Clean Break

by Tammy Cohen

  ‘I want to try a new approach this week,’ says Julie, leaning forwards. She is wearing purple trousers and a purple cardigan done up all the way to the top.

  ‘With all the stuff that has been going on, the last few sessions have been a bit negative, which isn’t at all a surprise. So I think it would be really useful if we could restore a bit of balance. What I want you to do today is to each think of three things you used to like about each other.’

  Kate closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath. This isn’t what she wants to do. She wants to work out how to split up from Jack. Not to remember the things that brought them together.

  But Julie is costing them £75 an hour. So there is no point in not doing what she says.

  Jack goes first.

  ‘I liked Kate’s smile,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t look at me and say it,’ says Julie. ‘I know it’s hard but, if possible, I would like you to turn to Kate and say it directly to her.’

  ‘I liked your smile,’ says Jack. He is facing me, but he is addressing a point somewhere by my ear.

  ‘Very good,’ says Julie. ‘What else?’

  ‘I liked how patient she was with the kids. Never shouting at them. Not like now, with the bed and the vodka. She was a brilliant mum. And I liked the way she looked at me. She made me feel like I was the most important man in the world.’

  Now Jack is finally looking at her, and Kate looks away, feeling the blood rushing to her cheeks. She is embarrassed, and there is something niggling in the back of her mind. Something she can’t quite put her finger on.

  ‘Kate?’ says Julie.

  Kate breathes in.

  ‘I liked your confidence,’ she tells Jack, forcing herself to meet his eyes.

  ‘And I liked how you always took care of me. Well, I liked it at first, before it became suffocating.’

  ‘Stick with positive things, please, Kate,’ says Julie sternly.

  ‘Sorry. I liked how you used to make me feel safe.’

  Kate realizes now how much she has missed that feeling. Not that it has been very evident over the last few years. But there was a time when being with Jack was like wearing armour that meant no one could hurt her. Until the person hurting you was Jack, says a voice in her head. But she dismisses it. Julie wants them to be nice about each other, and that’s what she will do. Kate switches off the voice and stops trying to work out what is niggling at her. Instead she holds Jack’s gaze, even though her face is now burning.

  After the session Jack asks her if she wants a lift home, and she accepts. She has a car, but she only drives when she has to. Driving was always Jack’s job.

  Now they drive in silence, but the air in the car crackles with something alive. It is as if the counselling session has lit a flame that has burnt away the last few terrible years, sending them back to a time before the fights and the name-calling and the bitter things they both said.

  ‘Shall we pop into the King’s Head? Just for a quick one?’ Jack asks.

  And though it is Thursday and she should be home sorting the kids out, making sure they do their homework, and though she knows she definitely should not be going anywhere with Jack, she says yes. She is so tired. And now Julie has made her remember how it felt to have someone to look after her and to care about her being tired.

  She has a glass of wine. And then another. And a third.

  And on the way back to the house, Jack takes her hand, as if none of the last few weeks has happened.

  ‘Oh,’ says Amy, when she sees her parents come stumbling into the house together.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ says Ben. ‘Get a room, would you?’

  But Kate sees the two of them exchange smiles before they head upstairs.

  And because she is drunk, and because she is tired and weak and her thoughts are full of a rose-tinted past, Kate doesn’t say no when Jack kisses her. And when he goes to the loo and she looks at her phone and sees seven missed calls from Tom and three texts, she switches her phone off altogether.

  And when, later, Jack leads her upstairs to bed, she does not object.

  Chapter Eight

  JACK: Friday morning,

  twelve days after the split

  It is over. We are a family again.

  I am giddy with relief.

  For the first time in two weeks, I slept properly, and now I have woken up in my own bed, in my own room, and everything feels right again. I look up at the ceiling and it still has the thin crack in one corner. And straight ahead there is the picture of Amy and Ben as small children that I had printed on to canvas for your fortieth birthday last year. You cried. Remember?

  I turn and watch you sleeping and think how beautiful you are.

  When you wake up and find me watching you, your eyes grow wide, and there is a moment when you look almost scared. I smile and lean over to kiss you.

  ‘It’s only me,’ I say.

  You jump up, saying you are late for work, though the alarm has not yet gone off. I love how you are too embarrassed to meet my eye. It reminds me of when we first got together.

  At breakfast, the kids are quiet. Looking from you to me and back again. Trying to guess what is going on but not wanting to ask. Amy catches my eye, and I wink at her. I feel like a million dollars. You leave for work early, saying you have stuff to do. I go with you to the door and give you a hug, but when I try to kiss you, you wriggle away, saying you have to rush. It doesn’t worry me. I know you need time to process last night. But I also know that, like me, you can feel how right this is.

  I text you on your way to work to let you know I am thinking of you. Then I text you when you will be just arriving to let you know I am thinking about what we did last night. I add an emoji of a wink. I try to call you at the time you will be heading off on break, but you do not pick up. So I try again ten minutes later. And again five minutes after that.

  Still at home, I get ready for work. I take a long shower and dress with care. I briefly consider moving my things back from the box room to the bedroom. Then I think about what Julie might say if she was here and decide to wait until you suggest it yourself. I think Julie would be pleased.

  When I still haven’t heard from you by lunchtime, when I am due to leave, I start to get annoyed. I know that you might be confused, but what would a call cost you? A text, even? I phone you again as I am walking to the car. And again after I drop off my first fare.

  I do an airport run to Luton. The client in the back of my cab is chatty and, normally, I am OK with that, but today I find it hard to engage. When we get stuck in traffic outside the terminal, I have to close my eyes and count to ten so I don’t slam my fists against the steering wheel.

  It is after four when my phone pings to show a text message from you. I am driving around Hanger Lane in West London. When I glance across and see your name on the screen, it is like someone opening a valve inside me and letting out tension. I don’t look at the text while I am driving, but knowing it is there gives me a warm glow inside.

  I drop off my fare in Wembley and put my hazard lights on while I read your text. I am hoping you will tell me you have been to Tesco on your way home to pick up something nice for dinner. A celebration of our new start. When I read your text I have to read it again straight away because I am so sure I have read it wrong.

  I am sorry, you say. Last night was a mistake. I have not changed my mind. We are not getting back together. Please forget it happened.

  The words jump out at me. Sorry. Mistake. Forget. Each one is a punch to my stomach. For a moment I think I will be sick, and I open the car window so I can breathe in the fresh air.

  I have to make a pick-up in Brent Cross so I start driving. A knot of hatred forms in my gut as big as a fist.

  Chapter Nine

  KATE: Friday evening,

  twelve days after the split

  ‘You don’t need to tell me. I know I’m an idiot.’

  Kate is stirring chilli with one hand, and her phone is tucked between her ear and
her shoulder so Mel’s voice sounds like it is coming from far away.

  ‘What the hell got into you?’ Mel is saying.

  ‘I don’t know. It was a mixture of talking about how things used to be and feeling at a low point and drinking bucket-loads of wine. We got carried away. That’s all. And then, of course, he thought that meant we were back on again. He’s been calling and texting the entire day.’

  ‘And what about Tom?’ Mel wants to know.

  Kate groans.

  ‘He doesn’t know. He must never know. The thing with Jack last night just made me even more sure that Tom is the one I want to be with.’

  After the call ends, Kate puts the lid on the chilli and sits down heavily at the kitchen table. How can she have been so stupid? Jack was just getting used to the idea of them being apart, and now she has gone and confused everything. She sent the text more than three hours ago and still he has not replied.

  She knows how hurt he will be. And how angry.

  She is dreading Amy and Ben coming down for dinner, because she knows they will ask her questions about their dad. Jack is not the only one who will be hurt and confused by what happened last night.

  ‘But I thought that meant you and Dad were back together,’ Amy says, as Kate dishes out the chilli and tries to explain.

  Her eyes fill with tears, reminding Kate again just how young she still is.

  ‘I’m sorry, baby,’ says Kate, making her way around the table to give Amy a hug. ‘Marriage is complicated.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m glad you’re not getting back with him,’ says Ben. ‘I love him, because he’s my dad, but I hate his moods. He scares me sometimes.’

  Kate is surprised. She has never heard Ben talk like this about Jack. She pushes her food around her plate but cannot eat.

  After dinner the kids go back to their rooms and Kate flops down in front of the television. There is a nature programme on that she usually enjoys, but she cannot focus on it. Instead, she thinks about Jack and what he will do now. She hopes that he will accept what she has said. Maybe he is even thinking the same thing. That it was a mistake.

  But, deep down, she knows he isn’t.

  The house feels weird. As if it is holding its breath. She pictures little particles of tension hanging in the air like specks of dust. Since last night something has been niggling at her, but she still cannot work out what it is.

  She sends a text to Tom to tell him she is thinking about him.

  Still no word from Jack.

  In the middle of the night Kate hears Amy shouting.

  ‘I heard those noises from the roof again, Mum,’ she says when Kate goes into her room.

  Kate listens but doesn’t hear anything.

  ‘It’s just squirrels, like I told you,’ she tells Amy.

  But when she gets back into her own bed she lies awake, unable to sleep. And when she does finally drop off, just as the dawn light is creeping in around the blackout curtains, she dreams there’s a monster standing by her bed, breathing in the dark.

  Chapter Ten

  JACK: Monday afternoon,

  fifteen days after the split

  You have a lover.

  I feel sick.

  I call Lynne at the cab office and tell her I’m not well and can’t work. She sounds surprised. ‘This is the first time in fifteen years you have called in sick,’ she says.

  ‘First time for everything,’ I say, and pretend to laugh.

  Afterwards, I put my head in my hands and rock backwards and forwards. I try to stop the movies in my mind, but I can’t. You with him. Doing what we did last Thursday night.

  He came to the door early this morning before you left for work. You didn’t let him in, but I got a good look. What can you see in him? He is younger than me, that’s true, but he is thin and pale and his hair needs a cut. I could see right away he hasn’t set foot in a gym. I could knock him over just by blowing on him.

  He held up a greasy brown paper bag. ‘I come bearing gifts,’ he said.

  Bearing gifts? This is the man you think is better than me?

  You told him he shouldn’t have come. Said the kids were in the house. You tried to make your voice stern, but you turned your face to the side and I saw you hiding a smile. Then you looked behind to make sure no one was there and you kissed him. Right there on my doorstep. I saw his hand go down to your bum and I thought I would vomit. Felt the bile rising in my throat. But I swallowed it down.

  ‘Go. GO!’ you said to him, and pushed him away. But it was in that playful kind of way that shows you don’t really mean it.

  He walked away backwards, holding up his hands as if in surrender.

  He mouthed, ‘Later,’ and licked his lips.

  I want to kill him.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Amy, coming into the hallway just as you shut the door.

  ‘Only Karen, from across the road,’ you said. ‘She brought us some croissants.’

  When did you get so good at lying?

  All day I have sat without moving while the images played out in my mind. His hand on your bum. Your smirking face. His tongue coming out to lick his lips.

  What have you done?

  Don’t you remember the vows you made to me?

  It has got dark while I have been sitting here. And my stomach is groaning for lack of food. My right calf has cramp because I haven’t moved in so long. But I hardly notice the pain in my leg because the pain in my head is so strong.

  At around five forty-five you come back home. The first thing you do is go around turning on the lights. You look nervous.

  Have I scared you? Good.

  You take out your phone, and for a moment I think you are calling him and feel the acid rush of anger in my veins. But then you say, ‘Mel. You got a minute?’

  You tell her that you haven’t slept. You say you feel awful. But then a smile creeps across your face and you say, ‘Tom was here this morning.’ And I realize that she knows. Mel. That bitch knows you have a lover. And she’s clearly OK with that.

  ‘No,’ you say to her. ‘It isn’t because he found out about Jack. Thank God. I still can’t believe I did that. I’ve felt grubby ever since.’

  And now it does come. A string of yellow bile that goes straight on to the floor. Grubby. I’m her husband, and she feels grubby after being with me. It is beyond belief.

  ‘I am being careful,’ she says into the phone. ‘You don’t need to remind me what he’s like. I was married to him for sixteen years.’

  Now Mel says something else. And you sigh. ‘I don’t know which friend he’s staying with,’ you say. ‘All I know is all his stuff is still here in the box room. I can’t wait for it to go.’

  You are sitting at the kitchen table while you say all this. And after the call has finished you put your phone down next to you and stare into space.

  And I watch you. From my secret hide-out in the attic.

  But you have no idea.

  There’s a drop of bile on the screen, and I wipe it away with the sleeve of my jumper. It is cold up here so I am wearing two jumpers, one over the other. After two weeks in the attic I am used to it. But the first night I spent up here I thought I might die. I wondered how long my body would lie up here before the smell gave it away.

  Sometimes, when I think properly about where I am and how far things have gone, I feel like I can’t breathe. Hiding, like a rat, in the attic of my own home. Only coming out when everyone else is out or asleep. Stealing food from my own fridge in my own kitchen.

  It started after you told me you wanted a divorce. After that scene in the kitchen when I sat and looked at you, and waited for you to say you were joking but you never did.

  Were you sleeping with him then? I wonder. Croissant Man? Tom? Even while you said all those things to me that seemed to come straight from a bad film script.

  It’s not you, it’s me.

  I love you, but I’m not in love with you.

  I just need space.

  K
ids adapt.

  Did you meet up with him afterwards and have a bloody good laugh about it? While he touched you in all your secret places that are mine to know?

  I bet you laid it on thick. About how your husband lost it when you told him you didn’t want to be with him any more. Well, who wouldn’t? Out of the blue like that. I want a divorce.

  I’m not proud of what I did. Of losing control. I know you were fond of that dinner set from your mother. I shouldn’t have smashed it up, or punched a hole through the kitchen door after you tried to shut me out. But I never laid a hand on you. Did I? You never gave me credit for that. And afterwards, when I’d cooled off, I came home and helped you clear up, didn’t I?

  And then I knelt on the floor amidst the piles of china and glass and I begged you to change your mind. I wept. Do you remember? A grown man. On his knees. Crying. I said I’d do anything. Anything at all. How you must have laughed.

  And when you said, again, that you needed space, I offered to move my stuff into the box room. Said I would go and stay with a friend. Anything so long as you agreed to think about it, agreed it wasn’t yet over.

  I thought it was a phase. PMT, maybe. And that, when you’d made your point, we’d go back to normal. I thought you just needed time.

  But I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t about to move out of the home I pay for, leaving you free to do God knows what.

  The next day, when you were out at work and the kids were at school, I set it all up. Tiny spy camera recorders hidden in fake smoke alarms in the living room and the kitchen and the hall. I got them on Amazon. Next-day delivery. They look just like a real smoke alarm. You never noticed the difference. They detect movement. So they start recording whenever someone comes into the room, and it gets transmitted via the Wi-Fi straight to my phone.

  So clever what they can do these days.

  Then I set up home in the attic. I tried to make it cosy. Sleeping bag. Clothes. Food and water. A Thermos. A bucket for when I can’t get to the toilet. It’s not as bad as it could be. Two years ago, when we almost got the loft converted, we had the floor boarded and the sloping walls plastered, but then we decided it wasn’t high enough. Even at its highest point, I can’t stand up without hunching right over. And though the kids would have been all right back then, we knew they would soon be too tall. So we never bothered with the windows. Just carried on using it to store junk.