But then …
‘So, you are pregnant’ I say, because her bump now is at its biggest.
‘Could you not try another counsellor?’ said Tom when I told him that Angharad was pregnant, and I had snapped, again, at that.
‘Sure, at seventy pounds an hour, Tom. At seventy pounds an hour when we might need every penny we have to make a baby.’
He walked away; he no longer takes me on when I speak in a certain tone. I sometimes wonder if he’s been reading books, learning how to deal with me.
This counsellor is provided, incredibly, by the NHS. If she were thrusting her bump in my face while laughing, I would still have no choice but to accept her and be grateful.
The counsellor’s hand goes over her stretched middle.
‘As I said last time, we aren’t here to talk about me,’ she says, school ma’am-strict.
She is the fertility counsellor. She should be a safe space. A baby-free zone. But I am a woman and I try not to make strangers feel uncomfortable, so I mutter congratulations and move on. But how, now, can she understand? And how can I speak freely? She’s judging me, I think again – all of the horrible things I have said about pregnant women and their complacency, their smugness … now, they are about her.
She reads my mind. Of course she does, it’s her job.
‘My own life bears no relation to my understanding of yours,’ she says. Yoga teacher replaces school ma’am.
I can’t help it. Despite the politeness, I raise an angry eyebrow.
‘Let’s move on,’ she says. ‘Tell me about your partner. How are things there?’
60
Harriet
September
I am in a coffee shop two minutes from my flat. Tom is due any second. I’m wearing what someone normal would wear for a normal meeting – jeans, a top, ballet pumps – and I am trying to make my insides reflect the averageness of my exterior.
Really, they’re not average. They’re extreme, with a stomach that’s so excited I haven’t eaten all day and a chest that’s hammering away and a lower back that’s damp. I’m scrolling on my phone – because what’s more average than that? – when he walks in.
‘Harriet?’ he says and when I confirm, he offers to get me a coffee, but I’ve necked an espresso already.
‘Just a tap water,’ I say. I’ve been practising my measured smile, speaking slowly so my voice doesn’t shake.
And then, we chat.
It’s businesslike, on his part, and on mine, too – like I say, exterior.
I tell the three or four musical theatre anecdotes that I’ve been practising.
‘I think there’s genuinely something in this,’ says Tom when I’ve finished.
He looks up from the iPad he’s been making notes on.
‘I’m going to take this to the production company. There’s an executive producer there who I think would go for it, if I can sell it right.’
‘And if they do?’ I ask. ‘What happens then?’
Like I give a shit.
Tom gives a wry smile.
‘They’ll take it to the commissioning editor at whatever channel they think it would work best for,’ he says. ‘They’ll say they like it but “don’t think the idea is quite there yet”. Ad infinitum until we all lose the will to live waiting for it to happen.’
I don’t know what to say. There’s an awkward pause. I’m not very good with sarcasm.
‘But you know!’ Tom laughs, breaking the silence. ‘Hopefully not. Hopefully it’ll get made and we’ll all get together to watch it and toast our – your – awesome idea.’
He wants to drink with me; celebrate with me. He wants to make a TV show about me then celebrate with me.
I stare at him. That face. Then there’s another pause, and I know he’s going to say it.
‘So, where are you based?’
‘I’m round here, just a fifteen-minute walk down Essex Road,’ I say, fake stifling my fake yawn, the one I do when my voice is shaking or I’m blushing and I need to draw attention away from that.
And then he fake yawns too, and I realise: he already knew.
‘How weird, me too – whereabouts?’
I tell him, taking a sip of water. ‘How about you?’
‘Yeah, same. Opposite the noodle place.
‘I’m in that building!’ I laugh. Fake laugh.
‘This is possibly odd, but I’m in there too and I always hear my next-door neighbour playing the piano. You’re not number one hundred and twenty-four, are you?’
I start laughing and this is fun. And whatever else this is, I’ve missed fun.
‘Okay, stalker,’ I say, and he throws his head back. A Luke move.
‘That’s hilarious,’ he says, pushing his too-long hair out of his eyes again, and I think Luke, Luke, Luke.
‘And embarrassing,’ I say. ‘I bet you’ve heard me hit some rough notes. And God knows what else.’
‘Same,’ he says. ‘I bet you’ve heard my girlfriend and me do all kinds. One rule in London, you never meet your neighbours. We’re convening all laws.’
‘Tell you what, if you have any follow-on questions, just hammer on the wall and yell them and I’ll stop singing and answer.’
‘Agreed. And if I’m playing computer games too loudly when my girlfriend’s out, mention that, too.’
I think of when the noise did make it through. I think of when the shock of hearing their conversation made me think of when I lived in a psychiatric hospital. All the things you don’t know about me, Tom, I think, all the things you don’t know.
‘Right,’ he says, putting away the iPad and necking the last of his latte. ‘I think that’s all my questions. Thanks for that, really helpful. You never know, there might be something in it and if there is, you can pop round and we can all watch the final product together.’
‘Sure, if that annoying girl from next door isn’t playing her piano again.’
We’re grinning and I’m thinking: this is almost a date. If you’d just stop mentioning your girlfriend.
He stands, kisses me politely on the cheek, then stops. He blushes before he even asks it. I know what’s coming.
‘This is a strange question, but did I come to a party at yours a few months ago?’ he says.
I wait for him to continue, look blank.
‘There was this really drunken night … I sort of stumbled into a flat near ours …’
Blank.
‘A red-haired girl was kind of whizzing around in circles and then fell over?’ he says.
Oh, Chantal. A class act, always.
‘Not mine, I’m afraid. Wow, you must have been seriously drunk not to know where you were.’
‘Oh, I was,’ he says, bright tomato now. ‘I even lost my flat keys; the porter had to let me in.’
Ah! So that’s what happened.
I picture him, asleep.
‘Ignore me,’ he says, slipping into his jacket. ‘Just a stupid night.’
He is stumbling.
‘I guess we’re going in the same direction?’
He says this awkwardly too, because it’s one thing having a coffee together and another walking along the road and letting yourselves into your respective flats, where you can immediately hear each other through the wall.
I let him off.
‘Actually, no; I’m going to meet the girls,’ I say as though I am a person who has girls. ‘But shout if you need anything else. And if not, I’ll see you in the elevator.’
61
Lexie
September
‘Tom is amazing,’ I say to Angharad.
I am loyal to Tom, always. Even with what has been happening, I dislike those people who moan about their partners leaving towels on the bed, dressing badly, forgetting the dry-cleaning, never doing the vacuuming. It’s life-draining. I am pro-Tom. And if I wasn’t pro-Tom, I would leave. Would I? I think I would, but then lately – it’s not quite so simple.
‘He wants a baby as much a
s me, and he’s so on board with this treatment,’ I enthuse. ‘I’m incredibly lucky to have him.’
Angharad smiles.
Then she stays silent.
Silence has always been tricky for me.
I get together with friends to watch a film then speak over it until it ends. Kit and I never let each other finish a sentence.
But I try for a few seconds, smiling, meeting eye contact.
Angharad is better at it than me, though, and I crack, inevitably. I can’t bear it – how do people cope with the lingering emptiness of no noise?
‘There was … I was a little bit worried that he was … but it’s probably nothing.’
‘What did you think it was?’
‘Nothing. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘But you did.’
I try silence again. Fail again.
‘It just crossed my mind he was cheating on me, but he wouldn’t, it was stupid.’
How have I said these words out loud?
‘Okay.’
She’s doing it again.
‘It was just some odd behaviour.’
‘Mmm.’
‘And a social media message from some girl.’
‘Okay.’
‘And some condoms that he’d bought, even though we are trying.’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘In the spring.’
Silence.
I literally can’t do it. I am powerless to stop speaking.
‘Nervous, distant, taking his phone with him to the loo …’
Beat. Big, silent beat.
‘But it’s fine now.’
Oh, the torture.
‘I probably imagined it. The girl was clearly weird. I was paranoid around that time.’
Finally, she speaks.
‘Have you ever talked about it?’ she asks. Voice as steady as a newsreader now, she is a chameleon of reassurance.
‘Kind of. I tried.’
I flush so much it stings as I think about how easily I swept this away. What kind of girl doesn’t track down the other woman and find out more? But our situation is so dense, like everybody’s, and so those sweeping ‘what kind of girl?’ sentiments: they’re more complicated than that, aren’t they?
‘Well, it might be something to talk about, if it’s on your mind.’
‘No, it’s really not,’ I say decisively. ‘I don’t know why I mentioned it. It’s gone. I mean, it wasn’t anything anyway. But it’s gone.’
She nods and we move on.
‘Are there other people you can speak to?’ she asks. ‘Outside of your relationship? How about your mother?’
I resist the urge to eye-roll. Oh, here we go, in therapy and back on to my relationship with my mother.
‘She’s not really a talker,’ I say. ‘She believes in getting on with things, fixing them, buckling down.’ I pause. ‘She’s always thought I’m a little … flighty.’
I think about her disappointment when it was evident that I was headed for more creative pursuits, rather than the rules and the black and white of science.
I suddenly picture telling my mum I’m in therapy. She would find that incomprehensible.
‘And your dad?’
‘He’s a bit better, but he’s a little older than Mum and he’s old-school, too. We don’t delve into the hard stuff. Plus, they’re very far away, in Canada. There isn’t much chance to talk.’
Despite our distance, I feel disloyal.
‘What about when they were here?’ she asks. ‘When – presumably – you did live with them. Did you talk then?’
I try to think. Did we?
‘I think so,’ I falter.
But all I can picture is Kit’s bed, Kit’s arms around me when I was sad, Kit’s kind eyes as he brought me a custard cream.
‘Angharad,’ I say as I leave. It’s the last time I will see Angharad – if I want to continue I’ll have to transfer over to somebody else - as she is going on leave. She doesn’t state what type of leave, comically, even though it could not be more apparent.
‘I just wanted to say that I am sorry. For going on about you being pregnant.’
She smiles.
‘That’s okay,’ she says. ‘You’re human. This stuff isn’t easy to navigate.’
‘I’m a nice person, normally,’ I laugh. ‘Believe it or not.’
She touches my arm.
‘I can tell that, Lexie,’ she says. ‘I can tell that.’
My eyes fill with tears. It takes so little, these days, and now – like a true cliché – I am leaving my therapy session and contemplating my own family. Why didn’t we talk? Is that why I haven’t told my mum about our fertility struggles? Because an open conversation about something so clunky and unsolved is beyond us? I walk away from the hospital feeling tipped upside down and shaken out.
Next, reflexology. Tom is suspicious, wary that the promises of reflexology helping fertility issues are designed to take sixty pounds a time from desperate middle-class thirty-somethings, pulling off their socks and handing over their wallets.
‘I can’t see any problems with your uterus,’ says the reflexologist, putting pressure on my foot, and I think: What if you could?
What would we do then? March down to the hospital and tell the doctors what they missed?
I have three sessions then abandon it and Google acupuncture.
Tom is quiet this time. ‘If it helps you feel better, then it’s worth it,’ is all he will say when pushed.
62
Harriet
September
I’ve just finished a musical, so work is more manageable than it has been recently. I have time to think. To plan.
Next door too, things are quiet. Tom and Lexie are visiting Lexie’s brother in Yorkshire. Ugh, family. Tom and Lexie, and their family.
I picture country cottages and homemade soup and twenty-year-old in-jokes, and there is a pain across my forehead that is worse than a hangover, worse than a migraine. I look at pictures of David again. I touch his face lightly as a child, as a teenager, as the grown-up I barely got chance to know. I wish that I could explain to him where the distance between us came from. What Luke had said to me. How I had felt like I had to make a choice between him and my fiancé. How I felt like if that were the case, I had to opt for my future husband, the man who I would have children with. How I am slowly, hesitantly, starting to admit that I made a catastrophically wrong decision.
Tom has posted some pictures of him and Lexie on social media. Tom and Lexie do the pub; Tom and Lexie do walks in the country. Tom and Lexie do refusing to be broken, no matter how big the boots are that trample all over them.
I look at the images again and feel that familiar and strong desire to erase Lexie from the picture, to sketch myself in instead. I feel betrayed, angry. Everything I used to feel when I thought of Luke being with Naomi.
I’ve not left the house since Tuesday. I’ve drunk cup-a-soups for dinner, and Googled Tom and Luke. My skin is pale and a large spot has sprung up on my chin. My hair is lank and greasy, right to the ends, and I smell oddly of damp.
I contemplate the last time this happened; where it led.
I make another coffee, more amaretto, and check Tom’s social media again. The selfie of the two of them walking, the one of them in the pub probably taken by a friend, or just someone they met who liked them because that’s what life is like being Tom and Lexie. I’ve seen the cards in their flat, the invites. People are drawn to them, in a way they have so rarely been drawn to me.
By now, Tom and Lexie have most probably finished their walk and are thinking about watching a film with a bottle of red.
I throw my own coffee cup against the wall and leave the remnants there. Because who will know? Who will care? This isn’t like being in the hospital: no one cleans up my mess, no one checks if I’m falling apart.
I’m losing patience. I need Tom and Lexie to come back. They are too in control up there, too happy. I need to move things on.
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I set up another Facebook account and send Lexie a follow-up message from Rachel.
Do you know where your boyfriend was on the fifth of this month? I type. Might be worth asking him …
I’ve done my online research. I know Tom was away that night.
I log out. Look around. What now?
It hits me then, a feeling that one of the therapists identified long ago and that comes to me in a physical form often, especially on those nights when those people are in my flat with their names and their faces blurring with Pinot Grigio: I am very, very lonely.
I’m lonely alone, and I’m lonely in a houseful of people, and there is no time when I am not lonely. I am too lonely to reach out to people on the periphery of my life and pull them closer. I am scared of rejection, of being known. I keep Chantal half a metre away in Waitrose, make sure I don’t socialise with work colleagues unless I’m drunk.
I don’t have the guarantee of the other friendless; a family who will ensure that I am not lonely unconditionally, surrounding me with bickering and a claustrophobic Christmas that everyone will grumble about but never, ever want to give up. And I can’t get that back now. My family are too far gone.
But Tom can fix that, I think, he can fix that. As long as Lexie is erased.
63
Lexie
November
It is November, but I am sweating. I am on the tube, squeezed up against rush-hour commuters, and in my bag are forty syringes and what looks like enough medication to cure a ward full of sickness but will actually just do me and my uterus for a few weeks. I am terrified. Not of taking the medication but of dropping it, of it being stolen, of losing my mind for a moment and leaving my haul abandoned in the luggage rack. It is the most precious object I have ever carried and when I get home, I look at my stinging palm and realise I’ve been holding it so tightly that it has left a raging red mark that doesn’t fade for an hour.
‘Oh my God!’ Tom says later as I chop an onion and lob olive oil into a pan, then I jump again.
Through the Wall Page 19
