by Tina Seskis
I knock on the sanatorium door, which is pointless as it’s open, but it seems I’m playing for time. I stand back and look up through the trees at the sky, and there are faint white clouds in the soft muted blue, and they are so neat and rhythmic in their thin, straight patterns it’s as if somebody has raked them. I breathe. It will be OK. Maybe they even have news of Jamie. It’s possible. Whatever I do, I mustn’t tie myself up in knots, risk saying the wrong thing. For the next hour or so, I mustn’t worry about what has happened to my husband, or how I’d truly felt about him, or what might be happening inside my body. For the next hour or so, I mustn’t worry about anything other than watching my back.
42
A week or so before
As Jemma paused at the back of the church, tiny and picturesque and how she’d always imagined, the first person she noticed was Dan, and she wondered if she should be doing this. Every single event, large or small, insignificant or otherwise, had led her here, to this moment, and yet now it felt so wrong. But when was it right? Had it ever been right? And how on earth had she let it get to this point?
As the music struck and she failed to start walking, the murmuring and the shuffling increased, just a notch. The organ filled the void, the joyful notes of Bach’s ‘Wachet Auf’ cutting into the silence, and it gave her a respite. She felt her father nudge her, oh so gently. She was frozen in time, in this minuscule moment when it wasn’t too late, when she still had the chance to change her mind. Still she could turn. Still she could flee. It wasn’t too late. Her eyes were wet behind her veil. She could feel everyone looking at her. Everyone she loved. There for her. No, not for her, for her and Jamie. Jamie. Oh God.
‘Come on, Jemma, love,’ whispered her father. ‘It’s all right.’ He started to propel her forward, and although she let him, her legs felt heavy and useless, and she had the walk of a defeated, broken-in elephant underneath the froth of her skirts. She saw Veronica turn and look, a hazy smear of antipathy clouding her eyes, and Jemma paused again, halfway down the aisle. She fast-forwarded in time to the day ahead – to the saying I will, to the you may kiss the bride moment, the photos, the speeches, their first dance, falling into bed together, her new lingerie. The honeymoon. She couldn’t go through with it. Not after last night.
‘Dad,’ she whispered.
Her father was squirming. What was he meant to do? This wasn’t his fault. She needed to sort it herself.
‘I’M SO SORRY EVERYONE, I’M MAKING A MISTAKE.’
Silence. Jemma couldn’t understand it, the lack of response. And then she realized that she hadn’t said anything at all, except in her head, and the words were crowded inside there, trapped. The space was filling up with I’m making a mistake I’m making a mistake I’m making a mistake I’m making a mistake and it felt as if her mind might even explode, shatter into a million tiny pieces of horror. Her father subtly nudged her, and as she started walking again she concentrated on her feet, on her dainty little feet, in their dainty little princess shoes, transporting her, lumbering her towards this terrible image of hell. The day she had dreamed of, ever since she was an innocent little girl, going to hell.
Jemma managed to reach the altar without looking at Dan again. His presence was merely a faint electric buzz behind her now. Instead she focussed on Kay, who was sitting in the front row in a simple burgundy dress, her cream fascinator equally elegant and understated – but although her step-mother smiled at Jemma, her hazel eyes were troubled. And now Jamie was turning to her. She hadn’t even glanced at him yet, let alone acknowledged him, not since she’d seen him from the entrance to the church. He didn’t deserve this.
‘Hello, Jem,’ he said quietly. He was beaming. ‘You look beautiful.’ And then she realized that Jamie couldn’t see her eyes beneath the veil. He didn’t know. Her father was hovering, unsure what to do. Eventually, he sat down and refused to engage with his wife, who was whispering anxiously to him. Jemma stared at the vicar, begging him to rescue her. He was a nice man. Surely he had an obligation to do so? Yet they’d had all the meetings. She and Jamie had been so pleasant, so respectable, so well-suited. They’d seemed textbook, had given the vicar nothing to doubt. But now? Did he see? Please let him see.
As Jamie helped Jemma remove her veil, her eyes were shiny still, and he seemed to see that as a radiance of her happiness. He squeezed her hand, but she couldn’t squeeze his in return. Her hands were like dead fish, her face was the face of a simpleton doll, and yet Jamie hadn’t noticed. Jemma stared at the vicar, and she knew he caught the look, the plea in her eyes. He hesitated. He glanced at Jamie. Jamie smiled back. Whose obligation was it here? They were in God’s house. The vicar was the servant of God. This was not God’s will.
‘Jemma?’ said the vicar, softly. ‘I said, “I, Jemma Marie Brady …’ He paused, waiting for her.
What? What had happened? Surely they hadn’t got to this part already? Who on earth had pressed ‘Play’? She didn’t know what to say.
Jemma’s eyes were leaking. Jamie looked alarmed, at last. The pregnant pause in the church was infinite, to the end of time and back. And then Sasha, her best friend, her beautiful bridesmaid, handed Jemma a tissue. As she dabbed at her eyes she looked straight ahead, focussed on Jesus, who was hanging emaciated from the cross in front of her. She could no longer see her friends and family behind her. She could only remember the gaudy colours that she’d passed by as she’d cut her lonely swathe through the church: the reds and cerises and the glorious emerald greens of her friends’ dresses, the floral patterns of the aunties, the dark backs of the men. She couldn’t see the cream of the cosmos and the dahlias and the phlox and all the other flowers that she’d spent hours selecting, to bring to mind a summer meadow. On her way to the altar, the blooms had been but a backdrop, mere scenery. She’d been the main event. She, and Jamie. Now she wanted to whisper an apology and turn around and bolt down the aisle and out of the door. She wanted to disappear in a cloud of fairy smoke, and wake up tomorrow to find it never happened.
43
Now
The police were surprisingly nice to me, and it only took half an hour or so, but that has just made me feel yet more suspicious. They claimed they had nothing more to update me with, but I’m certain there’s stuff going on in the background that they’re not telling me. I am now so paranoid about what everyone’s thinking, I even wonder if the police have found out somehow that I hadn’t wanted to go through with the wedding. Maybe Chrissy has told them, and how I wish I’d never confessed to her. But I’d been drunk that night, and distraught, and I’d had to tell someone – and how was I to know that Jamie was about to vanish off the face of the earth? It’s like the cruellest of practical jokes.
It’s a relief, therefore, to get back to the confines of my self-appointed prison, and I’m grateful that at least it’s a luxurious one. My breakfast is just being delivered, and Chati is polite and unobtrusive as he puts down the tray. And although I never feel like eating anything at all until the food arrives, it’s so beautifully presented, and the aromas are so sweet and spicy and jungly, I usually can’t resist. Today, as well as fresh fruit salad, there are steamed buns, and when I take my first bite, I can taste coconut and ginger and another unidentifiable local spice, and I vaguely wonder what meat it is. It tastes like pork, but then I decide it must be chicken. The food is delicious, whatever it is, and before I know it, I’ve finished it. Just as I’m wiping my mouth with a starched white napkin, Chrissy drops by to see how I’m doing, update me on the mood in the resort (palpable excitement, she implies, somewhat undiplomatically). I hardly say anything, and she doesn’t stay long, and I’m relieved. Despite our attempts to be normal, our exchanges feel increasingly difficult, for both of us.
Jamie has been missing for so many days now that a new routine on the island has been established. It seems that even trauma can be normalized through structure. I still spend most of the day on the terrace, staring out through my own bit of jungle at the sea beyon
d, still looking for something, still dreading it. In my brief snatches of sleep, I still have nightmares. The army continues to zip about on boats or in seaplanes, checking every nearby deserted island in case Jamie’s been shipwrecked there, which is yet another possibility they’re investigating. The British detectives carry on interviewing people. Honeymooners try to get on with the business of loving each other, albeit with a camera phone and Twitter handle to hand. And although, to my knowledge, no-one has snapped me on the terrace yet, the fact that someone might just makes me shrink back further into the sanctity of my bungalow. I long for my dad to get here.
I’ve only seen Dan twice since the day he arrived – that awkward, highly charged time we bumped into each other on one of the inland paths, and briefly the other day with his mother. They are staying in an over-water bungalow on the south-east side of the island, and the police have been the ones liaising with them mostly, so there’s been no need for us to have any contact with each other. Neither Dan nor Veronica choose to come near me, which must seem odd to the casual bystander – we’re part of the same family, after all – but my mother-in-law’s suspicion of me rises off her like low mist in a valley, and I can’t face trying to justify myself to her. I’m pretty sure Dan hasn’t told her anything, but that doesn’t stop her doubts. I can’t help feeling devastated for Veronica, though, that her youngest son is missing. It must be the most flailing feeling in the world to lose a child – surely even more so than a husband.
The doorbell rings, and it is jarring, that ding-dong noise, in my wood-and-thatch haven, and I assume it is Chrissy again, or else Housekeeping, or, worse, the police, wanting to speak to me once more. I don’t want to talk to anyone, but least of all them.
My feet are soft and silent as they slide across the smooth, hard tiles. I feel solid, and heavier than I should, weighed down by regrets. I pull the door open and try to rearrange my features into a neutral expression.
‘Oh. Hello,’ I say.
‘Can I come in?’
I hesitate, nearly tell him to go away. ‘OK,’ I concede.
Dan walks through my bungalow, past the oversized bed I shared with his brother, past the beautiful carved furniture, on to the terrace with the gorgeous glimpses of the sea through the trees. He sits down at the table. I worry that there may be nosy holidaymakers outside, with cameras. I don’t want us to be seen together. I don’t want anyone to hear our conversation. I try to warn Dan off with my eyes. I attempt to silently convey to him that I don’t know where Jamie is. That what I want more than anything in the world is for my husband to be found. That I don’t want to speak about anything else, especially Dan’s role in all this – I still can’t decide how much he’s to blame. But of course there are too many conflicting emotions to express in just one look, too many contraflows of feeling. Everything is messed up.
‘Jemma,’ says Dan. His voice is curiously impassive. ‘I want you to know something before the police tell you. They’ve found an account of Jamie’s.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He had another bank account. It seems he was siphoning money into it.’
‘Oh …’ I’m stunned. ‘But why would he do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I know they think he was seeing his boss,’ I say, after a long while, as the sands shift sightlessly under the gentle waves a few yards away from us. ‘Did you? Before, I mean.’
‘No,’ says Dan. ‘Though I must admit I wasn’t that surprised …’ I’m unnerved by the hatred in his voice. It’s so faint, but I spot it. It’s there.
‘But if he was seeing her, why would he have bothered marrying me?’ There’s more silence, as the question stumps both of us. Neither of us is willing to discuss the possible reasons. It’s so weird being in the same space as Dan, talking to him again face-to-face for the first time in years. Until he arrived on my honeymoon, I’d only seen him a handful of times, and never alone, since the day he walked out of his parents’ drinks party. As I wait for him to reply, my mind meanders back through our past with a regret that is delicate in its construction, like a spoonful of bubbles. I thought I’d found in Dan a good, steady man, who loved me, made me feel safe, brought out the best in me. My love for him had been like the coming in of the tide, so gradual as to be barely noticeable. Enter his dashing brother, a veritable tsunami of glamour and charm, buoyed with a bottle or two of champagne and the sociopathic ruthlessness of his mother. The fact that I was drunk when I first kissed Jamie will never excuse it. But what about how Dan has behaved since? I’m pretty certain it’s worse.
‘Why are you telling me this, Dan?’ I don’t need to try to inject hostility back into my tone. Blame is easier than regret.
It still takes him an age to answer. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I thought you ought to know, before the police tell you …’ His eyes drift away to the sea, making them seem brighter, browner. It is a spiky, painful kind of silence between us now. He shifts in his chair. I’m not sure what it is that he wants to say. When he turns back to me, he looks broken, and it occurs to me that he might be trying to make amends, but it’s too late.
‘Oh God,’ I say, so quietly I’m almost speaking to myself.
I need to think about something else, other than Dan, our past, so I move back onto safer territory, which, bizarrely, is to talk about the disappearing trick it seems his brother has engineered, willingly or otherwise. My tone turns formal, a bit like a radio announcement. ‘I’m so sorry about Jamie. I just pray they find him.’ He looks at me hard, and it’s clear he doesn’t know what to think. He suspects me, I know he does. I shift my gaze away.
‘Me too,’ he says, eventually. ‘Me too.’
Dan gets up and so do I. We walk back through the bungalow towards the front door, where he stops and gives me the briefest of hugs, how someone might say goodbye to their sister-in-law in a situation such as this, and a couple passing by capture the moment – and I presume the photo will end up online soon enough, and my reputation will take another battering. And it’s only going to get worse now, I’m sure of it. It is only a matter of time.
44
A week or so earlier
I will I will I will. She had she had she had. The words floated about, blurry and indistinct, and she felt like she might even pass out. It was done. The register was signed. And now Jemma was sitting on the closed seat of the church toilet, which was not the cleanest, and her precious white dress was making contact with the porcelain, and she didn’t care. She was crying, great racking sobs that she was managing to keep inside of herself, as she knew people might hear, and she couldn’t tell anyone. She couldn’t admit how she felt. She had made her decision, and now her job was to get on with it.
There was a knock on the door. Sasha.
‘Jemma, sweetheart, are you OK in there?’
Jemma wiped her eyes. She took a breath. Her voice was steady enough through the cubicle door. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, Sasha. My … my stomach’s a bit dodgy, that’s all.’ She feigned a laugh. ‘Not very bride-like, I’m afraid … Anyway, I’m just coming.’
She pulled the flush and when she came out she couldn’t look at her friend, and she knew in that moment that Sasha knew, but couldn’t say anything either. Not now. It was too late. Instead Sasha watched her as she washed her hands at the tiny sink, with a soap that smelled of hospitals. Her new wedding ring felt bulky and uncomfortable on her finger. Sasha briefly squeezed her shoulder, and then they left the sanctuary of the chapel toilets and made their way out to the front of the church, for Jemma to see her husband, have her picture taken with him, as irrefutable proof as the marriage certificate that she really had done this, that her new life had begun. That now, officially, she was Mrs James Armstrong.
In the little church garden, just before the graveyard, there was winter-crunched grass, scattered with snowdrops, and the whites and greens were so sparkling and vibrant that the photographer was almost orgasmic about the light. Maybe it was normal to feel
like this when you get married, Jemma tried to tell herself. Perhaps everyone has a wobble at some point, even on the day itself – and in her case it was hardly surprising. And yet, as she stood with a fixed smile on her face, she felt like an imposter at her own wedding, and rarely had she felt as wretched.
‘Okey dokey, lovely … that’s really lovely. Smashing.’ Click click. ‘Jemma, can you put your hand on Jamie’s arm, so we can see the ring?’ Click click. ‘Beautiful. One more.’ Click click. ‘Got it.’ The photographer’s face popped out from behind his camera, as if he were playing peek-a-boo with a baby, and he had a handlebar moustache and bouffant hair, and he was so bouncy and enthusiastic it made Jemma want to weep. Jamie seemed to have got over his years-long commitment issues and was playing the part of the happy groom with gusto. As he touched her, it made Jemma’s bones jolt, and she wasn’t remotely sure what the feeling was.
‘Can we have the bride and groom kissing now, please?’ the photographer said. Jamie turned towards her obligingly, and his waistcoat was awful, and he’d been right about that. What had happened to her judgment of late? The colour looked gorgeous on Sasha, and her two little flower-girls, but very pale pink sapped the life out of Jamie’s skin. And although in these situations Jamie could sometimes seem a little ungracious, Jemma had to give him his due, not today. Today he looked so happy, and his happy, smiling face loomed towards her, and she caught a fresh, clean whiff of his happy-smelling aftershave. A few days ago she would have been ecstatic, and yet in this moment it made her feel – what?
