The Shadow Between Us

by Carol Mason

  Someone has lit a barbecue and there is smoke in the air. It’s stinging my eyes. Avenues for my thoughts to wander down stretch out ahead of me but I don’t want to go down any of them at this particular moment. ‘You said you were going to call the realtor,’ I repeat, my voice quavering.

  ‘That’s not true. You said you wanted it sold. I said OK.’

  ‘You said it would go up for sale before the end of the month! You promised.’ I wipe my eyes.

  ‘I was angry.’

  ‘So you haven’t done it, then?’ I hear the wobble in my voice, the doubts, the belligerence, the building of anger I’m never properly able to release. It takes a certain gut-wrenching effort to push away the rush of what used to be. How do you accept that which you can’t grasp and probably never will? It’s still surreal to me. I cannot get my head around how this began, and how we got here so fast.

  ‘No, I haven’t done it, OK? I haven’t done it because it’s not going to solve anything, is it? You seem to think that if we make the house go away, everything goes away, and it doesn’t. And you know that deep down. And I know you know it.’

  I cling on to his words, the calm way he delivers them – on to this insight he has of me, born of knowing me almost better than I know myself, as though it’s a lifeline back to the person I used to be. ‘You promised,’ I just repeat, less convincingly.

  ‘Look . . .’ His voice is quieter now. I can tell he is running out of space to give to this topic; his day won’t accommodate it. ‘If you want to end it, then go ahead. But I’m not doing it. There’s no way I’m seeing my marriage break up because of—’

  ‘Because of what?’ My heart races with anticipation.

  ‘Her,’ he says.

  The way he outs her in a single sharp pronoun, practically spits it, stuns me. But of course now that he’s done it he has put her there, right back in the middle of us, like this shadow. She is filling every space, starving me of air. I am completely ambushed by her. My heart is pounding.

  When I don’t speak, he says, ‘Look, I’m going now, OK? I’m at work. I can’t do this conversation here. I’m hanging up.’

  Because Mark is always polite even when he’s at the end of his rope with you.

  FIVE

  There’s something about this ritual that’s almost sacred now. I take a sip of my wine, my laptop balanced in the well of my crossed legs. I’ve put the gas fire on, not because it’s cold, but because this is what Jessica and I always do on an evening when Mark is working late and we’re settling in to watch one of our shows. It brings me a comfort that goes way beyond warmth.

  Her Facebook page is public, the profile picture the same as always. The post at the top is also unchanged. The family trip to Spain. Beautiful Seville! she has written. Thirty-four photos in total, all candids – five of them you can see without clicking on the album. Pretty little Daisy in the pool in her pink water wings with her gaggle of cute, bare-chested cousins. Cheeky Henry sticking out his tongue; he’s wearing his oversized lime green sunglasses and his dad’s Panama hat. Glen, lean and shirtless, batting a cricket ball. Someone is poised to catch – his brother, I think. Then there’s the one that fascinates me the most. It’s of the four of them watching a performance by flamenco dancers, their faces composed in that same transfixed expression. No one could deny they’re a model family. Theirs are the kind of good looks you gaze upon with a certain reverence, that repeat themselves down the generations, that are almost unfair. Sarah is holding a glass of white wine. Her loose blonde hair is pinned back at the sides, showing tiny platinum bezel-set diamonds in her ears. What’s so perfect about this one is, it’s a family of four thinking the same thought, being moved in the same way, at the exact same time, and it’s captured there, impossible to be recreated, long after the moment is gone, for all of forever. The last one is a picture of Sarah and Glen in a restaurant. I imagine Glen’s brother and his wife were probably watching the kids. Sarah has her arm draped across Glen’s back. I stare at the strong smile lines, the slightly sunken cheeks. He is saying something into her ear that has obviously tickled her by how she’s laughing. They’ve been married since 2007. Anyone can see they’re still very much into one another, which just makes this even harder to accept.

  Twenty-nine other ones.

  What gets me is, whether it’s a close-up of Henry’s absurdly long eyelashes or a frolicsome scramble for an airborne beach ball in the pool, there is so much humanity here, something almost more vital than life itself. Lots of people have liked and commented on them. Sarah has liked all the comments, and replied to most. Reading her words, her voice is so clear in my ear, so immediately recognisable: the gently lilting Welsh accent; her sparkly sense of fun. I cannot peel my eyes away from these vivid little narratives of somebody else’s life. For the time it takes to go through them it’s like I’ve been given a free pass to travel light, to feel the heat of a Spanish summer. I’m always a bit disappointed when I get to the end, though. When we are back to Daisy in her water wings in the pool.

  I usually go to Sarah’s older profile pics last. Eleven of them but one in particular always draws me: Sarah at a charity fundraiser. It’s not just the floaty teal evening gown that shows how slim she is, and how gently toned her arms are. It’s because she’s so alive with personality in this one; someone has snapped her how she really is, so completely free of pose or pretence. She is reaching down to pluck the hem of her dress off the heel of her silver sandal where it’s got caught, and she’s pulling a face. There’s a gigantic Christmas tree in the background. She looks flushed, like she’s been tucking into the champagne.

  By the time I go to click on her friends – she has 167 – I am smacked with, Why am I doing this? What do I hope to find? It’s a strange thing to catch yourself recognising an element of lunacy in your own actions. I’ve long since given up scrolling through the whole lot of them, trying to connect the dots; all I can really conclude is that they are professionals – work or uni friends and acquaintances. Unfortunately, once you eliminate all the family members, there’s not much evidence of Sarah’s working-class roots on Facebook. Her bubbly bestie, Jo, has just updated her profile picture. I click on it. She looks a bit sad. Maybe because she recently got divorced and lost her job.

  Once I’ve finished, there’s the same frustrating hankering: why aren’t there more? I’d give anything to have something fresh to pore over. It’s the strangest thing to get an aperture on to someone’s life and to recognise it’s not nearly enough.

  The message tab is there, though. It always troubles me how accessible we all are these days. How Facebook links the lives of old and new friends, even strangers, showing us surprising things we have in common, making us ships that pass in the night when we normally might not have been navigating the same waters. I get the same crazy thought. What if I message her? My heart races at the prospect. I have a sudden urge to top up my wine so I get up and go into the kitchen. I’ve managed to keep to my new rule of only drinking more than my allotted measure Fridays to Sundays, just so I can prove to myself I’m keeping a check on it.

  When I get back to my laptop, good sense is taking over. I can’t possibly write to her. It would be mad. Still, though, I stare at her current profile picture – a cropped version of the bigger one of her in the party dress, where she’s pulling a face. I must sit like this for ages, finishing the wine without even tasting it. Then, somehow, without my brain even giving directions, I have scrolled to the message tab again.

  Just click on it.

  When I do, a reckless charge erupts in me; my limbs have a sudden energy and life of their own. Just catching myself doing this is like crossing a boundary already, like outing myself for a crime I’ve almost got away with. I stare at the little blue-bannered box, her name in white type, feeling the pounding of my blood.

  Dear Sarah, I imagine writing. I am conscious suddenly of the wine having gone to my head, yet the idea of doing this is not diminished. My fingers levitate over the
keypad. Dare I? I’ve got this far . . . Next, I am carefully tapping it out. My spine is locked in a shiver. I am oddly calm despite my heart beating hard. It feels good already, like a relief. But I’ve absolutely no idea what to say next.

  SIX

  The coffee shop is quiet this morning. I have a searing headache that I suspect isn’t going to be improved by caffeine but I’m going to try anyway. I remove my sunglasses. Beth scans my face as though she’s making something of its absence of make-up.

  ‘Muffin?’ She indicates the tray she’s busy emptying.

  ‘Thanks. I just ate breakfast.’

  She continues to lift the remaining three or four with tongs and lays them in the display cabinet, in no great hurry, while I stand there like a potted plant. When she’s done she fixes me with a steady stare. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking . . . You look like you need something.’

  I frown, unsure what she means. ‘To eat?’

  Her gaze doesn’t flinch and her expression is set in a way that I don’t like. Then she says, ‘A purpose.’

  I am blank for a second before the magnitude of her insult dawns on me. Then my heart gives several juddering beats and I hear myself saying, ‘You know, that’s actually seriously fucking rude.’ The words fly out without my bidding. This is déjà vu.

  She appears stunned. Her bottom jaw hangs there, slightly detached from the upper.

  I am swept back to the parking lot near Bellevue Square mall. I’d been on my way to deal with our car insurance. It was the first day I’d actually left the house on my own in weeks. I had just got out of Mark’s SUV and was pulling my bag from the back seat when I heard the shrill, raised voice of a woman. I noticed her then realised – oddly – she was addressing me.

  ‘Aren’t you listening?’ She is small but there is something fierce and purposeful about her. ‘I said that was a stop sign! You’re supposed to come to a complete stop. You came to a rolling stop. There are kids walking through here at this time of day!’ Her hand is planted on her hip. She is probably a few years younger than me, with an oversized Macy’s sale bag hanging off one shoulder.

  I frown. I did come to a full stop. I am ninety-nine per cent sure. I’ve always taken road safety with the utmost seriousness. I don’t run amber lights, or go over the limit in a school zone. I am paranoid about reversing out of shopping centre parking stalls where people will just walk out behind your car, no mind to their own safety. Haven’t we all, at some point, almost failed to see someone?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her, realising, at the same time, that she seems equally convinced of the opposite. ‘I really thought I had but if I didn’t—’

  ‘You didn’t!’ she snaps.

  Panic is tightening around me. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘If you’re sure . . . then I’m sorry. Like I said, if I didn’t, then you’re right – I absolutely should have.’

  She stares at me wordlessly but hard. She was expecting more pushback. I’ve surprised her. I am busy thinking that’s the end of it. I finish closing my door, hear the beep of my vehicle locking. I am walking over to the car insurance office. Then I hear, ‘You know, it’s because of irresponsible people like you that there are flowers and shrines at the side of the road. People not paying attention . . . on their phone, texting, chatting . . . People seeing stop signs but ignoring the law. Rules don’t apply to them in their fancy cars . . .’

  Each word is like a bullet in my back. I stand there, frozen, letting myself be peppered by them. But then suddenly I am turning. Rage rushes up my body with a force hitherto unknown. ‘I said I was sorry!’ I hear the defensive, indignant outrage in my tone. ‘I’m certain I stopped! I always stop! But if I didn’t stop then I said I was fucking sorry!’ I am screeching, egged on by this rabid sense of having been wronged. How dare she? ‘And anyway . . . I wasn’t texting or talking! So I don’t know what you’re even going on about!’

  I can tell immediately that this is going to escalate. Nothing about her body language says she’s intending to let it end here. She goes to say something else, points an index finger at me, but I thrust out the palm of my hand. ‘Back the fuck off!’ I growl.

  I don’t recognise myself.

  At first she is like a deer caught in my headlights, but the expression suddenly changes and I recognise what it is. Triumph. ‘Are you threatening me?’ she asks.

  My heart rages. Somewhere, where there’s a mote of sanity left, I am conscious of it being a pivotal question. What I say now will dictate what happens next. All my instincts tell me to walk away but I can’t stop myself. ‘If that’s how you want to take it, then fine.’ I say it quietly but it has the odd effect of sounding more menacing than if I had screamed.

  She looks amazed for a moment. ‘What?’ Then, ‘Right!’ She digs in her pocket. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  With the mention of police, a dizzying, sickening sense of dread washes over me.

  She is dialling numbers. A violent shaking begins. It grips me quickly and it stuns me how fast I am beholden to it. She is talking to someone now. My God. I can’t even follow what’s being said for my terror.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she spits at me, presumably repeating what she’s been told to ask.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I say, thinking, Damn, Olivia! Why are you making this worse? She holds her phone towards me to make sure the person on the other end of the line hears my belligerent response.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asks, eyes sending daggers. Then, ‘She doesn’t want to give her age.’ She stares me up and down. ‘I’d say she’s about forty-six. Maybe forty-seven.’

  She has just aged me by five or six years. I am vain enough for it to sting.

  All I can now think is if the police are coming, then it’s best I’m not standing here like this. So I start to walk towards the car insurance office as though this isn’t happening. My legs are trembling violently, my heart leaping out of my ribcage. Once I get inside and sit down with the teller I’m so flummoxed I don’t remember what I’ve come here to do.

  It all takes ages because I can’t concentrate on the paperwork for still feeling traumatised. When I step back outside, two cops are there waiting by my car. ‘We’ve had a complaint that you’ve been acting aggressively towards a member of the public,’ the younger, hugely overweight one says, when I reluctantly walk over to them. ‘We’re here to tell you that if it happens again we will have to take you in. Do you understand?’ He doesn’t quite look me in the eye, but slightly off to the side of my head.

  All I can think is, Thank God they’re not asking my name. They’re not going to know who I am.

  I nod, but then find myself saying, ‘Don’t you even want to hear my side of it?’ I make a point of saying this quietly and calmly to show I’m not the psycho she’s painted me as being, but it still comes out a little confrontational.

  ‘Like I said’ – the young cop barely meets my eyes – ‘if it happens again we’ll have to take you in. Do you understand?’

  I stare at his face waiting for some sign of humanity but I’m not getting any.

  Say it!

  So I say, ‘Yes. I understand.’

  It’s over. They turn and go back to their car. I go back to mine. I’m aware they don’t immediately pull away. Perhaps they’re waiting for me to, first. The woman is still standing there clocking all this. I can feel the smug satisfaction.

  ‘She baited you in and she won,’ Mark said, after. ‘You gave her exactly what she was looking for.’

  ‘Why, though? Why would anyone do that?’

  ‘Because there are people like that in this world, Olivia. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, or what’s going on in their lives that they’ve got nothing better to do than make yours a misery. You’ve got to be careful what you say to people because you never know how they’ll take it.’

  For days I could not get over how it had all escalated. Why had I implied I was threatening her? It was stupid, not to mention juvenile and be
neath me. Why hadn’t I handled it better with the cops? Turned the tables and told them she was the one behaving aggressively? Sometimes your best form of defence is a gentle, tactical offence. Or, better still, why hadn’t I just ignored her in the first place, and walked away?

  ‘Let it go,’ Mark said, knowing it was mangling me. I had never had dealings with the police in my entire life until twice in a freakishly short span of time. It was just so humiliating. ‘Believe me, if they’d wanted to arrest you they’d have done it. They were just doing their job. They clearly didn’t think anything of it. And don’t worry about her. She lived to tell the story . . .’ Then he added, under his breath, in typical Mark fashion, ‘To the entire neighbourhood.’

  The memory dissolves and Beth is still staring at me. I don’t want to make this worse but still feel the need to gently say, ‘You don’t know me. You have no idea what’s going on in my life so you really shouldn’t pass comments.’ I try to say it levelly because one wobble and I’m going to break down.

  She blanches, looks very uncomfortable then turns her back and starts to steam my milk. I just want to run.

  Until it happens again with someone else? I can hear Mark saying. You can’t keep on running because this is going to outrun you, Olivia. Until you deal with what’s at the core of this.

  So I stand there through the whizz and sputter of a coffee maker, weathering out my shame. As she reaches for a mug I try to say a friendly, ‘To go, please,’ my brain trotting out a heartfelt apology that I wish I could voice. Next thing, she is handing me my drink in a paper cup with a sleeve on it. ‘No charge,’ she says, meeting my eyes flatly with either displeasure or remorse. I hurry out a ‘Thanks, that’s kind,’ and try to exert mind control over the wobble of my hand.

  As I’m about to walk away, she says, ‘That was actually just my really unfortunate way of telling you that I’m still looking for help. If you’ve changed your mind?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ I freeze, wanting the ground to swallow me again. Is she making this up to save face? I half glance in her direction, try to attempt a smile but my cheeks are set in concrete. ‘Well, I’m sorry . . .’ I say. ‘I really am.’