What She Never Told Me (3 page)

Chapter Four

The eleventh of December. My birthday. I have no great wish to celebrate my forty-three years. Trying to cope with the breakdown of my marriage and agonising over whether we can ever put it together again has been tough enough. Now, waking up every morning with the awful knowledge that I will never see my mother again, I feel as if I’m drowning. I haven’t been able to work. Even if I was able to haul myself to the studios, I don’t think I could cope if any of my singers turned up with something sad. They’ve been great. They send me texts saying they hope I’m all right and that they’re looking forward to seeing me again soon. Ursula, though, says I can’t just keep drawing down what I’ve got in the bank and the sooner I start working again the better. And, she keeps telling me, I mustn’t cut people off for too long.

So she has insisted on getting a bunch of friends together at the Italian wine bar. All I have to do is turn up.

I lie in bed far longer than I should, feeling sorry for myself and wondering about the point of it all. London seems empty now that Sandy has taken himself out of my life. I hadn’t even wanted to come here in the first place; I had done what my mother had told me I should do – as I had always done, whether her intentions were overt or hidden. Had I not met Sandy, I might not have stayed. But, then, where would I have gone?

I stay in the bed for most of the morning, but I don’t sleep. If I don’t get up, if I don’t even speak, if I maintain silence and darkness, it will be as if time isn’t allowed to move forward. I do a lot of that, these days. Ursula tells me it’s a kind of depression and I should get help, talk to a bereavement counsellor or even a psychotherapist. I always tell her I’ll think about it, but to myself I say,
No way
.

The light coming in through the chink in the curtains eventually becomes so bright that I push the covers away, drag myself out of the bed and into the bathroom to be shocked awake by the strong jet of the shower.

I make a plan of action for the day, although it’s not much of a plan and there isn’t much action involved. At some point, I’ll wander down to the high-end boutiques on Westbourne Grove and treat myself to new clothes, something edgy, something to declare that I may be forty-three, but I look every bit as good as a thirty-year-old.

The flowers arrive around midday as I’m drinking my umpteenth cup of coffee – a big bunch of flowers. The colours are dramatic – dark red and pink and purple. I know they’re not from Ursula. They must be from Angela and Joe. But when I look at the card that accompanies them and see that they’re from Sandy, my heart leaps. And then I feel deflated when I remember that Sandy has always sent me roses on my birthday. I try to work out what these non-roses mean.

I think back to last year and the long-stemmed crimson roses. Twenty-four of them. So things must have been all right then, I think, throwing myself into yet another frenzied examination of my failed marriage, going over the same events, trying to remember the words that were said and the ones that weren’t, the looks that were exchanged, the times he looked away. I want to be able to stick pins on to an imaginary graph charting the collapse that must have taken time but which seems to have happened almost overnight.

At what point did things start to go wrong and were there warning signs I ignored or just didn’t notice? I analyse, deconstruct, hypothesise. If only I had done this. If I hadn’t done that. I turn my attention to the card and try to contain the flicker of hope it lights, pinch it out before it becomes too strong. But it’s too late.
Louise,
with love,
Sandy
.

I should take the words
with love
at face value: a warm message from my estranged husband on my birthday. We have, after all, seen each other since I came back from Ireland. He has been supportive, calling me every few days to make sure I’m all right. These enquiries – I stop short of calling them conversations – have a certain tone to them, a caring tone. But they make me feel like a patient talking to her doctor, rather than a wife, even a separated one, talking to her husband. So, when I read the words on the card, I fill them with meaning and hope, and when the phone rings an hour or so later, I’m on high doh.

It’s Sandy, his Scottish burr like music to me as he wishes me a happy birthday.

‘Thanks for the flowers. They’re lovely,’ I tell him, now full of certainty that the flowers and the message accompanying them must signify some kind of turning point.

I wait to hear him say that he misses me, after all, and that maybe we can try to pick up the pieces of our broken marriage and put them together again. But he doesn’t. So I start telling him about the party that Ursula has arranged and, buoyed by the arrival of the flowers and the message on the card, suggest that he might like to come, if he’s not busy.

‘I’m sorry, Lou, but I’m about to catch a plane.’

‘Another conference?’

‘Another conference. Well, happy birthday again. I hope you have a terrific party.’

Yeah, right. I put the phone down without saying goodbye.

*

The party is in full swing at the Italian wine bar when I get there and I feel I’m drowning in the sea of faces. And then I see Ursula among the crowd and I want to throw my arms around her, shower her with thanks for having always been there for me. Ursula, on the other hand, looks more than a little cross when she sees me saunter in, not only very late but also slightly the worse for wear after the half bottle of wine I’ve drunk to shore up my defences. I’ve never been a big drinker, but the twin catastrophe of losing my husband and my mother has dealt my sobriety a blow and, as the evening goes on, I manage to down a few more drinks.

‘I love the hair,’ Ursula says. ‘It suits you. Takes years off you. Fabulous jacket, too. I’m glad to see you’ve been treating yourself – for a change.’

In the afternoon, on a whim, I had walked into a hairdressing salon and asked the stylist to decide what kind of cut would work for me and to get on with it. I had nothing to lose. Hair grows and, over the past few months, mine had grown so much that I had taken to wearing it pulled back into a ponytail or scrunched into an unruly up-do. But I liked the cut the hairdresser gave me, short and spiky and gamine, nothing I would ever have imagined might suit me.

And, to celebrate the haircut, I had spent a small fortune on new clothes. A dark green leather jacket, a long and tight-fitting black cashmere jumper, black jeans and narrow ankle boots. The boots were almost flat, which was just as well, because any more of a heel and I would have had trouble staying upright.

‘Let’s drink to that!’ I say, taking a bottle and filling up my glass.

‘Do you not think you’ve had enough?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ursula! That’s a bit of a joke, coming from you. Pot? Kettle? Anyway, it’s my birthday, and no, I don’t think I’ve had nearly enough. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go to the loo.’

The Sandy lookalike I pass on the way to the loo stops me in my tracks, and for a moment I’m persuaded that my estranged husband has turned up, after all. But it’s not Sandy. He’s a lot younger and, as I discover when I examine him more closely, he doesn’t really look like Sandy at all. But he’s not unattractive. He’ll do. I chat to him for a while, my confidence boosted sky high by the booze and by his telling me that I remind him of a short-haired Sandra Bullock, and then I go back to my party. But I know he’ll be waiting for me when I leave. And he is.

With all the food I’ve eaten, I’ve sobered up enough to feel the disapproval of my friends as I wave goodbye to them and stagger back to my flat in Ladbroke Grove with my new friend. He, too, has had a lot to drink. He has waited for me, and now that we are inside my flat, he’s eager for action. My enthusiasm has waned with tiredness. But I’m feeling confident. Here’s someone who wants me, even if Sandy doesn’t. And so I make all the moves I am supposed to make, all the usual sounds as we grind against each other. But when I pull away from him, I feel empty of everything but self-disgust.

I shunt him out of the flat, telling him my husband will be home any minute. He stares at me in drunken astonishment.

‘You’re . . . nuts,’ he manages to say, struggling to get into his coat as I ease him out on to the steps and close the door behind him.

Tomorrow I’ll make the phone calls to Ursula and the others. I’ll apologise for abandoning them and walking off with a stranger.

I have an excuse; I’ve had to deal with too much loss all at once and alcohol has given me a temporary respite from it, but I’m all too aware that this has not been my finest hour.

*

‘Sorry about last night. I didn’t behave well,’ I tell Ursula on the phone.

‘So you bloody well should be. I hope you have the mother and father of all hangovers and that it lasts for a week.’

‘I have a hangover and it’s horrible. So am I forgiven now?’

‘I’ll think about it. But, really, Lou, how could you go off with a stranger? He could have been a serial killer.’

‘But he wasn’t, was he? I’m a good judge of character.’

‘Yeah, and I’m sure a lot of women killed by charmers who turned out to be serial killers thought they were good judges of character, too,’ she says drily.

‘Well, I seem to recall that you’ve wandered off with a few strangers in your time,’ I mutter.

‘Lou, I know this is a hard time for you, but don’t make it worse by doing stuff like that. Okay?’

‘All right,’ I say. ‘Look, I’m starving. I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I don’t suppose you fancy meeting up for lunch? My treat.’

We meet at one of the cafés on Westbourne Grove and order food. I start to ask for a bottle of white wine, but Ursula jumps in and tells the waiter we’re going to have two glasses, small ones. I protest, telling her that it’s cheaper to order a bottle than to order four glasses.

‘We’re not having four glasses. We’re having two, one each, and you’re lucky I’m letting you have even one,’ she says.

Ursula is bossy, but I give in. She’s right. I’ve been drinking too much for too many weeks. It’s time to cut back.

‘Any word from Sandy?’

‘Not since yesterday morning. He called to wish me a happy birthday. God, Ursula, don’t ever let slip to him that I . . .’

‘That you shagged some stranger? It’s none of his business. But don’t worry, I won’t. So what’s the latest? I suppose you’re still hoping he’ll come back?’

I shake my head at first. I try to keep telling myself that there’s no hope of saving my marriage, that it’s finished and that I have to move on. But that’s not what I feel deep down. I would have him back in a trice.

‘I still don’t understand why he left, what I did to make him leave. I asked him if he’d met someone else and he said he hadn’t,’ I say.

She nods her head up and down. She has heard it all before, over and over.

‘Oh, fuck, Ursula, I miss him so much.’

Ursula doesn’t do soft. She either says what she thinks, which is most of the time, or she keeps quiet. You never have to wonder where you are with her.

‘It really pisses me off when you keep talking about what you may have done to make him leave. I hate to upset you, Lou, but there probably was a woman. There always is. “Space” my arse – men make their own space all the time, no matter where they are, and women have to fit into it. They’re all liars, even men like Sandy. They can’t help it. It’s just the way they are. And they can’t bear to take the blame, so they learn how to make women feel guilty. Don’t do this to yourself,’ she says.

Easier said than done. It doesn’t take much effort to recall the moods and silences that led up to the night Sandy told me he was moving out for a while. I had been tearing my hair out for weeks on end, wondering what was going on. Whenever I asked him if he was all right, I got a curt ‘I’m fine’ in response. Or he might say, ‘I have a lot on at the moment.’ It didn’t occur to me that he was preparing to leave.

On what turned out to be his last night in our flat, he was monosyllabic and I was a bag of nerves, treading on eggshells around him. We were in the middle of supper when he told me he needed some space for a while.

‘What do you mean, “space”?’ I stared at him.

‘Just that . . . I need a bit of time by myself. It’s not you,’ he said, not looking directly at me.

‘Sandy, for God’s sake, we’re married! We’ve been married for ten years and suddenly you’re talking about needing space. You’re not a child.’

I had raised my voice, but I wasn’t shouting at that point. And then another thought struck me and I did shout.

‘You’re having an affair! That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘There’s no one else involved in this. I’m trying to tell you something and you’re blowing it out of proportion.’

‘
I’m
blowing it out of proportion? You’re my husband and you’re telling me you don’t want to be around me. Jesus, Sandy, you’ve been like a month of wet Sundays for ages and I’ve stood back and worried but said nothing, and now you spring this on me. Don’t play games with me. Just tell me the truth. Have you met someone else?’

He still didn’t look at me directly, just sighed and shook his head.

‘This isn’t about anyone else. It’s . . . hard to explain, but I need a bit of time by myself. I think we both need a break. We’ve needed one for a while.’

My head reeled in shock. I didn’t need a break from him, but he had made the decision for both of us, so at that point there was nothing I could do but give in. I couldn’t prevent him from leaving. So, defeated, I wept quietly and he held me for a few minutes. Contained for that short time in his arms, sobbing against his chest, I felt a tiny surge of hope that he would change his mind and stay. But he packed a few things in a holdall and left, saying he was going to stay at the flat of a colleague, Geoff, who was doing a stint abroad with a charity.

‘The break will do us good,’ he said, and for a moment I believed him. But as he walked out the door, I saw something in his face that looked like relief and I knew my marriage was over.

A shattering of glass brings me back to the present. Startled, I look around and see a child being dragged away from one of the nearby tables by a man I take to be his father, his high-pitched screams drowning out every other sound. Other diners are staring at the family, some in sympathy, most in disapproval.