The House Swap(6)

For the next hour I sit in the tight little circle of my workmates, listening to the conversations flowing around me, barely in the room. When I get to my feet and say my goodbyes, Carl comes over to wish me a happy Christmas.

‘See you in the New Year,’ he says. ‘Have fun.’ His hug is friendly, vaguely affectionate. It lasts about two seconds, and yet it sends something unfamiliar ricocheting through me, something I can’t quite pin down and examine before it’s gone.

‘You, too,’ I say. ‘Bye, then,’ and then I’m ducking out of the bar, my heart beating fast again, and my bones rattling under my thin jacket as I step into the icy-cold air.

All the way home, those few minutes at the bar replay senselessly through my head. I lean my head against the steamed-up window of the bus. I’ve never thought about Carl this way before – not really, not seriously – but right now I can’t drag my mind away. A harmless little fantasy, I tell myself. No one could begrudge me that. And suddenly the gates swing open and I’m wondering what it would be like to kiss him – to kiss anyone, after all this time. The thought is strange and violent. I press my fingertips against my forehead, which is already aching. I’m going to be in no state to be the perfect wife and mother tomorrow.

When I reach home, I unlock the door quietly and, as soon as I do so, I can hear Francis snoring. I tiptoe to the half-open door of the lounge and see him sprawled on the sofa, fully clothed, dead to the world. Silently, I turn away and go into the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I pull off my short silver dress, feeling the sequins scratch against my bare skin, peel off my underwear so that I’m standing naked in front of the window. The curtains are open, and I hesitate for a few seconds before pulling them shut, a half-formed thought lurking darkly in the back of my head: a sudden, wanton desire to be watched, to be seen.

Throwing myself down on the bed, I reach for my handbag and pull out my phone, seeing at once that it is flashing to signal a new message. I bristle with instinctive knowledge and, sure enough, it’s Carl’s name that appears on the screen.

Good to see you, the message reads. You’ll be glad to know I decided to go home soon after you left. Got to stay sensible, right?

I try and think of something to reply, but my thoughts slip through me and I can’t hold on to what I want to say. I throw the phone on to the bedside table, roll over to turn off the lamp, then lie back and close my eyes, feeling my head swim. It’s not unusual for us to text each other, but it’s rarely so late at night. In light of my fantasies on the way home, it feels significant. It isn’t, of course. It won’t change anything. All the same, as I lie there in the darkness and think about him, I do something that I haven’t done for a long, long time, and when I wake up hours later, dragged out of sleep by dreams I can barely remember but which leave me hot and frustrated and confused, I do it again.



It’s another day and a half before I look at the photographs in the hall. They are what I expected: luminously filtered snapshots of marital and familial bliss. Caroline holding Eddie and laughing against a sparkling, snowy backdrop, both of them wearing woolly hats and gloves; Caroline and Francis strolling hand in hand down a sandy beach and squinting amiably into the sunset, the photo presumably taken by some roped-in onlooker; the three of them seated in the chaos of what must be Christmas morning, surrounded by the debris of multicoloured wrapping paper and ribbons. Eleven photographs. They are all showing different moments, different landscapes, but they have one thing in common: they all seem to have been taken within the past year. There’s no progression, no sense of history. Everything that came before is a blank.

I don’t spend as much time looking as I had thought I would. When it comes down to it, they’re just pictures. They don’t hurt in the way I thought they would, either. The happiness in them doesn’t feel real, and whoever said the camera never lies has clearly never set foot in this place.

I go back upstairs to her bedroom, and look around at the mess I’ve created. Anyone walking in here would be forgiven for thinking it had been the victim of a senseless raid – possessions thrown helter-skelter across the floor, cupboards and wardrobes stripped and gutted. I haven’t bothered to clear up after myself, but I’ve been very thorough. Any fool knows that if a woman has things she wants to keep secret, she hides them where she sleeps. So far I haven’t found much, but I know that will change. I know in my gut that Caroline isn’t the type to erase the past, despite the image she tries to portray. She isn’t the type to make a choice. She wants it both ways.

You can’t have your cake and eat it. Strange expression. It makes no sense, unless you know that, in the past, ‘have’ was used to mean something more like ‘keep’. You can’t keep your cake and eat it. You can’t hang on to something and destroy it, too. Wanting to keep your memories safe and at the same time wanting to wake up one morning and find that they’ve been wiped out of your head … Wanting to nurture what you’ve got, and at the same time wanting to light the blue touch paper and stand back to watch it burn and explode … yes. That’s something Caroline and I can both relate to.



Away


Caroline, May 2015


I GET UP early and make breakfast in the gleaming show-kitchen. Its emptiness is surprisingly restful; at home, I can barely move for clutter. Sometimes, I fantasize about doing what I occasionally read about in magazines and throwing out everything we own, starting over again with an entirely clean slate. The people who put themselves on record to talk about this kind of thing always look liberated to the point of insanity – smiles manic, eyes wide and evangelical. When it comes down to it, though, I can’t imagine doing it. Francis is a hoarder, and I wouldn’t even know where to start.