That Girl From Nowhere (35 page)

The only real light we have shining down on the car park comes from the flats in the building above, and a streetlight on the corner where the cycle path disappears from view around the building. Standing here, in the near dark, the sound of the sea suddenly seems to have been magnified. Its volume is deafeningly loud all of a sudden, or maybe it is all the blood in my body rushing so forcefully to my head I fear it is about to explode.

This really shouldn’t be happening. I’m not altogether sure how it is happening.

‘Time I went,’ Tyler states.

‘Tyler …’ I begin. Then nothing more comes out because I’ve run out of words. What do you say when the man who asked you if you were single before he arranged a magnificent date and was showering you in glorious kisses, discovers you’re married?

‘Yes?’ he asks.

‘I …’ What do you say? Nothing. Except: ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I,’ he replies.

Everyone was in their beds with their doors shut, only the corridor light was on so it was easy to unlock the front door and shunt Seth through to my bedroom without being seen. He walks across the room towards the windows, leans against the sill and folds his arms over his chest. I shut the door, lock it behind me. This shouldn’t be happening and I have no idea why it is happening. As it continues to happen, though, I take a couple of deep breaths before I turn to face him.

He’s grown a beard. In all the years I’ve known him, the only time he ever even flirted with facial hair was when Sienna asked him to grow a beard so he could be like Father Christmas. He got to three days before the itching was too much for him. In our separation he has managed to change that, though. It’s made up of short brown, neatish hairs, so I’m guessing he trims it but doesn’t groom it. His hair has grown as well – the grade-two shave replaced by a shortish back and sides from not bothering to have it cut. The skin under his eyes is a pewter colour, his normally healthy peach skin is pale, almost grey. He’s lost weight, probably from not eating properly. How he looks is how I feel most of the time.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask him when he doesn’t speak, simply stands with his arms folded. ‘In fact, how did you know where “here” was, considering I never told you?’

‘Your mother called me.’

‘
Which one?
’ is on the tip of my tongue before I remember he doesn’t know the half of what’s been going on. And seeing as only one of them knows about him … ‘Of course she did,’ I reply. I know the exact day she called him, too: the day she met Tyler and decided he wasn’t good enough so she’d better make do with the other not good enough one who she at least knew. ‘What did she say? No, wait, don’t tell me. No, actually, do … Actually, no, don’t. I don’t think I can bear to know what she said. Actually, d—’

‘She said at this time of her life she should be planning on what to knit for her grandchildren, not worrying about whether she should be signing up her daughter for online dating. And that she didn’t know how I could stand to look myself in the mirror every day when I’d wasted almost all of your child-bearing years. And that if she ever saw me again she wasn’t sure if she could restrain herself enough to not slap me into the middle of next year. Oh, and when you did meet someone else, not to show my weaselly little face anywhere near you as she might instigate said slapping. Or words to that effect.’

‘Had quite a lot to say for herself, didn’t she, my mother?’

My husband nods. ‘Yeah, quite a lot.’

‘Erm … hang on, how do you get from “slapping you into the middle of next year” to “here’s my daughter’s address, turn up whenever you fancy … oh, and, don’t worry, I won’t warn her in any way”?’

Seth pushes up the sleeves of his navy blue sweatshirt. On his left wrist he wears his divers’ watch and the leather, intricately plaited wristband I made for him at the height of the loom-band craze last year. On his right hand he has the silver cuff that I engraved with our initials in the same design he’d come up with for our engagement party. I keep staring at his arms, the pale skin covered in light hairs, so I do not have to stare at his face.

‘I told her that she was right; that I’d thought about it and was incredibly sorry for everything that had happened. That I’d tried to get in touch but you wouldn’t talk to me so could she tell me where you’d gone so I could come and beg your forgiveness and maybe get our relationship back on track.’

‘And she handed over my address, just like that?’

‘Yes. She told me she’d moved with you.’

‘Well, it’s a good thing I hadn’t fled from you in fear of my life, isn’t it? I swear, that woman doesn’t think sometimes.’

‘She was only trying to help.’

‘Yeah, that’s what she was doing,’ I say sarcastically. ‘If you and her are such good buddies, why weren’t you in here instead of waiting outside? Which, by the way, is a really creepy thing to do. If I’d been on my own I might have died with fright. Especially with your new facial hair.’

Seth raises one of his hands, runs it over the bearded lower half of his face. ‘I called your mobile and it was off, so I called your mother and she said you were out, probably working, and would be back later. I decided to sit on the bench and wait.’ Even though I’m not looking at his face, I know he is staring at me. I can feel the weight of his gaze on the top of my head. I raise my eyes to meet his.

If I’d been on my own
is currently playing on loop in his head. I knew the moment I said it that I shouldn’t have. Betrayal and a deep sense of wounding have settled on his face.

‘How long have you been seeing him?’ Seth asks.

‘What?’ I know what that note in his voice is implying.

‘How long? It’s a fair enough question.’

‘I didn’t cheat on you,’ I tell him. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that.’

‘Answer the question then: how long have you been seeing him?’

‘I met him a week or so after I moved here and this was the first time we’ve been out, not that it’s any business of yours.’

He opens his mouth to say something and I cut in with: ‘I can’t talk any more right now. My head is fried about this and so many other things. I am not able tonight.’

‘OK, fair enough, but can you answer me this: weren’t you going to sort out us before you moved on?’

I say nothing in response because I don’t want to talk about this right now, I am not able.

He takes my silence as a green light to ask another question. ‘Or have you already “moved on” and this guy is just another step further along the road?’

That is goading enough to get me to bite. ‘What are you saying?’ I ask. Even though it’s obvious,
blatant
, what he’s accusing me of.

‘You’re not exactly shy about sex with different people is what I’m saying. How many of them have there been in the past three months?’

I’m guessing Seth has been examining what should be the wall of photographs he’s helped me assemble and disassemble during the various moves of my life and he has been shocked and injured by the way I have edited him out. The only one that remains of him is the one of him with Dad. And yet, on the second row of the wall of my life in photographs that I’m rebuilding, there is Tyler. Melissa is there, too, but I wasn’t kissing her a few minutes ago.

What he is saying reminds me of the time I found a bee on the washing in our back garden. I didn’t think, just reached out to pick it off, and the bee objected to being moved on and stung me. Seth is like the bee – doesn’t like the idea of being picked off, moved on, and has decided to sting me.

‘How many were there before me again?’ he says. ‘Or did you lose count? Have you lost count now?’

His words continue to pump in poison, like the bee’s sting did in my hand. The poison kept pumping in until Dad stopped me trying to pick out the sting and brushed it off with a quick, sideways swipe. I remember staring at it, incredulous at how this little sliver of a thing had managed to cause such extreme pain in my hand. I stare at my husband, incredulous that after everything he has done, he is causing extreme pain in my heart. It never seemed to have bothered him that much that I’d once slept around, and I thought in the moments it might have bothered him, he accepted it as part of who I was. I never thought he’d use it against me, no matter what the provocation.

‘Fancy sleeping in your hire car, do you?’ I ask. My quick, sideways swipe to remove this sting and stop his poison.

He unfolds his arms and stands upright. ‘No, no I don’t.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure.’

‘Sure? Sure-sure?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he replies, finally ashamed and mollified. ‘That was bang out of order. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’

‘Why are you behaving like a dick?’ I ask.

His hazel-green eyes flare suddenly. ‘Because I
really
hated seeing you kiss someone else. And I really,
really
hate knowing you’d probably be in that bed fucking him right now if I hadn’t turned up tonight.’

‘But I can do what I like because we’re finished, Seth. I made it clear we were over. What part of “we have to split up” didn’t you get?’ I reply.

‘That isn’t—’

‘Isn’t what?’

‘That isn’t how you end a marriage, OK? You don’t just tell someone you’re splitting up and not tell them why. That’s the part of “we have to split up” I don’t get.’

I drop my face into my hands. If I had told him why, he would have carried on lying to me. He would have told me the truth eventually, but it would have been so eventually I wouldn’t ever have trusted another thing that came out of his mouth. ‘My head is fried,’ I plead. ‘I don’t want to talk any more – about anything. I just don’t.’

‘I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. A lot has happened.’

‘You have no idea,’ I say, my voice wrapped tightly in a sob.

‘We both need sleep. How are we going to do this?’

‘Top to tail,’ I say.

‘
Really?
’ he replies. ‘When was the last time you topped to toed it?

‘Apparently tonight.’

‘Right you are then.’

‘And keep the underwear on,’ I add.

‘I can’t do that. I can’t sleep with anything on.’

‘You’ll have to learn, starting tonight. I don’t want “it” on the loose in the night.’

‘What, you think it detaches itself from my body and roams around in the night?’

‘No, I just don’t want to encounter it if I roll over in the night and parts of our bodies touch each other. And then we have one of those awkward moments where it responds and I can’t get my leg far away enough and you start having to think of your grandmother or something to make it—’

‘Yes, all right, I get it. The black jacks stay on.’

We are silent as we undress, but the rustle of clothes being unbuttoned, pulled off, pulled down, fills the space in the room, everything amplified and loud. Each undone button, each piece of clothing folded and placed on my desk, is a noisy reminder that we used to rush through this part almost every night so we could get into bed together, talk and eventually fall asleep wrapped up in each other. We would usually not wake up like that, would be separated as we moved through dreamland, but undressing was always the start of finishing our day together.

Without being asked, he takes the foot of the bed and I throw him a couple of pillows. He accepts them with a small smile of gratitude and slides under the duvet. I do the same. Even though we are on opposite sides of the bed, I’m still aware of him. Of his body, his heat, the weight of history that links us.

He rests his head on his arm and stares up the ceiling and I do the same. Our breathing is deep and synchronised. Seth will probably sleep. He always used to say he hated sleeping without me beside him, and now we’re back in the same bed, coupled with the exhaustion of the drive and the adrenalin of the last half an hour, I can imagine he’ll probably flake right out. I hate that idea. I hate that he has snatched away the chance for me to have something else on my mind before I go to sleep, something pleasant and exciting, and after doing that, he’ll probably just slide off to sleep like nothing has happened.

‘I don’t think Mum told you,’ I whisper in the dark. ‘Nancy and Sienna are staying here with us for a while.’

His demeanour is immediately tense. I can almost hear how alarm bulges his eyes, while his body has obviously been dragged away from its slow descent into sleep.

It’s mean and awful that I did that, but I’m quite pleased to know that neither of us will be getting much sleep tonight.

Since first light came creeping in through the open blinds I have been sitting on my desk chair, my feet up on the seat, watching Seth sleep. I had a break to go for a shower and to get dressed, but mostly I have sat here and watched him while the Sun has got higher and higher in the sky.

He doesn’t suit his beard, but he looks the same. Maybe a little older, more tired, thinner, but he’s still Seth. He’s still one of the best friends I ever had. I would have stayed with him forever, I think. I certainly planned to. Our future was set, made from stitching together every day, week, month, year we’d had – each one distinctive, unique and important – until we had the patchwork quilt of who we were as a couple.

‘Wake up, Seth,’ I say from across the room. We have to talk. I wasn’t fair on him. At the time it’d been too difficult for me to even contemplate: after losing Dad, talking to Seth about all this seemed an impossibility when he had kept things from me. No matter what he’d done, though, that wasn’t fair on him, he did deserve better.

I move across the room, crouch down beside him and hiss, ‘
Seth! Wake up!
’ into his ear.

He jerks awake, his eyes wide and shocked. ‘Whaaa-what?’

‘Shall we go get a coffee, have a talk?’ I say.

He grunts, tries to turn over. ‘Later,’ he mumbles.

‘No, now.’

‘No,’ he murmurs. ‘Sleep.’

A wave of anger crashes through me. ‘OK, you sleep,’ I say, irritation in every word. ‘And I’ll send Nancy in with coffee a bit later, shall I?’

He dresses quickly and efficiently, asks for the bathroom so he can use the toilet and brush his teeth. Last night was the second night ever that I’d known him not brush his teeth before bed (the other time was the night we first slept together). I used to sit on the edge of the bath and talk to him while he brushed his teeth. It was for two minutes, he couldn’t reply as the toothbrush buzzed around his mouth, but it was one of our ‘things’. Sometimes, he’d sit beside me and we’d have a conversation before we started work. That was another square of the quilt of our life, another bead on the string of our time together.