Journey to the Centre of Myself (20 page)

He enters the house and I hear his keys hit the dining room table on his way in; the routine we have for the evening. As he’s locked the door and moved the keys, I can’t make a dash for it.

He comes into the room, slowly. I’m appraised as if I’m a frightened kitten, poised to startle and retreat.

‘Let’s try to sit and talk,’ I say.

The tension held in his face softens. ‘Okay.’ He takes a seat in the chair nearby and kicks off his shoes. ‘Do you mind if I make a drink?’

‘No, that’s fine. I’ll have a coffee.’

‘Okay.’ He nods his head several times, and then gets up to prepare the drinks.

I sit, rubbing my fingers. Lost. Wasting minutes of time in confusion. I wonder where to start.

He brings the drinks in and sets them down on the coasters on the coffee table. Takes his seat again.

‘How’s your mum?’

He looks at me, confused.

‘Is she better?’

‘Sorry. I didn’t imagine that would be the first thing you said. No. She’s not good. I probably need to go back later. I’ve called the doctor out again.’

‘Adrian, I’m sorry.’

He rolls his eyes. ‘You never liked my mother anyway.’

‘I wouldn’t wish her ill.’

There’s silence. Uncomfortable, perched at the edge of a cliff, do not push it, silence.

‘I went to see her.’

He looks confused again. ‘Who?’

‘Gen.’

He nods. ‘Did it help?’

‘Yes. It helped me a lot. I will go back when the weather’s nicer.’

‘It’s good you went.’

‘I looked at the inscription. I understand now, I guess, why you needed it. It said she was here, a permanent sign. Is that what it meant for you?’

Adrian chews on his lips before he speaks. ‘I suppose so. It seemed right, necessary, part of the process. I agreed to her burial in the meadow, but she was more than a number, will always be more than a number.’

‘We could go there together in the summer, to visit her?’

‘That would be, well, not nice, but, I’d like that.’

Again silence descends. It’s like a library, not a home.

‘The room took me by surprise,’ I say.

‘Well yes, that was the whole point, except it went wrong, didn’t it?’

‘You lied to cover it up and well…’

‘You couldn’t trust my lies. I get that. I do.’

‘So much of our marriage has been based on them, Adrian. I don’t know if there’s a way forward for us.’

He takes a sip of his drink. His eyes have filled with tears.

‘It took me a long time, but I realised the room needed to go,’ he says.

‘I don’t ever want another baby.’

His head lowers. ‘I get that now.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want children, Adrian. It kills me that there’ll be no child-like giggling, or watching our baby develop, learn to crawl, walk. But I could get ill again. A high probability they said. I can’t take that chance.’

‘I understood that. My thought was that we could adopt.’

I shake my head. ‘We had our child. She would have grown up resembling bits of you, bits of me, but she died, and my hopes and dreams died with her. Sure it’s selfish, but I don’t want to watch somebody else's child do what Gen couldn’t. If I can’t have
my
daughter, I don’t want theirs.’

‘I hoped it was the grief talking.’

‘No. I’ve never changed my mind.’

Adrian looks at me. ‘I realised that a few months ago.’ Adrian takes a deep breath.

I watch him suck on his bottom lip. I wait. He swallows.

‘I knew things couldn’t go on as they were. We were suffocating. Work was light, so I worked shifts and odd jobs around decorating the room. Thank God that daft bat next door is deaf, otherwise she’d have told you about the drilling and banging, too. I got that you wanted some freedom, either working somewhere with more responsibility or travelling a bit, so I figured I’d build you an office and put up a map. You see, I realised it was never going to be another child’s room and moved on. I’ve accepted it now, Karen.’

I nod my head.

‘But there’s something I need you to understand—part of what I’ve struggled to make clear to you. I don’t want a shrine, but I cannot deal with how you want to pretend she never existed. I understand seeing her photo is hard, but she lived, Karen, and I want a photograph of her somewhere. Whether it’s in the bedroom or the hallway, there
will
be a photo. I need that. It’s part of me accepting her death.’

‘So what about the gambling?’

‘I was stupid. I saw the horse—Gen’s Generation—and I had to back it. It won, but I only had a fiver on it… I gambled when I was broken and I hope never to go back there after all the trouble it caused. It was the name, I couldn’t help myself.’

‘But all the names in a paper could mean something. That’s what terrifies me, Adrian. That you feel you have to put a bet on because its fate, or whatever, and then we’re back again. Your gambling is a problem. You can’t go back to it occasionally. It doesn’t work that way.’

‘I’ll go back to my meetings if that’s what you need.’

‘It’s not what I need, Adrian, it’s what you need. The gambling becomes my problem, but it’s not—it’s yours.’

‘I’ll go back. It was just the one bet, I promise, but I’ll go to the meeting tomorrow.’

‘The room, Adrian. It was a lovely idea, but I don’t envisage living here for much longer.’

‘What? But we’re talking—’

‘This house has too many bad memories. If we do decide to move forward together, I need a fresh start. I can’t continue here.’

‘But our daughter lived here.’

‘Yes, lived. But she’s not here now.’

‘I’ve changed the bloody room and it’s not enough, is it? You keep moving the goalposts.’ He shakes his head.

‘There’s no goal, Adrian. There’s no game. This is my life. Your life. We’re in our forties. It’s not the time for shilly-shallying around. It’s time to decide what we want from life.’

‘So that’s it, this is some sort of a midlife crisis.’ His jaw clenches.

‘Oh, my God, no. Maybe. Yes, yes it is,’ I yell. ‘I’ve grown up and realise that you can’t control me anymore. My parents did it, Steve’s done it, you have, and I understand why with my breakdown, I really, really do, but enough now. There are things I want to do.’

‘You almost died, Karen. I thought I’d lost you.’

‘But you lost me anyway—the Karen I was. You kept a prisoner, a shadow. I wasn’t there.’ I lower my voice. ‘The fact is I haven’t been there for a long time.’

‘What
things
do you want to do?’

‘More travel. Perhaps some photography. I’ve not given much thought to what else I might want to do. I’m just letting myself believe I can do more.’

‘We can have holidays.’

‘No, I don’t want a simple holiday. I want to see the world. Be present for more than a fortnight.’

‘How does that tie in with photography?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve not looked into it yet.’

‘You see, Karen, all this stuff, it just reminds me of how it started before, all those wild ideas with no plan behind them. Wanting to book holidays and getting excited. I can’t help worrying that you’re having another episode.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Do you see where I’m coming from, though? You just… take off. Go away, come back with radical ideas. You’re telling me you’re fine but you told me that before—when you tried to die.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I bellow and throw my mug at the floor. Remnants of coffee splash and stain the carpet. ‘Listen to me. I’m not manic. I’m not mad. There’s no pressure of speech. I have the money worked out, they’re ideas. Ideas do not make me manically ill.’

‘But I thought you were okay before and then—’

‘This is part of the problem. You can never assume one hundred percent that I am okay. I could walk out of the door and be hit by a bus. I could have another manic episode, I could kill myself, but you would
not
be responsible. That’s what you need to understand. I need to live my life and you need to back the hell off and let me go.’

‘Sure, I’ll just forget about you. Stop giving a shit. Bye, Karen, I hope you’re enjoying a nice long break and not maxing out the credit card and taking an overdose of pills.’

I rebound in shock as my hand reverberates from his cheek. ‘Oh, my God. I am so sorry.’

‘Right now I need to get back to my mother, Karen. I have nothing more to say. Stay in the house, or don’t. Whatever you want to do.’

‘But when are you coming back?’

‘That depends on how mum is. I’m not sure it really matters to you anyway.’

I hold onto his arm, my voice cracks as I try to tell him how I feel. ‘It
does
matter. That’s why I came home. I’m aware it’d take work. Maybe we’d need counselling or something, but I don’t want us to have been for nothing.’

‘You’re telling me you want to be free.’

‘I’m telling you I don’t want to live in a gilded cage.’

‘You can’t trust me.’

‘Counselling would help us, I’m sure.’

‘I can’t do this today Karen. My mother needs me. I can’t be here for you right now. I have to go.’

‘Will you try to think about what I’m saying?’

‘I’ll try. But you leaving me changed something. You’re saying you’re a different person and you want different things, but I’m not sure I’m the person you left ten days ago. I need to ponder what I want.’

‘You mean you might not want me back?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t, and if you feel anything for me, you’ll not hassle me about it, not when I’ve got all this other stress on. It’s just too much.’

He gets up to walk out of the room and turns to me. ‘You need to get that coffee up before it stains. I’ve always treated you like some kind of Pampered Princess. You want to be independent? Start now and clean up after yourself.’

My jaw drops.

‘Oh… one more thing. I left your washing in a box in the utility room. I can’t believe you dumped your dirty laundry on me and then left again.’ His lip curls in a snarl. ‘Never have I felt more like a pet dog. I’m your husband, Karen.’ He huffs. ‘Well, I was.’

He leaves the room. The sound of keys being picked up comes from the hallway, followed by a click as the front door is closed. I curl up on the settee in a ball and try to stop myself from shaking.

I lay on the sofa for hours. The television murmurs in the background, but I couldn’t tell what was on. I don’t know what I thought Adrian would say to me but I didn’t expect this. Not after begging me to stay. Not after following me to France.

I guess Arjan really has left—again.

I go to our room to lie down on our bed. My limbs heavy as if made of stone. I feel I need to punish myself. Yet again I’m thinking of myself.
Have
I taken Adrian for granted? Do I need to take in how he feels? Does my behaviour punish him or reward myself? Getting a chair to climb, I drag the box off the top of the wardrobe and empty my old journals over our bed. I do remember the happy times. I do. So where did it start to go so very wrong?

***

Journal extract - January 2002

Gosh, I’ve not journaled in ages! Arjan and I have kept in touch all this time, photos, postcards, phone calls. Trips when I can afford it to Amsterdam. Trips when he can afford it to England. The biggest surprise of all? He’s from England. His mother is Dutch, his father’s from Rotherham. I discovered his name isn’t really Arjan, it’s Dutch for Adrian. His name’s flipping Adrian. What a charmer. Oh well, it worked on me.

He’s coming to live here. We’ve looked at houses and found a lovely little terrace. He was going to save and study Architecture but he says he loves me more than he ever loved that dream. I’ve got my job working for the Car Company. It doesn’t pay a heap, but it's steady work.

My parents love him. At first, they thought it was a holiday romance and weren’t keen, but then he asked my Dad for my hand in marriage, stated his intentions. Mum’s thrilled, she’s already doing my head in with ideas for the wedding and telling me who to invite. I don’t care. I just want to be Mrs Adrian Owen as soon as I can.

Jo can’t believe that it was her hen do that found me my husband-to-be. She says she needs to be chief bridesmaid.

Journal extract - June 2003.

We did it! It got too much for us, so we took my parents to the Town Hall and they witnessed our wedding, just the four of us. Now Adrian and I can settle down to married life. How exciting.

Journal extract - June 2006

We’ve been trying for a baby now for three years. It’s just not happening. I thought by now we’d be having a second. We’ve been for tests but they can’t find any reason why it’s not happening. They’ve told me to relax. How can I? I’m a failure. My husband will be expecting me to produce a child. He says he doesn’t care, that he wants me. He says children would be the cherry on top of a well prepared Appelltaart. I don’t believe that. He’s just saying it to placate me, I’m sure. He called himself Arjan the other day. Spoke about himself in the third person. It seemed so long ago. I told him he sounded silly now, calling himself that. He’s Adrian. He seemed shocked, but agreed. That was back then when we were younger and dafter. We’re grown-ups now.