Friend Request(90)

As soon as the handbrake is on, I’m unbuckling my seatbelt and opening the door.

‘Thanks very much. I’ll just grab Henry and get him into bed, and we’ll speak soon, OK?’ My voice sounds high and tinny, completely unlike my normal voice.

‘It’s OK, I’ll bring him in. He’s so heavy when he’s asleep.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ I squeak. I clear my throat. ‘It’s fine,’ I repeat, lower and calmer. ‘I can manage.’

‘I know you can, but I’d like to help you.’

Before I can reply, Sam is out of the car and unstrapping Henry. He lifts him swiftly out of the seat. Henry’s eyes half-open and then close again, his head heavy on Sam’s shoulder. Sam shifts him onto one hip and heads up the garden path without speaking. I have no choice but to follow, rummaging in my bag for the key.

I open the door and stand aside to let Sam and Henry in. For a few wild seconds, I think about running, shouting for help – surely Sam wouldn’t hurt Henry – but it seems ridiculous and anyway, where would I go? I don’t know any of the neighbours. And as I look at Henry’s sleeping face over Sam’s back, I know that it was never really an option. Everything I thought I knew has shifted, like coming into your bedroom to find that someone has moved everything very slightly out of its normal place. I can’t leave Henry alone with Sam; I don’t know what he is capable of. I follow them in and close the front door behind me.

Sam goes straight into Henry’s room and puts him on the bed. Carefully he takes off his shoes and school uniform and eases him under the duvet dressed just in his Thomas the Tank Engine pants. Something about the way he does it makes me wonder if I’ve got this all wrong. Surely the person who knows that there’s no point putting pyjamas on our son because he’ll only wake in the night and take them off, can’t be the person who has done… I’m not even sure what it is he’s done. I can’t articulate it to myself, even inside my own head.

Sam comes out, leaving the door open a crack as we always do.

‘I think we need a drink after all that, don’t you?’

Before I’ve had a chance to answer, he heads straight down the hall to the kitchen and opens the fridge, taking a half-drunk bottle of white wine out of the door. I follow him into the room.

‘Look, Sam, I’m tired. Can we maybe do this another time?’ Just leave, please leave.

He takes two glasses from the top cupboard. I vow to completely reorganise the kitchen tomorrow if… if… my mind tries to finish that sentence but I close it down.

‘I don’t want a drink. Please, Sam, I just want to go to sleep. Let’s do this another time.’

I step forward boldly and take the glasses out of his hand and put them on the kitchen worktop.

‘It’s late. I’m exhausted. Please?’

He shrugs.

‘OK, if that’s what you want.’

I follow him back down the hall, hardly daring to hope that it’s nearly over, that he hasn’t realised he’s slipped up mentioning Nathan. A minute more and I’ll be locking the door behind him, and then I will be able to think.

He puts his hand on the Yale handle, poised to push it down.

Come on, I will him silently. Open the door.

His hand stops. He turns to look at me. Just open the door.

‘I can’t, Louise.’ His voice breaks, and on the door handle I can see his fingers shaking.

‘What do you mean? Can’t what?’ Breathe, just breathe.

‘I can’t leave. Not yet. I’m sorry.’

‘You can.’ I try to control the rise in my voice, to disguise the fear, the panic.

‘No, it’s no good.’ With a dart of pain that surprises me, I see there are tears in his eyes. In fifteen years together I never once saw him cry. He looks down. ‘You know, don’t you? Because of what I said in the car, about Nathan Drinkwater?’

I look down too, at the whorls and knots in the oak floorboards that we chose together, the dust gathering in the corners by the door mat.

‘I don’t know anything.’ My voice is a rasp, constricted by the muscles in my throat, which are seizing up, barely leaving room for the air to flow in and out.

‘You do, I can see it in your eyes. I told you at the reunion that I’d never heard of Nathan Drinkwater, and now you know I was lying. You’re frightened of me. You know.’ He’s not angry. In fact I’ve never seen him look so desperately sad, and the love and despair on his face screw the knot inside me even tighter. I sway slightly, my head spinning.

He reaches out to touch me but I jerk my arm away. His face falls.

‘Come and sit down,’ he says. ‘Let me explain.’

He doesn’t wait for an answer, but walks back to the kitchen, his tread heavy and slow, reluctant. I hesitate outside Henry’s room, his nightlight glowing through the crack where Sam left the door ajar. I gently pull it closed and follow Sam down the hall on legs that will barely carry me.

Sam has taken the wine bottle from where he left it on the worktop and is sitting at the table pouring two glasses. He gestures for me to sit down next to him, so I do, my body heavy, filled with lead.

‘Remember when we first got together, Louise?’ he says, twisting the stem of his wine glass. ‘We were so happy, weren’t we?’