The Strangers We Know

by Pip Drysdale

  ‘Pregnancy doesn’t make you upset,’ I said, wiping the tears away with my sleeve. How had this happened? How had we gone from ‘true love’ to two strangers lying on the sofa, both with their dating app notifications off, in the space of a week?

  ‘The hormones might,’ he said. But all that did was make me cry more, because now we’d never have a baby together. The entire life I’d taken for granted with him was gone. But I needed to hold it together.

  ‘When do you go?’ I asked, steadying my breath and rolling back onto my side, my eyes scanning the room, our bookshelf, the coffee table, the curtains we’d picked out together, the life we’d been building. He hugged me tight and I closed my eyes. What would he do if I asked him again now? Lie? What if I showed him my app, if I presented him with proof? Would he explode? Find an excuse and then secretly move whatever money we had to a place I wouldn’t find it?

  I’d seen firsthand how everyone has a side of them you can’t predict, a side you don’t know is there until it’s too late. And I was only just meeting Oliver’s.

  And so, as I lay there, not saying the things I needed to say most, I was filled with the kind of loneliness you can only feel when you’re not alone. It stabs you far deeper than solitude. It slows your pulse and fills your lungs with darkness.

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ he said, pressing play and kissing me on the head.

  And I just lay there silent, watching the cheerful man on the TV chop things up and then drop them into a big pot of hot water.

  It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do: lie in his arms and say nothing, pretend I didn’t know. It took every ounce of self-control I had to hold it inside. But I knew deep down Tess was right, and so I reminded myself that there were only two rules and the first rule was: Don’t tell him you know about the app. Imagining that rule in Brad Pitt’s voice definitely helped.

  It was then that Oliver’s phone buzzed. I pulled it from his pocket and I looked up at him. I could see the white light from the screen reflecting as two little rectangles in his eyes as he moved through to his emails. His jaw tensed. His eyes changed. Hardened.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, sitting up, roughly pushing me aside.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  He let out a big exhale. ‘Fuck,’ he repeated, getting up. ‘Work emergency.’ And then he stomped through to his study. Said ‘fuck’ one more time. And then slammed the door.

  And I was left alone, listening to the cheerful man on the telly tell me to leave things simmering on a low heat, like that wasn’t the state of my entire life, wondering what had happened to piss Oliver off like that and whether this counted as secretive phone or computer use.

  It was only the next evening that I realised what ‘work emergency’ was code for.

  FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 2018 (7.34 AM)

  I woke to pink-white sunshine streaming in through the window: the mauve curtains had been pulled open, my mouth was dry and full of hair and Oliver was in the shower. I could smell his shampoo on the pillowcase and hear the pipes creaking. The water hitting the tiles. And I lay there, drinking in every detail, wondering what it would feel like to have someone else sleeping on his side of the bed.

  I clenched my eyes shut and hugged onto a pillow as I recalled the night before. The gold coin. The call to Tess. Our chat. Coming home. Oliver. The email. He’d shut himself in his study to work after that email came in and I hadn’t seen him for the rest of the night. As for me, I’d sobbed in the shower. I’d prayed that I was wrong. I’d texted Tess for support. And then I’d tossed and turned, finally falling asleep at around 4 am. It was just after 7.30 now and my eyelids were made of cement, but something had changed in the night.

  Gone was shock. Gone was denial. I was now well and truly into ‘rage’.

  And the thing I’ve learnt about rage is: it has to go somewhere. You can either let it eat you up inside until one day you explode, or you can use it. So, as I lay there, I consciously chose to use it. There would be no more moping. No more crying. And no more making excuses for him.

  As soon as I got home that night and had access to his computer, I’d do exactly as Tess had instructed.

  But he was still here right now, and so I needed to hold it together a little longer. Needed to keep pretending. I pried my eyes open against the sunlight coming through the window and reached for my phone. A message from Grace saying she wouldn’t be in until that afternoon because of ‘dental issues’ and an Instagram notification: @JoshHammersley added to their story for the first time in a while.

  Perfect.

  Josh was the ex I told you about. The one who broke up with me just before I met Oliver. He was tall and Scandinavian looking, with high cheekbones, white blond hair and blue eyes. To say our relationship had been painful, confusing and downright lonely at times wouldn’t quite do it justice. But it wasn’t all bad, and for all his faults, I’d never found Josh on a dating app.

  So right then, seeing his name on my phone screen, I missed him.

  Tess had told me to block Josh when we broke up that last time, her exact words: ‘Babe, block him, this is a cycle, enough is enough’. But I didn’t want to block him because it seemed childish. Or, rather, that’s what I’d said. The real reason was I wanted him to see how ‘fine’ I was without him; that usually made him want me back. And I needed him to want me back. And then, when he hadn’t wanted me back, I met Oliver, and frankly at that point I wanted Josh to see how happy I was with someone else. To see how lovable I really was.

  Yep, I was complicated. Messy.

  Sometimes I suspected I might actually be crazy: but then maybe everyone else would seem crazy too if their inner dialogue was audible.

  In any case, no, I hadn’t blocked him, had I?

  And until now, what with his hectic work schedule and infrequent social media habits, that hadn’t been a problem. Because until now, he’d always been the single one (hooray!).

  But when I clicked through to his profile to see what he’d posted, I realised that had changed.

  It was a picture. With a girl. A blonde one. A long-limbed, bronzed, fake-lashed, pretty one. They were in a plane, faces squished together. He had stubble; he was on holiday with her. Of course he was: it was summer, that’s what normal people do with their summers, right? Post things like #nevergoinghome #holidayspam #Biarritz? Not like me with all my dark revelations. But life is always like that: it’s as though it sets an egg timer and the moment your love life falls apart brrriiiiinnnnggg: everyone else’s seems to flourish.

  My phone beeped. A text message.

  Tess: Are you okay?

  The pipes squeaked as Oliver turned off the shower. I could see him through the crack of the bathroom door reaching for a towel – one of the white fluffy ones we bought together at Peter Jones before I suspected he was the devil – as I typed back.

  Me: No. Want to die. Chat later on?

  Tess: Don’t crack babe. This is too important.

  But I had no intention of cracking. The bathroom door opened and Oliver emerged, a towel around his waist, his jaw tight as he moved through to the kitchen.

  I was sitting there, watching him, watching the water droplets sparkle on his shoulders, and he didn’t even say good morning. Whatever had happened at work the night before, whatever that email was, had really upset him. Normally I would have pushed to talk about it, tried to fix things, but I didn’t have the energy this morning. We were no longer on the same team.

  The coffee machine started whizzing from the kitchen as it turned on; the cupboard doors opened and banged closed again.

  ‘Charlie!’ Oliver yelled. ‘Where are the black pods? We’re out!’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’ll get more.’ That sounded normal, right? Like the sort of thing I might say if I wasn’t planning my exit strategy? Far better than all the unsaid words bubbling on a low heat inside me. The unsaid words I wasn’t allowed to say yet like: Fuck you, I trusted you – well, sort of.

  I glanced over
at his suitcase – he’d start packing in a bit. I didn’t know how long I could pretend. I needed to get out of there as soon as I could. Or I would, indeed, crack. I’d show him the app and ask him outright. I could feel it. I may throw something at him. Drop his phone in the loo. And that might feel good in the moment, but I’d be screwing myself over in the long run. Because Tess was right, if he could lie to me so well about cheating, who knew what else he was lying about? What he was capable of? I needed to protect myself. Which right now meant getting out of there before I fucked it up. So, before he came back into the bedroom I got up, went through to the bathroom, shut the door and turned on the shower. That way I couldn’t say anything.

  * * *

  An hour and a bit later I was in the shop at my desk, my computer whirring, feeling very sorry for myself, sipping coffee as I stared down at Josh’s Instagram feed. He’d posted a couple more holiday snaps since that morning with hashtags like #bliss and #summerlove (Was she helping him with these? He wasn’t really a hashtagger) and he looked so happy. So uncharacteristically brown. I wanted to be a good person and be glad for him, but all I could think was why wasn’t he that happy with me? And in that moment, it felt like maybe everything was my fault. Josh wasn’t happy with me so he left. Oliver wasn’t happy with me so he signed up to a dating app. I was the common thread here.

  It was then that Mum started ringing. I stared down at my phone. I should answer. But I really didn’t want to; if there was one person in the world who could crystallise the thought that it was, indeed, my fault, it was my mother.

  I stared at her name flashing back from my phone screen, fragments of memory from the last time I saw her flickering in my mind: Oliver and I, standing outside, about to knock on the door, him squeezing my hand and telling me it’d be okay. Mum fawning over him and ordering me around: ‘Darling, put on the kettle’; the self-satisfied look on her face when he pulled out an orange envelope and asked if he could leave a copy of his will and whatnot in their safe. Like I’d finally done something right in my life – maybe I wouldn’t end up on a park bench after all – but it had nothing to do with my own efforts.

  No. I couldn’t risk feeling any worse right now, and so I let it ring out.

  I’d always wanted to be one of those people with a great relationship with their parents, but I just wasn’t. There was nothing bad about them per se: they were still together, still living in the same two-storey, red brick house I grew up in out in Surrey, Mum still played bridge and tennis with her old friends and Dad was still loving but silent. But I hated visiting them for two reasons.

  One: it reminded me of things I didn’t want to remember, a version of myself I no longer wanted to be. And I’d moved to London to be different. To recreate myself. To make something of myself.

  And two: Mum was always saying things like ‘Are you sure you want to be an actress? Don’t you want to do something easier, something you can succeed in?’ Or telling me how beautiful and brilliant all her friends’ kids were, how much they earned in their safer careers as teachers and lawyers and secretaries. She didn’t understand why acting was so important to me: that it was the one place I could be totally raw and emotionally truthful, and have it applauded as opposed to shunned. She didn’t think in those terms: everything was practical with my mother. It’d always felt like she’d have been prouder of me if I’d become a prostitute – at least then I would have earned well.

  So me marrying Oliver and his healthy salary prospects had improved our lukewarm relationship considerably and I wasn’t looking forward to telling her it was over. That he was cheating. She’d somehow make it my fault. Blame my ‘hyper-sensitivity’ or ‘mercurial nature’. I’d heard those terms a lot growing up. Though, to be fair to her, she didn’t have all the information.

  A little ping sounded from my computer – an email – so I looked up. The Oliver Goldsmith marketing team wouldn’t be able to make it that day. Relief flooded my veins. I’d totally forgotten they were coming and I wasn’t prepared. My mind had been mush – an ashtray left out in the rain – from the moment I received that ‘gold coin’ the afternoon before. I hadn’t sent out any of the orders as I’d promised Grace I would (today, I’d do that today) and I still only had that one navy dress sitting on the rail out back for them. But I was pretty sure I’d seen something come in from an Italian shipment that hadn’t been put out on the floor yet. It was a blue and white checked Givenchy dress with a full knee-length skirt and thick black lace running down the front, around the neckline and at the sleeves. It might just be perfect.

  I grabbed my coffee and headed back into the storage room. I wasn’t sure where exactly I’d seen it. Running through the last few days in my mind, I tried to isolate which shipment it was in so I could figure out which box to open because they all looked the same. Eventually I chose one against the far wall. Kneeling down beside it, I pried back the cardboard lid: the contents smelled like a dry cleaners. Lying on the top was a lime green beaded dress. I pulled it out and hung it on one of our moveable hangers. I might as well get them ready for the floor while I searched.

  A few minutes later I was pulling out a shoulder-padded Yves Saint Laurent power suit in a dusty grey pinstripe. I was feeling the lining, checking for any holes, when I heard something. A bzzzz? The door. A customer was here. Shit.

  I stood up, my legs all pins and needles as I hobbled to the door and plastered a fake smile on my face. But before I made it out into the main room, I heard that buzz sing out again. They’d left.

  Paranoia flooded my veins. Something was wrong. A shiver ran through me and I instinctively glanced over to my bag. It was still there, thank god – someone could have taken it – and pulled out my phone: 4.09. I’d be able to go home soon. There was a little shop on the corner that sold flip-phones, suitcases and gadgets I’d walked past many times; I was pretty sure they’d have a USB stick for me to buy. Then I’d go home and sift through Oliver’s computer files, copy whatever I could find, and put an end to the pain.

  But what then? I’d have to confront him at some point. He’d want to know why it was over, and how would he react then? He’d gone to such lengths to create the illusion of being the perfect man – would he become dangerous when he realised I knew his darkest secret?

  I’d never been scared of Oliver before that, but once you learn someone has such a big secret, you begin to wonder what else you might have missed.

  You begin to wonder if you know them at all.

  8.11 pm

  I stared at his blue-white screen, the walls around me glowing tangerine from the setting sun sitting just above the windowsill, my fingers poised over the keyboard. The window was partially open, creaking with a gentle breeze, and I could hear the wall-muffled sounds of children shrieking with laughter from Battersea Park across the road. I was in Oliver’s study, his computer was whirring and I was trying to guess his password. Slowly, I typed in @-l-o-v-e-r-7. But I was grasping. I knew that.

  I pressed ‘Enter’.

  Nothing.

  How was this so hard? Was I right, did I not know him at all? Had I been sleeping beside a stranger all this time? Because I’d seen enough movies to know that people always use the things that mean the most to them in their passwords: people, pets, birthdays, memories. And I’d already tried: C-h-a-r-l-i-e, O-l-i-v-e-r, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e (that was his mother’s name), 0-6-0-2-1-9-8-5 (my birthday), V-e-g-a-s and o-l-i-v-e-r-a-n-d-c-h-a-r-l-i-e-f-o-r-e-v-e-r (that was my password, FYI, good wifey that I was). I’d tried variations with numbers, brackets and dashes too. I’d tried everything I could think of. Frankly, I was surprised his computer hadn’t locked me out yet. I couldn’t even take it to the Genius Bar and get them to crack it for me because Oliver had a desktop computer, the heavy sort you can’t steal – a choice he made after we were broken into and his laptop was taken. I winced when I thought about that laptop: it was me who’d insisted he not take it on our honeymoon. That we have three days just for ‘us’. Wow, he was pissed
when we got home and found the house ransacked and the computer gone. I’d joked that maybe they’d return it when they found the ‘w’ key was missing (it was) and that certainly didn’t help matters.

  And even though he’d managed to remote wipe it, he’d remained anxious for months about what sensitive information might have been accessed before he managed to do that.

  Sensitive information like the sort I was seeking.

  Sensitive information that had me wondering whether what I was trying to do was illegal or simply ‘frowned upon’. But I reasoned that we were married, what was his was mine, so I was really breaking into my own computer, right? Besides, I was hardly the first wife to break into her husband’s files. What were they going to do – lock us all up?

  But as I stared at his log-in screen my jaw grew tight: I was all out of ideas.

  Now, please do your best not to judge me here. I know I should have considered the whole password issue before now but I was new to this. I’d never had to break into a computer before. I had a lot on my mind. And I’d blanked it.

  But I had to figure it out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up the charade for too much longer so it had to all happen before he got home. And I was starting to worry about my mental state: when I got home that night it’d felt like something was different. A faint whiff of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on lingered in the air. Like someone had been there.

  I needed this whole thing to be over.

  And I was so close. The small USB stick I’d bought that evening was already plugged into a port at the back.

  There has to be a way in.

  Somebody out there must have encountered this problem before.

  And so I reached for my phone, pulled up a browser window and consulted our electronic collective unconscious. Yes, I asked Google, desperately typing in: Macbook Pro forgot password reset.