The Mistress's Revenge (26 page)

I’m only joking! I know you know exactly who was waiting there, in his black leather-look jacket and his nasty jeans, leaning against a lamppost smoking a cigarette. Looking at me. Looking at me. Looking at me.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” he said to me as I approached him, trying not to look terrified.

When I didn’t reply, he slowly straightened up and ground his cigarette butt under the sole of his sneakers.

“You’ve been upsetting people,” he told me, and his voice was as casual as Sunday brunch.

“You’ve been upsetting friends of mine. You need to stop doing that. Do you get what I mean?”

He smiled at me and I noticed that the teeth in the front were several shades whiter than those at the back. Do you think that’s some sort of money-saving thing? Did he not think it was worth whitening the back ones because nobody really sees them?

I couldn’t speak, of course. I actually wanted to laugh because it was all so preposterous. Who was this man threatening me at the gateway to the park where Tilly and Jamie used to play on the swings on winter mornings so cold their breath came out in puffs of white smoke? Since when did my life turn into a low-budget gangster movie?

The man was still smiling, but my face was frozen with fear. It had to be some sort of a joke, right? And yet it wasn’t a joke. He was the thank-you gift you’d sent me after our night together. But he couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real.

I walked past him without speaking, half expecting him to reach out to grab hold of me, or at least to follow me, but he remained immobile. In the park, the Mothers’ Mafia were out in force, with their three-wheel buggies and their toddlers clutching their organic muesli bars. I have to say I was bewildered as I looked at them. Hadn’t they witnessed what just happened to me? How could they still be living in a world where the worst thing that could happen was little Jack refused to wear his tricycle helmet, when just yards away a man had quite clearly threatened to do me harm?

Or had he?

By the time I reached the opposite entrance to the park, I was already starting to have doubts about what had happened. It was too surreal. Things like that just didn’t happen. Not in places like this. Not to people like me. I thought again about what he’d said. He hadn’t actually made any threats, had he? I could have been wrong. I could have misinterpreted his meaning. By the time I was halfway home, I was starting to feel foolish. And do you know what was the weirdest thing? Really, I knew that you had sent him, knew he’d been standing outside my house the other day, knew exactly what he was trying to say. And yet my stupid, useless, common sense refused to let me fully confront it.

By the time I put my key in the door, my hand had stopped trembling, and I had started to rethink my reaction.

You wouldn’t have sent the man with the stripes on his sleeves, if indeed you did, unless you still wanted to maintain a connection to me. He is the go-between, the bringer of conflicted love notes and billets-doux. He is the proof, white sneakered and puffed-up chested, that you still care.

The man with the two-tone teeth is another link to you. He scares me, and yet now that he has gone, I find myself wanting to see him again. Is that perverse? Through my bedroom window, I scan the empty pavements opposite looking for a flash of over-white sneaker and am almost disappointed to see nothing.

I feel things are moving forward. There’s a momentum about life at the moment, isn’t there? The man with the leather jacket represents progress of a sort.

I hope Helen will be pleased.

T
he whooshing in my head is getting worse. If I look to the side suddenly, it feels like my brain has come loose in my skull and is skidding around, and I feel light-headed all the time.

I googled the symptoms and while it could just be the withdrawal from antidepressants or the eccentric mix of other generously donated
prescription drugs, it apparently could also be stress. I feel like my life has slipped out of gear somehow and I can’t seem to get it back.

I try to talk to Tilly about what’s happening with her, but everything I say comes out wrong and she looks at me as though I’m an alien who has switched places with her real mother.

“Your teachers say you’ve lost your way,” I babble. But when she looks at me, I can’t meet her eyes. I spend a lot of time in the cubbyhole. It feels strangely safe.

This morning, there was a phone call on the landline. Usually a call on the landline can only mean my dad or one of Daniel’s aging parents, phoning from afar with voices tremulous with reproach, or else a recorded message advertising itself in advance with a mechanical click. This time though, there was a real live, non-parent person on the phone. He was very polite, but there was a hard edge to his voice.

“Mrs. Islip?” Don’t you love the way people who don’t know you often think conferring you with a marital status you don’t possess is somehow akin to doing you a favor? As if they’re graciously extending you a particular courtesy you ought to be grateful for?

He was phoning from a debt collection agency. The whooshing in my head reached epic proportions while he spoke. I owe his client “a substantial amount” of money apparently. He wanted to know what plans I had in mind with regard to repaying the money.

My tongue swelled up in my mouth, huge and leaden, like a slab of cold, congealed lasagne. He told me the substantial amount I owed and it sounded ludicrous. Impossible.

“Are you quite sure that’s correct?” My voice belonged to someone else.

“I’m afraid it often comes as quite a shock to people to hear the figures out loud. Haven’t you been reading the letters we’ve sent you?”

Of course, he knew very well that I hadn’t been. I’m a textbook case, I imagine. Just like all the rest.

“Can I take it you’ll be making a payment within the next ten days?” He was so unerringly polite. They must go on training courses for that, don’t you think?

“We don’t expect the full amount of course, but my client does need to see some evidence of good intentions. Nobody wants to get the bailiffs involved.”

The bailiffs? I have to tell you, Clive, coming hot on the heels of the man in the leather jacket, this phone call only served to convince me further that I’ve somehow stumbled onto the wrong film set. This is not my life. This is not who I am.

But then again, as everyone keeps saying, I’m not myself. So perhaps this is indeed who I am now.

I’m so confused and my head won’t leave me alone. It taps out drum tattoos on the inner surface of my brain.

I need you to help me feel right again.

I need you turn me back into me.

I
wish you’d get a Facebook page, Clive. I really do. How many times did I used to urge you to do that, when we were still “together” (what a strange phrase for two people who were clearly such poles apart).

“Oh, I would never do that,” you’d say vehemently. “I find it so sinister.”

Thank God I’m Facebook friends with Susan and Emily. It’s so reassuring to go to their pages and be able to keep abreast of all the things that are happening in your lives, particularly since it has become so difficult to get hold of Susan. (I worry about how much this vows business is taking out of her. She’s clearly overwhelmed with it all.)

I’ve just been looking at Emily’s page. My goodness, she has a lot of friends, doesn’t she? They’re all young and attractive, just like her and lots of them have double-barreled names that take up three lines on her “friends” list.

I suspect Emily is finding time weighing on her a bit much. She updates her status several times a day, and it’s all about her pregnancy. She clearly imagines she’s the first woman ever to have reproduced, and every new development is accompanied with a row of exclamation marks, as if we’ll all be as amazed as she is.

Emily Gooding-Brown is finding it impossible to sleep because the baby keeps waking her up!!!!!!

Emily Gooding-Brown can’t find any clothes to fit her!!!!!

Underneath each of her status updates are always a clutch of comments, leading me to suppose that most of her friends are as time-rich as she is.

Georgia Hanley-Corrigan Not long now, babes!

Often I’ll add a comment of my own. I always try to be positive and supportive—I see myself as a sort of trusted auntie figure, and I make sure never to be patronizing. Even if sometimes I do want to just write

Sally Islip says, why not get a life Emily!!!!!!!

This morning I was enjoying a particularly lengthy exchange between Emily and her friend Flikka (I think it’s lovely the way so many of her friends have these amusing nicknames, don’t you?). They were talking about the summer holidays and Flikka, who is clearly also about to drop, was stating her intention of spending a few weeks in Mummy’s place in the south of France. Well, I have to say, Emily got quite agitated.

Emily Gooding-Brown That sort of heat can be very dangerous for newborns. Risk of febrile convulsions.

Flikka de Souza Air con darling!!! Anyway, I will need the break. I’ll be exhausted, and Mummy has lined up a divine local lady to come in and help so I’ll get lots of yummy lie-ins.

Emily Gooding-Brown Lucky you being so laid back. I know I won’t let anyone else near my baby once he’s born. I’ll be like a tigress, I know it!!!!!!!

I was so engrossed in this that I completely forgot about Jamie, who has stayed off school, complaining of a tummy ache. When I heard him calling me, I almost jumped out of my slack old skin!!!!!!

I dragged myself out of the cubbyhole and pushed open the door of his bedroom. Jamie was sitting up in bed, playing on his PSP.

“I’m bored,” he told me.

Can there be anything more irritating than a child who ought to be at school making you break off work to tell you he’s bored?

“Well, go to school then.”

At this, Jamie remembered to put on a vaguely pained air.

“I can’t, I don’t feel well.”

“You look fine to me.”

Then, to my horror I realized he was about to cry. Jamie hardly ever cries. I put my arms around him, and realized by how awkward it felt that it must be a while since I held him. He felt much more fragile in my arms than I remembered, his shoulder blades sharp as beaks. I don’t know whether this ever happened with you, but when I’m away from my children I always imagine them to be far bigger, far more mature than they actually are, and then I’ll hear them on the phone or come across them quite by chance and realize they’re still young, and it always shocks me. I expect all parents feel that, don’t they?

Jamie seemed very tense at first but then he kind of slumped into me. We sat there for a while just gently swaying. The thing was though, that after a while I started to get this really anxious feeling. I get it quite a lot at the moment, but this was worse than usual, like something was slowly burning through me. I began to feel very uncomfortable sitting there with Jamie and, I know this is going to sound odd, but I missed the cubbyhole. I missed the computer and I missed this journal.

“I know, why don’t I take you to school?” I said to Jamie, brightly. “You can still get there for lunchtime.”

He looked slightly crestfallen.

“Can’t I stay here with you?”

The kids don’t really get this working from home thing, do they? They seem to think we’ve got all the time in the world to sit around doing nothing. When I explained I was busy, Jamie’s face kind of closed up, like a serving hatch. I tried not to notice, and stood up ready to go. Jamie didn’t move.

“You can’t go out like that. You’re in your dressing gown. As usual.”

His voice was different than it had been a few minutes before, as if he’d taken a pencil sharpener and sharpened it up.

When I looked down, I realized he was right. I had on the old fleecy beige dressing gown that Sian is always threatening to burn.
How come I hadn’t noticed that before? I’d just assumed I was dressed. To be quite honest, I then started to wonder whether I’d actually got dressed yesterday either. I tried to picture what clothes I’d put on but found nothing came into my head. Uh-ohhh.

Feeling wrongfooted, I told Jamie he could stay at home, as long as he kept himself occupied. But now I’m back in the cubbyhole, I feel resentful. Daytimes are my time. They’ve always been my time. I know it’s wrong, but it feels like Jamie is intruding. I feel like I can hear his breathing, even though I know I can’t really. My head keeps whooshing, and the anxious feeling just won’t go away. My computer screen is still open to Emily’s Facebook page, and her face looks out, haughtily from under a cowboy hat.

Sally Islip feels like her brain is exploding.

Sally Islip doesn’t understand anything.

Sally Islip has lost her way.

T
his morning there were two more calls from debt agencies. I told them they had the wrong number. I said we’d been getting a lot of calls for Sally Islip and maybe she’d had that number before, but she certainly didn’t now.

“I’m terribly sorry to have disturbed you, madam,” said the first man. “Can I have your name so we can wipe you from the records?”

My head, with its exploding brain, had to think quickly.

“Susan Gooding,” I said. “Mrs. Susan Gooding.’

“My apologies, Mrs. Gooding,” came the reply.

I have to say it quite shocked me just how easy it was to become your wife. In fact I can’t imagine why I haven’t become her before. All it takes is a few words into a telephone, and here I am. Mrs. Gooding. I try it out tentatively, like a spoonful of extra-spicy curry.

While the phone was in my hand anyway, I decided to phone Susan. The real Susan, of course. Well, it’s been nearly ten days since that coffee in Starbucks, and I wanted to know how she’s getting on. You really must watch that diet she’s on, Clive. I mean I know Susan
thinks she could do with losing a teensy bit of weight, but she doesn’t want to overdo it. Even former models can’t afford to be too thin once they reach a certain age.

When I rang, she was at her desk in her office. I could hear lots of loud voices in the background. I must say they did sound like they were having fun, all of them. I envy that sometimes, that camaraderie.