Faye did a really good job of not reacting, though I could see her struggle by the sudden clenching of her jaw. I almost laughed at the horrendousness of the whole situation.
“Jack, would you like to respond to that?”
“No.” He glared at me. Faye cleared her throat and soldiered on. I had to admire her composure; this had to be incredibly difficult.
“Kate, what else did you get from the affair apart from sex?”
“Why are we focusing on my infidelity? Jack was unfaithful too, but he gets to not have to talk about it?”
“We’ll get around to Jack too. You seem a bit more ready to open up.”
“I felt special and it was exciting, I guess. I enjoyed being intimate with someone. It made me really see how distant Jack and I had become.”
“Jack, what is your reaction when you hear Kate say that?”
“It makes me angry. I thought everything was fine. She never said she was unhappy. Sure, we were busy, but that’s just life. If she had needed something, she could have just told me.”
“So, Kate, did you try to talk to Jack about it?”
“Not specifically. I don’t think I was fully aware of how I was feeling before I met…before this happened.” I nearly said Anders’ name.
“Let’s go back a bit. When do you think the intimacy problems started?”
Neither Jack nor I looked at each other. I thought back to the last time we had been truly happy, and the pieces fell into place. I understood the events that had started us down this path. I opened the box that I usually kept tightly closed, something that was the defining moment, the turning point for us: our daughter, Eve.
A miscarriage, such an innocuous word, sounds like it describes being too late for a conveyance of some sort that involved horses. Not so much. It is too bland a word to apply to an event so dark and bleak. The horror of labor pains too early, the unrelentingly cruel diagnosis, and the horrific pain of her death so close to what should have been a time of joy. My mouth twisted into a grimace with the onslaught of the tears, and my nose ran unchecked.
She was our dark-haired beauty who never had a chance. I held her in my arms, her tiny frail body, too red and listless, and felt her life slip away, and there was nothing I could do, apart from kiss the final warmth from her still cheeks. I could not deny her an escape from the needles and the pain, but I loved her so much I selfishly wanted her to stay. Jack and I cried out our heartbreak together, holding her so carefully until we had to leave her alone in the morgue, which was the hardest thing I have ever done.
It was ten years ago now, but the wounds were as fresh as ever. If I could have one wish it would be to have her back, healed and happy, and I would give my own life in exchange without a moment’s hesitation.
Apart from our love for her, there was so little tangible evidence that she had ever existed, and we had buried her alone, Jack’s family not making the effort to understand and mine so far away. Jack sat alone in her room for hours, slowly and gently dismantling the preparations we had started for her life with us.
The way I dealt with the grief was to bake. I baked everything, all day and night for months afterward. I ran out of recipes, so started creating my own. Inevitably, really, I became good at it. It didn’t make things better, but it didn’t make them worse, and somehow making other people happy by giving them a cake or a biscuit, such a small thing really, filled some of the void inside. That’s how I got the name Saint Kate of the Cupcake; I would give away the endless things I had made to homeless shelters and women’s refuges, and it was the name jokingly given to me by the director of one of the shelters.
The boys were only four years old at the time, so their memory and understanding of what happened soon faded, but they knew Mummy and Daddy were sad and did their best to cheer us up and make us laugh. I had to lock my grief away and carry on for them.
Maybe that made it worse somehow, not dealing with it properly, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt that if I broke down I would never get back up again, and I couldn’t do that to their childhood. They needed me to be there as their mother, not someone who never got out of bed. So, I locked it away for later, when I was alone in the dark, though there was not a moment that I forgot her. Slowly, the excruciating pain eased into something more bearable, but it never went away entirely. It never would. Even now, I occasionally woke up sweaty and cold in the middle of the night, disorientated and panting, in a panic because Eve was lost and alone somewhere and I couldn’t find her.
Jack carried on too, but we were never the same again. We dealt with our grief in different ways. I mindlessly baked, and he went to work. When the cookbook became a success, Jack’s indifference was the first real indication of the degree of separation between us. Both of us were swollen from sadness, but we were still functioning, and I had no energy left over then to build a bridge. We were not unhappy, just living in parallel. Later, I thought. There was nothing seriously wrong. But as time passed, it was still there.
The relationship we had before had morphed into something else, something far more solitary. When I stopped to think about it and mourn what we had lost, it was a dull hurt, and, in comparison, a mere brick in the house of pain where we dwelled. Rarely did we talk about Eve, as if we were both too scared to combine our pain as it might overwhelm us with its enormous weight, rather than lighten our own loads. So, we put one foot in front of the other and set off down the road to here, where we had both had affairs and our marriage was broken. We had become so good at ignoring things that were painful that neither of us had noticed until then. We had become too proficient at carrying on regardless.
We sat there silently in front of Faye, who waited patiently for us to open up the wounds we had so carefully concealed. I finally looked across at Jack and admitted to myself there was nothing left. All I felt was tired—tired of fighting, tired of trying to pretend everything might one day be fine, that we could go back to what we were before or find a new place where there wouldn’t be so much pain between us. It wouldn’t. It was who we were together, and to deny that was to deny Eve. I was ready to give him up, because that would keep her memory intact, which was the only thing I had left of her. A deep sadness settled into my bones, and all I wanted to do was sleep and make it go away. I put my head down in my hands and cried, dark, heaving, soul-wrenching sobs, unsure which loss I was mourning, my husband or my daughter.
I had finally reached the point where the thought of breaking up and moving on with my life was less painful than staying. It was never going to be anything more than what it was now: a complete façade, with no deeper feelings or connection. The difficulties from now—moving out of Clouston Hall, splitting the finances, the hurt this would cause both us and the children—I dreaded less than the feelings of drowning and disgust at the vision of my future if I stayed. Even if it meant the end of my career, it was a price I was finally willing to pay. I could see that, whatever justifications I had made to myself, I had stayed with Jack these last few months out of fear. I had been too scared of being on my own. The prospect of being alone still sent a chill through me, but if I imagined a set of scales, the fear no longer outweighed the relief of leaving.
And so, our dance that had begun with so much joy and enthusiasm at our wedding was almost done. There were only a few more steps until we finally reached the end of our song and the end of our marriage.
It took a week for me to get my head around the decision, and even then I struggled not to change my mind and take the “easier” path, the one where I had to do nothing at all, except live a lie. Jack seemed to have been avoiding me, without words asking me to pretend that nothing was wrong and to swallow this too. Unfortunately, all our issues had accumulated into a small mountain that was impossible to ignore anymore.
Jack had disappeared into his study after dinner and emerged only as I was turning the lights off, preparing for bed. It was time. I truly looked at him, tall and handsome, to all appearances the fairy-tale husband even
now. I was struck by qualms over whether this was the right decision. It would be so much easier to stay with him. He’d left me with an option, one that would be mutually beneficial, but would mean a lifetime of no intimacy, only the pretense of it in public. I wouldn’t truly know until I’d left him whether it was a mistake or not, and that was frightening.
What if I never found anyone else? It’s not like single women were complaining that there were too many great men out there and they couldn’t choose. I’d give up security and comfort, upset my children, and live a life of loneliness. On the other hand, the thought of only ever having this, of living the rest of my life in a barren desert of a marriage, was intolerable. Inside my head, I was screaming. I didn’t want to bring my baby into an environment like this. Jack said he would be able to raise the child like his own, but would he when he was faced by a child who looked nothing like him? There really was only one decision.
“I’m sorry, Jack, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t spend the rest of my life pretending everything is fine when it isn’t and it’s never going to be.” My voice came out husky as I tried not to cry.
“It doesn’t have to be pretend. I can take care of your…needs too.” He seemed to squirm a little when he said that. It set me off, the thought that I was so repulsive to him, the sexual equivalent of eating a slug. I was sick of feeling like I was not normal and that wanting to have sex was disgusting. I think the pregnancy hormones might have been making me a bit touchy too.
“I get it! You’re gay and you don’t want to have sex with me! But this is not my fault!” I screamed, furious at him. I pushed past him to run up to our bedroom. I grabbed a suitcase from the cupboard and, randomly opening drawers, started piling things in. The dam wall containing all the hurt and anger was cracking, and it all came pouring out.
“I’m not gay!” he shouted as he came into the room.
“You want to fuck other men. That means you are gay, you idiot!” We were only centimeters apart, screaming at each other. His face was red, rage twisting his features until they were no longer beautiful and transformed into something ugly.
“That’s all you wanted—sex, sex, sex. You’re a fucking nymphomaniac!”
“What I wanted was a man, not a repressed mummy’s boy who would rather lie to everyone than admit, even to himself, that he wants to fuck men,” I hissed back. “That’s it. I’m done!” I shook my head back and forth. “This marriage is over.”
With an inarticulate roar, he grabbed me and threw me face down onto the bed.
I reached out with my hands to brace myself, and then he was on top of me, pinning me so I was bent over the edge, my face pressed into the mattress. I turned my head so I could breathe, but otherwise his weight held me immobile. I couldn’t work out what he was doing, until I heard the sound of his belt buckle undoing. Even then I couldn’t really believe what was happening. I felt his hands fumble with my underwear, pulling them down so hard it scraped my skin.
“No, Jack, don’t!” I cried.
“This is what you want, isn’t it?” he spat against my neck.
“Stop, please…” I pleaded, but he kept going.
All I heard was “hate you, hate you, hate you” in time with the bright starbursts of pain.
Finally it was over, and he collapsed on top of me.
“I love you,” he cried, great heaving sobs escaping him as he clung to me. We slid backward onto our knees on the floor, Jack holding me against him as he wept. I felt numb, in shock. I didn’t fight him, just sat there trying not to feel the different hurts—the stinging pain between my legs or the deep cramping ache inside from the brutalized flesh.
Warm rivulets of blood or sperm or a mix of both started running down the inside of my thighs. I pushed away from him, and he let me go. I went into our ensuite, locked the door, and stripped off all my clothes and ran the shower. I stepped into the warm water and began to wash myself. I scrubbed and scrubbed, trying to erase the feeling of violation like it was a mark on my skin.
Twenty minutes later I was still scrubbing and realized I was crying. I’m not sure when it started, but I couldn’t make it stop. But it seemed distant to me, as if I was somewhere else looking in at my body. It was around an hour later I turned the shower off. Mercifully, the robot-like state continued, and I dressed and went downstairs. Jack was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands.
“You should leave,” I said tonelessly. I think I was still in shock because I couldn’t feel anything; there was no meaning somehow, even as I said the words. Seeing him look at me with hopeless resignation in his eyes, I felt nothing. It seemed impossible that he would even respond to them, when everything felt so insubstantial. I was hollow, just a paper shell, not enough mass to exert any influence on the outside world.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll stay at the London flat until we can sort everything out.”
“That would be best,” I said, then turned and walked out. I went to the kitchen and started making myself a cup of tea, for want of any other ideas on how to keep my hands busy. I heard sounds of packing from upstairs, then footsteps descending the stairs and the front door shutting quietly. The end of an era finished with a soft click. My legs faltered, and I fell heavily into one of the chairs.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I SAT IN A STUPOR, unaware of my surroundings, staring at the small puddle of tea spreading and cooling on the table where I had bumped the cup. A rapping at the door startled me out of it, and through the frosted glass I could see Edwina’s outline. This was so not going to happen, I thought fiercely. There is no way I’m going to let the bitch see me like this.
I rose, careless of whether or not she could see the movement, and went upstairs. I packed up what few things I absolutely needed into the car and, wheels spinning, tore past a startled Edwina walking back to her house. I returned to London and stayed in a hotel until I found a vacant rental house in Clapham that I could move into immediately. I bought some furniture that arrived the same day I did, took off the wrapping, hired a divorce lawyer, and then I fell apart.
I have no clear recollection of the next few weeks, as if someone had turned off the lights and I sat in darkness. Gradually the numb feeling left and the pain and loneliness set in. Despite everything, I missed Jack. He had been part of me for so long, and that part was gone, painfully and messily hacked off. I grieved for him, myself, and us.
The child inside me remained, unaffected by the assault or my emotional state. I had wondered what it would be like to be alone. Maybe one day it would reach that comfortable stage, but right now it felt like a life sentence in solitary confinement. I lay in bed, watching the drapes that enclosed it move in a slight breeze, the light changing as the days passed, unable to summon the will to move. I ignored the phone and the knocks on the door. They seemed irrelevant. There was nothing anyone could say that would make a difference, and I couldn’t handle anyone seeing me like this. Pity or sympathy right now would make me physically sick. I sent text messages when communication with the outside world became unable to be refused. I pretended I was starting a new book and was deeply absorbed in preparation work. Nothing could be further from the truth. I spent all day in my pajamas doing nothing at all, day after day. I wept. I slept. That was all.
The only one persistent enough to break through my bubble was Bats, because she literally broke into my house. I had shambled from my bed to the couch, where I flopped listlessly, watching God knows what. I didn’t care enough to notice what was on or whether it was those infomercials that usually annoy the bejesus out of me. I was wearing a pink fluffy dressing gown that badly needed a wash, and my hair had become solid. I vaguely registered the tinkling sound of breaking glass, but I didn’t think to connect it with my house. Footsteps down the hall sent a chill of adrenaline like a splash of icy water, and I sat bolt upright, frozen with indecision: try to hide or get out of the house.
“Katie?” I heard Bats’ voice shouting from half way up the stairs and almost
wept with relief that it wasn’t Jack or a burglar.
“In here,” I said weakly, my voice cracking with misuse. I cleared my throat and repeated myself a bit more loudly.
“Dear God! What has happened to you?” she said upon seeing me through the open door.
“I…well…Jack…” I tried to start explaining but just burst into tears.
Putting her arms around me, she shushed me gently.
“I love you, but you need a bath desperately. I don’t know if I can handle a long story if I have to be this close,” she said kindly as she firmly helped me up off the couch and steered me to the bathroom. She turned on the shower and pushed me in, clothes and all.
“Strip off, and I’ll put them in the wash.” Dutifully, I followed her instructions, handing her the sopping garments. She disappeared briefly and returned with a towel and some clean clothes.
“I’ll make some tea while you finish up here. Wash your hair and clean your teeth too!” she ordered, and then she disappeared back around the door.
Dried off and in clean clothes, I felt much better. Somehow the logic that I needed to wallow in my misery by not taking care of myself had gone a bit far. Hopefully, liking being clean was the herald of a new, less painful stage. I took a deep steadying breath and went downstairs.
Bats had made me something to eat and a cup of tea. I was so ridiculously grateful, I could feel tears coming again. She carried it over to the table, and we sat down. I took a sip of tea, which was hot and perfect on my tongue.
“So, what happened?” she asked. I told her almost everything, what I’d done, what I’d found out about Jack. But not about that.
“You never suspected anything?” Her brow furrowed slightly.
“No. Should I have?” I looked at her closely, to see if she had known. It would be so much worse if everyone else was in on it and I was just the poor deluded wife who had subconsciously refused to see what was obvious to everyone else.
Saint Kate of the Cupcake: The Dangers of Lust and Baking Page 20
