‘Oh, yes, he’s upstairs. Taking a nap. He’s pretending to work but I know he’ll have dozed off. Do you want me to get him for you?’
I stood stock-still and listened to her speak. I remembered . . . I remembered when Marcus made me meet Serena for the first time. How I convinced myself it would work out. He’d told me so much about her, but despite what he repeatedly said, she didn’t look vulnerable, she didn’t look like she would harm herself if he left, she didn’t seem to need him to be with her while he was with me.
A lot of me knew it was nonsense, that he was using me, manipulating me, setting me up to tolerate anything. I was young enough to ignore the sensible part of myself. I was naïve enough to stay. Right then, I wasn’t young, I wasn’t naïve. Even from the doorstep I could smell the place, I could feel how much she had infused the house with her presence. Once upon a time it’d been like that with me, it’d felt like my place because everything about it was touched and loved and adored by me. The place was hers. Theirs now. I had no business here.
‘No, no thank you.’ I stepped back onto the elaborately tiled path. ‘No, no, I’ll call him. Thanks, thanks so much.’
She frowned like I was a bit crazy. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ she said with a smile so sweet and gentle and ‘pretty’ I knew instantly what had drawn him to her. Apart from the figure, the breasts, the hair, the smooth skin, it was her smile. Her sweet, sweet smile. I had a smile like that once. I’m sure we all did. We could all smile in such a way that made us pretty.
‘You’ve done more than you know,’ I replied before I walked away.
September, 2017
His stuff was packed by the time he made it over.
Mum had been overjoyed at the idea of keeping Betina a bit longer. ‘Take all the time you need,’ she’d cooed down the phone before hanging up so fast I was sure there would be scorch marks on the hall table.
I didn’t realise how quick a packer I was until it was necessary to work fast. All his clothes, books and CDs. His computers and electronic devices, his shoes, and incidentals like his toolbox, cables and magnets were all collected together as well. What didn’t fit into his suitcases and holdalls were piled up next to them on the floor of the corridor.
While I was doing it, collecting bits of Alain to remove from my life, I hadn’t felt anything. I was completely numb to it. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t crying, I was moving on with my life, putting these pieces into the jigsaw of removing Alain from my world.
‘It wasn’t what it looked like,’ he said as soon as he came through the door. ‘It honestly wasn’t what it looked like. She’s just staying there for a few d—’ His voice snagged when he saw his world, his life, laid out in the corridor, waiting for him to remove it. ‘Poppy, no.’ He came further into the flat, flattening himself slightly against the wall to edge past his belongings. ‘Just give me a chance to explain.’
‘Explain what?’
‘She’s just staying there for a while. Nothing happened between us. She’s an old friend—’
‘Old girlfriend,’ I corrected.
‘Not in many, many years.’
‘Do you know, I really wish I cared about that. It is not the fact you had a half-naked woman at your house that’s the problem. It’s not that you used to sleep with her. It’s the fact that I can’t trust you, Alain. We never dealt with how we met, what it meant about you and, I suppose, about me because I ignored what you did.’
‘We’ve got a child together, Poppy. Don’t you think we’ve moved on from that now?’
‘Alain, we could have a million children together and what difference would it make if I can’t trust you? I thought I could rely on you. When . . . I couldn’t at all. Our relationship is built on dodgy beginnings. You lying to me and trying to use me to make a name for yourself. Me coming back to you because I needed help. Me moving in with you without being asked to. Me pretty much talking you into having a child. And then asking you to move in because I was scared of being alone with or without a child. Our relationship is built on trash. And no matter how much you try to pretty it up, trash is trash is trash and it’ll always collapse under the weight of its shaky, insubstantial foundations.’
I could tell by the way he looked, the set of his expression, the way he held his body, that Alain wanted to seize my arms, shake some sense into me. ‘We are not built on trash,’ he said sternly.
‘OK, we’re not built on trash. Can you get your stuff out of here before I have to go and collect Betina? I’d rather she wasn’t here for any drama.’
‘I love you, Poppy. I’m not giving up without a fight.’
‘Fight yourself, Alain. I’m too tired. I shouldn’t have had a child with you. This would be so much easier if I hadn’t.’
‘Popp—’
‘I’m tired, Alain. Everything that’s happened, even how we met, has led to Betina. So I can’t wish any of it away. But, you know what, I thought we were going to be honest going forward. I have brought so much to you, I have been so vulnerable in front of you, and you could still hide a woman living in your house from me. It’s the pointlessness of that lie when you’re not even sleeping with her that’s mind-blowing. And it’s something you don’t come back from. We don’t come back from.’
‘I wasn’t sure how you’d take it,’ he explained. ‘She needed somewhere to crash, and you’ve seen her, she’s not exactly unattractive. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about me going over there to work when she was there all the time. It was a stupid thing to omit, but it wasn’t malicious.’
‘Do you want a hand taking your stuff to the car?’
He closed his eyes in regret. I remembered, quite clearly, when we were here last time. When I had to get dressed so he could tell me the truth. I shouted at him then. I was still Prison Poppy ninety-nine per cent of the time. Every little thing used to enrage or scare me. And when I was scared that made me angrier. I felt trapped all the time and being with Alain back then had been an escape from all those feelings. When he told me the truth about how and why he came to be in my life . . . I remembered the horror of it, the anger that drove me into the bathroom, ransacking the cupboard until I found that blade. I hated myself for falling back into that as much as I hated him. I hated that, after that, after I was forced to do that, I started again.
Even after I got back with Alain. Even when I was meant to be happy and everything was sorted because my brother and sister were back in my life after our parents had tried to keep us apart, sometimes the blade was the only way to cope. I didn’t want to go back there. Having Betina to focus on, having a job, having a normal life that wasn’t defined by my sleeping with a teacher and going to prison for it (even though I was still living under the threat of being for ever on licence) were the most important things in my life. I didn’t want to be reliant on a blade, to wonder when I’d need that type of release again.
‘Do you still love me?’ Alain asked after he had crammed most of his stuff into the back of his car with the seats folded down.
‘I’ll never stop,’ I replied. ‘But love isn’t the issue. Trust is. And believe me, if I don’t trust you, I can love you all I want but it’s never ever going to work.’