The Man I Married

by Elena Wilkes

  Paul took the opportunity to extract himself. ‘Yeah, mate sure!’ he said brightly. ‘Let me show you where it is,’ he gestured through. ‘Be careful of the basin taps though, they’re still a bit wobbly.’ They laughed together and I heard the tread of their feet up the stairs. There was the creak of the floorboards across the landing and then the bathroom door opened and the patter of amiable exchange.

  I stood in the kitchen, fighting that same disembodied feeling I had earlier. Did I even know this man? I listened to the rise and fall of voices from the dining room and the gentle hum of the oven. Then I saw his work phone. It sat, black and small on the table where he’d left it. I picked it up. The last message sat there on the screen, its first few words visible:

  I came to your flat and saw your new girl.

  I flicked the screen and the rest of the message scrolled up.

  Did you think once I’d found you I was ever going to let you go?

  The phone fell back onto the table as if it were alive and I snapped a look up. I could hear Paul moving about and I wasn’t going to take a chance of getting caught. Creeping back into the hallway, I glanced up the stairs.

  He was sitting on the landing gazing down at the baby in his arms. There was such a look of rapt concentration on his face, such absorption, that the shock of it sent a jolt of pure physical pain through my chest. I heard the toilet flush and then the sound of running water before the bolt on the bathroom door shunted back.

  ‘Thanks, mate.’ Luke bent to take the baby, and I followed Paul’s eyes, utterly enthralled, taking in the trail of blankets. I turned quickly, almost crashing into the doorframe and stumbled through the dining room and out into the fresh air. Emma was still laughing when she looked round and saw me. She got up quickly, leaving them to it.

  ‘You alright, hon?’ The warmth of her touch sent a hot prickle of tears to the backs of my eyes.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Fine.’ I blinked and squinted tearfully into the sunshine. ‘I’ve got a bit of hayfever I think.’ I fumbled in my pocket for a tissue that I knew wasn’t there.

  Luke appeared with the baby. ‘You alright?’ He frowned at me, concerned. ‘Hayfever,’ said Emma.

  ‘Hold on—’ he handed the baby back to Jess. ‘I use them sometimes. I think I might have some tablets in the bottom of this bag.’ He rummaged around at the bottom. ‘Here.’ He held them up triumphantly. ‘These’ll do the trick.’

  I took one, wavering a bleary smile just as Paul appeared, carrying a huge fruit and jam-filled sponge. There was a whoop of admiration from the table. He gave me a look and then beamed round.

  ‘Pudding, anyone?’ Then he cast about, concerned. ‘Oh Emma, would you grab the tub of ice cream, please? I’ve left it on the side, the serving spoon’s with it.’

  I pretended that it was perfectly normal that Emma would be asked yet again to help, but I went and sat anyway, smiling and pretending, watching them serve up the pudding together.

  I found I had no appetite, but cooed with the rest of them at how delicious it was, pushing spoonfuls of it around my dish. In reality it was as though I was sitting watching the world from somewhere very far away. I could hear the diffused laughter; I could see the vibrant colours of the mats and the tablecloth; I saw someone pick up the baby and begin to feed her. Paul must’ve gone inside and put music on: some discordant jazz began moaning away in the background. The flies hummed, zig-zagging in a net of black above their heads. The reflected scene tipped and began to shimmer as if on molten steel. I sat at the centre of it, in the eye of it all, feeling utterly empty and very much alone.

  * * *

  The front door closed and the gale of goodbye chatter with it. The hallway was sullen with silence.

  I knew he was standing at the end of the hall watching me, his shoulders cutting out the light. A squeeze of anxiety gripped my stomach. Somewhere outside, the birds twittered in the haze of early evening. I turned round. He was drying his hands on a tea towel. There was a minute before he spoke.

  ‘That went well, then.’

  ‘Yes, it did.’ I knew something was coming but I didn’t know what form it would take. I thought about the phone message. I couldn’t cope.

  ‘They’re a friendly lot, aren’t they?’ I deflected.

  ‘Well you were certainly very friendly, so I’m not surprised they reciprocated.’ He turned and went back into the kitchen. I considered going upstairs and getting changed out of the offending clothes, but I didn’t want to draw any more of his attention.

  I walked carefully down the hall, aware of the bruising strike of my heels on the tiles.

  ‘You’ll ruin that floor.’ He spoke with his back to me as he started the washing up. I held onto the doorframe and slipped my sandals off. The floor was freezing.

  ‘Did my clothes bother you that much?’

  ‘No.’ He carried on scrubbing at a plate.

  ‘That’s not the truth though, is it?’

  Let’s get this over and done with.

  He paused, resting the heels of his hands on the sink edge.

  ‘I’m disappointed, actually.’

  My insides tightened to a knot. ‘Because of the baby?’

  I watched his shoulders stiffen. His eyes lifted and he stared blankly out of the window. ‘What madness have you dreamt up now?’

  ‘I saw you with the baby… I thought…’

  The head moved slowly from side to side. ‘I’m talking about you. I’m talking about the way you behave when there are men around. I’m talking about the way you dress. I’m talking about the kind of friends you choose to have: the silly women spouting rubbish, prancing about and putting themselves out there for any man who wants to take them.’

  ‘What?’ I was stunned. ‘You mean Emma?’

  He swung round and a spray of suds from the glass plate he was holding spattered across the floor. ‘Oh come on! Please don’t insult my fucking intelligence! Is that why you felt the need to lie about going for lunch with her all the time you were at work?’

  I blanched.

  ‘Don’t bother making more lies up. She’s already told me. You and her, handing it all out on a plate.’

  ‘I really, honestly, have no idea…’

  ‘Course you don’t.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘The day we moved in here you were flirting with the removal men. If you could’ve only seen yourself!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You spend your time tarting yourself up in clothes suited to someone ten years younger… I mean, what do you think you look like?’ He broke off, shaking his head like a bull elephant. ‘… Seriously?’ His eyes were blazing. ‘I suppose you have no idea about how you were draping yourself over that Luke bloke, have you? Desperate to get his attention… Aww! What a beautiful baby Luke… Aww! I’ve got hayfever! Didn’t you get that he wasn’t interested?’ The whites of his eyes were marbled and wild. ‘That poor wife of his had to watch you showing yourself up and saying nothing. They’ve just had a kid together for Christ’s sake!’ He waved his hand. ‘Ohh! But of course, you’d know nothing about that, would you? You’d know nothing about that kind of bond.’

  His words sliced like a blade. He went to slam the plate into the rack, but it slipped from his hand and shattered into shards at my feet. I stared down at the pieces, shocked and stunned and utterly appalled. I looked back at him. He was breathing heavily and swaying a little. I wondered how much he’d had to drink. I felt for the wall behind me, my fingers inching round the edge for safety.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ He pushed past me in the doorway, knocking me back against the frame. I went to grab his arm.

  ‘Paul!’

  He swung me off, fist lifted, shoving me backwards. I took a step, and felt a sickening crackle of something underfoot. A violent pain shot from the ball of my foot to the top of my skull. ‘Jesus!’ I gasped, grabbing onto the door for support. Paul was there in an instant.

  ‘Lucy? Lucy!… Oh my God, Lucy!’

  He picked me up and carried me straight into the
living room. I buried my face in his neck, unable to think, just aware of the searing pain that was burning up through my calf. He set me down gently on the sofa and dragged a stool over. ‘Don’t move,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t move an inch. I’ll be right back in one second.’

  I lay with my head against the seat, my back arched with the pain, staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t bear to look down; I thought I might throw up at just the thought of it. He appeared again at my side, with a bundle of tea towels, a basin, and some antiseptic. He touched my leg and I jumped a mile.

  ‘Hold still, hold still, just let me have a look.’ There was the immediate pressure of his hand as he lifted my calf to examine the bottom of my foot. He took a sharp intake of breath. ‘No, no, this is pointless. We’re going to have to go somewhere with this. You’ve got a big piece of glass still in the wound, it’s sticking out, don’t move—’

  ‘Oh Jesus!’ The thought of it made my head swim.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you sorted. Don’t panic. I’ll go and bring the car round.’

  A wave of sickness hit me as soon as he’d gone and a spring of sweat slicked through my hairline. I was trembling so much he had to carry me into the car, but we got to A&E with me in the front seat with the heel of my foot resting in a mixing bowl full of tea towels. The whole lot had turned bright red by the time we got there. We saw a very sympathetic nurse and then a doctor who gave me a tetanus injection and something to kill the pain.

  ‘How did you manage to do this?’

  I listened to the minute buzzing of the strip light as I lay on the trolley. I could feel him digging around in the sole of my foot and I closed my eyes. I tried really hard to think of something else. I squeezed Paul’s hand.

  ‘It was my fault,’ I heard him say. ‘I dropped a glass plate and hadn’t cleared up all the bits properly.’

  I opened my eyes and stared at the light. The doctor’s words blurred and re-focussed. ‘…maybe she shouldn’t drink wine and then walk around with bare feet.’ Paul gave a little laugh.

  ‘Now, I’m just going to put a few stitches in here.’

  I heard the percussive clatter of instruments dropping into a metal bowl and took in the strong smell of something like peroxide. Something cold touched my skin and I instinctively jumped.

  ‘Two more minutes.’ Paul squeezed my fingers and smiled down at me. His face was full of love and worry. ‘Hold on in there. Brave girl. Soon be over.’

  I breathed in slowly through my nose and counted down from a hundred.

  ‘Don’t think, don’t think about it.’ He turned my chin to face him. ‘Concentrate on me, only me. You’re fine Luce. You’re fine, you’re fine.’

  * * *

  His mood, whatever it had been, had lifted. All the way home in the car he was like a different person, chatting on about how brilliant the staff had been and how wonderful the NHS was. I could only listen. I was in too much pain to hold a conversation. I clutched the bag of tablets I’d been given and said nothing. I think I was in shock. Shock at his words and his face and his fist…

  The argument stuck and burned into my brain.

  ‘You’d know nothing about that type of bond, would you?’

  But maybe Caitlin would. Was there a child?

  ‘Did you think once I’d found you, I was ever going to let you go?’

  It was all suddenly becoming very clear. The words buzzed through my brain. Caitlin. This was proof. It was Caitlin: the woman I wasn’t. His anger, his fury, the accusations, would all make sense if he felt so bad and wanted rid of me now. His guilt over her and the baby: the need to drive me away: to punish me and punish himself at the same time. Yes, of course.

  I rested my head, keeping my mouth rigid-lipped and eyes tightly closed, unable to bring myself to utter any words or ask any questions, because I really, really didn’t want to hear the answers.

  He’d been seeing someone else; I didn’t know how long, or if it was over between them or if he was still seeing her, but that’s what had been happening. Nothing I could say or do right now would change that. I should have been screaming, I should have been shouting and demanding and walking out. I should have been. Other women would, I knew. But I kept remembering the other moments: I remember watching him sleep, naked on the bed, the patterning dawn light from the curtain giving his skin an eerie underwater glow. The way he lay curled in on himself, like a little child, the fan of his eyelashes against his cheek, his eyes suddenly dropping open and looking at me as though he was looking right through, and into, some part of me that had been buried for years.

  ‘You’re mine,’ he whispered. And on some bizarre, strange and profound level, I knew that to be true. He had me, all of me, and he knew it. I knew it too.

  * * *

  He fussed around endlessly, getting me drinks and cushions, settling me in a chair in the living room with my foot up on a stool; then he and set to work cleaning the blood from the carpet.

  ‘I don’t know how this got here or whether this is going to come out.’ He had a mixture of baking soda and detergent and cold water and was kneeling, scrubbing it into the stain.

  ‘I’ll have a look when I feel up to it.’ I watched him as he worked: his shoulder blades moving easily under his shirt, the slimness of his hips as he crouched, the muscles in his haunches flexing. He was lithe and beautiful and sexy. I could’ve burst into tears right then at just the sight of him. I didn’t want to love him as much as I did. Hating him would have made things so much easier. So why couldn’t I?

  ‘God, what an end to a perfectly brilliant day!’ He grinned round at me and I smiled hesitantly back. The Luke thing was clearly forgotten. I eased my leg, feeling a slow drift of pain from my foot creeping into the back of my knee. I squirmed uncomfortably in the seat.

  ‘You okay?’ He was at my side in an instant, leaning on the chair arm, his face a mask of concern.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, fine. Honestly. Stop worrying.’

  ‘It’s my job to worry.’ He kissed my forehead tenderly. ‘I’ll get you up to bed in a minute when I’ve finished this.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He stood up and smiled, collecting his cleaning stuff together. I rested my head back; the cushion cradled it as my spine tightened horribly and then relaxed. A slow heartbeat of pain began to thrum the length of my body. I glanced into the hallway. There, on those perfect tiles, was a thin shard of glass, glinting in the soft light, my own blood running along one edge as though it’d been painted with a very fine brush. Quite beautiful. I closed my eyes. The pulses between the pain grew a little longer as the tablets began to kick in and the quiet draw of sleep dragged me down to somewhere I really wanted to go. Thrub, thrub, thrub, the pain said.

  Blood. So much of it, I mused, half in sleep and half awake, feeling the irony that the one thing I hadn’t seen this month was blood, and now here it was, lots of it, but a different kind.

  Chapter Nine

  Then my sister Louise rang.

  ‘So is your foot worse? You sound worse.’

  ‘Oh I’m getting there. It’s better than it was. How are you? How’s Mam?’

  ‘Did you ever get my housewarming present? I thought you’d always find use for a bottle of bubbly.’

  ‘I sent you a card to say thank you ages ago. You’ve not got it?’

  ‘Mam might’ve picked it up and hidden it. She does that these days. Hides things.’

  Don’t we all.

  ‘Anyway, I was asking how you were.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  We both stopped.

  ‘You’re not alright though, are you Luce?’

  It was the softness of her voice that did it. ‘No.’ I managed eventually.

  ‘And it’s not just your foot.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you talk about it? Is he there?’

  We’d never spoken like this, Lou and I. This wasn’t what we did. It felt unfamiliar and disloyal and oddly comforting all at the same time.

>   ‘He’s gone into work. I don’t think I know him, Lou.’

  ‘No, well. Mam always said that about Dad, didn’t she?’

  ‘Did she?’

  I realised Paul had left his phone on charge on the arm of the chair.

  ‘You’re not having second thoughts about getting married, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lou. It’s all so bloody hard, there are so many things—’ I trailed off. Where would I start?

  ‘Have you spoken to him about it?’

  ‘Tried to.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Mam said you never know any man until you threaten to leave him.’

  I smiled. ‘Is that what she said?’

  Easing myself forward, I hobbled over to pick the phone up. There was no password.

  ‘It’s when you try to leave them, then all their true colours come out.’

  The message from Caitlin still sat there. I checked the number against the one that had rung him last Sunday. They matched. My stomach turned over.

  ‘But you’re only just married, Luce! You can’t be thinking like that! Not all men are like Dad! It’ll work itself out, you’ll see. It’s bound to be a bit of a learning curve for both of you. Not that I’d know a thing about any of that!’ The chuckle trailed off wistfully but then she paused. ‘If only you lived a bit closer—’

  A sudden lump caught again in the back of my throat.

  ‘So my advice is, don’t lose your friends. They’re the people who’ll celebrate with you in the good times and be there for you in the bad times – and if you ever really need them…’ she paused and I heard her swallow. ‘Dad wouldn’t let Mam have friends; did you realise that? And he chased away any that I might’ve had. So don’t let go of them Luce… trust me, I know when you allow that to happen…’ She suddenly sounded sad. ‘You find you’re in it on your own.’