I watched while he took off the packaging, my brain trying to remember desperately what I had ordered.
‘A potato slicer.’ He looked at me questioningly.
‘I thought it looked fun,’ I shrugged, remembering
how a potato had been turned into chips in seconds.
‘Don’t tell me, it’s to go with the vegetable-spiral thing that came on Monday. Where on earth are you getting these things from?’
I told him that I saw them advertised in one of the magazines that come with the Sunday papers because it sounded better than admitting I got them from a
shopping channel. I’m going to have to leave my bag in the bedroom in future. I’ve got into the habit of taking it downstairs with me in the mornings in case I need to make a quick getaway, which means my credit card is easily accessible. But even if my silent caller did turn up, I’d be incapable of going very far. Because of the pills, driving is out of the question, so I’d only get as far as the garden, which wouldn’t be much help.
Sometimes I think that he has turned up. I’ll start awake, my heart beating furiously, convinced that he’s been watching me through the window. Because my instinct is to flee, I half get up from the chair, then sink back down again, not really caring, telling myself that if he is there, well, at least it would be over. I’m lucid enough to know that as well as the pills being my lifeline, they’ll also be the death of me, one way or
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another. Or, at the very least, the death of my marriage, because how much longer can I expect Matthew to put up with my increasingly bizarre behaviour?
Aware that the pills I took are already making my
head a little woolly, I have a quick shower and put on what has become my uniform, loose jeans and a t-shirt, as I’ve worked out they still look presentable after a day on the sofa. One day, I wore a dress and it was so creased by the time I finished sleeping the day away Matthew joked I must have spent it crawling through the bushes in the garden.
Leaving my bag where it is, I carry the tray downstairs, tear the toast into tiny pieces and take it into the garden for the birds. I wish I could sit for a moment and enjoy the sun but I only feel safe in the house with the doors locked. I haven’t been out since I started taking the pills regularly. I’ve been relying on food from the freezer for our evening meals and I’ve resorted to using the cartons of long-life milk that we keep for emergencies. Matthew noticed last night that the fridge was almost empty, so I’m hoping he’ll suggest going shopping tomorrow.
My limbs feel heavy as I go back into the house. I
rummage in the freezer and find some sausages and
then rummage in my brain, searching for something I can do with them to turn them into an evening meal.
I know there are a couple of onions hanging around
somewhere and there’s bound to be a jar of tomatoes in the cupboard. Dinner sorted, I go gratefully into the sitting room and sink onto the sofa.
The Breakdown
231
The presenters on the shopping channel have become
like old friends. Today the goods on offer are watches studded with little crystals, and I’m glad I’m too tired to go and fetch my bag from the bedroom. The house phone starts ringing; I close my eyes and let sleep take me. I love the feeling of being slowly lowered into oblivion and, when the pills begin to wear off some hours later, the gentle tugging back to reality. Today, as I drowse in the no-man’s land between sleep and wake, I become aware of a presence, of someone nearby. It feels as if he’s in the room looking down at me, not on the other side of the window. I lie very still, my senses sharpening as the seconds tick by, my breathing becoming shallower, my body tensing. And when I can bear the waiting no longer, I snap my eyes open, expecting to see him looming over me with a knife in his hand, my heart beating so hard I can hear it thudding in my chest. But there is no one there and when I turn my head towards the window, there is no one there either.
By the time Matthew comes home an hour later, the
sausage casserole is in the oven, the table is set and to make up for the lack of any kind of second course, I’ve opened a bottle of wine.
‘That looks good,’ he says. ‘But first, I need a beer.
Can I get you something?’ He walks over to the fridge, opens the door. Even I flinch at the empty shelves. ‘Oh – didn’t you do any shopping today?’
‘I thought maybe we could go tomorrow.’
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‘You said you’d go on your way back from your
meeting,’ he says, taking out a beer and closing the fridge door. ‘How did it go, by the way?’
I look surreptitiously at the calendar on the wall and see the words ‘Inset Day’ under today’s date. My heart sinks.
‘I decided not to go,’ I tell him. ‘There didn’t seem much point when I’m not going back to work.’
He looks at me in surprise. ‘When did you decide
that?’