Strangers on a Bridge

by Louise Mangos

  Simon was too angry to acknowledge that Oliver shouldn’t be made to rat on his mother. Oliver had enough burdens to deal with. Things Simon didn’t know. We already had too many secrets between us. I guessed that’s why Oliver was feeling so betrayed by me. To see me with a strange man, barely more than a boy. That might not ordinarily strike a chord with him, but he’d seen me kissing him. And I couldn’t forget I’d kissed him back.

  ‘Are you saying you saw Mum kissing this man? Are you sure you saw right? I mean, you were busy scoring a fantastic goal. Don’t you think it’s possible you could have made a mistake?’

  Simon’s voice was urgent, wanting it all to be a mistake.

  A sob caught in my chest, and something unravelled.

  ‘It was the guy who was here once. I saw him leaving the house. I’m sure it was the same guy.’

  My palm clapped to my chest in a futile gesture, to keep my heart from pounding.

  No, Oli!

  I could feel the rainbow of Simon’s emotions from where I stood at the door. Confusion, betrayal, disappointment and, lastly, searing anger. He could no longer speak, and I imagined the rage that had now caught his tongue. He stood up and brushed past me where I was leaning on the doorjamb, knocking into my shoulder. I steadied myself and locked eyes with Oliver as we listened to Simon walk down the hall and shut himself in the bathroom.

  Oliver’s angry face had calmed. He looked at me warily, worry pitting his chin, and his lip trembled. I wanted to hold him.

  ‘It’s not what you think, Oli. He’s…’

  I wanted to tell him the truth. I wanted to tell him that Gerry was the son of the man who’d been menacing us. But to explain everything would take too long and become too complicated. There were things I would need to miss out of that explanation. That I had kissed that young man would disgust Oliver all the more. And telling him only part of the story would make everything sound worse.

  It was Simon I needed to talk to first. Simon who needed straightening out.

  I knocked softly at the bathroom door. ‘Can I come in? I need to talk to you.’

  Silence.

  I went to our bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my palm over the duvet, smoothing out non-existent creases.

  Simon took an age. I imagined him looking in the bathroom mirror, wondering what had possessed his deranged wife. He would be giving himself a pep talk, as he might do before facing the crowds at a conference. I heard Oliver in his room playing with the battery-operated Transformer he’d received for Christmas, and I knew he had already moved on.

  The front door of the apartment slammed, and for a brief moment I thought Simon had gone quietly down the stairs and left the house.

  ‘Mu-um! They didn’t have any hot dogs at the club.’

  Leon must have been dropped off by another parent. He dumped his bags in the hallway and I heard him searching for us in the rooms downstairs.

  ‘Power was out,’ he continued. ‘I haven’t had anything to eat. Is there any dinner left?’

  Oh, I forgot the dinner!

  ‘I’ll be down in a minute, Leon,’ I called. ‘We haven’t eaten yet. Can you press the “off” button on the oven, please?’

  The lasagne I had prepared that morning would have been ready long ago, with help from the oven timer. I heard him mumble something about ‘having to do everything round here’ as he went into the kitchen.

  ‘Blimey, Mum. The lasagne looks a bit burned,’ he shouted back. ‘Can I have a shower first? There was no hot water either.’

  He started up the stairs and the bathroom door opened. Simon must have heard Leon come in and his subsequent requests.

  ‘Uh. Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Did you have a good day? How’s the karate coming? Learn any good moves?’ Simon’s voice sounded so normal, I marvelled at his control.

  ‘It was cool,’ Leon answered. ‘Same as always. I’m just going to shower.’

  I heard Leon’s clothes being shed outside the bathroom door. The floorboards creaked as Simon appeared through the bedroom door. His eyes were red, but not from tears. He was angry. Very angry. He pushed the door closed.

  ‘I’m not sure what’s going on with you, Alice. But the biggest mistake you’ve made here is in somehow involving one of our boys.’

  And I thought: God, you don’t know the half of it.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  ‘Whatever Oliver saw, and whatever you will shortly tell me it was that Oliver saw, he already has some kind of predetermined picture in his head of something his mother has done wrong.’

  I opened my mouth, began to rise from the bed, but Simon put out a hand.

  ‘I haven’t finished.’

  He spoke as though he was addressing one of the boys. I was no more than his child right then.

  ‘I know Oli is not yet a teen, and has to deal with all the temptations of deceit that come with hiding stuff from his parents, but I trust his judgement, probably more than yours at the moment, and… Jesus Christ, Alice, what were you thinking?’

  ‘You’re not even going to let me tell my side of the story?’

  ‘Alice, the main issue here is you shouldn’t be having anything to do with that arsehole’s son in the first place. If this is all just an innocent meeting that went horribly wrong, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But Oliver said it’s the same guy he’s seen here, in this house. In our home! He’s not lying, is he?’

  I sucked in my lower lip. My confused mind still hadn’t had time to think up a valid excuse.

  ‘Is he?’ Simon yelled, making me jump.

  Through the narrow gap in the door, the mechanical toy buzzing in Oliver’s room ceased and, in the heavy space between our words, I heard Leon run the shower in the bathroom. Socked footsteps padded along the hallway. Oliver pushed open our door.

  ‘Did you call, Dad? I’m hungry. Is dinner ready yet? At this rate it’ll soon be bedtime.’

  Oliver looked innocently between us, hunger eclipsing any registration of tension. Adolescent priorities.

  ‘Simon, we’ll talk about this later,’ I whispered.

  ‘Don’t bother serving me, I won’t be down to eat,’ said Simon as he kicked off his shoes and stamped on the legs of his trousers to take them off.

  He sat on the bed and turned on his bedside light. With his back to me, his shoulders slumped, his body language was suddenly weary.

  I laid a hand on his shoulder, and he flinched, shunning my touch. I took a breath to tell him I loved him, but clamped my mouth closed, thinking it might sound pathetic. I hoped my gesture of physical contact conveyed my regret. I took my silence down to the kitchen to serve burned lasagne to the boys.

  Oliver was unaware his anger had caused a rift. As I dished up a steaming plate of food, it occurred to me that my maternal role as the provider of meals, clean laundry, tidy beds and refilled shampoo bottles superseded the concept that I was someone who could potentially destroy his family. His ego was bruised. Analysis of why his mother was at or near his football game in the first place didn’t enter into it. The kissing thing probably disgusted him on a more infantile level than understanding the implications of my betrayal. The fact was, although he hadn’t known I was going to be at his game, I was there anyway, but missed him scoring that goal. He was the one betrayed, not Simon.

  He now had a voracious appetite, and all other thoughts were obliterated as he satisfied this fundamental human need.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Leon asked absently between mouthfuls, wet hair plastering his neck.

  ‘Dad’s not hungry,’ I said. ‘He’s not feeling well.’

  ‘I like it crunchy like this on top, Mum. Good stuff,’ he continued, my answer ultimately of little importance to him.

  After pushing the blackened cheesy crust to the side of my plate, I couldn’t face eating either, and sat quietly listening to the boys chatting away in Swiss German at the table, swallowing hard against the threat of tears. Their fluency in the language
, and my exclusion from their banter, made me feel all the more isolated. As soon as their cutlery clattered to their plates, I cleared away the dinner things and went back upstairs to the bedroom.

  Simon was lying on top of the covers in his boxer shorts, his shirt open to the waist, socked ankles crossed. I was sure he wasn’t reading a word of the book he was holding. I gently closed the bedroom door so the boys couldn’t hear our discussion. Simon spoke first.

  ‘He has been here, hasn’t he?’

  I pressed my lips together, and silence confirmed my guilt.

  ‘I thought so. That stupid leather bracelet. It was his, wasn’t it? Jesus, Al, did you fuck him on the sofa where we made love that night? How could you?’

  ‘No! No, Simon we didn’t… we haven’t. Nothing like that has happened. How can you say that when you don’t even know what’s happened? We haven’t had sex!’

  At the mention of sex, I recalled the dream I’d had about Gerry on Christmas Eve, and I blushed. Simon narrowed his eyes. For him, the expression I could not prevent appearing on my face said it all.

  ‘Wanting to is almost as bad as actually doing it, Alice.’

  He stood up abruptly, his creased shirttails comical against his thighs.

  ‘Well, I know one thing. You’re the one who wanted to leave this house. Now would be as good a time as any to make your choices without the rest of us. It seems to me that’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘This has all got way out of control, Simon. Please, you have to believe me. There is nothing going on between Gerry and me. I swear. Are you telling me you think I should leave? Isn’t that a bit harsh? We need to talk this through.’

  ‘Alice, my patience has been tried for the past six months. You’ve become progressively more uncommunicative with me, your partner, your husband. And, for God’s sake, your behaviour has become completely irrational. You’ve made some decisions not even a child would make.’

  My breath came in puffs and I bit my lips together. He stopped, realised he’d gone too far. It was pointless for me to try and justify my actions, when the chemical synapses that produced Simon’s vitriol had themselves been triggered by irrationality.

  ‘I can tell you this. You’re not sharing my bed tonight. And it’s not me who’s going to stoop to the pull-out in the office. You can make your own bed and sleep in it. Excuse the metaphor, Mrs Reed.’

  Without speaking, I gathered my nightshirt, bathrobe, and a book I knew I wouldn’t be able to read, and headed to the office, pulling a set of sheets from the hall cupboard on the way. As I smoothed the bottom sheet over the concertinaed mattress of the sofa bed, Leon poked his head around the door.

  ‘What’s going on, Mum? Dad sounds really pissed off. Are you sleeping in here?’

  I bit back a quip about Leon’s coarse language.

  ‘It’s just one of those marriage things. We can’t get on all the time, I guess. Relationships have their ups and downs, Leon. We’ll be all right in the morning.’

  I couldn’t speak any more. A sob blocked my throat. My hair swung around my downturned face as I concentrated on smoothing the sheet onto the mattress again and again. Leon wandered off to his room. I took a deep, shaky breath, and went to check on Oliver. He was lying on his bed with headphones on, head bobbing gently from side to side, oblivious of the chaos he had created.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  ‘Why, Mum? This is so extreme. Why can’t you “work things out” here, in our home?’

  Leon’s voice wobbled, and I put down the sweater I had been folding and hugged him. I was surprised when he hugged me back, hard. Of both the boys, I’d thought Oliver would be the one who would be more upset about the temporary separation.

  ‘It won’t be for long. Your dad and I have talked it through, and it’s for the best. Sometimes it’s easier to talk about things when there’s distance in between. Anyway, you guys are going off on a fantastic ski trip soon.’

  Simon was adamant about having the break. If I hadn’t gone on about wanting to move out of our apartment in the New Year, he probably wouldn’t have insisted on the separation. He thought this break would prove to me that my negative sentiments about where we lived were unfounded, and that I’d find a way to sort out the confusion in my head about what had happened.

  I’d rented a studio room on the ground floor of a row of houses directly on the lake, not far from the centre of the village. A small part of me was thrilled to be so close to the water, a sentiment shared by Oliver, who hoped I would still be there in the summer so he could enjoy swimming directly from the garden area in front of the building. I told him it would probably only be for a few weeks at most, and he sulked for an entire afternoon.

  The boys would come to me for lunch every day, but would continue to live at the farmhouse. They could call me whenever they wanted, and we would be free to go on outings at the weekend. For the moment, Simon and I would perform these duties on an alternating basis, and would see very little of each other. I also thought he’d insisted on taking on all this extra work as a kind of test for me. He wanted to know how far he could truly trust me to keep my word.

  Easter was approaching and Simon wanted to take the boys on a skiing trip to Zermatt. They would be staying in a stunning hotel on the edge of town and I had to fight the jealousy in my gut. I wouldn’t have downhill-skied, as my ankle was still pestering me after many months, but I knew it would be a fantastic experience for the boys, and I petulantly wished I could be part of their memories.

  Instead I thought I might take the bus to Rothenthurm if the days were clear and have the last skate ski of the season.

  When Simon and the boys left, there was a strange emptiness. Everyone had gone. A part of me wondered if I would even have been happy to see Manfred around the corner in the village.

  I awoke on Saturday to a beautiful spring day, and knew the last of the snow would soon be gone from the pre-alpine cross-country trails, so I dressed early and left for the Langlaufloipe without breakfast. I’d skated a few times over the winter, thrilled to find that the sport put no pressure on my ankle, and I’d gradually improved over the season.

  As I tapped my boots free of snow so I could put the bindings in and close the Velcro around the pole straps at my wrist, I looked up at the flags flapping next to the trail. A warm Föhn wind had begun to blow from the south. They said it carried the capacity for lunacy and irritability, but that morning I felt good, and there was something secretly divine about playing hooky from my family.

  I’d skated a full ten kilometres before I realised I’d forgotten to fill the water bottle in my belt. The sun was blazing, and the hot wind that had been blissfully at my back as I headed along the valley now blew into my face as I rounded the loop to head into the blazing sun. My energy was sapped, and I started to feel weak with hunger. The sunlight glistened pale yellow in the traces left by the other skiers ahead of me. The snow was softening, and in some places water was beginning to gather in the tracks. I was amazed at how quickly conditions had changed, although, with spring on the way, I should have expected this.

  My skis were no longer gliding smoothly. The melting snow gripped them, and I began to struggle up the slightest of slopes. I saw a chalet in the distance, the Steinstübli, where they served drinks. I had some change in my pocket and knew I must stop before I dehydrated. I ordered a mineral water from the outside bar and walked around to the east side of the chalet to sit in the shade. My face was hot, and my head began to ache dully.

  ‘Endlich. I find you here, and on such a beautiful day!’

  My body was too exhausted to react to Gerry’s greeting, and I smiled flatly. I’d known there was a possibility he would be on the Loipe, but thought it unlikely we would meet. Now I wondered whether our running into each other had somehow been manipulated. He peeled the Velcro pole straps from his bare hands and pushed his sleeves up his arms. His head was bare, his hair shining in the sun.

  ‘You look a bit hot. Here, take some of
my magic potion. Pure water doesn’t always do the trick in these conditions.’

  He handed me the bottle from his ski belt, and I gratefully took a sip. Although it was lukewarm, it tasted of lemon and was slightly salty, and I couldn’t help myself. I gulped the liquid once I realised it contained the energy my body needed.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Gerry knelt down beside me, and my eyes involuntarily filled with tears. I couldn’t work out why. Was it because I missed Simon and the boys so much, that I was just happy to see someone I knew, or was it that, deep down, I was always hoping I might see him? Heat exhaustion was blinding my logic.

  ‘I need a coffee. I’ll be right back,’ he said.

  I looked around and realised he was on his own. He walked to the bar. His muscular legs in the tight Lycra ski gear still made the heat rise to my already flushed face, in turn making my temple throb. He returned to sit by my side, leaning against the warm wood of the chalet wall, and we surveyed the snow-covered moorland.

  ‘They say beavers may return to live here. I love the wilderness.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘I think this will be the last ski day this season. You see how quickly the snow can melt? I think we should not stay long, otherwise we will not make it back to the start of the Loipe. You’re alone?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Thanks for the drink, Gerry. I’m already feeling better. It was stupid of me to go without breakfast this morning. You’re right. I’d better make a move. I’m not very competent on this sticky snow.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. Here.’

  Gerry put out his hand and I reached out to take it. A little static shock connected us as he pulled me to my feet, and he hung on to my hand a moment longer than necessary.

  When we arrived back at the start of the loop, I was exhausted. Gerry greeted a couple of skiers, friends of his packing their equipment into their ski bags, and I half-hoped he would be persuaded to go with them for a beer or a meal. But that half-hope turned to an inexplicable feeling of gratitude as he came back to me instead.

  ‘Do you have your car?’