Chapter 21
‘How has the last week been?’ Barbara said.
Barbara was our marriage counsellor, a softly-spoken, gently overweight woman in her fifties.
Every Wednesday we attended an hour-long session in her office in The Croft therapy centre.
It was a flat, sprawling building housing a number of practitioners.
In addition to basic counselling, the centre offered services like homeopathy, acupuncture and fucking Reiki, all of which had underwhelmed me from the start.
I wanted to show willing, and I wanted to save my marriage, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d now spent close to a hundred pounds in order to tell a stranger all the things we should have been able to say to each other, and none of the things we needed to.
Which was my fault, I knew.
Rachel and I sat either side of a coffee table, facing Barbara.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell Rachel was slumped in her seat, arms folded, reluctant.
Something about the atmosphere in the office made it difficult to look at her directly, as though there was a curtain hanging in the air between us.
‘Andy?’ Barbara said. ‘Do you want to start?’
No, I didn’t want to start. How has the last week been? Obviously she meant in our relationship, but a few other answers suggested themselves far more readily.
Another part of the problem.
I said, ‘Not so much.’
‘Rachel then?’
Rachel shrugged. ‘I suppose.’
Despite my own response, my heart bit slightly at that, because, as with the shrug in the kitchen, it was as though she’d already given up.
I didn’t want that to be true. But there was nothing I could do to change it.
That’s the main problem with trying to solve your problems by talking: you have to want to, and you have to be able to.
‘It’s not been a great week,’ Rachel said. ‘I suppose it’s not been helped by Andy’s work, which has been very busy.’ She half-turned to me. ‘Hasn’t it?’
‘I’ve been out more than I’d like. I’ve not had much choice.’
Rachel turned back to Barbara. ‘Yes, and I do know it’s not his fault. What he’s doing is important. I suppose that’s what I have to accept. That it’s more important to him than our marriage.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘It feels like it is. And you’ve been busy in the past without it feeling like that. Perhaps things are just different now. Perhaps I just feel it differently.’
Barbara said, ‘Because of the baby?’
‘Yes.’ Rachel’s hand moved over her stomach. ‘And it hurts because I know it’s selfish, but I can’t help it. Does that make sense?’
Barbara looked at me. ‘Andy?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Would you like me to leave my job?’
Rachel sighed. ‘Oh, don’t be –’
‘No, in theory. Would that help?’
The sigh expanded through her, as though my question was a new exchange in some exhausting battle, designed to wear her down.
But it didn’t seem like the most ridiculous suggestion to me.
A part of me knew it wouldn’t solve anything, but – a sudden, bright realisation – it would be something.
A gesture I could make that, no matter how problematic, was actually far easier than untangling the threads of what was really bothering me. Far easier than sharing them.
‘It wouldn’t do any good if you weren’t happy,’ Rachel said. ‘I don’t want you resenting me more than it feels like you already do.’
‘I don’t resent you.’
‘What you do is a part of who you are, a part of the man I fell in love with. I don’t want to change that. I want that man back again. I want things to be like they used to be, when we were happy. It doesn’t seem like so long ago in some ways. But then, in others …’
She started to cry. Barbara skilfully slipped a tissue from a box on the table beside her and passed it across, but Rachel shook her head and composed herself.
‘I want that too,’ I said. ‘We used to be so happy. I want that back.’
‘But maybe things are different now. Maybe we’re not two people who should be together anymore. Despite how good things used to be. Because they’re not like that now, are they?’
I blinked. None of this was new to me, of course, but still – it stung. Rachel was normally so reserved and controlled that it was unsettling to hear her so emotional, so fierce about everything. Worse, actually, than the indifference, because she sounded so … resolved.
Already resolved to being on her own.
‘I don’t want us to not be together,’ I said. ‘I still love you.’
‘And I love you. But that’s not the point, is it? I love my friends. And lately, it feels like that’s all we are. We’re not a couple. You don’t talk. You just don’t talk anymore. And if it’s over, if it’s not going to work, then I think we both need to accept that sooner rather than later.’
I shook my head. Didn’t say anything.
After a moment, Barbara leaned forwards.
‘Well, that’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it? Did you bring your lists with you?’
Rachel nodded. ‘I did.’
She plucked it out of her purse: a folded sheet of A4. The list of the things we’d loved about the other person in the initial flush of romance, when we’d first got together. The list of what we loved about each other now.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my own piece of notepaper.
Rachel blinked. ‘You did it?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
She looked at me a little longer, then down at her sheet of paper, and then to Barbara.
‘Shall I start?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Strong,’ she said. ‘Dependable. Funny. Quiet but not shy. Good-looking. Sexy. Relaxed. At ease with himself.’
As she went on, I forced myself not to say anything. Rachel wasn’t speaking to me anyway; she was speaking to Barbara. That was the idea: for us to use her like some kind of totem pole, allowing the other to overhear.
‘Determined. Rational. Logical. Athletic.’
In her tone of voice, I heard all the things that were lost. Over the last few months, such a counter-weight had been added to our relationship that the good things no longer rested down heavily enough to maintain balance, never mind tip the scales in their favour.
‘Humble. Self-deprecating. Loving. Caring.’ Rachel looked up. ‘That’s the end.’
‘Well.’ Barbara seemed pleased by that. ‘And what about your “Now” List?’
‘Strong. Still athletic, good-looking. Still sexy.’ She didn’t blush; Rachel never blushed.
‘But then … well, he’s still quiet, but it’s not the same.
Before it was like he didn’t speak unless he had something to say, and now it’s like there’s something he wants to say and won’t.
He doesn’t talk to me anymore. He doesn’t seem relaxed or at ease with himself either. And I don’t know why.’
This time, when Barbara offered her the tissue, she took it.
I sat motionless.
It’s like there’s something he wants to say and won’t.
‘Andy,’ Barbara said. ‘I’d like you to read your lists. Is that okay?’
I nodded.
‘Okay.’
I met Rachel ten years ago, when I was a twenty-five year old grunt pool officer. She was two years younger and doing a PhD in microbiology.
I met her online, out of necessity. Grunt pool work mostly involves door-to-door work, research and dogsbodying, and the kind of people you meet are not the sort you generally either want or are allowed to date.
Police work, in general, is very insular; cops quite often end up dating cops. But that wasn’t something I wanted.
So: what made me fall for Rachel?
Beautiful.
She only had one photo on her profile: a head and shoulders shot.
Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she had a bit of a smirk on her lips.
She was attractive without being conventionally stunning, but didn’t seem like she gave much of a shit about the matter one way or the other, and I liked that a lot.
Intelligent.
Obviously we exchanged a few emails in advance of meeting up, and she did her best to explain the subject of her PhD to me.
I’m not as stupid as I look, but I understood about one word out of every ten.
I couldn’t even pronounce some of them. She kept apologising for it sounding so dry.
But she didn’t need to, because, as incomprehensible as most of it was, her passion for the subject still came across clearly, and I liked that a lot too.
Confident.
The other thing I liked before we met in person was that she didn’t get hung up on the cop thing.
She was politely interested, but certainly didn’t go ga-ga over it.
Some cops lap up that kind of attention, but not me.
And I found it appealing that Rachel wasn’t immediately asking for war stories or telling me how interesting the job must be.
In fact, I got the impression it would take a lot more than a uniform to impress her. That’s a good thing.
Our first date was … interesting.
It was a bit of a haphazard arrangement: a rushed meeting.
She was organising a post-grad meet-up night in the basement of the University Union and said she could get me in past security.
She was already out there when I arrived, smoking and chatting with the guards as though she was friends with them.
I smoked back then too, so lit one up and introduced myself.
She was smaller than I’d expected, wearing a top low-cut at the back that revealed a stretch of fairly ripped muscles, the kind a climber has. She also wore glasses in real life, but beyond that she looked and came across exactly as she had in her profile and emails.
As we went inside, she said, ‘You’re taller than I expected.’
‘Six two, as advertised.’
‘Yeah, but that site has a few trade descriptions issues.’ She signed her name on the guest sheet against mine. The guy manning the table peeled off a sticker and she slapped it hard on my chest. ‘A lot of those profiles don’t exactly match reality.’
‘Mine is all true.’
‘Good start, then, Andy.’
I followed her downstairs. ‘Have you met a lot of people online then?’
‘Enough that I was about to give up.’
‘I guess it must be difficult for women on there.’
She shrugged without turning around.