Fifteen years earlier
I’d never really had a hangover before, not like this, a savage sickness that seemed more psychological than anything else.
I woke expecting to find you curled around me, wanting the comfort of your slow, quiet breathing, your warm skin.
The shock of your absence made me fully aware of other things.
I was wearing my bra but nothing else.
My jeans and T-shirt were scattered around the room – nothing unusual there – but your clothes were not.
What were you wearing last night?
Jeans, dark blue ones, a washed-out black T-shirt with Bob Marley’s face on it.
Those clothes were nowhere.
I lay there rewinding my memory, but I couldn’t remember getting to bed and I thought you must have carried me.
My head was hurting, my mouth was dry and there was no glass of water by the bed.
But worse was the feeling of fear, of paranoia.
I needed you so badly right then.
I got out of bed and I realised my body felt bruised.
I thought I might have fallen over, perhaps when I was dancing, the last thing I could clearly remember.
But I was bruised inside too, and I had a sense that we’d had sex but not the kind we usually had.
I felt deeply ashamed.
I thought I must have encouraged it, pushed you into acting more aggressively.
My instincts had been right: I hated the person I became on tequila.
It was Thursday morning and I thought you must have got dressed and gone to a lecture, which was so unlike you, and that gave me an even more intense feeling of panic.
I thought perhaps we’d rowed, that you were angry with me, even that I had disgusted you.
I was vowing I would never drink again, not just tequila but any form of alcohol, as I walked through to the kitchen.
Jack was there standing by the kettle and he grinned as I came in.
‘Morning! How’s your head?
’
‘Terrible. I’m never drinking again.
’
‘Tea?’
I didn’t like his smile; there was something off about it.
‘Where’s Lucian?’
The kitchen clock said 9.
30, I noticed. You never got up before ten.
Another brutal surge of panic, no breath left in my lungs.
Jack looked at me. ‘What do you mean, where’s Lucian?
’
My heart was banging hard against my ribcage.
I think even then I knew the answer.
‘He went to his uncle’s.
You must remember that.
You thought he was too drunk to drive but his uncle sounded odd, he said.
’
‘But he came back?’ My voice a whisper.
‘Well that would have been a bit awkward. Of course he didn’t.
’
Jack moved forward to kiss me.
He aimed for my mouth but caught my cheek.
‘You should drink tequila more often. You were wild.’
I was crying without tears, just ragged breathing, pacing around the kitchen, clutching my chest. No, no, no.
The splintering of my world.
The violence of our lovemaking – hatemaking – pressing against my brain, a fragmentary memory or a nightmare?
‘You’re saying we slept together?
’
‘Sor-ry. I’m really not buying into you not remembering it.
You were unbelievable.
I’ve never had sex like it.
’
‘I don’t remember.
’ I whispered it, but now the memories were rushing back in.
Jack and I fucking each other – his word, never mine, a vocabulary to deepen my shame – in your bed.
The one we’d lived in, you and I, not leaving it for a whole week once, our own love-in, we said at the time, like John and Yoko.
How could this have happened when it was the last thing I’d ever wanted?
I would never have allowed it, never, not when I loved you so.
‘Of course we shouldn’t have done it, but at least let’s be honest. I’ve seen the way you look at me.
I feel the same.’
No.
I knew this wasn’t true.
‘I didn’t want to have sex with you.
’
I said it quietly, even as my mind was blurring through the details, searching, searching for clues.
But I was still drunk probably, and poisoned by panic; I was frozen into a state of no recall.
‘Well frankly I find that a bit fucking offensive, Catherine.’
This ‘fucking’ of his, imbued with hostility, made me look up.
‘Of course you wanted to sleep with me. You know you did.’
‘I didn’t.
’ I whispered it, but now Jack was shouting.
‘Bullshit, Catherine! If I must remind you, you were the one who started it. You were the one who started kissing me when we were dancing, and I kept pushing you off and saying, no, no, we can’t do this.
And then it just got out of hand.
We both lost control.
’
I slid down onto my knees, my body curved over as I wept.
I heard Jack sitting down on the kitchen floor next to me, felt his hand on the back of my neck.
I thought I might be sick.
I hurled myself away from him.
I needed to talk to you, make you understand.
This was not something I’d ever meant to happen; it was a mistake, a devastating mistake.
I was so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing.
I must have encouraged Jack, given him the wrong idea, but there was no way I would ever have wanted it to happen.
‘You know how drunk I was. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing.
You took advantage of me.
’
‘Believe that if it makes you feel better. We both know it isn’t the truth.
’
Oh the sweeping hopelessness, the vanishing of my dream, my life, my love.
‘Catherine? We need to talk about this. You can’t just repaint what happened and put all the blame on me.
That’s not fair. You wanted it at the time just as much as I did, and you know that really, don’t you?
It’s not like you tried to stop me.
’
I did look up at him again then, but I was crying so much it was almost impossible to speak.
I nodded instead. I hadn’t said no, I hadn’t tried to stop him.
Jack was telling the truth, I just couldn’t bear it.
‘I love him,’ I said.
‘We both do.’
‘What are we going to do?’
Even as I said it, this ‘we’ broke me.
I didn’t want any kind of alliance with Jack.
This shared secret, I knew, would slowly corrode inside me; I would never be the same again.
But I was still clinging to the possibility that somehow you and I could stay together.
‘The important thing is that he never finds out. He’s fragile.
I’m sure you know that.
’
A weighted pause, Jack hovering, circling, with his sentence of destruction.
‘I think, like his father, he has a fatal tendency to overreact.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘I’ve known him since he was eight years old, Catherine.
And I know what he’s capable of.
He takes things to heart, he dwells on them.
We need to be careful.
You know Lucian has never forgiven his mother for being unfaithful to his father.
He hates her. And I think it would be the same with us.
I think it might push him over the edge.
’
Jack didn’t tell me to leave you; that was my own doing.
But I knew as I swept up my things from your room, all those points of familiarity so heartbreaking to me now – your easel in the middle of the room, your chest of drawers with yesterday’s twin mugs of coffee on top – that I had to leave and never return; I had to protect you from yourself.
I grabbed as many of my things as I could find; I scrawled that horrible note in your sketchpad: I’ve changed my mind.
I can’t do this. I can’t see you any more.
I took a scarf of yours too, a blue one that still held your sharp, citrusy smell.
Did you know? Did you ever miss that scarf?
Jack came out of the kitchen as I wrenched open the front door, clasping my clothes and your scarf to my chest.
‘Catherine?’
His voice was low, quiet, perhaps trying to instil some calm in me, but I didn’t turn around.
‘We made a mistake when we were drunk. It happens. No one ever needs to know about this.’
I ran all the way back to the house in St Paul’s, feeling the real pain in my body now and remembering the grittier details of our pairing.
Jack’s face above me, the things he said, the things he wanted us to do.
Liv was coming out of the front door as I arrived.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said when she saw me.
Crying, shaking. She took me back inside, sat down beside me on her bed.
‘What’s happened?’
I looked at my dearest friend and I had no words, not even to her.
Just the start of a dark, toxic shame that would wrap me in silence.
Believe that if it makes you feel better : Jack’s words burnt onto my soul.
‘I’ve broken up with Lucian,’ I told her.
‘And I’m going home. ’