Frustrated, I kneel back down and pull again at the drawer. I can feel the resistance, but the mechanism is a cheap one, rattling against the strain. Frustration surges up inside me and, before I have time to check myself, I set the flat of one hand on the cabinet above the drawer and use the other to yank the handle hard, once, then again. The catch rips and breaks, and the drawer is sliding out fast and smooth on its rollers, opening up what’s inside.
It’s a single wallet folder, green and unlabelled. I reach in and pull it out, opening it and taking out the contents. Several sheets of paper, printed from the internet, with some scribbled, illegible annotations in dark pen. I glance at the first sheet, and my throat seizes up. It’s a printout from 192.com of every household in the UK that is registered under Francis’s and my surname, and picked out in yellow highlighter is our own Leeds address in full.
I can feel my heart hammering as I spread out the other sheets on the floor in front of me. A photograph from a property website of the block we live in, advertising one of the other flats for sale. The homepage of the company where I now work, along with the Team page, where my own face smiles out blandly from the thumbnail photograph. A few screenshots of my social-media profiles, locked down and basic as they are. It’s all public information, but the collection of it, the fact that you’ve bothered to print it out … it feels quite odd. Invasive.
On the final sheet, I see the profile I set up months ago on the house-swap site: the photographs of the inside of our home, the chatty description of its location and the invitation to contact me. It had never occurred to me to wonder how you found me on the house-swap site, but now I realize you must have set up a Google alert or something similar on my name, my address. It’s what anyone might do, if they wanted to keep abreast of something. But even as I try and rationalize it, I’m aware that there’s a world of difference between something and someone, and especially the kind of someone I am to you. A world of difference between attention and obsession.
My head spins, and I’m pushing the papers shakily into a pile, forcing them back into the folder and shoving it into the drawer again, as if, in another moment, I might be discovered. I lean against the desk, thoughts buzzing.
Next to me, my phone is blinking, signalling a new email. I sent so many messages yesterday, caught up in disbelief and confusion, and you didn’t reply to a single one. Until now.
The message is brief. Don’t worry. I’ve been keeping myself busy. Scrolling down, I realize it’s a reply to one of the angrier emails I sent: What’s the point of all this? How are you occupying yourself there, in my flat? What the fuck are you actually doing? Your response is cryptic, brief and anonymous. It seems hardly worth the effort of typing. And then I notice the attachment.
I open it, my breath coming fast and shallow. At first, I don’t understand. It’s a picture of the hallway, taken in low light, from the far end by the kitchen. There’s nothing distinctive about it, no sign of activity. Then I see the photographs. They’re hung up just as I’d left them, but they’ve been altered somehow. Then I see. My own face has been cut out of them, leaving only black space.
The shock of it stuns me for a second, my head reeling with sudden lightness. There’s something so systematic about it, the effort it would have taken. Sinister precision. I gaze at the photograph, trying to understand. Why would you do this? Something is troubling me about it, something beyond the obvious surrealism of the act. With a rush, it comes to me that it’s the fact that it’s my face that has been removed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve still been clinging to the thought that whatever is driving you to conduct this whole performance, it must be underpinned by love. I could have understood a symbolic removal of my husband, a desire to cut him out. But this isn’t love; it’s the opposite. You’re telling me that you hate me.
Home
Caroline, June 2013
WITHOUT REALLY MEANING to, Carl and I have established a kind of rhythm over the past few weeks. We message each other sporadically throughout the day, just to share the odd funny story or moan about our workload, and in the evening he usually texts me at about eight, after Eddie is in bed, when we’ll chat for half an hour or more. I find myself waiting for these texts, compulsively glancing at my phone throughout the business of making dinner and navigating Francis’s unpredictable moods. When Carl gets in touch, I retreat to the bedroom and carry on the conversation there. Francis has generally passed out by the time it’s under way in any case, and even if he hadn’t, I’m rapidly growing to believe he wouldn’t care. The invisible lifelines of connection between us are shrivelling and draining. One by one, they’re dying and dropping away, and I’m not even sure if he knows it or not.
I’m at my desk, working on autopilot, shuffling rows of data and organizing figures. It’s brainless activity, leaving my mind free to wander. I flash back to the previous evening – Francis and me sharing the sofa, conversing amicably enough about the weekend ahead. These patches of normality, when we manage to get through a few hours of civility and he behaves in a way that passes for average, are few and far between now, and they don’t have the effect on me they once had. I used to clutch at them like the last clumps of grass and earth grasped at by someone tumbling off a cliff. I know they won’t last – that even as I hold them they’re crumbling into nothing in my hands and, like it or not, I’m still falling.
The messenger icon flashes at the base of my screen, and I smile, knowing what the message will contain. Sure enough, Carl is confirming the plans for tonight, telling me he can’t wait. Friday night is always reserved for the two of us these days and today is only Wednesday, but I’ve said that I need to work late, and he’s coming to the office to meet me after hours. It’s a risk, one we haven’t taken before. Coupled with the knowledge that I’ll be seeing him twice this week, it feels like a shift. I’ve been thinking more and more the way I felt the other week when I left his house, when I first tentatively started to consider the possibility of leaving Francis. I haven’t said anything to him – won’t do, until I’m sure I know what I want – but I can feel these thoughts within me every time I’m with him, a secret growing and blossoming out of a tiny seed. I can’t yet think about Eddie, or about sitting down in front of my husband and telling him I intend to walk out on him exactly when it seems he needs me most. But he has never not needed me, and he doesn’t seem to give a fuck about what I need myself. The thought gives me a surge of anger. I shake my head and, with a jolt, I realize I’ve been calculating the figures on my screen wrongly, not concentrating at all.
See you at half six then, I type back to Carl, pushing everything else out of my head. I’ll be waiting …
You better be, he writes back.
My fingers hover over the keys, and I think about saying something dirty, spilling out a fraction of what always runs hectically through me in the lead-up to our meetings, but in the end I just type a kiss and close the window. I can’t afford to get too distracted yet if I’m going to finish everything on my desk on time. Ironically, it’s him who has bred this self-control in me. He’s good at holding me off, making sure that we get through the week balanced on this delicate tripwire of desire, never peaking too soon. At first, it didn’t come naturally to me: I wanted it all, as fast as I could have it. Now I understand the pleasure of delayed gratification, and I find myself doing the same.
At six o’clock, people start to peel away one by one, calling farewells around the office and packing up their stuff. Soon, it’s only Steven and me left. As the boss, he’s often last to leave. He’s frowning over a presentation, clearly rehearsing it, lips moving soundlessly. Every so often, I glance at him, wondering if I should text Carl and tell him to wait somewhere nearby.
‘Should I lock up this evening or are you staying late?’ I ask him at last. With a start, he looks up, noticing the empty desks.