by Rosa Temple
Chapter 2
I’d wasted the best part of three hours with that bunch of losers and for what? So I could become the next sub-editor in an office of losers? I need a good cry on Rob’s shoulder. Rob and I had spent many a Sunday morning, lying in bed, talking about our lives and how things could be when he got promoted and I got a job on a national newspaper. We’d buy a bigger place. We talked about having children, marriage. We’d be able to join in conversations with our married friends when they talked about moving into the catchment area with the good schools. We’d discover if it was true that Mamas and Papas buggies were not as good as they used to be but twice as expensive. We would finally be grown-ups.
Rob got his promotion, he made junior partner and I started to become anxious about my career. It looked more and more as if it was going nowhere. I was constantly trying to look out for any opportunity that came up in which I could use the skills I had. I’d enjoyed working with the script editors back in the days at the production company. I thought one day I could write for television which was what gave way to the idea that, actually, I might like to write a novel. Lying in bed on those Sunday mornings, Rob and I would discuss story ideas for my novel, killing ourselves laughing when the plots became more convoluted and less believable by the second.
Still at an all-time low after Geoff’s do, I get off the bus near home. Maybe my current state of disappointment and depression would be the perfect starting point for a novel. I shake a vision of only ever selling four books, one each for Mum and Dad, and one each for Rob and Helena, and try to stop feeling sorry for myself. All I really need is Rob’s big strong arms around me. I slip my shoes off as soon as I close the main door. My toes have lost all feeling and I can’t wait to peel off the outfit I wasted time and money on.
I get to the top floor and sigh in relief to have made it home. There are no lights on in the flat and my heart sinks. Rob isn’t home and the flat is ghostly quiet. About to go into the kitchen to check the fridge for wine I’m suddenly distracted by a noise coming from the bedroom. There was no light under the door when I came in but I’m pretty sure I can hear movement now. Maybe Rob is home after all and went to bed already. He has been putting in a lot of extra hours over a big case he has on.
I stop with my hand above the door handle when I hear one of Rob’s sex sighs. I’d never walked in on Rob masturbating before and this wasn’t the time to start. Another sex sigh peels out in the bedroom. A sex sigh that isn’t Rob’s. Is he watching porn in bed? Yuck. Maybe I should go in and surprise him, let him see what he’s missing. Surely his tipsy girlfriend would be a much better option then some false-breasted actor on a laptop.
I open the door. There’s no laptop light in the room. The sex sighs continue. The bed moans in response and the headboard bangs repeatedly against the wall. The room reeks of a perfume I know and it isn’t the Daisy I drenched myself in this afternoon. Shadows rise up the wall. The outline of a woman. Even in the dark I can see her naked back. Long, wild hair being tossed over her shoulder and her thighs gripping Rob’s thighs. My heart does a somersault and lands in my throat.
A part of my brain isn’t allowing me to believe that Rob is having a full-on sex session in our bed. In my bed. Naked. Rob sighing sex sighs and slapping the thighs of another woman.
I feel the blood drain from me, cold crawling over my skin and giving me goosebumps. I blink several times before realising hot tears are streaming down my cheeks and my lips are quivering involuntarily. My mouth is dry. I can’t speak. The only part of my body that allows itself to move at my command is my hand. I slap on the light switch.
The sighing stops immediately and two sets of eyes flick across to me. One from behind a mop of black curls, the other from Rob’s head which has shot up from the pillow. Sheets and underwear fly up in a mad flurry as clothes are grabbed from the floor and body parts are covered up. My next impulse is to throw up. I gag. I manage to gasp Rob’s name before rushing to the bathroom to be sick. Nothing comes out but I stand over the toilet bowl and heave. The bathroom door opens tentatively as the front door slams shut. I turn to see Rob standing there with a sheet around his waist.
‘Syd. Syd … I.’ He stops talking when I rush past him to the bedroom knowing she has already fled the scene but I just need to see for myself. Apart from the dishevelled bed, all that remains in the room is the stench of their sex and that oh too familiar perfume.
Rob has the nerve to touch my arm as it rests on the door frame, my mind playing the scene over and over with a strobe light effect on it. I throw Rob’s hand off me, banging my hand on the door in the process and it hurts like hell.
‘Are-are you all right? Did you hurt your hand?’ he asks as we stand inches from each other in the tight corridor.
‘My hand? Is that all you’re worried about hurting?’ I bellow the words into his face aware that I’m spraying spit into his open mouth which I notice is stained with another woman’s lipstick. I want to throw up again. ‘Rob.’ I shout. ‘Rob.’ I shout his name again because I don’t know what else to say.
‘Syd, I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know what I’m doing. What the hell have I just done?’ He grips his hair with his fingers.
‘In one word, Rob, adultery. You’re an adulterer, you fucking bastard.’ I punch both fists on his chest. He catches my hands and I shrug him off.
‘Why did this happen?’ I’ve stopped fighting and started shouting again. ‘How could you have sex in our bed? How could you even want to in our bed of all places, not with me … not –’
Before I can stop myself my right hand balls into a fist and I swing at Rob’s jaw, managing to catch it slap bang in the little dip I love to trail my finger over. The need to vomit and to cry has overwhelmingly been overtaken by the need to kill Rob.
I grab his shoulders as he rubs his chin and drive my knee square into his crotch. He doubles over, his hair is a complete tousled mess. I swing his head away from me. It collides with the door frame and Rob is down. The sheet he’s wearing opens and he quickly cups his hands over his unfaithful ball sack before I can take aim.
Stomping my way to the living room I begin pulling all of his books off the bookshelf, ripping out pages and when they won’t give, I start tearing at them with my teeth. I hear the sound of a depraved animal and realise it’s coming from me. I’ve heard the phrase ‘steam coming out of your ears’ but never fully understood how it could feel until tonight. Thursday 6th September, the night my heart is broken in two. The heart I gave to Rob so completely and he’d plunged a knife so cruelly into.
Several minutes or so go by, I’m not really sure how many, and Rob comes into the living room where I’ve flopped onto the floor my back against the bookcase. I’m motionless, no matter how much I want to get up. He waited until all the commotion died down and all my energy has drained from my body. My eyes pierce into his as he stands in the doorway and I’m shaking. Rob has seen me angry. But this is an anger I never knew I had. I totally lost control.
While he stands there in his track suit bottoms and an old t-shirt, I think I’m beginning to calm down. My shoulders, which I hadn’t noticed were tight and achy, drop a few inches, but tears take over again. I’m overcome by the feeling of betrayal and loss. How ridiculous was I to have loved someone as much as I had Rob. As much as I still love him. I trusted him with my life.
Everything we’d talked about, everything we were working towards is gone. Blown up. Annihilated. Brutally assaulted. Set alight. All in one night. I don’t know how I will ever get past this. I can never forgive him. Forgive them. My love was wasted, has been for years, only I hadn’t seen it coming.
The omens for this break up were all there. They had shown themselves that morning the minute my perfect look got spat on by the murky puddle, courtesy of the white van driver. For as much as I love Rob, I hate him too and from somewhere deep inside I can feel the anger starting to well up inside me again. I furiously wipe tears from my eyes.
Rob approaches me with his arms outstretched as if I’ll fall right back into them, as if when he holds me everything will be all right. It isn’t all right and it never will be.
I get up from the floor before he can reach me and bowl past him, heading for the kitchen. Goodness knows why the kitchen. What I should be doing is packing my things. Better still, his. But I want to be the one to walk out. Storm out. Never look back. I don’t want to be in the same space as Rob, breathing his air. He’s contaminated the flat.
‘Syd, please, we have to talk about this.’ His voice is weak, as he follows me into the kitchen. Rage and anger are driving me as I reach for the knife block and pull out the bread knife.
‘Talk?’ I shout. ‘What’s there to talk about? How much better she is than me? What a big laugh you’ve had at my expense?’
‘Sydney. No, it’s nothing like that. It was nothing, all nothing and I just need you to calm down so I can tell you –’
I swipe at the air with the knife.
‘You come anywhere near me and there’s no telling what I’ll do.’ I don’t even recognise my own voice. It seems to hiss from my lips as I shake. Rage has won over Chi. No matter how much I try I can’t calm down.
‘Put the knife down, Sydney. This isn’t you.’
‘Yes it is! It’s what I do when the man I love breaks my heart.’ I blindly throw the knife in his direction. It hits the side of his leg and he yells in pain. I rush to the door not knowing if I’ve hit a major artery. All I’m aware of are the million and one expletives coming from my mouth and the racket Rob is making about his poor leg and the amount of blood he’s losing.
I pick up my jacket and bag from the floor in the corridor and leave the flat. I know he won’t chase me because he’s hopping around in pain and I did see blood on his sweatpants.
Two blocks away I discover my feet are beginning to feel cold and damp. I forgot to grab my shoes. My new trousers have grown soggy around the hems because I stepped into the solitary puddle still remaining in London from earlier.
Chapter 3
I contemplate storming back to the house to get some shoes. A pair of trainers. Something. But the thought of seeing Rob right now is the last thing I want. A woman approaches from the other end of the street and I take in the look she gives me. First she looks at my feet. Her eyes trail upwards to my face and she’s trying not to stare. I know she pities me and wonders what the fight I’ve just had was about. She must wonder who came off worse. She’ll know it’s me. I’m the one without shoes. She walks past, not saying a thing, the typical London response to someone who is obviously in distress. Maybe she thinks I’ve got a friend I can go to. I suppose that should be Helena. But how do I talk about this to anybody? It’s as humiliating as it is heartbreaking. How does this reflect on me? Five years of thinking I made Rob happy. Everyone will think I’m a failure. They’d be right. Unlucky in love, unsuccessful in my career. I’m hopeless.
I grit my teeth and keep on walking. I’m too embarrassed to see anyone, on the bus, on the tube, especially the way I look, so I keep going.
I walk all the way to my parents’ house in Willesden Green, not crying, not screaming and with sore feet. Too weak to look for their key I ring the doorbell. That’s when I notice there are no lights on. Shit. They’re probably both fast asleep, it’s late and I didn’t even think about the time. Just as I think I should dig out the key and crawl upstairs to the spare room as quietly as I can, a light comes on. The hall light shines a faint yellow through the upper window of the front door. It opens slowly so that soft yellow falls on my face.
Mum looks at me with absolute horror.
‘I left him,’ is all I can say. I précis a whole night and five years of lies and deceit into three words.
Without a word Mum wraps me up in one of her best Mum Hugs and whisks me inside and up the stairs. Dad is on the landing in his pyjamas and I feel the look that Mum gives him. He bows his head and retreats quickly back to their bedroom and closes the door.
Mum walks me to the bathroom.
‘I’m running you a bath, my darling. You just hang in there. Okay?’
I nod, watching the water rising. Steam builds up in the room and the smell of Mum’s rose scented bath salts fills the air.
‘I’ll get you a towel and robe. You just pop yourself in there for a bit.’
Minutes later I’m sitting in the bath hugging my knees to my chest when Mum comes back to the bathroom with a mug of tea. She hangs a towel and a towelling dressing gown on the back of the door and hands me the tea before sitting on the toilet lid. She won’t look me in the eye, just keeps hers down-turned while bubbles pop and sparkle around my hunched shoulders. In the bath I shiver and take a sip of tea. For the next five to ten minutes I shiver and sip, shiver and sip, stopping to sniff every now and again. I’m too numb to look at Mum, too wounded to weep and too angry to utter another word.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Mum says realising I’ve reverted to my teenage self, meaning I can’t bring myself to talk about my problems. I need time.
When the water starts to turn cold I put the cup on the floor and lift myself out of the bath. Only half drying my body, I wrap the towel around me and loosely knot it around my chest. I drape the dressing gown on without tying the belt and head to my old bedroom, now the spare room. I crawl into bed and as tired as I am, I can’t sleep.
My mind is racing, so is my pulse. I take deep breaths, try to tap into my Chi but all there is inside me is anger. All those angry words. Rob’s face had been a picture when he’d caught sight of me standing in the bedroom. I’d grown accustomed to the various expressions of his face. The look he gave me when he broke or lost something of mine. The look that told me he had remembered a birthday or anniversary too late and the present he’d bought wasn’t up to much. No matter what, he always managed to return his expression to one in particular. That look of little boy lost; cute and innocent. I could never get or stay angry with him when he gave me that look.
Knowing I had this weakness for him is probably what led to the little lies. They were little once. White lies about why he was going to be late home from work. I used to sit, religiously, waiting for him to come home, looking out towards the houses opposite, imagining the bustle up on the main road. I’d picture couples having drinks in The Salusbury or eating at the Thai place Rob and I loved, while two plates of lasagne turned cold on the table in front of me. Poor Rob, he’d come home tired from all that work at the solicitor’s office but did he really think he could hide the smell of the pub on his Hugo Boss suit or the taste of lager when he gave me a too wet, too enthusiastic kiss “Hello”? Saying in a slurred voice, ‘Sorry, Syd, meeting dragged on,’ or ‘Big case came up.’
I suppose I was stupid for not pulling him up on those occasions. Those little white lies. I could have just said to him, ‘Rob if you want to have a drink with your friends after work, go ahead. I don’t mind. At least be honest so I don’t waste my time cooking you dinner when you’re too wasted to eat it.’
No relationship is without its problems. I didn’t mind Rob having a social life. Of course, I didn’t think for one moment the white lies would grow dark, that Rob could be so deceitful and underhanded.
*
I’m guessing it’s late morning when I wake up. I figure the world outside has moved on and no one else has had a night like mine. The sun is out. It’s bright in the bedroom and I can hardly open my eyes. I don’t want to know how late I am for work.
Unless my old bedroom is haunted, I get the feeling that someone else is in the room. I’m sure I can hear breathing. I manage to open my eyes to find both my parents sitting on my bed. Dad is in his suit. Obviously, he has taken a day off work to make sure I’m all right and Mum is either on a late shift at the doctor’s surgery reception or she is staying home for me too. Either way, that’s three of us not at work.
‘Er, morning,’ I croak. ‘Sorry, what time is it?’ I make efforts to find a clock or my phone.
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br /> ‘It’s two o’clock in the afternoon,’ Mum says with a weak smile.
‘Shit! Sorry. Look I need to get going or call Danielle. Have you seen my phone?’ I pull off the covers and find my dressing gown is open and the towel is damp and stuck to my leg. ‘Shit! Sorry. Where’s my bag?’ I tie the dressing gown as my head whips from side to side. ‘Where’s my bag?’
Mum stands up.
‘Darling, it’s okay. I called Danielle. I told her you were not well and you won’t be coming in.’
I crash down onto the bed and slump forwards.
‘Thanks, Mum. What did she say?’
‘Not much. Just “okay” I think.’
‘She’s pissed off with me.’
‘Why?’
‘Danielle is always pissed off with me, even though I haven’t done anything.’ I notice a quick exchange of glances between Mum and Dad but won’t entertain what that could be about.
‘Sweetheart,’ Dad says at last. ‘I’ll kill the bastard if you want me to. I took a half day at work.’
‘What? To kill Rob?’
‘No. Mum said you were still asleep so I came home. What’s happened, Sydney? What did he do?’
‘It’s all right, guys,’ I say. ‘Really. You don’t have to worry. Or murder anyone. I already took care of it.’ I crawl back into bed forgetting they’re both there. I’m sleepy all of a sudden.
My parents, however, look wide eyed at each other from either side of the bed, then back at me.
‘No,’ I say, sitting up on my elbows. ‘I don’t mean I killed him but I came close.’ I look at Mum’s face growing paler and paler by the second. I have to put her out of her misery before total exsanguination.
‘Relax, Mum. A slap around the chops. A heel to the kneecap with my shoes off. That’s all. The bastard will live.’ I decide to leave it at that. Anything else will shock them. ‘And if you don’t mind, guys, I need to process this. Just, don’t worry. I’ll sort it out and then I’ll be out of your hair.’
