by Pip Drysdale
Oliver’s face took on this very serious expression right then, his eyes went all odd, and I was sure he was about to bin me. That he’d been planning on us just driving around in the cab until he got up the nerve.
As he opened his mouth to speak, my vision blurred and I braced myself for a re-enactment of the night Josh ended things. Told myself I’d be strong. Fixed my expression to ‘fine’. But he didn’t bin me. Instead he took my cold hands in his warm ones and said: ‘Charlie, we have one life to live. One chance at this. Please would you live yours with me?’ It was spontaneous and raw and it felt like a scene from True Romance. Oh, the fucking relief. So I said yes, of course I said yes.
A moment later he pulled out the ring and the cab continued to the airport.
Did it concern me that the proposal seemingly came out of nowhere? A little. But that was part of his allure.
I took another bite of pizza as I stared at the spot by the big bay window where we’d put the Christmas tree a few weeks before. Large, shiny red baubles and little wooden Harrods ornaments hanging from golden strings, silver tinsel wrapped around the base: our first Christmas as a married couple. How many hours had we spent together in this room, sitting on that big brown sofa, watching Netflix? A thousand? Five thousand? A wasted hour never felt wasted with him; we were so good together. I was his one ‘non-negotiable’. So why on earth would he be on a dating app? It made no sense.
And then my throat grew tight and my heartbeat slowed as I realised what it could be.
I’d told Oliver something about myself just a couple of months before. We were having a deep and meaningful, boozed-up chat late one night and it just sort of came out. No, that’s a lie: I’d wanted to tell him for a while but I was scared. I didn’t tell him everything, just the basics: the first time I had sex it was a house party, I was drugged, I didn’t remember much, it wasn’t ideal, and I was sorry I hadn’t told him earlier. It was one of those things I’d always felt like I should tell him before we got married but was terrified it might make him see me differently and change his mind. And since Oliver never liked talking about exes or past sexual experiences, it was an easy secret to keep. But when it did come out he was so loving, so protective. He didn’t say any of the things that Josh did: ‘Why didn’t you just report it?’ And I’d thought that meant he didn’t judge me for it.
But what if I’d been wrong?
I dropped the pizza crust back into the box, and as I did our bedroom door opened. And there he was. Still awake. My husband.
He was wearing an old white t-shirt and some green pyjama bottoms and, fuck, it was so great to see him.
‘Do you ever stop eating?’ he asked as he came over to me, a grin on his face.
‘I thought you’d gone to bed without saying goodnight,’ I said, as he wrapped me in his arms. He smelled like the ylang-ylang of his body wash mixed with whatever laundry detergent the hotel had used while he was away.
‘Like I’d dare,’ he said, pulling back to look at me. He had stubble and it glimmered in the low light. I loved him with stubble.
‘How was tonight?’ he asked.
And despite all my reasoning to the contrary, all I could think was: velvet sofa, dating app, swimming pool, you.
I looked down. ‘Fun,’ I said, hugging him again, my head pressing into his chest as I swallowed hard. Don’t say it, Charlie.
No point causing a problem if it was nothing.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, his voice three tones higher.
I nodded and said ‘yep’, refusing to look up. I have one of those faces that is easy to read; according to my acting teachers that was what made me great on screen. The audience could see the thoughts dancing behind my eyes. They knew they could trust what I was feeling. But in real life it screwed me over sometimes. I was superb in small situations – I could fake ‘fine’ with the best of them – but the deeper something cut, the more obvious it became. The only way around it was to believe a different truth, to think the opposite thought: Oliver would never cheat on me, we’re so happy together, he’s the perfect husband. Usually I could pull it off – but this was such a shock, so personal, and I’d had too much booze and too little time to prepare.
‘Charlie?’ he asked, taking me by the shoulders and pulling me gently away from him. He squinted as he looked into my eyes. ‘Oh my god, something is definitely wrong. Look at your face. What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, frowning. Jaw clenching.
‘Oh please. You look like you’re about to cry. Just tell me what it is and we can fix it.’
I stared into his eyes – if a designer had a hand in it they’d be named something like cut-grass green – and all I could hear was ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. What if I asked him and it turned out it was him? What if he admitted it? What would I do then?
‘Charlie?’
My throat grew tight and my cheeks grew hot and he looked at me with raised eyebrows as if to say: ‘So?’
Shit. He was looking at me expectantly now and there was no getting out of this, he knew something was wrong. He wanted to know what. I was tipsy, I couldn’t think of an excuse and, fuck it, I’d seen something that worried me – communication is important – and I needed to hear a denial in his voice.
And so I said it. I took a deep breath and then: ‘Are you cheating on me?’
Except it sounded different than I thought it would. Different to last time when it was sort of apologetic. This time it came out measured, calm and monotone. Like I’d just asked him if he’d remembered milk. And it lingered in the air as though nobody wanted to claim it. Not me. Not him. But fuck, fuck, fuck, now it’d been said.
‘What?’ he asked, stepping back from me.
Shit, shit, shit.
I was right. Holy fucking shit. I was right. ‘It’s okay if you are,’ I said, swallowing hard, trying to fix things; why was I always trying to fix things? ‘I mean, no, of course it’s not okay if you are.’ My eyes were prickling with tears. ‘I just need to know.’
I watched his expression for clues. His jaw twitched. Was that a flicker of something behind his eyes? Guilt?
No.
It was something else.
Amusement.
He was trying not to laugh.
‘Are you laughing at me?’ I yelled, fake-hitting him on the arm. But my shoulders relaxed with his reaction. My cells contracted. It was okay. It was all okay. My life was not falling apart. And his walls weren’t going up.
‘Of course fucking not,’ he said. ‘But my sweet, sweet wife, have you thought this through?’
His face was pink from holding the laughter in. ‘When on earth would I have the time to cheat on you?’
‘I don’t know, busy people cheat all the time,’ I said, sheepish. I crossed my arms and he swiftly, gently, uncrossed them.
‘Hey,’ he said, his forefinger under my chin and lifting my face to look at his. Our eyes met. A thousand volts, straight to the heart.
‘Of course I’m not cheating on you, silly,’ his voice calm, his face kind. ‘I’d never do that to you,’ he said. I fell into his embrace again.
‘I know why you feel this way though,’ he said.
I let out a big exhale. ‘So do I. You’re always bloody away.’
‘True,’ he said, his hand stroking my hair. ‘But also I’m pretty fucking irresistible.’
‘Oh shut up,’ I said into his chest.
And we stood that way for a few moments, pure relief pulsing through me. Relief that I’d been wrong. Relief that I wouldn’t have to start asking new men if they had any brothers and sisters and sitting at the singles table at weddings. ‘Did you bring me a present?’ I asked eventually, puncturing the silence. I wanted to change the focus of the conversation and he usually brought me something – perfume, chocolate, nougat – from duty free.
‘Oh right, so first you accuse me of cheating on you and now you want your present? Interesting.’ Then he led me by the hand through to the bedroom. The air
smelled like our laundry detergent in there because I’d changed the sheets that morning. I sat on the bed and watched him rifle through his suitcase.
‘Here we are,’ he said, pulling a lime green ribbon into the light.
‘What’s that?’ It looked like a shit present.
‘A Bahia bracelet,’ he said, sitting next to me on the bed.
‘Is it edible?’ I asked, pouting as I mock-frowned down at it.
‘They’re good luck, silly. A business associate put me on to them.’
He reached for my wrist, the inside facing up, then wrapped the ribbon around it. ‘Now, I make three knots and for each knot you make a wish. When it breaks off, the wishes will come true.’ He nodded towards his own wrist. ‘See? I’ve got one too.’ The ribbon around his wrist was orange. ‘Never going to guess what I wished for.’ He winked.
I knew exactly what he’d wished for – a baby. How had I doubted him, this man who was more into our family unit than I was? He’d grown up with a struggling single mother and a younger brother and was keen to provide in the way his father never had.
‘Ready?’ He grinned at me, our faces only a few inches apart.
I nodded.
He tied the first knot and I made my first wish.
Now, I’m not sure that I wish like a normal person. I don’t think about it logically. I don’t articulate the wish in words. I see the thing I want and feel the feeling I might feel if it came true. What I wanted for that first wish was to get that film role I was up for. And so I visualised myself in the newspaper, and what I felt was a surge of adrenaline: there I was in black and white.
He paused for a moment, then he tied another knot. This time I saw the app from that night, the picture, and imagined being wrong, seeing it again and realising it was someone else altogether.
He tied the third and final knot, his fingers lingering on the edge of the ribbon as I thought: God, I don’t know … world peace? But as horrible and selfish as it makes me sound, there was something I wanted so much more than world peace right then. And so, as I glanced up at him, I visualised him and me, and heard the words ‘Till death do us part’.
He lifted my inner wrist to his mouth and, still looking me in the eye, kissed it. Electricity ran through my core.
‘What did you wish for?’
‘I can’t tell you or they won’t come true,’ I said.
Little did I know I wouldn’t want them to come true.
‘Oh really? I bet I can get it out of you.’ He grinned as his fingers came towards me. I squealed as he lay on top of me, tickling my ribs, my underarms. But then his face was right near mine, and I could smell toothpaste on his breath, and he leaned in and kissed me. Soft. Metallic. Warm.
And just like that, we were back to ‘us’. Back to my rom-com reality. On the surface at least. But underneath? Well, that bomb had been armed, the timer set to just five days’ time, and even though I couldn’t hear it yet, somewhere deep inside I could already feel it: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE 2018 (7.23 AM)
I woke to a wet patch of dribble on my pillow, a mouth full of hair, and Oliver hard and pushing himself into my lower back as his warm hands moved beneath my t-shirt. ‘Morning,’ he said into my ear as he tugged at my underwear.
I reached my hand back into his hair. ‘Hey,’ I said, my voice croaky and eyes struggling against the muted glare coming in through the space between the curtains. We really should have made more of an effort to shut those fucking curtains. Though perhaps that would have done little to change how things turned out.
Who knows.
It was Wednesday, which meant I was supposed to be at Pilates, but instead my underwear was around my knees and Oliver was sitting up beneath the covers, the cool morning air on my skin as I rolled onto my back and watched him pull them from my ankles. He was brown and healthy looking. He looked like an advert for the Brazilian tourism commission, a firm tan line on his hips and upper thighs, and as he smiled down at me, deep laughter lines formed around his mouth. His eyes were a deep green as he pulled the crisp white covers over his back and lay down on top of me, his chest warm and his weight propped up by his elbows. He moved my legs apart with his knees. The window creaked with the breeze and as he stroked my hair with one hand he used the other to guide himself inside me. Our eyes were locked. A brief moment of mild pain. And then we were moving together. Slowly. Gently. Deeper. His lips – his breath – never far from mine. Our hearts only separated by his ribcage and mine. See, that was the thing with ‘us’: we never fucked. Never-ever. Not even when we fought. Even at the most passionate of moments he was always holding my hand or stroking my hair. Those were the sorts of things that made it so hard to believe he might stray: he loved me.
* * *
Twenty minutes later we were lying there in the morning light, me facing the window and his arms around me. Big spoon. Little spoon. And Natasha upstairs was stomping across her floor: ke-clunk, ke-clunk, ke-clunk.
‘The baby elephant is up,’ Oliver mumbled into my hair. Then he reached across me to my bedside table, picked up my phone and squinted at the time. It read: 7.43 am. ‘I have to get up,’ he announced with a big exhale and rolled over to his side of the bed.
His feet hit the floor – bam. There was no stealth mode with Oliver. If he was in a room he was in a room. Everybody noticed. A bit like Natasha upstairs really (she was loud, had a lot of dark hair and was five foot ten) though I’d never have said as much. Now Oliver was groaning, standing up and wandering through to make coffee, arms above his head as he stretched. The coffee machine whirred and he slammed a cupboard door as he pulled out cups and tried to find the pods – the black ones – he liked.
In went the pods, and the whirring started up again. I smiled down at the green ribbon around my wrist and thought of my wishes. Then I thought of my audition the following day. Of the pages Clarence, my agent, had sent through. It was a very serious scene in which the housewife gets arrested and is chatting to the policeman. Surely there was something interesting I could do with it? I wanted that part. I needed it. And then I thought of how Clarence said I needed to build my Instagram following. That I needed to post more.
You see, even though you wouldn’t know it from my IMDb page, I’d had a tonne of callbacks. But nine out of ten times it went the same way: I’d be passed over for a bigger name, someone with a bigger Instagram following, someone with connections or a sex tape. And the second one of those was the only one I was willing, or able, to affect. So yes, Clarence was right, I needed to post more.
But posting on Instagram was a tricky business.
You see, Oliver was next-level security conscious. He got like that after the break-in at the old flat.
So his Instagram page was set to private and there were only a handful of us deemed worthy of being accepted as followers. He’d strongly encouraged me to do the same, but I didn’t want to have a private account; the whole point was to up my public visibility. So we’d struck a compromise: I wasn’t allowed to post anything easily recognisable in case someone figured out where we lived. That meant nothing where the park might be visible through the window for example. Nothing of a pizza box with the logo visible. There were lots of rules. Which meant my Instagram wall was a mishmash of random snaps, sporadic shots of brightly coloured cocktails, throwback wedding pictures, headshots, waiting-on-set shots, close-ups of flowers from the flower market, selfies against plain walls, snippets of poetry I’d stolen from other accounts, my feet in the straps at my Pilates studio – anything, so long as it didn’t disclose our postcode. But being so careful all the time was stressful so Clarence was right, I didn’t post enough.
In fact, I hadn’t posted in over two weeks; it was time.
And so, as the smell of coffee filled our small flat, I had an idea: I reached for my phone, pointed the lens at my Bahia bracelet with just the sheet as the backdrop, nothing recognisable, took a photo and uploaded it as an Instagram story with th
ree hashtags: #charlieandollieforever #threewishes #allforyou. And then I tagged Oliver. How cute were we?
Yes, to anyone looking on, our bliss-bubble was entirely without puncture. We were a team.
A moment later he was wandering back through to me, his penis flopping around in its dark nest on the whiteness where his swimming trunks would have been as he sat down on the bed and handed me my cup. I put down my phone and took it from him.
‘Got much on today?’ I asked him as I took a sip.
‘Just some meetings,’ he said. ‘What about you?’
‘Nothing too exciting for me,’ I said, getting ready to drop the bomb. ‘I have an audition tomorrow, though.’
‘Do you just?’ He kissed me on the forehead. ‘No kissing other men.’
Oliver took his coffee through to the bathroom and pushed the door half closed. I could see him in the mirror as the pipes creaked, and the faucet turned on, then he was stepping inside. And I was thinking about my audition: I really wanted that part. It was for a film; most of my auditions were for films. Which was probably because that’s where my heart was.
I loved the theatre, of course I did, but I love-love-loved being in films. The lighting, the process, the freedom that was granted with the word ‘cut’ and the second chance at perfection that always followed. It offered up something life rarely did: the chance to have a do-over. Besides, I had the sort of face that just looked better once it had gone in the lens, been reconfigured and spat out the other side.
My phone beeped. Tess. A screenshot.
It was from some guy I vaguely recognised from the app the night before. She’d matched with him soon after the whole ‘Is-that-my-husband?’ debacle. Aside from a question mark, the message was written entirely in emoji: Eggplant? Monkey with its hands over his eyes.
Modern day hieroglyphics for: Hookup?
