Chapter 40
FORTY
I’m not fine.
Not freaking fine.
I’m far, far, far from freaking fine.
Frank hasn’t texted again. This feels like the end of my world. Harriet comes home and Aiden goes back to California. Her cough is really no better. I pay for one more month’s rent on the Santa Monica Airbnb to buy us some time until we can work out who is going back to get our stuff. Rupert is pissed off: ‘If you’re only going back to America to pack up all your belongings and Harriet’s, why can’t you just stay in a hotel for two nights? Why are you wasting all our money on a month’s Airbnb?’ he says.
At least he said our money.
Harriet reconnects with some of her friends. Despite her telling me she fully supports me leaving her dad, I don’t see much of her, so we don’t really get to talk about it. Rupert goes to work, and Rupert comes home from work. When he comes in, I go out. To the cinema. To a café. To a quiet pub where I can sit in a corner and nurse a drink. Anything to avoid being under the same roof as him at the same time.
I relocate to the spare bedroom, moving all my clothes in there. But that mattress is a relic we should have replaced years ago, and it gives me an ungodly backache. So I move back into our bedroom – given he won’t sleep in the spare room – erecting a barricade of pillows down the centre, so we’re clear that we each have our own half. I lie awake for hours listening to him snoring, playing it all over in my mind – how Frank and I met, that hike, our conversations, how he kisses me, how he caresses me, how he makes me come.
The second week brings the full-on realisation: Frank isn’t going to text again. He texted that time to tell me he was back in America, then to show me that he’d unearthed our portrait from the rubbish bin. Those texts were not a continuation of us; they were really just an extension of goodbye.
I pull up our last messages so many times it’s not funny. I activate the message bar and stare at the winking blue cursor. But then I click off because – what can I really say that’s going to change anything?
By the third week, I am so drained from all the over-thinking that if he showed up at my front door, I don’t think I’d even have energy to walk to the foot of the stairs to greet him.
On Tuesday night, I go out with Nat. In a bar around the back of the train station, I tell her that this entire business of looking at flats I might be able to afford to rent on my own, trying to decide if I should attempt to get my old job back, leaving the house every time Rupert comes in, is just so exhausting. The logistics of setting up life as a single person is almost enough to make you want to go back to him even if he’s committed mass murder. I tell her I can’t believe we ever bought a house with a double vanity in the en-suite bathroom. Because when Rupert stands there beside me flossing his teeth, I’ve got to watch bits of food fly out of his mouth and stick to the mirror. And, I mean, how can I have been married all these years to a man who shaves his forearms?
She smirks. ‘So you think Frank doesn’t have stuff stuck between his molars?’
I pull up his picture. My favourite one of him I took before the video. ‘How could this guy’s teeth possibly be a breeding ground for oral bacteria?’
She shakes her head in affectionate despair. ‘Yup. I’d also rather have sex with him than with Rupert – and I’m not even into fellas.’
I try to smile but pull a duck face instead.
‘Moira,’ she says, almost impatiently. ‘You’ve been back three weeks and you still haven’t called that lawyer whose number I gave you. You moved out of the marital bed then you moved back into it.’
I throw up my hands. ‘It’s a case of sleep there, or give myself scoliosis.’
She shakes her head at me. ‘Why isn’t it him who is doing his back in? Or him looking at flats to move into?’
I tell her we had the conversation, but he said he’s not moving out because he’s not the one who thinks there’s a problem with our marriage. I tell her that rather than him gaslighting me, he seems to be gaslighting himself.
‘I don’t know why you’re being so passive,’ she says.
‘I’m just a laggard,’ I tell her. ‘I got that on my report card when I was in junior school.’
‘That was thirty-five years ago.’ She shakes her head in despair. ‘You know what I think? I think you’ve been leaving Rupert for a lot of years. You might have been leaving him from the moment you met him.’ She lets me digest that. ‘I also know from years of professional experience that when a person suspects their partner of adultery they don’t run away for three months to decide if their marriage is worth saving. Nor do they jump into bed with someone they say they don’t like – for whatever reason they tell themselves they’re doing it – when casual sex is not part of their code.’ Before I can protest, she says, ‘I think you were waiting for Rupert to open some sort of door for you to leave. And the second you saw a crack, a glimmer of light on the other side, you wanted to explore what it would be like out there…’
She searches my face with so much understanding in her eyes that I find myself agog to hear what she’s going to say next.
‘I think that in Santa Monica you were trying out what life would be like if you did leave him. And I think somewhere in there you’ve figured out that it wouldn’t be half bad.’
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘It’s a good job you don’t charge by the word, or I’d be bankrupt.’
She doesn’t smile, so I say, ‘He told me he has nothing to offer me, remember? He can’t put himself in the position.’ Ugh! I still hate those words.
‘But he also said it wasn’t for him to help you make your mind up about your marriage – and he was right; it wasn’t his place to help you with that one.’
‘He doesn’t trust anyone enough to commit to them again. He’s had one semi-serious relationship since his wife died. He doesn’t want something deep and meaningful.’
‘But he almost killed himself on a jet ski because you all but admitted that having sex with him in your apartment meant nothing.’ We hold eyes. ‘As if that’s not convincing enough,’ she adds, ‘he told you that you can love two people, but you can only be in love with one… I mean, how much persuading do you need to see it for what it is?’ She searches my face almost in despair of me. ‘He’s in love with you.’
A hot tear rushes down my face. ‘It’s just too many mixed messages,’ I hear myself repeat my old refrain. Even I don’t fully believe it any more.
‘There are no mixed messages here,’ she says. ‘He’s been very clear. He wants you to take responsibility for your own decisions – and your own heart. But if you do… he is there waiting.’
Can she be right?
‘You know there are a bunch of regrets that people have when they’re dying,’ she says. ‘Depending on which source you read there’s about ten of them or about thirty. But you know what the main one is?’
I shake my head.
‘It’s not having the courage to express their true feelings, speak up for what they want. So they settled for mediocre existences while they know in their heart that their life could have been so much more.’ She studies me sympathetically. ‘If you love Frank, tell him. Put that stubborn pride and fear of rejection aside, and go all in. Because he was right. This is your life. One life, that’s all we get, Moira. And you have a lot of it left. So don’t be that person who always looks over her shoulder at what might have been. For heaven’s sake, don’t be that person. Be braver than that. Please.’
She flags down our waitress and orders two more drinks.