, because I didn’t like it. Past the pub, past the shops. I don’t want to go far, just a little circuit to stretch my legs.
It’s nice being out early, before the school run, before the commute gets going; the streets are empty and clean, the day full of possibility. I turn left again, walk down to the little playground, the only rather poor excuse for green space we have. It’s empty now, but in a few hours it will be swarming with toddlers, mothers and au pairs. Half the Pilates girls will be here, head to toe in Sweaty Betty, competitively stretching, manicured hands wrapped around their Starbucks.
I carry on past the park and down towards Roseberry Avenue. If I turned right here I’d go up past my gallery—what was my gallery, now a vacant shop window—but I don’t want to, because that still hurts a little. I tried so hard to make a success of it. Wrong place, wrong time—no call for art in suburbia, not in this economy. Instead, I turn right, past the Tesco Express, past the other pub, the one where people from the estate go, and back towards home. I can feel