Truly Madly Guilty (37 page)

Clementine realised she was hungry. She set aside her cello and on the way to the kitchen she picked up the horrible knobbly shell necklace and chucked it straight in the bin. She went to the fridge, got herself a tub of yoghurt, went to the drawer for a spoon and the first thing she saw was the polar bear ice-cream scoop Sam had been looking for the other night. Men. It had probably been right there in front of him the whole time.

She opened the yoghurt, had a mouthful. It was really very good. Creamy, like they said in the ad. She was susceptible to advertising, but really, this was very good yoghurt. It reminded her of her first taste of food after fasting.

She hadn’t been fasting.

There was a feeling growing within her. A twitchy feeling. She was jabbing the spoon into the yoghurt and eating it too fast. She thought of the opening melody of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’. The high-pitched bassoon. The strange, jerky moments building to an ecstatic unfurling. She wanted to hear that piece. She wanted to
play
that piece, because that was exactly how she felt right now. There was an upward spiralling feeling in her chest. Was the yoghurt drugged? Was it simply exquisite relief because she’d demonstrated her absolute willingness to donate her eggs but
she didn’t actually have to do it
: altruism without action, it didn’t get better than that!

Was it just that she’d had enough of feeling bad over what happened? She could never forget that afternoon but she could forgive herself. She could forgive Sam. If he wanted to end their marriage over this, then she would grieve him as if he’d died, but goddamn it, she’d get over it, she’d live. She’d always suspected this about herself, that right at the centre of her soul was a small unbreakable stone, a cold, hard instinct for self-preservation. She’d die for her children, but no one else. She wouldn’t allow one mistake, one slip of judgement, to define her life, not when Ruby was fine, not when life was there for the taking.

She thought of Erika saying, ‘This is
your
dream,
Dummkopf
.’

That job was hers. That job belonged to her. She threw down the empty yoghurt container, licked her fingers and headed back to her cello, not to work on her technique this time, but to play music. Somewhere along the way she’d forgotten it was about the music, the pure, uncomplicated bliss of the music.

chapter seventy-three

‘He’s going to steal it!’ announced Holly, loud and clear.

‘Shh!’ said Sam. They could never get Holly to shut up during movies.

‘But he is, look!’

‘You’re right, but …’ Sam put a finger to his lips, although who the hell cared, the movie theatre was packed with wriggly, chatty, rain-crazed kids and their frazzled parents.

Holly shovelled a handful of popcorn into her mouth and sat back, her eyes on the flickering colours of the Pixar movie. Ruby was on Sam’s other side, sucking her thumb, caressing Whisk’s spokes. Her eyelids drooped. She would fall asleep soon and wake up five minutes before the movie ended, demanding it be restarted.

Sam normally loved a good animation but he had no idea what this one was about. He was thinking about his job, and how much longer he could get away with coasting. He was the new guy, still ‘learning the ropes’, but he should have had those ropes learned by now. People must be starting to notice. The head of his division had said, ‘Might be time to invest in an umbrella,’ with a quizzical look at Sam’s drenched clothes yesterday. It was all going to come crashing down. Someone would say, ‘The weird new guy
isn’t doing anything
.’

It’s past crunch time, Sam. You need to get over it, to get on with it, leave a goddamned umbrella at the front door. Why did tiny things like that seem so impossible these days? Ruby’s head tipped gently against his arm. He pulled up the armrest and she snuggled up to him.

Clementine was getting on with it. He’d seen something change in her after the visit from Vid and Tiffany and Dakota. ‘I feel better after seeing them,’ she’d said, ‘don’t you?’ He’d wanted to shout, ‘No! I feel worse! I feel much worse!’

Did he actually shout that at her? He couldn’t remember. He was becoming a shouter, like his own father used to be, before age softened him.

He shifted about in his seat.

‘You’re wriggling,’ whisper-shouted Holly.

‘Sorry,’ said Sam. The popcorn tasted like salt and butter-flavoured cardboard but he couldn’t stop eating it.

Yes, something was definitely changing in Clementine. There was a new impatience about her, a brittleness, except brittleness implied fragility and she didn’t seem fragile, she seemed fed up. She wanted to move on from Ruby’s accident and she was right. There was no point dwelling on it. There was no point replaying it over and over. Sam had always considered himself the more emotionally resilient one in their relationship. Clementine was the one who made too big a deal of things, who got dramatic, sometimes to the point of hysteria, over tiny things, like her auditions, for example, although of course auditions weren’t tiny, they were a big deal, and nerve-racking, he got that, but she used to let them consume her. Once Sam had heard Holly telling Ruby, ‘Mummy is sick with an audition.’ And he’d laughed because it was exactly like that. An audition hit her like a virus.

But that didn’t seem to be the case with this latest audition, even though it was one of the most important of her career. She wasn’t saying a word about it. She was just getting on with her practice. Sam wasn’t even exactly sure of the audition date, even though he knew it had to be coming up soon.

Once, he would have been able to say exactly how many days it was until an audition because that was how many days it would be until he’d be getting sex again. But that was a long time ago, when sex was still a natural, normal part of the equation, before it got complicated. It was strange how sex had got so complicated, because for many years he would have said it was the
least
complicated aspect of their relationship. He would have put money on it staying that way.

Right from the beginning, their very first time, it had felt so natural. Their bodies and libidos had been in perfect sync. He’d been in enough relationships to know that sex often started out awkward before it got good, but with Clementine it was straight away
good
. There were other red flags about their relationship: he wasn’t musical, she’d never even been on a date with a non-musician before; he wanted a big family, she could have been satisfied with an only child. But there was never a red flag over sex. He actually remembered thinking, in his youthful, innocent, idiotic way, that their amazing sexual compatibility was proof that they were meant to be together because that’s when they were their
honest, true, raw selves
. The rest was nothing but details.

Sam and Clementine had never needed to talk about sex, and that was such a relief after Daniella, his previous girlfriend, who he had very nearly married, and who had liked to discuss and dissect their sex life, and to follow each encounter with an immediate debrief: How can we work together to achieve better outcomes next time? (She was a business consultant. She didn’t use those words but he could feel their intention.) Daniella had no qualms about beginning a conversation over the breakfast table with a comment like, ‘When I was blowing you last night …’ which would make him choke on his cereal and blush like an altar boy. (‘So cute!’ Daniella would crow.)

He loved the fact that he and Clementine kept an element of mystery about their sex life. They treated it with a shy kind of reverence. Sex was like a beautiful secret between them.

But maybe Daniella had had the right idea all along. Maybe all that bloody reverence had been their downfall, because when their sex life slowly changed and began to seem perfunctory and rushed, they didn’t have the words to talk about it. He couldn’t work out if Clementine even liked sex anymore (and he didn’t want to hear the answer if it was no). The idea of ‘performance’ had begun to announce itself in his head. Everything still operated as it should but for the first time ever he’d begun to wonder how he compared to those ex-boyfriends; if their musical ability had somehow translated into sexual ability.

He had known it was probably nothing. All parents of young kids went through this. It was so common it was a cliché. There would be a renaissance, he had told himself. When both girls started sleeping reliably through the night. When they weren’t so tired and stressed. He had been looking forward to the renaissance.

And then that night of the barbeque it had seemed like Tiffany was offering them the key to the door they’d accidentally closed on themselves. She was the gorgeous ringmaster crying, ‘
Right this way for amazing sex again, folks!
’ It had suddenly seemed so easy again. He’d seen it on Clementine’s face. She’d seen it on his.

And then the universe had seen fit to punish them for their selfishness in the cruellest way imaginable.

He saw it again: Oliver and Erika lifting up his baby girl. He saw it a dozen times a day. A hundred times. He would never, could never, get over it. He couldn’t see a way out of this. There was no
solution
here. He had to change something. Fix something. Break something. He remembered how Clementine had flinched when he talked about separating. For a moment she’d looked like a frightened child. He felt bad, or he was aware that he
should
have felt bad, but really he felt numb and strangely detached, as if it was somebody else who was saying these cruel things to his wife.

‘
Daddy
,’ said Holly. ‘You’ve eaten it
all
!’

Sam looked at the empty bucket of popcorn.

‘Sorry,’ he whispered. He couldn’t even remember eating it.

‘That’s not fair!’ Holly’s enraged face was illuminated by the light from the screen.

‘Shh,’ he said helplessly. His throat felt scratchy. There were tiny flakes of corn kernel stuck between his teeth.

‘But I hardly got any!’ Her voice rose to an unacceptable level. Someone muttered disapprovingly in the row behind.

‘If you can’t be quiet we’re going,’ said Sam in a low, shaky voice.

‘Greedy Daddy!’ she shouted, and she snatched the container and threw it on the aisle floor next to her. It was calculated, wilful naughtiness. It couldn’t be ignored.

Bloody hell. He picked up the soggy umbrella at his feet, lifted the dead weight of Ruby over one shoulder, stood, and grabbed Holly by the wrist. Something twinged painfully in his lower back.

Holly screamed blue murder as he dragged her out of her seat and into the aisle.

Consequences.
He and Clementine made fun of that sort of parenting jargon but Holly and Ruby had to learn what it had taken Sam all these years to discover: Life was all about consequences.

chapter seventy-four

Oliver decided to go for a run in the rain.

He risked injury on the slippery footpaths, and also a relapse of his chest cold, but right now he really needed to clear his head because his wife was a common thief and as a result he would never be a father.

He was incorrectly assigning causality but he was very upset. Angry. Shocked.

He double-knotted his shoelaces, stood up, did a few stretches, opened the front door and nearly closed it again because it was raining so hard, but he couldn’t bear to roam around his house while his thoughts scuttled like trapped mice.

Running would give him clarity. His nervous system would release a protein that stimulated regions of his brain related to decision-making.

He took a deep breath and headed out. Vid and Tiffany were obviously entertaining. There were cars lined up in their driveway and around the cul-de-sac. They were extremely sociable people.

As Oliver ran out of the cul-de-sac he considered his own, significantly smaller social circle. It might be helpful if he could talk this through with someone, but there was no one.

He did not have the sort of friend he could call up for a ‘quiet beer’. He was not the sort of person who said ‘quiet beer’. He didn’t actually drink beer. He had the sort of friends who drank protein shakes at the local health-food café after a thirty-k morning bike ride, while they discussed training schedules for the upcoming half marathon. He liked his friends, but he had no interest in hearing their personal problems and he therefore couldn’t share his own. He couldn’t lean over his protein shake and say, ‘My wife has been stealing memorabilia from her best friend since she was a kid. What do you reckon? Should I be worried?’

He would never betray Erika to another man like that anyway.

A confidential discussion with a woman might be better. Maybe if he had a sister, or a mother. Technically he did have a mother. Just not the right sort of mother. She would find Erika’s stealing screamingly funny or tragically sad, depending on where the pendulum of her mood currently sat.

A car drove by and tooted at him in either a supportive or derisive way: hard to interpret.

If Erika had started hoarding, he could have handled that. He’d even mentally prepared himself for that remote possibility, in spite of her constant, obsessive decluttering. He’d prepared himself for depression (common while undergoing IVF), for breast cancer, for a brain tumour, for accidental death and even an office romance (he trusted her, but her managing partner was apparently a ‘ladies’ man’), but never for this. Never for
petty thievery
. They were straight-down-the-line people. Their financial affairs were in scrupulous order. He and Erika would
welcome
a tax audit. Bring it on, they’d say to the tax office. Bring it
on
.

His glasses needed windscreen wipers. He kept running while he took them off and tried to dry them with the edge of his T-shirt. Useless.

She had taken Clementine’s stuff, like a Dickensian pickpocket. It was unfathomable. She said she was going to stop and that she would give back what she could over a period of time, but in Oliver’s world, people never stopped. His parents had said they’d stop drinking. Erika’s mother had said she’d stop hoarding. They truly believed it at the time. He got that. But they couldn’t stop. It was like asking them to hold their breath. They could do it for only so long before they had to gasp for air.

Another car swept by, and a teenage boy stretched almost half his body out the window in order to yell, ‘Loser!’

Really dangerous activity there, sport. You could get sideswiped by another car. Also bad-mannered.

He took the corner at Livingston. Twinge in that left knee again.

Right now Erika was over at Clementine’s telling her that they wouldn’t need her as an egg donor after all. They had discussed it and agreed it would be polite to tell her in person. She’d invested her time doing blood tests and filling in paperwork. They didn’t like to waste someone’s time.

It was Oliver’s decision. There were Clementine’s unkind comments that Erika had overheard.
Repulsed
by the idea
.
Bitch, he thought as his foot hit a puddle and water sprayed. Clementine wasn’t a bitch. He was fond of Clementine, but the things she’d said had been so unkind and unnecessary.

He thought of Erika’s little face (she had a small darling face) and how she must have looked when she’d stood in the hallway overhearing those awful words. His fists clenched. He felt a sudden urge to hit Sam, because he obviously couldn’t hit Clementine.

The moment passed, as primal urges did. He’d never hit anyone in his life.

Anyway, even if Clementine hadn’t said what she’d said, obviously Erika’s relationship with her was too … strange? complex? dysfunctional? … for this to go ahead.

‘Absolutely not,’ he’d said to Erika. ‘She can’t be our donor. It’s not happening. It’s over. It’s finished.’

He couldn’t tell if she was relieved or shattered.

He’d been so adamant, but now, as he ran, his clothes getting wetter and heavier (you would think there’d be a point of total saturation, at which they couldn’t get any wetter, but apparently not), he was regretting his decision. Maybe he’d been too hasty.

It felt like another loss. Each time he thought he was doing well, avoiding the hope. Each time he told himself, I have no expectations, but with each new failure it hurt so much he understood the hope had been there after all, flitting seductively around his subconscious. It didn’t get easier either. It got worse. A cumulative effect. Loss upon loss. Like the ligament strain in that left knee.

So, what now? Anonymous donor? They were so difficult to find, unless they went overseas. People were doing that. They could do that. He could do it. He could do whatever it took to have his own biological child. He just wasn’t sure if Erika could. He had a terrible suspicion that if he said, ‘Let’s forget about the baby’, the first expression he’d see on her face would be relief.

His heart rate was up very high. He could hear himself puffing. He couldn’t normally hear himself puffing. That chest cold had affected his fitness. He concentrated on breathing in rhythm with his footfalls.

He saw a blue car coming his way from the opposite end of the street and realised it was Erika, on her way home from seeing Clementine.

He stopped, hands on his hips, catching his breath and watching her approach. He couldn’t see her face yet, but he knew exactly how she’d be driving, hunched over the wheel like a little old lady, two deep lines between her eyebrows; she didn’t like driving in the rain.

Her frown was the first thing he’d noticed about her when they worked together, long before they did the squash competition draw together. He didn’t know why he found it so appealing; maybe because it indicated that she took life seriously, like him, that she cared and she concentrated, she didn’t just float along the surface, having a great time. He’d never told her that. Women wanted to be noticed for their eyes, not their frowns.

She must not have lingered at Clementine’s after she’d delivered her news.

The car pulled up on the side of the road. She wound down the window and bent over the passenger seat to look up at him anxiously.

‘You shouldn’t run in this weather!’ she shouted. ‘You could slip! You haven’t even finished your antibiotics.’

He headed over to the car, opened the door and got in next to her. The car was warm. She had the heater cranked up.

Water slid off him, pooling all around him on the leather seat. He could feel it squelching. He was reminded of the night they pulled Ruby from the fountain; how they’d worked together, how they hadn’t needed to talk, they’d just acted. They were a good team.

Erika sat, still hunched over the steering wheel, studying him silently, frowning ferociously.

He put his hand to the side of her face.

‘Sorry,’ he said, going to draw it away. ‘I’m all wet.’

But she grabbed it back, and tilted her warm face into the palm of his cold hand.