Life Without Me

by Anna Legat

  LIFE WITHOUT ME

  Anna Legat

  Contents

  THE SUMMONS …

  FULL DISCLOSURE …

  THE SENTENCE …

  APPEAL IS GRANTED …

  THE SUMMONS …

  I didn’t see it coming. Had I done so, the shock alone would have killed me.

  I didn’t know what hit me, but it hit me hard.

  I heard my skull crack as it slammed against the pavement. I had heard something similar once before, when my tooth broke on the shell of a small but nasty pistachio. It was one of those tough nuts, the last one in the bag, the one you’re best advised to leave alone. It had a narrow hairline crack hinting at an opening, so I bit into it and that was when my canine split open and an electric current of pain travelled to my brain.

  This time it wasn’t my tooth, it was my skull. And this was far worse. My skull felt as if somebody else’s teeth had crushed it to splinters. It felt as if its contents had poured out of my nose. Something certainly did. It could have been blood. It was warm.

  I should have passed out, but I hung on to consciousness, wondering who would take care of all my unfinished business while doctors were trying to glue my brains together in the hospital. Who would take care of Mother? Emma? Mark? And who on earth would take care of Rob – because it certainly wouldn’t be Rob.

  My head had rolled awkwardly to face the house so I could see him pounce to the window. His mouth rounded in a scream which I couldn’t hear, but I knew he definitely wouldn’t hear me when I said, ‘Don’t just stand there! Call an ambulance!’

  Though I couldn’t hear myself say it either, so maybe I only thought it.

  He ran out of the house with a kettle in his hand. I had always believed that people dropped things when in shock. Traditionally, the thing to drop would be a cup of tea; it would tumble slow-motion to the floor and smash into a thousand ceramic shards. A dramatic ping and the shocked person’s face, frozen in horror, would complete the picture. Rob, however, had a different take on the matter. He was running towards me, clutching the bloody kettle with the cord dragging behind it on the ground. I heard the clanking of it. I heard Rob yell, ‘Georgie!’

  I gave up. I can’t remember closing my eyes, but I stopped seeing. My hearing was gone too. I could hear and see nothing. Absolutely nothing! Not even a dark tunnel with a shimmer of light at the end of it.

  I thought I was dead, but I wasn’t. Not quite. At least not until Rob attempted to perform CPR on me and pushed his entire weight firmly into my ribcage. That squeezed the living daylights out of me and out popped my bewildered soul.

  Expelled from my battered body, I found myself watching the scene from above as it unfolded in its whole macabre glory.

  I saw myself on the ground, squashed under Rob’s weight as he was vigorously punching my chest. His thrusts animated my body, forcing it into knee-jerk reactions. Every so often he would pinch my bleeding, runny nose and inflate me like a ball. Between gasps for air he would sob and scream, and whimper and urge me to get up. If there had ever been a chance of that happening, Rob had effectively managed to destroy it.

  A man came running from the top of the road. He was breathless. ‘I called an ambulance. It’s on its way. I saw it happen. A car hit her. Hit and run … I got the numberplate!’

  So that was it – I knew what had hit me, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I was dead, or as good as, and the whole world had come to a standstill.

  Life without me was unthinkable.

  Only that morning I’d had it all well under control. My life was a well-oiled machine, ticking away like a Swiss clock, predictable. Every event – past and future – was scrupulously forecast and documented in my diary. I was smug in my custom-designed world. There were no surprises. I hated surprises. They threw me off.

  The hit-and-run palaver threw me off big time.

  That morning, as every morning, we had breakfast: cereal, semi-skimmed milk, tea. That was it. A healthy, no-nonsense breakfast which facilitated a self-restrained and consistent start to each day. I never varied breakfast, not on Sundays, not at Christmas, not on holidays. Breakfast was breakfast – a down-to-earth, regular routine. Anything over and above that would be sinful.

  We ate in silence. We usually did. Emma was perched on the edge of her stool, half of her skinny backside sliding off it; one leg was propped on the rung of the stool, the other one outstretched, with toes pointing to the door – her typical ‘on your marks’ pose. She looked bored, which was normal for Emma. If anything was crossing her mind, she kept it to herself, under her unnaturally long and gothic black lashes. I often wondered how she managed to cultivate such long lashes, but never had the time to work it out. Or ask her. On the whole, we didn’t say much to each other in our house, only the important things, like changes to our schedules or additions to the shopping list.

  ‘I’m staying at Becky’s tonight. Revising the Great Depression.’

  ‘Get your change of clothes into the car. I’ll drop you straight after school. I’ve got to go and see Grandma. Haven’t been there since … was it Tuesday last week?’

  ‘She wouldn’t know if it was Tuesday last year,’ Mark shrugged.

  ‘Finish your cereal!’

  Under the veneer of sarcasm Mark was a big, floppy softy. He was still living with us at the less than tender age of twenty-three, his room an endearing mess of heavy metal posters, cheesy underwear, and law books. He was reading Law, just like his mother and father had. In his final year of university and flying higher than a kite on a breezy day, he had his life mapped out for him. He played cricket on Sundays, had a regular respectable girlfriend called Charlotte Palmer, spent most his evenings working, and was saving up to travel to the Far East on his gap year before finally taking up a post in one of the most prestigious city law firms. I was proud of him. He never gave us any trouble.

  Mark looked like his father: tall and sinuous, long arms, long legs, a bit clunky in his unintended lengthiness. Obviously, as far as Rob went, that description would have fitted him twenty-five years ago. Now the long legs had become a bit spidery in appearance, the chest had caved somewhat and shoulders had dropped, but then that’s what fifty years does to people if they don’t keep fit. Rob didn’t, and he was pushing fifty big time. He was an office mole. Thinning greying hair, glasses he polished with a clean white hankie every day at breakfast, Radio 2 crackling softly into his ear – he was no bother. I loved him the same way I had when we got married. It wasn’t a passionate, carnal type of love. It was rather maternal: indulgent and tolerant. And there were only a few things I had to tolerate about Rob: the indecisiveness, the mumbling under his breath, the misplacing of things and, of course, the damned Radio 2 crackling away at breakfast time. Still, I loved him, which I often doubted was something he could say about me. He simply endured me, and on a good day was fond of me. Certainly not as fond as he was of Radio 2, though. Listening to Radio 2 was his major hobby. To be fair to him, he couldn’t listen to me – I wasn’t ever saying that much. I was busy.

  ‘Off now!’ I kissed him on the forehead. He glanced at me, puzzled, as if he was making every effort to remember who I was. I didn’t have the time to wait for him to gather his wits and deliver a reply.

  I was dropping Mark at uni first and then Emma at school. I did that every morning, always had. Rob would take a bus to work. That way he wouldn’t have to trouble himself with the kids’ school runs. And he liked reading on the bus, one thing you can’t do when you’re driving. His car, a comical Mini Cooper which only emphasised his awkward six-foot-plus frame when he sat in it, was tucked away in the garage, fresh as a daisy. Rob would take it out every two months to give it a wash and make sure the battery hadn’t gone flat. It was a
job he enjoyed – that, and feeding the cat. Every other job around the house was down to me, including school runs.

  I drove on automatic pilot. I knew the steep, windy route up to Bristol University by heart. I blanked out the shenanigans of the morning traffic: the hysterical hooting, the fist-shaking, the killer looks. I ignored the suicidal pedestrians throwing themselves in front of the car, seemingly keen on certain and imminent death.

  I didn’t know then that I would be soon joining their ranks.

  We weren’t speaking. Emma and Mark sat at the back, looking away from each other. I liked having them in the car. They were safe with me. In two weeks’ time Emma would be sweet sixteen. She acted twenty-nine and desperate. I didn’t approve of the long lashes, short skirts, sheer tights, and push-up bras. Who was she trying to impress? It sent the wrong signals to any old pervert lurking out there. She was only a little girl. At her age I still rode my bicycle and wore socks with holes in them. Why couldn’t she be more like me?

  I kept asking her what she wanted to do with her life. She still didn’t know if her usual ‘Oh, leave off, Mum!’ was anything to go by. Nevertheless, I shouldn’t complain. She was doing well at school and had recently taken to revising with Becky for their GCSEs. I liked Becky. She was plump, bland, and a straight-A student, if not particularly streetwise. A good, steady influence on Emma.

  I had good kids. Nothing to worry about. I could take my eyes off them as much as I could take my eyes off the road, and think.

  The morning drive was a perfect time for thinking. My mind wandered off to the Ehler case. I had been preparing for a lengthy, cut-throat trial – Tony always put up a decent fight for his clients – but, out of the blue, Ehler had pleaded guilty. Before sentencing, the judge would hear character witnesses and all that nauseating, sycophantic blabber about what an exemplary model of a son, husband, father, and citizen Michael Ehler happened to be. As far as I was concerned he was a small-time crook. Tony would, no doubt, try to get him off on a suspended custodial sentence and in no time his exemplary client would be back to rebuilding and selling stolen cars to supplement his modest panel beater’s income. Over my dead body! I screamed inside. The time, manpower, effort, and money that went into catching those petty wheeler-dealers was enormous – the rewards mediocre. It was a Herculean task to make charges stick against them and I would be damned if I would let the cocky little bastard off the hook that easily!

  I stopped at the usual spot, on a double yellow line, and let Mark out.

  ‘Got some change for a sandwich?’ He thanked me for the ride in his usual fashion and snatched a ten-pound note from my hand as if it was his due. I tried to calculate in my head how many sandwiches one could buy for a tenner a day, and how much of that money went towards that gap year in the Far East. Emma snorted at the back of the car. She was getting no cash for her sandwiches – the school cafeteria had a brilliant pre-paid card system in place.

  As I arrived at court, I parked in a discreet corner and took out my make-up gear. By the time I finished applying deep crimson lipstick, heavy duty mascara, and glittering baby blue eyeshadow I looked like a common whore. I couldn’t help it – I had to make myself desirable for Tony.

  Tony pushed my buttons. All of them: the ones that made me go for his throat and fight him to death in court, and the naughty ones – ones that made me sweat oestrogen and dribble uncontrollably at the mere thought of him. I was a quivering teenager whenever he came close to me. He smelled good. There was something intoxicating about his scent. You wanted to lick it off him. Then there were those hands with the long, flat-tipped fingers, fingers that could play any woman like a church organ. He wore crisp white shirts with starched collars and cuffs. The silk rustled when he moved. His suits were tailor-made, hugging his toned body like a mould. You wanted to break that mould, tear it off him and let him take you there and then, in public view, against the wood-panelled wall or on the cold marble floor. You wanted the world to watch as he worked you with his organist’s fingers and banged the living daylights out of you as you gasped for air without giving a toss about common sense.

  I knew that ecstatic feeling only too well. It was only a year ago that our sordid affair had ended. It had started following a heated argument over my refusal to give his client a deal on a lesser charge. Forced by the judge to negotiate, we had been locked together in a room with a coffee maker and a plate of stale biscuits. I pointed my finger in his face, shouting, ‘No! You’ll listen! You’ll listen to me, fuck you!’

  He grabbed my hand and twisted it behind my back. His breath was on my face when he said, ‘No, fuck you.’ With his free hand he pulled up my skirt. It was a tight pencil skirt so I helped by wriggling my body for it to get over my hips. He ripped off my knickers and I undid his fly. In no time I was sitting on the conference table, knees up to my shoulders, my dagger-sharp high heels dangerously close to his face. He didn’t even break sweat. His face remained impassive right through it. His body was cool. He smelled like a wild stag. I reeked of sex.

  When we were finished, we told the judge we couldn’t reach an agreement. We were back to square one. The trial went on for another two months and so did our sordid affair. We lived dangerously: in empty courtrooms with five minutes spare to the next hearing, in toilets, parking lots, and once in a hotel corridor before we could get to our room.

  Tony had remained strangely detached. There was no emotion or tenderness to our encounters. I couldn’t call them lovemaking as love didn’t come into it. Sometimes I had the impression he didn’t even like me, just wanted to fuck me and be done with it. The feeling was mutual. I didn’t like Tony either, but that was of little importance. It was purely physical. We were like a pair of copulating rabbits: always in a hurry, fast, impatient, and then promptly on our separate ways. I took to wearing stockings and skimpy knickers with strategically placed slits to facilitate easy access and avoid tearing. We used no protection. For the thrills. The whole idea of fornication is to reproduce. We got off on the risk of that happening.

  I wasn’t proud of myself. I’m still not proud of myself. The best way to deal with it was to assign the whole episode to temporary madness. I had gone banging bonkers for a while and then it passed, and I was cured again. Cured and respectable. Except that I would still dress up and put on my whorish make-up when Tony was around, and I would wiggle my arse, performing my very own version of a mating ritual.

  I checked myself in the rear view mirror. Good grief! I looked cheap. I despised myself. This explained why I couldn’t bear Emma’s elongated eyelashes and short skirts with those sodding sheer tights. I didn’t want her to turn out the way I had. I wanted her to stay in control of her instincts. Respectability comes from self-restraint.

  I got back into the saddle as soon as that trial was over. I lost. I hated losing; I had always been a bad loser. But in that case it was more than just losing the trial – it was the ultimate subjugation. Tony was on top of me, fucking me against my will. Professionally speaking. Professional rape. I ended the affair.

  Of course, Tony thought I couldn’t handle the defeat in court and this was my way of taking it out on him. But it wasn’t about him. It was about me. I was losing my marbles. I had found myself staring down the barrel. If the madness was to go on, I would be consumed by it. My career would be over. I would lose my family. There would be chaos. I would be out of control. Rob would be free to go.

  I loved Rob. He and I had a solid relationship. We had two beautiful children. We had order, purpose, and a good understanding. We were comfortable with each other to the extent that I could wee in the bathroom at the same time as he was cleaning his teeth. We could pass wind companionably while watching the news. And there was no madness. Not even when we first met.

  It had been a fortuitous meeting, destiny in action from the word go. We met at the Edinburgh Festival. I was nineteen, in the first year of university. It was my first holiday away from my mother. She had held a powerful grip on me and my sister
Paula, not to mention our long-suffering father. Mother had been a force to reckon with. Or to get away from, as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. My first step was to go backpacking with friends. Girlfriends. We romped around the Lake District, living on fresh air, cigarettes, and cheap wine. Some of us revelled in random sexual encounters with total strangers. Some of us, but not me. I was one of those prim and proper girls who was shit-scared of falling pregnant before her time. Plus I didn’t hear the call that everyone else seemed to hear – the mating call. You could have diagnosed me as sexually retarded. I was waiting for Mr Right to come and deflower me on our wedding night. I had it all planned in my head.

  We stopped over in Edinburgh for some ‘cultural cleansing’ before returning home to Bristol. The concert we went to would become the most significant milestone in my life. I can’t remember the name of the band that played that night, but I recall blinding beams of light crossing above our heads and bouncing off our faces, turning us all into a broken collage of arms, torsos, heads, and grins, like a Cubist painting. I was wearing my ripped jeans and a cropped top with bare midriff – nothing spectacular. My girlfriends were long since lost in the crowd, probably copulating with random passers-by behind portaloos. I was sort of twitching to the music. A tall, lanky bloke appeared and started twitching next to me. I seized him in my peripheral vision: he was OK, a bit skinny, but then who wasn’t at twenty-two? He had a punk hairdo and the long mild face of a little lamb. I gathered there was a reason to him dancing next to me, as in, he was about to chat me up. But he didn’t. He didn’t have the guts. I had to take the initiative and once I did, there was no going back.

  Nodding my head to the music, I smiled at him. He responded.

  ‘Do you like them?’ he shouted over the noise.

  ‘Yeah!’ By then I was head-banging to show my appreciation.

  ‘Me too.’