Through the Wall

by Caroline Corcoran

  He shrugged again.

  ‘The sex was good,’ he said with a smirk. ‘I’ll give you that. It worked for me, having you there and up for whatever I wanted to do.’

  I flushed. But something different to usual was happening in my head. I had had a lot of distance since the last time Luke put me down like this and part of me had been wondering: he couldn’t be right, that I was utterly useless, because I had a career, didn’t I? I had a creative mind. I had music.

  In fact, whatever Luke said, the one thing that really had changed about me – us – before he proposed and then broke up with me was that I was flying at work. I was gaining the confidence that a lot of women feel when they hit their career stride in their thirties. I may not have been fully formed, but I knew that I had parts. There were germs of a human being there. I no longer thought that I was the nothing he painted me to be. Deep down, I wondered, is that why he had proposed to me, promised me this future? To halt any doubts I’d had; any thoughts that I could leave him and be my own person. But when it seemed like that was happening anyway, he’d done an about turn and simply ended us. Moving on to someone else.

  Is that why I was no longer appealing? Because I couldn’t be fully controlled?

  But I wanted to hear it from him.

  ‘So why did you break up with me?’ I whispered, because when would I get another chance, now? ‘In the end, what was different?’

  ‘Because I met Naomi,’ he said. ‘And she was beautiful and funny and she had her own life. I was sleeping with her for months while I was still “engaged” to you.’

  He put it in quotation marks.

  ‘Don’t put it in quotation marks,’ I said, but where normally my eyes would be filling with tears, something else was happening. I was furious. Livid. Every bit of pain he had caused me had transformed now into hot fire that finally, as he stood in front of me, had an outlet.

  I repeated myself, louder now.

  ‘Please don’t put it in quotation marks.’

  He tightened his grip on my chin and held my hair with the other hand. He thought this was just like normal – because yes, there were glimmers of what therapists at the hospital later called physical abuse, too.

  Who had I thought I was, trying to take the power away from him?

  But Luke wasted years of my life, ruined me. He told me he wanted children with me, proposed to me, bullied me, belittled me. He built me up then kicked me hard so that I fell, and then he just … left. Something was building.

  47

  Lexie

  April

  Two months have passed now since we went to the hospital. I’ve decided to try to heave myself out of this lonely, sugary ennui.

  First step: I need to lose the weight and am huffing my way through the park. I am running to Beyoncé and I am grumpy because it’s not working.

  Where is the adrenaline? Where is the mindfulness induced by the repetition? Am I failing at being cured by exercise too, when even doctors say it can fix all ills?

  I pass a woman who can jog with green juice in her hand while simultaneously walking – running – a dog.

  She looks carefree; I feel encumbered by worries. There are always worries now, ticking along in my brain and joined constantly, like a Pied Piper, by new ones. I picture the latest one, jogging sluggishly along behind me, gagging for a drink of water.

  It was last night when I walked in that I saw Tom jump nervously.

  He was on his phone and he looked shifty. Tom doesn’t jump. I’m the jumper. I jump these days if toast pops, if the vacuum turns on, if someone walks into a room. Tom is laid-back, calm. It’s not the stray hairs of the movies, is it? It’s the ever-so-slight changes of behaviour from someone you know the insides of. It wasn’t even an immediate assumption that it was Rachel. It could have been him texting a friend to complain about me, or scrolling through an ex’s social media, but I knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t positive.

  I headed straight for the kitchen and he came out, too wide-eyed, too smiley, doing too much touching of my back.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he said brightly, then he hugged me tightly, despite me only having been gone for twenty minutes to the shop up the road. Ask yourself. I’m asking myself again, Rachel.

  I studied him.

  ‘Fine, thanks, why are you being odd?’

  I took a tub of ice cream out of the bag and put it in the freezer.

  ‘I’m not being odd,’ he said, being odd. ‘Let’s put a film on, get under the blanket, eat that?’

  ‘I thought I was supposed to be being healthy?’ I said, my voice frosty ice cream, too.

  ‘Well, it’s only one night …’

  ‘Tom, is there anything you want to tell me?’ I bit.

  I don’t want to confront him again; I want him to offer up the information. Or I want it not to be true. But he’s not doing it and it’s making my insides burn up, so I’m pushing.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘What are you on about? This isn’t about that girl again?’

  I ignored him and walked into the living room, picking up the remote control.

  ‘Is it?’ he asked, more quietly. ‘Is it about that girl?’

  But I turned the film on and curled my legs under me and stayed quiet.

  ‘Forget about it,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s just watch the film.’

  I sat in front of the TV making plans. I had been scared into action. If there was someone else, I had to fight her. I couldn’t just step back and let Tom be lost to me. I dug my running stuff out before bed and headed off first thing.

  It’s now eight thirty and I’ve been out for fifteen minutes. I’m spent but too embarrassed to head home already. Instead, I sit down on a bench near our flat and see Harriet going out. Casual, today. Dark blonde hair up high in a bun. Big brown eyes mostly make-up free. Still beautiful. Her endless legs jump on a bus as she reads something on her phone and grins.

  As I sprint home, I imagine being the kind of girl that Harriet, or potentially Rachel, is and it seems as impossible as scaling a mountain. These women are in a different bracket to me now, with their confidence and their independence. I have drifted so far from my old self that I doubt my memories of her; suspect I must be exaggerating how together she was.

  48

  Harriet

  April

  Weeks and weeks it takes Tom to respond, but of course he does, as he’s too nervous that I’ll ruin his relationship. Especially when I send a follow-up, threatening to do just that. He answers quickly.

  That doesn’t sound like a smart move, can we just leave it?

  To which – heading out of the door to some social media-invite birthday party of someone I used to work with – I immediately send back an emoji of a beer. I’m more of an amaretto and Coke girl, obviously (and as he knows), but for emoji clarity, the beer did the job.

  And also, leave my girlfriend alone. I know you sent her messages.

  I smile. You have no idea, Tom. You think you’ve just met some woman who’s a bit desperate. You don’t know how I can turn; you don’t know how when I needed to, I did turn.

  I send another message, naming a bar that isn’t near either of our flats that I went to once with some – of course – work colleagues.

  God, that night was awful. All the nights, unless I am drunk enough that I can’t remember them, are awful. Do other people enjoy nights out? They are different, I remember distantly, with real friends. I ache, again, for Frances and for the other women that I wasn’t as close to but who I know, in retrospect, that I loved and who loved me. Frances’s friends, initially, but then mine. We sipped amaretto together in bars, picking each other up, dropping each other off. We shared in-jokes, we gave advice.

  When Hayley lost her dad after a stretched-out cancer battle, I organised a weekend away for the five of us. I packed board games, bubble bath and hot chocolate, and we stayed in our pyjamas for forty-eight hours. Hayley’s arms appeared around me as we’d packed up the car to come home.
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  ‘You’ll never know what this weekend has done for me,’ she’d whispered. ‘As good as months and months of therapy.’

  But I knew: they’d all have done it for me. I was part of something for the very first time. Even when we moved, they were still there, on social media, on my phone – a few hours late with a reply because of the time difference but still checking in, still in my life. But when some of them reached out after what happened, I burned with shame. I thought of Hayley, hugging me that day through her grief, thinking I was good, and I felt sick. It was only Frances I could cope with and when even she couldn’t deal with me, I changed my number and cut ties. Sometimes I think I can do it again. Chantal could be my friend. Some of the other women who come for dinner. But there is a chasm now, after what I did, because I will always have a secret. I’m playing a part now, an Almost Harriet who emulates the other one but will never quite fit into her shape.

  I jump on the bus and out of the corner of my eye I see Lexie, sitting on a bench, breathing heavily and holding her thighs. She is in leggings and trainers – cooling down, presumably, after a run.

  ‘Thursday 7 p.m.,’ I type to her boyfriend, because I am starting to enjoy being the bossy one with all the control. He doesn’t reply.

  49

  Lexie

  April

  If I had to call it, I’d say that Tom looks even more nervous when I come back from my ‘run’ than he did when I left. His phone is still next to him.

  ‘My run was good,’ I say pointedly.

  ‘Sorry yeah – where did you go?’

  He is forcing himself to make conversation and pull his mind from whatever it was on, but he looks so troubled that I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

  ‘The park,’ I say, pulling off my socks and eyeing him. What is it? Has Rachel been in touch?

  I walk straight into the shower, determined that whatever type of girl I had become, I will never be the girl who checks her boyfriend’s phone.

  But I kick the side of the bath in frustration. Because I’m lathering up my shower gel and thinking about it. Why can’t I be that girl? Is it because I’ve always judged her so harshly, made the ruling that she’s the worst girl?

  Or is it because deep down I don’t think Tom’s a cheat, so whatever and whoever Rachel is, he will tell me when he’s ready?

  But the truth is that I simply can’t face handling anything else right now. Suspecting is manageable. Knowing and having to walk away from Tom when we are in the midst of all of this, isn’t. I turn my face up towards the showerhead but bury my head firmly in the sand.

  50

  Harriet

  April

  I am simultaneously drunk and hung-over and lying on my sofa in just a bra. A man is standing next to my sofa wearing no clothes. The clock says 3.07 a.m. The man with no clothes is going home.

  ‘You’re hot,’ he says, pulling a T-shirt on, when he sees that my eyes are open. ‘I’ll text you.’

  Yeah, I think. You’re about as likely to text me the next morning as anyone is to text me the next morning.

  My phone beeps.

  I LOVE YOU AND I LOVE YOUR PARTIES, says Chantal, and I smile, at least, at that. And the fact that she left after an hour or so again but is still obviously very drunk.

  The door slams shut thirty seconds later. I get up and bolt it behind the man and pour myself an amaretto. I reply to Chantal; this is almost the same as having a nightcap with a friend. An Almost Harriet, having an almost drink with an almost friend.

  51

  Lexie

  April

  I’m not pregnant, again, and the drugs that I am on to try to get pregnant have given me period pain so excruciating that all I can do is pace up and down our tiny flat – turning approximately every three seconds – and cry silently so that I don’t disturb the night time.

  I am pacing and crying when I hear Harriet making what can only be described as sex noises. The sex noises are a better painkiller than any sort I have ever taken, because I am inherently nosy and distracted by them.

  Harriet is having sex! Normally, the noises we hear from Harriet’s flat late at night are pure party – irritating often but difficult to get too worked up about when you live in Zone One and buses and idiots zoom past your window twenty-four hours a day. We’re used to noise. But this particular soundtrack, I don’t hear that often.

  I’m gutted Tom is away; getting back into bed with no one to whisper with about what I just heard is disappointing. Then, I think, would I do that these days anyway? Now things are different. Now there is no fun.

  I lie awake and when I stop writhing with the pain, I think about my neighbour, writhing in something else. Is she with a boyfriend or a lover? A date or a one-night stand?

  I lie awake and seem unable to stop thinking about Harriet and her close but distant life. I think about how imposing and groomed she looks when I catch glimpses of her on the stairs. I think about how I feel I know her and yet realise there are basic level omissions in my knowledge – if she is in a relationship, who she loves.

  I think about how much money she must make to afford her flat, alone. I think about how impressive that is, especially from a creative job that lets her be – presumably – her own boss.

  I think about how she is what I had hoped I would be in my thirties and how very far removed from my reality that is today.

  And then, I think about Tom. Away now, sleeping in a bed that I am not in. Alone? I think so. I hope so.

  If Tom were cheating on me, would it be with a woman like Harriet? A woman who had her shit together but was fun, still viewing Friday nights as being for pushing your way to the bar and dancing?

  Part of me still believes that what Tom wants now is me, in whatever form I come in, and a baby, however long that takes.

  But on the bad days, and when he is sleeping far away and I can’t soak in the reassurance of his face, I can conceive of a world in which the other appeals far more.

  When the period pain lingers enough to stop me sleeping still, even at 5 a.m., I Google my neighbour. I see her social media filled with pictures from a party last night. Harriet, squeezed between friends and pouting. Harriet, downing a shot with a gaggle of equally groomed women. A platter of sushi adorned by an app with the word YUM.

  And then, of course, she came home with a man. She had fun, audible, late-night sex. Tomorrow – today – they will likely nip out to a restaurant on the high street for breakfast and Bloody Marys. I realise then that I am picturing Rachel and in my head, she is Harriet. Glamorous, popular, sexy. They are blending into one and merging with the other women I see on the street and sit next to on the bus, who wear ironed clothes and cute boots. The ones who take their phones out of their bags and speak firmly about what they need and what their plans are. Who have signature scents and blended eyeshadow.

  I am suddenly horrified by myself: a woman who is jealously googling her neighbour in the early hours of the morning after listening to her have sex. I get up to change my sanitary towel and sit with my head in my hands on the toilet. If Tom wanted a Harriet instead of a Lexie, who really could blame him?

  52

  Harriet

  April

  Tom doesn’t reply to my message telling him what time and where we are meeting. And then – what took you so long, Tom? – he blocks me.

  I am incensed, briefly, but I know I need to go about this another way anyway. If I had met Tom as Rachel, he could have recognised a face that looks familiar enough for it to bug him until he places it. And then he would have known I was lying. That I wasn’t Rachel and had a different career altogether.

  Far better that he knows me as me.

  And he will.

  Time for Plan B.

  It came from something someone said at work. We were in a meeting, the others making geeky songwriter in-jokes around the piano while I played and zoned out. I felt my shoulders settle. I felt people drift further away. The part where there was human interaction wa
s always the inferior bit of my job; far better to be lost, rhythmic, to feel strong as I pounded the piano keys harder and harder and forgot that my colleagues were even there. Forget the world was there.

  ‘Harriet! Harriet!’

  I was angry that this voice had cut through my playing.

  ‘What?’ I bit, fingers snapping away from the keys, turning around to them in anger.

  ‘We’re stopping for now, okay?’ said my colleague Jacob. ‘Just going to order some food in and chill out for a while.’

  In the chat that followed as we ate our pizza, Jacob joked that our industry would make a good sitcom and I zoned back in, just long enough to snip.

  ‘I’m not sure any of us are funny enough for a sitcom.’

  Not us. You.

  I wasn’t jovial; I was in a bad mood after a two-hour stint looking at old pictures of Luke between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. this morning.

  Luke. Tom. Luke. Tom.

  ‘A documentary, then,’ said Steph. Steph? Sam?

  These women look the same with their skinny jeans and their highlighted hair and the same trainers. People think London is the home of the unique, what a joke. I’ve never seen more ubiquity in one place. At any given time there is one restaurant you should eat at, one brand you should covet for your wardrobe, one book you should be obsessed with. They might as well send out a memo at the start of the month.

  And yet, I’m still here. Why? I wonder. Too lazy to uproot again? Nowhere else I belong? Clinging onto something I thought I was going to be doing with Luke? Or, lately, is it more to do with Tom?

  ‘Oh yeah, now you’re talking,’ said another dramatically. ‘A dark documentary exposing the cruel underbelly of the musical theatre world.’

  They laughed and I thought about how unfunny they are, and how much I dislike them, and how much I dislike everybody I spend time with really, and how no one who’s in my life matters to me while David, Frances, my friends, Mom and my dad are outside its parameters.