The Strangers We Know

by Pip Drysdale

  ‘Yep,’ I replied, finishing my champagne. ‘Anyway, how’s everything with you?’ I asked, horribly aware that the last few days had been all about me. That I was becoming ‘that’ friend.

  ‘Ask me in ten minutes,’ she smiled, eyes quickly darting to the guy by the black paintings.

  There was a part of me that had always been suspicious of Tess’s shallow relationships with men, secretly thinking she was hiding behind bravado when she talked about them being free drugs, about breaking the oxytocin-bond by sleeping with someone else, secretly thinking she was just scared. I’d seen her after Marc. I knew how fractured she’d been. But right now I’d have given anything to be just like her. It was as though she didn’t form scar tissue like I did. While I was moping around like a sack of potatoes, she just moved on into the endless possibilities of dating in London. I wanted to be like that too.

  ‘What you need is a bit of a chemical distraction. What about him?’ she asked, nodding at a man three paintings away from us.

  I glanced up at him – he was dark-haired, well-dressed, nice-enough-looking. But he wasn’t Oliver. ‘I don’t want to just pick up a man in an art gallery,’ I replied.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s too soon,’ I said. The champagne girl was coming in my direction now and I smiled at her. I almost bloody waved. Oh yay, she’s coming.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, when she arrived, taking a glass and putting my empty one down on her tray. The bubbles looked silver under the lights above us. I took a sip.

  ‘Okay, but hon, don’t let him hold you still for too long. Promise me,’ Tess said.

  ‘I promise,’ I replied, as we moved on to the next painting. This one was a deep burnt orange, lots of cracked texture and flecks of gold through it. I let out a sigh as I stared at it. My cheeks were warm from the booze now and I felt blissfully numb. ‘I just want to stop being so angry with him,’ I said to Tess.

  ‘No, angry is good. First you get angry. Then you start hoping his head explodes. Then you start e-stalking. Then you get over it. It’s a process, just ride it out. In three months you’ll be fine.’

  It was around then that the guy she’d been making eyes at all night made his way over to us.

  ‘Here we go,’ she whispered as he approached.

  Then they both stood there side by side, gazing at the painting for what felt like an age. Silent. Their bodies abnormally close for strangers.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked, finally.

  ‘Hmmm, I do, but I wouldn’t want it on my wall,’ she said, smiling at him.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said, sipping his champagne. ‘I’m Zach.’ He offered Tess his hand.

  ‘Tess. And this is Charlie.’

  ‘Hi,’ I said, feeling totally like the third wheel. I should be taking notes. This will be me soon.

  But as I watched her there with him, my insides panged: I didn’t want to take notes, I wanted my husband back. Because you can always tell when two people are going to end up in bed. It might be that night, it might be in a week, it might be in a month, but it was going to happen. There was something in the electricity that passed between their eyes. Something in the way their bodies yielded to one another. They were two pieces of a puzzle yearning to fit.

  That was what Oliver and I had been like the first night we met.

  I ached for what we had been like before I’d seen him on that app. For how in love we’d been, or I thought we’d been.

  I could hear Tess and Zach chatting beside me but that just made me feel even more alone, and so I did what I always do when I feel awkward: I reached for my phone. And I’m not sure whether it was the champagne or just the deep yearning for Oliver, for ‘us’, but something had me scrolling through to that dating app, finding Oliver’s profile and sending him a message: Hi, I’d really like to chat if you’re available.

  If he wouldn’t be honest with me as his wife, maybe he’d be honest with me as the other woman.

  Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. What would he reply?

  But the clock kept ticking and no response came. And even then, I still held out hope that I was somehow wrong, that it would somehow be okay. My mind was a whirlpool of all the positive reasons he might not be replying, reasons that didn’t involve being in bed with someone else – maybe he was feeling guilty and was going to get off the app soon, maybe he loved me after all and it had just been an experimental phase. Maybe now that he’d had a taste of what it would be like to lose me he’d be mine again. We’d be ‘us’ again.

  Or maybe it really was all over.

  Now I didn’t want to be there anymore. I just wanted to be home. With the doors locked. I wanted to feel safe. And so I downed the rest of my champagne quickly – one gulp, two gulps, three – and as the walls started to sway towards me I touched Tess’s arm. ‘I’m going to go,’ I said.

  ‘What? Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Just want to sleep. Loads of love and see you soon.’ As I kissed her goodbye on the cheek, she whispered in my ear: ‘Are you okay?’ I nodded, and then, as she said ‘Love you’ I left her with Zach and made my way outside.

  The cool night air hit my cheeks and tears prickled behind my eyes. Staring down at my phone I pulled up the TfL app, scanned through the list of tubes currently delayed and tried to figure out how to get home. The air was filled with the sounds of chatter and footsteps and traffic. Fuck it, I should just get an Uber. So I went to that app instead.

  But there, as I held it, my phone beeped. A message had come in.

  From @Oliver1982.

  I held my breath and clenched my jaw and clicked through to it, not knowing what to expect. And then I just read it: Hey sexy. Great, let’s chat. xx

  Episode 5

  SUNDAY, 10 JUNE 2018 (8.33 AM)

  I sat up in bed, the grey-lit room spinning and damp sheets twisted around my legs. The sky had been treacle black by the time I got home the night before, so I’d forgotten to draw the curtains. I reached beside the bed for a glass of water and took a sip, looking down. I was wearing underwear and the metallic top I’d worn out the night before. Beside the glass of water was what was left of that bottle of gin I’d started the morning before. Uh-oh.

  The expanse of time that stretched between me leaving the art gallery and finally going to bed was hazy at best. But I remembered there had been messages. Lots of messages.

  Hang on, had there been sexting too?

  I couldn’t be sure but my heart was speeding up. I moaned and reached for my phone on the table beside the bed. It was 8.30, my alarm hadn’t even gone off yet – the shop opened at noon on Sundays – and so I had plenty of time to scroll through the app. To assess the damage.

  I punched in my passcode, held my breath and went to the app.

  Shit. I was right.

  I’d been messaging with @Oliver1982 for a good two hours after I got home. What had I said? Had I told him it was me? That I knew? And if I had told him, was that even a bad thing? I had all his files now, after all. I was safe, wasn’t I? My eyes scanned through the messages, piecing it together, memories flickering in my consciousness.

  @Oliver1982: So tell me what you like.

  I bit down on my lower lip as I read through our conversation. There were slightly suggestive emoji texts, a request for photographs, then my nipple, my lower back, and one of my inner elbow masquerading as my bum. I knew that trick would come in useful one day. That had gone on for about twenty minutes. And then Oliver, noble man that he was, had dropped a bomb.

  @Oliver1982: I like you Annabella. So there’s something you should know.

  Me: What’s that?

  @Oliver1982: I’m married.

  Me (straight away): What??????

  @Oliver1982: Let me explain. I’m very unhappy. That’s why I’m here.

  My reply was almost instant. Drunk-Charlie needed to know.

  Me: Aren’t you worried someone will tell her?

  He took two minutes to pen his reply to that.

  @Olive
r1982: No, the truth is I want someone to tell her. I want her to know, I want it over but I don’t have the heart to let her down.

  Whatever pain I’d felt the night before when those words first flew in, hit me afresh as I read them again in the brittle morning light. And all I could think was @lover7. It seemed like that must be why she’d been watching me. She was planning on telling me. Yet she hadn’t – why? Had she lost the nerve? Would I be able to tell a woman, a stranger, something like that? But as I stared down at those words, any latent hopes I’d been harbouring that maybe we could somehow work things out vanished.

  I dropped my phone on his side of the bed and wandered through to the kitchen, pressing the button on the Nespresso machine and putting a little cup underneath the nozzle simultaneously. And from beyond its warming-up hum I could hear my phone beep from the bedroom so I went back to check the screen.

  Oliver: Charlie, I love you. Be reasonable.

  I stared at the screen. It wasn’t even anger I was feeling any-more. It was defeat.

  And so I typed back the only thing I could: I hate you. I never want to see you again.

  And then I did something very, very grownup. The thing I’d always refused to do with Josh, the thing I should have done, the only thing I could think of in that moment to stop any more pain. To get back my power.

  Yes, I blocked his number.

  Then I spent the next three hours crying before eventually forcing myself to get ready for work.

  * * *

  Grace was squinting at the pages of a newspaper when the door buzzed and I walked in. It was just before noon by then.

  ‘That’s a pretty dress,’ she said as the door shut behind me and I moved over to my desk. I was wearing a hot pink woollen number and a pair of knee-high leather boots. That sounds like an odd choice for summer, but the weather was strange that day: air thick with moisture and low charcoal clouds.

  ‘Thanks,’ I replied, sitting down and firing up my computer. ‘How’s your tooth?’

  ‘Fine. But I need new health insurance. Do you know I had to pay for the whole lot out of pocket?’

  I watched the Apple logo glow white on the screen and started shifting things around my desk the way I always did when I was anxious. Because soon I was going to need my own private health cover – could I even afford that? Would the NHS be enough? There were all these things I now needed to think about. Like I was going to need to move eventually, find a flatmate, file divorce papers. But at least I still had my job. What if I’d quit? What would I have done then? What if I was pregnant like Oliver always wanted me to be? But no, I had an income of my own, a life of my own, I could make it on my own. But fuck, Oliver was due home today and soon I’d have to face him. How would that play out?

  Maybe I could avoid it.

  But probably the most confusing thing was I knew I didn’t want to avoid it. As much as I hated him for everything I was discovering that at the crux of it all I still loved him. I still found myself playing versions of how things might have been in my mind; I had to actively stop myself from constructing excuses for him. From living out conversations with him in my mind. It was illogical. It was like being ripped apart. It was love.

  But all of that turbulence was internal. On the outside, the rest of that day passed in a state of relative calm. And soon it was time to go home.

  6.46 pm

  His car was still there, parked in its same spot, when I got home from work that day. My first thought was: Maybe he just went straight to a hotel. But as I walked past it I noticed that the black bags were gone. That was weird. Why had he taken his bags and not his car? I moved towards our building, a deep rust red in the evening light, and glanced towards our window. Shit: the curtains were closed, a thin ribbon of light peeking through the middle, and I’d left them open when I left that morning.

  He was in there.

  Fumbling with my keys, I made my way through the security door and hurried down the hallway to our front door. I slid my key in the lock, turned it and, as I flung the door open, heat rose from my solar plexus.

  The sitting room was still a bit of a mess, but all his things were back in their places and the bookshelf was no longer empty.

  It looked like the other night had never happened.

  Like I’d never packed him up.

  What was he playing at?

  My heart sped up as I slammed the door behind me.

  ‘Oliver?’ I called.

  Silence.

  I went to the bedroom, pushing open the door, my pulse wild: nope, not there. I moved through to his study. And there he was, wearing a thin navy cardigan over a white t-shirt, sitting at his computer, his forehead creased, his phone in his hand and a Peroni beside him.

  ‘Charlie, I’m on the phone,’ he said, his hand covering the mouthpiece. ‘I can’t get into my fucking computer.’ He was talking through his teeth like he did when he was frustrated.

  ‘What? Why are you even here? Hang up the phone, Oliver,’ I said, my voice strangled by frustration. I’d found the strength to kick him out, to do the hard thing, and yet here he was. Still. Like what I wanted didn’t matter.

  His eyes were wide in a ‘Can we do this later?’ look. Like I was being unreasonable. But I wasn’t being unreasonable, I knew that, and no, no we bloody could not.

  ‘Look, I know you’re upset and we can talk about it later, but I’ve only just got to the front of the wait queue. I need them to help me.’

  I couldn’t quite understand what was going on. Why wasn’t he pleading for forgiveness? Why was he being like this?

  ‘Are you serious? Oliver, hang up the fucking phone!’ I yelled.

  ‘Charlie,’ he said slowly through gritted teeth, like he was talking to a child and didn’t want to scream. ‘I need to get onto my computer right now and I can’t.’ His face was getting pink and a vein was now visible on his left temple. ‘You have no idea what I am up against. So please, just calm the fuck down for a second and wait. We can talk about anything you want to when this is done.’ He was hissing by the time he finished and then he started talking to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Like I was being the unreasonable one.

  For a split second I almost did what he asked. That’s me: the people-pleaser. But then I remembered all those messages via the app – I want someone to tell her. I want it over – I remembered the red lace garter belt in his jacket pocket, I remembered his lies – ‘I’d never do that to you’ – and something deep within me erupted. Because I’d trusted him. And trust didn’t come easily to me.

  It started with nausea.

  Then came: ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.

  I stood there watching him chat politely to someone on the other end of the phone, but as I looked down at my hands I realised I was shaking. The heat of salty tears was on my cheeks. I was thinking of all those women in his Facebook message request box now.

  I didn’t know what to do, say, or feel. How was this man the same man I’d married? All I could manage was ‘Oliver?’ Tears burnt in my eyes now, frustration and anger and hurt bubbling up inside me. But still, he ignored me, focusing on the person on the phone. Talking to them calmly about resetting things.

  And so I decided to force his hand.

  ‘You know what,’ I said, ‘fine. You want this over, I’ll make it over. Properly over. But I’m not going to be made into the bad guy who walked away. I’m going to send a screenshot of your dating app profile to your mother. Then she can google all those sex parties just like I did. Help her understand who her son really is.’

  And then I stormed out of the room, slamming the door after me.

  A moment later his footsteps were loud and following me.

  ‘Charlie!’ he called after me. I was in the kitchen by then, my cheeks hot and my vision blurring as I scrolled through my phone to the app, my hands shaking with adrenaline as I took a screenshot of his profile. I knew I was playing with fire but I didn’t care. How could he be like that? And I think I was actuall
y going to do it, you know. I think I was that angry. That horrified. But I didn’t get the chance. He got to me before I could find his mother’s contact info and hit the phone out of my hand.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ he yelled.

  ‘Don’t I dare?’ I yelled back, truth splintering around me. I leaned down to pick up my phone and he kicked it aside, I stood up, opened my mouth – a scream of frustration, betrayal, rage – and he pushed me against the wall. My head hit the plaster. A sunburst of white. My eyelids felt heavy. Oww.

  A veil of fear fell over me as I looked into his eyes. What was happening?

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘The neighbours will hear you.’ His hand was over my mouth and his jaw was clenched. His eyes were just an inch from mine and I could smell his cologne. But I couldn’t breathe. I tried to pull away but he was too strong, and the more I struggled the tighter he held. A blind panic flew through me.

  A memory.

  A need to escape took over.

  Adrenaline – zing.

  My hands were flailing, scratching, I swiped him on the side of the face. He stepped backwards, his hands away from me now as he held his cheek.

  ‘What the fuck, Charlie!’ he yelled.

  We stood there for one, two, three seconds just staring at each other. I thought maybe he’d try to explain now, but he didn’t. Instead, he just stomped off back to his study and slammed the door. It boomed through the flat.

  And I was left there in the kitchen, my lungs burning with oxygen like I’d been running. It was then that the sobbing started.

  I needed to get out of there. Now.

  My phone was lying on the floor by the kitchen counter. I reached down and picked it up – there was a long, horizontal crack across the screen. My bag was just above it and I took that too. I imagined Oliver in his study, still trying to get into his computer as I grabbed my laptop from the bedroom. Who knew when I’d be back. He was still in there as I rushed to the front door. My hands were trembling as I pulled the door open.

  All I could think of was Alyssa in that supermarket with her unwashed hair and basket of booze. Was this what had happened to her?