The House Swap(41)

Slow the pace. The arrow on the speedometer tells me I’m crawling along but, from the rushing in my head and my ears, it’s hard to be sure. I fix my eyes on the centre of the road. I know this route so damn well I could do it with them shut. Might be easier. Cars are flashing and beeping as they overtake me. It must be only ten minutes until home – maybe fifteen. Not long, but my heart is pounding and, all at once, I’m staring down the barrel of a gun and I’m more scared than I would have thought someone who didn’t have much left to lose would be. I’m swallowing down panic. Clenching my hands on the wheel. And then it comes out of nowhere – a car cutting up from the right at the roundabout, and I realize too late that I should have given way, and I’m dragging the car blindly to the left and shooting forwards with no idea of what I’m doing or if it’s safe, the horn blaring in my ears and an ache spreading across my shoulders and, somehow, miraculously still alive.

I pull into the next lay-by and get out of the car. There are tears on my face. The air is sweet and clean. I lock up and walk the rest of the way home. I’m chillingly sober. It’s like the pills drained out of my system the instant I swerved the car. Words are falling like rain in my head and I’m telling myself: Enough now. Can’t do this any more. Scaring myself. Time to get clean. So many times I’ve said these things, only for them to fall down like dominos the instant a breath of trouble touches them. Not this time. Not this time.

I stumble through the front door and into the lounge. Caroline is on the sofa, knees drawn up to her chest, her face intent on the lit screen of her mobile. I’d forgotten she had a day off. She’s texting, and she doesn’t see me at first. When she does, the colour drains out of her face and she stuffs the phone into her pocket and glares at me hard, like she’s not sure who I am. She’s texting him. That Carl guy, from her work. I’m not an idiot, and I worked it out long ago, but I’ve found it increasingly hard to give a shit about anything much lately, and the sum total of my thoughts on it so far has been that it’s hardly a fucking big surprise. Easier to write her off as a faithless slut than think about it properly, but right now all I want is to move forward into her arms and feel her cheek warm against mine and have her tell me it’s all right.

‘Caro,’ I say, and the instant I open my mouth I realize I’m not sober at all, far from it. My head has tricked me again and now the words won’t come out.

She’s looking at me with disgust written all over her face. ‘You didn’t even go to work, did you?’ she says.

‘No,’ I say. I mean that she’s wrong, but it doesn’t sound right. The room is dipping and spinning around us. I’m trying to remember how many pills I took in the clinic and why this feels so different and so strange.

‘You bastard,’ she’s saying, her voice thick with tears already, because they’re only seconds from the surface these days, no matter where we are and what we’re doing. She’s run out of things to say as well, but that doesn’t stop her. She just says the same ones over and over again, and I want to tell her that I understand and that I’m finally on the same page, but I can’t decide how to say it. My thoughts are swelling and popping in the air like bubbles.

‘We should talk,’ I tell her, but for some reason it enrages her and she swipes at me with a half-closed fist, yelling something I can’t catch and bursting out of the room, slamming the door before I even have a chance to take in what’s happening. I hear her in the hallway, scrabbling for her shoes, sobbing and banging her fists on the wall, shouting like she’s gone insane. It sounds crazy, but I envy her. She can burn it out. She’s so fucking good at being angry, and all I can do is stand here and wonder how the hell it all went so wrong so fast.

The front door slams and I’m alone in the house. My hands are shaking, and it isn’t just the pills. I’m replaying that instant on the road in my head, the way the car jerked out of control. Still can’t believe I’m alive. And now I’m wishing I’d taken my hands off the wheel and closed my eyes and I can’t understand why I didn’t. I’m moving uselessly forward into the room, and I can see that Caroline’s left her handbag slung next to the sofa, and before I know it I’m opening her wallet. I don’t have much left this month. I’m going to need it. I pull out the two ten-pound notes I find there. Stuff them into my pocket. And fuck yes I feel like a bastard. But there’s no change there and all it does is dig the writing on the wall in a little harder and deeper – and at times like this it’s like it’s written in blood, carved right into my own skin.



I’ve taken to sitting in the window seat in Caroline’s lounge. It’s a vantage point on to the main road, three floors below, and although the view is pretty industrial and bleak, there’s a strange sort of relaxation in watching the cycling rhythm of cars and passers-by. It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m not sure how long I’ve been here. I’ve been thinking about how to reply to her latest message, not getting too far. I thought I’d enjoy seeing her suffer, but the reality isn’t what I expected. It’s like trapping a butterfly under glass and only seeing once it’s up close that maybe it wasn’t as beautiful as you thought, anyway, and that, now it’s where you want it, the point of it has almost gone.

I’m staring down on to the street, barely seeing, when I dimly register something strange – a point of stillness in the churning procession below. The scene snaps into focus and I see that a woman and a young child are standing at the foot of the building. The child is pointing upwards towards the window I’m sitting at, his mouth moving with words I can’t read. He’s wearing a blue school blazer and grey trousers, and his fair hair is neatly parted in the middle. There’s something in the heart-shaped curve of his face that keeps me looking, and I’m going to the photographs in the hall and examining them closely, pressing my face close to the glass and trying to match up what I’m seeing with the mental picture of what I’ve just seen. It’s him. Eddie.