He kisses me goodbye and tells me that he loves me. I tell him that I love him too. Well-worn words that have shrunk and lost their meaning. I lie perfectly still as I listen to the sound of my husband leaving me, it doesn’t last long. When the front door closes, I get out of the bed and watch him walk away from behind the bedroom curtain.
I follow in Paul’s footsteps, head down to the kitchen and turn on the light. My throat is dry so I pour myself a glass of water to take back upstairs. I stop in front of the oven and check that it is off twelve times, clicking my fingers with my empty left hand. I notice the red light of the answering machine flashing away on the sideboard in the hall. The only people who have ever used the landline are my parents, and even they don’t call this number any more. My index finger hovers reluctantly over the PLAY button, almost too scared to make contact, as though it might burn me. I swallow a gulp of water, letting it wash away my fear, then I push the button. It’s Paul from two days ago. So he did call to tell me he was at his mum’s. I don’t know how I missed the machine flashing, I walk past it all the time. I delete the message and then pause over the PLAY ALL button. I shouldn’t need to hear his voice again, but I do. I close my eyes as the familiar sound of my father’s voice fills my heart and ears. Hello, it’s me, Dad. Call me back when you get this, Peanut. He hasn’t called me that for such a long time. The tears I have been managing to suppress fall freely from my eyes. They make tracks down my cheeks and cling to my chin for as long as they can, before dropping down onto my nightshirt to form damp stains of sadness. I’ve saved this message for so long now. Paul says it’s morbid, he doesn’t understand. Out of some instinctive curiosity, I pick up the phone and hit the LAST NUMBER DIALLED button. After several rings, I hear a click and then a pre-recorded message speaks in my ear. I slam the receiver down, glaring at it as though it’s to blame. I’ve never called Claire from this phone.
Then
Thursday, 22nd December 2016 – Morning
I’m a few minutes late for work. Madeline is already in, but it doesn’t matter, not today. I still feel disorientated, as though I might be dreaming within a dream. I checked the bottom of Paul’s wardrobe after he left. The pretty pink bag and its black lacy contents were gone, he’d taken them with him. I doubt they were a gift for his mother.
I sit quietly at my desk as the rest of the cast assemble. Colleagues say, ‘Good morning,’ and I nod back, it’s like listening to a stuck record. I don’t feel like making conversation today, polite or otherwise, and my morning hasn’t been particularly good. When I think nobody is looking, I study the faces of the women in the office. They all look blinkered, a little weary, a lot lost. A collection of people treading water, trying to stay afloat in an unpredictable sea. They’re not my friends, not really; we’d all push each other under if it meant we wouldn’t drown. I conclude I have nothing to worry about; they can’t see the real me, they can’t even see themselves.
Madeline comes out of her office to bark at someone and I catch her eye. She’s talking to them, but she’s staring at me, and for a moment I’m convinced that she knows. There’s a terrible taste in my mouth that I just can’t get rid of. The nausea rises up through my throat once more and I head for the toilets, doing my absolute best to appear calm. As soon as I’m inside, I burst through a cubicle, flush the toilet and lean my head over the bowl just in time, hoping that nobody will hear me. It’s just bile, I haven’t eaten anything. I wonder if it’s nerves or guilt or both. Either way I need to fix myself and fast, I don’t have time for this. I hear Jo’s voice outside the door. She thinks I should pop to the chemist before we go on air, there’s one not far from our building. I think she’s right. I wait a while, to be sure that it’s over, then I open the door and wash my hands, relieved to see that I’m alone again.
I feel much better after the show. Madeline, however, is not feeling at all well. She’s been waddling back and forth to the toilets throughout the morning and is covered in sweat. She thinks it must be food poisoning. I think it is far more likely to be the laxatives I put in her coffee just before we went on air. Madeline likes coffee, she drinks a lot of it, never says no, as long as it’s black. She also likes to drive to and from work. She thinks public transport is ‘dirty and full of germ-ridden commoners’. She’s in no fit state to drive herself home now, so I offer to, much to her surprise and Matthew’s approval. I don’t think she’s going to go for it at first but, after another impromptu visit to the lavatory, she seems to come round to the idea and I am glad.
I carry her bag as we leave the office because she ‘feels too weak’ and I pretend not to know which car is hers when we reach the car park. She unlocks the black VW Golf, then passes me the key, before folding herself into the back seat, as though her car has metamorphosed into a taxi. She barks her postcode at me as I tap it into the satnav, then warns me to ‘drive bloody carefully’ and ‘watch for foreigners on the road’.
She sleeps as I drive and I decide I like her a lot better like this. Silenced. The poison is trapped inside her while she sleeps, opposed to seeping from her lips when she is awake.
I hate driving in London. It’s too busy and loud. There are too many people on the roads and all of them are in a hurry, though few of them have anywhere they really need to be. It’s better once we’re out of the city centre, the roads seem to widen and are less crowded.
When the satnav suggests we’re only ten minutes away from our destination, the car makes a warning sound and an angry red symbol glows on the dashboard.
‘You’re almost out of petrol,’ I say, observing the narrowing eyes of my passenger, awake again, in the rear-view mirror.
‘I can’t be,’ she says.
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure there’s enough to get you home.’
‘Do I look worried?’ We make eye contact in the mirror again. I hold her stare for as long as seems sensible when driving at forty miles an hour, then look back at the road ahead.
We don’t speak again after that, not until I turn left into the road where she lives. She barks at me again then, telling me where and how to park, but I don’t really hear her. I’m too busy staring up at the house she says is hers, unsure how to feel about what I’m seeing. I recognise this place. I’ve been here before.
Before
Easter Sunday, 1992
Dear Diary,
Taylor is on holiday with her parents for the whole of Easter and I feel miserable. I haven’t seen her since the last day at school and I won’t see her again until next Tuesday when we go back. She sent me a postcard. Mum barged into my bedroom with a big grin on her face to give it to me a couple of days ago. She thought it would make me happy. It didn’t. Taylor seems to be having a lot of fun without me and I don’t think she misses me at all.