He Said/She Said(103)

I think now that I was quietly having a nervous breakdown. It was a slow leaking of sanity, morality, even intelligence. The undergraduate essays I increasingly neglected to mark were frequently beyond my grasp. I would walk into rooms and forget why I was there; I’d go out to get a pint of milk and stand paralysed before the fridge in the 7–11 before coming home with bread. I started going for eight-hour walks and pretending I was at my department. Occasionally I would accompany Laura on her morning commutes, taking the Tube home again so that I could cry. These private howling sessions in our flat could last all day. They were internally painful, as though previously undiscovered tectonic plates were breaking apart to form new continents inside me. I’d keep one red eye on the clock, ready to travel back into town and accompany her home again.

I was so desperate to be rid of Beth that I retreated into boyhood fantasy again; now, time travel gave way to making Beth disappear, teleported or zapped to a parallel dimension. On a more earthbound level, perhaps she would be offered a job she couldn’t refuse; in New Zealand, for example. Perhaps she would find a new friend at her job, or in her bedsit. Perhaps – and this was the most outlandish, far-fetched notion of them all – perhaps she would simply have her fill of Laura. I wanted it to be painless for Beth. I never lost sight of how much she had already suffered. All the while, their friendship deepened by the day. I’d frequently come home and find the only two women I’d ever slept with cosied up in lopsided friendship, bound in profound, female communication I could never hope to penetrate. I felt stretched, as on a rack, between my duty to see and support Mac and my desperate need to stay at home and supervise Laura and Beth.

I thought constantly about how I would issue the ultimatum to Laura, knowing that I never could. I was scared of the answer. I kept mentally replaying Laura’s words: you’re acting like it’s an either/or situation. She had never denied it. The only way Laura would let Beth go would be if Beth herself pushed her away. And that was never going to happen.

There was a glimmer of hope when Beth gave us the photograph. Even as I stared at it, panic rising inside me, I thought: Laura’s going to head for the hills after this. It was a lapse in self-censorship I couldn’t have planned better myself. I thought, surely Laura won’t tolerate this. If anything, I was braced for the confrontation, worried that this would be the explosion where Beth, suddenly realising she was on the verge of losing Laura anyway, blurted the truth. But the confrontation never came. Instead of being horrified at Beth’s voyeurism, Laura was actually charmed by the picture. I’d got used to keeping myself under control, but even then I was surprised by the restraint I showed that day, agreeing with Laura as she said it was beautiful. I remember that she had her hair tied back that day and I grabbed it so tightly that if it had been any other part of her body she would have screamed in pain.

With Beth’s guard so far dropped that this seemed acceptable, there was no predicting what she might do, what she might say, next. This was both my greatest fear and my motivation. I hit my tipping point the day she let slip about hitching down to Lizard Point.

‘Do you have any idea,’ Beth had said, ‘what it’s like, spending all this time with you both and having to constantly bite my tongue?’

Laura blanched; she must have picked up on my own secret terror. After Beth flounced out, I walked to the balcony, gripping the railings for balance.

‘Where’s she gone?’ said Laura, when we both heard the street door slam.

Beth crossed the road away from the common, towards the Tube. ‘On to the common, through the trees,’ I said.

I waited till Laura had gone, then pocketed my wallet and took the stairs so fast it felt like flight. The traffic was against me, London motorists not wanting to give up their ten-second spurt of movement between two red lights.

I wasted valuable seconds feeding my Travelcard into the slot. By the time I was underground, Beth was on the platform, the sulphurous backdraught from an incoming train sending her scarf flying. I caught up with her as the doors opened, and grabbed her by the upper arm, soft flesh turning to iron with the shock of unexpected touch. It was the first bodily contact we’d had since that night in Cornwall.

‘Wait,’ I panted. ‘Please, wait with me.’ With a slight forward motion she tested my grip against her strength, then slackened in defeat.

We stood there in the diesel slipstream of the train as it pulled out for Edgware. For a moment we were the only people on the slender platform. The pit of the sunken train tracks gaped invitingly before us. It would be so easy to—

‘Do you know how it feels lying to Laura?’ she broke into my thoughts. ‘Of course you do.’

She let me lead her back to the bench. When I sat down, we were both shaking.

‘If she knew about us, it’d only make it worse,’ I said. ‘And we’ve kept it up for so long, now. It’s not like it just happened yesterday. You’ve been lying to her your whole friendship. You’d break her heart if you told her. You don’t want to do that any more than I do.’

‘It’s just so hard, living a lie. I didn’t understand how exhausting it would be.’

‘Beth. Are you threatening to tell her?’

A train blew in. She boarded without answering me. From the doors she said, ‘I really don’t know how you do it.’

Was that a threat? I didn’t know. I knew only that we couldn’t see her again. It was all too close to the surface now. The countdown to my destruction had been activated. I saw it in my mind’s eye, red digits on a black display spinning backwards towards zero, just as time had ticked forwards at the trial. This was no longer a case of me trusting Beth to keep quiet. It was about removing ourselves from the situation, or losing Laura for ever.