After You Left(2)

Then again, realistically, what are they going to ask?

How was the honeymoon?

Wonderful.

That’s about all anyone wants to know of someone else’s holiday, isn’t it?

I squirt hair product into the palm of my hand. All the other questions rush at me now, as I tip my head back and let it hang there. How had I not seen this coming? Had he been different lately? Distracted? Unusually stressed? Had he seemed tired? Unwell? Less enthusiastic about life in general? When he had said his vows, had he looked for one minute like someone who was feeling strong-armed into getting married? Someone who was having second thoughts?

No.

Or had I been too caught up in how happy I was to notice how unhappy he was?

There is a flurry of doubts and questions – endless questions – but they just float there like dots unable to join before my eyes; I can’t grasp on to them or make them add up to an answer. I slide down the wall, squat there, staring at the drain. The water pelts off my knees, which quickly hurt from hyperextension. Shampoo has run into my eyes and they’re stinging. I shove the heels of my hands into the sockets. Pull yourself together. The echo of my mother’s tough love. Then some shitty sentiment about men! Always, men! who let you down. Ever since my dad upped and left us, my mother was always male-bashing. That was the day she became the bitterest person I’ve known.

Out of the shower, I try to towel dry my hair, but my arms are like two dead weights. I stare at my mobile phone on the night table. I’ve never actually registered the acute and terrorising silence of an un-ringing phone before. How many times have I dialled his number? How many texts have I sent? How many emails from which I’ve received no read receipt? I stare at the phone as though it’s going to suddenly leap and attack me, but I check it again, in case it rang and I didn’t hear it.

In the kitchen, I set about making a cup of tea, but it feels like a gargantuan undertaking. Bag in cup. Water in kettle. Something reeks in the bin, but what do I care about smells? I stand there, unblinking, in a trance, while the kettle hustles to life, its blue light in my peripheral vision. Then I give up, and walk back into the bedroom. The phone is still sitting where I left it. I dial her number.

‘Louisa . . . Hi. It’s Alice.’ The race of my heart. Justin would never fail to account for his whereabouts to his secretary. I used to joke that if we were on a sinking lifeboat he’d hurl me to the sharks before one of his clients. It wasn’t true, of course. But it still always made him smile that viral smile that stretched unrestrained and infectious across his face. ‘Why do you have such a low opinion of yourself?’ he’d ask. And it was a good question.

‘Is Justin there by any chance?’ I try to sound confident. No one can know.

But I can hear the tremor in my voice: the insecurity, the uncertainty; the dread of him coming on the line, the dread of him not. The exact same feeling I would get every time I tried to ask my mother questions about my past. That urge to know. The entitlement. The anger at finding yourself in the position of having to ask. That conflicting impulse of bursting to get everything off your chest, and clamming up and shutting down all at the same time.

There’s an ominous pause, then Justin’s secretary, in her perpetually astonished North East accent says, ‘Alice! Ah, hiya! Er, no. Justin’s not here. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have expected him to be.’

She knows! Then I think, No, she can’t know.

‘He’s probably on his way in,’ I stumble. ‘It’s odd, but I can’t get him to answer his mobile.’

It’s not odd. Louisa would know that Justin never took phone calls while driving. Justin was scrupulous about many things that generally might not make it on to your average thirty-eight-year-old male’s moral radar. He always gave up his seat to women on trains, and they didn’t have to be old or pregnant. He’d never jump a queue, even if the person ahead of him were unaware. He once told me that he had never consciously told a lie.

‘Is everything all right, Alice?’ Louisa sounds genuinely concerned.

‘Of course. Everything’s fine.’ I stare at the single blue shirt-sleeve dangling over the top of the laundry bin, unable to fathom how barren the sight of a piece of his clothing can make me feel. ‘Will you tell him to ring me as soon as he gets in?’

‘Well, yes! I would. But that’s the thing . . . I thought you knew. Justin’s going to be working from home for a while. I mean, that’s what he said when he rang in this morning.’

The earth shifts. ‘He rang in?’ I expected he’d be in contact, so why is this the worst thing I could possibly hear? Almost as bad as if I’d heard he died?

‘He did, yeah. About an hour ago.’

My head swims with this new knowledge. Justin can ring his secretary but not his wife.

The desire to fall down, even though I’m already sitting. ‘Oh . . . that’s right. Sorry. I forgot. He did tell me. I think I was probably only half listening, as usual.’ Then I wonder, why isn’t she asking how the honeymoon was? Because he told her? ‘I’m at work right now . . .’ Does she know I’m lying, and that we’re therefore having a very ridiculous conversation indeed? ‘I’ll ring him at home.’

When I click off, I sit here in the wake of that conversation, listening to the strangely hypnotic, funnelling sound of my pulse in my ears. Then I realise I have to get dressed.