by Hilary Boyd
‘It doesn’t matter how many times, or when, or why, Freddy. You said you were getting help.’
‘I was. I did. I have been to meetings.’
‘And spoken, got involved?’
Freddy sighed. ‘No. Not yet.’
‘I thought . . .’ She stopped and he wondered what she had intended to say. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
He felt the atmosphere drain between them. As if someone had switched off the light. Freddy had hated her – and everyone else – nagging him to ‘get help’. But he hated it more now that she had given up. He felt tears hot behind his eyes.
‘Please . . . please don’t give up on me, Lil,’ he begged, unable to stop himself reaching out and taking her cold hand in his. She didn’t draw back, and he took hope from that. But her next words dashed any hope.
‘I’m going back to Oxford tomorrow,’ she said softly. ‘I love you, Freddy, you know I do. Perhaps too much. And what happened to you as a child literally breaks my heart. But I can’t do this any more. I can’t live with someone I can’t trust, someone who’s . . .’
She didn’t say the word, she didn’t need to.
‘I’ll get help, I will.’ He heard the desperate pleading in his voice. ‘I promise I’ll go and see one of the people Kramer recommended. I’ll make an appointment tomorrow.’ He stopped, noting no reaction in his wife’s face. ‘What happened tonight was unacceptable on any level,’ he said. ‘I’m utterly ashamed. But it’s a wake-up call. I’m not right in the head at the moment. I know I need help.’
Tears were pouring down Lily’s face, her mouth puckering, but he was amazed to see that her eyes were still full of love.
‘Please, Lily. Just one more chance,’ Freddy whispered. But he knew his words fell heavy and rejected in the still night air.
*
They lay close together, naked and chilly. He held her in his arms, her back pressed against his skin, his hand cupping her shoulder – it was how they always slept. Freddy was awake though, his eyes open, staring into the darkness. He didn’t want to miss a moment: he wanted to imprint for ever the feel of Lily’s body, the scent of her skin, the soft rise and fall of her breathing as she eventually drifted into sleep. Imprint it so that he could carry her with him, always.
Chapter 54
Lily was huddled miserably in Seth’s kitchen. She had left London early, before seven, the atmosphere so painful between her and Freddy that she ran along Charlotte Street towards the Tube as if she were escaping a tsunami. Her husband had been mostly silent as she packed her case; he hadn’t asked her to stay. But his expression showed such devastation that she felt an overwhelming reluctance as she dragged herself from his farewell embrace.
Dr Kramer handed her a cup of coffee.
‘Should I have left him like that?’ she asked him, accepting the white china mug, but setting it down on the scrubbed-oak surface without sipping. ‘He’s such a mess. I’m worried what he’ll do.’
‘You mean you’re worried he’ll harm himself?’ Seth asked, pulling his own stool closer to the island and sitting down, facing Lily. He was dressed in a pressed blue shirt and black chinos and looked tidier and more formal than he was on the boat – he had already seen one patient that morning, he’d told her, and had another due in an hour.
‘I don’t know. Freddy’s an optimist, but even he says he feels crazy at the moment. And what happened last night was so out of character. He’s the gentlest of men.’
‘He has the numbers I gave you?’
‘Yes. That was what the row was about. He was furious I’d told you.’
‘He felt betrayed,’ Seth said.
Tears filled Lily’s eyes. ‘Freddy trusted me with the most important secret in the world and I let him down. I should have asked before talking to you. But I never thought. I told my friend too. It was so horrible, I just couldn’t deal with it on my own.’
The doctor nodded.
‘I’ll never forgive myself if Freddy does something.’
Seth shifted in his seat, his expression suddenly firm. ‘Lily, you are not responsible for what Freddy does or doesn’t do.’
She stared at him, bewildered. ‘But I am. I’m his wife. He’s facing the worst crisis of his life and I walk out on him?’
‘You’re not helping by being there. You protect him, foster his denial. It’s called “collusion”.’
Irritated at what she considered Seth’s patronizing tone, she replied tartly, ‘I know what collusion is and I haven’t colluded. I’ve been totally straight with him.’ That wasn’t true, she thought as she said it, but she had meant to be straight with Freddy. It was just so hard in the face of his need for things to be perfect.
‘Just by going back to him, you’re tacitly approving.’
‘But he promised he’d stopped gambling and was going to GA.’
‘And if he was, that might have worked in the short term. But only in the short term, Lily. This man has been systematically traumatized in a horrific way from a very young age. No amount of self-help groups – useful as they undoubtedly are – could even scratch the surface of his pain.’
Lily felt the tears and made no effort to stop them. Accepting the square of kitchen towel that Seth tore from the roll by the sink, she wiped her eyes. But the tears kept coming.
She raised her face to the doctor. ‘What will happen to him?’
‘I don’t know. I hope he’ll get help.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’
Seth Kramer shrugged. ‘There’s nothing you can do. You gave it your best shot.’
His reply seemed almost callous to Lily. Cast her husband to the wolves, basically. Wash her hands of the whole affair.
‘I still love him. I really do. Even after everything that’s happened.’
Seth’s face was soft with compassion. ‘If you love him, then leave him to find the help he needs.’
*
It was cold on the boat, although it was only early September and the days had been very warm. Seth had been kind, as usual, offering lunch, offering supper, offering a bed for the night, but Lily had refused them all. He was obviously busy and she was intruding on his life. In the end he had persuaded her to stay on the boat.
‘It’s ridiculous paying for a hotel,’ he’d said. ‘I won’t be going there for the next few weeks. I’ve taken on too many new patients now the summer is over and I don’t have the time to write.’
Lily wasn’t sure she believed him, but she was too discombobulated to argue. And the last thing she wanted to do was throw herself on her sister’s mercy again. Not after all Helen’s dire warnings about Freddy. The humiliation would be more than she could bear.
So Seth, after his last client left, had walked with her to the canal. He’d shown her where the wood was for the stove, how to work the chemical toilet. He’d given her the keys to the large padlock on the main door and helped her make the bed – the mauve-and-grey-patterned duvet cover was very much a man’s choice, and made her smile.
They had sat together in the dying light, sharing a bottle of red wine he’d brought from the house. But Lily knew she wasn’t very good company. The wine tasted too strong in her throat and she was having trouble focusing on what the doctor was telling her about a book he had just finished by a long-dead Dutch writer. Her head still ached despite the paracetamol she’d taken, and was tender to the touch where she had hit the wall the previous night, a constant reminder of what her husband had done.
Now she was in bed at last. But, although she was so tired she could hardly think straight, sleep eluded her. She lay on her side, tense in the unfamiliar setting, listening to the sounds of the water lapping against the boat, the shouts from a party of people crossing the bridge nearby, the occasional tramp of footsteps along the tow path. The duvet cover felt scratchy – maybe it was new: Seth had said he seldom slept on the boat �
�� and the foam mattress fitted into the wood surround was harder than Lily was used to. There was a smell of wood and oil and damp, and a faint whiff of bleach from the loo.
Lily had felt lonely before. After Garret died she had thought she would die too, she missed him so much. But she’d had the twins at home, Prem and Anthony down the road, the chair shop with all the various clients . . . Then Freddy. For a moment she thought back to a holiday in Umbria one summer, the year after their wedding. Her family: Freddy, Sara and Stan, Dillon and Gabriela. Long evenings of laughter under the massive oak tree behind the house – always some friend or acquaintance of Freddy’s staying for a night or two to enliven the party – candle flames playing on their tanned faces, the empty wine bottles, moths and fireflies dancing around their heads. She had wanted those evenings never to end. Even this summer, after Freddy had deserted her and her life lay in ruins about her feet, she’d had her sister and brother-in-law to turn to.
Tonight, though, Lily did not feel lonely. She felt, instead, completely alone. All she wanted, like a persistent ache, was to be back in the Charlotte Street flat. To rewind the clock and hear Freddy’s laugh again, to look into his brown eyes, to feel his soft skin against her naked body, to smell the lingering waft of cardamom shaving cream in the bathroom, to put her hand in his as they strode through the London streets . . . To allow him to weave a ‘perfect’ life together.
But Lily knew, as she lay staring at the slatted blind of Seth’s boat, she could no longer afford to love him. Freddy had cost her almost everything she held dear in her life. Dillon was barely speaking to her and Sara had stepped back from her mother’s chaos. She hadn’t spoken to either of them since the Delaunay tea. Lily’s forced stay with Helen, and what her sister saw as ‘meddling’ in her nephew’s plight, had tested their relationship almost to breaking point. Prem was openly frustrated with her. She was homeless and broke.
Ring any bells? Lily asked herself, finding it almost funny, comparing her disastrous love for Freddy March to Kit and Freddy’s addictions. But there were painful similarities. And the knowledge that Freddy could hurt and destroy her – just as Kit’s heroin and Freddy’s roulette wheel had ruined both their lives – in no way diminished her love for him. It should have, but it didn’t. She still wanted Freddy with every cell, bone, drop of blood and breath in her body. But, unlike them, for Lily the spell was broken. Freddy had gone too far. She would never go back.
Chapter 55
He searched for the number on the doors in the north London street, checking his phone to make sure he’d got the details right. The weeks since Lily had left had been a numb sort of hell for Freddy. Sleepwalking through his life – the endless phone calls and emails, drinks and dinners and parties, schmoozing and boozing and negotiating . . . the food-truck launch itself – he had found his only real focus, every minute of every day, was the shocking thing he’d done to Lily. What he’d done and the uncontrollable rage he’d felt as he did it. He had completely lost sight of who he was.
I’m a survivor, he told himself daily. I don’t need help. I’ll get through this by myself. I always have. But one windy, wet Sunday morning, in the middle of October, he had finally understood that he might not. The launch was over – a niche success. Max was delighted. There was no work to focus on, no party to go to, no emails that couldn’t wait till the morning. No Lily. He had gone out to get a paper from the corner shop – Mr Patel, who had taken to calling him ‘dear’, reminded him of Arthur March. But as he was walking back along the pavement in the rain, he saw his father coming towards him. Not his father as he had last seen him in Malta, but his father when he was still bulked with muscle and rage.
Staring in horror at the approaching figure, Freddy felt suddenly dizzy, his heart racing nineteen to the dozen. He realized he was sweating and wiped his clammy, shaking hands on his jeans. He heard his paper drop, felt his breath wheezing in his chest. A young woman in jogging pants and a pink hoodie touched his arm, said something he didn’t understand. He pushed her away. He was sure he was having a heart attack, dying, right there in the street.
A second later the man – who was not, of course, Vinnie Slater – moved past him, casting only a cursory glance at Freddy, now bent over the gutter and retching. But with a familiar sort of inevitability, which didn’t even feel painful in the moment, Freddy, as he straightened up, saw he had wet himself.
‘It sounds like a panic attack,’ the nurse on the NHS helpline had suggested later, her tone sympathetic. ‘Have you been particularly stressed lately?’
And Freddy, with a sudden flash of understanding, saw he had been unbearably stressed his entire life.
The door, when he found it, seemed an improbable address for a respected psychotherapist. Although it was a shiny maroon with a stylish pewter knocker in the shape of a dolphin, it was sandwiched between a betting shop – the final irony – and a sandwich bar, which had two metal chairs and a table on the pavement outside. But he rang the bell anyway. A moment later a male voice answered, ‘Top floor, be careful on the stairs.’
Freddy saw what the voice meant. The stairs were steep and winding, but carpeted in what looked like an expensive sisal runner, lit by a skylight on the landing above.
Already so nervous he thought he might puke, Freddy hesitated at the sound of the voice, on the brink of turning tail. He’d already cancelled one appointment.
Then a head poked over the banisters. It was that of a man about ten years older than Freddy, balding and lean, with very blue eyes in a tanned face. He looks, thought Freddy, more like a sailor than a therapist. But the man smiled as Freddy reached the top floor and held out his hand, offering a firm shake. The smile was both wise and kind, and Freddy took a deep breath. Maybe with this man, his instinct told him, I can be safe.
Epilogue
It was a sunny Saturday morning in early December, three months since Lily had said goodbye to Freddy, her head bloody, her heart broken. They had not spoken since. Lily was leaving the flat she now rented in Summertown – a pleasant two-bedroom ground-floor apartment, with a small, neat garden, in a pretty cul-de-sac. She was en route for the 500 bus that would take her to Oxford station.
She had stayed on Seth’s boat for a while after breaking up with her husband – almost five weeks – and it had been an intensely solitary time. She had turned in upon herself, stripped bare, for once, of the distracting turbulence that had recently been her life. But, aside from the odd stab of searing loneliness that made her want to cry out, she had found the time strangely peaceful.
Every morning, early, she would get out of bed, pull on a sweater and jeans and pad through to the sitting area, where she’d light the wood stove – she was becoming quite an expert. Then she would make herself a cup of coffee with Seth’s state-of-the-art machine and, clutching a blue tin mug full of the powerful brew Seth favoured, she’d sling the tartan blanket from the sofa around her shoulders and open the glass doors onto the deck.
It had been a beautiful autumn, and at that time of day the sun would be tipping the horizon, its rays piercing the pale layer of mist that often rose from the field beside the canal and hovered over the still water. All she was able to hear were the birds. It was so beautiful, so utterly peaceful, that it sometimes brought tears to Lily’s eyes. She would lean against the side of the narrowboat, her bare feet cold on the dewy decking, and sip the warm coffee, her heart slow, her breath calm, her mind enjoyably empty.
Then, three weeks after her arrival on the boat, an email from ‘[email protected]’ had landed in her in-box. His message had been short, almost formal, but her heart had raced, nonetheless, when she saw it was from him.
Dearest Lily,
I am writing to let you know that I have given Helen and David’s address to the solicitors, Markham and Ryde, who are dealing with my father’s estate. (I don’t know if you’re still living there, but I’m sure they’ll forward it, if not.)
I have asked Bill Markham to transfer the money left to me in my father’s will to your account. It amounts to £109,632, and will go some way in repaying my debt to you.
It might not arrive for a few months – you know how long probate can take – but let me know when it does.
I hope you are doing okay. I struggle, but I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear I’ve finally been brave enough to get some help!
Much love to you, as always, Freddy xxx
It had taken Lily a moment to catch her breath, all the old emotions Freddy engendered gathering raw around her heart as she read his final line. She’d pushed them firmly away, concentrating on the practical content of his message. He could so easily have kept the money, gambled it away, she’d thought.
She’d known she was pleased, as Freddy suggested, that he was getting help. But she had been surprised to find she was not tempted to respond to the email, beyond thanking him for the money. The thought of hearing more about his personal life, of being sucked back into his chaos, of feeling too much for him again, had sent a piercing shaft of anxiety through her gut.
The money was hugely significant in her parlous financial state. Her heart had leaped at the sum. It meant she could borrow enough, until probate was finalized, for a deposit on a decent rental – from Seth, perhaps, or Prem. It was getting chilly on the boat as winter approached, and although the doctor had insisted she stay as long as she liked she knew she would relish a place on solid ground, with central heating and a loo that didn’t wobble and smell of bleach.
Today, as she waited for the train to arrive, Lily was nervous, but also excited. Not nervous because she was seeing the twins and Ted. Her relationship with her children had begun slowly to mend over the autumn. They were still careful with each other, and nobody referred much to the recent past, but Lily felt they were a family again. The anger on both sides had gradually dissipated now that Freddy was no longer in the picture.
