We are two strangers in the house now, circling each other warily, and – at least on David’s part – there is very little pretence at anything else. We’re barely even civil. He grunts answers to my questions as if he’s devolved into some Neanderthal beast no longer capable of full sentences, and he avoids looking me in the eye. Maybe he doesn’t want me to see that he’s drunk most of the time. I think he’s saving all his ‘normality’ for work, and doesn’t have the energy for it at home.
He seems smaller – diminished. If I was the shrink I’d say he was a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown. My friendship with Louise has completely knocked him. No, that’s not quite right. Louise’s friendship with me has knocked him. She was his special secret thing and that’s been ruined. He’s been fooled.
Now that the initial shock of the discovery has passed, I know he blames me.
‘Are you sure you didn’t know who she was?’ he asked me last night, hovering in the doorway of our bedroom, not wanting to cross the threshold. ‘When you met her?’
‘How could I have possibly known she was a patient of yours?’ I answered, all wide-eyed innocence. A patient. His lie, not mine. He might have been drunk, but he didn’t buy my answer. He can’t put his finger on how I knew about her, but he knows I did. My behaviour’s confused him though – this isn’t my ‘form’. In Blackheath I was far more direct in my approach, except Marianne was nothing but a potential threat to my marriage. Louise is – well, Louise is the great white hope of our happiness. Louise is wonderful.
I hate acknowledging mistakes, but I have to admit I was probably too obvious in Blackheath. I shouldn’t have let my rage get the better of me – at least not so dramatically – but that was different. And anyway, it’s all in the past. I never care about the past unless I can use it for something in the present, and perhaps Blackheath will turn out to be useful, in which case it won’t have been a mistake at all. The past is as ephemeral as the future – it’s all perspective and smoke and mirrors. You can’t pin it down, can you? Let’s say two people experience exactly the same thing – ask them to recount the event later and, although their versions might be similar, there will always be differences. The truth is different to different people.
Poor David though. He’s consumed by the past. It’s concrete boots on him, weighing him down, drowning us. That one moment in the past has shaped him into this broken man. One night has led to the drink, the worry, the inability to let himself love me, the guilt. It’s been so fucking tiring living with it and trying to make it all right for both of us. Trying to make him see that it doesn’t matter. No one knows. No one was ever going to know. So in many ways, as no one knows, then it never even really happened. If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, blah, blah, blah.
Soon, however, our terrible guilty secret will be dragged out into the light and we shall be free of it. David is on the verge of telling, I know that. I imagine that prison seems a better option to him than this continued hell. It doesn’t hurt as much as it should, to think that the man I love so very very much considers life with me to be hellish, but then, this has been no picnic for me either of late.
Telling, though, will only be a momentary relief. He hasn’t grasped that yet. Telling won’t win him Louise. Telling won’t bring him trust and absolution. David deserves both. Some secrets need to be excavated, not just told, and our little sin is one of those.
I could have done all this much more easily. I could have left them well alone and maybe David would have eventually told Louise the truth of our marriage, and the event that has shaped it, and she’d have believed him, but he’d always wonder if she had a little doubt. He’d be constantly looking in her eyes for suspicion. There is nothing solid in a telling.
It all comes down to Louise. She has to uncover our sordid past herself. She needs to set us both free with her complete belief. I’m working hard for that. Even if he can’t bear to look at me, I’m doing it all for David.
I make a pot of peppermint tea and then, while it’s brewing, I fetch the little handset from the wardrobe, turn it on and text Louise, my little pretty puppet on a string.
Wanted to let you know all okay here. I’m trying to be normal. Emptied out capsule pills so just taking empty cases when he’s here. Not swallowing others, putting them under my tongue and spitting out. Looked in his study to see if he has a file on me but can’t find one:( Glad u know where spare key is. Feel crazy being worried about D – he’s always looked after me – but ur right, not enough that I love him. Maybe i’ll contact lawyer about divorce. Oh, I imagined us in my dream – on the Orient Express – great girls’ holiday – we should do that one day!! A xx
It’s a long text, but it shows how much I need her and miss her. I don’t bother putting the phone back yet – Louise always replies quickly, and this time is no exception.
So glad ur ok and good work with the pills! I’ve been worrying bout u. I had a dream and I went thru that second door I told you about. I ended up in Adam’s bedroom. Stuff was moved around. When I woke up and went in to check on him, it was all exactly like in my dream. Weird, huh? You really never get the second door? I think maybe I was sleepwalking. And YES TO ORIENT EXPRESS!
I reply how odd that is and that no, I don’t ever have a second door and I guess her brain must work differently to mine, but my hands are shaking with elation as I type. I can barely sit still with the sudden rush of adrenaline. She’s doing it already! She hasn’t figured out quite what she’s doing yet, but she’s so quick at this. Faster than I ever was. A natural. I have to get things moving more quickly now that it’s not entirely in my control.
Will check his study again for a file on me. Where can it be? Anyway, have to go. Take care. A xx
I can’t be bothered to get into a long chat with her now. I’m too excited. I’ve nudged her though, in that last text. Another little seed planted to get her synapses firing, even though the answer is so fucking obvious she’d have to be a retard not to have the solution. What must she really think of my intellectual capacities? Poor little Adele. So sweet and kind, and yet so simple and stupid. That’s what she must make of me.
If only she knew.
