I’m guessing Seth has been examining what should be the wall of photographs he’s helped me assemble and disassemble during the various moves of my life and he has been shocked and injured by the way I have edited him out. The only one that remains of him is the one of him with Dad. And yet, on the second row of the wall of my life in photographs that I’m rebuilding, there is Tyler. Melissa is there, too, but I wasn’t kissing her a few minutes ago.
What he is saying reminds me of the time I found a bee on the washing in our back garden. I didn’t think, just reached out to pick it off, and the bee objected to being moved on and stung me. Seth is like the bee – doesn’t like the idea of being picked off, moved on, and has decided to sting me.
‘How many were there before me again?’ he says. ‘Or did you lose count? Have you lost count now?’
His words continue to pump in poison, like the bee’s sting did in my hand. The poison kept pumping in until Dad stopped me trying to pick out the sting and brushed it off with a quick, sideways swipe. I remember staring at it, incredulous at how this little sliver of a thing had managed to cause such extreme pain in my hand. I stare at my husband, incredulous that after everything he has done, he is causing extreme pain in my heart. It never seemed to have bothered him that much that I’d once slept around, and I thought in the moments it might have bothered him, he accepted it as part of who I was. I never thought he’d use it against me, no matter what the provocation.
‘Fancy sleeping in your hire car, do you?’ I ask. My quick, sideways swipe to remove this sting and stop his poison.
He unfolds his arms and stands upright. ‘No, no I don’t.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m sure.’
‘Sure? Sure-sure?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he replies, finally ashamed and mollified. ‘That was bang out of order. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’
‘Why are you behaving like a dick?’ I ask.
His hazel-green eyes flare suddenly. ‘Because I really hated seeing you kiss someone else. And I really, really hate knowing you’d probably be in that bed fucking him right now if I hadn’t turned up tonight.’
‘But I can do what I like because we’re finished, Seth. I made it clear we were over. What part of “we have to split up” didn’t you get?’ I reply.
‘That isn’t—’
‘Isn’t what?’
‘That isn’t how you end a marriage, OK? You don’t just tell someone you’re splitting up and not tell them why. That’s the part of “we have to split up” I don’t get.’
I drop my face into my hands. If I had told him why, he would have carried on lying to me. He would have told me the truth eventually, but it would have been so eventually I wouldn’t ever have trusted another thing that came out of his mouth. ‘My head is fried,’ I plead. ‘I don’t want to talk any more – about anything. I just don’t.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. A lot has happened.’
‘You have no idea,’ I say, my voice wrapped tightly in a sob.
‘We both need sleep. How are we going to do this?’
‘Top to tail,’ I say.
‘Really?’ he replies. ‘When was the last time you topped to toed it?
‘Apparently tonight.’
‘Right you are then.’
‘And keep the underwear on,’ I add.
‘I can’t do that. I can’t sleep with anything on.’
‘You’ll have to learn, starting tonight. I don’t want “it” on the loose in the night.’
‘What, you think it detaches itself from my body and roams around in the night?’
‘No, I just don’t want to encounter it if I roll over in the night and parts of our bodies touch each other. And then we have one of those awkward moments where it responds and I can’t get my leg far away enough and you start having to think of your grandmother or something to make it—’
‘Yes, all right, I get it. The black jacks stay on.’
We are silent as we undress, but the rustle of clothes being unbuttoned, pulled off, pulled down, fills the space in the room, everything amplified and loud. Each undone button, each piece of clothing folded and placed on my desk, is a noisy reminder that we used to rush through this part almost every night so we could get into bed together, talk and eventually fall asleep wrapped up in each other. We would usually not wake up like that, would be separated as we moved through dreamland, but undressing was always the start of finishing our day together.
Without being asked, he takes the foot of the bed and I throw him a couple of pillows. He accepts them with a small smile of gratitude and slides under the duvet. I do the same. Even though we are on opposite sides of the bed, I’m still aware of him. Of his body, his heat, the weight of history that links us.
He rests his head on his arm and stares up the ceiling and I do the same. Our breathing is deep and synchronised. Seth will probably sleep. He always used to say he hated sleeping without me beside him, and now we’re back in the same bed, coupled with the exhaustion of the drive and the adrenalin of the last half an hour, I can imagine he’ll probably flake right out. I hate that idea. I hate that he has snatched away the chance for me to have something else on my mind before I go to sleep, something pleasant and exciting, and after doing that, he’ll probably just slide off to sleep like nothing has happened.
‘I don’t think Mum told you,’ I whisper in the dark. ‘Nancy and Sienna are staying here with us for a while.’
His demeanour is immediately tense. I can almost hear how alarm bulges his eyes, while his body has obviously been dragged away from its slow descent into sleep.
It’s mean and awful that I did that, but I’m quite pleased to know that neither of us will be getting much sleep tonight.
44
Smitty
Since first light came creeping in through the open blinds I have been sitting on my desk chair, my feet up on the seat, watching Seth sleep. I had a break to go for a shower and to get dressed, but mostly I have sat here and watched him while the Sun has got higher and higher in the sky.
He doesn’t suit his beard, but he looks the same. Maybe a little older, more tired, thinner, but he’s still Seth. He’s still one of the best friends I ever had. I would have stayed with him forever, I think. I certainly planned to. Our future was set, made from stitching together every day, week, month, year we’d had – each one distinctive, unique and important – until we had the patchwork quilt of who we were as a couple.
‘Wake up, Seth,’ I say from across the room. We have to talk. I wasn’t fair on him. At the time it’d been too difficult for me to even contemplate: after losing Dad, talking to Seth about all this seemed an impossibility when he had kept things from me. No matter what he’d done, though, that wasn’t fair on him, he did deserve better.
I move across the room, crouch down beside him and hiss, ‘Seth! Wake up!’ into his ear.
He jerks awake, his eyes wide and shocked. ‘Whaaa-what?’
‘Shall we go get a coffee, have a talk?’ I say.
He grunts, tries to turn over. ‘Later,’ he mumbles.
‘No, now.’
‘No,’ he murmurs. ‘Sleep.’
A wave of anger crashes through me. ‘OK, you sleep,’ I say, irritation in every word. ‘And I’ll send Nancy in with coffee a bit later, shall I?’
He dresses quickly and efficiently, asks for the bathroom so he can use the toilet and brush his teeth. Last night was the second night ever that I’d known him not brush his teeth before bed (the other time was the night we first slept together). I used to sit on the edge of the bath and talk to him while he brushed his teeth. It was for two minutes, he couldn’t reply as the toothbrush buzzed around his mouth, but it was one of our ‘things’. Sometimes, he’d sit beside me and we’d have a conversation before we started work. That was another square of the quilt of our life, another bead on the string of our time together.
With Seth, February 2014, Leeds
&nb
sp; ‘Are you sure you don’t mind not having anyone here?’ I asked him.
He kissed under my right ear lobe. ‘Not at all,’ he whispered before raising the camera on my phone above us. ‘Say “nuptials”!’ he said with a laugh.
‘Nuptials!’ I said, and grinned as he imprinted the image of our special day into the space in my phone. Password-protected so no one would ever know.
I’d heard Sienna in the living room watching CBeebies on her own so we’d had to creep out of the flat so she wouldn’t see Uncle Smitty, as she called him. Outside my building, we both stand for a moment and stare at the sea. ‘This is such an amazing view,’ he says. ‘When I was sat out here last night I had a real sense of peace and being connected to something huge.’
‘This way,’ I say to him. I turn towards the main road, intending to head up towards George Street, the main street in Hove. On that small road there are more coffee shops – chains, independents and local chains – than any other type of shop.
‘I saw a café along the seafront. Let’s go there.’
‘No, let’s go up to George Street.’
‘Why? That café looked cool. I’m sure it’s open now. It’d be nice to talk and see the sea. Ha! See what I did there?’
My face musters a smile. ‘No, let’s just go to George Street. There are so many more places. Some of them have nice views, especially if you like to watch somewhere come to life.’
‘Look, what’s the problem with—’
Seth has finally faced me, seen the uncomfortable manner in which I bite at my lower lip, keep my eyes on the uneven black-grey surface of the car park where less than twelve hours ago he watched me kiss another man.
‘He works there,’ Seth states.
I nod. Owns it, actually, I should say. Makes brilliant coffee in the most brilliant cups.
‘I might have known.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What do you think it means?’
‘I don’t know, that’s why I asked.’
‘It means I might have known he’d be someone you see every day.’
‘That doesn’t even make sense – I see the postman every day, are you expecting something to happen between me and him? Or are you calling me a slut again?’
When he doesn’t reply, I say, ‘Well, are you?’
He shakes his head.
‘Well then, stop saying things that don’t make sense or imply you think I’m a slut. I haven’t slept with anyone since you. And even if I had, it’d be no business of yours.’ I sound far more indignant than I am: I’m single, we’re separated, our marriage is over as far as I’m concerned, but guilt is gambolling through me, leaving a sense that I have betrayed him. ‘And I don’t even drink coffee every day,’ I add for good measure.
‘George Street it is,’ he eventually says.
My unwarranted sense of guilt and betrayal makes every step slow, laborious and painful as we walk together to the place where our marriage is going to end properly.
45
Smitty
We find our places in the café just at the bottom of George Street. It is old-fashioned on the outside with double-bay tinted glass windows, but the height of modernity on the inside: brilliant white walls with primary colour picture panels containing bright, bold prints in each of the picture panels, and white, distressed-wood floors.
It’s mainly populated by people who are coming in for a coffee on the way to work, or those who have come early with their laptops to stake out a space to work for the day. Seth pulls out a low striped fabric-covered bucket chair for me at the back of the café, then turns towards the counter.
‘The usual?’ he asks.
‘I suppose so,’ I reply. I’m not sure what the usual is any more. Everything feels like it is in flux, nothing set; all that I knew or thought I knew is fluid and changeable. He returns a few minutes later, after I’ve watched him queuing, after he has constantly looked over at me, as though checking I am still there and won’t be running away again. ‘Where would I run to?’ I should have called over to him. ‘It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.’
He lowers himself into his seat, slowly, dragging the moments out before we need to speak. I have no idea where to start with the process of unravelling. How do we make sense of any of it? It’s like a huge, sheer rock face: the summit so high it’s not easily visible to the naked eye, and I – we – need to climb it without any safety equipment. It’s possible, doable, but dangerous, particularly since it is so unknown. Seth and I used to talk all the time. About anything, everything, it was our ‘thing’. We talked and listened to each other. Now, I don’t know what to say; which words to choose to start the conversation.
‘How about we start with this,’ he states. From the side pocket of his trousers he produces a rectangular box and slides it across the table to me. I knew I shouldn’t have bought him a pair of those trousers. I wear combats and workmen’s trousers because it allows me to carry all sorts of things in the various pockets, my own wearable toolbox. He coveted them so passionately I finally bought him a pair. And now look: they’ve let him bring that thing here without me having a clue he was carrying it. What’s that expression about no good deed going unpunished?
I stare at that box, long and oblong with coloured writing and a coloured design. It was the most discreet one on sale, that’s why I chose it. Hid it amongst my other shopping and avoided eye contact with the person who served me. Not that they’d care, but I had cared.
‘There’s only one left in the box,’ he states. ‘I’m assuming there were two when you bought it.’
My gaze goes from the box to him. Calm. He’s calm. That’s good.
‘Here we go,’ the waitress trills. She’s that 1950s vintage Brighton-type with her spotted scarf tied in a bow around the front of her glossy black bun, her lips coated in bright red lipstick, her foundation overly pale and her eyes heavily made up. ‘One café mocha, extra shot of chocolate, and one double-strong latte.’ We each indicate which is ours and continue to stare at one another as she sets the large white cups in front of us. From the corner of my eye I see her notice the box on the table and she visibly winces as it crosses her mind that we’re not going to be having a nice coffee and chat. She winces again, gritting her teeth, then quietly withdraws. When the crowd has died down she’s going to stand behind her counter, pretending to polish her coffee machine while watching how this story plays out.
‘So, one test instead of two?’ Seth asks when it’s obvious I’m not going to restart that conversation.
‘I used one just before I came down here.’ The box fascinates me. Why didn’t I throw it away instead of hiding it? I remember dashing out of the bathroom into the corridor when I heard his motorbike pull up outside. I remember thinking it would be the worst thing in the world to be caught with that box so instead of shoving it into my back pocket with the test, I hid it in one of my packing boxes. Why? And why didn’t I take it away when I went back to collect as many possessions as I could? Did I want to get caught?
‘What was the result?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I was so freaked out by everything that I stopped down the road from the flat and threw it into the nearest bin without checking.’
He frowns, the action crinkling his forehead, while he calculates something. ‘That day at the flat, that’s what you were doing?’
‘Yes.’
Obviously the more important thought hits him then: ‘Have you done a test since?’
I sigh before I’m forced to shake my head.
‘So you could be … You could be pregnant right now?’
‘No, I’m not. Which is why I didn’t need to look. I’d know if I was and I’m not.’
‘Have you had a period?’
I sigh again. Stupid box. If it wasn’t for this stupid box this conversation wouldn’t be going this way. I wouldn’t be on the back foot and having to think about this again. No, I haven’t had a proper pe
riod since before I left Leeds, but I was incredibly stressed, grief-stricken about Dad and the break up with Seth. I was moving. My mother decided to move in with me. Any one of those things would normally have stressed me out enough to make a period late, but all of them together? It’d be a miracle if my body got itself right again enough to have a period in a decade or so, let alone three months. I glare harder at the box. This stupid box that’s caused all this trouble.
‘Clem? Have you had a period since you took the test?’
‘I am not pregnant,’ I state. I pull the box across the table towards me, drop it in my bag to give me a way to hide my face. ‘I will do this test later, if it makes you happy. But I am not pregnant.’ I was pregnant once when I was seventeen as the result of a split condom and it felt completely different to this. Admittedly that pregnancy lasted for about two days until nature decided to take another course and spare me having to make the decision that my birth mother made, but my body felt different then to how it feels now.
‘Would you tell me if you were?’
‘Yes, Seth, I would tell you. What sort of thing is that to ask?’
My husband reclines in his seat, pushing his legs out before he runs his hands over his haircut. ‘Have you not been living the life where you left without an explanation?’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t have asked if you hadn’t just ended our relationship without talking to me properly.’
‘Marriage. I ended our marriage. We’re married.’
‘I know we’re married.’
‘But no one else does, do they? And why is that? Oh, yes, because of your “friend” Nancy.’
Abruptly Seth’s expression changes – worry and fear dance on his features. Now he’s the one on the back foot, uncertain where this conversation is going to take us. What I’m going to say next.
‘Nothing happened with Nancy.’
Liar, I think. Liar. ‘Something always happens with Nancy. Always.’