ROY
Sunday, 6th December
I hear a car screech and walk over to the window. The car speeds past undeterred. Mia’s been gone for a couple of hours now and I’m starting to worry. She hasn’t taken the car so she must be nearby. I consider going out to look for her but I haven’t the faintest idea where she might be. Perhaps she just needs some space. God knows I do.
I pour myself some Scotch and sit down on the sofa. I switch on the TV and skim through the channels. Jack Nicholson flickers to life. He’s punching a woman, screaming in her face. Something springs to mind. A memory. Or a memory of a memory, perhaps. I put it on mute. I need a new plan.
I thought I had it all figured out but the police showing up changed everything. I want to speak to you but that is no longer an option. I want to leave but I know that will make me look guilty. I need to wait until this blows over. Then I can finally have what I want. What I know I deserve.
I think about my phone lying destroyed on the kitchen floor and I cringe. Mia can be so difficult sometimes. I was trying to have a calm, adult conversation but Mia . . . she brings out the worst in me. Yet, I know I’ll be the one apologizing when she gets back. I don’t want to grovel but tonight, I know I have to. I didn’t mean to . . . I lost control . . . forgive me.
My father’s face flashes in front of me. Eyes on the prize, he used to say.
Eyes on the prize.
MIA
Monday, 7th December
It’s about three in the morning. We are in bed. I open my eyes a sliver and look at Roy through my eyelashes. He’s lying flat on his back. I curl up on my side, facing him. Slowly, I edge my right hand towards his. I want to reach out and touch him. I want to convince myself that even though he stepped out of our marriage temporarily, he’s still the man I married; that he’s still here. But I can’t. There are no more than a few inches between us, yet the distance feels as vast as an ocean.
Roy’s eyelids flutter. He flips on his side, away from me.
I bring my hand back and tuck it under my head.
We are both awake yet we feign sleep.
Horizontal bars of sunlight pierce through the window blinds. I realize I must have fallen asleep, exhaustion winning over anxiety just this once. I turn around expecting to find Roy sleeping, but his side of the bed is empty. I get up, brush my teeth and run a bath. I text Mike to let him know I’m taking the day off and then I strip off last night’s clothes and sink in, letting the hot water engulf me.
I don’t want coffee but I take it anyway. I hold the cup in both hands and take a sip. It scalds my tongue.
‘Do you want some toast? Or cereal?’
It’s bizarre. My husband has been cheating on me, his mistress is missing and he’s standing here, in his favourite pyjamas, casually asking me if I want breakfast. The sheer audacity of it all leaves me reeling and in an instant the despair from last night is coloured with something else.
‘That’s what you want to talk about? Breakfast?’
‘Mia,’ he sighs, ‘you should eat something.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, ignoring the rumble that seems to be coming from my stomach.
He pours some cereal and milk into a bowl and sits down across from me at the table. I can hear the crunch of Kellogg’s as he chews on, his eyes evading mine.
‘Stop it,’ I say.
‘Stop what?’
‘Avoiding anything hard. Avoiding this.’ I point to the floor where a few stray fragments of what used to be Roy’s phone are shimmering in the sunlight. ‘You’ve done it with your parents for years. And now you’re trying to dodge this conversation by, what, pretending to be hungry?’
Roy puts his spoon down and pushes the bowl aside.
‘I’m not pretending to be hungry; I am hungry. And last night . . . I’m so sorry, Mia . . . I lost my temper and I shouldn’t have . . . I know how hard this must be for you. But you have to understand, it’s been hell for me too.’ He cradles his head in his hands. ‘I never thought this would happen to us.’
Try as I might, I can’t keep the resentment out of my voice. ‘This didn’t happen to us, Roy. You did this.’
He looks at me hopelessly and I sigh.
‘I’ve taken the day off,’ I say. I watch him, waiting for the disappointment to cloud his face.
Nothing.
I realize he is a much better liar than I ever knew.
‘You can’t imagine what it’s been like for me. The pressure. Every day. From you, from my parents. Sometimes I feel like I can’t even breathe without disappointing you.’
I turn to look at him.
‘What pressure?’
‘To move back. To have a baby. To fucking provide,’ he exclaims, standing up and pacing the room. ‘It’s never-ending, the list of things you want from me. It’s like you’re all just waiting for me to fail. And I . . . I can’t stand it. This is not the life I wanted.’
I stare at him, astonished. I want to scream. Pressure to provide? He works a ten-hour week. The three articles he writes every month barely cover his own expenses.
‘Roy—’
‘When I left home . . . I had this vision of what my life would look like. Dreams. I wanted so much. I used to be free . . . alive . . . and now, I’m . . . I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I’m trapped.’
‘You’ve got all the freedom in the world! What are you on about?’
‘See!’ He stops pacing to stare at me and bangs his hands on the kitchen table so hard even the fruit bowl trembles. ‘This is exactly what I mean. You never did get it.’
I stare up at the streaks the late afternoon sun is making on the ceiling. My back aches from lying in the same position too long. The voices in my head remind me of all the things I’d done to welcome Roy back from his trips over the past few months. Each act is more repulsive than the last: racing home from work to whip up Roy’s favourite meal; surprising him with little presents; waiting for him, dressed up in sexy lingerie. I push them away and try to shake off the disgust that crawls through me.
‘You didn’t have to come back and sleep with me after you’d been with that – that . . . Why did you do that? Every single time. What were you trying to prove?’
‘I wasn’t trying to prove anything,’ I hear Roy say. ‘Not everything is about you, Mia.’
My phone buzzes; it’s Mike again. I silence it and close my eyes, retreating into myself.
Pity sex, the voices sneer.
I flinch as Roy switches on the light.
‘You know how much this project means to me. But you shot it down. Without a second’s thought.’
My eyes follow him as he walks over to the window. It’s raining outside. Heavily. It surprises me that I’ve only just noticed that.
I sigh. ‘We can’t afford to put all our money into one project.’
‘Because I could never earn it back,’ Roy mutters.
‘I never said that.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
‘Don’t twist my wo—’
‘What about your father’s house, we can afford that?’ he says, spinning around to face me.
I get up. I snap.
‘Well, it’s not happening so I don’t see the point in arguing about it now.’
‘The point is that you didn’t even discuss it with me. You just decided to buy it like it was one of your handbags.’
‘The one time I do something without—’
‘It was not one time. It’s everything, all the fucking time. This is not the life I imagined for myself. It’s always about what you want. Where we live, where we go on holiday, what we eat. You’ve got the next fifty years planned. Our whole lives! You need to know where things are going even before they get started. But I’m not like you. I can’t live like that!’
‘Oh, come on. I don’t do anything without checking with you first. And I plan because I have to! We can’t both breeze through life with our fingers crossed, hoping everything will work out. Someone�
��s got to be an adult in this relationship. And you know what, you’re right, we are different. I don’t destroy the people I love.’
‘No, you just manipulate them.’
‘There’s been others?’ I ask after we’ve finished dinner.
Don’t be stupid. Of course there have.
I push the voices back inside my head and focus on what Roy’s saying.
‘Emily . . . that’s the first time I’ve – You have to understand . . . everything that’s happened, meeting her, my parents visiting, everything with your family, the wedding . . . I don’t think any of it was a coincidence. It had to happen so I could see how far I’ve come from the life I envisioned for myself.’
‘I thought you wanted to be with me. All these years . . . Isn’t that why you asked me to marry you?’
‘Are you done?’
I wince, and then realize Roy’s pointing to my box of noodles. I nod. He picks it up and peers inside. I’ve barely even touched it.
‘I did want to be with you. I just don’t think I realized how much I would be giving up,’ he says, chucking our boxes in the recycle bin. ‘I’ve always been so scared of hurting you, I haven’t been honest and I’m sorry about that. But the truth is, I haven’t been happy, Mia.’
‘And you think you can have all this . . . freedom . . . with Emily?’
‘It’s not about Emily. I told you.’ He speaks slowly, as if explaining common logic to a child. ‘I ended things with her. She was a trigger.’
A trigger.
I think the bullet has lodged itself in my heart.
Over the next few hours, Roy points out all the ways I’ve disappointed him, cataloguing every sacrifice he’s ever made, from having to eat the wrong kind of dal to not being able to travel the world. He talks of destiny. He talks of freedom and spirituality and gentleness. Then he tells me I bring out the worst in him.
Try to stay calm; don’t overreact, I tell myself. Emily’s gone now, so if you can do that, if you can ride this out, we can fix this. Just get all the information and come up with a plan. Fix this.
The voices in my head laugh, mocking me for my naivety. I silence them and I listen to Roy. I listen to him blame me for everything that’s ever gone wrong in his life. I listen as he tells me, repeatedly, how refreshing and fun being with Emily was.
That’s because she’s barely an adult, I want to scream out, but I don’t. It’s killing me, but I listen.
By the end of it all, I am drained and confused. I remind myself that this is the same man who used to list out all the things he loved about me; who used to turn up outside my office to surprise me; who used to tell me, repeatedly, all the ways I made his life better, brighter, infinitely more fun. He loved me once. He’s just lost, I realize.
So I tell him I’ll change.
I tell him we can go anywhere he wants, live how he wants, where he wants.
I tell him we can save our marriage, turn back time.
I tell him he is my whole life.
It doesn’t work.
None of it works.
We scream and we shout.
I cry.
We brood in nuclear silence.
We talk through the night, much like when we first started dating, except we now employ our words to injure each other, each word a carefully contracted dagger, aimed to hit where it will cause the most damage. And once it does, we twist it, deeper and deeper, till there’s nothing left. We know each other too well to show mercy.
And yet the accusations and the arguments and the quiet protect us, allowing us to swerve away from the only questions that matter.
Can we make this work?
Do you want to try?
Do you still love me?
Love is the most lethal form of destruction there ever was.
MIA
Tuesday, 8th December
I am woken by the sound of the phone ringing. Mike.
‘Where are you?’
‘At home. I told you, I’m not well.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I – I’m just run down, I suppose. I—’
‘Guess what, I’m run down too but I don’t get to sit around at home just because I’m tired. Get in here. There’s a problem in Turkey.’
The train jerks to a stop and I’m ambushed by dozens of teenagers on what appears to be a school trip. The carriage fills up within seconds. A middle-aged woman sits down next to me. I glance at her as she takes off her gloves and places them in her handbag. She pulls out her newspaper and there she is, the archetypal victim, young, beautiful and intelligent, with everything to live for. I cannot escape my husband’s mistress. The newspapers have found her and she’s found me.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the seat.
I picture Roy with her.
I wonder if they developed their own moves or if he simply recycled ours.
The very thought turns my stomach.
Emily burying her face in the crook of his neck.
Roy kissing her toes before placing her feet on his shoulders.
Roy and Emily lying facing each other, her right leg draped over his left.
Roy whispering into her hair while running a finger along the curve of her hip.
Images flash past me unbidden and I torture myself all the way to the office, watching a film of achingly familiar, but distorted memories. Everything in the film is real. All of it happened. The only difference is that it stars Emily instead of me.
The train staggers to its final stop. I wait till the school group gets off and the carriage is quiet, and then open my eyes. Emily is looking down at me, her unmoving stare burning into me through the slatted grey metal of the luggage rack. I get up and walk towards the door, then turn back, reach up and grab the newspaper. I put it in my handbag for later.
I go straight in to see Mike when I reach the office.
‘What is it, Mike?’
‘Shipment’s late. Sort it out.’
As I walk from Mike’s office to mine, all around me people are busy working, having tea, slagging off Rihanna’s new single, arguing over the last Hobnob and it pisses me off. I stop walking and just stand there, somewhere in between the Sourcing and Merchandising desks, but they all just carry on. Can’t they see what I’m going through?
Perhaps I have become invisible.
I walk into my office and close the door. Someone’s left a pile of paperwork and some swatches for me on my desk. I flick through them and call Chris.
‘Chris, what the hell is going on? I thought we were back on track.’
‘We were. The shipment is ready.’
‘What’s the hold-up then?’
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d want Mike to know . . .’ Chris hesitates. ‘The factory’s forged the test reports.’
It seems cheating is the new normal.
‘How do you know?’
‘Monir knows the inspection officer.’
‘I see. The MDAs?’
‘I haven’t issued them yet.’
I try to streamline my thoughts. If I don’t say anything, we might get away with it. If I come clean, I lose the order and Eastside as a client. Plus the fine for the loss of sales on such a large order would be monumental.
‘Who else knows?’
‘Just Monir.’
Just Monir. It’s a gamble but a minor one compared to everything else in my life. Fuck it. I give in to the convenience of the half-truth.
‘Issue the MDAs, Chris.’
‘Mia, are you sure? If they figure it out . . .’
‘Just do it, please,’ I say and hang up.
I spend the next few hours staring into my computer, making sure I look focused and put-together even as the edges of my life start to fray.
I last till midday.
When I see Mike walk out of his office at lunch hour, I get up too. I scrawl a message on a Post-it, leave it on his desk and walk out.
The first thing I notice is the BMW parked outside our hous
e. It’s been crammed into a space too small for it, the rear wheels sticking out at an angle, yet along the street there are plenty of empty, larger spaces.
I slip my key into the front door and go inside.
I’m about to call out to Roy when I hear voices. I lower my handbag onto the floor, slip off my shoes and tiptoe into the living room. The two detectives from last week are in there with Roy. I step back into the hallway, unseen. I flatten myself against the wall and disappear into the shadows.
If anything, I’m an expert in invisibility.
‘. . . there’s more to your relationship than you let on the last time we spoke. Am I right?’ DI Robins is saying.
There’s a long pause and then I hear Roy speak.
The truth. Finally.
At least I hope so.
ROY
Tuesday, 8th December
‘Yes . . . Emily and I had an affair earlier this year. When you were here last . . . my wife . . . she didn’t know. I didn’t want to lie, but . . .’
Robins is sitting on the sofa across from me. ‘I understand, it’s a delicate matter,’ she says, almost too breezily. ‘You were just trying to protect your wife.’
I nod. ‘I told her after you left.’
‘It’s good to come clean,’ Robins says.
Is it? I want to ask. I notice the wedding band on her finger, as inconspicuous as her tone. No engagement ring, I note. I wonder if she has children.
‘So this affair, how long did it last?’ the other officer, Rob Wilson, asks from his current position by the window. He’s constantly moving; he must have done ten laps around the room by now.
‘About seven or eight weeks. We met in India in September, at a shoot, and things just happened. I ended it last month.’
‘Why? Your wife had no idea, right?’ Wilson asks, walking towards the fireplace. Even as he perches his elbow on the mantelpiece and leans back, his gaze travels the room, bouncing from one object to the next. It feels as though he’s taking stock, ready to arrest me should anything else go missing.
I direct my reply to Robins. Suddenly she doesn’t seem so bad. ‘No, but I couldn’t do it. The lies, the guilt . . . I . . . it just felt wrong. I never wanted anyone to get hurt.’
Your Truth or Mine? Page 13
