by Adale Geras
Zannah was filled with a peculiar mixture of terror and embarrassment that she’d never encountered before. What everyone would think, what they’d all say, how she’d be thought of – a flibbertigibbet, a woman who didn’t know her own mind, frivolous, unkind – was almost as bad as the dreadful thing she was about to do to Adrian. He loved her. What would he say? What would happen now? She didn’t know which awful bit of the situation to concentrate on: telling everyone that the wedding was off; cancelling the arrangements – and what about the dress? I’m keeping that, whether I ever wear it or not. I love it so much. And what about the ring? The ruby on her left hand. She’d have to give it back to Adrian, wouldn’t she? What was the right thing to do? The magazines never mentioned the possibility of such an eventuality. Their business was happy marriages following perfect weddings. She wasn’t going to be having anything like that in her life.
She had to tell Adrian before she talked to anyone else. But was it fair to do something like that when he was on his way to America? She didn’t want to spoil his trip. She’d turned off her phone. By now there would be a few messages from him, she knew. Tomorrow, she thought. Time enough to listen to them then.
Perhaps, she told herself, as she lay down again and switched off the light, I can let Ma and Em know. Just them. I’d make sure they didn’t say a word to anyone else, but at least I’d have someone to talk to. Then I can meet Adrian at the airport. Once he knows, it can all begin, the unravelling of everything that’s been put together over the last nine months.
Sleep wouldn’t come. Do I love Adrian? Zannah wondered. I must still love him a bit. What’ll I miss about him? She tried to conjure up his face, his voice. She thought about getting up, finding her phone and listening to him in the dark, then decided not to. She closed her eyes. I’m so tired, she thought. The mess of emotion and anguish in her head subsided a little as her body relaxed, and as she drifted into sleep, an image of Cal came to her, touching her hair, touching her neck. Suddenly she was wide awake again. ‘I wish I was still married to Cal,’ she said, aloud, and felt worse than ever. She had no right, no right in the world, to wish such a thing. I’m going to forget I even thought it, she told herself. He’s been so kind, but it was just kindness, wasn’t it? Nothing more than that, surely? Kindness and shared memories of their past together. She turned over and buried her face in the pillow. Oh, God, she thought, Cal. Was he going to become another source of pain; something else to contend with, along with everything else?
Tuesday
‘Are you sure you don’t want a scone?’ Joss pushed the plate across the kitchen table to where Zannah was sitting, nursing a mug of Earl Grey tea that had long ago gone cold.
Zannah shook her head. She’d hardly said a word since she arrived yesterday. She’d gone straight to bed and now it was nearly three o’clock. She’d slept for hours and hours.
‘Exhausted.’ Bob had made this dazzling statement of the obvious on his way out to the university. ‘All the wedding stuff getting to her, I shouldn’t wonder.’
At first when Zannah had phoned to say she was coming up to Altrincham for the rest of half-term, Joss hadn’t known what to think. Adrian, she knew, had flown to America yesterday but Zannah was supposed to be going back to London with Isis. Clearly, the plan had changed. Joss was wary of asking anything in case Zannah clammed up, so she took her time over buttering a scone.
‘Ma? Can I tell you something in private?’
Joss nodded.
‘I’m not going to marry Adrian. I’ve decided.’
A pause. ‘D’you want to talk about it?’
‘Not really, but I will. It’s … Adrian wants to send Isis to boarding school, and any children we may have. I don’t want to. I hate the whole idea.’
‘Is that all it is? Can’t you discuss it? Persuade him that you’d hate it? I’m sure he’d … Zannah, up till a few days ago, you were madly in love with him. How can that have disappeared so quickly?’
‘I don’t know, Ma, and that’s one reason I feel so awful. What sort of person am I if I can love a man one day and just, well, not love him the next? Do people do that? Fall out of love overnight? I may not love him, but I don’t want him hurt and he will be and I’ll be the one who’s doing it … I don’t know what to do.’
‘I suppose if you can fall in love in a couple of minutes, then you can fall out just as quickly. But he’ll be devastated, Zannah.’
‘But I’ll be devastated if I have to marry him, Ma! And I can’t spend the rest of my life being unhappy just so that I can say I did the right thing. I’ve got to look after myself. And Isis. He’s as good as told me he’s not fond of Isis. I can’t spend the rest of my life torn between the two of them. He’s jealous of her. He said so. I can’t marry him. But when I think of what everyone’s going to say … I just can’t face it, Ma. I’m so sorry. You’ve all … The money and the work! What’s Charlotte going to say? And Maureen … I simply don’t know where to begin. All those people to be notified … There’s so much … ’ She put her head into her hands and groaned.
Joss stood up and went to sit on the chair next to her. She put an arm round Zannah’s shoulders and squeezed her tight. ‘Listen, darling, don’t worry about anything, okay? You haven’t told anyone else, have you?’
‘Only Cal. And Em, of course.’
‘Then wait. Stay here as long as you like and rest. You might feel different when you see Adrian again. When you’ve spoken to him, you’ll know better what you want.’
‘I can’t do it over the phone. He keeps ringing and texting me but we don’t say anything about, well, our quarrel. He tries to bring it up and I keep changing the subject. He wants to discuss serious matters and I say we’ll deal with it when he returns. But now that I’ve thought about it, I know what I want and I can’t have it. Oh, God, Ma, I’ve been so stupid! I want Cal and it’s too late. I’ve divorced him and he’s moved on and now … I feel like going to bed and never getting up again.’
‘Don’t say that, Zannah.’
‘But it’s true. That’s what I feel.’ She reached for a scone and picked it up and began nibbling it, not seeing it, not, Joss was quite sure, tasting it. ‘Can I stay here with you and Pa for a few days? Cal’s got to work, of course, but Granny Ford’s happy to have Isis till the end of half-term. Em says she’ll go and pick her up at the weekend.’
‘Of course you can stay. We’ll look after you.’
‘Thanks, Ma. I’m going back to bed, okay?’
Joss stopped herself saying But you’ve only just got up. Instead she nodded and said nothing. This Zannah was one she hadn’t seen for years: not since the breakdown after she and Cal split up. Would she be ill again? Not if I can help it, Joss thought.
Once Zannah had gone upstairs, Joss started to wash the coffee cups. Out of the window, she noticed that the camellia was dotted with buds showing pink, almost ready to open. The sun was struggling through a thick bank of grey cloud. It occurred to her that in breaking up with Adrian Zannah was showing strength of mind and determination. She could have compromised, Joss reflected, even to the extent of letting Isis go to boarding school. Many other women, perhaps equally reluctantly, allowed their children to be sent away. She had stopped loving Adrian, and Joss thought she knew why. She still loved Cal. She’d never got over him. Adrian was a kind of substitute. Had she ever loved him? Probably. But if she suddenly had no desire to marry him, how strong had it been all along? Maybe even Zannah didn’t know.
Now here she was, ready to cancel the wedding she’d been longing for; ready to inconvenience all sorts of people – ready to risk the wrath of Maureen, which Joss knew would be something to see – in order to do what she felt she had to. That was brave, and it was also right. It would be wrong for her to marry Adrian if she didn’t love him.
The contrast between Zannah’s courage and her own spinelessness struck Joss with a force that made her stop what she was doing and take her hands out of the sink. She stood there, wond
ering whether she’d ever be capable of something like that: something that turned what everyone expected on its head. Her daughter wasn’t exactly saying To hell with the lot of you, I’m doing what I have to do, because Joss could see that this course of action was going to be hard for her. She hadn’t even split up with Adrian yet, and you could see she was suffering; dreading the encounter, and with good reason. How did you tell someone you had loved yesterday that today you didn’t love them any longer?
I couldn’t do it, she thought, and went to fetch a tea-towel to dry her hands. If I told Bob the truth, if I said I was still in love with Gray, even though I haven’t seen him for so long, what would happen? She had a sudden vision of all the separate pieces of her physical life: her dresser, her crockery, her clothes, her laptop, floating by on a swollen stream of muddy water that reminded her of the pictures on TV of the aftermath of those hurricanes in New Orleans and Texas last September. This house, their house, hers and Bob’s, broken, the roof smashed in, glass splintered out of the windows, empty. It had been such a terrible year for natural disasters: hurricanes and then the earthquake in Pakistan. The entire world was there, right in front of you, every night, impossible to escape. You could click through the channels with your remote and share the suffering of the starving, the homeless, the bereft, the refugees: a whole planet’s worth of misfortune that put what you were feeling into some perspective without making you any happier.
It was ridiculous to think like this. If I were to leave Bob, nothing would be broken. The life I’ve lived so far with him would disappear, that’s all. He’d be … what would he be? The truth was that they spoke together in an intimate way so seldom that she had no real idea of how the loss of his wife would affect him. He’d be shocked; outraged, probably, and also hurt. He’d wonder what he’d done to deserve it. I can’t do it to him, Joss thought. He’s been good to me in many ways. He hasn’t given me what I need and want, but that’s not his fault. He has never really known what that was and that was partly my doing. Maybe I never made it clear enough what I needed. He’s not a bad person, or a bad husband. He’s done his best for me, always. I can’t fling that back in his face. It’s no fault of his that the right person, the man I love, and will always love, is someone else and not him. Gray … I promised the girls I’d never see him again and I’m not going to break my word.
Joss went to sit down at the kitchen table, where she picked up the newspaper and held it without reading it. Anyway, she reflected, there’s nothing to say that Gray would want me even if I did leave Bob. He’d looked so happy sitting with his arm round Maureen, in that ghastly picture over Christmas, on Adrian’s camera phone. How coupleish they’d seemed! He certainly wasn’t pining. Probably he’d pushed her to the back of his mind so thoroughly that she’d become nothing more than Zannah’s mother. What would he say when he discovered that Zannah had called off the wedding? There’s something good that’s come out of all this, she thought. I won’t have to meet him and make polite conversation at the wedding. Thank God for small mercies.
*
It was midnight when Gray went to his study. Maureen was fast asleep. He’d sat in front of the television like a zombie, not watching something or other that she was keen to see. She’d been pleased that he was there because he so rarely kept her company on the sofa, and he’d felt vaguely guilty, but not guilty enough to concentrate properly on the kind of thing she enjoyed. Tonight someone in the silly play that had flashed across the screen had reminded him of Lydia and he’d spent the rest of the hour in fantasy, counting the minutes till Maureen disappeared into the bedroom and he could be alone.
He’d become like a stalker. Every day he put Lydia’s name into Google and sometimes he was rewarded. A few nights ago, he’d come across a fact that had preoccupied him for days. She was giving a reading in London at the end of April. He had rung up and bought a ticket the very next morning and was now living for that day. He hadn’t decided what to do. He could sit in the audience and disappear silently or perhaps … Would she see him if he came up to her afterwards and invited her for a coffee? Wondering about that took up far too much of his time. You’re pathetic, he told himself. Like a schoolboy.
Under this teenage-crush behaviour, something more serious was going on. He’d made up his mind to leave Maureen; to ask her for a divorce. Since Christmas, he’d mentally moved out of the marriage. He simply couldn’t go on pretending to be happy. Playacting. He was treating this house as though it were a comfortable hotel and Maureen had become no more to him than a competent housekeeper. It’s not fair to her, he thought, and knew he was kidding himself. This wasn’t to do with her but with him. With what he wanted, which was out of this house, out of this marriage and out of this town. I can leave everything: the hospital, my job … the whole of my life till now. I can find a job in London, he told himself, and when I go to the reading and see Lydia, I can say: I’ve left her. I’ve asked for a divorce. I won’t be married any longer. I’m leaving Guildford. I’m going to live in London. When she saw how serious he was, surely she’d ask for a divorce as well and then they could be together. Wouldn’t she? Of course she would. He’d persuade her. He sat in the darkened room, gazed unseeing at the glowing screen in front of him and lost himself in fantasies of how it would be when they were no longer apart. That’s what stalkers do, he reflected. Pretend that someone loves them when in reality they don’t give a shit. They were demented souls, who didn’t recognize the truth when it smacked them in the face. Was that what he was like? Had she stopped loving him? Part of Gray, the rational part, had to admit that this was a possibility but he preferred to indulge the craziness that refused to allow the idea to enter his head.
Monday
Zannah stood at the barrier in Arrivals at Heathrow and wondered whether there was an ideal place to tell someone you had stopped loving them and no longer wanted to marry them. She’d discussed the problem with Emily for hours. Somewhere public, Em had suggested. That, she reckoned, would make it more inhibiting and you’d be less likely to throw things and scream and shout. Zannah hated the idea of other people being anywhere near her while she was doing something so private. A walk through the countryside? Not if you lived in London and the person you were meeting was jet-lagged. There was no alternative: he’d have to be brought back to his flat. Not her flat, because Zannah wanted to be able to leave: to be the one closing the door at the end of the conversation.
Would it be a conversation? A shouting match? She had no idea and was dreading it more than she’d ever dreaded anything in her life. When she’d discovered Cal’s infidelity and told him their marriage was over, she’d been hurt, sad and tearful, but now she felt a paralysing mixture of guilt and anxiety that was wrecking her sleep. One of the worst, the most excruciating, things was how this situation made her feel about herself. What sort of person was she if she behaved like this? Surely only a worthless human being fell in love one day and then a few months later, simply stopped. Adrian didn’t deserve a wife like that. Zannah hadn’t realized that it was possible: that you could go from feeling nothing but passion for someone, to growing impatient with many things about them, and finally (after a very short time) to not loving them. She was shallow, and selfish and all the things that everyone would no doubt call her when she told them what she’d decided. She thought of the letters she’d have to write to the wedding guests and shuddered. I’ll worry about that when I have to, she thought. For the moment, there was the small matter of meeting Adrian and breaking the news. She’d managed to get the day off school by telling her head the truth. Thank God for a kind boss!
Emily had pointed out that it was unnecessary for Zannah to go to Heathrow now that she’d decided they were going back to the flat. Still, Zannah was waiting at the barrier. She’d promised Adrian on the phone that she’d be there and if she was going to disappoint him in the more important matter of their wedding, she had no intention of letting him down when it came to something so small and relatively easy t
o achieve. Also, the trip to Heathrow had distracted her. She’d had to concentrate on traffic and parking and getting to the right place in Arrivals, which took her mind off what was ahead of her.
There he was. He was waving at her and smiling and he looked so handsome. Zannah waved back and when he reached her, she allowed him to hug her, feeling sick and treacherous, and also acknowledging that she still fancied him like mad, and wanted him to kiss her. She didn’t stop him, but allowed herself to kiss him back, perhaps with not as much abandon as she would normally have shown.
All the time they’d been walking to the car, the talk had been inconsequential. Meaningless. When they set off, with Zannah driving, Adrian kept chatting away about the flight, the food, the movies. He asked after his mother. Then he phoned her on his mobile and Zannah was relieved to hear him arranging to go down to Guildford on Saturday. He’ll have the perfect person to talk to about how horrible I am, she thought. Maureen’ll cheer him up. I’ll have to speak to her before then, though. On the phone? In person? Would the head allow me another day off to go and see her? She probably won’t want to see me.
‘Mum says would you like to come down there on Saturday as well? It’d be great, wouldn’t it? I’ve said I’ll go down … Hope that’s okay?’
Zannah nodded and searched her mind for what to tell Adrian … What bits of news could she offer in return for his scraps about New York and how great it was? He chattered on, then turned to her. ‘You’re very quiet, Zannah. Anything wrong?’
