by Sue Watson
‘But you lied,’ I remember crying.
‘Only a little lie, for your own good – to teach you a lesson,’ he’d said. ‘You must never interfere in my work again. I’m still shocked at what you did, Marianne. I don’t think I can ever trust you again… my own wife,’ he’d said, and left me standing there, chastised like a child.
So I hadn’t been responsible for a death after all, but his disappointment in me cut like a knife.
After that Simon changed his pin code and all his passwords on his PC so I couldn’t access anything. I don’t blame him, and I’m glad, because I’m not sure I’d be able to resist looking now.
I can’t trust myself.
I know I should walk away from the phone sitting tantalisingly before me. I should have faith in my husband, because he loves me – but I can’t, because what it is I’m imagining threatens my very survival. All the pills in the world can’t give me the peace I now long for. I can’t rest until I know what’s happening. Even though the rational part of me says it could be an innocent text between work colleagues, the mad part of my brain is screaming at me that it’s something else.
My hand is reaching out for the phone just as Simon appears in the doorway. He’s just read the boys a bedtime story and is smiling about something one of them said. I laugh nervously and he walks towards me, kisses me on the cheek and suddenly everything’s okay again. I breathe deeply and sink into him. I am pathetic. I have to stop tormenting myself over nothing, because it’s seriously affecting my mental health again, not to mention the damage to our relationship.
Now he’s kissing the back of my neck, murmuring sweet nothings. Here, if I need it, is the evidence that my husband isn’t having some wild affair with a woman he works with. Of course he’s not, it’s just a text message – I want to throw the bloody phone across the kitchen, smash it into smithereens on the new worktops, but I dig my nails into my palms and try to relax against him.
He eventually pulls away and as I go back to the oven and stir the sauce for pasta, I see him walk over to where his phone waits. I turn to reach for the bubbling pot of water, flashing a look over at him to see if he’s responding to the text, but he puts the phone carefully down and starts shuffling through the day’s post.
‘I’m making your favourite pasta,’ I say, hoping the domestic sing-song in my voice will keep everything sweet, like I’m spraying Caroline deterrent all over the room. ‘You always say the sauce reminds you of that holiday in Sorrento. It’d be about ten years ago now.’ Smiling at the memory, I turn to look at him. ‘Do you remember how hot it was that summer? I was pregnant with…’ I stop there.
‘Yes, I love Italy.’ He smiles absently as he looks through the credit card bill, my twittering voice swooping around him. He isn’t listening, but he’s frowning at something on the bill and I feel a little uneasy. ‘You’ve been buying flowers, Marianne?’
‘Yes… yes. I meant to say, I went to Mum’s grave, put some roses there, for her anniversary.’
‘You should have reminded me; I would have gone with you. The anniversary always makes you rather…’
‘It’s fine… I was okay,’ I say, before he can add anything. My mother has always been a moot point between us – just the mention of her can bring up so much that I try to shut it down before it gains any momentum. Self-preservation, I suppose. Simon’s own mother died two years ago and he’s never mentioned her once, even on the anniversary of her death. I know there was very little warmth between them, but she was his mother. I suppose we all have different ways of dealing with loss.
I wish my own grief wasn’t so all-consuming – so many layers, so many years. I stir the sauce and see scarlet water, white, blood-stained towels. The text on his phone has unsettled me, and I close my eyes tight so I don’t see the blood.
Simon sits down at the oasis, and leans on the Calacatta Oro marble worktops, which the designer assured us would set off the clean lines of the sustainable European oak cabinetry.
I don’t care about the origins of the fucking cabinetry, I want to know if you’re sleeping with her.
I glance over again as his hand reaches for the phone, clicking open the text. The air is thick with steam and Italian herbs, but all I can taste is fear and hurt.
‘Oh… looks like I’m working late tomorrow,’ he says.
I plunge dry pasta into bubbling water, unable to speak. Silence hangs in the air between us, heavy and aromatic. Eventually, I’m able to respond.
‘Oh. Why are you… working late?’
‘What do you mean why?’ he snaps, and I know I’m in danger of ruining a perfectly good evening.
‘I meant what is it… an emergency?’ I say, trying to sound interested, but not too interested.
‘An emergency? Hardly. If it is, it’ll be too late in twenty-four hours’ time,’ he mutters as he takes a bottle of red from the side and opens the drawer, looking for the corkscrew.
‘I left it there for you, on the oasis,’ I say. I always try and pre-empt anything Simon might need. A friend I had at the old house used to joke that I was a Stepford Wife, but it’s not like that, I’m not that organised. It’s just that Simon has a stressful job and the last thing he needs after a day of open-heart surgery is to lose it over a bloody corkscrew. But tonight it seems he has.
‘Honestly, Marianne, you know I’m under pressure. I’m working so hard towards this senior consultancy. I had a really tough meeting with Prof. Cookson today. I’m not the only one in the frame for this and he’s riding us all hard, and now I’m home and you’re adding to my pressure, questioning, the constant mistrust… it’s back and it’s driving me mad!’ He stabs his finger into the side of his head, suggesting madness. My madness. His face is red, angry, resentful, and I’m relieved when he finds the corkscrew where I’d left it and has something to do with his hands. Pushing hard metal into soft, pliant wood, he glares at me until the cork is released; there’s a soft pop and he’s pouring himself a large glass of red.
‘I’ll have one too,’ I say fake brightly, pretending everything’s fine. Perhaps if I keep pretending everything’s fine, then it will be?
I look at his phone still sitting on the table – I can’t help it. I don’t want to go over and over the bloody text in my head like it’s a crossword puzzle. But I know I will. I need to solve the conundrum, find out the answer to my question. I’m at the mercy of my own sick mind. ‘What about tomorrow evening? Can you tell her you’re…’ What? Leaving her? Not in love with her any more? What does the rest of the fucking text say?
He hasn’t poured me a glass of wine, so I go over to where he’s now standing with his own glass and pour myself one.
‘Are you sure you should be drinking wine?’ he asks, like I’m a child.
I nod mid-gulp. ‘I’m fine, not taken any pills yet today.’ I let the warm red liquid fill my throat and soothe my soul, and when he turns away I take another bigger gulp.
‘You haven’t taken anything?’ He’s incredulous.
‘No. I’d like to come off the medication for a while. I feel well enough, Simon.’
I’m all better – do you love me now?
But he rolls his eyes and looks worried. ‘Marianne, you should be taking your meds. You can’t mess about. You know what happens when you don’t.’
‘Yes, but when I don’t take them, I feel better, more alert… more…’
‘More what? Mad? Paranoid? Psychotic?’
I’m stung. I don’t know why; this isn’t new. I know what I am but still, hearing those words makes it all so real.
‘I just hate feeling like I’m wading through cotton wool all day,’ I mutter, going back to the safety of sauce-stirring and wishing I could down the bloody bottle in one go. I take a breath and turn around to speak to him. ‘I want to be better, Simon. I used to take the prescribed 30 mg a day in the evenings and that knocked me out, but I could at least function the next day. But now Doctor Johnson’s upped it to 45 mg… I think it’s too much.
’
‘Oh, fair enough, you should know all about your dosage. After all, you spent years in medical school,’ he mutters sarcastically.
‘Don’t be like that Simon, you know what I mean… I told you, I stagger through the day. Everything’s cloudy on 45 mg.’
‘But they calm you down?’
‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. But along with the cloudiness I have unwelcome thoughts… and I find it all so distracting. Simon, I want to be present… I want to be a good wife, a good mother,’ I add, hoping he’ll at least try and see things from my perspective.
But he doesn’t even look up from his phone. ‘Good wife and mother? It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?’
I start to cry silently over the bubbling sauce.
Eventually Simon sees that I’m upset and wanders towards me. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,’ he says, and again I feel the sharpness of his blame for what happened all those years ago. ‘I was talking about the way you become… agitated when you don’t take your medication,’ he’s saying. ‘It’s not just about you, Marianne. You have a family to consider – what do you think your “episodes” do to them, to our surviving kids?’
‘Don’t… just don’t… Simon…’ I’m now back on the edge of tears and he can see I’m likely to become hysterical if he doesn’t back off.
‘You always think I’m saying one thing when in fact I’m saying something quite different,’ he snaps. ‘You really do have to stop jumping to conclusions, Marianne. I’m sorry if you’re upset, but you need to sort yourself out, for everyone’s sake.’
I turn to him, tears streaming down my face. This wasn’t the way I’d hoped things would be for my pasta marinara. I was aiming for memories of Sorrento and loving smiles, not me hiccoughing and dripping tears into the sauce.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ He’s holding his hands in a surrender gesture. ‘It’s just… I have such high expectations of you and… I shouldn’t, because you aren’t well, you’re poorly, my darling,’ he adds more softly.
I don’t feel ‘poorly’, in fact until he mentioned the C word (Caroline) only a matter of days ago, I felt fine – never better. I’d put everything behind me, was moving forward and Simon and I were beginning to connect again. But the past has come raging into the present and is now swirling around like dark water at my feet. I know he doesn’t mean to hurt me, I’m just oversensitive – but perhaps I’ll always be ‘poorly’ and was never really better, just pretending to myself? I should take his advice and keep up with my medication.
Ten years ago, my GP prescribed antidepressants temporarily, but in a short time I became dependent on the pills and both Simon and I were concerned at the way I reacted when I stopped taking them. My anxiety levels went through the roof and so we went to my GP together and Simon suggested I needed something stronger that I could take long-term. That was years ago and though I’ve had my moments, on the whole I’ve stayed relatively calm, but the recent increase in dose has made me feel out of it. Perhaps it’s the price I pay for not going mad and doing crazy things?
I should be sensible and take them again – we don’t want a repeat of last year. I’m bloody lucky to have a husband who cares, who stuck around after everything that happened. Simon’s picked up the pieces, including me, on more than one occasion. He was telling me only the other evening about one of his colleagues who just walked out on his wife for a woman ten years younger because she’d let herself go. It made me think – I’ve done a great deal more than letting myself go and he’s still with me, for now. He’s a bloody saint and the least I can do is take the pills and make life a little bearable for Simon. I need to stay on track, keep my thoughts to myself and not burden him with my trivia. I can’t give him any excuse to leave me. I couldn’t bear to lose him.
Suddenly the pan of pasta begins to boil over, throwing foaming bubbles over the cooker. I yell and run to it, reaching instinctively for the handle but managing to scald myself instead. I cry out in pain, but Simon doesn’t flinch, just takes a long sip of wine.
‘You go on and on about being a good mother, a good wife, and you can’t even boil pasta,’ he says bitterly and shakes his head like he can’t believe it. Then he looks away, unable to countenance the flawed woman standing before him. In a kitchen she doesn’t deserve, in a life she isn’t worthy of.
‘Mum, are you okay?’ Sophie’s suddenly at my side, pulling my hand under the cold tap, shooting her father a look that would kill.
‘I’m fine, darling,’ I say, grateful for her kindness, touched by her concern. She’ll be leaving for university at the end of next summer and I wonder what life will be like without her.
She pats my scalded hand dry with a clean towel as Simon continues to play on his phone. He’s probably sending Caroline a text, planning their cosy evening tomorrow night, telling her what he’s going to do to her on her big brass bed (oh yes, I’ve seen it – she poses on it on Instagram. I try not to obsess, but I can’t help but keep going back to the photo, as painful as it is to see).
When Sophie finally goes back upstairs to her virtual world, I discreetly open the handmade cabinet door and reach behind the tins of tomato soup. I see Simon watching as I open the bottle of Mirtazapine.
‘And take the correct dosage, don’t skimp,’ he says, continuing to flick through his phone.
‘I just don’t want to feel so tired,’ I sigh, more to myself than him. ‘They sap all my energy. I haven’t worked on anything for ages.’
‘Worked?’
‘My bags.’
‘And what a great loss to the world of handbags that must be.’ He says handbags like one might say shit.
I don’t answer him. No point. Working with fabric and colour was my talent – I like to think it still is – but it isn’t a talent Simon recognises, probably because his talent is science-based. He’s never seen the point in fashion or design and though when we met, he said he admired my drive, I don’t think he understood my world. It was so different from his. ‘Vive la difference,’ he’d say. ‘It makes us more exciting.’ But within a year of being married I’d given birth to our child, and I didn’t need to create any more – my new life filled me up and quenched any desire I had for design, even as a hobby.
I’d longed to be a mum, to hold that baby in my arms, but sometimes the things you wish for don’t always work out. The whole experience of motherhood took me by surprise. I was so overwhelmed with love for my baby even Simon took a back seat. I was drained and had nothing left for him. In fact – and I find it very difficult to go back over this – due to my negligence, my husband sought comfort in someone else’s company.
I found out from a friend when Emily was just a few months old. He’d been seen holding hands with a woman in a local restaurant; he hadn’t even had the decency to be discreet. When I confronted him, he said he’d wanted me to find out, that it was just an emotional affair, nothing more, and that me knowing was a relief. But it wasn’t a relief to me, it was pure agony. He’d promised me before we married that he wasn’t that sort of person, that forever meant forever and he couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. How could I ever trust him again?
Weakened by sleepless nights, baby weight and the endlessness of being a new mother, I eventually accepted what happened. I just wanted to keep my husband, and for our family to stay together, and if that meant forgiving and forgetting I had to do it. And it wasn’t sex. According to Simon, he hadn’t actually done anything – he may have thought about it, but he said he’d never do anything to hurt me. So I forgave him for even thinking about it. I don’t honestly know what I’d have done if he had confessed to a full-blown relationship. I’d like to think I’d have been able to walk away, but back then I was unable to imagine anything worse than being without him. Then something worse happened.
My damaged mind still has problems going there, back to what happened, to those dark, lonely days of exhaustion and cow-like heaviness. I try to forget, but my therapist and Simon
won’t let me. Saskia said that facing up to what happened would help me to heal, move on, which is why Simon sometimes tries to make me talk about it. But I can barely say my baby’s name, and I cover my ears when he says it, which is why I need the medication.
In order to get through the day when the children are at school, I sometimes try to avoid the extra dosage. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes I just need it – if I didn’t take the pills, who knows what I’d do? But on good days I can quiet my mind by making bags from scraps of fabric like I used to. I recently made a shoulder bag for Jen’s birthday from scraps of silk and velvet in midnight blue sprinkled with tiny silver stars. I gave it to her at her birthday dinner – one of the few social occasions Simon and I have attended here. Jen was delighted. She loved the bag, clutching it to her chest and saying it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Everyone admired it and some of her friends asked if I’d make one for them and I remember looking over at Simon, who was looking back, his poppadom paused at his mouth, waiting for my response.
‘No, I’m too busy at home,’ I lied.
Choose your battles.
Though I had to admit that making the bag and giving it to Jen made me happier than I’d been for some time. Despite what I’d said in front of Simon about being too busy, I wanted to make more and considered starting a Facebook page to try and sell them. I mentioned this to Simon a few days later, but, as he pointed out, when on earth would I have the time with three kids, a huge house and a busy husband?
He’s right of course; it was stupid of me to think it made sense to spend all that time sewing for a few pence when I could be spending my time more usefully. But I did enjoy making that bag for Jen and while I was working on it I was able to forget my medication, take a break from the dark, swirling water and land somewhere in the fabric stars. For a few hours anyway.
But now I realise this isn’t the answer, it’s a temporary stop gap and doesn’t work long-term. I’ll go back on the higher medication, to stop me overthinking everything. I’ve realised I can’t control myself as well as chemicals can, but I can help myself. I promise myself I won’t think about Caroline. I’ll stop constantly checking her social media and imagining all kinds of ridiculous scenarios. I also make a vow not to put myself in any situation that might cause problems for me, or those around me. I’m being really positive. And trying hard not to crumble.
