I didn’t abandon the Internet message boards completely. I’d visit weekly and answer some questions, or continue talking to people I’d already started conversations with. But End of the Line gave me what the boards couldn’t.
‘What do you think about when you go home at night?’ asked a woman at the back of the Northants Women’s Circle meeting. ‘Do you ever worry how the people you’ve spoken to are getting on?’
I never forget a voice and I recognised hers. She’d called me before, up to her eyes in credit card debt. She certainly hadn’t spent all her money on her appearance.
‘Some of them stay with you longer than others,’ I replied, and thought of David. His and that of the woman I’d matched him with were the only funerals I hadn’t been to. I hadn’t even seen a photograph of them. Yet he still burned deeper inside me than anyone else.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I hated this house.
I glanced around the open-plan space that was full of barely used objects. A top-of-the-range fifty-two-inch television that was hardly ever turned on, an eight-seater dining room table and chairs that had yet to be eaten off, and two L-shaped sofas were rarely sat upon. Our ￡20,000 kitchen was adorned with branded, built-in appliances, Corian surfaces and Italian marble-tiled flooring. It was all less than a couple of years old, so beautiful, so box-fresh, but so hollow. The house had everything a family could need with the exception of love. In fact, try as I might, I couldn’t remember the last time that all five of us had been under the same roof, together at the same time. The more hours I whiled away there, the darker the walls became and the more I resented the house for changing everything.
The sound of a sneeze broke the silence. That cat had been asleep and curled into a tight ball on the windowsill before waking himself up. I’d assumed it was only dogs that gave their owners enthusiastic welcomes when they returned home. But Bieber always dashed through the house at the sound of Tony’s car crawling up the drive. As soon as the front door opened, he’d purr and rub his needy little head on Tony’s ankles, and would be rewarded with more attention than my husband gave me. Tonight, Bieber would have to join me in waiting. I took my place at the breakfast bar, staring at the oven. I had to think for a moment to remember what I was even cooking.
I sent all three of them a group WhatsApp message to find out where they were, but no one replied. They must have gone somewhere without a phone or Wi-Fi signal. I’d left the mail neatly arranged on the kitchen counter and I assumed Tony had sifted through it, as it was no longer how I’d left it, in size order.
I turned on the radio to find my favoured 1980s music station. Whitney Houston was asking ‘How Will I Know’, the Eurythmics wanted to discover ‘Who’s That Girl?’ and Carly Simon inquired ‘Why’. They asked a lot of questions back then. All I wanted to know was where was my family?
When the six o’clock news began, I assumed Tony had already left the office and gone to the gym to knock the hell out of a punch bag. He was probably training for another of his white-collar boxing tournaments, where he and other like-minded office workers take each other on in the ring in organised, regulated matches. When things became strained between us, he’d spend more and more time there training. And while he’d told me in no uncertain terms not to attend his fights, I couldn’t help myself, and stood in the shadows at the back of the Freemasons’ Hall function room, increasingly aroused by each punch he threw and the damage inflicted on his opponent.
Alice was probably still at an after-school club and would be dropped off later by a friend’s mum, while Effie might be crying on her friends’ shoulders over Thom, who was likely blaming his public humiliation on her, for sending all and sundry his naked selfie. Or maybe Tony had taken the girls out for pizza without me. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I’d grown accustomed to watching my family interact while I lurked on the sidelines like a bit-part character in my own local theatre production. I didn’t blame the girls completely – Tony had taken it upon himself to organise birthday parties and trips out, and he spoiled them by making too much time to listen to every minute detail of their lives. That put immense pressure on me to keep up appearances and pretend to be interested in their stories, or else I’d look like an uninvolved mother. Only I wasn’t as convincing as my husband.
The distance between Tony and me had expanded from a crack to the size of a chasm shortly before my cancer diagnosis. I wasn’t even worthy of a peck on the cheek when he brushed past me on the stairs. I’d remind him how good he looked as he changed into his gym gear, then pretend not to be hurt when he didn’t reciprocate with a compliment of his own. I’d even feign liking the sleeve of tattoos gradually expanding up his left arm from wrist to shoulder, when quietly I hated them.
For a man approaching his late thirties, Tony was in enviable shape. When his friends had visited our former house for summer barbecues and he wore a sleeveless top and cargo shorts, I’d watched their wives ogling him. Their husbands had ‘dad bods’ and beer bellies, and it was all the women could do to keep themselves from panting when they saw Tony. Once upon a time, I’d felt sorry for them, but now I was envious because at least their out-of-shape partners were present. Tony wasn’t. He was far, far away.
I poured myself another glass from the bottle of Merlot from the online wine club he’d joined and never got around to cancelling, and asked myself if I’d been more in tune with Tony’s feelings, might I have been able to pinpoint the exact moment he’d looked at me and decided I was no longer the woman he’d married?
The last time I’d instigated intimacy between us, the girls were playing with Henry in the garden and I’d followed Tony upstairs. He’d moved into the spare room weeks before, but I’d told myself it was only because the stress of setting up his own insurance brokerage was giving him sleepless nights. Then, somewhere along the line, he had decided to make the temporary measure permanent, and without discussion.
I crept up on him as he changed out of his work suit and, before he could protest, I slipped my hand down the front of his trousers and wrapped my other arm around his waist.
‘What are you doing?’ he’d asked. He sounded irritated.
‘I think you know what I’m doing,’ I replied, and moved my hand inside his briefs and played with his balls.
‘It was a rhetorical question,’ he replied. I could feel him stirring but he tried to resist. He squirmed until I removed my hand. But I wasn’t ready to give up, so I began unbuttoning my blouse. He used to find it sexy when I’d get naked while he was fully clothed. It would turn him on like nothing else.
‘Laura, stop it. I told you, I don’t have the time.’
‘You never have time,’ I sighed. ‘Not for me, anyway.’ Part of me hated myself for still desiring a physical relationship with someone who didn’t want one with me. But I longed to connect with him.