The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  ‘You haven’t got a jacket,’ I said. ‘You’ll be cold.’ But he just shrugged dismissively, and I thought what a stupid, motherish thing that was to say. And I felt self-conscious suddenly under his gaze, aware that my hair must be a mess and my make-up mostly gone. And I was too tense, too anxious about catching the train, to be able to think of anything to say. What could I say? Andrew was creeping into my head now, and Jono, and the enormity of what I had done.

  I sat forward in the seat. I watched the street lights, the buildings, the cars race by.

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ Simon said and I looked at him. ‘The train,’ he said. ‘You’ll make it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  And then we sat there, staring at each other. He took my hand and he squeezed it, and I still couldn’t think what to say.

  The taxi leant as it hurled around the bend at the back entrance to the station, flinging me sideways against Simon. For seconds he caught and held me, for sweet, fast seconds, and then the taxi jerked to a stop. Before I could get out my purse, Simon dug some money from his pocket and shoved it at the driver, and then we were out and running across the concourse at Waterloo, slowing only to check for the platform number. I had a minute, less than a minute. Clumsy and awkward and frantic now, I ran on and slammed my way through the barrier.

  ‘Call me,’ Simon shouted after me, his voice caught and harsh from running. ‘Call me when you’re on the train.’

  And when I did call him at least five minutes later, after I’d found a seat and got my breath and tried to calm my pounding heart, he was still there, at Waterloo.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to leave like that,’ he said, and I pictured him there without his jacket, without his socks, watching as the train disappeared. ‘I’m sorry you had to leave at all.’

  Now, I look at my reflection in the black of the window beside me and see myself distorted and wild. I take out my little mirror from my handbag and peer into it. I inspect myself; I see the flushed redness around my mouth, and on my chin and my cheeks. And I see the burn in my eyes. You can see what I’ve been doing. Anyone could see it. Andrew will see it. I don’t have any make-up with me except for my lipstick, which I take out now and apply, but my lips still appear smudged around the edges, and swollen. And who am I, covering up what I have done with a bit of lipstick, when I have another man’s scent – another man’s bodily fluids, for heaven’s sake – still warm upon my skin? From nowhere a shot of hysteria bursts up inside me and breaks out on a cracked laugh, which I try to hold back. The man sitting opposite me glances up at me from his newspaper, and then quickly glances away. And really, there is nothing funny in all this, nothing funny at all. But I feel like I am a player; here are my movements, here are my lines, my cues to speak and respond. Nothing seems real. Not my home and my life within it, or this thing that I have just done.

  It’s late and dark, and I ought to get a taxi to take me the short distance from the station to my house, but I cannot bear to be hurrying home now. And so I walk, and I walk slowly, conscious of the sound of my shoes on the pavement. Our street is long and straight and we live about halfway down; I find my eyes pinned to the distance, waiting for my house to come into view, and when it does, irritation and dread rise and mingle within me: the lights are on. Andrew is still up.

  I put my key in the door and my heart is thumping.

  Strangely, the way I feel is the way I imagine I would feel if it was my parents I was coming home to, rather than my husband. I feel like a naughty child or a teenager, about to be found out. And of course I don’t want to be found out, but at the same time I also feel slightly defiant. After all, I may have betrayed Andrew, but hasn’t he betrayed me too, in shutting me out, in driving me to this?

  The house is quiet. For a moment I think that maybe he is in bed and that I might yet avoid him, but as I start to climb the stairs I see that he is in the study; the door is partially open, and there he is hunched over a pile of papers with the computer screen glaring away beside him.

  I stop on the stairs.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think you’d still be up.’

  He doesn’t turn. He shuffles his papers and says, ‘There’s a discrepancy on the credit-card bill. I can’t make it match my accounts.’

  And isn’t that a disaster for an accountant.

  For a few seconds I stay right there, several stairs from the top. I know that he will not look up unless prompted, and that it would be perfectly easy for me now just to go straight into our room, and then quickly into the shower. And yet some demon has me stepping slowly up the last few stairs and loitering at the study door. He sits with his back to me, but I can see part of his face as he moves his head from side to side as he reads through those papers. I see his tiredness; I see his far too familiar frown. And I see how the tension increases in the set of his shoulders as I stand there behind him and watch, and wait.

  ‘It’s very late,’ I say at last. ‘Can’t you leave it for now?’

  And without looking up he says, ‘No. The bill is due tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh.’ I stand there a little longer, and I see his shoulders lock a little tighter.

  See me, I think. Smell me. You must know.

  Eventually he asks, ‘Did you have a good evening?’

  And I say, ‘Yes. Yes I did. I had a very good evening, thank you.’

  And that is all.

  Slowly, I get undressed. I feel that I am inside a layer of glass and any sudden movement will break my shelter. I take my time in the shower, carefully washing my sins away. And yet Simon is still on my body. I am changed, moulded to a different shape, stamped by another man’s mark.

  Andrew will know. How could he not?

  I lie in our bed and I can smell the faint scent of Simon’s aftershave, still on my hair. If Andrew were to hold me, or to lie close to me, surely he would smell it, too. But it is a long time till Andrew comes to bed, and clearly he has other things on his mind.

  He creeps in beside me and I hear him sigh.

  I turn my head on the pillow, so that I am facing him. I am wide awake. Too tired, too wired to sleep. Tonight I have crossed the line; I have done what I thought could never be done. I have broken out, however shadily. And now I stare at my husband, and my husband stares at the ceiling.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask, because one of us must speak.

  He doesn’t answer straight away. He doesn’t look at me. Then, after a while, he says, ‘Yes.’ Followed by, ‘They’ve charged us the wrong amount on the gas bill. I’ll have to phone them up tomorrow.’

  I watch as his eyes gently close. I watch as he drifts into sleep. I wonder if it has ever occurred to him that I would, eventually, sleep with someone else. And that he could let it happen, and that he could lie there now, apparently oblivious to the fact that it has, astounds me.

  I think of Simon, kissing my mouth, my neck, my chest. I think of his body, so hard and urgent, driving into mine. I think of his hands lacing with mine and of the sound of his voice whispering, Rachel, Rachel, over and over, as if he would never, ever get enough of my name. And of the intensity of his eyes; of the paleness of his skin and his beautiful face. And I think of my own body, jumping into life. I think of what I have done and I relive it, every moment. And I do not feel guilty. Oh no. I do not feel guilty, I feel justified.

  Simon calls me in the morning at a quarter to nine, after Andrew and Jono have gone and I am standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror, contemplating my body, seeing it with new eyes. My mobile rings and I clamour downstairs to answer it, chucking out the contents of my bag with scrabbling fingers; clumsy, giddy as a sixteen-year-old. My heart pounds; my voice comes out breathy, fast.

  ‘Hello.’

  And he says, simply, ‘Rachel.’ And never again will my name be an accusation, an apology, a weary plea of denial. Now, it will always be something else. ‘How are you?’ he asks, his voice tender, and gentle, and slow. I picture him scrubbed and immaculate in his pristine suit, sitti
ng behind a large oak desk, his office door closed to the world. I am crouched at the bottom of the stairs, still naked, huddled against the wall, lest the postman should come to the front door, and peer through the glass, and see.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, and I screw up my eyes and flinch at my lack of a better reply. ‘How are you?’

  He laughs, quickly, softly, then says, ‘I was worried about you getting home.’

  ‘It was okay, really.’

  ‘There was no . . . problem?’

  He means with Andrew. He means with Andrew, who sat at his computer and did his best to avoid noticing me at all. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No problem.’ And a spider of hurts creeps its barely-there trace across my heart, strengthening my resolve.

  I can hear him breathing and think that probably he can hear me, too; I try to breathe more quietly, and I wish that I could think of something to say; the right thing, the witty, sophisticated thing.

  Then he says, ‘Can you be free, today, at lunchtime? It’s short notice, I know, but I had a meeting that’s been cancelled and I – I want to see you again.’ He talks quickly, as if there’s some thread of doubt in him, as if he fears I might say no.

  And just as quickly I say, ‘Yes of course. I’d love to.’

  I meet him outside the Oxo Tower because I cannot remember exactly where his flat is. I am there just moments before him, and I lean on the railings by the river and watch the view to stop myself from watching, too eagerly, for him. But still some instinct has me turning, just before he approaches. I see him walking towards me, smiling at me, and deep within me rusty, long-forgotten senses curl and flicker into life. I cannot believe I am doing this. I cannot believe I am here. I feel as if I have stepped into somebody else’s body, and somebody else’s life.

  He is carrying a picnic bag from some fancy delicatessen. ‘I sent my secretary out,’ he says when he reaches me, and kisses me on the cheek. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  But we don’t eat anyway, at least not until afterwards. We go straight up to his flat and I am wired, every nerve in my body fired up. There is a voice in my head saying, See it, do it, and mentally I am recording all this. Recording everything; every play of the light, every scent, every sound. His fingers on my skin, the weight of his body, pressing down on mine. I feel his touch like a bruise – so aware am I, after feeling nothing like this for so long. It’s like having sex with a stranger, but that’s because it is sex with a stranger. While one voice in my head is so frantically making notes, there is another voice telling me that I am a fool to trick myself otherwise. But what do I care? What do I care, when it makes me feel like this?

  And how easy it is to have an affair.

  Suddenly, those days that stretched out so empty before me have a new purpose, and I can be free at the drop of a hat. An hour here, a couple of hours there. I keep my phone right with me always; I jump to its command. Like a Girl Guide, I keep myself prepared. I can get from my house to Simon’s flat in just over thirty minutes if I get a fast train, if I time it right.

  And with Simon’s flat being so close to his office, he can nip back home often; on his way back from court, say, or from meeting clients. He can build in a little extra time. Sometimes he calls me unexpectedly.

  ‘I can escape for half an hour,’ he might say. Or ‘I can be at my flat at one-thirty. Can you make it?’

  And it is worth it, even for half an hour. Even for less.

  Oh yes, I take to it like a duck to water. I take to it like it is the answer to all my woes, a plug to fill the void.

  And it isn’t just the sex. We talk too. He talks, constantly, about his sister, about the old days. And that helps to justify it, too. He needs to talk. We meet, on stolen lunchtimes and sneaky afternoons, and we lose ourselves in the sort of fast sex that we would have been having back then, though not with each other. And then he talks, about all those people and all those parties from so long ago, and even if I wasn’t there I can go along with it, I can picture it. I knew those people. I can pretend. He laces me in, and takes me back to those heady, vibrant days before everything became so serious and precarious and tainted with doubt.

  And Andrew simply doesn’t notice. He is gone all day; he has no idea where I am or what I do.

  I become a little careless. I leave my phone lying around, and on it all my stored messages from Simon, the ones I cannot bear to delete. One day, when Andrew is working at home for some reason, my phone rings when I am in the shower. I’d left it on top of the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and I hear it ring, but in the time it takes me to switch off the shower and grab a towel, Andrew is there before me. I yank open the bathroom door just as he picks the phone up, and the ringing stops.

  ‘Missed call,’ he says as I stand rooted to the spot, water running from my hair and my heart pounding. He is looking at the screen. ‘S.R.,’ he reads. ‘Who is S.R.?’

  But he doesn’t wait for an answer. He doesn’t really want to know. He hands me the phone and wanders back out of the room, leaving me dripping shower water all over on the floor and wondering what would have happened if he’d got there just two seconds sooner and answered it. Would he then just have said, ‘Some man for you,’ and passed me the phone? Would he even have been at all suspicious?

  THIRTEEN

  ‘They used to fight sometimes,’ Simon tells me in a plaintive voice. ‘My mother and Vanessa.’

  ‘Oh, Simon, all mothers and daughters fight.’

  It is a Thursday, sometime after two. We are lying on his bed and under my head I can feel the hardness of his chest, the beat of his heart, and the deep vibration of his voice as he talks.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘But sometimes they’d really fight. Screaming and shouting and slapping at each other. They’d go wild, both of them. Vanessa especially.’

  ‘You probably remember it worse than it was,’ I say because it is hard for me to imagine this version of Vanessa. The Vanessa I knew was so calm, so serene. ‘You were very young.’

  ‘I hated it when they fought,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know what to do. My mother threw Vanessa out once. Literally. They were having this horrendous row and my mother grabbed Vanessa by the hair, dragged her down the hall, opened the front door and literally hurled her out. Vanessa skidded straight down the steps and lay there screaming. My God, the noise.’ He shudders, and I feel it, under my ear. ‘They always made it up afterwards of course, but . . . sometimes I wonder if that is why she behaves the way she does. My mother, I mean. I wonder if it’s guilt.’

  ‘Oh, surely not, Simon. Surely not.’

  But he says, as if he hasn’t heard me, ‘I wonder if she’s just screwed up with guilt.’

  ‘She’s screwed up with grief,’ I say. ‘And love.’

  He sighs, and I can feel his mood, sliding down. This room doesn’t help. It’s so claustrophobic. We lie here in the daytime, but it feels more like night. The window in here is small and quite high up, and covered with a grey blind made from a heavy, canvas-like fabric. I have tried to pull that blind up before, but the string that operates it is twisted and too thin for the weight of the material; it cranked its way up awkwardly, and then the view that from the living room is so magnificent seemed all wrong for such a small window: too busy, too crammed. And so mostly the blind stays down, and I tell myself we are cocooned in here, shut away from the rest of the world.

  Simon is silent now, lost in his thoughts. Soon he will be going back to work, and I lie there, counting out the seconds, trying to stretch them longer.

  I look around the room. I know it well now: the heavy cotton bed linen, which is sometimes burgundy, sometimes silver-grey; the ceiling with its lowered central square around which the downlights are recessed, casting out an angular, muted glow; the walls that are painted the palest, palest grey, in stark contrast to the black slatted doors of the huge built-in wardrobe. A week or so ago I found something belonging to his wife inside that wardrobe: a pale-blue cashmere cardigan, hanging there among all his suits an
d shirts. I found something of hers in the bathroom, too, in the cupboard under the sink: a small make-up bag containing a travel-sized bottle of cleanser, a pair of tweezers, mascara and a tube of tinted moisturizer. Emergency essentials, and all of them recently used.

  I wonder about his wife. I wonder what she is like, that he has never been able to talk to her about Vanessa in this way. Because he hasn’t. I just know he hasn’t.

  Simon sighs again, and stirs, and I am broken away from his embrace. He reaches out an arm to his bedside table and picks up his watch. ‘My mother did love Vanessa,’ he says. ‘And Vanessa loved her. But don’t we always hurt the people that we love?’

  One day, after we have made love, Simon has to make a work call. He takes the phone into the living room, and closes the door. I hear his voice, business-like and abrupt. While he is gone I look inside his wardrobe again, at that cardigan. I look to see if it has moved; if it has gathered fluff or evidence of more wear, but it hasn’t. So I scan the shelves for anything else that is new, or that I may have missed before. There are his socks on one shelf, his pants on another. A couple of jerseys, folded up. Three pairs of shoes on the bottom, below his suits. Everything is so minimal, so neat. At the back of the wardrobe there is a safe the size of a microwave. This, I imagine, is where he keeps all his important things, his passport, his financial stuff, the photos of his sister, though I will never know, of course. I cannot ask. And on the shelf at the top of the wardrobe there is a small suitcase, which I imagine he uses for business trips, and visits to his house in Kingham. There is a leather luggage label attached to the handle, with his name on it, and the address of this flat. I wonder if there is anything inside the case, but I cannot get it down, of course. He would hear me.

  But still, look and you will find.

  Inside the bathroom cabinet there is now a pot of moisturizer that wasn’t there before. I open the lid and discover a long blonde hair wrapped around the rim. And so I know without a doubt that his wife has been here, and been here long enough to need her things. Simon hasn’t mentioned this, of course, but why would he? We don’t talk about our families. I don’t want us to talk about our families. But once I left my scarf here, left it for days, because each time I came here I kept forgetting to take it away with me again. And so there it sat, tidily folded up on his kitchen counter, between his mail and the fruit bowl for the best part of a fortnight. And now I wonder, did he quickly hide it when his wife turned up, and then get it back out again for me? Does she hunt around looking for evidence of me? Does she have her suspicions, or does she not even care?