Woman with a Secret

by Sophie Hannah

  Nicki? Where are you? G.

  Do you want to hear my latest theory? You always sign your emails “N x.” I always sign mine “G.” You’ve decided I’m a cold, emotionless husk because I won’t sign off with a kiss. That’s why you’ve gone missing from my cyber-life. Right? For your information, I’ve never signed emails with an “x” and I don’t think I ever would, however I felt about someone. It’s fine when women do it, but from a man it would look somewhat effeminate, I think. Also, I can’t believe this would bother you suddenly when it never has before? Or maybe it has, and you’ve been waiting and hoping . . . ? Look, I’m a big boy. I can handle honesty. Will you tell me what I’ve done wrong? G x (just this once, for strategic effect, because . . . well, because I’m rather fond of you, Nicki. Perhaps I should have said so before.)

  No. No. This is unbearable.

  Kind, sincere, affectionate words. Of all the things to become phobic about. Fuck you, King Edward. You’re to blame for this.

  I’m glad there’s no mirror in this room. I would hate to see what I look like.

  A disaster area. There’s not a person on the planet who wouldn’t be better off without you in their lives, not even your children.

  Instead of shutting the computer down and running away, I force myself to read all seven of Gavin’s emails again—not once but several times. By the time I’ve finished, the words seem less threatening and my hands have stopped shaking.

  How can he care about me this much? He barely knows me. Correction: he doesn’t know me at all.

  And yet, not knowing him either, I care about him too. The way he rescued me from the brink . . .

  Far from objecting to it, I like the little dot he always puts after his initial. I like his vulgar email address, mr_jugs@hushmail.com, and his habit of putting two asterisks on either side of a word or group of words to convey insistence.

  Have you found out something about me? What did he mean by that?

  What should I do?

  No one to ask, or answer, apart from myself. At one time, I’d have told Melissa. I told her everything, before she resigned from her position as my confidante.

  There is no one I can think of—not one single person in my life—who would be interested in discussing the changeable writing style of a man who goes by the name of “Mr. Jugs” in order to seek anonymous physical gratification online.

  If I ever did muster the courage to tell anybody, I would get no useful analysis, and plenty of soul-destroying condemnation: from my female friends, my brother, my parents; from Adam, assuming he’d speak to me ever again if he knew the truth, and not simply throw me out on the street in horror. And—though I hate to think about it—I would get shock and disgust from Sophie and Ethan too. They might only be ten and eight, but they understand what betrayal is even if they wouldn’t use the word.

  My children. Who are downstairs. Who believe I’m looking after them because all three of us are in the house at the same time and I’m the adult.

  Tears fill my eyes as a violent internal current sweeps my breath away. This used to happen a lot before I stopped emailing Gavin, often when I was sitting here, in front of the computer screen: a sudden flood of realization that something terrible is happening—something precious is being irrevocably destroyed—and, though it’s my fault, I can’t stop it. I have no control.

  Four or five seconds later, my eyes are dry, and I can breathe easily. I couldn’t recreate the doomed feeling if I tried; it’s as if it never happened.

  I press my eyes shut so that I can’t see the computer in front of me, and wish that the Internet had never been invented. I tell myself that I absolutely mustn’t—must not—email Gavin, for the sake of my family, but instead of hearing my own voice saying the words, I hear Melissa’s, which blend with the sand-haired policeman’s, though neither of them has ever said those words to me.

  Their judgment, though I’ve conjured it out of nowhere, is too heavy a burden to bear. I can only escape if I defy it outright.

  I should reread Gavin’s messages once more before writing to him—allow their significance to sink in. There might be something I’ve missed . . .

  No. No time. Adam will be home any minute. And Gavin has waited long enough to hear from me. I might still matter to him as much as I did when he sent those emails; by tomorrow, he might have stopped caring. I don’t want to leave it too late.

  I open his most recent message and press “reply.” My fingers are numb, unreliable. It takes me three attempts to manage “Hi Gavin” without typos. Then I delete it and write “Dear Gavin,” instead. “Hi” is too casual.

  I’m so sorry I haven’t replied before now. Until today, I haven’t opened my Hushmail account for more than three weeks. I decided I couldn’t do what we were doing anymore. It was nothing you did wrong, so please don’t worry about that. I don’t want to go into detail, but I had a minor skirmish with the police that was kind of linked to my involvement with you. It shook me up and I lost what little courage I had. I decided we had to stop before something irreversible happened. In an ideal world, I would love for us to be in touch again. You saved my sanity and brought unexpected pleasure into the darkest patch of my life. But it’s just not possible. Once again, I’m so sorry. I wish you all the very best. N x

  I press “send,” wiping away my tears with my other hand. There. I’ve done the right thing for once. I’m glad the urge to behave honorably doesn’t seize me more often if this is how it feels: like hollowing out my heart and stuffing it full of grayness.

  The darkest patch of my life. Was that an over-the-top way to put it?

  In February, thanks to King Edward—King Edward VII, to give him his full alias—I considered taking my own life. For a few days I wasn’t sure that even the thought of Sophie and Ethan, motherless, would be enough to persuade me to stay in this world.

  I’m about to sign out of Hushmail when a new message appears in the inbox.

  Gavin. Oh God. Christ, God. Of course it’s him: no one else knows I have this email address. I used to email King Edward from a Gmail account. I didn’t know Hushmail existed until I answered Gavin’s advertisement and he wrote back from a Hushmail account.

  How has he managed to reply so quickly? Has he been sitting in front of his computer for three weeks and four days, waiting?

  I hope he hasn’t. Almost as much as I hope he has.

  I try to grasp the mouse, aim wrong and knock it off the table. Having restored it to its place on the mat, I take a deep breath and click to open the message.

  It’s one line long:

  More detail about your encounter with the police, please. G.

  I type an equally short response:

  No. It was horrendous. I want to forget it ever happened.

  I don’t sign off with my usual “N x.” I hope this is a tactful way of demonstrating that we are no longer an item, insofar as we ever were. My replying doesn’t mean I’ve entered back into a correspondence with him, and this exchange has nothing to do with sex. He’s just being nosey; as soon as he sees that it won’t work, he’ll give up.

  Another new email appears in my inbox. I open it.

  All right, so you had a brush with the police and decided you couldn’t write to me anymore—fair enough (or I’m sure it would be, if I understood why). So what changed today? Did they only just let you out of jail? G.

  I smile in spite of myself.

  So, Gavin turns out to have a sense of humor. Is that so bad? Not all charming, funny men are evil. Adam, for example.

  My fingers hover over the keyboard. I want to answer, but how can I justify responding a second time if I really want to break this off?

  Does Gavin think that if he puts nothing sexual in his messages, I’ll decide it’s OK to write to him?

  If we’re not going to do the cyber-sex thing, what’s in it for him? Or for me?

  I don’t want him as a platonic friend. That would be awful. If I have to choose between types of loss—and it ap
pears that I do—I’d rather have the sudden dizzying kind, not a long-drawn-out diminishment.

  I type:

  No jail. I saw the same policeman again today. It reminded me that it was because of him that I’d stopped writing to you. I decided I owed you an explanation. That’s all. Please stop emailing me. I don’t want to be your pen pal. All or nothing for me, and it has to be nothing. Again, I’m so sorry. N x

  I press “send.”

  All done.

  Log out, Nicki. Why are you still sitting here, staring at your inbox? How devastated will you be if he doesn’t write back immediately?

  Then why did you order him not to?

  His reply arrives within seconds.

  I agree: you owe me an explanation. What happened with the policeman? First time and second time, please. All or nothing is a sound principle—and since you’ve already given me some of the story, you must now supply all of it. G.

  This sounds more like the Gavin I’m familiar with: wooden. Giving me orders. Desire stirs inside me. I shift in my chair.

  Should I tell him? If I don’t, he’ll never understand, not really. Can I bring myself to write what happened in an email? The prospect makes my skin prickle.

  I click on “reply.” Downstairs, a door bangs shut, making me jump.

  “Kids!” I call out. “Don’t slam the door!”

  “Not kids. Me. Sorry.”

  Adam. Shit.

  Terror floods my body, freezing me in place. It’s a few seconds before I can move again. I grab the mouse. “I’ll be down in a sec,” I shout. Please don’t come upstairs.

  What will Adam do? I listen for clues, with the cursor hovering over “Sign Out” in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Please go into the kitchen, Adam. I need a few more seconds . . .

  I hear the creak of a door—the living room, I’m guessing—followed by Adam trying unsuccessfully to talk to the children. He gives up after a minute or so. I hold my breath, listening for footsteps on the stairs.

  Nothing. He must have gone into the kitchen, or to the bathroom.

  You don’t know that. Sign out. Don’t risk it.

  I type:

  Need to go now. Might explain later. No promises, though. Bye. N x

  I press “send,” then sign out. Then I go to “History,” click on “Show All History” and delete all the Hushmail entries. I’m so grateful that I can do this. It’s the online equivalent of saying a few Hail Marys and being absolved of all your sins. Thank you, technology.

  What next? I can’t think straight. Oh yes, I know: Yahoo Mail, my respectable email account.

  Adam pushes open the spare-room door as I’m opening a message from my mum. “Hi, hon,” he says. “OK day?”

  “Brilliant, thanks,” I tell him. “You?”

  “Why brilliant?”

  “Well, actually . . . not that brilliant.” Come on, brain, start working, for fuck’s sake. I have nothing to be excited about, not officially. I must keep this in mind—for the rest of my life, ideally.

  It’s a good sign that, after only three weeks and four days of being good, I am already much worse at lying.

  I’m not going to start lying to Adam again. I can’t.

  “I had to go to school and back four times,” I say. The email from my mother about when we’re next all going to get together is still up on the screen. Not at all secret from my husband, but still . . . I ought to feel more guilty about this ongoing correspondence than I do about the one with Gavin.

  If I’m making a list of people to cut off contact with, my parents have surely earned their place at the top.

  You’re not cutting anyone off, though, are you? You never will.

  How did I not hear Adam on the stairs? He could so easily have caught me.

  But he didn’t.

  Being bad and getting away with it: there’s no feeling like it.

  WHO’S A BAD SPORT, KEIRAN?

  Damon Blundy, September 6, 2011, Daily Herald Online

  In the Times yesterday, Keiran Holland explained why he believes that disgraced sprinter Bryn Gilligan doesn’t deserve a second chance, now or ever. Having read Holland’s sermon and found it unpalatable, both conceptually and digestively, I would like to offer Holland one of the greatest gifts one human being can offer another. By coincidence, it’s the very thing he seeks to deny Gilligan: the gift of a second chance. Keiran, you must be embarrassed about what you wrote, so why don’t I take a week off to reread my Jeeves and Woosters, and you take my next column, with my blessing. Use it wisely. By which I mean, use it to lament the ethical cataracts that prevented you from seeing clearly in the bad old days (yesterday, this morning) when you were a hapless churner-out of received opinion.

  My regular readers know all about Bryn Gilligan, since I’ve written about him more than once. Gilligan was found guilty of doping and, having first protested his innocence, eventually made a full confession and apologized. Later, he apologized more satisfactorily, for all the good it did him. Yesterday, his appeal to overturn his lifetime Olympic ban was rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Keiran Holland believes Gilligan’s life sentence must remain in place because “His contrition is plainly not genuine.” “If that sounds harsh, it isn’t,” Holland assures us. “Bryn Gilligan is a liar and a cheat, and has admitted as much himself.”

  There’s a problem with this argument that I hope all proud owners of more than half a brain cell will be able to spot instantly. It was the lying and cheating Gilligan did that created the occasion for his apology. People who say sorry tend, on the whole, to be those who have made mistakes, often serious ones. If the fact of their having done something wrong dictates that we mustn’t accept their apologies, doesn’t that mean there’s no point in anybody apologizing for anything ever again? Should contrition be banned outright?

  Keiran Holland doesn’t think so. If he did, I might have more respect for him. Personally, I’m a fan of the centuries-old tradition of acknowledging one has fucked up and resolving to do better in future, but I respect a man who can hold a consistent line on an issue, however outlandish. Keiran Holland is not that man. As usual, he simply hasn’t thought it through. Indeed, what he claims to have wanted from Gilligan was a better apology, one that was less “weaselly.” Holland wanted the pure, special stuff: contrition of the highest grade.

  Would he have forgiven Gilligan and lobbied for the lifting of his ban if he’d gotten the abject grovel-fest he was after? No—as evidenced by his response to Gilligan’s subsequent more fulsome apology, which can be summarized as “He’s only groveling now because he saw that his original rubbish apology wasn’t cutting any ice, therefore we must continue to haul him over the coals forever.” Forgetting that Inspector Javert is nobody’s favorite character in Les Misérables, Holland omits to explain why a perfectly worded apology that follows cheating at sport plus a flawed apology is unacceptable, while arguing that the very same perfect apology after only cheating at sport would have been ideal. Logically, it doesn’t stack up.

  While I agree that Gilligan’s use of the word “oversight” in his initial statement and in relation to deliberately pumping himself full of banned substances before each race was an evasion at best—indeed, I said so here—what I find remarkable is that Holland seems to have no idea why Gilligan’s first reaction to being exposed as a sinner might have been so inadequate. The apologies of disgraced celebrities tend to be, don’t they? “I’m sorry, but . . .” when there is no possible “but”; “I’m sorry for the part I played” when no one else played any role at all; “I’m sorry if certain people were offended” when only those under general anesthetic could fail to take offense, so unquestionably vile was the transgression. I hope I’m not the only person who has noticed that deficient apologies seem to be perennially in vogue. There’s an obvious reason for this—so obvious that I’m not going to waste time explaining.

  I’m keen to know why Holland is so lacking in compassion where Bryn Gilligan is concerned.
What is it about the combination of drug taking and cheating that he so objects to, when he has no problem with either one in isolation? He cheated on his wife for at least six months with Paula Riddiough, former Labour MP and saboteur of her only son’s education (though to be fair, any red-blooded male would be tempted by the luscious Paula), so it can’t be Gilligan’s prolonged dishonesty that bothers Holland. A cheat himself, one might hope he would show a bit of leniency toward his underhand compadres. I’ve had the misfortune to be married twice—to Princess Doormat and Dr. Despot—and I cheated on them both with gay abandon of the heterosexual kind. It’s a sad fact that however beautiful the woman you marry, you will always meet one who is more or equally beautiful, eager to wrap her limbs around you and possessed of the additional appeal of being not-your-wife. So . . . having said all that, am I shocked to the core that Bryn Gilligan broke the rules in order to win races? No. How could I be, as a rule-breaker myself? To paraphrase the well-known adage, I read news stories about the repugnant behavior of famous people to know that I am not alone.

  Is it the drugs, then, that Keiran Holland can’t forgive? No, I can prove it’s not that. Holland was one of the judges, in the Supernatural/Horror category, of this year’s Books Enhance Lives Awards. The unanimously chosen winner in that category was Reuben Tasker for his novel Craving and Aversion, which begins with the line “Every translucent love contains particles of rot-green hate.” Only if you’re paranormally stoned, I’m afraid, Reuben.

  Tasker’s enduring devotion to cannabis is an open secret in the literary world, as is his belief that the drug expands his imagination. He’s on record as saying he doesn’t think he’d be able to write a book worth anyone’s time without it. Assuming some or all of this year’s other Supernatural/Horror contenders are tediously abstemious on the narcotics front, doesn’t that mean that Tasker’s drug taking might have given him an unfair edge over the competition? Shouldn’t he have to give back his prize money, arrange a head-hung-in-shame photo shoot and sob within dampening distance of Piers Morgan?