While they are absorbed in the meal and the conversation, that is the time I tend to go inside: move her reading glasses from beside her bed, hide the remote, delete an email or two, open a window, alter a thermostat. I have on occasion taken some garment or other, not to wear but to dump in an outhouse. Once I smashed her bedside lamp. Then I return to my viewing spot and watch as the rest of her evening is marred by these small hiccups. They spend half an hour looking for the remote, which in the end is found in the breadbin; her glasses are next to the wine rack; the trousers to her work suit won’t turn up for a day or two. Finally they can curl up on the sofa and watch a film, but they feel too warm downstairs and when they go to bed the bathroom is icy. Perfection stained with her self-doubt and irritation.
Tonight, everything is different. I don’t have to do anything at all to ruin the lovey-dovey mood. He is not in the kitchen cooking. He is standing by the window, staring out into the garden, perhaps out towards the woods. He’s keeping vigil, but it’s pointless, he won’t be able to see me. I’m in the shadows. She is upstairs. She’s lying on her bed; she’s not tapping on her laptop or reading a book. She’s not even flicking through a magazine in a half-hearted, distracted manner. She is staring at the ceiling. Motionless. Perhaps paralysed with fear or dread. That’s the aim.
Eventually I watch her get to her feet. It’s clear from the way she moves that she’s in a lot of pain. I’m not a monster, I do feel a twinge of something when I see her limp into the bathroom and start to run a bath. If not guilt or remorse exactly, then maybe pity, but I don’t let that twinge in my gut solidify. I certainly don’t let it travel to my brain. I haven’t got time. I see an opportunity. I have to get moving.
38
Emma
I am struggling to get comfortable. My ribs ache, and however I try to sit or lie puts pressure on a tender blooming bruise, but I think a bath will help soothe my injuries. It will certainly distract me from the screaming silence that has settled between me and Matthew. I feel humiliated and exposed after telling him my theory that Becky is haunting me. I don’t know what I was expecting from him. I just wanted him to make me feel safe. Part of me wanted him to say that he didn’t for a moment believe in such things, that it was impossible. I don’t want to believe it myself. But he didn’t make me feel safe. His look of horror and disgust disturbed me further.
He thinks I’m a drunk. No one respects or admires drunks. Me least of all. It offends me that Matthew might think I’m the sort of person who would lose control to alcohol, be controlled by alcohol. I thought I could trust him with my thoughts, no matter how odd or intimate. I hoped he would gently laugh away my fears, reason with me or hold and comfort me. Do something, anything, that would keep us connected and would reassure me. But he slammed the shutters down by insinuating I am mad, unhinged, addicted. I feel locked out, like a disgraced fallen woman banging on the gates of a stately home trying to get the attention of the master who has seduced and abandoned her. Obviously he’s not the wealthy one and I’m not pregnant, but I feel desperate, pathetic, somehow disgraced for trusting him. I feel oddly afraid of this hasty marriage. Not afraid of him as such, but certainly afraid of the fact that I have so dramatically changed my status quo.
I massage my eye sockets with the heel of my hand. I have to stop this train of thought. It isn’t helpful. Matthew is my husband. I love him, don’t I? I do. At least, I think I do. I must. I have to. It’s practically impossible to know exactly what I think right now, when my head and body ache and desperate thoughts ricochet repeatedly around my mind.
How much do I really know about him?
I pour a generous amount of citrus-scented bath oil into the running water. I’m trying to smother the woody, deathly smell that Matthew says he can’t detect and I am sure is a sign of a visitation from Becky. I shake my head, despairing at my own thoughts. How have I turned into the sort of person who thinks being haunted is a possibility, let alone a rational explanation? Yet I do, or at least I don’t know what else to think. I massage the back of my neck. Fraught, exhausted.
I decide while I wait for the bath to fill that I will call Heidi. According to her socials, she arrived back in the country on Sunday evening, after the inevitable two-hour plane delay. I’ve been thinking of calling her all afternoon, working up the courage. I know I have to apologise and put things right. I miss her and I’m sorry, but besides that, I need my best friend. I’m scared, and despite being newly married, I feel alone, vulnerable. Before I met Heidi, I often felt lonely, but that stopped the day we became friends. Our friendship has always shielded me. If ever I was going through a hard time at work or in one of my fleeting relationships, or my brother was causing me concern, I knew I could pop round to hers, or at least pick up the phone, and she’d laugh or talk or argue me out of my fug. How did I forget that, even temporarily? I realise that I’ve allowed the excitement of meeting Matthew to be all-consuming. There has been new pressure on my time, a whole host of unfamiliar emotions carousing through my mind and oxytocin surging through my body. I guess there is no fool like an old fool, and I do feel both old and foolish right now. I’m not saying Matthew is a mistake; I’m simply recognising that centring everything around him so completely and swiftly was unwise.
I psych myself up to eat a huge dollop of humble pie. Heidi is the first contact saved in the favourites on my phone. I decide to make a video call, because I need to look her in the eye when I say I’m sorry. The phone rings four, five, six times. I shake a little. Is it possible that she isn’t going to pick up? That she might ignore me? I brace myself, wondering how I’ll absorb that blow. I’m just about to hang up when her image springs up in front of me as she answers. The moment of relief is nipped at when I see that she is sitting with Gina, in Gina’s home. I know they have always met up without me to do mum or couple things, but somehow, right now, being faced with their cosy togetherness hurts. This is clearly just a girls-night social and nothing to do with the kids or husbands. This will make the apology harder too. The only thing worse than having to apologise for behaving like an idiot is other people witnessing as much.
I swiftly absorb the scene. There are mugs on the coffee table, a box of Jaffa Cakes, most likely empty, a big packet of Tyrrells crisps and an open bottle of white wine, two half-full glasses. I’m glad that at least Heidi kicks off the conversation. ‘I hear congratulations are in order,’ she says in a way that clearly communicates she doubts it.
I smile anyway. ‘Thank you.’
She doesn’t ask anything more about the wedding day, which would be usual, but I suppose nothing about this marriage is conventional. Instead she says, ‘You don’t look especially overjoyed. Far from the blushing bride I was expecting. Are you ill?’
It would be easy to be offended, but in fact I’m grateful to her for behaving so normally with me. Her normal is to tell me how it is. Or at least how she sees it. I find it reassuring that she’s not holding back or hiding in small talk; it gives me hope that we can swiftly get back on our usual footing. ‘Oh, I’m fine. I had a little accident, that’s all. It’s taken the wind out of my sails.’
Gina’s face creases with concern. ‘Oh no. What happened?’
‘I was running. I just tripped.’ This is a lie, obviously, but I don’t have the courage to start by explaining the ladder incident. I’ll get to it. I’m not hiding it from them. It’s just not the place to begin this conversation.
Heidi and Gina share a look, but I don’t halt to examine it. I pile in with my apology before I lose my nerve. ‘I’ve been a dick lately. I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, you have,’ says Heidi.
‘That day of the walk. The things I said. I am so sorry. Can you forgive me?’ My voice scrapes along my throat before it tumbles into our history. I wonder how hard she’s going to make me work for this.
But then she sighs and says, ‘Yes, you silly bag, of course I can.’
Just like that. No drama, no recriminations. It feels so normal, so easy.
Too easy? The thought assaults me and I’m annoyed by it. I want to sink into the moment of relief and happiness. However, after the constant drama of the last few months, I am mistrustful of things running smoothly and positively.
‘We get it. You haven’t been totally yourself,’ adds Gina.
‘What do you mean by that?’ My question comes out sharper than I intended. I see Gina blink as though she’s batting away some level of shock.
‘Nothing,’ she says soothingly. ‘Just that you’re going through a lot of changes at home and at work.’
The restructuring has been incredibly stressful. My CFO has been especially stringent and rigorous. I mean, that’s great, that’s his job, but he’s forever complaining that I haven’t responded to emails from him, emails that I haven’t even received. When I tell him as much, he says things like ‘Check your spam’ before sighing laboriously and saying he’ll send again. Classic BS. Obviously he’s never sent the emails in the first place and is covering for his own incompetence. He’s questioned my expense claims, too. Sent them back to me with certain items highlighted in red and terse notes attached: Was this hotel used wholly and exclusively for business purposes? I don’t go into this detail with Heidi and Gina; they wouldn’t get it. Instead I just mumble, ‘Yes, it’s been a busy time,’ and then I grasp the heart of my concerns. ‘I thought marriage would be easier,’ I blurt.
‘Did we teach you nothing?’ laughs Heidi. But it’s not a mean laugh; she’s welcoming me back under her wing, and so I make an effort to laugh along with her.
‘You’re sharing your home for the first time. That takes some getting used to.’ Gina spells out what I already know, but it’s good to hear it anyway. Reassuring. ‘You’re both adapting. It must be difficult for him too. His wife has only been dead a year.’
‘I’m his wife,’ I mutter. I wish I didn’t sound so sulky.
‘Yes. Right. I meant his first wife.’ Gina looks uncomfortable.
‘And it’s been fourteen months.’
Heidi asks, ‘How are you feeling about the whole Becky thing now you’re Mrs Charlton? Last time we spoke, things were intense. You chose to elope because he was so cut up about going inside churches.’ I’m pretty sure she mutters ‘for fuck’s sake’ under her breath, but I let it go.
‘I’m struggling,’ I confess. I want to tell them that I’m overwhelmed with emotions, that I feel awful. That I’m shocked that I’ve turned into this woman who feels rather than thinks or reasons. I feel my husband loves someone else more than he loves me, that he’s always distracted and thinking about her. A dead woman. As she is dead, it shouldn’t matter, but it does, because only the dead can be canonised. I feel hollowed. There is a throbbing between my breasts. In my heart, I guess.
I am about to tell them this, but I’m stopped in my tracks when Gina murmurs, ‘Yeah, Matthew said as much.’
‘Excuse me? What?’
Heidi swiftly elbows her, but Gina lifts her chin, the way she does when she’s determined. ‘I’m not keeping secrets from her,’ she insists.
‘What secrets?’
‘Matthew rang me. He asked me not to mention it to you. He said there were …’ she pauses, looks for the right words, obviously not keen to use whatever words he did. ‘Issues,’ she says finally.
