There are even a couple of references to what happened on 9 July 2013. Nothing explicit, of course. She isn’t a fool, and she knows that you can’t really trust anyone. But all the same, it’s enough to tell me that she’s desperate to talk. Against her better judgement, she’s half hoping that someone will have the ability to crack her open and pour her secrets out. She wants them out of her head. She wants them gone.
Before I log out, I decide to make a change to her profile picture. Currently, it’s a safe, soft-focus shot of her and her son walking hand in hand along a sunny seafront. It takes me a few minutes’ searching to find the kind of picture I want, but eventually I stumble on one that is just right. I save it on to her desktop, then upload it. I wonder how long it will take for people to start noticing, commenting, speculating. What’s this all about, Caroline? Are you OK? From what I can see, she doesn’t let the mask slip much. She preserves her image for the people around her, because she’s scared. She needs some help to rip the scales from their eyes and show them who she really is.
Away
Caroline, May 2015
IT’S NOT EASY to make this place cosy, but we collect together all the cushions we can find in the house and dump them on the sofa, light some candles and put some background music on the stereo. I step back and consider the room, realizing that it does make a difference. These small changes alter the atmosphere of the house, robbing it of some of its faceless unease. They make it easier to shrug off the thoughts and reminders that have been oppressing me. If only Eddie were here, it would almost feel like a normal family evening.
I glance at the photo my mother sent me earlier in the day: Eddie smiling broadly at the camera, pointing to the ‘Good work!’ sticker on his coat. I can’t help wishing I were there, but I push the thought aside, determined to enjoy the evening ahead.
Francis has cooked a curry, explaining in painstaking detail exactly what he has put into the spice mix and why. It’s a bit too hot for my liking, but I eat it anyway, gulping down vats of water in between mouthfuls, even though he warns me it won’t help. After dinner, we clear the plates away and decide to play one of the games we brought down with us in the car. Predictably, Francis chooses Scrabble, and we settle down around the pristine glass coffee table.
‘Better not scratch it,’ he warns. ‘It’s probably rigged up on a hotline to the police station. They’ll have us done for vandalism before you know it.’
‘Oooh,’ I say, biting my lip and feigning trepidation. ‘Better get our gloves on.’
Francis touches the tabletop with a fingertip, widening his eyes before snatching it back in mock-alarm. We’re stringing out the joke, but it’s the first evening since we arrived that everything feels so natural. It isn’t easy, right now, to connect this man with the one I was faced with little more than a month ago, the one who surfaces every so often with savage, unpredictable frequency. The tell-tale swings between mania and lethargy, the sick, regressive pull towards what he still can’t quite consign to the past. But they’re getting fewer, or at least I think so, and although it feels wrong, part of me knows that they throw the good times into sharper relief, make them more exhilarating and precious.
We begin to play and, sure enough, within five minutes it’s evident I’m not going to win. I’m an averagely good player, but Francis has an annoying knack with this kind of game, despite claiming to have played it no more often than I have.
‘Hey,’ I object, seeing the glint in his eye as he slides an X on to a triple-scoring tile, ‘X U – that’s not even a word. It’s just two random letters.’
‘Oh, right!’ Francis draws back in pretend deference, squinting at the board. ‘I’m so sorry … although, actually, Caroline, you’re wrong, because I think you’ll find that the xu is a monetary unit in Vietnam.’
‘As any fool knows,’ I say sarcastically, shaking my head.
‘It’s a hundredth of a dong,’ Francis replies patiently, as if to a small child.
‘A what?’ I can’t help laughing, despite my growing frustration, as I lamely add an S to an existing word and wait for his next manoeuvre. ‘Oh, no, now that’s just ridiculous—’ He has slipped an I neatly in next to an O. ‘Io?! What the hell is that?’
‘A cry,’ Francis says smugly. ‘Often of triumph, which is something you’d better get used to hearing, because, if I’m not mistaken, I’m smashing this.’
‘You think you’re so clever,’ I mutter, shooting him a glance across the table, ‘don’t you …’
He holds my gaze for a few moments. The candlelight brings out the angles of his cheekbones and darkens the hollows under his green eyes. A little frisson of surprise runs through me, an awareness that this is my husband and that, slowly but surely over the past two years, he has been merging back into the man I used to lie next to and watch sleeping for hours, unable to look away.
‘Your move,’ he says, eventually.
I lean forward across the coffee table and kiss him, softly at first, feeling my breathing quicken as his hands reach out and pull my face towards him, his fingers running through my hair. The pressure of his lips on mine hardens, and I shift away from my seat and climb swiftly on to his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and arching my back to let his hand slide warmly up underneath the fabric of my shirt. We have done these things thousands of times, randomly punctuating the past fifteen years and, like anything you’ve done thousands of times, we’re good at them. So good that it’s easy to do them without thinking. My mind is clear and blank, white noise fizzing in my head. He’s undoing the clasp of my bra, and I reach down and wrench the zip of his jeans and then my own, wanting it quickly and without ceremony, but suddenly he’s pulling away and staring somewhere over my shoulder, his face intent and alert.
‘Did you hear that?’ he asks.
‘What?’ I shake my head, confused. ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
I start to kiss him again, but a second later I hear it, too – a little patter of knocks on the front door, tentative and quiet. I glance at the clock on the wall; it’s almost ten at night. ‘Fucking hell,’ I mutter. ‘What’s that about?’
Francis is getting to his feet, doing up his jeans and heading for the front door. ‘Hold that thought,’ he instructs, throwing me a brief glance through narrowed eyes as he leaves the room. ‘I’ll see who it is and get rid of them.’
I sigh and lean back against the armchair, my body humming with frustration, an itch irritated and unscratched. I glance across at myself in the mirror – my shirt half undone, my trousers rucked around my thighs. A thought flickers darkly across the back of my mind: your hands on me, pushing the fabric down. I suppress it instantly, but it’s enough to send the moment slipping through my fingers like mercury.
I hear the front door opening and Francis’s quizzical ‘hello?’, then a female voice, low and charmingly apologetic. I can’t catch the words, but I recognize the voice. Starting to my feet, I straighten and do up my clothes then hurry out into the hall. Sure enough, Amber is standing on the doorstep, dressed in a short black skirt and a military-style coat buttoned up to the neck, her long, fair hair falling smoothly over her shoulders. She’s smiling up at Francis, using the same kind of easy charm I felt radiating from her in the café. When I appear in the hallway, she glances across, and her smile brightens dazzlingly. She gives a little wave, half greeting, half apology.
‘Caroline,’ she says. ‘Good to see you. I hope you don’t mind me popping round. I was just sitting around at home with nothing to do, and I thought, Why not come say hello? I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’
‘No …’ I say automatically, seeing that Francis is standing to the side and gesticulating for her to come in.