Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  Will didn't want to lie to his wife by saying no, and he didn't want to hurt her by saying yes. Being an expert at ignoring things he didn't want to deal with, Will hadn't yet accepted that he'd committed the ultimate betrayal by opening his heart to someone else. That he'd allowed another woman to slip into the places where his wife used to live. He had done something he could only have done if he was in love. He hadn't admitted that to himself, he wasn't going to wound his wife by making her the first person he acknowledged this to. So he said nothing. He looked away and said nothing.

  She said, “Can't you get anything right? If you wanted revenge, you're meant to fuck someone else, not fall for them.” And then she asked, “How long?”

  And he said, “Too long. Even one day is too long. I'm sorry.”

  “Did you do it to get back at me?” she asked.

  “I don't think so,” he replied. “I didn't go out looking for someone or something else. After I found out what had happened I couldn't talk to you without wanting to shout at you. I didn't want to shout at you, so it got simpler to keep it all in. And this thing happened because I wasn't paying attention. I wasn't concentrating on making things work with us.”

  “Do you want to make this work?” she asked.

  “More than anything,” he replied. He tried to take her hand but she shrank away, didn't want him to touch her. He was upset as he told me this. What did you expect? I wanted to ask him. Did you think she'd throw her arms around you and say it was fine? You've done the worst thing imaginable after hurting one of your children. Did you really think she'd let you touch her?

  “You can't see her again,” she told him.

  “I don't see her. I don't speak to her. We only occasionally e-mail each other.”

  Will thought saying that was OK. That he'd put his wife's mind to rest about it all. What he'd done was the opposite. What he'd actually said was, “Even though I have no contact with her, she's always on my mind. She's always there with me, she climbs into bed with us at night. She's there when we make love. She's with me in my fantasies.” What he should have said was, “It's completely over. I ended it because she wasn't you. I never slept with her and it's over. I don't know why she's e-mailing me.” As a woman, his wife would have noticed the absence of this, she would have noticed that he didn't say it was over. She would have noticed and she would have stored it up in her mind, in her heart. It would have been one of the things that motivated her to do what she did.

  “We go for counseling,” she said. “Emergency counseling. I know you didn't want to before, but now we have to. If you want this to work then you have to be willing to do anything to make that happen.”

  “Anything,” he said.

  A week later Will turned up for their first counseling session. They'd slept in the same bed, carried on going through the motions of normal life, had found a counselor and made that emergency appointment. He sat there for twenty minutes be-fore he realized that she wasn't coming. He paid the counselor, he rang his wife and got no answer. Not at the house, not at her work, not on her mobile. He was scared, as he rushed home, that she'd been hurt.

  He was right to be scared. She had been hurt. And now she was going to hurt him back.

  She had decided to use the time she knew he'd be at the counselor's office to put all his belongings outside. To change the locks. To leave outside the solicitor's letter informing him of her intention to file for divorce exactly one year from the date of the letter, when she was legally able to.

  Will's wife couldn't forgive him. He hadn't slept with someone else—she had done that, and she probably would have been able to forgive a physical act. But what he did violated the sanctity of their marriage; it was like a knife driven deep into the heart of what they'd built together. What Will didn't realize was that you didn't admit—even by omission—that you'd fallen in love with someone else and stay married. Love isn't like that.

  “So, that's Australia. You wanted to know and now you can tell me off. Just like the few friends I had before all of this have done. I'm stupid. I'm selfish. Go ahead, let me have it.” I was being flippant because I was steeling myself for the lecture. For being told I was stupid to get involved, that he was a bastard, that I was wasting the best years of my life hanging around waiting for a man who had used me. I'd heard it—and a million other versions of it—all before. Every time it damaged a friendship and cut me deep inside because no one knew. No one understood what he meant to me, why he was so special. I could never tell them, either.

  Gabrielle's eyes checked her rearview mirror, checked her wing mirror and then her long, slender fingers hit the right-hand signal just before she violated several laws to pull across two lanes of traffic, causing a chorus of horns to flare up behind us. She took the exit for the service station we'd just been about to pass.

  Oh Jeez, she's really going to let me have it, I thought as I eyed up the soft line of her jaw, which was hard and angular now that it was set with her eyes fixed ahead. She'd been married. She never told me why she and Ted had split and then divorced. Probably because of someone like me. Another woman who had entered their relationship. Maybe she was going to tell me to get out and walk to Sussex or walk home. Either way, I wasn't welcome in her car anymore. Oh Jeez. Oh Jeez. I can t afford to lose my job, I thought as she prowled the car park looking for a parking spot. I'll be hard put to find one with such a senior title, so near to where I live and on the money I'm getting. This is karma: a ruined life for a ruined life.

  Silently and carefully, Gabrielle pulled into a parking space, cut the engine. The sound of her unlocking her seat belt filled the car for a moment, then was replaced by the elastic spring of the belt being snatched backwards. I closed my eyes and counted to ten as I heard her shift in her seat. I braced myself for the sharp sting of a slap on the cheek.

  “I'm really hurt that you think I'd ever judge you,” Gabrielle said quietly.

  Startled by her words and the genuine wounding in her voice, I opened my eyes, stared straight out of the windscreen. This I had not been expecting.

  “Kennie, we're friends, which means I know you. I know how many morals you have, how if there's a cause, hopeless or otherwise, you're going to back it. So I know how much you must have already beat yourself up about this. He must have been so special to make you go against everything you believe in.

  “In all the time I've known you I don't recall a single time when you've spoken about a man like you did him. Why would I discount that? Because he's married? What you feel is more important than that.

  “And no, I'm not saying it was an ideal situation or that it's a great idea. Or that there aren't some people who go out especially to date married people—you're not one of them. He doesn't sound like a serial cheater from what you said, but even if he was, what good would me telling you off do? It'd just push you closer towards him, make you hide things. And if you can't talk to people, then you start to do crazy things.

  “Sweetheart, I've been married, I know how complicated things are, especially when you're going through a hard time. Should he have talked things through with his wife? Yes. Would staying away from him have made it easier for them to talk through things and maybe get things back on track? Yes. But it didn't work out that way. And from how you've been acting since you got back, I'm pretty sure you're in the depths of hell right now. You don't need me to make you feel bad—I'm sure you can do that all by yourself.”

  I closed my eyes again and braced myself. A tidal wave of everything that I hadn't been able to let out in nearly two years was welling up inside. I couldn't stop myself. I tried, I truly tried, but I couldn't stop it. It all came pouring out in an undignified, uncontrollable torrent. It all came out and suddenly I was sobbing my heart out.

  Never underestimate the ability of understanding to make you feel truly awful.

  TOAST, BUTTER & GINGER

  MARMALADE

  CHAPTER 17

  There are many shades of darkness.

  Kyle
was thinking this as he lay, fully clothed, on his bed in between his daughter and his son. His arms were crossed over his chest, the palms of his hands resting on his shoulders. He used to lie like that when he was boy. He hadn't been a fan of the night. Bad things happened at night, he used to think when he was a boy. In the blackness of his bedroom, he could make out the shapes of the closet door to his right, the doorway to the en suite bathroom ahead of him, the bedside tables on each side of the bed, the folds—thick and thin—in the floor-length curtains at the windows, the smooth lines of the dressing table. His children curled up like warm, living bookends on each side of him.

  He wasn't remotely tired, it was only 9 p.m., but he had to stay in bed. They'd refused to sleep without him because Kendra was gone. Only for the night, but they'd been wild-eyed and paranoid that she wasn't coming back. As she was leaving with the Lolly Lady, Summer stood on the doorstep, repeatedly making Kendra promise she was coming back. Jaxon had just sat at the far end of the corridor playing with his steam train pretending that it wasn't happening. When Kendra had tried to talk to him, he'd pretended not to hear. She'd managed to get him to talk to her by talking to Garvo. Then she'd gone outside again to another round of “promise you'll come backs” from Summer. The whole thing had added another fifteen minutes to their departure.

  When Summer was in bed earlier she'd asked to call Kendra. He'd reminded her that she was camping, was sleeping under the stars tonight and would be back at some point tomorrow. Summer had looked at him as though he was an idiot. As though she hadn't OK'd that plan and wasn't impressed that Kyle had allowed it to happen.

  The only way to appease them both was to suggest they camped out in his bedroom so they could tell Kendra that they'd been camping, too. They'd made a canopy with the sheets and read their stories by flashlight. It'd been a pretty lame attempt since he'd had no time to plan it, but it'd worked and they'd both eventually fallen asleep with Kyle in the middle. The last two times he'd tried to leave the bed he'd looked down to find one or other of them staring at him, silently asking where he thought he was going. They had a tag team system guarding him. He understood what they felt. He felt it himself: a trickle of worry that Kendra would disappear from their lives. It was irrational, but real.

  Especially since he hadn't been very pleasant to her in the days after she'd asked about Ashlyn. It wasn't her fault. After saying it to Kendra, Kyle had realized how powerful words could be. How they could set you free, how they could chain you, how they could propel you back to the midst of the place called hell. It was hard to look Kendra in the eye after he admitted his secret. Virtually impossible to talk to her.

  He hadn't seen her reaction to the handful of words that explained everything. He'd mumbled them while staring into the middistance. She hadn't gasped dramatically, nor reached out to him in comfort. She'd been silent for a moment then said, “If you want to talk about it, I'm listening. If not, no worries.”

  Had he been imagining it or had there been a slight Australian inflection in her voice when she'd uttered “no worries”? His mouth had moved upwards with the ghost of a smile.

  He'd jumped to his feet and said he was going to play with the kids. “OK,” she'd said. He hadn't looked at her for the rest of the day.

  Now, a week later, he was lying in the dark, held hostage by his children's fear of abandonment, wondering if she would come back. Kendra. Or Ashlyn. Either one. Both. Except, did he want Ashlyn back? Really?

  Almost violently he moved his mind away from that train of thought, back to the report he had to write and the presentation he needed to rework. It wasn't the most interesting thing on earth, most of his work wasn't now, but this job paid the bills—just—and allowed him to work from home.

  She was lying on the sofa when he got in.

  Her slender form stretched out, her eyes half closed, staring in the direction of the television but probably taking in very little. He reached down to kiss her and paused as usual as the whiff of alcohol hit him.

  She must have just had a couple of glasses with dinner he told himself, carefully ignoring the fact that, as usual, her dinner plate sat on the floor beside the sofa, still heaped with uneaten, untouched food.

  Kyle dropped a kiss on her forehead and she smiled a languid, dreamy grin.

  “Hello lover,” she said. Her voice was drowsy with sleep, he reassured himself. She'd dozed off because she'd been waiting up for him, he who was working late in the office as usual. “I thought you were never coming home.”

  “Where else would I go?” he said. He used to say, “I have nowhere else I'd rather be” but not anymore. Now it was, “Where else would I go?”

  In the kitchen, he hated himself for doing it, but he went to the large chrome bin, checked how many bottles were in there. Two. Two bottles of cheap red wine. One on the table, two in the bin. He stared at the bottles, his foot pressed on the black pedal, the chrome lid of the bin gaping open to show him what his wife had been doing while his back was turned. She'd found a new lover and it was lying amongst the other trash, its white label and its body's sleek, smooth lines mocking him. It'll pass, he told himself. It'll be fine. He was ignoring the empty liter bottle of tonic water also lying in the bin. And he was ignoring the semicircle of lipstick on her glass on the table. He was pretending he didn't know that she never left the house without her lipstick, which meant she'd taken the children half a mile down the road to buy the wine and gin to drink with the tonic water, or she'd left the children alone. Which she'd never do. Never.

  In bed her lover's distinctive scent oozed out of her and stroked him in persistent, acrid waves. They were on opposite sides of the bed. He wasn't sure when it'd started to happen but they'd stopped sleeping spooned up, getting comfort from the warmth of each other's bodies. Now they were like strangers, friendly strangers, people who knew each other well enough to share a bed, but not to lie very close to each other. Not to touch.

  He lay in the dark, thinking around the problem. Not wondering when she'd started drinking this much again. He allowed himself to think how he had always been concerned about Ashlyn's drinking because she'd always been able to put away a lot more than most women, than most men—him included. But he stopped short at wondering why she'd started again.

  Instead of doing that, he decided to focus on the big presentation in the morning. He'd come home at a vaguely decent hour tonight because the presentation, the big unveiling, the one he'd buried himself in for the past six months, was tomorrow. So tonight, he—and everyone else he worked with—was home fairly early so they could all sleep, shave, make themselves presentable for the client.

  Kyle closed his eyes. Everything he'd been working towards would come to a head tomorrow. What he'd given his life to, what he'd sacrificed his family time for would all be worth it. And when it was over, when the client had looked over the models, the plans, the blueprints, the graphic presentation, when they'd heard the spiel, he'd be able to relax. Take time off. Talk to Ashlyn.

  Talk. To. Ashlyn.

  Properly.

  Do something about her problem. Their problem. Because he was in it as well. It was their problem. For better or worse, he'd promised her. And while things hadn't exactly been “for worse” they'd definitely been residing in the “not good” area for a long time. But that would change. Now he had time, that would change. It'll work itself out, he told himself. It'll be all right.

  That denial, ignoring the full extent of what was going on, was what needled him the most.

  It ate away at him like bacteria ate at rotting meat; the guilt twisted deep inside him, curling tighter and tighter around his heart like a python squeezed the life out of its prey. He could have done something. If he'd spoken up earlier, confronted his wife, maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't have done what she did to Summer.

  “Don't cry, Dad, it's all right.” Kyle jumped at Summer's voice. Her eyes were as large and wise as an owl's in the dark. He hadn't realized she was awake and watching him, nor that he wa
s crying. She patted his arm. “All better now.”

  “I'm OK,” he whispered. He unlaced his arms, rubbed quickly at his eyes. “There's just something in my eye.”

  “All better, Dad,” she mumbled, her eyes falling shut and blinking open. “We'll look after you.” Then she was out like a light, probably wouldn't remember this conversation in the morning. He rubbed at his eyes again to make sure they were dry, then crossed his arms over his chest. Protecting his heart from the monsters that lived in the different shades of the night. That was what used to scare him when he was younger. That something would carve open his chest and scoop out his heart. Not that it would kill him, but he'd be left with a huge gaping hole right in the middle of his chest.

  CHAPTER 18

  Gabrielle and I were the last to arrive at the campsite, owing to our impromptu rest stop.

  It was all too humiliating to think about. Crying in the car, her hand rubbing my back as I sobbed. A few people had walked past our car, saw my tears and Gabrielle's comfort and probably thought she was breaking up with me. I hadn't even told her all of it, why I'd had to leave, why I had severed all contact with Will before I left—hadn't answered his calls, blocked his e-mail address, stayed in a hotel for a few days to avoid him. And I hadn't told her why I hadn't opened his letter, nor why I was terrified of thinking about him. No, I hadn't even gotten to the truly awful bit and I'd still cried like that.

  We pulled into the car park of Wildberry Woods, the forest campsite. They had individually marked out pitches in certain parts of the woods, each with a stone fireplace and cleared earth for pitching tents. We had maps for nature trail walks. Our campsite was in the far left of the woods. The leaves were like a canopy over the forest and as we set out, I started to feel a bit of excitement. This was something out of the ordinary for me. I hadn't been out at all since I'd come back and Gabrielle was right: apart from work, adult conversation was something that was lacking in my life.