Roar

by Cecelia Ahern

  Drivers stared at her from behind windscreens, minds still too foggy from recent sleep to register what they were seeing, which was a thirty-something woman in a dressing gown, wearing a pair of trainers. Some thought she had been involved in the accident ahead, was wearing pyjamas for school drop-off, and in shock had wandered away from the scene. Some even tried to coax her to safety but she ignored them. Others thought she was simply mad and locked their car doors as she neared them.

  Only one person called the police.

  Officer LaVar and his partner Lisa were the nearest to the scene and the first to make contact with her. By then her position had become increasingly dangerous. She had reached the end of the back-up and was walking head-on towards oncoming traffic travelling at 120 km. Those who came upon her braked hard, honked loudly and flashed their hazards to alert the traffic behind, but it didn’t deter her.

  Only when LaVar and Lisa flew down the shoulder, sirens blaring, did she seem to snap out of her trance. She finally stopped walking. They managed to stop the cars, causing yet another traffic jam, and rushed to her, wary of her reaction.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ she said, breaking into a relieved smile. ‘I’m so glad you finally came.’

  LaVar and Lisa looked at one another in surprise at her lack of hostility, and Lisa left the handcuffs behind. They guided her to the side of the road, to safety.

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ the woman said, serious now, ‘I need to report a crime. Somebody has stolen my common sense.’

  The concern fell from LaVar’s face, though it rose in Lisa’s. They put her gently into the car and drove her to the station. LaVar sat down with her in the station’s cell, because Lisa couldn’t keep a straight face. There were two steaming Styrofoam cups of milky tea before them.

  ‘So, tell me what you were doing out there,’ he said.

  ‘I told you,’ she said, politely. ‘I was trying to report a crime. Somebody has stolen my common sense.’

  She lifted the steaming tea to her lips.

  ‘Careful it’s very ho—’ he warned, too late. She winced as the tea scalded the inside of her mouth.

  ‘Told you,’ she said finally, after she’d recovered from the immediate pain. ‘Who would do that if they had common sense?’

  ‘Good point,’ he agreed.

  ‘Oh, I know you think I’m crazy,’ she said, cupping her hands around the heat of the drink. ‘Who would steal common sense? And how?’

  He nodded along. Good questions. Valid questions.

  ‘How do you know it was stolen?’ he asked. ‘Maybe you lost it.’

  ‘I did not,’ she said quickly. ‘I am very careful. I make sure not to lose things, to put everything in the correct place, and something like my common sense … no,’ she shook her head. ‘I keep my common sense with me at all times, I always check for it. It’s a necessity, like my phone. I wouldn’t go anywhere without it.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘Someone stole it,’ she repeated. ‘It’s the only logical explanation.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, bowing to her conviction. ‘So we’re looking for a perpetrator.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, relieved to be finally taken seriously.

  ‘Any ideas who? Anybody suspicious lurking around?’

  She shook her head, bit down on her lip.

  LaVar thought too. ‘Let’s put it this way: did you have particularly strong common sense? The sort that would be envied by others?’

  ‘I liked to think so,’ she replied.

  ‘So you may have been known to have good common sense? I’m just trying to think as the perpetrator would. Burglars target homes where they know there are valuables to steal. If somebody stole your common sense, then they knew that you had it.’

  She nodded, happy with his analysis.

  ‘So, were there any occasions in which you showed your common sense, where somebody else may have witnessed it, and decided to steal it?’

  LaVar looked at her. He felt that she was withholding something, and urged her to tell him.

  She sighed. ‘It’s just a theory. And there’s no point in offering theories if it will get people in trouble.’

  ‘No one will get in trouble until we figure it out,’ he said, motioning for her to continue.

  ‘I recently separated from my husband. He had been having an affair, for four months, with a girl at the office who walked like a duck, but I took him back and we were trying to make it work for the past year. But it wasn’t working. Not for me. I told him I wanted to separate.’

  ‘Sensible,’ LaVar nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘And that’s the last time I recall using it.’

  ‘People knew about this decision?’

  ‘Pretty much everyone.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘So it doesn’t narrow down our suspects. That’s a show of great common sense to a large population.’ He thought again, and then continued in the same line. ‘And your husband, was he happy about the situation?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Hmm. Go on.’

  ‘He wanted us to continue living together, but I thought that was a bad idea. Neither of us would be able to move on.’

  ‘Another show of common sense,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she realized. ‘So I still had it then. Which means …’ A thought occurred to her.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We had to sell the house. He packed his things and I packed mine and it was then that I noticed it missing. I unpacked all the boxes in my mother’s house – I’m staying with her for a while, until I get on my feet again. But it wasn’t there … I simply don’t have it any more. My ex-husband must have taken it away with him, packed it in one of his boxes. Either deliberately or accidentally, I don’t know, but it’s my only theory. I’m certain I had it before we moved.’

  LaVar thought hard. ‘And what makes you say you don’t have it now?’

  ‘This morning I walked down the motorway in my dressing gown.’

  ‘True,’ he agreed. ‘Yet …’ He looked at her more closely. ‘You seem to have your wits about you.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my wits he took! If he had, we would be back together again, living in our house. If anything, doing what he did restored my wits.’

  He nodded. A sensible rationale once again.

  ‘Tell me, what are you wearing beneath your robe?’

  She seemed taken aback and clutched her robe tighter to her chest. ‘My nightdress.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just go outside in that?’

  ‘Because I would have frozen. And it’s quite see-through.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What?’

  He looked down at her feet.

  ‘What about the trainers? Do you wear them around the house with your nightwear?’

  ‘No! I usually wear my slipper socks, the ones with the grips on the sole, but they weren’t appropriate for the motorway.’

  ‘Indeed not.’ He wrote something down in his notebook. ‘And for what purpose did you walk down the motorway?’

  ‘I told you, to report a crime. I know, it is nonsensical.’

  ‘You know this.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well then, if you know it is nonsensical then surely it is your common sense that allows you to know that.’

  She thought about it.

  ‘And if your intention was to alert the authorities, you did exactly that.’

  ‘Instead of walking into a police station,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Look,’ he said gently, ‘I can’t file a report. I don’t think your common sense has been stolen, nor do I think it is lost. I think that you still have it, on your person. You’re merely using it in a different way.’

  She pondered this.

  LaVar explained his analysis of the case. ‘You wore your dressing gown because you knew you would be cold, you wore sneakers because you knew slipper socks would not be good for the motorway, and you walked down the motorway in
rush-hour traffic knowing somebody would alert the police, whose attention you needed to report your crime. It seems you achieved everything you set out to do, despite the method you utilized to achieve it.’

  She sat back, and pondered that some more. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘Under the circumstances, I’m going to let you go, with a firm warning. Whatever you do, do not endanger your life or the lives of others.’

  She nodded, head down, feeling like a scolded child.

  LaVar lost his authoritative tone. ‘Your common sense is a little different, I’ll give you that. It isn’t linear, it is not the common sense of the majority of people, but that doesn’t mean that it is wrong or that it has been lost or stolen. It is yours and it is unique.’

  Her eyes filled and he reached into his pocket and retrieved a tissue. He handed it to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said gently.

  ‘You’ve obviously been through a very stressful time. People think differently during those times, but you’re not going crazy.’

  ‘You’re a very smart detective,’ she smiled.

  ‘See, you just knowing that tells me your common sense hasn’t been stolen,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled, and breathed a long sigh of relief.

  She’d heard about men doing it, knew very well that sometimes it was part of a costume, sometimes for sexual gratification, sometimes because they didn’t completely identify with the male gender, and other times because they were actually female but born in male bodies. Some felt themselves between male and female and so were bi-gendered, having both male and female sides to their soul. She knew all of this because she’d heard stories from women with husbands who liked wearing their panties, women whose sons were now daughters, a woman whose husband liked to go out one night a week as his feminine alter ego. She’d of course known about it all on a vague materialistic level, but then she’d researched it further. For herself.

  She was a woman, not a man; she was born a woman, felt like a woman, dressed like a woman, felt sexy as a woman while wearing women’s clothes, felt sexier as a woman with no clothes at all just in her own skin. And yet.

  She had an overwhelming desire to slip her feet into her husband’s shoes.

  It wasn’t a casual yearning, it was a heart-pounding, head-thumping desire that felt so powerful that it alarmed her. It felt so strong that she knew it was wrong. And as soon as she felt it, she saw his shoes everywhere. They were all over the house, deserted wherever he had kicked them off. Dirty sweaty trainers by the door after his run, polished brogues underneath the table where he kicked them off during dinner after a long day at work, tartan slippers by the leather couch from when he’d put his feet up. It would have been easy at any stage to slip her feet in, even when he was looking. It would have been easy to walk around, make a joke of it; he wouldn’t care, no one would. But she didn’t want to make a joke of it. She wanted to wear those shoes for real. It felt like a big deal, not a casual joke, it felt like something she would rather do in private. She had a longing to wear her husband’s shoes, not because she liked the style, or the fabric, or the shape or the size. She wanted to know what it would feel like to be him, to literally walk around in his shoes.

  She had never felt so frightened by a desire, or embarrassed, or so repulsed by herself.

  But it was difficult to find the time to steal away and for this she was thankful. She wanted to hide from her longings. She worked, he worked, children, food, life, sleep. Days were filled, there was no room for secrecy, you couldn’t go to the toilet without open doors and wandering bodies. But burying this secret desire only caused it to intensify. Like a volcano over time, this hot impulsive passion built and built.

  They were watching television, binge-watching their favourite show, one episode after another, both exhausted and sleep-deprived but needing to get to the end of the series, sure through each slow hour that this one would be their last tonight, but then they’d get sucked in by the cliff-hanger ending and start watching the next episode. Tonight, however, she couldn’t immerse herself in it as she usually did. She felt distracted, jittery. It was like the feeling she used to get back when she was still smoking; that craving for a cigarette that wouldn’t let her rest until she’d smoked one. The volcano within her was active. And she exploded. Silently. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, told him not to pause the show and wait for her – which raised questions; they always paused the show when one of them left the room, not to would cause an argument.

  Leaving him satisfied with her answers she went straight to his wardrobe, feeling more like a swindler than a sleuth, and she surveyed his shoe collection. She felt like a kid in a candy store, viewing the great selection on rows of shelves. She eyed the polished black brogues that he wore to work. How had his workday been, she wondered. Fine, he had said, but he seemed quiet, and she never really got the details. Then she saw his tan trendy brogues, the ones with the blue sole, the young cool vibey husband who was funny and engaged and entertaining after hours. She brought them to the toilet. She locked the door. She put her feet in her husband’s shoes. She walked up and down the shag-pile rug, thinking, wondering, hoping for something – some kind of epiphany, a climax to her slow build, some kind of calm after the eruption that sent her up the stairs. But all it did was pique her curiosity. She needed more. She wanted to know what it was like to walk around like him, out in the world. She shared a house with him, some would argue a life, they had made people together, they had laughed and cried, buried parents, said goodbye to friends together. And yet.

  And yet their lives were very different.

  She didn’t need to understand how he felt about his life; he was quite able to communicate that to her. It was what life was like for him that intrigued her. The normal stuff that he couldn’t communicate because it just was, because it wasn’t different, or didn’t seem out of the ordinary. She wanted to know what it was like.

  She waited impatiently to make her next move.

  She actively encouraged a golfing holiday, which again raised questions, but it meant she would have three days to herself. After waving him off, she waited, just in case he’d forgotten something and came back to get it. She didn’t want him catching her. Fighting the overwhelming urge to get started, she paced the kitchen, watching the clock. Finally, satisfied after twenty minutes that he wasn’t returning, she raced upstairs, taking two steps at a time.

  She entered their walk-in closet and went straight to his trainers. They were such an integral part of his casual look, that I’m running out for bread, milk and bacon look, bringing kids to the playground look, with faded jeans, T-shirt, a hoodie, sports watch.

  Pushing her feet into the trainers, she straightened up and examined her image in the mirror. She giggled. With the house to herself, she posed, tried to stand as he did, giggled again. The shoes were six sizes too big – like clown shoes – and she kept tripping up.

  The door to the bedroom opened and she froze. Ada, their cleaner, appeared at the door to the walk-in closet and she got such a fright, she jumped, swore and held her hands to her chest.

  ‘Mr Simpson, I’m sorry, you gave me such a fright!’ she squealed, trying to catch her breath.

  The woman wearing her husband’s shoes froze, absolutely mortified, waiting for Ada to open her eyes. She wondered if she should make an excuse for wearing his shoes, or if she should act like nothing had happened. She was in her own home, she shouldn’t have to apologize or explain anything, and yet she felt compelled to do both. She was still trying to decide on the best story when Ada continued:

  ‘I would have knocked, but I thought you were away on your golf trip. Just so you know, I let Max out to the garden to do his business and I cleaned out the ashtray beside the shed before you-know-who saw it,’ she smirked.

  The woman frowns. ‘Ada?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘No!’

 
‘Why did you call me Mr Simpson?’

  ‘Oh,’ she rolled her eyes and hurried away. ‘Mike. I’m sorry. I don’t feel comfortable. It feels … whatever, why are you following me?’

  The woman was following Ada as she worked, trying to look deep in her eyes to see why on earth she was calling her by her husband’s name. But it was clear that Ada was not pretending. Startled, she left the cleaner alone and returned to the wardrobe, where she continued to stare at her reflection.

  She took her husband’s shoes off immediately, feeling dirty and ashamed, confused. She couldn’t sleep that night. She lay awake analysing, wondering about how she felt in her husband’s shoes. Setting the bizarreness of it all aside, she replayed in her mind exactly what happened and came to the conclusion that Ada had seemed like a different person to the one she knew, the woman she would speak to a few times a week. Ada had been more formal, jittery – she did not look Mike in the eye, she was less personable. Like she didn’t want to be in the room with him for too long. If it wasn’t because she felt her employer was wearing her husband’s shoes, then it had to be because she didn’t feel as comfortable in a room with Mike as she did with her. Something small but something different, and something new she had learned.

  The following day she put on Mike’s trainers again. She greeted the postman at her door.

  ‘Mike,’ he said in greeting.

  She did not know the postman’s name. He had been their postman for ten years.

  ‘Hey,’ she replied, certain her voice would give her away, but not so.

  The postman, who never looked up to say hello to her, proceeded to talk about football. This new development was enough to spur her on. Already Mike’s life was different. She changed into his stylish shoes, the trendy ones that he wouldn’t wear to work, and headed out to collect the kids from school. Among the hundred-strong herd of women at the school gates, she saw three other men. She immediately felt eyes on her, yet not eyes that were willing to engage in conversation. Ordinarily, there was always somebody for her to chat with at pick-up, but the conversations went on around her as if she wasn’t there. And yet their acting as though Mike wasn’t there only made it more obvious how aware they were that he was there. She felt uncomfortable. She focused on the kids’ classrooms. When the kids arrived, they broke into huge grins.