Care must be taken, some accompanying notes to the medicine had advised me, that people did not use the drug for the wrong reasons. These reasons were eating-disorder related, I surmised, rather than anything else. This was for girls who took laxatives and emetics, who wanted to clear themselves out, to flush themselves away.
Jake stood up, staggering slightly, holding onto the sink. I could feel the words rising through my chest, small bubbles, like something exciting, something to look forward to. Even with the smell in the bathroom, I didn’t feel sick. My head felt extraordinarily clear, my perception tingling at the edges, as after lots of coffee or exercise. I can tell him, I felt at that moment, the rising again, my mouth opening to speak.
Jake, you know the pasta we ate last night? I gave you a separate one – I – I put something in the sauce.
I would not delay, soap-opera style: it was done. Another surge of energy, a pulsing in my fingers.
This is the first one – like we agreed? My voice was weaker now, fraying at the edges.
Jake was lifting his head from the sink, slowly. His hands were gripping its sides, his hair limp and damp across his forehead.
What? His eyes were narrowed. He breathed out a stream of acrid air, moving his head from side to side. You did what?
Shhh. The boys. I put a hand out, as though to touch him. He raised his head to look at me. I could see the emotions travelling over his face: there was something beautiful in it, like watching a shadow pass across a landscape from the window of a plane. He was repulsed, shocked, but then – the shadow moving, the shapes changed by sudden darkness – he was thinking something else. Now, I too had done something terrible. I would hate myself, wish I had never done it.
But I didn’t. Not yet.
We should do something today, I said. Go somewhere. We should – we should go to the sea.
Jake looked at me again, an exaggerated frown taking over his features.
What? he said again. I . . . I feel awful, Lucy. There’s no way I could drive anywhere.
I’ll drive. I’d had my licence since I was eighteen, but when we’d had the children, Jake became the driver. I needed to be in the back of the car, in the early days, sometimes lifting my breast out of my clothes to feed them as they stayed strapped in their seats. Even as they got older, sitting in the back listening to stories or watching screens, the tradition had continued. I was the one with the snack bag, handing out fruit, opening windows if one child turned green.
But I could do it: I could drive. I had dreamed about the ocean, I remembered now, waking in the night to the empty wrinkled whiteness of the bed, thinking it was foam, the very edge of the world. We needed it, the dream seemed to say: the wordless confirmation of the beach, the vastness of water.
We should go today. It was the kind of decision that we used to make together, when we were younger, when we had more time, more faith in the power of relocation. We would wake up on an empty day and decide to go to Norfolk, or Sussex, or Kent. We would speed away, our hearts running with the road, any morning tiredness ebbing into the sky.
But: Jake was white, could barely stand.
No. God no, he said, his hands at his temples. He looked much older, suddenly, confused.
Maybe tomorrow, then?
I have to go back to bed. He turned, not towards the sofa, but to the stairs, started climbing them slowly, holding onto the handrail. I heard him greet Ted on the landing – All right, mate? – could imagine him ruffling Ted’s fluffy hair as he passed. A small, sleepy voice:
Are you okay, Daddy? Are you poorly?
Hearing this, I could feel that something wanted to collapse inside me. Something wanted to give up, to stop everything. But I didn’t let it. Jake was going up to our bed, I noted. He felt entitled to this, now. He would lie in our bed, and feel his weakness. He would know – as I had known for years, forever – how easy it was for a body to be destroyed.
~
Whatever people might think, I am just like them. I always wanted to be good, to be right, to receive a pat on the head, a touch in the small of my back. Well done.
I never imagined that I would hurt a single person. When I first held those boys – my babies – I was afraid that I would drop them, swing them from a window, turn their prams over in the road. It seemed to be a miracle, that this didn’t happen. That we made it through alive.
~
18
On the way to the sea, there was almost no traffic; Ted had just grown out of car sickness but we kept one window open anyway, the coolness passing over us, the leafless landscape clouding by. Jake was feeling better, had even put some music on; I wondered if he had chosen it deliberately, an album from the beginning of our relationship, from our early drives. I used to rest my legs on the dashboard, let my hand lie on his jeans. Now, our bodies seemed to be miles apart, glowing with the separateness of strangeness. I held the steering wheel tightly, peered over the wheel. I could tell Jake was nervous, tapping along with the music, occasionally out of time, taking sharp intakes of breath as I rounded a bend at speed, slowed too hard behind another car.
Today, Jake looked almost normal, some colour back in his skin, but in the night I couldn’t stop seeing it: his whole body sickly, weakened. I had slept badly, waking at what felt like hourly intervals, as though by a newborn. But there was no one there: Jake had gone back to the sofa without me having to say anything. It was my own mind waking me up, the same pictures flashing through, fast as a flip book. In the deep, tangled space of 3 a.m., there was no triumph, no energy. My mind had become light, rootless, easily blown from one subject to the next, every one of them dangerous.
This morning I had put make-up on my face, covering the black circles under my eyes with a glossy beige paste. I had phoned the school, told them the boys were ill, the lie coming out easily, simply. I had never done this before, had never been able to cope with the anxiety of the transgression, the image of the teachers’ faces, sensing an untruth. Now, it seemed like nothing. Even Jake had called in sick without complaining. He just nodded and did it straight away, mumbled a few words into his phone in another room.
When we arrived, the seaside village looked different, warped, somehow, rough at the edges. We had never been there in winter, and at first the boys were bewildered, slow-boned, reluctant to get out of the car. I remembered that feeling, the sense that the journey was sufficient without an arrival, all that time watching the world unfurl itself, accompanied by music.
Jake had grown up near the sea. He was healthier by the ocean, he always said, his breathing and sleeping easier. Something in the atmosphere made his hair even curlier, as though he was returning to his true self. Today, I craved the smell at the edge too, its sharpness, gulls circling above fish, snatching them as they flickered into sight. We seemed to need this rawness, the place where comprehensible life gave way to mystery, salt water, death. Perhaps, I found myself thinking, this would heal Jake, heal both of us. Make everything better.
We crunched across the gravel path that led to the beach, the boys running ahead, their feet hitting sand before ours did, sinking deeply. On the shore, the sun was bitterly bright, completely unobstructed; I could see for miles, further than I ever remembered being able to before. It reminded me of the first time I wore glasses, aged eleven or twelve, the way the world suddenly became clear, complicated, every tree with separate leaves, every distant person with their own particular features.