by Dawn Goodwin
Hours earlier, lying wide-eyed and alone in bed, he had already decided what he was going to say to her. This had to stop. The only way to make that happen was to talk, tell her the truth, make her see sense, listen to what she had to say, if anything. Then they could decide where they went from here, together or otherwise. He had been avoiding it for too long enough, as had she.
But she had looked so wretched and scared when he opened the door that his steely determination crumbled, his angry questioning about where she had been evaporating into a soundless vapour. Shoes in hand, pathetically thin frame swamped under cheap glitter, looking far from her best, he was reminded of Grace caught playing dress-up in her mother’s wardrobe. Then when she had said those three pathetic yet mobilising words, the diatribe he had planned was ruined.
He stood washing mugs that weren’t dirty, just so that he had time to collect his thoughts and figure out what he was going to say to her now. The truth was he would do anything for her. She had always been his weakness – the feisty, spirited, argumentative girl he had met in university had captivated him. Then when Grace was born, his family was complete and they were happy for a while. They had wanted more children, but the elusive sibling for Grace had never materialised and they had accepted that theirs would be a unit of three. But nothing lasts forever, so they say.
She had always been a dreamer, full of grand plans and ambitious goals, but she had put it all aside so that Grace could have at least one parent who was always at home when she finished school every day, rather than a ghostly apparition appearing in the corridor every now and again before vanishing to an apparently busier and more interesting life.
She never complained and he knew how much she adored Grace, who had never wanted for anything. Grace became her whole life, to the point where he had felt overlooked, obsolete. Felicity – well, she had made her intentions very clear and the contradictions between her and V had made the idea of her all the more attractive. She had paid him the attention he was craving, pathetic as that was.
Then the unthinkable had happened and V had been cast adrift, her sole purpose in life snatched away from her. He had passively stood by and observed V slowly fade away until he could hardly recognise the woman living in his house. She became a mouse, barely speaking, flinching when he touched her, rare laughter never quite reaching her eyes, lost. She built an iceberg around herself as a defence and everyone caught a cold from it.
Yes, he had stood by and watched, not really knowing the best way to break through, but he had been trying to cope too. He had tried different words, but everything he said seemed to exacerbate the distance between them. It got to the point where he preferred the quiet hospital corridors at night to the acres of pristine white sheet between them in bed.
Then it looked like she had turned a corner. She started talking again and he had hoped against hope that she had started seeing a counsellor as he had suggested repeatedly. He was wrong about the counsellor. It turned out it was a new friend who was making a difference and that was fine with him because there was conversation again and he was grateful for the fractures in the silence. One morning she came downstairs wearing red nail polish on her toes and he could’ve wept with joy at this nod to frivolity.
But he had also ignored the scarier edge to her new friendship – the drinking; the strange outbursts; her apparent hallucinations and memory lapses; the empty pill packets. He should’ve asked more questions, found out who this woman was. Then yesterday, with all those presents… He desperately wanted to believe that V was the victim of a cruel prank, but he knew it was more likely that grief was finally taking its toll on her.
His hands swirled in the scalding, soapy water, checking for an errant teaspoon or a stray cup, but he had washed everything he could find. He pulled the plug and watched the soapsuds swirl and disappear. As he looked up and out of the window into the crisp morning, he could see Felicity in her garden checking the washing on her line. He watched her for a moment, his mind remembering fingers tripping over skin.
Once upon a time, the very idea of a fling with her would’ve been absurd amid his perfect world, but things change. Felicity was dominant, self-confident and, most appealing of all, she didn’t need saving – well, not by him anyway. She needed distraction from her dull, monotone life. Even in the last few weeks as the life had begun to creep back into V’s pallor, the distance between the two of them had remained, pushing him closer to Felicity, but he had resisted. That had to mean something.
He watched her take an armful of clothes off the line and then stride purposefully back indoors. Tom stared after her for a moment, regret in every breath. Then he reached over, flicked the switch on the kettle and started to get his confessions in order. Time to come clean.
Veronica
I took longer than I should’ve to change, trepidation, not style, making me question my outfit repeatedly. But I also knew that all the delaying tactics in the world wouldn’t make this go away. The shower had washed away any surface dirt, but that was all. Scarlet suggested I play the victim with plain clothes, naked face and simple ponytail. I allowed her to act as the puppet master. Eventually I descended to my fate, bare feet matching his, with only chipped nail polish on my toenails left to remind me of the previous night’s excesses. Exhaustion hollowed out my legs and the hangover of earlier had settled into a thin coating of nastiness on my tongue. My mind kept conjuring up the smiley face on the blue pill, taunting me.
Tom was waiting for me in the lounge, with a prim pot of tea on a tray, and I felt like I was presenting myself before the headmaster to be reprimanded for smoking behind the bike shed. He sat in the armchair, legs crossed, looking tired and pale. My conscience prickled again. He looked up as I sat on the couch. I had asked Scarlet to stay and she disappeared into the kitchen. There would be time for introductions later.
He didn’t speak immediately, just reached forward and poured the tea, before handing me a mug. If his choice of cup was deliberate, he didn’t give any indication. It was from the pottery shop, hand-painted by Grace’s chubby hands, all splashes and flicks of colour blending together to create a montage that only a toddler could identify and only a parent could love. I shrunk back, my eyes searching his expression, then reached out to accept the cup. I could feel the heat burning into the pads of my fingers and I lowered it hastily to the side table.
Neither of us wanted to speak, but the silence was oppressive.
Eventually, Tom said, ‘Where were you?’ The ‘this time’ hovered unsaid.
‘Just out,’ I replied, knowing that that wouldn’t suffice but hearing it crawl from between my dry lips anyway.
He immediately dropped his head and shoulders. ‘That’s all I get? We should’ve been together, especially on her birthday.’
‘You’re right, I…’ I paused, picked up my tea, burnt my lip, put it back down and returned to chewing on my ragged thumb. ‘Um, I went out with Scarlet, we drank too much.’ I chuckled, ‘You know me and spirits – not a good mix.’ Nor drugs apparently.
A clock ticked, a car accelerated past the window, normal morning routines unfolded around us.
‘Where did you go?’
The million-dollar question.
Before I could explain, he said, ‘Look, that’s not important. We need to talk. I need to talk. God, I don’t know where to begin.’
I frowned. This wasn’t what I was expecting. The confessions were supposed to be coming from me.
He held his head in his hands for a moment, then muttered to the floor, ‘I’ve been having an affair.’
Heat rushed up my neck.
He looked at me, his eyes pinpricks in his dejected face.
‘I’ve been having an affair,’ he said with more conviction. ‘It’s over now, I’ve finished it, a while ago, but I need to explain… why…’
I started to laugh great gulps of mirth at the irony of it.
‘Ron, stop.’
I couldn’t. The laughter sounded wild and fever
ish and I could feel cold tears streaming from my eyes.
‘Ron!’ he shouted.
Hearing him call her by that nickname jolted her. The laughter died as suddenly as it had started. I looked at him properly for the first time in a long while. He looked older, shattered.
‘Who?’ I needed him to admit all of it.
I could tell he was dreading that particular question.
‘Felicity.’
I snorted again.
‘Things before Grace – we had drifted apart a bit, you were busy, she took up all of your time. I don’t know, it sounds lame, but the best way I can describe it is that I felt like I was intruding on your little partnership. It’s no excuse and I know I’ve hurt you on top of the grief you’re already living with. But that’s the thing – we don’t talk, we had stopped talking even then. We used to – years ago – but then family life took over, responsibility, and we stopped.’
He paused for breath. When he spoke again, his voice was weighed down with regret. ‘You have every right to be angry. A part of me wants you to get angry, because at least then we would be talking and you would be reacting. We’ve never really talked about what happened, any of it, but it’s constantly there between us, in everything we do, like an elephant in the room, and I need it to be over.’
I shook my head, incredulous, trying to clear the picture hovering in my mind of Felicity’s smug face. ‘Okay, my turn.’ Tit for tat.
I sat forward and rested my arms on my knees, mirroring his pose.
‘Last night…’ But I couldn’t get the words out. Everything I wanted to say sounded empty and hurtful, like a woman scorned.
He was peering at me through intense eyes, betraying the effort it was taking for him to remain composed.
‘What? Say something. Anything,’ Tom pleaded.
‘Okay.’ I dragged my eyes back to Tom. ‘I guess I was feeling…’ What exactly? My vocabulary was still failing me. The words in my head sounded chaotic and misaligned. ‘Yesterday, when I was making Grace’s cake and after all those presents, you had this look on your face as though you thought I was mad, like I had lost the plot. You immediately assumed the worst of me, instead of contemplating the fact that someone else may have been involved—’
‘That’s not true, I said as much—’
‘No, your face gave you away. You thought I had finally tipped over the edge. And I don’t blame you. There have been so many things that have happened that I haven’t been able to explain. And even I don’t know what to believe of myself any more. Every day I seem to be doing something that I would never have even considered before. Hell, I even thought it was you for a minute – the flowers yesterday…’
‘What flowers?’
‘It’s not important. Anyway, I didn’t want explanations and theories from you; I just wanted you to be there for me and to listen. Scarlet? Well, she understands that. She humoured me, dressed herself for a party, said the right things, so I decided that a party was what we would have.’ I could remember the flare of defiance I had felt. ‘We went to a bar, we had a lot to drink…’ I paused.
‘So where did you spend the night? At her place?’
‘Um…’ A lie leapt to my tongue, but that would be too easy.
‘Look, that’s twice in as many weeks you’ve put me through hell, just for a couple of drinks with your new mate. Who is she?’ His voice was edgy. I could see him physically attempting to calm himself down, a deep breath, a steadying of his hands. Then in a calmer voice, he said, ‘It’s great that you’ve found someone that you can hang out with and talk to, but it’s gone too far. You didn’t even act like this when we were at university. Talk to me. Please. I’m really worried about you.’
I raised my eyes to scan his face. He looked so wretched.
Tom was still talking, his pent-up angst finding release in words. ‘It’s the silence that hurts the most. We’ve never talked about Grace. You still won’t talk now.’ I hated the way he said her name with such reverence. He had canonised her, but to me she was still my little girl. ‘I would rather you were angry, lash out, throw something, I don’t know… use me as a punchbag, but don’t keep locking me out. I hurt too. I’ve wanted to talk to you, needed to talk, but I haven’t because I thought it would make everything worse, but it can’t get any worse than it is right now. You don’t even seem angry about this thing with Felicity. You don’t even seem surprised.’ His words were tumbling over each other, and I put my hands over my ears.
‘I… I don’t…’ I blew out some air. I could feel my control slipping away, like retreating sand in an hourglass. I had to get my thoughts in order, but the sand was accelerating. All I wanted was to put my hands up in defence and back away, run for cover, hide in a small, dark place. But the sand had momentum now and I knew once the last grain had filtered through, the truth would spill out along with all the hurt and grief.
‘You want me to get angry?’ My voice was low, dangerous, as I felt my mind struggling to hold onto the conversation. I looked at the carpet, the beige neutrality of it, and wondered how much dirt it was hiding deep in the thick pile. ‘That’s about all I feel these days. If I’m not angry, I’m numb. Yes, I feel angry – at you, at Felicity, at the world. But the anger scares me, so I lock myself away so that I don’t hurt anyone else. But Scarlet, she lets me be. She doesn’t judge, ridicule, remind me, pity me. She just lets me be me, whatever that is on any given day.’ I looked up at him again. ‘You’ll like her, Tom. She’s funny, outrageous,’ I smiled, knowing she would likely be eavesdropping and wanting her to hear. ‘She reminds me of what I used to be like, before us, before this’ – I indicated the sensible suburban room around us – ‘before…’
‘Look, don’t get me wrong. I know we’ve struggled to talk about everything and I’m really glad you’ve found someone to confide in, but this all seems so… extreme. You have to admit, you’ve gone off the rails a bit.’ There was relief in his tone now, his voice lower than it had been.
He started to speak again, but I held up my hand, ‘No, let me finish, please. I need to. There’s so much more I should be saying.’ I took another deep breath. ‘In the beginning, I felt like I was drowning. Life was carrying on around me like nothing had happened. You had your work, our friends all carried on with their family life – I know they could do nothing else, and you needed to swamp yourself in work to cope, but I felt… cheated – like it wasn’t fair – and then angry. The constant questions about whether I was okay that I didn’t want to hear in the beginning stopped coming, the casseroles weren’t offered any more, no one knew what to say to me, so they left me to myself and said that time would heal everything and it would get easier. But it didn’t. There are reminders everywhere. It gets harder to wake up and breathe every day, to swing my legs out of bed, to put on a happy face. I can’t just carry on doing the dishes and wandering around the shops, not without Grace there.
‘Then Scarlet came along and she has shared the load a bit. She seems to know what I’m feeling and when I need to talk – or when I need to be distracted. I’ve been to some dark places, but she steers me away – and she’s saved me, made it easier to carry the blame around.’
‘Blame for what?’ he interrupted.
‘Sometimes, I think what if it was really me in that accident and that this is actually hell? Part of me thinks that all of this is just rightful punishment and I deserve to suffer.’
‘I don’t understand.’
I ignored him. Words were tumbling out of my mouth in fits and starts, with no order or reason, but now that I’d started, I didn’t want to stop.
‘Last night there were too many drinks, and’ – I shook my head again – ‘I took some drugs, stupidly, recklessly, and woke up this morning in a man’s bed with no idea how I got there.’ I rushed it out. ‘What I do know is that this is not about hurting you or blaming you; it’s about me finding a way of channelling all of this anger and grief and… I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am.’
I was wrung out.
Tears tracked slowly down his cheeks and it was his turn to look away. He got to unsteady feet. Approaching the window, he stood, looking out. I waited. While my hands started their wringing dance again, his were still, clasped prayer-like.
When he eventually spoke, his voice was croaky. ‘Give me a minute. I need a minute.’ He left the room.
I slumped back into the couch cushions and closed my eyes. I felt the cushions shift next to me and opened them again to see Scarlet looking at me in concern. She rested her hand lightly on mine.
‘You okay?’
I just shook my head. Before I could reply, he was back. He didn’t seem angry, just disillusioned, beaten, which cut through me deeper than any rage would have. He was so focused on my face, he didn’t acknowledge Scarlet at all. ‘You’re wrong, you know. It has always been about blaming me,’ he said. ‘You think I didn’t do enough.’
‘No, I… Is that what you think?’
He interrupted forcefully, his eyes firing. ‘You had your chance to speak; let me have mine now.’
Scarlet had retreated to the far corner of the room, as though hiding herself from the bullets of hurt and recriminations that were shooting around.
He composed himself somewhat. ‘I’ve never heard you say the words since it happened, you know. Most of the time you don’t even say her name.’
‘What words?’
He returned to his seat and leant forward, looking purposefully into my eyes so that I couldn’t look away. ‘Grace is dead.’
It was like a knife stabbing, twisting, inflicting searing pain. I put my hands over my ears again, but he crouched in front of me and grabbed them, forcing them into my lap, holding them hostage.
‘She’s dead and you have to face up to it, but you won’t let yourself. In your heart, you think I should’ve saved her. I know you do. You think I should’ve done more, but I couldn’t. The car was going too fast. The driver was drunk. No one could fix her. But don’t blame me – I’m a doctor, not God, and I wasn’t on call that day. To be honest, I’m glad I wasn’t. I couldn’t have been her doctor that day. I was her dad instead.
