by Adele Parks
It doesn’t matter which one of us, does it?
It has never mattered to you before.
This is not true. This is so far from the truth. If it didn’t matter to me which one I was with, I could have picked either one. That’s the whole point. I couldn’t choose. But how do I explain that?
I cram a second hot dog into my mouth. I swallow it without tasting, then I force myself to slow down, chew carefully. I might make myself sick, besides I don’t know when I’ll be fed next. Something about my hunger after the enforced fast reminds me of the first time I dealt with Oli being sick. It was about four months after Mark and I married. He picked up a tummy bug at school, the way kids do. I remember him vomiting all over the lasagne I had carefully prepared for their tea. It was like The Exorcist. I was grossed out – the smell, the mess – but then I saw the small boy’s big watery eyes, shocked, scared, and I stopped thinking about what I was feeling. I stopped being horrified. I just wanted to fix him. I leapt up from the table, caught a lot of the vomit in the salad bowl, in my hands, down my jeans – I didn’t care. I stroked his back, murmured, ‘I’ve got you, it’s OK. You’re OK, better out than in.’ He vomited for twenty-four hours. Who knew such a small boy could have so much stuff in him? Certainly not me at that point. New to parenting and dealing with sick kids, I was terrified. I thought the doctor’s advice not to let him eat anything other than dry toast, maybe a spoonful of rice, was barbaric. Naive, I thought he should be rushed straight to hospital and wondered why everyone else wasn’t as panicked as I was. I guess Mark had been through it so often by then that he took it more in his stride. I changed sheets, mopped Oli’s hot body with cool flannels and refused his requests for Coco Pops. ‘But they are like rice, Mummy,’ he pleaded. It was the first time he called me Mummy.
Suddenly, I don’t feel hungry. What have I done? I picture Oli and Seb, mops of dark hair, tanned skin and long lashes in common. Seb skinny and angular, all elbows and feet that in the last few months have grown too long for his body which has yet to catch up. Oli is filling out; he wears a hint of the stocky strength of the man he will become. I envisage them as I usually do, huddled over their phones or eyes glued to the TV, oblivious to everything else around them, including me. This is an image I have often been assaulted by in the past. When I am with Daan. On those many occasions I have immediately forced the thought of them out of my head, slammed the door on the room in my brain where the boys sat. I have to sectionalise and bracket, it is the only way. Shut down, blank out. I trained myself so it was as though once I was away from them, I viewed them through tracing paper. The memory of them a pale and poor copy of the original. So far away and indistinct, they did not quite exist. The thought of them did not have the force to rip through the tracing paper, insist on their reality, their notability. I feel awash with shame that I have ever shut a door on them, even mentally. Now I ache for my boys. My children.
And they are my boys.
If either Oli or Seb ever woke in the middle of the night with a terrible dream or a high temperature, it was always me who climbed into their beds to comfort them. Mark would have done it, in a heartbeat, he had done it before I came along, but he knew that if he went into their rooms, I wouldn’t sleep alone in our bed anyway. I wanted to be involved, I wanted to soothe and comfort. I wanted to feel needed. So he let me tend them. Joking that he wouldn’t ‘fight me for a night with a kid in a single bed’. I have made their beds, picked up Lego, built papier mâché volcanoes, shopped, cooked, cleaned bathrooms. Stove to loo. In one end, out the other. Relentless. I’ve performed these daily devotions, this worship, uncomplaining, with joy, mostly. I have watched them grow. These small beings, stretched out, reached me in a way no one else had until I mothered. And I’ve listened to them. Heard their funny observations turn from charming to challenging, but not always wrong or rude. Sometimes very thought-provoking. I’ve been with them as their vocabularies became more complex, their friendship groups more unknown, their desires more secretive. As they’ve grown, I have tried to store them up but because they constantly changed, my memories are unreliable, they spilt, seep away. I want them to be less liquid, more solid.
And I’ve wanted all of this, felt all of this, whilst leading a double life.
It’s a comfort to think that the boys won’t even know I’m missing yet. They won’t have cause to be scared. That’s something. I wonder, is there a chance this could be over by Thursday? How long does Mark or Daan, whichever, think he can keep me like this? Obviously not indefinitely. Neither man is a killer. I am their wife. The sentence makes my scalp crawl. The wrongness of my situation has lurked in my subconscious for years, a dark stain on the peripheral of my vision, a small catching in my nostrils that meant I chose to breathe through my mouth. I’m not used to articulating it even to myself.
I am Mark’s wife.
I am Daan’s wife.
I belong to them both.
They both belong to me.
If Mark is my abductor, Daan will already know I am missing as he was expecting to see me on Monday. If Daan is responsible, then because of the way I’ve constructed my life, Mark won’t know I’m missing until Thursday afternoon. But this is madness. They will have to let me go eventually. Exposed, humiliated, brought to my knees, lesson learnt but he – whichever he it is – has to let me go. Doesn’t he?
‘Mark?’ I call out. I scramble on all fours, as close to the door as the chain will allow and listen. I know someone is on the other side of the door. I can’t see or hear them, but I can tell there is someone there by the way the light falls. ‘Mark, is it you? I think it is. I understand. I’m sorry.’ I start to cry. I don’t want to. I don’t want to appear weak, defeated or pathetic, but I am. I’m all three. ‘Think of the boys. I know, I know, you always do. I should have. That is what you are thinking right now, isn’t it? That I should have thought of them. I am so sorry. Don’t let this get out of hand, Mark. Please. If you let me go by Thursday, they will never need to know this has happened, we can carry on as normal.’
The words tumble out, without me really thinking about them. How can we carry on as normal? What is my normal? Two husbands. Mark is never going to agree to that. That isn’t even what I mean. Is it? Am I asking him to take me back? Am I saying I’ll give up Daan? I don’t know. I don’t know. I just need to get out of here.
The typewriter throws out a short, angry-sounding burst. I should wait to see what it says but I don’t, I talk over the clatter, desperate to get my point across. Desperate to convince. ‘Is that what’s happening here? Will I be given a choice? A chance? I’ll have been taught my lesson without the boys being affected. Mark, I know that matters to you. They above everything, matter to you.’
The note slides under the door.
Wrong.
Reading the word. I clamber, scamper like an animal, back towards the radiator away from the door. As though the word has burnt me. Shit. The room seems to tilt, I’m on a rolling ship in a storm. Wrong husband? Wrong that I’ll get a choice, a chance? Wrong that the boys matter above everything? Maybe not above anger, jealousy, fury. My heart is beating so fast now that I can feel it in my throat, in my gut.
‘Daan?’ I realise that calling both men’s names is likely to further infuriate whoever it is who is out there but I’m beyond being rational. I slam my hand into the floor. ‘Let me explain, let me out. Daan? Daan?’ Nothing. I scream, ‘I hope to God it is you out there, Daan, because if I’ve driven Mark to this point of madness, the boys will lose both parents!’
The typewriter clatters. I scramble for the note.
Don’t pretend to care about the boys.
You only care about yourself.
I do care about the boys. I love them. It might not look that way right now, considering everything, but I do. I always have. That fact has never changed. It’s unalterable.
Suddenly, I feel a familiar but rare gurgling low in my gut. I can’t reach the bucket quickly enough; the waste starts t
o pour out of me before I can pull down my trousers and pants. Steaming shitty liquid runs down my legs. I look around me helplessly. I snatch up the sheets of paper and try as best as I can to use those to clean myself, but the waste keeps flowing from my body. I’ve barely eaten anything these past few days but anything I have eaten is now on my clothes, my legs, the floors, the bucket. It’s even on my hands – steaming, stinking, humiliating. The food must have been covered in a laxative.
I peel off my jeans and pants throw them in a corner, I’ll put them on when they dry out. I can’t afford to use my drinking water on cleaning anything other than my hands and legs. I sit in the corner furthest from the door, back against the wall. Half-naked. Sullied. Degraded. My stomach screams with hunger, but I can’t risk eating anything else, my arsehole is raw.
I start to cry. To sob. My pity is mixed with fury.
‘Thank you for lunch, fuckface.’
20
Mark
Friday 20th March
Mark doesn’t know where to start with telling the boys their mother is a bigamist. Whether it is even something he ought to do. Isn’t it bad enough that she’s missing? That she’s gone? Isn’t that enough for a child to process? Oli might know the word but Seb would probably sigh and ask, ‘Do I have to look it up?’ Leigh makes the boys do that – look up in a dictionary words they don’t recognise or understand. She only allows them to google if there isn’t a dictionary close to hand. She says the process of researching etymology helps with remembering the meaning better than just being told. Yesterday, the government announced they are closing schools and cancelling exams. Mark thinks his head is about to explode. How the fuck is he supposed to home school Seb on top of all of this? Leigh would have relished that task. She’d have immediately reached for pens, drawn up timetables, researched resources, downloaded the Duolingo app.
He’s furious with her. Loathes her. Feels betrayed in a way that makes him want to shed his own skin. Slither out of it like a snake. Cast aside who he is and start again. That particular thought winds him. Was that what she felt every time she left their house? Did she shed them?
Fiona is at the supermarket. Mark has noticed that when the three of them are alone together, the house descends into a fog of recriminations; spiky anger – or maybe fear – stains the atmosphere. Largely, they all hide out in separate rooms. So Mark is surprised when Oli strides into the kitchen, goes directly to the fridge, opens it, peruses the contents, takes out a plastic bottle of milk and starts to drink.
‘Get a glass,’ says his father. Oli tuts, rolls his eyes but does reach for a glass.
‘I think Seb is crying,’ says Oli. ‘He just can’t comprehend how Mum might leave him like this.’
‘No.’ Mark knows he needs to go and comfort his youngest. Try to stop the baffled, hurt tears but he’s hesitant. What can he say? He heaves himself off the breakfast stool.
Oli looks pleased that his dad has broken through his inertia and is going to do some parenting. He wants to try to gee him up. He fishes his phone out of his back pocket. ‘Look at this meme, Dad.’
Mark almost bats away his son’s phone, he’s not interested – Leigh was always better at feigning attention to mindless memes – but he digs deep to find some level of patience. If it matters to Oli, he should try to pay attention.
Mark doesn’t understand what he’s looking at. There is a man walking around his house, muttering about being all prepped for lockdown. He has a six-pack of beers tucked under one arm, the remote control in his other hand. He opens cupboards and shows piles of loo rolls and packets of dried pasta, neatly stacked. He nods, approving of his own planning. Then he opens the door to his understairs cupboard, there is a full wine rack and his wife. She is bound and gagged. Struggling to escape. The man on the video says, ‘Yup, all ready for lockdown.’ He nonchalantly selects a bottle of wine from the rack and closes the door on his wife, trapping her in the dark cupboard.
‘What the fuck, Oli!’ yells Mark.
Oli looks startled. His father doesn’t usually swear at him. ‘Funny, right?’ he says, but there’s no certainty in his voice, or stance, or eyes. Oli seems to understand his mistake now. He turns red and starts to walk hurriedly out of the kitchen.
‘No, that’s not bloody funny. Do not show that to your brother, do you understand? Do not show that to anyone. Do you hear me?’
Oli doesn’t reply but Mark hears his bedroom door slam. The rage surges through his body. It has nowhere to go. It isn’t Oli’s fault. Mark shouldn’t have shouted at him. This is all her fault. But she’s not here. Not stood in front of him. That’s the problem.
Mark looks under the kitchen sink and grabs the roll of black bin bags. He bounds up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The house seems to shake. Anger is charging around his body like a highly combustible fuel. He might explode. He opens her wardrobe door and starts to wrench her clothes off their hangers and shove them into the sacks. Dresses, tops, jeans tumble into the binbags and settle like twisted limbs in a mass grave. The process isn’t fast enough for him, he stops wasting time and throws garments into the sacks with the hangers too. He tries not to remember when he last saw her wearing each piece, he refuses to recall how she filled her clothes, sometimes twirled in front of him, happy with her look, or on other occasions groaned she had nothing to wear. The gap that opens up in the wardrobe is satisfying. He wants rid of her. All traces of her. The sack fills up quickly, he grabs a fresh one. Then a third. Everything must go. He wants to wipe her out. He yanks open the drawers where she keeps her underwear and starts to push her pants, socks, bras into the sacks too. Carefully coiled belts, folded scarves and even make-up are tossed away. These things are part of her sham, part of her deception.
‘What are you doing, Dad?’ Mark jumps as though he’s been scalded. He turns to see Seb staring at him, wide-eyed, scared.
‘Just having a clear-out.’
‘Of Mum’s things?’
‘Yes. I’m taking them to the charity shop. She doesn’t need them.’
Seb looks like he wants to cry again. ‘She might need them, when she comes back.’
‘She’s not coming back,’ says Mark. He turns away from his son, because he can’t bear his expression. The pain he radiates punches Mark over and over again in the stomach, the head. He wishes he’d never brought Leigh into their world. He can’t bear the fact his boys are going to lose two mothers. ‘There is some ice cream in the fridge. Why don’t you go and get some? I’ll be down in a moment. I’m nearly done here.’
Seb glares at him but leaves the room.
Mark always had more space in his wardrobe and as a consequence she stored her wedding dress there. It is not enough to throw that out, donate it to charity. He snatches at the pretty floaty fabric. It’s easy for him to put his big hands on it and rent it apart. Each tear, rip, slash, slakes his thirst for obliteration. Only when the dress is in tatters does his breathing start to slow. Her clothes are now nothing more than chaotic snarls of junk, trash. It strikes him as funny that something can alter in value so significantly, depending on how you view it. He carries the black sacks downstairs. He is red in the face, his back is clammy, but he feels a bit better. He doesn’t feel so much of a fucking fool.
21
Fiona
‘What do you think he’s like?’ Mark asks.
‘Who?’ Fiona is pretty certain she knows exactly who Mark is referring to, but she doesn’t want to make a mistake by bringing his name into this home before Mark does.
‘Him, her other husband,’ he spits out the word. Fiona reaches for the plastic basket in which laundered, but yet-to-be ironed, clothes lie tangled. Mark had pulled the items from the dryer earlier but hadn’t thought to fold and smooth them, that was the sort of thing that only the person who finds themselves responsible for ironing remembers to do, knowing it makes the job easier in the long run. Fiona does all her own ironing – obviously – and it seems like Leigh does all of the Fletcher famil
y’s. Fiona tips the contents of the basket onto the kitchen surface, that she has just cleared and wiped, and then methodically starts to fold the laundry.
‘What does it matter what he’s like?’
‘Oh, come on, Fiona,’ Mark sighs impatiently. Of course, it is mad of her to pretend it doesn’t matter. Other than where Leigh is right at this moment, the only thing that can matter to Mark is the all-pervasive question: what does the other man have that he doesn’t? What had seduced his wife into becoming not another man’s lover, but another man’s wife? It has to be pretty spectacular to instigate a treachery so complete and absolute. Like anyone who has ever been betrayed, Mark is most likely stuck in that deeply disgusting and disturbing place where he is eaten up with a need to know everything about the other person he has been betrayed for. Yet Fiona knows that every piece of knowledge will whip, sting, inflame his sense of inadequacy, confusion, shame. Mark perhaps even knows as much too but he won’t be able to stop himself forensically googling and trailing all the social media accounts he can track, examining any morsel of information he can glean. What does the other man look like? What does he do with his life? Why did she pick him? It is a dark, destructive compulsion. But then most compulsions are.
‘You know, it’s not like she’s just left me for another man. That sort of jettisoning goes on all the time. That’s commonplace, manageable. What she has blown up is not just what we had, but who we are. My past, the boys’ childhood, it is all annihilated. It never existed.’
It is late, the boys are asleep, or at least in their rooms, faking sleep and playing on their phones. Fiona has spent most of the day at the Fletchers’ but even so she hasn’t been alone with Mark. This morning she went to the supermarket, this afternoon he said he needed to take a walk, to clear his head. She offered to go with him, but he asked if she would stay with the boys. ‘In case she comes home,’ Fiona suggested, trying to keep him hopeful.
