His Other Life

by Beth Thomas

  I was obviously out of my mind; but only one side of it.

  ‘I’ll get going, then,’ Linda says, moving towards the hallway. ‘Let me know if you need anything.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She’s taken aback by my new hard voice but I don’t care. I feel different. I feel tough, as if nothing at all can hurt me now.

  ‘Well, OK, if you’re sure …’

  ‘Yep.’

  She nods. ‘I’ll be off then.’

  ‘Seeya.’

  I don’t see her out. Suddenly good manners seem utterly unimportant. Nothing seems important because nothing is real. Throw anything you like at me, world. Bring it on. Nothing will shock me, nothing will surprise me, this is the new Grace, a graceless Grace, who from this moment on is as hard and unmoveable as Vinnie Jones on death row after the zombie apocalypse.

  ‘We’ve just bought a caravan!’ Mum says ecstatically, coming back in. And I burst into tears.

  With Adam quaffing cocktails in Quito (I Googled it), there’s a lot of admin to do over the next couple of days: ending the tenancy agreement at Maple Avenue, paying off the remaining rent and power bills, selling the contents to a house clearance place. I don’t do any of it. It feels much more important at this stage to celebrate the new Grace that I’ve just turned into, to revel in my new capable strength and independence. So I go to my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house and curl up and think about how strong I am and how I will never be suckered like that again and how nothing can possibly affect me now. And after two days of lying in the foetal position with old Jinksy the pink rabbit in my arms, I can honestly say that I believe it.

  Mum and Lauren visit me periodically with food and drinks and updates. Dad’s paid three months’ rent for the house in advance with notice to quit, and settled the utility bills. Mum and Lauren suggest that I might like to go with them to the house before the tenancy ends to choose which pieces of furniture or crockery or framed prints I might want to preserve from my make-believe life of failure and lies. I just shake my head and roll over. How can they imagine that I want any of it? It’s all tainted. If I look at that bookcase or that telly, I’ll just remember Adam and me in Currys or Ikea, and I’ll get all choked up and misty-eyed until I remember that he was pretending and then I’ll want to put my bare hands around something and squeeze and squeeze until it stops struggling.

  Oh my God, what am I turning into?

  So after Dad and Robbie have packed up all my clothes and toiletries and brought them all back, a dude with a big lorry and an eye for bargain-inducing tragedies (and the other eye on the death announcements) goes to the house and loads it all up and gives me £3,800 for the whole lot. Good riddance. I bet Pam next door’s head exploded when she saw that happening. She’ll need a new hobby now that we’ve gone.

  I put the cash into the silver guitar bag with the rest. In those two days on the bed regrouping with Jinksy’s help, I’ve come up with a plan. It’s not a cunning or complicated plan, it’s simple, but brilliant, like the best plans always are. I’m going to find out from Ray and Julia who Ryan Moorfield is. I’m going to track him down. And I’m going to … ask him a few questions.

  OK, maybe it’s not that brilliant. But it’s simple, it’s my plan and I need it. Give me a break, I’ve only been strong and capable for three days.

  The next morning, Lauren taps tentatively at my door, and when she comes in with my tea as she has for the past two days, she finds me not only vertical but clothed and in the process of applying mascara.

  ‘Fuck me, it lives,’ she says, taking a sip of my tea. ‘Feeling better?’

  I glance at her, moving only my eyeballs, then go back to the mirror. ‘What do you mean, better? I was fine anyway.’

  She nods. ‘Oh, OK.’ She drinks more of the tea. ‘So what are you getting dolled up for?’

  ‘Going shopping. Need new clothes.’

  ‘OK. Well, some of us have got to work.’ She takes a final slurp before putting the half-empty mug down and leaving the room. ‘Have fun.’

  ‘Wait! Lo?’

  She comes immediately back into the room. ‘Yes, sis? You OK? What’s up?’

  ‘What day is it?’

  She widens her eyes. ‘Seriously? That’s what you want to know? That’s what you called me back for, all panicky and hysterical?’

  I shrug. ‘I hate not knowing what day it is.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘It’s, like, Tuesday. Cloth head.’

  Ginger is more than happy to shut up shop for the day and take me clothes shopping. ‘You thinking about court appearances?’ she asks me tentatively, as she drives us into town.

  ‘No, bollocks to that. I need sparkly stuff for Dad’s birthday party. It’s tomorrow. You coming?’

  She glances at me from the driver’s seat. ‘You’re going ahead with it?’

  ‘Yeah. Do you think we shouldn’t? Dad wanted to cancel but I think it would be good for everyone. Lighten the mood, you know?’ I don’t add that I have an ulterior motive for wanting to get into a room where there is plenty of alcohol and a certain step-father. Of course, he and Julia might choose not to come, but if there’s even the slightest chance that they do, I want to seize it. I’m not going to tell Ginger this, though. Not yet anyway. To let anyone else in on my plan would feel like yet more epic ineptitude. I need to solve this one on my own. Dad’s party seems like the perfect opportunity to speak to Ray about Ryan Moorfield, if only because it’s likely to be the only opportunity I’m going to get. There’s no word yet on any further sightings of the invisible man, and anyway, I’ve thought about it and I’m not sure that the right moment is ever going to arise in the wake of their son’s abdication to casually bring up someone else entirely.

  Dad’s party it is.

  Ginger shrugs. ‘Have you announced Adam’s mad disappearance and even madder reappearance in South America yet?’

  ‘Announced? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just seems like a bit of an odd time to make an announcement like that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Well, I’m not exactly planning on making an announcement, Ginge. This is my dad’s night, I will not allow Adam to ruin it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Why’d you say it like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You know, like it’s actually the opposite of OK. All sarcastic and knowing.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t. Have you invited Matt? Fletch and I can pick him up if you want.’

  At the sound of Matt’s name, I get a tiny clenching feeling in my tummy, like my muscles are all doing crunches on the inside. ‘Oh, could you? Yeah, OK, that’d be good. Thanks.’ I’m trying so hard to sound off-hand, I end up rousing Ginge’s suspicion, and she looks at me sharply from the driver’s seat. I turn away to look casually out of the window and accidentally lock eyes with a cyclist, so I flash him a quick smile. He jerks in surprise, tries to smile back, wobbles a bit, starts to look disconcerted, frowns, wobbles some more, and is then gone as we pass him. I watch in the wing mirror as he bumps the kerb then dramatically squeezes the brakes – a bit too hard – and slams both feet onto the ground.

  ‘So you’ve invited him?’

  ‘What? Oh, Matt? Um, no, I haven’t. Yet. But Mum said Lo and I could invite as many friends as we want, you know, to bulk out the numbers. Otherwise there’ll be seven of us in the whole of the rugby club.’

  She turns to look at me again. ‘The rugby club? Is that where you’re having it?’

  ‘Yeah. I know. But I wasn’t involved in the planning of it, I just want to point that out now.’

  ‘What? Well why weren’t you? You could have stopped this hideous travesty!’

  ‘Come on, it’s not that bad. They could have done a lot worse.’

  ‘Yes, they could have booked that old concrete factory on the industrial estate.’

  ‘Hah! Yes they could. Or maybe those public toilets next to the park?’

  ‘Ooh, yes, the toilets.
Your mum would have loved that gorgeous stained glass window over the door.’

  ‘Mmm, yeah. Gives the place such a lovely ambience.’

  ‘Imagine what the acoustics would be like.’

  We giggle at the image for a few moments as Ginger is reversing into a parking space, then she pulls on the handbrake, kills the ignition and turns to me.

  ‘Seriously, though, Grace. Why weren’t you involved in your dad’s party arrangements?’

  Her voice has taken on that gentle, sympathetic tone people do when they’re trying not to hurt someone’s feelings by accidentally implying something that might hurt their feelings. I frown. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘No, nothing, just wondering.’

  I narrow my eyes. ‘Ginge. This is me. What are you getting at?’

  She takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. ‘OK. I just think that you should have been involved in this one. It’s your dad’s sixtieth birthday, it’s only going to happen this one time, it’s important.’

  I feel myself frowning. ‘Well yeah, I know that. But Mum and Lauren organised it without me. That’s not really my fault, is it?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t saying it was your fault.’ She breaks eye contact and looks down at her lap. ‘Not exactly.’

  Cold prickles start to break out all over me. ‘Not exactly? What does that mean?’

  ‘No, nothing, forget it.’ She reaches behind her and grabs her handbag from the back seat. ‘Come on, let’s get you all glad-ragged up.’

  ‘No, hold on a minute, Ginge, that’s not fair to say something like that and not explain it. I know I haven’t visited Mum and Dad so much since Adam and I got married, but that’s normal, isn’t it? You start a new life with your husband and leave your old life behind.’

  She puts her bag on her lap. ‘Yes, I know, you’re right. To a certain extent. But you haven’t been back to see them for months.’

  ‘Yes I have! Months! That’s rubbish. Where did you hear that?’

  She looks into my face a few moments. ‘Lauren told me. She reckons she last saw you just after Christmas.’

  ‘Well, she hardly knows what day it is, let alone how much time has passed since she last did anything.’

  Ginger nods thoughtfully. ‘Oh, right. That does make sense. I thought it was odd, you not visiting in all that time. Considering that you used to go every week.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Sorry, Gracie. I should’ve known. Come on then, let’s shop till we stop shopping.’

  As we start walking, I’m wondering why Lauren would say something like that. I remember that I visited just after Christmas because we were at Ray and Julia’s on Christmas Day. Then we went to Mum and Dad’s on the twenty-seventh, or something. Actually, Adam didn’t come because … because what? Can’t remember. Probably had to work. But he hardly ever came anyway, so that was normal. But I know I’ve been to see them since then. It was Robbie’s birthday in February, I definitely went then. Didn’t I? Something bad starts to uncurl inside me. Twentieth of February, that’s his birthday. The whole family would have gone out for dinner. I would have been there. So why can’t I remember where we went for the meal? Think, think. Where does Robbie like to eat? My first thought is McDonald’s, but that was probably a few years ago. He turned twenty, where would he have gone? Maybe he didn’t have a family meal this time, now that he’s a proper grown-up. Or … Is it possible … that maybe he did, and I just didn’t go? Is Ginger right about me? The bad thing inside me starts to unfurl its wings and stretch itself out wide, spreading loathing through me like a poisonous river. Suddenly my mind is filled with so many images of things in the house that are different – the new clock in the kitchen, the new sofas in the living room. The random exercise bike in my old room. Mum and Dad in competition with Mr and Mrs Martin next door. The new driveways, the Martins’ new windows. That old couple were in their eighties, there’s no way they would be doing up the house now. These must be new neighbours, moved in in the past … well, however long it is since I was last here. Does that mean Mr or Mrs Martin has died? Or both of them? How could I not know about that? They used to babysit us when we were little. Made us peanut butter sandwiches when we got home from school. Gave us a fiver each, every Christmas and birthday. Where are they now? All these things have changed since I was last home, and the only plausible, logical, contemptible explanation is that I simply haven’t been here. Things have been changing and happening and moving on without me, and not because I’ve been sitting in HG Wells’ time machine. I haven’t seen my family since that time after Christmas. I’m a despicable person.

  ‘You do see a lot of your parents, don’t you?’ Adam’s voice comes into my head. ‘I mean, far more than anyone else I know. It’s … odd.’

  Suddenly I find tears threatening and quickly I blink them away. I’m the bad person here, any tears would be self-pity. Or guilt. Which is just self-pity in a fancy bag. I can’t let Ginger see me feeling sorry for myself.

  ‘You OK?’ she says. Fuckit. Nothing gets past her.

  I nod silently. Let her think I’m upset about Adam.

  She stops walking and puts her hand on my arm. ‘Look, I know this has been a fucking awful time for you, finding out all this stuff about Adam.’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  She nods. ‘I know. At least, I think you will be. It’s such a shock, everything that’s happened …’

  ‘Well, not that much of a shock, to be honest. I mean, I knew he was secretive and wasn’t including me in his life, so the safe and all that is fairly expected really.’

  ‘Yeah, I was talking about him being on his way to a new life in South America, Grace. You can’t have been expecting that.’

  ‘Oh, right. No, that was a bit of a surprise.’

  We pass by a shoe shop and stop simultaneously to gaze at the contents in the window.

  ‘I love those.’

  ‘Which? The boots?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Mm. Lovely colour.’

  ‘Impractical though. They’d be ruined first time they got wet.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s a bit like that woman who gets a call that her husband has had a car accident and is in hospital, and then this hidden life of his starts to unfold.’

  ‘What?’

  She turns to me. ‘That film. Can’t remember what it’s called. He’s been leading a double life the whole time, and she only finds out because of where he had the accident. It’s like, hundreds of miles away from where he was meant to be.’

  I stare at her. ‘Are you saying Adam has been leading a double life?’

  ‘Could be. I mean, you knew next to nothing about him, did you? His past or even his present. Maybe that would explain everything.’

  I think about it. I’ve been assuming that he was just incredibly private, or uncommunicative, but was secretly booking flights and buying paperbacks during the advert breaks. And possibly setting up a new life thousands of miles away. Fairly standard shitty husband behaviour, I suppose. But what if there’s more to this? Even more to find out? I shut my eyes. ‘Oh my God, Ginge. What if there’s another wife?’

  ‘That’s the least of your worries. He might be a serial killer.’

  My eyes fly open. ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Did Maple Avenue have a basement?’

  ‘No.’

  She shakes her head dismissively. ‘That pretty much rules out serial killer then. He would need somewhere like that to … keep things.’

  ‘Oh shut up.’

  ‘Maybe he was a sex pest?’

  ‘Flip, Ginger, why would you think that?’ She doesn’t answer immediately, which sends my mind spinning. ‘Bloody hell, did you mention serial killer first so that when we finally realise he’s just a pervert, it’s not so bad?’ Another thought occurs to me. ‘Oh my God, has he ever … pestered you? Sexually?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that, don’t worry. Jesus, can you imagine what Fletch would do if he ha
d?’

  Fletch adores Ginger, but he’s not the most motivated man I’ve ever met. His reaction would probably be to frown a lot and call Adam something foul when he couldn’t hear.

  ‘Or maybe Matt?’ Ginge adds, thoughtfully.

  Now that’s a different story. My mind is suddenly filled with an image of a huge, furious Matt, barging into our house with clenched fists and stomping around the place until he finds Adam cowering near the back door in the kitchen. Probably in the process of fleeing the scene, as that seems to be his preferred method for dealing with things. Matt marches over and shoves Adam on the shoulders with the heels of his hands, so hard Adam staggers backwards. ‘How dare you?’ Matt says, between clenched teeth. ‘How fucking dare you?’ Except in a nonsensical dream-like way, he’s suddenly not defending his sister’s honour, he’s defending mine.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t really matter in the end, does it? It’s dreadful he treated you so badly …’

  ‘Or did he? Maybe he was actually treating someone else badly by being with me?’

  She pauses. ‘Yeah, possibly. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. He’s out of your life now. Whatever he was up to.’

  ‘You know what I can’t stand the thought of?’ I say to Ginger, pausing on the pavement.

  She stops too. ‘What?’

  Tears fill my eyes again as the thought fills my mind. ‘What if I never find out?’

  It takes most of the day to find a dress suitable for Dad’s party. We hunt in a team, like velociraptors. I head straight in for the clothing rails, while Ginger comes at them in a surprise attack from the side. I don’t tell Ginge, but what I’m looking for has to be the right mix between devastatingly sexy and devastated wife. I need to look breathtakingly beautiful and heartstoppingly sad. I need an air of mystery, coupled with an air of misery. I want Ray to see my pain; and I want Matt to see my … wonderful personality.