One mile away.
Staring at me right now.
I have no way of knowing.
‘Are you going out tonight?’ I ask.
‘I did say to a client…’ George begins. I meet his eyes and his gaze flickers to the flowers he had given me, which now sprout from a bright yellow jug on our coffee table. ‘Do you want me to stay here, Leah?’
‘Yes, please,’ I say, adding hurriedly, ‘it isn’t because I’m scared to be alone.’ It’s partly because I’m scared to be alone. ‘It’s… I’m worried about you, George.’
A flicker of surprise passes across his face. It’s horrible it’s such a shock to him that I’ve been thinking of something other than myself, my sisters, the anniversary. Despite everything, I love my husband with all my heart and it seems he has lost sight of that. We have both lost sight of that. I sit on the sofa, patting the space next to me.
He cautiously settles himself. ‘I’m… okay.’
‘I miss you. Archie misses you. We miss our family movie evenings.’ Finding Nemo and buttery popcorn. ‘And our games nights.’ Hungry Hippos while Archie was awake and once he’d gone to bed, cards. Red wine and cheese and crackers. Olives. Folk music streaming through the Bose. Dylan urging ‘Don’t Think Twice’ as I arranged my cards into suits and tried to second-guess what George would be collecting.
‘It’s been… hard.’
I think he means I’ve been hard, but I wait for him to elaborate.
‘The business isn’t doing great,’ he says eventually. ‘I’m doing all I can but… I’m sorry, Leah.’ His eyes are sad, bordered with fine lines that hadn’t been there months before. When was the last time I had really looked at him? There is a groove on the bridge of his nose, wrinkles forming on his forehead. Each one of them telling the story, the story of us.
‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for.’ I know I have a hundred apologies to make to a hundred different people and even then, it won’t be enough. I hate the way I’ve made him cross lately – wearing the gloves, restarting my rituals – and I hate the way he has to fight to keep his feelings in check for fear of upsetting me. I only pick up on his anger from his body language, never his voice. I’ve let him down.
‘I’ve let you down…’ His voice cracks, along with my heart. I can’t let him stagger under the weight of our family alone any more. It is breaking him apart. Emotions flicker in his eyes and I know how conflicted he is. It must be awful to leave your warm house, on cold nights, to schmooze with clients when you’d rather be reading a bedtime story to your child. Snuggled up on the sofa with your wife. Knowing that whatever you are doing, it still isn’t enough. I have it easy, the one who stays home in the evenings. Who works part-time. That’s one thing I can change, right now.
‘Lionel’s offered me extra hours because Carol’s leaving.’
‘I don’t know, Leah. I don’t think you should.’
‘Because you’re the man?’ George is quite traditional sometimes.
‘Because of Archie. Carly’s great helping out but how would you feel if she were always the one picking him up? Do you really want to work full-time?’
‘No. But if I need to, I will. I’ll do everything I can to help, you know, with money,’ I am lying to myself. Lying to him. The TV production company are offering enough to obliterate our debts but I can’t sell myself that way. The thought of it makes me feel sullied. ‘We’ll be okay.’ Another lie, but sometimes we tell ourselves the things we need to hear, don’t we? As though our words can make it so.
‘Yeah.’ He shuffles closer, puts his arm around me. I rest my head on his shoulder. We sit in a silence that is companionable rather than awkward.
I must have dozed off because the slam of a car door rouses me. Within seconds I am on my feet, peeping out of the window again.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ George says behind me. His breath hot on my neck.
Upstairs, I stroke George’s face with my fingers, feeling the rough stubble beneath my skin. I never wear gloves in bed. It’s my safe place. The feel of him around me, on me. In me. It’s the one place I forget. His lips are dry as I push mine against his, which are slow to move in response. My thumb dips under the elastic of his boxers. He catches my hands in his. Raises them to his mouth and kisses them. ‘I’m so tired.’ Rejection stings but I understand.
‘It’s been good to talk, though, hasn’t it?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Leah?’ There’s a beat. ‘I miss you too, you know. You have a choice to spiral backwards or to move forwards. To not let your past define your future. You get to decide, no one else.’
Turning this over, I coil my body around his, wishing I could draw in his strength. He is right. Anniversary or not, I can’t, won’t let that man break me. If I did, he’d be breaking us. George. Archie.
Tomorrow, however scared I feel, I will drop Archie off at nursery and go to work. Ask for more hours. Step up to my responsibilities. I am an adult now, not the scared eight-year-old girl I once was, however much I still feel her presence inside me with every decision I make. Everything I do. For me. For my family, it is time to move on. Perhaps there is something in Marie’s words. Twenty years of suffering is twenty years too much. In a few days the anniversary will be over. But I can make it lose its power now. Like throwing water over the wicked witch and watching her shrivel. Forging a normal life will be my bucket of cold water.
Enough.
I can cope now, I can. Even if it is the fear of George slipping away from me, fear of losing something, someone else, that has made me determined to do more. Be more. I won’t let another family fall apart. Not when I can stitch our fraying threads back together.
I fall asleep.
It’s still dark. A noise wakes me. I lie motionless. My body rigid. Fingers gripping the duvet.
Waiting.
My eyes scan the room. The digital clock shouts 6 a.m. in neon green digits. There’s a warm orange glow emanating from the plug-in night light by the door. Archie thinks it’s funny we have one too. He thinks it’s so we’re the same as him but what he doesn’t know is that I hate the way the night-time swallows me, the suffocating blackness. The fear that something bad, someone bad, will spring out of the shadows.
I know that sometimes they do.
There’s nothing to be heard except George’s breath rattling in his throat. Slowly, my hands relax.
My pyjamas are damp with terror. In my nightmare I had taken Archie to the circus but we were the only ones in the Big Top, the smell of sawdust rising from the empty ring as we took our rickety front-row seats, fluffy pink candyfloss balanced on sticks. The lights went out, Archie had whimpered.
‘It’s okay,’ I had whispered but my heart was pounding. The urge to run immense.
Brightness had filled the tent but only for a second but that second was enough for me to see it. The clown. The lights began to strobe and each time they flashed on, the clown’s face loomed closer and closer. His smiled his slashed red grin, sharp teeth dripping with blood.
And that was when I woke.
There’s a circus coming to the meadow in town in the new year. We won’t go. We never do.