Both of You

by Adele Parks

  Until, that is, you know she’s a liar. Then it doesn’t really matter what she said, ever.

  If the exams hadn’t been cancelled, Oli would have had to spend the next few months revising. Even the thought of cramming the facts into his head, being sure as he pushed one in another one fell out, scares him, but now he doesn’t have to worry about any of that. It’s the biggest break ever! He would have spent nights lying awake thinking about that airless school gym, him sweating, his head fuzzy with facts that swam around, weak and vague. He would never have been able to remember the difference between attrition and abrasion when it came to the erosion of coastlines, and all the different French verb endings. It made his scalp itch to think about it, his palms clammy, throat dry. But all that was gone now. Thank fuck.

  Still, he must remember not to look too pleased about it in front of his dad because his dad is behaving like a mental case right now. Yeah, OK, his wife going missing is clearly a blow, but Oli thinks his dad should have some pride. Considering everything they’ve discovered. Oli would never let a girl get to him so much. And even if she had, he would never let anyone know. He’d just get his revenge on her. He wouldn’t be left looking like a total dick. His dad should have sex with Fiona or something, to get even.

  His dad is not having sex with Fiona though, instead he’s behaving like some sort of jailer with him and Seb. Monitoring his every movement, making it harder to simply get in and out the house, FFS. He wonders if they’d notice if he slipped out now. He really feels a need to get away. Just out. Away from here. Away from her absence. The lack. He could go down to the embankment. It’s a really cool place to hang out and practise tricks. Although she’s sort of ruined the place now.

  That is where he saw her, with him.

  Six months ago. They were just walking along the street, hand in fucking hand, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. She looked comfortable, entitled. She should have been checking over her shoulder, nervous about who might see them. It was so arrogant not to be jumpy, cautious.

  She looked really beautiful. It was a weird thing to think about your mum and not something he did think generally. His mates sometimes said his mum was fit. When they were younger, she had been identified as a MILF, it was just something that was said when they were playing video games in the safety of their own bedrooms. The confession spilling out amongst all the cussing and trash talk that was routine whilst shooting up Russian mercenaries. Oli hadn’t liked it and told everyone to ‘fucking shut up’ which they had. Sebastian is still young enough to say his mum looked pretty and he sometimes wants to take a photo of them all when they are heading out somewhere, but Oli outgrew that mum/son adoration thing a while back. So it surprised him that he couldn’t help but notice she was glowing, shimmering. He honestly didn’t recognise her at first, she looked like someone else. Besides, she was supposed to be at work in Scotland.

  Then they fucking kissed, in the street. Totally gross. The man was nothing like his dad. He was younger, taller, blonder. He was wearing a suit. Oli had never seen his father in a suit, other than on his wedding day which Oli could barely remember but there were photos all around the house.

  His mother was having an affair.

  He isn’t an idiot. Loads of his friends’ parents are divorced. Usually their dads started banging someone else, usually younger and usually someone they met at work. That was the pattern. He didn’t know of any mums who had affairs, though. It was so weird. What was wrong with his dad? How dare she? He had followed them. It was nuts but what else could he do. He didn’t want to look at them, but he couldn’t take his eyes off them either. They walked for ages. It was a hot day. The bloke took his suit jacket off, threw it over his shoulder. Oli scooted along on his board, sweat pooling at the base of his back. Following someone isn’t as easy as they make out in the movies. He kept his distance, but he was scared he’d lose sight of them. Unlikely though, as the man was a fucking giant. He was sure his mum was just going to turn around and spot him, but she didn’t. She was too absorbed in the giant. It made him fucking sick.

  They went back to this really flash apartment block. He couldn’t work out if it was a hotel or what. It looked like apartments but there was a bloke at the reception desk. What was that about? They went inside. Through the huge glass wall, Oli watched his mum chat to the receptionist. They were all friendly, not in a rush. She should have been ashamed, she should have been skulking. Hoping not to be spotted. But she was so relaxed.

  He waited for ages for her to come out. She didn’t. He’d have waited all night but the bloke on the reception desk came out and asked what he was hanging around for. ‘Get along home, or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘What have I done wrong?’ Oli yelled back. Fucking loser. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but he moved along anyway. He had a feeling his mother wasn’t going to come out of the apartment block any time soon.

  Oli didn’t know what to do with the information. He got up every day and wondered, is this the day she tells Dad and leaves us? He didn’t want it to be. Yet he did. It made him nervous, angry. He watched her to see if there were any signs that she was more or less happy than usual. There were none. She was just the same as ever. Just as reliable. Just as interested in his friends, school and football, just as uninterested in his Insta, his obsession with trainers. She didn’t change and that should have reassured him, but it didn’t, it worried him. He started to wish she would act differently, say something. Rowing or crying or something, maybe even leaving, would be better because her not changing meant this was her norm, and he began to wonder just how long it had been going on?

  He couldn’t look at her in the same way. He hated being alone with her. He backed off and that was desperate because it just made her try harder with him. She cooked his favourite meals, turned up to every match every weekend, she was constantly asking, ‘You OK, Oli? Anything worrying you?’ What was he supposed to say to that? He felt embarrassed that he knew this weirdly intimate thing about her. It made him feel mad, alone, cheated and he didn’t know what to do with those feelings. He started calling her Leigh. He didn’t want her to be his mother anymore. She had poisoned his home. His life.

  She was so smug. Going about her life as usual. Tricking them all into thinking she was a nice person. That she loved them. He wanted to spoil things for her. He wanted her to taste some of her own poison.

  23

  Kylie

  Wednesday 18th March

  The room stinks. I stink.

  Here’s the thing. I have been a better wife to both of them because I have two husbands.

  Or is that just what I’ve always told myself?

  When I was a child, it was always clear when my father was seeing other women. Unlike some sorry-assed adulterers he did not try to smother his culpability with compensatory acts of sorrow or regret; he did not buy my mother guilt flowers. He did not recognise his own fault and responsibility. Far from it. Instead he blamed my mother for not being enough for him. He punished her for making him stray. My father did not like to see himself as a bad person, an adulterer. He reasoned that she made him behave worse – be worse than he wanted to be – because he was somehow, on some level, forced into adultery because of her failings. Madness, I know. But his own particular brand of madness and we all have one.

  Guilt and unacknowledged self-loathing meant he itched for opportunities to blame her, to find her lacking so that he didn’t have to blame himself. A poorly ironed shirt, a teabag left in the kitchen sink, a differing opinion on a TV show could lead to a humdinger, knockout, nasty knuckleduster of a row. A fight. He never physically hurt her, he didn’t have to, his words wounded. Mortally. He would accuse my mother of being cloying and beneath him. This confused me later, after he told me there are women you marry and women you fuck. My paraphrasing. He said there are women who are something, others who are nothing. But in that case, what was my mother after he stopped being married to her? An ex-something? Was Ellie real
ly the only something?

  It didn’t matter what he said to Mum, how much he insulted her, blamed her, ignored her, he couldn’t make himself feel better, he could only make her feel worse which was what he was running from in the first place; hurt feelings.

  My mother was strongly disinclined to fight back. She often said, ‘Hush now, Hugh, you don’t mean that. Stop saying things you’ll regret.’ But he would rail anyway, yell, blister, bark, squall for hours. Eventually, she learnt not to fuel his fire with platitudes which he thought were cowardly, and over time she resorted to silence or tears. It was cruel. Hard to watch.

  I would not be like him. I refused to be. That much I have always been sure of. I know what the universal opinion is of people who have affairs. They are unilaterally dismissed as bad, undisciplined, selfish. I love both men and I have always been good to both men. I married them to be something better than a common adulterer. People who have affairs always think they are so special, so ground-breaking and different, but they are not. They are ordinary, predictable, boring.

  At least I am not that.

  I would not have a constant see-saw of affection. Favouring one man because he was the first, the next because he was a novelty. There was no hierarchy. No other man. Not that such a concept exists for their gender. We hear of the other woman, not the other man. No one thinks a man can be anything other than centre stage. He is never just a bit on the side. He is never called a homewrecker. But there are names, humiliating tags that I would not permit. I would not have a cuckold and a lover, both labels marred with preconceptions. One pitiful, the other unstable. And I would not blame Mark for not being enough, Daan for being too much.

  It is not much of a defence, I know, but I did at least take onus. I owned the guilt and grief, I absorbed it all. I rarely row with either man. In fact, things that Mark and I might have usually argued about, had indeed previously and reasonably bickered about – like whose turn was it to go to the supermarket or where we were going to go on holiday – I have let go since I married Daan. I smile. I brush it aside. I let him have his way. I always go to the supermarket. He always chooses our holiday destinations.

  The stench of my waste lingers in the air. I can’t get used to it. I can’t ignore it. I’m so hungry again.

  ‘Please, this is enough now,’ I wail out loud.

  I am a better wife to Mark because I am married to Daan.

  I am a better mother too. More patient, more fun, more alive. I am better because there was an excess of energy, garnered from my other life. I never mummy-slump. When out for a family walk, I don’t leave them to trail, heavy-footed behind Mark and me, heads bent over phones or earbuds in, trapping them in a world I can’t access. Instead I walk alongside them, sometimes I hop or jump, behave childishly. Which they enjoy. It diminishes the difference between us, moves me closer to them. I set challenges. ‘Race you to that tree.’ ‘Race you up that tree.’ I build camps in the woods with them. At home I play FIFA on Xbox with Seb and Warzone with Oli, I talk to them about more than schoolwork. Our conversations flit from rappers to YouTubers to haircuts, friendships, girls, travel, sport. My absences from my boys are inexcusable. I know it. Possibly inexplicable. But when I am with them, I am at least 100 per cent with them. I do not spend my time nose buried in my phone or out on long, private runs. All parents have outlets. Everyone needs an escape.

  I have never confided the particulars of my situation to anyone. How could I? But if I had, they would have asked, ‘Why not just leave Mark? Why not just divorce?’ There are a myriad answers to those questions. I still love Mark. I thought that would change but it didn’t. I trust Mark. I have a life and a home with Mark. The boys. I don’t always trust Daan. I can’t have children with Daan. Or anyone. I owe Mark. I am indebted to him for giving me his sons, children I’d never have any other way. I couldn’t bear to hurt Mark. Daan doesn’t need me as much as Mark does. Mark doesn’t want me as much as Daan does. The reasons collide, mesh, mash. They never stop flooding my brain. There is one reason.

  The boys.

  I’ve loved them with every fibre of my soul since the moment I clapped eyes on them. They fill me up with so much love and meaning that there are times when I’ve thought I might explode with the joy of being their mother. And I fill them too. They need my love, they need me. I know that it was part of my appeal to Mark that I loved them so entirely. He wanted a lover, maybe even a wife but he needed a mother for the boys. Someone to unfurl his boys. I put my cool hand on the heat of their grief and drew it away, soothed. What you need and what you want being perfectly aligned is a rare and wonderful thing. Mark grabbed it with both hands. The boys blossomed under my care. When I married Mark, I officially adopted them.

  I reach for the water bottle; the label is smeared with my diarrhoea. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting. I carefully tear off the label and then take some sips, regardless.

  The worst days are the ones when Mark thinks I am away with work and really, I’m just sat in Daan’s flat. Sometimes, when I’m certain Mark isn’t going to be working from home, I do sneak back to the house to put on a load of washing so that the chores don’t add up at the weekend. On Wednesday afternoons the boys often play sports. I’d like to go to those games, but I can’t because how would I explain being away on a Wednesday night and how can I justify to Daan living away from him for more than four days a week? He is patient enough giving up every weekend of his life because he thinks I am nursing my sick mother. I have to be strict. Disciplined. I have a lot to lose. Twice as much as the next woman. I see the boys play football at the weekends. That’s enough. It has to be.

  The boys were aged seven and eleven when I met Daan. They had just started to break away from my tight and constant maternal clench. I realise now, that as all boys turn into tweens, teens and ultimately young men, they have to push their mothers away. It’s natural. It is still hurtful though. I couldn’t help but feel saddened when they quickly turned their heads away from me and a kiss might land on their ear or simply die in the space between us. The boys had started to edge into the stage when all they needed me for was to locate a stray trainer or charger cable, cook a meal. I still needed them.

  My arms felt empty.

  It was around that time I suggested to Mark that we consider fostering or even adoption. ‘Maybe a girl,’ I said hopefully. ‘A toddler, someone who needs a loving home.’ Someone who would accept my kisses without question. He instantly dismissed my idea, not giving me or my needs even the dignity of a debate. ‘I don’t want to go back to nappies and broken sleep, Leigh. Besides, adoption’s such a risk. If you are not genetically related, you don’t know what you are getting. How can you be sure you’ll bond?’

  ‘I’m not genetically related to Oli and Seb,’ I pointed out.

  For a moment Mark froze, he looked caught out, afraid. Then he pulled me into a hug. ‘God, I forgot. Isn’t that wonderful?’

  And it should have been wonderful. If maybe, momentarily, Frances wasn’t sat in the shadows of our relationship and Mark had thought of me as the boys’ mother – simply that, not the stepmother, the stand-in or make do. But I didn’t really think that was what was being said. When he’d said that if a parent wasn’t genetically related to the child, you couldn’t be sure you’d bond, Mark was not talking about my relationship with a future child or indeed the children we had, Mark was referring to his own feelings on the matter of nature versus nurture. So, in fact, it was far from a compliment. Really, he was revealing that he didn’t believe my bond with the boys could ever be quite as strong as his. It was as though he’d stabbed me. Then left me to bleed out.

  Two or three weeks later my father died. It was a very intense time.

  My reflections are punishing. Stopping, examining, recalling is something I’ve studiously avoided over the past four years. I change track. Pull to mind the thoughts that I’ve always used to console myself.

  I never got behind on the washing, no one ever opened the fridge and de
spaired that there was no milk for their cereal. When I went to Daan’s to become Kai, my last act before I walked out of the door was to check in the freezer, count the Tupperware tubs of bolognese and shepherd’s pie. Checking there were always organic meals made from scratch by me, enough to last until I returned.

  No one was neglected.

  I close my eyes. Let the darkness of the room take me. Sleep isn’t restful, but it’s better than the nightmare I’m living.

  24

  DC Clements

  Friday 20th March

  When DC Clements returns to the station after visiting Daan Janssen, she is immediately called into her boss’s office, she doesn’t even have time for a fag. She tells herself that is a good thing, that she should give them up soon anyway. Filthy habit.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Her boss doesn’t normally keep tabs on her in this way. He respects her judgement, her work ethic – besides, he is swamped himself and doesn’t have time to micromanage. However, when she explains, he looks irritated, impatient. ‘I see. Look, Clements, we’re too busy for this. File the report, put out an alert but other than that, drop it. I’m not giving any more man-hours over to it. There isn’t a body, so there’s no case.’

  Clements is being given an order. She should accept it, but she feels her mind and body resist slightly. No, there isn’t a body, but there is something. The woman with two husbands – two lives – flung herself forward, jumped up and down, insisted she was interesting enough to be noticed. Clements is fascinated by her. Mystified by her. She doesn’t even know what to call her. Leigh Fletcher? Kai Janssen? Maybe Kylie Gillingham is best. The name she had before she had any husband. Before she got herself into this mess.

  ‘I just feel, sir, that there might be more to this than—’

  ‘We work with facts, DC Clements, not feelings, as well you know.’ He only ever gave her the full-title thing when he was reminding her of rank, her place. ‘Most likely the woman has run off to ruin some other man’s life. From her profile, I’d say she’s quite the survivor, not the sort to get into danger. She’s the sort that looks after herself.’ Clements stiffens at this. Women frequently find themselves in danger, irrespective of what ‘sort’ they are. ‘If she turns up, we’ll press charges for bigamy. She might get a few months inside. Most likely just a fine, but I don’t suppose we’ll see her again anyway.’