After You Left by Carol Mason
ONE
Alice
2013
The alarm goes off, and, for a moment or two, in my semi-awake state, I think I am still in Hawaii. I slide a hand across the mattress and make contact with his mid-back. I can hear his mammoth breathing, never quite a fully-fledged snore. With the gentle clawing of my fingers on his bare skin, he rolls over now. He looks across at me, sleepily, and we smile.
But the rainbow-coloured bubble of my happiness doesn’t hold. Instead of Justin’s warm, waking body, I am patting cold sheets. Then comes the blunt, quick scutter of disbelief. I am endlessly astonished how I can be hit so unexpectedly by something I already know.
I’ve made a terrible mistake. I can’t go on, for everyone’s sake. I’m sorry.
Events of four days ago have cruelly lain in wait on this side of my consciousness, keen to be relived – as if I haven’t played them over enough already. But each time I do, it’s neither more, nor less, real.
I woke up in Kauai, like I’ve just woken up now. Justin wasn’t there. I imagined he’d gone for a swim, like he’d done the previous three mornings. I got up, drew back the white voile curtain to let the sun in. I stood there in its path, gazing out across a blazing turquoise ocean to where the black army of early morning surfers was riding the waves.
I couldn’t see him. Of course, I wasn’t even remotely perturbed. I just liked spotting his head. My husband. The noble-shaped skull and thick, dark hair. His arms windmilling as he cut a course at right angles to the tide. It’s my favourite thing to do: watch him when he’s unaware, imagining I’m looking at a stranger.
I let the curtain fall away, and went to the minibar to take out the cream. I was just about to insert a coffee pod into the Nespresso machine when I saw the tented piece of paper beside the two cups and saucers. On the front, Alice, in his writing.
I remember the hesitant reach of my hand. The words on the page that didn’t make sense. Then the open wardrobe door. Half a dozen or so empty coat hangers. The bare luggage rack where his suitcase had previously sat open.
The Hawaiian cop was a blank-eyed bulldozer of a woman. Her hair was shaved off, leaving only a clump of spiky fringe like a goatee at the wrong end of the face. I wanted to describe her to Justin when he came back, and tell him how intimidating she was, but then I had to fathom it all over again: Justin wasn’t coming back. The hotel manager had been the one to call the police; he was nice enough to let us use his office. I’d been wandering around, disorientated, in my bathrobe, telling people that my husband had disappeared. A couple of hotel staff had helped me search the beach. They were very kind, but I could tell right away that the policewoman wasn’t going to be.
Leaning forward, she dropped her enormous breasts on top of the desk. ‘Sweet cheeks, this is not a suicide note, if that’s what you’re thinking. Someone who is about to kill himself doesn’t disappear in the middle of his honeymoon with a laptop and a suitcase full of his clothes.’
I hadn’t said a thing about suicide. The word landed and revolved in my head.
I can’t go on . . . ? She was giving me that look that said, I’m only tolerating you because you’re English, blonde and possibly a lunatic.
Then she read the note out loud again, as if I could have possibly forgotten it. She clapped it down in front of us, looked at me quite gravely and said, ‘Honey, you’ve been dumped.’
The rest is a blur of packing, trying to think straight enough to change flights, a disorientating six-hour wait in Los Angeles, the numb journey home. Then back here, to nothing . . .
I’m supposed to get up now, to go into work. The sun comes in our bare, floor-to-ceiling windows. I lie there, aware of its warmth on my arm and of how dog-tired I am; I cannot move. On the radio a man is talking about his efforts to rid his lawn of moles: ‘So you know what I did? I went into my garage, I fired up a road flare, and I smoked the effer out.’ Justin and I would have found this funny. The cavernous echo of his absence almost takes my breath away.
In the shower, I can’t adjust the hot and cold, and realise I should have done this before I got in. I stand there, alternately scalding and freezing myself, wiggling the tap but failing to get to grips with something I’ve done automatically so many times before. One thing I am aware of is feeling like a half-sized version of myself. I am sunk in right below my ribs. I am never this un-fleshy. I think it’s because, for some reason, every time I even think about eating, the memory of greasy pizza at LAX is there, warning me off. The urge to throw up before the last of it was down. The single-minded trek to the toilets. Barely making it there. Heaving before I reached the bowl, a cascade of puke. People stopping to have a look. A cleaner standing with a long mop, unfazed: it’s all just part of the job.
Justin left me. Vanished into thin air.
It was like I was vomiting him up along with the pizza.
I stare at the bottles of hair product lined up in rows on the shower shelf. Which one is the shampoo? I’m suddenly incapable of reading a label. There’s a buzzing of panic in my head. How did I ever imagine I could go into work? See people? Act normal? Talk about the honeymoon? Tell lies? Act a lie? Because no one can know. When Justin comes home, I want everything to return to normal – after I’ve half killed him, of course. By saying nothing, there will be no embarrassment around anyone who knows us, no public legacy of his having once, momentarily, lost his mind. The goose-bumps come out on my arms. The chill of dread down my spine. How am I going to do it?
Then again, realistically, what are they going to ask?
How was the honeymoon?
Wonderful.