She's Mine

by A A Chaudhuri

  * * *

  I am fifty-seven years old but I feel at least a decade older. Every day I rise at 6 a.m. and am at my desk by eight. As a banking partner at a Magic Circle law firm, I work a minimum twelve-hour day, often longer if there’s a big deal on or I need to attend an important client function. It’s the trade-off for the huge sums I make, which enabled us to put Ella and Daniel through private school and beyond. I was always a hard worker, but when you lost our child, I became someone I was once determined never to be – a workaholic. A slave to the City, just like my father. Not particularly because I get a thrill out of it but because expending all my energies at work allows me to temporarily discard the memory of our first child. Otherwise it would consume me, like a terminal disease, the way it has done you. I couldn’t let that happen. One of us had to be strong.

  * * *

  I study the silhouette of your face, the lines of your emaciated body. Gone are your womanly curves. Your cheeks, once flushed and full, are pale and hollow, and from this angle, I can decipher a dark shadow under your right eye. On the rare occasions I happen to catch you naked, I am horrified by your skeletal frame. Your spine and ribs protrude from what little flesh you have, and there is an unusually large gap between your thighs.

  Where has my Christine gone, once so beautiful, so full of life?

  When I first set eyes on you at that client function all those years ago, you took my breath away. It was that classic lightning-bolt moment. I hadn’t long joined Sheridans from Decker Wyatt, where Miranda and I had both been associates. She and I moved together when our mentor at Deckers defected. You were speaking to a couple of portly, ruddy-nosed clients, classic City stereotypes. I could tell that you were bored stiff and trying to ignore the fact that every now and again their line of vision would venture to your open-neck blouse, the merest hint of cleavage on show, enough to titillate unsavoury types like them, well past their sell-by date and not getting any at home. I watched you laugh and smile, nod in all the right places, and at one point you threw back your head with fake laughter, then happened to glance my way. We exchanged shy smiles, and it was the most thrilling moment. For me, at least. And it suddenly made what had so far been a tedious evening worth the effort.

  We didn’t get the chance to speak until the end of the night when only a few clients remained and the room was full of empty glasses and one too many sozzled lawyers, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were required to be back in the office, fully functional, the next morning.

  Although I was popular at university, I’d always been more comfortable around my male friends. Women, particularly attractive women, had somewhat terrified me. Maybe that was why I’d felt so at ease with Miranda. I wasn’t intimidated by her. I’m decent-looking, with an average five-ten frame, and a strong (not as slim as I used to be) build, and I’ve been told (you told me, in fact) that I have good bone structure and warm, friendly eyes. But I’m not drop-dead handsome, I know that. Although I tend to wear contact lenses these days (because I’ve been told by someone special to me that they make me look younger), back then I mostly wore glasses, giving me a studious, more-mature-than-my-years appearance. Funny how you always want to appear older when you’re young, but will do anything to turn back time when you’re past forty. It was a look that gained me many female friends, but not so many lovers. Until I met Miranda. She was fun, and easy to talk to. But she wasn’t a sex kitten like you. I knew nothing about you as such, just that you were a four-year-qualified associate in litigation, but as if from nowhere, at the end of the evening I plucked up the nerve to approach you. It was like I had to, else I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night, you got to me that much.

  You’d just said goodbye to a client and were heading for the door when I made my move. ‘How was your evening?’ I asked. ‘Just about bearable?’ My heart had been going like the clappers as I came up behind you and almost made you jump in surprise. ‘We should congratulate ourselves on being two of the last men standing,’ I carried on.

  You turned around, eyes full of surprise, and then, to my relief, you smiled.

  ‘Well, the wine helped,’ you said. ‘Although I think I’m going to have a stinking hangover tomorrow. Not good.’

  You flashed your beautiful smile, and my pulse went through the roof. Just like that, I was smitten. But I wasn’t stupid; I knew you were out of my league.

  After grabbing our coats, we shared a lift to the ground floor. The tension was almost unbearable; for me at least, I’m not sure it was like that for you. You seemed so calm, so at ease with yourself, and I guess you knew how gorgeous you were. Later, you confessed to me that you’d quite enjoyed watching me sweat. Although I’d tried to act cool, it was obvious from my body language how much I liked you. And I think that’s what drew you to me. You were always a princess. You enjoyed being fussed over, wielding control. And because you were out of my league, you knew you could control me, unlike other, more handsome men, who were just as unattainable as you. Sometimes, I wonder if you ever really loved me, or simply loved the fact that I adored you. But perhaps I’m being unfair.

  At first, we became friends. We saw each other at firm socials, and I always made a point of chatting to you. I could tell you were relaxed in my company. My best friend at the firm – Nate – noticed it too. He kept telling me to go for it, that life was too short to hold back. It was all right for him, though. Nate, God rest his soul, was a handsome bugger. In truth, I had envied him, had so wanted to hate him. But I couldn’t. He was a bloody top guy, and I still can’t believe he’s gone. Just can’t believe he killed himself, poor sod.

  Anyway, if it wasn’t for Nate, I wouldn’t have asked you out. But he kept egging me on, and finally, after a few months of getting to know you, I plucked up the nerve to ask if you fancied grabbing dinner sometime. We were both working late, and your trainee had left for the evening. I poked my head around the half-open door, and you looked up from the chunky document you were working on. I’d been fit to burst with nerves, wondering how I was ever going to look you in the eye again if you turned me down.

  But you didn’t. You said, ‘Sure, why not? That would be lovely’, then smiled that smile, and it was a struggle not to exhale loudly with relief and punch the air for joy.

  Thankfully, I managed not to embarrass myself. Gave a cool, ‘Great,’ in response, then left.

  Turned out, dinner was a success. The conversation flowed, and I didn’t want the night to end. You were so full of life back then, and I was captivated by you. Outside on the street, a cocktail and a bottle of wine later, we kissed for the first time, and then some more. Non-stop kissing like we were a couple of horny teenagers, and I thought I must have died and gone to heaven. That surely my luck had to run out at some point. That you’d come to your senses and realize that you were too good for me. But you didn’t. We went out again, we became a thing, a couple, despite having to be careful in the early days – although relationships weren’t strictly forbidden at our firm, they weren’t exactly encouraged. But if anything, it cemented our love, proved how invested we were in each other. Before long, we were engaged, living together, then married, and not long after that, parents.

  Now all of that seems like a lifetime ago. After it happened, I initially tried to comfort you, forgive you, but you pushed me away, became cold, punished me for something which, let’s face it, was entirely your fault. You should have been grateful to me for giving you another chance – for not leaving you – but instead you wallowed in your own self-pity, as if my grief was secondary to yours. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I urged you to have more children. I thought it would help bring us closer together again, help repair the hole in our marriage.

  But it didn’t. You pushed me away even further, and the hole became an abyss. Janine sometimes admonishes me for being too harsh on you. But she doesn’t have to live with you, does she? And I know Miranda’s had to bite her lip on several occasions. Raised by a father whose heart turned to
stone after losing his wife to cancer, she doesn’t have much time for wallowers. Even wallowers who’ve lost a child.

  What’s more deplorable is that you weren’t a proper mother to our other children. It was as if you resented them, something I have grown to resent you for almost as much as I resent you for losing our firstborn. How dare you push me away when it was you who lost our child? How dare you push our children away when they are equally blameless? You should have tried to do everything possible to make it up to me – you should have poured your love into Ella and Daniel – but instead you became distant and introverted. I couldn’t understand this, I still can’t; it just doesn’t make any sense. All I can think is that there’s something else that explains your unfeeling behaviour, something other than losing Heidi.

  But if that’s true, then surely I would have found out what it is by now?

  Perhaps I don’t want to face the truth, which is simply that it is all part of your innate arrogance. You were arrogant when we first met, thinking you could control me, hypnotize me, and you have been arrogant all these years in failing to admit your mistake and accept help from your loved ones.

  Even though I am miserable, I won’t be the one to leave first, nor even move out of our bed, as awkward as lying next to you makes me feel. I won’t let you bulldoze me or make me out to be the loser in all of this. That’s what allowing you to stay in this house – the house I kept afloat – while I’m forced to go elsewhere would feel like. Another win for you.

  You must be the one to leave, but there’s nothing to stop me pushing that along a little faster.

  Chapter Eight

  Miranda

  Before

  I watch you at the bar, Christine, getting a round of drinks. Greg at your side, fawning over your every move, hanging on your every word. I hate you for that, for taking him – the love of my life – away from me, even though I know deep inside that’s a bit unfair because he’d already finished with me before you two started dating. When he broke things off, on our anniversary of all days, it was like a shard of glass had been thrust through my heart. Everything hurt and the pain was so intense that for a while I thought about killing myself so I would feel no more. Which is so unlike me.

  I’ve never been the dramatic sort. My childhood ensured that. My mother, God rest her soul, died of cancer when I was two, and my father, who loved her more than life itself, became a stony-hearted bastard who, from that day forward, never hugged or kissed his only child, claiming that such displays of affection made people weak and unprepared for the shit life would unquestionably throw their way; the death of a family member being the prime example. If you don’t feel anything for anybody, if you don’t open your heart to them, you can’t miss them, he’d say. You’ll be stronger as an adult, and you’ll thank me for it.

  Well, turns out the old bastard – who I wasn’t even allowed to call ‘dad’ because it was too touchy-feely – was right. I did open my heart to someone, and I ended up paying the price for it, because when Greg ended things, it felt like someone had died. Before Greg, I’d never had a steady relationship. I’d had casual flings, the odd one-night stand, but never anything meaningful because Father’s warning was so indoctrinated in me. And I guess that’s why I never wanted marriage, a family. I saw what it did to Father, and I couldn’t face that happening to me.

  But then I met Greg when I joined Deckers, and everything changed. He was so kind, so warm, so easy to talk to, and we just clicked. I guess he was everything my father wasn’t, and I suddenly realized what I’d missed out on for all those years. Couldn’t resist baring my soul to him. And for a while things were good. Amazing, in fact. At least, they were for me. Already in our late twenties, I actually imagined being married to him, having his kids and showering our children with the singularly unique love only a mother can give. Greg had booked a swish Japanese restaurant in Mayfair for our anniversary. Somewhere I’d been dying to try. And I, with my head in the clouds, stupidly thought he was going to propose. But I knew something was wrong right from the moment we sat down. He seemed tense, his conversation stilted, his smiles forced, barely making eye contact with me. At first, I thought maybe he was nervous about proposing, but then, when things didn’t improve and I started to feel more and more peed off with his attitude – for effectively ruining our special night – I asked him point blank what the hell was his problem. Why he was spoiling our anniversary.

  And then he told me. Said he hadn’t been happy for some time, that although he cared for me deeply, I wasn’t the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and he didn’t think it fair to string me along. I could have killed him on the spot. I almost vomited up my £60-a-head meal, and it felt like the floor beneath me was folding in on itself, threatening to suck me into the underworld, even though I already felt like I was in hell. I asked him if there was someone else and he insisted there wasn’t. Which was true, even though at the time I refused to believe him. I know he didn’t want to hurt me, I could tell from his anguished expression. He’s always been one of the good guys, would never intentionally make me suffer. And I’m not just saying that because I’m clutching at straws, forever making excuses for him. I just think that maybe the occasion got to him, and he wasn’t thinking straight. But I did hate him for some time after that. Hated him, and yet couldn’t stop thinking about him. He became a kind of obsession, I guess. Just because I loved him so much, and I couldn’t bear the thought of not being with him.

  We hardly talked for six months, even after we moved firms. But then, after we’d been at Sheridans a couple of months and I saw that he’d been telling the truth – he hadn’t ditched me for someone else – I realized I missed him too much to cut him out of my life. And I know he missed me too, because he would text me every so often and tell me. So, one day I succumbed, picked up the phone and said I wanted to bury the hatchet, be friends again. He was so happy, and that touched my heart. It made me feel good that he still wanted me in his life, even gave me hope that one day he’d see the error of his ways and realize what he was missing; that I was the one after all.

  But then you came along and messed up the plan. Messed up my chances of happiness with Greg. I don’t really know you, but I can’t help hating you because as much as I don’t want to admit it, he never looked at me the way he looks at you. I see the longing in his eyes, the unabashed adoration, like he’d rip off your clothes and ravish you on the spot if you commanded it. You are smart, funny, and beautiful. What heterosexual man wouldn’t want you? You are something I am not and can never be. But if I want to stay in Greg’s life, I must become a part of yours. And so that’s what I’m going to do.

  Starting now.

  Chapter Nine

  Christine

  Now

  I stop talking and wait for Dr Cousins to speak. This is my second session with her, a few days on from my first. Although I wasn’t brave enough then to tell her the secret that haunts me, I feel increasingly drawn to her, and I’m starting to believe that, with time, she’s the one I will finally bare my soul to. Perhaps it’s your recent twenty-fifth that’s precipitated this. Or maybe it’s purely the fact that she seems to get me in ways others haven’t.

  ‘Christine, do you want to sit up now, maybe come and sit down opposite me?’

  I open my eyes, and they momentarily adjust to the natural light, having been encased in darkness these past twenty minutes or so. I haven’t yet returned to the subject of that day. I just went into a bit more detail about my childhood, particularly my brother, David, who I was close to once, whereas now we hardly speak. I pushed everyone I loved (and who loved me) away after I lost you. Including my own parents. I could barely look my mother in the eye, knowing I’d lost her granddaughter. Knowing the reason why. And gradually we grew distant; more so once Ella and Daniel became teenagers. We speak, perhaps once every six weeks. Occasionally, I have this hankering to confess everything to Mum. Like I’m her little girl again, and she’ll be able to make things
better. But I know she can’t. And I couldn’t bear to see the disgust on her face.

  I’m not quite ready to sit up. I feel safer, more relaxed, lying down, and I tell Dr Cousins this. She says that’s fine, then continues, ‘But deep down, you must know that you do deserve to be happy, Christine. In your heart, you know that you cannot continue to punish yourself for something that happened a long time ago.’

  I appreciate her efforts, but if only it were that simple. She doesn’t know the whole truth.

  ‘I know that time’s supposed to make things easier,’ I say, ‘everyone told me that it would. But it hasn’t, not for me at least. And I know I’m not the only person to have suffered the loss of a child, and that others manage to get on with their lives. But the fact is, I haven’t. I mean, yes, I got up every day, and I went on to have two more children, brought them up as best I could. But it was all very mechanical, routine-like. I hate myself for it, but it was the only way I felt able to cope.’ I pause, then say, ‘Have you ever seen that programme on TV, Channel 4, I think it is? The one about the synths.’

  ‘Humans, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. Well, I suppose I acted like one of them. Not the special synths who have feelings, but the regular, emotionless ones. I raised my children, but without enthusiasm, without love; almost as if I was on autopilot.’

  ‘So you admit now how selfish that was of you? How unkind it was to treat your own flesh and blood so coldly?’

  Dr Cousins’ sudden change of tone shocks me. There’s a sharpness to her voice I hadn’t expected, and it’s completely at odds with her normal approach. She’s not supposed to judge me, is she? None of my previous shrinks have done so. But then again, they haven’t really helped. Maybe a kick in the teeth is what I need. Maybe there is no justification for the way I behaved, and I need to face up to that. I play back her words and feel a sharp pang of guilt. It’s not as if I didn’t know deep down that my behaviour was unkind, but this is the first time a stranger has told me so to my face. After a brief pause, I reply, ‘Yes, I do. But it wasn’t intentional.’