RACHEL
Friday, 12 July 2013
Morning
I AM EXHAUSTED, my head thick with sleep. When I drink, I hardly sleep at all. I
pass out cold for an hour or two, then I wake, sick with fear, sick with myself. If
I have a day when I don’t drink, that night I fall into the heaviest of slumbers, a
deep unconsciousness, and in the morning I cannot wake properly, I cannot
shake sleep, it stays with me for hours, sometimes all day long.
There is just a handful of people in my carriage today, none in my immediate
vicinity. There is no one watching me, so I lean my head against the window and
close my eyes.
The screech of the train’s brakes wakes me. We’re at the signal. At this time of
morning, at this time of year, the sun shines directly on to the back of the
trackside houses, flooding them with light. I can almost feel it, the warmth of
that morning sunshine on my face and arms as I sit at the breakfast table, Tom
opposite me, my bare feet resting on top of his because they’re always so much
warmer than mine, my eyes cast down at the newspaper. I can feel him smiling
at me, the blush spreading from my chest to my neck, the way it always did
when he looked at me a certain way.
I blink hard and Tom’s gone. We’re still at the signal. I can see Jess in her
garden, and behind her a man walking out of the house. He’s carrying something
– a mug of coffee, perhaps – and I look at him and realize that it isn’t Jason. This
man is taller, slender, darker. He’s a family friend; he’s her brother or Jason’s
brother. He bends down, placing the mugs on the metal table on their patio. He’s
a cousin from Australia, staying for a couple of weeks; he’s Jason’s oldest friend,
best man at their wedding. Jess walks towards him, she puts her hands around
his waist and she kisses him, long and deep. The train moves.
I can’t believe it. I snatch air into my lungs, I realize that I’ve been holding
my breath. Why would she do that? Jason loves her, I can see it, they’re happy. I
can’t believe she would do that to him, he doesn’t deserve that. I feel a real sense
of disappointment, I feel as though I have been cheated. A familiar ache fills my
chest. I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of
course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it.
I found out the way everyone seems to find out these days: an electronic slip.
Sometimes it’s a text or a voicemail message; in my case it was an email, the
modern-day lipstick on the collar. It was an accident, really, I wasn’t snooping. I
wasn’t supposed to go near Tom’s computer, because he was worried I would
delete something important by mistake, or click on something I shouldn’t and let
in a virus or a Trojan or something.
‘Technology’s not really your strong point, is it, Rach?’ he said after the time I
managed to delete all the contacts in his email address book by mistake. So I
wasn’t supposed to touch it. But I was actually doing a good thing, I was trying
to make amends for being a bit miserable and difficult, I was planning a special
fourth-anniversary getaway, a trip to remind us how we used to be. I wanted it to
be a surprise, so I had to check his work schedule secretly, I had to look.
I wasn’t snooping, I wasn’t trying to catch him out or anything, I knew better
than that. I didn’t want to be one of those awful suspicious wives who go
through their husband’s pockets. Once, I answered his phone when he was in the
shower and he got quite upset and accused me of not trusting him. I felt awful
because he seemed so hurt.
I needed to look at his work schedule, and he’d left his laptop on, because
he’d run out late for a meeting. It was the perfect opportunity, so I had a look at
his calendar, noted down some dates. When I closed down the browser window
with his calendar in it, there was his email account, logged in, laid bare. There
was a message at the top from aboyd@cinnamon.com. I clicked. XXXXX. That
was it, just a line of Xs. I thought it was spam at first, until I realized that they
were kisses.
It was a reply to a message he’d sent a few hours before, just after seven,
when I was still slumbering in our bed.
I fell asleep last night thinking of you, I was dreaming about kissing your mouth, your breasts, the
inside of your thighs. I woke this morning with my head full of you, desperate to touch you. Don’t
expect me to be sane, I can’t be, not with you.
I read through his messages: there were dozens, hidden in a folder entitled
‘Admin’. I discovered that her name was Anna Boyd, and that my husband was
in love with her. He told her so, often. He told her that he’d never felt like this
before, that he couldn’t wait to be with her, that it wouldn’t be long until they
could be together.
I don’t have words to describe what I felt that day, but now, sitting on the
train, I am furious, nails digging into my palms, tears stinging my eyes. I feel a
flash of intense anger. I feel as though something has been taken away from me.
How could she? How could Jess do this? What is wrong with her? Look at the
life they have, look how beautiful it is! I have never understood how people can
blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it said
that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to
conquer all. Hatred floods me. If I saw that woman now, if I saw Jess, I would
spit in her face. I would scratch her eyes out.
Evening
There’s been a problem on the line. The 17.56 fast train to Stoke has been
cancelled, so its passengers have invaded my train and it’s standing room only in
the carriage. I, fortunately, have a seat, but by the aisle, not next to the window,
and there are bodies pressed against my shoulder, my knee, invading my space. I
have an urge to push back, to get up and shove. The heat has been building all
day, closing in on me, I feel as though I’m breathing through a mask. Every
single window has been opened and yet, even while we’re moving, the carriage
feels airless, a locked metal box. I cannot get enough oxygen into my lungs. I
feel sick. I can’t stop replaying the scene in the coffee shop this morning, I can’t
stop feeling as though I’m still there, I can’t stop seeing the looks on their faces.
I blame Jess. I was obsessing this morning about Jess and Jason, about what
she’d done and how he would feel, about the confrontation they would have
when he found out and when his world, like mine, was ripped apart. I was
walking around in a daze, not concentrating on where I was going. Without
thinking, I went into the coffee shop that everyone from Huntingdon Whiteley
uses. I was through the door before I saw them, and by the time I did it was too
late to turn back; they were looking at me, eyes widening for a fraction of a
second before they remembered to fix smiles on their faces. Martin Miles with
Sasha and Harriet, a triumvirate of awkwardness, beckoning, waving me over.
‘Rachel!’ Martin said, arms outstretched, pulling me into a hug. I wasn’t
expecting it, my hands were caught between us, fumbling against his body.
Sasha and Harriet smiled, they gave me tentative air kisses, trying not to get too
close. ‘What are you doing here?’
For a long, long moment, I went blank. I looked at the floor, I could feel
myself colouring and, realizing it was making it worse, I gave a false laugh and
said, ‘Interview. Interview.’
‘Oh.’ Martin failed to hide his surprise, while Sasha and Harriet nodded and
smiled. ‘Who’s that with?’
I couldn’t remember the name of a single public relations firm. Not one. I
couldn’t think of a property company either, let alone one which might
realistically be hiring. I just stood there, rubbing my lower lip with my
forefinger, shaking my head, and eventually Martin said, ‘Top secret, is it? Some
firms are weird like that, aren’t they? Don’t want you saying anything until the
contracts are signed and it’s all official.’ It was bullshit and he knew it, he did it
to save me and nobody bought it, but everyone pretended they did and nodded
along. Harriet and Sasha were looking over my shoulder at the door, they were
embarrassed for me, they wanted a way out.
‘I’d better go and order my coffee,’ I said. ‘Don’t want to be late.’
Martin put his hand on my forearm and said, ‘It’s great to see you, Rachel.’
His pity was almost palpable. I’d never realized, not until the last year or two of
my life, how shaming it is to be pitied.
The plan had been to go to Holborn Library on Theobalds Road, but I couldn’t
face it, so I went to Regent’s Park instead. I walked to the very far end, next to
the zoo. I sat down in the shade beneath a sycamore tree, thinking of the unfilled
hours ahead, replaying the conversation in the coffee shop, remembering the
look on Martin’s face when he said goodbye to me.
I must have been there for less than half an hour when my mobile rang. It was
Tom again, calling from the home phone. I tried to picture him, working at his
laptop in our sunny kitchen, but the image was spoilt by encroachments from his
new life. She would be there somewhere, in the background, making tea or
feeding the little girl, her shadow falling over him. I let the call go to voicemail.
I put the phone back into my bag and tried to ignore it. I didn’t want to hear any
more, not today; today was already awful enough and it was not yet ten thirty in
the morning. I held out for about three minutes before I retrieved the phone and
dialled into voicemail. I braced myself for the agony of hearing his voice – that
voice which used to speak to me with laughter and light and now is used only to
admonish or console or pity – but it wasn’t him.
‘Rachel, it’s Anna.’ I hung up.
I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t stop my brain from racing or my skin from
itching, so I got to my feet and walked to the corner shop on Titchfield Street
and bought four gin and tonics in cans, then went back to my spot in the park. I
opened the first one and drank it as fast as I could, and then opened the second. I
turned my back to the path so that I couldn’t see the runners and the mothers
with buggies and the tourists, and if I couldn’t see them, I could pretend like a
child that they couldn’t see me. I called my voicemail again.
‘Rachel, it’s Anna.’ Long pause. ‘I need to talk to you about the phone calls.’
Another long pause – she’s talking to me and doing something else, multitasking,
the way busy wives and mothers do, tidying up, loading the washing
machine. ‘Look, I know you’re having a tough time,’ she says, as though she has
nothing to do with my pain, ‘but you can’t call us at night all the time.’ Her tone
is clipped, irritable. ‘It’s bad enough that you wake us when you call, but you
wake Evie, too, and that’s just not acceptable. We’re struggling to get her to
sleep through at the moment.’ We’re struggling to get her to sleep through. We.
Us. Our little family. With our problems and our routines. Fucking bitch. She’s a
cuckoo, laying her egg in my nest. She has taken everything from me. She has
taken everything and now she calls me to tell me that my distress is inconvenient
for her?
I finish the second can and make a start on the third. The blissful rush of
alcohol hitting my bloodstream lasts only a few minutes and then I feel sick. I’m
going too fast, even for me, I need to slow down; if I don’t slow down something
bad is going to happen. I’m going to do something I will regret. I’m going to call
her back, I’m going to tell her I don’t care about her and I don’t care about her
family and I don’t care if her child never gets a good night’s sleep for the rest of
its life. I’m going to tell her that the line he used with her – don’t expect me to be
sane – he used it with me, too, when we were first together; he wrote it in a letter
to me, declaring his undying passion. It’s not even his line: he stole it from
Henry Miller. Everything she has is secondhand. I want to know how that makes
her feel. I want to call her back and ask her, what does it feel like, Anna, to live
in my house, surrounded by the furniture I bought, to sleep in the bed that I
shared with him for years, to feed your child at the kitchen table he fucked me
on?I still find it extraordinary that they chose to stay there, in that house, in my
house. I couldn’t believe it when he told me. I loved that house. I was the one
who insisted we buy it, despite its location. I liked being down there on the
tracks, I liked watching the trains go by, I enjoyed the sound of them, not the
scream of an inter-city express but the old-fashioned trundling of ancient rolling
stock. Tom told me, it won’t always be like this, they’ll eventually upgrade the
line and then it will be fast trains screaming past, but I couldn’t believe it would
ever actually happen. I would have stayed there, I would have bought him out if
I’d had the money. I didn’t, though, and we couldn’t find a buyer at a decent
price when we divorced, so instead he said he’d buy me out and stay on until he
got the right price for it. But he never found the right buyer, instead he moved
her in, and she loved the house like I did, and they decided to stay. She must be
very secure in herself, I suppose, in them, for it not to bother her, to walk where
another woman has walked before. She obviously doesn’t think of me as a threat.
I think about Ted Hughes, moving Assia Wevill into the home he’d shared with
Plath, of her wearing Sylvia’s clothes, brushing her hair with the same brush. I
want to ring Anna up and remind her that Assia ended up with her head in the
oven, just like Sylvia did.
I must have fallen asleep, the gin and the hot sun lulling me. I woke with a
start, scrabbling around desperately for my handbag. It was still there. My skin
was prickling, I was alive with ants, they were in my hair and on my neck and
chest and I leaped to my feet, clawing them away. Two teenage boys, kicking a
football back and forth twenty yards away, stopped to watch, bent double with
laughter.
The train stops. We are almost opposite Jess and Jason’s house, but I can’t see
across the carriage and the tracks, there are too many people in the way. I
wonder whether they are there, whether he knows, whether he’s left, or whether
he’s still living a life he’s yet to discover is a lie.
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