Lucy, you know you can talk to me, don’t you? If there’s anything – anything wrong at all.
So she knew. Shit. Fuckity fuck. I had noticed the swearing in my head becoming very childish lately, as though I was learning how to use the words all over again. Curses had begun to spill out of my mouth, dribble-like, at ordinary moments, loading washing into the machine, pulling hairs out of the drain.
Ah, yes. Everything’s fine – but thanks. Thanks! The last few words were loud, sharply pitched, yelled over my shoulder as I pedalled away, the bike lurching to the side with the weight of the shopping, Ted calling out in surprise.
As I cycled home I could feel the humiliation filling me, moving my pedals forwards, driving me on. There was a flush, the heat that everyone talks about, but then something else, a deeper, slower removal of the self, a smooth sliding motion, like a drawer pulled completely out. In its place: a gap, a nothing, somewhere I had never been.
~
For a long time after university, I forgot all about the harpy. I buried my notebooks in boxes that were never unpacked, moved files to obscure places on my computer. It was easy, I thought, to get rid of her.
After all, so many obsessions pass like this, slide easily into oblivion. The boy bands whose faces used to cover my wall. A collection of porcelain pigs. The rows of stuffed animals: blank-eyed, certain solace.
None of them have come back. Only this.
~
21
As I tidied the living room, I felt her gaze over everything. I knew Vanessa would have noticed the teetering sub-Ikea furniture, guessed that the only good pieces – a large rug, a solid wooden table – were passed on by relatives who no longer needed them. She would have seen how dust had built up along the skirting boards, giving the house its own light grey fur, a lowering darkness. She would, without needing to think, believe that I was responsible. I had not cleaned the bathrooms while the children ate breakfast, as a mother at school told me she did.
Such a nice house, Vanessa had said to me last year, her fingers curled lightly around her ridged plastic cup, as though reluctant to touch it. Her nails were painted, a French manicure, white moons on dusty pink arcs. Her hair was coiffed – I could think of no other word to describe it – not fashionable but elegant nonetheless, a symmetrical loop around her features, a bow on the genetic gift of her face.
Something must be really wrong if he fucked an old woman. This would, surely, be what everyone was saying. But perhaps I should have been proud of Jake for so thoroughly failing to conform to the stereotype. At least she was not one of his graduate students, with a firm body and loose mind, someone I would have had to approach with an almost maternal scorn. She was so much older than either of us. She was of the generation that had it all, supposedly: the ones who were said to have taken everything for themselves, until there was nothing left.
When Vanessa had complimented the house, I had rushed to clarify, red-faced, holding a plate of mince pies: It’s only rented. Not ours. I wish!
Who was I pretending to be when I spoke like that? Stupid cunt. I whispered this under my breath as I sprayed the glass coffee table, wiping fresh streaks across its surface. I didn’t know who I was talking to but it felt good in my mouth anyway, a small wet kiss. Cunt was the best word for it, we had been told in a women’s self-defence class at university, the most feminist choice.
Ancient, meaning sheath. We should have wanted this, apparently, to be a covering for a man’s sword. At around the same time a man in a pub told me gender equality was impossible, as long as a man continued to be the active party in penetrative sex, the doer, the woman the done to. I’d tried telling him that surely a woman could just as actively cover a man, but he didn’t look convinced. Even then, it had all felt pointless, word games that changed nothing.
Jake had taken the boys out to play football in the park while I got the house ready. We had sat together on the sofa a few nights ago as he systematically deleted Vanessa from his contacts. At that moment, it had seemed to mean something, the way the screen cleared so decisively, the way her information could simply disappear.
I hung a coloured bauble from the corner of the mantelpiece, seeing an image of Vanessa’s profile picture in its colours, her face distorted, guppy-wide. Her generous mouth, big when she smiled, staggeringly large when she laughed. Good for—
I shook my head. Disgusting. I felt the sensation again: embarrassment, corrosive as acid, a sense of pitching, tipping into a forgotten emptiness. I would have no more children, but I remembered, now, exactly how pregnancy felt: like being taken over, taken up, willingly. I was – from the first positive test – happy to be inhabited, possessed, had loved having company at every second. There was someone to see the world with me, a silent, nudging companion, always there.
22
As people arrived at the party, I looked at each guest for signs of knowledge, every gesture open to interpretation. The way they reached for a glass, took off their coats. Their questions:
How are you all doing? Anything new? How was your term?
But these were normal questions, I told myself. These were the things people always said. I tried to stay busy, to focus on not burning myself as I lifted the mince pies out of the oven. Jake seemed completely at ease, at the centre of the living room, laughing with two of the men from his Thursday-night football team. He was wearing one of his best shirts, dark blue corduroy, his sleeves rolled up in the warmth from the fire.
Jake had thick, strong-looking forearms, always my favourite part of a man’s body, although the hair on his arms was sparse and fair. My preference, not rationally, but from some other, storybook place, was for the hair to be thick and dark, hatched as a pencil sketch, like the deepest parts of a forest. I couldn’t resist this sight, whenever I saw it, in a cafe or a playground or a train. Dark hair emerging from a shirtsleeve, moving towards a watch strap. It made me understand men who cut out parts of women in their minds, separating them, breasts, lips, legs, all floating free.
One of the men Jake was talking to – Antonio, father of three – had this hair, visible at the end of his shirtsleeves, a thick softness covering his wrists. I offered them a mince pie, holding the plate forward until they had all taken one, still in their squat foil trays, too hot to be eaten. Antonio lifted his pie to his mouth, squinted, moved it away again, his eyes meeting mine. We knew each other a little better than most of the people here; there’d been a dinner party, years ago, where Antonio got drunk and started weeping, unable to stop. It was a strange, bright, summer night, dream-like, my hand on his arm, his cheeks wet with tears.
Maybe this was why I saw it, indisputably, as he looked at me. He knew. He was looking to see how I was coping. He was wondering, perhaps, how I was standing up in our living room, wearing a nice dark red dress. I was wearing heels: I had brushed my hair. I’d put on foundation, mascara, lipstick. At a party, these things, on a woman, are usually conspicuous only by their absence. Frankie, from down the road, for example, came wearing jeans and a T-shirt she’d spent the day gardening in, filled one corner of the kitchen with a distinct smell of sweat.
But Antonio could see that I had made this effort, that I was standing upright, holding a plate of mince pies. He was wondering how I was doing it. I excused myself, went towards the downstairs toilet. In there, I would be able to fan myself with my hands. If there were tears, they could be flushed out and disguised with cold water. I could press my hands to my throat, hold it in. By the door to the bathroom, I saw a group of women, mothers from the school, already waiting.