His Other Life

by Beth Thomas

  ‘You actually think it won’t do any good to find out whether or not he’s well? As if it doesn’t matter in the slightest to you whether he’s alive or dead?’ Her voice is low and quiet now, and much more measured. There’s more than a hint of steel in it. She snorts out a puff of air. ‘Well that just goes to show the absolute difference between a mother and a wife, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes, it does, Julia! Of course it’s different for both of us.’

  ‘Oh, really? Would you like to explain that to me? Because as far as I knew, we both loved him. Didn’t we? Or maybe you think I didn’t love him as much because he was my son, not my husband? Maybe you think he loved you more, because you were his wife? Or maybe you’ve given up on him?’ She pauses a moment, then adds, ‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’

  ‘Well that’s unnecessary,’ Ginger butts in. I glance at her nervously, then look back at Julia. She’s swivelled her head and is now staring in fury at Ginger.

  ‘You don’t have a flipping clue,’ she says in a voice so low it reminds me weirdly of The Godfather. I expect her to come over all Sicilian suddenly. ‘You’re not a mother and never should be. Us mothers know stuff about life that ordinary people like you can’t dream of.’

  I’m getting chills and have to fight the urge to look over my shoulder defensively. ‘Julia, I’m not in competition with you …’ I say, but I get the sense that what I’m saying is bouncing off her like vodka on wool.

  ‘Anyway,’ she goes on, turning back to me, ‘as the wife, it was you he left, not me. You obviously failed him in some way. And now thanks to you, we all have to suffer.’ She rolls her eyes, then takes a deep swig from her glass. Apparently the venom in her words has dried her mouth up.

  ‘Julia,’ I start to say, a bit quietly, if I’m honest. At this point in my life, I should be raising my voice, taking a step forward, maybe pointing a finger, defending myself. Adam’s not here, I don’t have to worry about upsetting him at this moment. But Julia’s words have sliced into me, drilled directly down into my gigantic reservoir of insecurity, and it’s bubbling up. A geyser of tears is threatening to erupt, and I sidestep towards Ginger. She turns her head, sees my face, and moves towards me too, so that our arms are pressed together. Right now, I feel, yet again, the most enormous gratitude for her presence in my life, and in this room.

  ‘It’s OK, Grace,’ Ginger says between gritted teeth, her eyes locked on Julia’s the whole time. ‘It’s absolutely fine. I’m sure in a moment Julia is going to realise how vile and unpleasant she’s being, and how completely unfair and unjustified that appalling accusation is. Aren’t you, Julia?’

  Julia doesn’t move or speak for a couple of seconds. Then she blinks, her face crumples and she staggers backwards, her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh …’

  Ginger coolly watches her, still without moving, but I step forward and grab her arm. Finally I feel like I’m some use. ‘Come on, Julia, come and sit down.’

  I guide her to the sofa and she sits down heavily, leaning her head back and immediately closing her eyes. ‘I’m so tired,’ she says on a long exhale.

  ‘I know. You’ve been through a lot.’ I hear Ginger ‘pah’-ing behind me, but I ignore it. ‘Why don’t you try and have a little snooze now?’

  Julia opens her eyes and shakes her head. ‘I can’t sleep,’ she says quietly. She searches my face. ‘He is dead, isn’t he? Do you think he’s dead?’

  ‘No, he’s not dead,’ I say with certainty, ‘don’t worry about that. Have they told you they found his car?’ She nods. ‘Well, then, you know that there was nothing in it, no blood, no smashed glass, no vindaloo. His passport is gone. There’s no disturbance at his office, nothing seems to have been taken, although they haven’t finished looking at it all yet. But even before they do, it’s pretty clear to me that …’ I hesitate. I still can’t decide whether Adam going voluntarily is better or worse than him being taken by force. From a wife’s point of view, it’s miles better if he was wrenched roughly away against his will, fighting against his captor, struggling with every part of him, desperate to return to his true love; rather than simply deciding to piss off and please himself. No, that’s wrong, because surely a good, loving wife would selflessly want him to have chosen this? Because she would not be able to stand the idea of him being hurt? I find I kind of like the idea. Which is a paradox because if he has been forced away, and hurt in the process, there’s no need for me to hate him. Is there?

  Julia is still staring at me with desperation in her eyes. I put my hand on her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Julia. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that he’s completely well, given all the facts. That he left of his own accord, for reasons unknown.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And anyway, no body has been found, has it?’

  She gazes at me with liquid eyes, that lost-puppy look back on her face. ‘Yet,’ she says.

  Fifteen minutes later, Ginger and I are back in the car, heading home.

  ‘Well, it’s not substance abuse, is it?’ Ginger says, ending the five-minute silence during which we both absorbed what just happened. ‘The woman is completely off her rocker.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that, Ginge. I feel sorry for her.’

  Her head snaps round to stare at me. I’m driving again, so I can’t stare back. ‘Do you? Really?’

  ‘Well yeah, course I do. She’s absolutely destroyed.’

  ‘You think?’

  I risk a sideways glance. ‘Don’t you?’

  She shrugs. ‘I think it’s an act. I think she’s faking the whole “I’m-so-upset-about-my-son-going-missing-I’m-turning-into-a-certifiable-dingbat” thing.’ She pauses and I can see she’s staring at me. ‘Don’t tell me you fell for it?’

  ‘Fell for it? Well, if you call believing that she’s genuinely devastated by Adam’s disappearance “falling for it”, then yeah, I guess I did. Why didn’t you?’

  Another shrug. ‘I dunno, really. Just didn’t ring true to me.’

  ‘You think she’s not upset at all? That she couldn’t care less?’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. Obviously she’s upset. Who wouldn’t be? I just think … I don’t know. It almost seemed like she …’ She moves her head a little. ‘As if she wants him to be dead.’

  ‘No way!’

  She nods. ‘Yeah. Didn’t you get that? All that breathy, “He’s dead, isn’t he?” stuff. And almost wanting a body to be found. Bit odd, I thought.’

  ‘Well, you’d be odd if you’d been through what she’s going through.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I would. I think most people would be anxious as hell, but trying to keep hopeful.’ She glances at me. ‘Like you are. He’s a grown man, after all. He’s not exactly vulnerable.’

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense. Why would she want that? She’s his mother.’

  ‘Who the frick knows? All I know is, something was off.’

  I think back over our strange encounter again, but all I can see is a woman deranged by some pre-existing problem that I can’t identify, coupled with massive stress, sleeplessness and grief. But I’ve never been any good at reading between the lines, or spotting subtle things. I tend to believe whatever I’m presented with. Maybe I’m naïve. Maybe I’m stupid. Turns out I was stupid to marry Adam, that’s for sure. Probably. Maybe I need to start questioning my reality a bit more. Maybe if I’d done that a year ago, I wouldn’t be here now.

  ‘Oh, and one more thing,’ Ginger says now, turning all the way round in her seat to face me. ‘This grieving, desperate mother, this woman who you want to believe is going mad with determination to cling to the idea that her son is still alive, still loves her, and will come home again one day.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, why the hell would a woman like that refer to her son the whole time in the past tense?’

  SIX

  I have no answer for that. Initially, I was convinced that Ginger had got it wrong, but remembering my conversation with Julia just now
, I realise that she’s right. There’s no sound in the car for a few minutes while I think about it and Ginger nods off.

  ‘So what does that mean?’ I ask eventually. ‘Do you think Julia knows something we don’t?’

  Ginger jerks awake at the sound of my voice and looks around blearily. ‘Whassay?’

  ‘I said, your theory about Julia talking about Adam in the past tense. Do you think she knows something?’ I remember her addition of the word ‘yet’ after I reminded her that no body has been found, and instantly my flesh contracts and covers itself with goosebumps. Again.

  Ginger rubs her eyes, yawns at great length, stretches her arms out in front of her, then shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I doubt it, to be honest. I mean, what could she know? Where he is? What’s happened to him? The fact that he’s dead?’ She shakes her head tentatively. ‘Nah, doesn’t feel right. I mean, to know those things she’d have to have been involved, and she doesn’t come across as the type, does she?’

  ‘What type?’

  ‘Violent, murderous matriarch. She’s just too “tickets-to-the-opera-darling”, in her blouses and slacks and home-made chutney, to pull it off.’

  When we get back to the house, Ginger decides that she needs to go home to bed, so she leaves me on the pavement and shoots off. I watch the car until it’s out of sight, then turn and walk towards the empty, silent house.

  I run upstairs to start packing a small overnight bag. I want to go and see my mum and dad anyway, to let them know what’s happened, and it’ll be so comforting to stay there for a few days. Who knows, maybe this’ll all be resolved by the time I have to come home again. I freeze with my hand in my knicker-drawer as that thought occurs to me. What do I mean, resolved? What kind of resolution could there be, after a husband is absent for five days? Maybe when I’m next in this room, Adam will be here with me. Or maybe he’ll be dead. Probably not in the room with me, in that case. I hope not, anyway. I shudder and close my eyes a moment.

  A sudden noise downstairs sends a thrill of fear plunging through me and my hand instinctively curls tightly around whatever is nearest. I look down at what I’ve grabbed. It’s a sports bra. That is not going to protect me from anything. Except saggy boobs, possibly. I turn, cringing, towards the door of the bedroom, dreading what I might see there, shuffling its way across the landing: grey, dead flesh hanging off its bones, jaw slack and loose, head twisted much too far around on its neck. I am almost paralysed with fear, nauseous with it, and my mouth floods with saliva as my stomach spasms. But the landing is as empty of walking corpses as it was when I came through it a few minutes ago.

  Good God, what is the matter with me? I need to get a grip. And preferably on something a bit sturdier than a white Nike Pro Airborne with nylon strap stabilisers. If I’m going to be here on my own, I’ll need a defensive weapon. I glance quickly around the room and completely fail to spot an automatic firearm or serrated hunting knife anywhere.

  I let go of the bra and creep stealthily over to Adam’s side of the bed. Maybe he’s got some kind of Swiss army knife in his drawer. My heart is thudding still, and as I reach for the drawer, I see that my hand is shaking slightly. I’m unclear at this point whether that’s fear of whatever made the noise downstairs or anxiety over being about to touch Adam’s things.

  ‘We need to get lockable cabinets,’ he’d said at Ikea.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that, my little petal, we can lock them,’ he’d replied, giving nothing away with the words but letting me know with his tone exactly what kind of idiot I was.

  ‘Oh, right yes, I realised that. What I mean is, why would we need to lock them? It’s only you and me going in that room anyway.’

  ‘Huh. You hope.’

  ‘What?’

  He took a deep breath in and released it very slowly to demonstrate his unending patience. ‘I’m talking about burglars, Gracie. People who come into your house uninvited and go into the rooms where they’re not supposed to be. It’s a very real possibility these days, you read about it in the paper.’ He paused. ‘Well, I do. The thing is, if we lock them, we know that all our valuables are safe and sound every day, even if we go away on holiday.’

  I had shrugged and not responded. I was smarting a bit over his dig about how I never read the paper. We’d had words about that before, and he wasn’t happy. As far as I was concerned, news and the papers were just another form of entertainment. I can’t do anything about budget cuts or the NHS or kids today, so what good does it do to get stressed over it by reading about it constantly? Strictly Come Dancing or Heat magazine were much cheerier. Adam despised me for it. Thought I should make more effort to keep up to date with current events, but had never been able to give me a good reason why. It’s one of the few things he hadn’t been able to convince me of.

  So he’d bought the cabinets with the lockable drawers, and as far as I knew, his had remained resolutely locked ever since he’d put it there. I had a key to mine, too, but I’d never used it. I don’t think right now I’d be able to lay my hands on it: inside the drawer it’s meant to lock, probably. But we didn’t keep our passports in there, so it seemed pointless to lock a drawer containing only a tub of lip balm, a packet of tissues, a novel and a selection of biros. Burglars could have ’em, and good luck.

  I reach out now and tug the drawer on Adam’s side. Yep, still locked. At this point I have to be honest and admit that I have tried it once or twice before now. When I’ve been in the house on my own. It became almost a habit of mine, actually. Whenever Adam left the house without me, I’d sprint upstairs, try the drawer, then sprint back down again to be completely engrossed in something innocent by the time he got home. The first time I’d tried, it happened to be about three weeks before my birthday, only a month or so after we’d got the cabinets. Finding it locked, I’d assumed my birthday present was in there, and felt plumes of excitement ignite in me. It must be jewellery; the drawer was too flat for anything more substantial to fit. So I’d left it alone, not wanting to spoil the surprise. Oh, I didn’t. The surprise was that he got my present three weeks later, on the way home from work, and gave it to me the same day. Which was fine because it was my actual birthday, after all. And it’s always lovely to receive perfume.

  After that, I checked the drawer regularly. More and more regularly. Pretty much daily, actually. And every time I tried it, I got angrier and angrier and angrier.

  Right now, I’m in a state of heightened anxiety, extreme pissed-off-ness, desperation and blinding terror. It’s the work of less than a minute to seize the cabinet roughly and slam it down hard onto the floor four or five times until it breaks apart. Thank God for Ikea. The drawer part separates entirely from the cabinet part below it and I bend down to examine it all.

  The first thing I notice is that there’s a tiny gold key Sellotaped to the underside of the drawer. I stare at it for a few seconds, shooting hatred at it from every single molecule of myself. If I’d turned to the side and looked in the wardrobe mirror, I’m sure I would have seen an ugly snarl on my face. That’s if I could have seen anything with my eyes narrowed into slits. I unpeel the key and try it in the drawer lock. And, yes. It fits. Of course it does. Never mind, this whole lot can go to the tip when I get round to it. I give the shattered carcass a fierce, satisfying kick for good measure, and am rewarded with its further disintegration. It’s starting to look like a defeated enemy, mortally wounded on the battlefield, spilling guts and blood everywhere. The next thing I notice is that the drawer must have been virtually empty, judging by the lack of any spilled contents. I crouch down onto the floor and pick all the other parts of the drawer out of the remains and toss them aside, then turn back to the broken innards and shattered MDF bones of the cabinet itself. There are a couple of biros amongst the detritus, but nothing else. I scrabble through it like a hyena picking over the carcass of a slaughtered zebra, incredulous that a man, however secretive, would keep an empty drawer locked. There must be something else here besides bro
ken fake wood. Eventually, thankfully, I turn over one of the final shards of compressed woodchip and a thrill shoots through me as it reveals, there on the carpet, a large, heavy-looking, silver key, three times the size of the little gold one. My frantic rummaging and digging and grabbing and shuffling stops at once; I reach out slowly and pick up the key, then hold it up to my face and stare at it in wonder.

  A noise from downstairs freezes me where I’m crouched, and I look up quickly towards the door, cradling my precious key safe into my hands. No one is going to get this from me, now that I’ve found it. As I start to move, I catch sight of myself in the wardrobe mirror: hunched and crouching low, uneasy expression, my hands protectively around my treasure, the silver of the key glinting just out of sight. ‘We needs to see who’s downstairs, we do,’ I whisper to myself throatily, then stand up properly, smooth myself down, and go back to the landing.

  From the top of the stairs I can see a large dark shape behind the glass of the front door. The noise I heard was just someone knocking, that’s all. I relax with relief, then shrink with horror as an image immediately returns to my mind: Adam with blank, dead eyes, body bent and broken, skull crushed, a small trickle of blood running out of his ear … I close my eyes and shake my head to rid it of that idea. I’m one hundred percent sure – well, ninety-nine – that Adam is not even dead, let alone undead; he couldn’t possibly be coming back to me from the other side because he’s still on this side. Plus, of course, zombies aren’t real, and probably couldn’t ever happen. Google was quite adamant about that.

  I open my eyes and stare fixedly at the normal, living, breathing, person-shaped mass on the other side of the glass to convince myself it really is a normal, living, breathing person. Will have to get a grip on my fear – I’m alone now, better start getting used to it.

  After some seconds of deep breathing and picturing lambs galloping around sun-drenched fields, I feel ready to advance towards the door. Evidently this person has been knocking while I’ve been ferreting around in Adam’s things, doing impressions of disturbed literary characters. Swiftly I unclasp the silver chain around my neck, thread the big silver key onto it, then put it back on and tuck the key into my tee shirt, out of sight. As I go downstairs, I can see finally that it’s just Matt, Ginger’s large policeman-brother. I speed up a little, wondering if there’s news. Then I slow down again, wondering if there’s news.