My Dead Husband, page 11
I left the office and took a sharp left, making for the toilets. I managed to keep myself together until I pushed my way inside. The moment I knew I was alone, I ran into one of the stalls and dropped onto the toilet seat, burying my face in my hands and sobbing.
I fought the crying even as I collapsed into it, as it wrecked me. I knew it didn’t help a damn thing. But I couldn’t stop.
The pervert customers, Kayden’s face leering in the glass, the homeless man on the beach, my book reviews, the work reviews, the hockey-mask man and the brick and the cold pond water rushing around me… Mum and her secrets, secrets I’d never dreamed she’d keep from me.
‘Ellie?’ Georgia was outside the stall. ‘Can I come in?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Ellie. What happened?’ She knelt down and smoothed her thumb over my cheek, the same way she had when we were kids and I’d had a falling out with Theo. ‘What did he say?’
I told her quickly.
Her features grew grimmer the more I spoke, until she sprung up and slammed her hand against the wall. ‘That piece of shit. It’s not your fault some losers have decided to leave those reviews. I’m going to speak to him.’
‘No, Gee.’ I stood and touched her wrist. ‘You need this job. Come on. You know what he’s like. He’ll make your life hell if you take a stand on this.’
I couldn’t put her family at risk: her husband, her kids, her normal, happy, beautiful life.
‘It’s such bollocks.’ She folded her arms.
‘Yeah, but that’s life.’
‘Well, it shouldn’t be.’
I laughed drily. ‘I’m not going to argue with you on that one.’
29
I left the office once I’d wiped the last of my tears from my cheeks, walking down the cobblestone pathway toward the main road. Then I heard footsteps behind me, running loudly on the stones, and I turned, certain he was back, but this time he’d do more than push me into a pond.
Freddy stopped and stared. For a second I thought he was angry at me. His features were twisted and his eyes blazed. ‘Georgia just told me what happened. Fuck, Ells. That’s out of order.’
I shrugged, finding it difficult to meet his gaze. That was how I knew I really liked him. Despite everything, I was acutely aware of how tired I must’ve looked, especially since my crying had ruined my make-up. ‘I can’t do anything about it. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I can do something about it. Wait here. I won’t be long.’
‘Freddy, you can’t…’
But he’d already spun and made toward the office. He threw open the glass door so aggressively I was surprised it didn’t smash.
I had no idea what he could say, but Freddy did seem to have a strange relationship with Nigel: getting away with more than any of us. He’d saved me from that tongue-lashing, but I doubted he could help me with this.
I sat on the wall, kicking my legs, feeling like a teenager waiting for her boyfriend… waiting for Theo. He’d had a wall outside his house and I’d often sit on it while he got ready, and then he’d emerge with a cheeky smile on his freckly face, running his hand through his curly red hair. ‘Sorry, Ells. But you know I have to look beautiful for you.’
I pushed thoughts of my childhood sweetheart away. They wouldn’t help me. Plus they could lead to that.
Say what you want about me, girl, but I’ve never lost a whole year of my life.
‘Ells.’ Freddy swaggered over, grinning. ‘Not sure if you’ll be grateful or annoyed, but you’re back in the game. Get your headset on and get ready to deal with self-entitled pricks.’
‘Wait, what? Are you serious?’
He took a short bow. ‘Come on. Don’t act so surprised. I’d do anything for you.’
‘But I don’t understand. What did you say?’
‘I told him I had a cousin who worked for a big newspaper, and if he pulled this shit he’d end up plastered all over the country as a bully and a sexist. That made him change his tune pretty damn quickly.’
I threw myself forward, flinging my arms over his shoulders before I had time to doubt myself out of the gesture. ‘Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me.’
He smiled warmly, his hands casually resting on my hips, reminding me of our sexting session and the steaminess we’d exchanged. ‘Let me take you out tonight. A few drinks, a few laughs. We can rant about what a prick Nigel is… and maybe, if you’re very polite, I’ll offer you a kiss.’
I slapped his chest playfully. ‘You’re a dick.’
‘Is that a yes?’
The alternative was to go home to a flat which, if my landlord’s lukewarm response had been anything to go by, was still vulnerable to any passing stranger in the street. Or maybe not a stranger: maybe Kayden in a hockey mask.
I knew I’d be safe with Freddy. I knew he’d protect me if anybody tried to hurt me again. It didn’t once occur to me that Freddy might be the man in the mask.
‘Yes. But you have to let me pay this time.’
He smirked. ‘I can’t promise that, Ells.’
30
I arrived at the bar early. The idea of skulking around the flat wasn’t appealing to me, especially since my landlord had said it could take one or two more days to arrange to have the window fixed. I’d tried to argue with him over the phone, but I felt deflated from the previous night and that day, overtired and overstressed.
It was better to be in public, sipping a rosé as I watched people walk down the promenade, stifling the thought that somebody was going to run up behind me any second. I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder every time somebody walked by.
My gaze was drawn to a family of four. The mother was a young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, with a pixie cut of jet-black hair and a profoundly contented expression on her face. She pushed a pram, pausing to lean down and lay a tender kiss on her baby’s forehead. The father and their toddler son rampaged ahead, the boy laughing as the man scooped him up.
I turned away quickly, stunned at the emotion which tried to choke me.
There was something so picture-perfect about it, something so not mine.
It was the sort of thing Kayden and I had spoken about in the early days. Lying in bed together, his fingers moving through my hair, he’d talk passionately about the life we’d build. ‘We’ll have two kids, and we’ll each have our favourite. I’ll take the lad to the rugby and you’ll go shopping and do your girly stuff.’ I’d giggled and told him he was a brute, no clue how right I was.
When I did finally get pregnant, I had to do the unthinkable, and I still hated myself for it. It was legal and it was acceptable and it was my choice, but every time my thoughts strayed to it, I prayed for another dose of amnesia.
If I could lose a year of my life, why couldn’t I lose that too?
I took another sip of my wine, remembering how Kayden’s face had twisted when I told him I was leaving him.
It had taken every shred of courage I possessed. But I had to. Because I couldn’t have another abortion, and Kayden refused to use contraception. I was terrified if I started to use the pill he’d find it, which would lead to a whole new hell I couldn’t stand to think about.
He’d walked right over to me, his powerful chest heaving, his stark azures burning. ‘You’re going to abandon me.’
‘It isn’t working. You must see that.’
‘You fucking whore.’
‘Please.’
I knew what would come next: what always came next.
But then he stepped back and this dead-cold look came into his face. After a moment, he’d smirked. ‘All right, Ellie. Have it your way. But let me tell you, you’re going to regret this. That’s a promise.’
It was the threat that had made me so paranoid during the past year, sure Kayden was going to re-emerge violently into my life.
‘Ells.’ I looked up to find Freddy standing over the table. He was wearing a shirt with the top two buttons undone to show his chest. His smile was genuine and his eyes were kind. I hoped. Or he was tricking me: like Kayden had tricked me. ‘Are you all right?’
He sat down and I nodded. ‘I’m fine. Do you want a drink?’
‘Sure, but I’ll get it…’
‘Nah-uh. It’s my turn. What’re you having?’
‘If you insist, I’ll take a beer.’
‘I do insist. A beer it is.’
I had to focus on my footsteps as I made my way to the bar. The glass of wine had hit me far too hard. I leaned against the mahogany surface and smiled at the barmaid, a woman with dyed pink hair and a sleeve of colourful tattoos. ‘We’ve got an offer on shots tonight,’ she told me. ‘Five for ten pounds. Any from the list.’
She gestured at a blackboard hanging over the bar, the alcohol written out in bold white chalk.
It would be a mistake, surely, to indulge in shots on no sleep and too much stress.
But I also knew it would make it much easier to push everything to the back of my mind. And after being targeted, insulted, assaulted, surely I was allowed to forget, at least for the evening.
I returned to the table balancing a tray heavy with my wine, his beer, and five shots of sambuca.
‘Jesus, Ells. I thought you said a quiet one.’
‘Are you complaining?’
He stood and took the tray from me, smiling in that captivating way of his: the way that urged me to reach over and run my fingers along his strong jawline. ‘Not remotely. How we splitting these bad boys?’
‘Because I’m nice, I’ll let you have three.’
He picked up the shot glass, raising it in a toast. ‘Here’s to getting unnecessarily obliterated on a weekday.’
I laughed – it felt good, welcome – and picked up my glass. ‘Cheers.’
I knocked it back, coughing as my eyes stung. He chuckled and picked up his second. ‘You’re not chickening out on me, are you, Ells?’
‘Hell no.’
I knocked back the second and then gripped the edge of the table, leaning back and letting out a sharp breath. ‘Damn, that really was unnecessary.’
He chuckled and then I was giggling, infecting each other with our laughter, our eyes meeting as we gave ourselves over to it. I wasn’t sure what was so funny, but it didn’t matter. It was enough that he could make me forget, make me live in the moment, despite the past and the future trying to split me apart.
If that didn’t mean something, I wasn’t sure anything did. I couldn’t think of anybody else who could draw me out of my bad mood like this. It was like we were made for each other… which was an insane thing to think, and surely a result of the sambuca bubbling in my empty stomach.
We got more shots, and the night glittered and spun.
At one point I brought a glass to my eye, sighting him as though through a telescope. ‘Tell me, young Frederick, why on earth are you not out with a nice young thing tonight?’
‘A nice young thing? That sounded a bit weird.’
‘Weird, how?’
He reached over and pinched my cheek. ‘Weird like you’re going to hunt down these nice young things – as you brand them – and chop them into pieces. Is that it? Are you a serial killer, Ells?’
I batted his hand away. ‘It’s true though. You could be out with…’ A group of women were walking by, their hair sun-blonde and their skirts short, showing their athletic legs, their tanned skin. Everything about them was glamorous and sexy. I waved at them. ‘With them! With one of them. But here you are with me.’
Freddy almost fell off his chair laughing when the women glanced over at me. Clearly I was making something of a scene.
My cheeks burned and I stared down at the table. ‘Are they gone? Please tell me they’re gone.’
‘Yeah. But I think you made them a tad self-conscious.’
I glanced up to find they’d walked down the street. Shaking my head, I said, ‘Maybe I need to keep my voice down.’
Freddy casually reached over and brushed my hair behind my ear, causing tingles to dance up and down my neck. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
I reached up and took his hand, pressing it against my face. I was very drunk, but I didn’t particularly care. ‘That feels nice.’
He stroked his thumb along my cheek, my skin sizzling with the contact. ‘When I first started at FCA, you were working on your book, right?’
‘Yeah, well, I was working on the edits. I remember because Gee came to tell me one lunchtime that a hunk had started. You’re lucky she’s married or she would’ve had you for breakfast.’
‘I would’ve still picked you. I’ll always choose you.’
A warning siren blared within me. Kayden had said similar things. But his hand felt so right against my face. ‘Cheesy.’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe so. But also true. Anyway, I saw you one lunch break, sitting on the bench outside work with that notebook in your lap. You had this look on your face, Ells… it was…’ He trailed off.
‘What?’ I urged.
‘It was so focused, so in the moment, so completely dedicated to what you were working on. I remember the way you brushed your hair from your face. I remember the way you smiled when you got an idea, and how quickly you scrawled it on the page. I couldn’t stop staring.’
My body felt warm at his words. ‘Freddy.’
‘Hmm?’
‘I think maybe I’d like to go home.’
‘That’s cool. I’ll ring you a taxi–’
‘No.’ I kept my eyes closed. Even with the alcohol, I couldn’t say this as I gazed at him. ‘I think maybe I’d like you to come with me.’
‘Oh.’ He paused, and then his voice rose. ‘Oh…’
‘Yeah.’
Suddenly I felt his breath on my face.
I could smell the shots, the beer, but I didn’t care. He was leaning across the table. I kept my eyes closed, firmly closed, and then his lips were on mine and I was moaning and he growled through the tight press of our mouths. Our tongues flared and went to war.
‘Come on.’ He stood and took my hand. ‘We need to get out of here. Now.’
31
Our hands were greedy as we strode from the taxi toward my flat. I fumbled with the keys in the door and we both laughed. And we kept laughing. We couldn’t stop. Then, once we’d slammed the door closed behind us, there was no room for laughter.
I leapt at him and wrapped my legs around his waist, gasping as he kissed my neck, as his hands got tight on my ass and everything became intense, important, vital.
There was no fumbling, no awkwardness.
Our bodies knew what to do and we gave ourselves over to the lust. We climaxed together, our eyes locked, lips close but not fused in a kiss. We painted each other in orgiastic breaths in those final moments.
Afterward, I lay in his arms, exhaustion catching up with me, as I felt his heartbeat slamming in his muscled chest. ‘Will you stay here tonight, Freddy?’ I murmured, already half asleep.
‘Of course, Ells.’ He kissed the top of my head. ‘If I had my way, I’d never bloody leave.’
32
Charlotte Salter’s Journal – Entry #5
I have reached the part of my story I do not like to think about. I have spent the years following that summer purposefully putting this far back in my mind. First I consumed myself with getting better – with therapy and medication – and then, once I’d met my dear Zachary and we conceived Eleanor, I dedicated myself to my family. I often wonder what my life would’ve been like had cancer not cruelly struck my husband… or if, after his passing, I hadn’t allowed myself to fall into a pit of despair.
I’d talked myself into believing my medication was dulling my grief, and I had to feel my grief if I was going to care for Ellie. I can see now this was my illness battering at the walls of the antipsychotics, desperate to be allowed back into my consciousness, but at the time the logic seemed trustworthy.
I’ve wished I could blot this summer from my memory ever since it happened, but if the mind will sometimes wipe away the past for a person – I know that far, far better than most – it turns out a woman cannot trigger it herself. Or, at the very least, I cannot trigger it.
I replay those moments over and over, hating myself with more bitterness with each recollection.
Kayden kept his promise to start bringing me food. Every day at around lunchtime, he’d stand at the end of my lane and wait for me to peer out of my window and see him. We’d arranged this after his first visit, when he’d knocked and sent me into a manic hunt for a hiding place.
I’d felt sure the knocking was them, whoever they were, the people: the endless people who were out to get me, who were going to kill me and rape me and steal my book idea, a book I hadn’t written or started to write. It didn’t matter if there was no logic in the fear.
He’d whistle twice. I still hear those whistles sometimes, like music that is far too welcoming, when I should remember them as sharp and ugly. Once I’d waved at him, he would swagger up the garden path with his hamper under his arm. More often than not he was shirtless. (Sometimes I saw the Other taking off his shirt.) He knew exactly what the sight of his bare torso did to me, and he was never surprised when I threw the door open and leapt at him.
I cannot say we made love, because that would not be strictly true.
We fucked. We fucked like rabid animals, as though fucking would bring us some sort of absolution.
Or, rather, I fucked like an animal.
For all his swagger and bluster, Kayden was very shy in the bedroom. He would lie back and stare up at me with his wide blue eyes, brimming with fascination, as I rode him as though my life depended on it: as I screamed as though I desired the whole world to hear how much I was enjoying it.
Sometimes, God, sometimes he would weep after we did this. He would bury his face in a pillow and weep, and what did I do, what was my response to these strange and incongruous tears? I would prance around the room munching on an apple or whatever else he’d brought me, ignoring the shivering lump in the corner of the room, ignoring the pain gushing out of him. And ignoring the Other, the pale shadow, who would sit in the opposite corner and watch it all: always watching, always there. Shimmering and fish-pale, this Other had become one of my most vivid hallucinations, and the mere sight of it caused vomit to broil inside of me.
