Stop at Nothing

by Tammy Cohen

  I could make this all stop now. The thought was intoxicating. An end to the low-level fear that buzzes in my ears like tinnitus. An end to dreaming about what happened and waking up with my heart bruised from slamming itself against my ribs. An end to you and the hold you have over my life.

  I was so tired of it all.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, looking at the pills. I was in the bathroom, sitting on the side of the bath. I’d just had a shower so the air was steamy and there was mist on the mirror of the bathroom cabinet. I imagined running the tap in the basin and swallowing down the pills two or three at a time, then lying down on my bed, still wrapped in my towel, knowing that it was over. For a moment, I imagined the peace of not having to think about it any more.

  Then I thought about Henry. In my mind I traced his face with my fingers. I imagined his warm breath on my neck.

  I threw the pills into the bin, and then I fished them out and flushed them down the toilet, a handful at a time. Just in case.

  Afterwards, I felt awful, thinking about Mum and what it would have done to her.

  But I still can’t get it out of my mind, that split second of blissful peace when I imagined being rid of you.

  10

  This is how I found out my husband had met someone else.

  It was nearly two years ago, and I hadn’t long been made redundant. I had also just turned fifty. You could say my confidence was at an all-time low.

  Phil was at work. He is a sound editor so he often worked late. Deadlines on post-production are a killer. He’d already told me he wouldn’t be back that evening. When there was a rush job on he sometimes used to sleep on the sofa in his Shoreditch studio. Or so he said.

  Anyway, this day, I was home for once in our lovely old house, sitting at my actual desk in my upstairs study, working on putting a few pitches together for a magazine I’d once edited. I was still in shock about losing my job but determined to see it as a temporary setback, telling myself something else would come along shortly. We could get by financially on my redundancy and Phil’s income, at least for a year, but I wanted to keep working, to keep relevant. Now I look back and wonder if it was genuine naivety or just denial. The girls were at school. Dotty was sitting by my feet, gazing up at me adoringly. My being at home all day was still a novelty and she would stare at me for hours, as if she couldn’t believe I was actually real.

  A text alert sounded on my phone. The noise of a bird whistling.

  I glanced over and saw it was from Phil. I considered leaving it for a few minutes, until I’d finished what I was working on, but it would have whistled again a few seconds later, so I clicked.

  You know how sometimes your life divides into ‘before’ and ‘after’? And later, when you’re looking at a photograph or an old film comes on the television you’ll feel a twitch of pain remembering the last time you saw it and how it felt to be in that ‘before’, to not know the things you now know?

  That text was the door between everything I’d known and the new alien reality I’ve inhabited ever since.

  I can’t wait to be inside you.

  That’s all it said. But that was enough.

  At that point, Phil and I hadn’t had sex in around four months. I wasn’t too concerned. It was a fallow period. We’d had them before.

  So I knew instantly that text wasn’t meant for me.

  I sat in a daze, feeling sick. My husband was cheating on me. Shock stripped my nerve endings raw. The GP I saw before the twelve-year-old once read through my notes with a serious expression and then asked me if I’d ever heard of post-traumatic stress disorder. I made a joke about how being in your fifties wasn’t exactly the same as being down the trenches, but she’d been quite serious. ‘You’ve been bludgeoned over the head by major life events,’ she’d told me. ‘You lost your job, your home, your husband left you and you reached a milestone birthday all within a year of each other. Add in ailing parents and the menopause and that’s quite a potent cocktail of psychological blows.’

  Looking back now, I wonder if she was on to something. And if she was, I wonder if this is where it started, if this moment staring at my phone screen in the study of my beautiful Muswell Hill house might actually turn out to be the still point of my turning world, the axis around which my life shifted into something I could no longer recognize.

  But at the time, I wasn’t thinking in those terms. At the time, I thought this would be a dip in the road – a pretty major dip, to be sure – but beyond it the road itself would carry on just as it always had. In fact, you know something mad? After half an hour or so of noisy devastation where I yelled out every filthy word I could think of, I started almost relishing the situation I’d found myself in. Oh, I was still upset, don’t get me wrong. But I knew what I’d found out would change things. And even I could recognize that our lives were crying out for change. Phil and I had been married for twenty-two years. We’d got into a rut. Here was something that would force us out of our stagnant status quo.

  I was furious, hurt, all those other things. But I also wasn’t a complete hypocrite. I’d been tempted myself in the past. Flirtations I’d allowed to go further than they should. Sure, I’d pulled myself back, but I understood how it could happen.

  While I was still working out how to react to the text I heard the sound of a key in the lock.

  ‘You’re back early,’ I said, ironing my expression smooth.

  ‘I thought I’d come back for a couple of hours. Pick up a few things. Head back in later.’

  And all the time his eyes were anxiously scanning my face, looking for clues. I could read him so well I saw the thought pass through his head as surely as if it were ticker-taped across his forehead: She hasn’t seen it yet.

  Much later, he admitted he’d come home ready to pretend he’d meant to send that text to me, ready to mount a seduction scene to back it up. But then I hadn’t reacted and he’d thought himself safe. ‘You must have been so relieved,’ I’d told him bitterly. ‘Not to have to go through with it.’ He hadn’t said anything, just looked sad and guilty, which remained pretty much his default expression throughout our separation.

  I’d gone downstairs to the kitchen to make coffee, still not mentioning the text but deliberately leaving my phone out on the coffee table in the living room where Phil was sitting. Then I’d brought him a drink and we’d chatted about this and that before he went upstairs to grab some things.

  Looking back, I can’t believe I was so calm. It was as if my brain had entered a state of suspended animation while my body carried on going about its normal business, like a chicken with its head cut off.

  When I checked my phone the text had been deleted.

  After Phil left for the studio again I went through everything. His social media accounts, email addresses. Old phones. He hadn’t made much effort to hide his tracks. But then, why would he? We weren’t the sort of couple who checked up on each other. Who would, after all this time?

  It had been going on over a year, it turned out. I’d assumed she’d be some young, cool producer he’d come across through work, but no, Joy was a wealthy Muswell Hill divorcee he’d met at the gym. A year older than me.

  And he really did love being inside her, as his many texts and emails on the subject attested.

  I’m not going to pretend those messages didn’t hurt, the ones where he rhapsodized about how sex with her had opened his eyes to how sex could be. Ditto the ones that talked about how me and him were just ‘going through the motions’ or how he was developing feelings for her. Or how he felt like he’d been sleepwalking through the last twenty years and now she’d woken him up. Is there some cheaters’ handbook where they get these lines from? I wonder.

  But still I thought I could win this one. He’d have to do a lot of grovelling. We’d have to make plenty of changes. It would take a long time. Counselling. The works. But we could recover.

  It never occurred to me that he might not want to recover.

&nbs
p; Recently I read that by the time one partner first brings up the prospect of separation, they’ve already been thinking about it for an average of six months. But at the time Phil sent that text I assumed the prospect of splitting up was as shocking to him as it was to me and that, after he’d had a chance to let it sink in, he’d come to his senses.

  I had no inkling that, after he arrived home the following day and I confronted him, puffy-eyed through lack of sleep and high on the self-righteousness of being the wounded party, that after he’d apologized again and again and cried a little and said how awful he felt, that after all that, he would turn to me and say, ‘But you must admit we’ve run our course, Tess.’ As if I might simply agree and shake his hand and we’d wish each other luck and say it was all for the best and go our separate ways.

  People talk about being blindsided. Well, I was blindsided and blind-fronted and blind-behinded.

  Within forty-eight hours, he’d gone.

  ‘My husband left me,’ I’d tell anyone who’d listen – random strangers in the GP waiting room, Twitter acquaintances I’d never even met. Because spoken out loud or written baldly down, it sounded so preposterous. I was waiting for them to tell me not to be so absurd.

  I was thinking about all this as I waited for Phil to bring Em home the evening after I’d posted the review on Yell. Normally, he dropped her outside the house but I’d texted to ask him to come in. After two years and everything that had happened, we’d just about managed to coat a thin veneer of civility over our interactions.

  As long as we stuck within set parameters.

  Set by him, obviously. Despite everything he’d done, my own more recent behaviour superseded his, meaning I’d forfeited the right to dictate terms.

  Dotty was beside herself when Phil came in, bringing him offerings of shoes and making that semi-orgasmic noise she made when everything she wanted most in the world had unexpectedly fallen into her lap. Phil dropped to his knees in the narrow hallway and she jumped excitedly around him, licking his face.

  He misses the dog more than he misses me.

  The realization was sobering.

  In the kitchen, Em dithered by the kettle, darting looks at us both from under her hair. She wasn’t used to seeing us together. Wasn’t sure what it meant.

  ‘Dad and I have a few things to discuss,’ I told her, smiling. ‘Nothing sinister.’

  It broke my heart to see how my sixteen-year-old daughter had become so protective of her parents.

  After Em had disappeared upstairs with her tea I launched straight into it, so there could be no question in his mind of why I’d asked him in. How, at the police station, Emma had been drawn towards Number Eight but had lacked the strength of her own conviction. The absolute certainty I’d had when he came on the screen that it was him, that instinctual recognition. Then how Em had spotted him first and not long afterwards I’d seen him coming out of the doorway while I was in the café across the road.

  ‘Look,’ I said, calling up the camera roll on my phone. ‘This is him. This is the man who attacked our daughter.’

  I thrust the picture at him. And then had to wait while he felt around in his jacket pocket for his glasses.

  I don’t know what I was hoping for. The same kind of visceral reaction I’d had, I suppose. But I’d forgotten about Phil’s analytical nature, how he never gave a gut response but took time to digest the facts, processing them through his brain until they arrived packaged and labelled and itemized with an introduction and a conclusion. And footnotes. I’d forgotten how crazy it used to drive me.

  Finally, he put the phone down and removed his glasses. Rubbed the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb in a familiar gesture that made my heart ache a little.

  ‘I don’t understand where you’re going with this, Tess.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, this could be anyone. Those men on that identification video. They’re from all over the country. What are the chances, really, that one of them is living practically round the corner?’

  I gaped at him. Incredulous.

  ‘I can’t believe I have to explain this to you. I know eight of the men were from all over the place, but the actual criminal isn’t. The actual criminal probably does live right round the corner, seeing as that’s where the attack happened.’

  ‘But Emma didn’t recognize this man when she saw him on the video – if he is the same man from the video. And neither did the woman who came to her rescue.’

  ‘No, but Frances said afterwards she’d been torn between two of the choices. You should have seen her face when I showed her the photo, Phil. She went completely white. She definitely recognized him. He was wearing the same jacket, for God’s sake. Look, with that funny little logo.’

  Phil shook his head. It was galling to me that, though his hair was more silver now than brown, it was still as thick as ever. He wore it long in the front, so he was constantly pushing it out of his eyes. ‘Joy’s welcome to you,’ I’d flung at him once. ‘She’ll end up with the dregs of you, bald and incontinent.’

  I wasn’t proud of myself. Some of the things I’d said.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t shown this photo to Em,’ he said now. ‘Or, God forbid, told her which door you saw him come out of.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Promise me that you’re not going to burden her with this. The chances of this being the right man are so minuscule. But even if it was, what good would it possibly do for her to have her worst fears confirmed – that he’s living right here, in her neighbourhood? Neither Em nor Frances picked him out of the identification tape. The case is effectively closed. What Em needs now is to get on with her life.’

  ‘She’s not getting on with her life, though. Have you seen her hair – those little bald patches? She’s stressed and she’s blaming herself.’ I stopped short of telling him about the letter I’d seen from the Victim Support agency, that I hate myself gouged into the page. I didn’t want him to think I’d been snooping.

  ‘I know about the hair. Joy’s been talking to a brilliant hair specialist she knows and he’s sure it’s just a temporary reaction. But you know, all this makes it even more pressing that she rebuild her confidence, without being scared that every time she goes out of the door she might bump into the man who attacked her.’

  ‘But she’s already seen him.’

  ‘Yes, but that was only once. He could have been passing through. She doesn’t need to know where he lives.’

  ‘Surely we need to warn her, though?’ I persisted, with less certainty. One of the worst things about menopause for me was that I lost the thread of a thought so easily, leaving it snagged and trailing, while I scrabbled to remember what my argument had been. ‘So that she can avoid going near where he lives?’

  ‘It’s right opposite the Tube, Tess. That’s what you told me. Are you going to stop her getting public transport during the day now?’

  We’d already made a rule that Em now had to get an Uber home if she went out in the evening. Though one heard such awful stories about that too. Frustration made me lose my temper.

  ‘So you’re suggesting we just ignore it? For God’s sake, Phil, you’re her father. Why aren’t you round there right this minute, pounding on his door? Our daughter could have been—’

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me what could have happened. I think about it every bloody day. But I’m not about to turn up at a complete stranger’s house, accusing him of harming my daughter, purely on some whim of yours.’

  We glared at each other. I thought for a moment of telling him what else I’d discovered. That this complete stranger had a name. A profession, even. See, was what I wanted to say, the lengths I’ll go to for our daughter? See how much I love her? But then Phil threw me by reaching out across the table and covering my hand with his own.

  My skin felt weird where he touched it, as if his fingers weren’t made of living tissue and blood and bone but some inanimate material encasi
ng my hand.

  ‘Tessa. I know you feel powerless. We both do. But getting yourself into a state is not going to help anyone.’

  Just like that, I felt tears burning the backs of my eyes. It might have been the sympathy in his voice, or the mere fact of the two of us sitting there like that, as we used to do, as if the last two years had never happened.

  ‘I don’t want to let her down.’

  ‘I know that. But the way to help her is to be here and listen to her and support her. This isn’t about you galloping in to save the day. In actual fact, it isn’t about you at all.’

  The words were harsh but the tone was gentle.

  ‘You look tired. Are you still having trouble sleeping?’

  I nodded. And bit back the words, Thanks to you. Bitterness had become so much a default setting in my dealings with my ex-husband that it was almost always my automatic response, even though, these days, it didn’t reflect how I felt most of the time.

  Phil got up to go, sending Dotty into a panic.

  ‘How’s Rosie?’ I’d promised myself I wouldn’t ask, but the words came out before I had a chance to check them.

  ‘She’s fine. In fact, she’s home at the moment for reading week.’

  Home.

  ‘Perhaps if I just came—’

  But Phil was already shaking his head.

  ‘We’ve been through this so many times. I’m sorry, I know this is hard on you, but you have to let Rosie come to you.’

  ‘Do you remember when they were small and still thought we were the centre of the world, and how it felt like we were the only people who really knew how to look after them and keep them safe?’ I asked. ‘And now, sometimes it seems we’re the ones they need keeping safe from.’

  Phil didn’t like that. I could tell he wanted to correct me and tell me not to lump him in with me. But I was right. We’d both hurt them in different ways, these girls we’d rather die than see hurt.

  ‘Can you at least tell her I love her? Please.’

  My voice sounded strange. There was a lump in my throat, as if my heart had come loose and got lodged there.