The Carrier (49 page)

Francine, there’s something Kerry and I haven’t been doing enough of in our letters, and that’s telling you things you don’t already know. We seem to be mainly giving you our perspective on past events. Maybe that’s okay, I don’t know. But the point of our doing this letter thing is to support Tim. There’s supposed to be only one difference between what he’s doing and what we’re doing: he’s saying it out loud, sitting by your bedside day after day, and we’re writing it down so that Lauren can’t overhear anything.

I’ve eavesdropped on Tim’s one-sided conversations with you. He doesn’t tell you anything you already know – he’s careful about that. I could be wrong, but I think he plans what he’s going to say to you in advance, before going into your room. There’s a neatness to his monologues. Each one contains a revelation of some kind, even if it’s only that he and Gaby first kissed in the porch of the Proscenium Library on this or that date. No big deal to anyone apart from Tim, Gaby and you: the long-suffering betrayed wife.

At least you’re not bored, I suppose. Tim wants you on the edge of your seat (sorry – you know what I mean), scared of what you’re going to hear next. It’s all what a stand-up comedian might call new material, though there’s nothing funny about it. Gaby’s his only subject matter, and he’s incapable of anything but total seriousness when it comes to her. He never runs out of new things to tell you: how she built up her company, endless technical detail about her creation, Taction, that no one but an expert or someone in love with an expert could hope to understand, her amazing website, witty remarks she made four years ago about trivial things. Tim must have a photographic memory. Or nothing else in his life that matters to him.

Having said that, I’ve never heard him come out and tell you he loves Gaby, not in so many words. Still, you’d have to be pretty dense not to have worked it out, Francine. No man wants to talk endlessly about a woman unless he’s got it pretty bad. Kerry and I didn’t quite realise the level of Tim’s obsession with Gaby until we heard him talk to you about her.

Since I can’t be bothered doing any more work today, I’m going to follow Tim’s example and tell you two things you don’t already know. And like him, I’ve planned both in advance. One is something no one knows: I’m starting to think I’ve been wasting my time for the past God knows how many years. I want to give up on my PhD, with immediate effect, and never see the damn thing again. Kerry doesn’t know. She’s against giving up on anything and would try to talk me out of it. And probably succeed. The truth is, I’m not sure I can be bothered thinking or writing any more about how the kinds of archetypes and stories we’re attracted to affects our attitudes to financial risk. It’s too interdisciplinary-messy and, at the same time, just too sodding obvious: person number 1’s worst fear is that he’ll end up having to tell a story about himself in which he was too timid to grab an amazing chance, and, as a result, missed out on the rewards enjoyed by those braver than him. Person number 2’s least favourite hypothetical life narrative is the one in which he stakes all his hard-earned savings on a long shot and is left regretting his recklessness in abject poverty. Person number 1 is obviously more likely to invest £100,000 in a high-risk illiquid start-up than person number 2.

There: I’ve said it in roughly a hundred words. Even you’d understand, Francine, though I’m sure you’d find a way to condemn persons 1 and 2 equally. But you’d grasp the basic concept. Any fool would. So why am I devoting years to writing a PhD on it, months drafting questionnaires and gathering data to prove what I already know? What’s the point? Even if I finish and publish it, all that’ll happen is a load of economic theory windbags’ll queue up to shout me down in journals no one reads. They’re already gearing up, apoplectic with rage because I’ve brought a wishy-washy imposter like narrative archetype into their precious economics.

You must be wondering why I’m telling you something that’s nothing to do with you, Francine. If I give up on my PhD or if I don’t, what do you care? Tim wouldn’t waste time telling you a random piece of news, would he? At the risk of sounding big-headed, I think there’s something he’s forgotten to take into account: how affronted you always were when someone else took centre stage, even for five minutes. You were incapable of sitting and listening to another person’s news without starting to seethe and act up because you’d lost the spotlight. Kerry and I noticed it the first time Tim brought you round to ours for dinner, the first time we ever met you. We were mystified and couldn’t for the life of us work out what had happened to him. Suddenly, his long, entertaining rants that had always been the best part of the evenings we spent together were no more. Every question we asked him, he answered as succinctly and humourlessly as possible before turning the focus back to you. ‘Fine, thanks, not much happening at the moment.’ The ‘fine, thanks’ was weird enough in itself. Even weirder was ‘Francine’s having an exciting time at work, though, aren’t you, darling?’

An exciting time at work. Never mind the fact that you were a pensions lawyer, Francine – it was such an un-Tim thing to say. Kerry and I couldn’t work out what the hell had happened to him at first. Then we realised. Actually, it was a bit of a horror film moment: the way the trusting heroine feels when she stumbles across a cobwebby black and white photograph album and finds a picture of her husband lying in a coffin with the undertaker’s sutures all over his body, and realises he’s been dead for years and that’s why he’s got that strange stitched Y-shape on his torso that he’s always claimed was a tennis injury. (Please pardon facetiousness and intrusion of random narrative archetype. As I said, I’ve been working on the PhD all morning.)

I think it would wound you, Francine, to have to listen to me chunter on about my career anxieties. It would cause your ego pain to be forced into a minor role – mute listener – especially knowing you won’t get your turn when I’m through.

Moving on to my second planned agenda item, the one that directly relates to you: remember when you and Tim got me
Imperium
by Robert Harris for my birthday? It’s funny, I’ve read Kerry’s latest letter to you and she didn’t even mention the Robert Harris aspect of the evening. Making Memories Night, to give it its official title. You told me as I was opening my present from you and Tim that I probably already had it, but that Tim had insisted I didn’t. You said it as if Tim, being Tim, was bound to be wrong. In fact, he’d been spotlessly correct until earlier that same day when not one but two people had presented me with copies: my boss and my secretary. Kerry laughed when I told her. ‘You’ll have to start putting the word about that you’ve gone off Robert Harris, otherwise you’re going to be getting twenty copies of his latest book for birthdays and Christmases for the rest of your life.’ (Incidentally, I’m sure a quick statistical analysis would reveal that your biggest flare-ups were on other people’s special occasions, Francine.)

I ripped off the paper in one corner, saw the ‘
Imp
’ of the title at the same time Kerry did. She was sitting next to me on the sofa. We both knew what had to happen. Impossible as it would have been to explain to anyone who wasn’t part of our crazy foursome set-up, we knew it was inconceivable that we’d laugh and say, ‘Actually, this is the third copy to arrive so far.’ Tim had assured you I didn’t have it. If he turned out to have been mistaken, you’d have made him suffer. Thanks to him, you’d have been someone who’d messed up the buying of a present, which, in your eyes, would have made you look bad in public.

I launched into a pretence of never having seen
Imperium
before and, for added security, not even knowing Robert Harris had a new thriller out. Kerry stood up and said she was just nipping to the loo. I knew it was an excuse. She wasn’t willing to risk you going upstairs for some reason and seeing the two
Imperium
s in our bedroom. (Imperia?) Do you know what she did, Francine? She got the other two copies of the book, wrapped them in a shirt and stuffed them under the mattress of our bed. I’d have done the same if I hadn’t needed to stay put and make an elaborate show of loving your present more than I loved life itself, to make sure you felt properly appreciated.

Tim was trying to look relaxed, but I knew he knew too. He’d guessed from my face, and Kerry’s, though he probably thought it was only one other copy of
Imperium
we were afraid of you finding and not two. Imagine that, Francine: that level of panic, over something so ridiculously trivial. That’s what you did to the people around you. That’s why I don’t worry, like Kerry does, that Lauren knows what’s going on. She thinks Lauren might have seen her shove a letter under your mattress. ‘And that matters why?’ I asked. ‘What can Lauren do that can harm us?’ It’s not about harm for Kerry, though. It’s about guilt. She couldn’t bear for Lauren (or anyone, actually) to think she was doing anything wrong. She’s also scared Lauren might confront Tim and make him feel guilty. I can understand that. In Kerry’s mind, Tim feeling bad equals Tim probably ending up dead.

Hence she’s always encouraged his long ‘chats’ with you, Francine. She talks about it as if it’s a kind of therapy for him. And hence this: our one-sided correspondence with you, and with the proviso that all our letters must be written in your room, sitting by your bed. This is how Kerry decided she and I would support Tim.

The drawback of these letters, from my point of view, is precisely what Kerry thinks is their best feature: you can’t read them, and we can’t read them aloud to you – Kerry’s rules. So you don’t know what’s in them. It’s the only way of being fair to everyone, in the opinion of my wise wife.

Who I think and have always thought, Francine, is in love with your unwise husband. It’s lucky she’s not his type physically or I might have lost her years ago.

I don’t especially want to be fair to you. When were you ever fair to Tim? Or any of us? I think I’m going to read you this letter. Kerry’s out. She won’t know. I’ll feel guilty about keeping it from her, but that’s not enough to stop me.

Here goes.