My recovery, or improvement as the professionals prefer, while spectacular was not complete, and I carry with me the residual effects. At first glance I appear relatively unscathed physically but I have quirks of personality and behaviour that make me different and that have, despite my best efforts, dictated the course of my life.
If how I am now was the result of an accident I might find it easier to accept. Instead I am sometimes suffused with rage, a seething hatred that I must tamp down and set aside for no good can come of it. I could spend my life searching and wondering and obsessing about the who and the why, with the awareness of it running on an endless spool in my mind. But this would change nothing. All it would do is allow my attacker to take even more of me so, hard though it has been, I have learned to at least fake acceptance.
Thankfully Tom accepts my past, and the limitations it brings, with gentle solicitude. We don’t have children and, while there is theoretically no reason why women who have suffered traumatic brain injury can’t conceive, it’s more difficult for us so I know I may never bear fruit. The doctor spelled it out to “manage our expectations.” Irregular menses, post-partum difficulties, the “cognitive demands” of rearing a child. I swear I felt my ovaries shriveling. While Tom claims not to mind, that his life is full and he’s happy, I see him looking and know his longing runs deep. His mother has helped of course; I found the link she sent me, “11 Trying to Conceive Tips the Experts Want You To Know”—and yes, there were that many capitals—particularly uplifting. Tom hopes that a change of scene, and a home we can “all” grow into, will kick my reproductive system into action. I hope so too, for the strain of this is beginning to take its toll.
I work. I am an artist, or perhaps more accurately a jobbing painter, which suits me fine as I can work from home and shut myself away from the world when I need to or want to. My paintings are abstract and have been variously described as visceral, uninhibited and thought-provoking whereas the truth is that my style is more the product of my physical limitations. I have twitches and tremors that tend to place hyperrealism firmly outside the scope of my capabilities.
My painting enjoys moderate success, no doubt in part due to my history, which Caitlin, my gallerist and agent, insists I use to my advantage. Her view is that anything positive I can pull from my experience is fair game. I feel uneasy with this approach, as though I am exploiting something vaguely unsavory but then, what do I know. I put aside such sensibilities and queasily play the victim.
“The Victim,” sometimes I wonder if that’s how Tom sees me.
It’s noon. I’m hot and sleep-befuddled. The sheets are twisted and clinging to my skin but the pain in my head has gone. I feel better than I did earlier and can’t really recall what was so wrong. I go through to the bathroom and turn on the shower, standing in front of the mirror as I wait for it to run warm. Gray eyes look steadily back at me or at least one does, the other one only pretends. The skin either side is showing the faint beginnings of crow’s-feet and what once was smooth is now marked by their tiny patterings. I of all people can hardly lay claim to them as laughter lines. Otherwise my olive skin, courtesy of my father, is pulled tight over high cheekbones and a strong jaw, marred only by the scar showing its puckered edges from beneath my fringe. My hair needs trimming. It’s still dark and I keep it long to my shoulders, swept to the side to obscure my scar and distract from my sightless eye. It is a capable face and it frustrates me that I can’t always live up to what it offers.
After my shower I dress, pulling on jeans and a white T-shirt. I’m losing weight again. My hip bones stand out hard and knobbly under the skin and my legs are becoming those of a child.
I go down to the kitchen to find Tom has been busy in my absence packing the picnic basket, which is ready on the side.
“Hey, you feeling better? I thought it would be nicer not to bother with a pub if that’s okay with you but to have a late lunch in the garden if we can. It should be warm enough, and it might give us a chance to get a feel for the place.”
It sounds like a nice idea, so I add a bottle of prosecco from the fridge.
Tom shakes his head. “Really? Given how you were this morning, shouldn’t you give that a miss today? I know you’ve been fine, but we don’t want to push things if you’re having headaches again.”
He moves to take the bottle from my hand and I feel a sudden spurt of irritation, hot and bitter.
“Tom, please don’t, I’m not a child,” and I place the bottle firmly next to the basket. “If we’re going to do this then we should make a day of it.” The sun is shining and the idea of a proper picnic under the trees suddenly appeals. I imagine lying next to him on the grass looking up at the leaves, with the fizz and pop of bubbles on my tongue and suddenly I’m inexplicably happy. I don’t know why I’ve been finding this so difficult. Maybe the countryside is just what we need. A house and a garden with perhaps a studio, looking out across fields. I wrap my arms around him and lay my head between his shoulder blades, feeling the heat radiating from his back.
“Let’s go and see this place that’s got you so excited.”
He turns and smiles at me, his eyes crinkling up in that familiar way and I push aside the last vestiges of doubt.
2
MAY 2004
“But all was false and hollow; though his tongue dropped manna”
—Milton, Paradise Lost, Book ii
She was just what he’d been waiting for. The first time he’d seen her, booking in at reception, he’d known she was his.
He checked no one was watching and bent forward. Quickly, like a snake, he flicked out his tongue and ran it across the door handle where her hand had been. He was sure he could feel the molecules of her dancing on his tongue. Her DNA mingling with his saliva. He swallowed. Now he owned a little something of her and the thought made him feel stronger, more alive.
He’d watched her this time. He’d seen her lips gently parting to reveal her inner pinkness, all dark and secret. He’d imagined the plump softness of them and the slippery moistness of her mouth against his tongue.
He closed his eyes and still she shimmered, bright against the sooty blackness of his lids. God, she was glorious and the very thought of her was more than he could bear.
He slid from the doorway and into the corridor, shielding his tumescence from prying eyes. He must find out more, who she was and where she lived, and what she did and where she went. His mind ticked like a bomb, ticktock, her time running out.
He’d slipped out and followed her for a while, until she met up with those simpering bitches. Girls with coarse dark hair and shrill voices, with their pushed-up tits and mottled thighs. Not like her. She was golden and perfect, a firefly luring him and pretending not to know it.
She’d made him angry, laughing with them. It cheapened her. It made her lose some of her glow and he needed her in all her shimmering perfection.
He’d stood at the bus stop burning with rage and his civilized veneer had slipped, just for a moment. He’d turned as a woman joined the queue and for a second their eyes had met. He’d felt her instinctively recoil and move away from him, for she’d glimpsed behind his mask and had sensed what he was; she’d felt the thing living deep within him. Oh, if they only knew. His body was a carapace with the real him curled up inside it, looking out at the world from behind the wet bulges of its eyes. He rarely let the mask slip but when it did, when they saw him and he smelled their fear, it was sublime.