Woman Last Seen(99)
“Well, yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.” I shouldn’t be surprised by Fiona’s anger. It’s going to come from every quarter. My sons, my brothers, my mother. I shall need to brace myself for it. Bear it. I think of the moment I slipped between his sheets. And afterward, the views of the Tower of London, London Bridge and HMS Belfast that I enjoyed from our apartment window. These were places I had taken the boys. Trailed with them in ever-decreasing circles of interest. Crows, murders, battles—unable to enthuse them the way a YouTube video can.
“Were you drunk?” Fiona demands. The rain is clinging to us both now, not heavy but persistent, undeniable. Causing a film, like cellophane, that somehow separates us. My wet hair is getting in my eyes. I am carrying the wine in my one working free hand so I can’t push it away. Fiona persists, “Were you drunk when you first slept with him? When you started all of this?”
I glance at the bottle in my hand and realize I feel very drunk now. Blurred. Uncertain. I let the bottle gently slip out of my grasp onto the soft ground. In the dark, Fiona doesn’t notice. I reach for the truth. “No, I wasn’t drunk. I can’t use that as an excuse. I wish I could in a way. People would understand it more. Find it more forgivable, but I wasn’t drunk—or if I was, it was not on alcohol, it was something more. Maybe possibility. Maybe inevitability.”
“You were greedy.” Fiona raises her voice, to ensure I can hear her above the noise of the sea and the wind.
“Yes, I was,” I admit. Because that is it. In a nutshell. I was greedy.
“I don’t get it. You had a permanent sing-along, dance-along, lifelong-adventure buddy in Mark but that wasn’t enough for you. You had to hoover up another guy.”
“Well, I don’t see it that way. I—”
“You don’t get to live two lives. You are just one person. One body. You have to pick a life. Why wasn’t one enough for you? You stupid bitch. You already had it all.” Fiona’s insult is pushed out with a smile, but I can’t pretend to myself that she isn’t having a go. She clearly is more than confused. She’s not shouting to be heard above the sea, she’s shouting because she thinks I need telling. I stop and face her, it’s the least I can do. I’ve seen Fiona lose her temper before, many times. She is the epitome of the fiery redhead. Yet I’m shocked that her face is almost unrecognizable, twisted and split with what I now see is fury. “Do you have any idea what a freedom it is to be able to send a text, just a simple bloody text about what is on your mind, without having to second, third, fourth guess how he might take it?”
“What?” I ask.
“Once you are married, there is no such thing as coming on too strong, is there? You can’t be the crazy intense woman. That’s such a bloody luxury. Do you know how lucky you are that you got to be totally, 100 percent yourself because that’s what it means to be married?”
“Well, not really for me,” I point out. She splutters out a sound of indignation from her nostrils. She’s raging but a moment’s reflection must reveal that it was never that for me. The opposite. Having two husbands cost me the opportunity to be myself.
“Which one of them were you planning to get old with?” she demands. “Or were you going to hobble on your Zimmer frame backward and forward between the two?”
“I don’t know,” I stammer. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“You hadn’t thought at all, had you? What about when you were sick? Who looked after you? One of them would, that’s for sure. You were never on your own. You never had to crawl out of bed and drag yourself to the chemist for tissues and paracetamol. They probably think the sniffling, snotty version of you is cute, do they?”
It obviously isn’t the moment to tell her that I haven’t been bedbound ill once in the four years since this started. Mums rarely get the chance to be bedbound, bigamist mums have no chance at all. I had to push on. Instead, I remind her, “When you were ill, I brought you chicken soup. I went to the chemist for you.”
It is true: sometimes Fiona was like my third child. I’d drop everything to help her. As I know she would me. Even now. Wouldn’t she? She is furious with me at present, but I just have to ride out the storm. She’ll forgive me. Of course she will. Why else would she rescue me and bring me here to safety?
“I’m struggling with this, Kylie. Because I don’t know who you are. What you think and feel, what you say, what you do—there’s no consistency about you! And without consistency, you are nothing. You might as well be dead.” I recoil from her. It’s just a phrase, I tell myself. People say it; they don’t mean it. Except in this past week, for me, that seemed a scarily real possibility. I might very well have ended up dead. How can she say that to me now? She glares at me and adds, “You can’t be on two teams. You’ve got to pick a side. Tell me which one of them you loved the most.”
“I don’t know why it matters. It’s not as though I’m going to get to choose between them. One of them abducted me. The other no doubt hates me just as much. I’m not going to be able to save either relationship.”
“Just pick one!” she shouts.
“I took immeasurable risks for Daan. I lost friends for him. That shows I love him.”