The Editor's Wife (23 page)

It was postmarked from Wales and read:

I know all about it. Please don't contact Diana or me again.

Owen.

In its brevity there was something utterly final, and I knew I had lost them both for ever. I wondered how long it had taken him to compose, and whether there had been other, less civil versions. I also wondered how we'd been discovered, since I was fairly sure from her earlier insistence that Diana would not have confessed unprompted.

I sat on my bed, staring at Owen's handwriting, frozen with shock. With just a few strokes of the pen my whole
life had changed: all possible sources of happiness had perished, and I was left with nothing. The thought that I would never be able to meet Owen again in our old, easy way, and that he was out there in the world, hating me, was almost as unbearable as the separation from Diana. We could have been lifelong friends: now my name would be unspeakable as cancer.

Once the initial shock had passed I began to experience the agonies of withdrawal. I was as obsessed as any addict, and equally incapable of accepting what was best for me. Diana's silence, and the calm and impersonal manner of Owen's chosen method of severance, left me no right of reply, no chance to apologise or explain. This feeling of helplessness and passivity was worse than anything. I felt a stalker's desperation to be near them: even some active hostility was preferable to this cold excommunication. I think if Owen had burst into my room brandishing an iron bar I'd have been glad to see him, and accepted a beating gratefully.

For an hour or two I entertained the fantasy of pursuing them to North Wales and tracking them down. It was a form of jealousy – double strength, since I was jealous of both of them. They had each other: I had no one. The only thing that prevented me was the conviction that at any moment Diana would phone. I held onto this belief through the days ahead, constructing various scenarios to explain her silence, none of them especially reassuring. She was being kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance; she was waiting for the opportunity to talk to me face to
face; Owen hadn't confronted her about his discovery and she had no idea anything was amiss. When the new year arrived and the date for their return to London came and went and there was still no call, my impatience turned to desperation.

One freezing weekday afternoon in January, half an hour before turning-out time at the primary schools, I cycled over to Dulwich and staked out the end of Aysgarth Terrace. From my window seat in the café I watched as Diana emerged, alone and on foot, from the end of the road, and made her way towards the school, well muffled in coat and scarf, and slipping slightly on the icy pavement.

Time was short: typically, Diana had left it to the last minute to pick up the twins, so I had to act fast, waylaying her just opposite the pub. She flinched violently as I touched her sleeve, and the look of panic only intensified when she realised it was me and not a mugger.

‘Oh my God, Chris,' she said, casting nervous glances up and down the road. ‘You mustn't come here. If Owen saw us together . . .'

‘I've been worried about you. I thought you'd at least ring.'

‘I couldn't. I mustn't see you or talk to you. It's one of the conditions.' She drew back under the awning of a newsagents.

‘How did he find out? You didn't tell him?'

‘No. I didn't tell him. He already knew.'

‘How could he? You don't think Leila?'

‘No, it wasn't Leila. It was Gerald.'

‘Gerald?'

‘He came to the house to collect some sponsorship money that we owed him. I wasn't in, but Owen was. Gerald told him that he'd spoken to me at your flat a couple of days before, but had forgotten to ask me for the money.'

‘Oh my God.' I closed my eyes. Coloured lights flickered and seethed behind my eyelids. Gerald would have had no idea of the chaos that his casual remark would unleash. If he'd only been the sort of brother you could confide in, the sort of brother who could comprehend deception and uphold it, like any normal person. But I'd done the very opposite of confide: even when he'd given me an opening, I had chosen to deny, deny, deny.

‘What did Owen say?'

‘He waited until after Christmas to confront me. Because he didn't want to spoil it for the girls. He said, “You went to Chris's flat and never mentioned it. Why?”'

‘Couldn't you think of something to say that wasn't incriminating?'

‘Not off the top of my head. Not with him looking at me as if he already knew everything.'

‘Did he go mad?'

‘Not mad. Just hurt and disgusted and going over and over it, wanting to know all the details, and then brooding over them for days. It's been awful.' She was still as jumpy as a wild deer: it gave me a pang to remember the poised, elegant woman who had taken pity on my flounderings at dinner with Ravi Amos, to see her so reduced and know I was to blame.

‘So I can never see you?' I said.

‘No. You must have known it would end like this. Owen and the children were always going to be . . . inevitable. There was never any question . . .'

‘I know. It's just hard to believe we can't even talk now and then. Can't I even ring you?'

She shook her head. ‘I can't afford the smallest slipup. I'm lucky I've still got a marriage left to save. Anyway, no contact is easier. I can manage not seeing you.'

‘Thanks.'

‘You know what I mean. Occasional contact would be agony. I'd have to get over you again, every time. I couldn't do it.'

Don't get over me! I wanted to shout at her. Come and live with me. But I wasn't that stupid, or that cruel. I couldn't provide a home for Diana and the twins in my one room, and the idea of bringing up Owen's daughters – even part-time – had never entered my head as a possibility. I must have known all along that we were heading for a dead end, and now we'd hit the wall and Diana was right: there was no way round it.

A woman with a pram went into the newsagents, calling out a greeting to Diana as she passed.

Diana acknowledged her with a fluttering hand. ‘I really do have to go now,' she said.

I decided to call her bluff. ‘Goodbye then,' I said neutrally.

‘Don't say it like that,' she pleaded. ‘When you have children of your own you'll understand.' A rag of muddy
paper blew across the street and caught on the spiked heel of her boot. She shook it off impatiently.

‘If you say so.'

‘It's worse for me, Chris, whatever you think. Just because I can't see you, doesn't mean I won't be thinking of you. I will be.' She spoke very softly and I could tell she was desperate to end on a note of affection, but I wasn't going to let her off lightly. The only way I could assert myself against this dismissal was to deny her romantic spirit the satisfaction of a proper farewell.

I glanced at my watch. ‘Go on then. You'll be late.' There was a tightness in my chest of held breath and bricked-up emotion as I waited for her to turn away from me for the last time, and when she did, with a final look of helpless apology, it was almost a relief.

THE UNSPENT ENERGY
and rage inside me had to be used. I rode at a furious pace all the way to Gerald's office in Croydon, flying across junctions blindly, weaving between cars, daring death to come and claim me, and knowing it wouldn't. In the depths of despair we are invincible.

I ran up the eight flights to Motor Claims. The girl at reception didn't have a chance to speak as I rushed past, bursting through the double doors into a vast open-plan office.

‘Gerald!' I bellowed, across the ranks of partitioned desks. Eighty or more heads swivelled my way. Voices were hushed, telephone calls suspended mid-sentence. Gerald, about halfway back, rose to his feet from behind a computer console, a look of sheer panic etched on his face. Raked by the gaze of his astonished colleagues, he
stumbled his way down the aisle towards me.

‘What are you doing here? Are Mum and Dad OK?' he asked as he hustled me out of the door.

‘Gerald you fucking idiot. Why did you go to Owen's? You don't know what you've done. You've ruined everything.'

‘What? What are you talking about? You can't come to the office like this. It's not allowed.'

‘Just keep away from me. Keep away from Owen and Diana.'

‘Who? Oh, them. I haven't done anything. I only went round to collect the money he owed me.'

‘I don't want to see you or talk to you
ever again
.'

‘All right.' He seemed relieved that this was all. ‘Can I go back to work now?'

‘Yes.'

‘Don't come here again. You'll get me in trouble.'

‘
Trouble?
You've just ruined my whole life!' I ranted.

‘You're mad,' said Gerald.

‘Is everything OK, Gerald?' I heard the receptionist say as I walked away.

‘Yes, it's all right,' he replied, in exactly the same embarrassed-defensive tone that I had always adopted to apologise for him. ‘He's my brother.'

THE NEXT FEW
weeks were abysmal. I hardly left my room. There were days when I didn't bother to get out of bed, but lay staring at the ceiling, unable to bear any distractions from my own misery. At a stroke I had lost everything that made my life interesting, enjoyable and promising, and all I had left was endless, empty time in which to contemplate my regrets.

Like the heartbroken throughout history I considered myself to be uniquely afflicted: my circumstances were exceptional; my suffering unparalleled. I suppose in my defence it could be claimed that at least I didn't inflict my morbid mood on other people. Instead I withdrew like a wounded animal, shunning the outside world. (The outside world, it has to be said, remained entirely indifferent to this gesture.)

Sometimes I would sit on the window ledge, where Diana used to sit, and look down at the passers-by with an alien's mystification. I watched my skinny Rastafarian neighbour's swaggering stride as he left the house, and the woman across the road trying to run for a bus in her sari, and felt consumed with envy for their sense of purpose. I would have chewed my arm off for his confidence or her urgency.

Occasionally I tried to remember what my life used to be like before I met Owen and Diana, and how I filled all those untroubled years, but it seemed unimaginably remote now and meaningless.

One morning I woke up feeling slightly better and I allowed this unexpected momentum to get me up and out of the house. Even though I was not eating heartily, supplies were running low, so I walked as far as Sainsbury's and had just filled a basket with canned food, when I was swamped by a wave of dread. The flickering lights and vibrant colours and the hum of the fridges and clamour of voices suddenly seemed overpowering and I had to dump the basket and bolt for the exit. I reeled home, buffeted by thousands of competing sense impressions, and slumped down on my bed, my heart heaving in protest. I knew it must be some form of panic attack, and that I wasn't seriously ill, but the episode made me even more reluctant to leave the flat.

Six weeks of isolation were broken by a visit from Mum, the first since the incident with the vandalised car aerial. It was midday and I was still in bed.

‘I've been trying and trying to ring you, but no one ever picks up the phone,' she said. ‘You missed your father's birthday. He was very good about it.' She took in my unkempt appearance and the general air of neglect in the surroundings and her tone softened. ‘Are you all right? Have you been ill?'

‘I suppose I have a bit,' I said, running a hand through my hair and finding it stiff with grease. ‘But I'm fine now,' I added, and bared my teeth in what I imagined to be a grin consistent with rude health.

Mum strode past me to the window and threw it open, letting in a gust of clammy February air. I suppose the room may have smelled a little stale. ‘That's better,' she said. ‘What a pong.'

‘Damp,' I agreed.

‘More like BO,' she replied. ‘When did you last have a shower?'

‘Er . . . I can't remember. Not too long ago.' The days and weeks had started to run into one another with little to distinguish them, so it was hard to recall the precise date of something as unmemorable as washing.

‘I suppose you don't feel much like it when you've got flu,' said Mum, who had come to her own conclusions about my ‘illness'. I decided to let her diagnosis stand.

‘No.'

By now she had removed her coat and was looking for somewhere to put it: all the likely surfaces, as well as much of the floor, were already occupied by discarded clothes. I took it from her and hooked it over the carriage
arm of the typewriter. ‘I've fallen a bit behind with my laundry,' I said apologetically, indicating the carpet of strewn boxer shorts, T-shirts and socks.

Mum began to gather them up, gingerly. ‘Are you sure you're all right? You're very drawn.' She looked at me with sudden suspicion. ‘You're not on drugs, are you?'

‘No.' It was nice to be able to offer her some reassurance that was entirely genuine.

‘Look, you obviously need looking after. Why don't you come home for a few days to convalesce, and I can feed you up and do your washing. Just till you're back on your feet.'

I shook my head, remembering the marshmallow-pink bedroom and scented pillows. ‘I'll be OK. Really.' Just saying the words aloud seemed to make it possible. ‘Perhaps the washing . . .' I conceded.

Mum was delighted with this admission of need, and set about stripping my bed, filling the duvet cover with all the clothes she could lay her hands on – dirty, clean, she didn't discriminate in her zeal for decontamination. ‘I'll bring them back tomorrow. You won't be going anywhere, I take it? Perhaps you should go to the doctor – get yourself checked out,' she advised. ‘You don't want one of those post-viral things that linger on for months.'