Sorrow and Bliss(44)

He opened it on his computer to teach me how it worked. I told him that seeing numbers in such concentration caused an invisible membrane to come down from underneath my eyelids, blinding me until the numbers went away. There were many categories. One of them was called Martha’s Unexpecteds. I said I had not expected him to be so Stasi-like in his financial oversight. He said he didn’t realise anyone would suggest a Word document and the calculator on their phone as an alternative to a spreadsheet. I told him I would try and use it, but it would be in a spirit of self-denial. Patrick said later, it was genuinely incredible how many Unexpecteds one person could attract.

*

In bed, on the nights he wasn’t working, Patrick would do a difficult Sudoku from a book of only difficult Sudokus and I would ask him when he was going to turn the light off. I told him that was when I felt the most married.

Once he had finished, he would put the Sudoku book away and read articles from medical journals. If I lay with my back to him, Patrick would absent-mindedly begin pressing his thumb into places that hurt at the base of my spine. He bought massage oil from somewhere and when he found out that things with fake perfume in them make me feel like I am being slowly asphyxiated he bought coconut oil, a kind from the supermarket that came in a jar and had a high smoke point which, the label said, made it suitable for all kinds of frying. Even when he put the journal away, he kept rubbing my back. Sometimes for the whole of Newsnight, sometimes after he would turn off the light. That was when I felt the most loved.

One night, I rolled over in the dark and asked if he had any feeling left in his thumb. I said, ‘How can you do that for so long?’

He said, ‘I’m hoping it turns sexual.’

I told him that was a shame. ‘I’m hoping it turns into me being asleep.’ I heard the lid come off the jar.

Patrick said, ‘May the best man win.’

Our sheets smelled like Bounty Bar.

*

Then Patrick moved to a different hospital on the other side of London. It felt like he was never home. I was still working at the publishing house. Although spring, it was cold and constantly grey and when no part of the working day could be spent on the roof with the only other girl who was left at the company besides me, it was impossible to sustain activity beyond lunchtime. The editor started telling us to go home if we had nothing to do because he couldn’t bear our salad lunches and the sound of ladies’ voices, talking and talking. I felt like I was always at home. I would invite Ingrid to come over or would ask if I could go there. She always said yes but if the baby had not slept, or was sleeping or nearly asleep, she would text and cancel at the last minute. Or I would go, and she would have to feed him in the other room because he was distractible, or she would complain or talk endlessly about the women in her baby group and I would go home, feeling guilty that from the moment I had arrived I had been trying to think how to leave.

In bed, on those nights when Patrick was at work and I had seen no one all day, I missed him so much it made me angry. I stayed up late reading Lee Child novels I bought on his Kindle and composing arguments to have with him when he got back. I told him I did not feel married. I told him I didn’t feel loved, in which case, what was the point.

That was also when I started throwing things. The first time, a fork at Patrick because he walked away from me when I was upset. About something so small – as he was getting ready for work, he mentioned that he had got two more Amazon receipts that day and because I had previously told him I was going to read all of James Joyce including the shit ones by the end of summer, he was starting to worry that the Jack Reacher thing was a cry for help.

I remember him stopping when the fork hit the back of his leg and rang onto the floor, his looking back and laughing, out of shock. I laughed too so then it was a joke. My funny impression of a wife going insane from loneliness. He said ha, okay. ‘It seems like I should go then.’ And I threw something at the door as he shut it behind him and no one laughed.

The next day, Patrick did his impression of a husband who hadn’t had things thrown at him the night before. I kept waiting for him to mention it. He didn’t. At dinner I said, ‘Are we going to talk about the fork?’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, you weren’t feeling great.’ I said fine, if you don’t want to. I sounded angry but I was grateful that he hadn’t made me apologise or explain why I had reacted that way to a joke, because I didn’t know. I said, ‘I’m sorry anyway’ and told him I wouldn’t do it again, ‘obviously.’

But I kept throwing things, in moments of rage that were unpredictable and incommensurate with whatever had happened. Except once – a hairdryer, hard enough that it left a bruise where it hit him, because I had complained about being lonely and he said, laughing, that I should have a baby for something to do.

As soon as I had done it, I would go out of the room, leaving the pieces of whatever I had broken on the floor. They would have been swept up and disposed of, always, by the time I came back.

As a teenager, whenever she was getting ready to go out, Ingrid would have a tantrum about what to wear, becoming so hysterical so quickly, she seemed like a different person. She pulled outfits out of her wardrobe, tried them on, wrenched them off, sobbed, swore, screamed that she was fat, told my parents she hated them and wanted them to die, tipped her drawers out until everything she owned was on the floor. Then she would find something and instantly she would be fine.