The House Swap(26)

I open my mouth, then close it again. I know he’s lying, but there’s something so powerful and so grimly familiar about this outright denial, this impenetrable brick wall, that I can’t think of anything to say.

‘Fine,’ he says again. His hand is pulling at his shirt collar, fidgeting and scraping. I know this state: the strange hyperactivity that so often spirals into agitation, paranoia and confusion. He lunges forward, tries to kiss me on the cheek, and I find myself shrinking back instinctively, barely able to believe how what I once wanted so much now almost repels me.

His face briefly twists with hurt, but a second later he wheels away from me and snatches Eddie up from the floor, throwing him into the air and roaring. Eddie loves him in this mood, of course, and as I watch him giggling and shrieking, it strikes me that it’s because he understands it, or thinks he does. The way Francis behaves at these times is like a child, with no adult thoughts or inhibitions.

I take Eddie quickly from his arms. ‘I’m going to run his bath,’ I say under my breath, avoiding Francis’s eyes.

‘Oh dear!’ Francis shouts after me, waving his arms extravagantly. ‘I’ve done the wrong thing again!’ His tone is shifting, turning subtly nasty, but I shut the bathroom door behind me and block it out.

I run the water and bathe my son, scooping up handfuls of bubbles and smoothing them over his skin. He’s content, chatting away in a nonsensical stream of consciousness about the video he has been watching. ‘The boy went to the wood and there was a bright light and I saw the monster but its eyes were blue and I didn’t remember …’

‘That sounds good, sweetheart,’ I say, stroking my hands over his wet hair. The feel of him calms and grounds me a little.

I dry him and get him into his pyjamas, then we snuggle together on his bed and I read him a story. ‘And the mermaids swam in the silvery sea, and sang their beautiful song,’ I recite. I try to concentrate, but I can’t help thinking of Carl and the things we did just hours ago, the things he said to me and the feel of his hands on my bare skin. It feels strange to be having these thoughts now, with my son curled up beside me, but they’re my talismans, keeping me safe from the other thoughts I could be having.

‘Night night, Mummy,’ Eddie whispers when I’ve finished. His grey eyes are large and solemn as I tuck him in, shining in the semi-dark. I gaze into them, and guilt stings my skin – the knowledge that there is so much he doesn’t know, so much that is taking me away from living with him in the here and now, so much time when I want to be somewhere else.

Tears are threatening, and I lean down and kiss his forehead, breathing in the scent of his freshly washed hair. ‘Goodnight,’ I whisper. ‘Love you.’ He smiles faintly and rolls on to his side, reaching for his favourite stuffed rabbit and burying his face into its neck.

I watch him for a moment, and unease ripples through me, too familiar to need voicing to myself. I remind myself that he will be asleep in minutes, and that he always sleeps through the night; that I always have my phone switched on; that I have friends no more than five minutes’ drive away if they are needed. That Francis is his father, and that he loves him.

Softly, I stand up and cross the room, slipping out of the nursery. I realize that I haven’t even taken off my shoes since I came back. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted a quick getaway.

‘I’m going now,’ I begin, but Francis is slumped on the sofa, his energy burnt out as fast as it came, eyes closed and head lolling to one side. It’s impossible to tell if he is asleep or if he just doesn’t want to acknowledge me. Either way, it comes to the same thing.

I stand there looking at him for a full minute, maybe two, searching for the man I fell for so hard that, when we were apart, I used to do little but sit around and dream of him, feeling his absence like a missing limb. These days, it’s when he’s right there next to me that I feel that absence the most. When he isn’t there, I can remember him as he used to be. But when we’re together, there’s no hiding from it – the knowledge that whatever was once there has gone, and that I’m stuck in limbo, inextricably and unhappily intertwined with someone I can’t fix.

In repose, his face is almost serene. I’ve been unfaithful to you, I say silently. I’m cheating on you. These words have been running through my head for weeks with monotonous regularity. Maybe I’m hoping that, at some point, they’ll unlock something inside me, that they’ll find their force and hit home. So far, it hasn’t happened. I turn away and leave him alone, not bothering to switch off the light.

I have dinner with Jess in a little pizza restaurant where the smell of oregano and wood-fired dough curls enticingly through the air, then go on for drinks in a hot, packed bar, the tables glinting with coloured candles. We chat about work, our children, things we’ve seen on television. A couple of times, she asks after Francis. The first time, I shrug and say he’s fine, but when she asks again later I can’t help saying that things are no better. She knows more than my other friends do about the way things are between us – has plenty of reasons to believe that our marriage is on shaky ground. All the same, I have never mentioned the pills. I drop hints sometimes, half wanting her to read between the lines, but whenever she begins to, I paper over the cracks as swiftly as they’ve opened up.

‘Sorry to hear that,’ she says now, her face creased with concern. ‘Is there anything you can do, do you think? Is he still cutting down on things at work?’