Chapter 8
EIGHT
Victoria
It’s after midnight and Ed is already fast asleep beside me. As usual, his snoring is driving me crazy. I don’t think I would have been able to sleep anyway but the snoring makes it worse.
Grabbing my phone from the bedside table, I throw a hoodie over my pyjamas because the winter nights are freezing and we don’t run the heater overnight. Moving quietly, I tiptoe down the stairs to the living room where everything is clean and organised, the blanket-covered sofas free of toys.
I hate mess and chaos. It makes me feel claustrophobic and unmoored at the same time, which sounds insane but I cannot think how else to describe the feeling of being hemmed in but unable to settle.
Ed relies on that part of me to keep this house under control, even though he promised he would do it when he gave up work.
Sometimes he just shakes his head when I start cleaning and tidying after a long day at work because he can’t understand it.
Sometimes he offers the default lazy parent words of, ‘If you would have just asked me…’ And then I have to bite down on my lip so I don’t scream, ‘I shouldn’t have to ask you.
’ His messiness makes me angry. His decision to just give up work to follow his passion makes me furious.
His chaotic parenting drives me mad. And now I’m keeping the secret of the message and everything that happened with Camilla from him.
I don’t feel like I can talk to him anymore.
I think… no, I know that if something doesn’t change Ed and I are headed for divorce.
And I believe he’s completely oblivious to this.
When we met, in the lift of the building where we both worked, I thought he was cute but a little bit boring.
We always seemed to be in the lift at the same time, which I later learned was by design.
‘I really wanted to ask you out but it took me a long time to work up the courage,’ he told me, which I thought was very sweet.
It could easily have been creepy in another man but Ed just seemed so nice, so earnest.
I always noticed him because of his ties.
He always wore a classic tailored suit in navy or black to work with a crisp white business shirt.
But his ties were always kooky. Depending on the season they were covered in little round suns or snowflakes, Christmas trees or Easter eggs, his favourite football team or cartoon characters.
He wore wire-rimmed glasses that couldn’t hide the deep green of his eyes and he was tall and thin.
I was waiting for him to ask me out. I could have asked him but I had recently been through two relationships where I felt like I was driving the bus and I was tired of doing that.
I wanted a man to pursue me for a change.
Each time he was in the lift with me, I offered a smile or a nod but I did nothing else.
And then one day, he was wearing a tie with pickles on it and I started laughing and then he laughed and then he asked me out.
I thought I was getting a strait-laced accountant with a quirky sense of humour.
Instead, I am married to a man who was pushed into accounting by his parents and has decided that, at forty with twin sons, it is now time to pursue his passion.
It’s a level of selfishness that I can’t fathom.
And to make matters worse, he didn’t even discuss it with me, just announced it one day as a fait accompli, and then looked hurt that I wasn’t as excited about his mid-life career change as he was.
‘I thought you would be happy for me,’ he said. ‘We can manage on the money you make and you’ll get promoted and then we’ll be okay until I start earning properly.’
‘But what if I don’t get promoted and what if I wanted to take time off to be with the kids more?’ I said, frustrated.
‘But you had two years,’ he yelled. And while that’s the truth, two years was not enough.
I want to be with the boys more and when I am with them I want to be really present, but I feel like I’m permanently exhausted.
When I’m at work I worry about the boys and all the shit I’ll have to do when I get home.
When I’m at home I worry about deadlines and projects that I haven’t given my all to. And now I have Camilla to deal with.
I feel guilty about not telling Reese that I replied to Camilla. She was the one who was the most hurt after all.
But Camilla is dangerous for me, for our friendship, for my life. I need to neutralise this threat before Reese gets involved.
But I’ve been watching you Victoria. I know a lot more about you than you can imagine. And I think it’s time for everyone to know the truth.
That message tells me that Camilla is a threat. I don’t know if she will just slink away after we block her but I had to tell Reese that so she wouldn’t go into full-on panic mode.
Camilla hasn’t replied to my last message but I keep Instagram open so that I’m ready if something does come in. I google Camilla again, hoping that even though I may not have her new, married surname, if she is married, I can still find her.
I have always wondered, after everything, what happened to her but it has also always felt like googling her, thinking about her, trying to find her, would be like summoning her back into our lives.
I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to simply put her out of my mind and pretend I had never met her.
As they did the first time I typed Camilla Struthers into Google, thousands of entries pop up but despite scrolling through ten pages, I can’t find Camilla Struthers. I find lots of Camillas and lots of people with the surname Struthers, but no Camilla.
Surely she would exist somewhere under her maiden name?
It’s now 1 a.m. and I know with certainty that I’m going to be an absolute wreck in the morning, but I need some information on this woman.
I close my eyes and picture Coach, her stepfather, who she hated.
His name was Bob or Bill… no, Bert something.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ I mutter as I struggle to find his surname.
Frustrated, I type in Bert, swim coach, 2006 and just like that the internet gives me his name in the form of an old picture of him and his team at a national swimming championship.
I click on the picture of the coach and enlarge it so that I’m sure I have the right one.
It’s definitely him. While we were never formally introduced to him, I do remember being out with Camilla once and her suddenly turning pale and slouching in her seat.
We were in a coffee shop at the time. The three of us had just ordered and sat down to wait for our names to be called, when Camilla muttered, ‘Shit.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Reese asked.
Camilla gestured towards a couple standing at the counter. ‘That’s my mother and the arsehole,’ she said.
Her mother was a thin, small woman but her stepfather looked like he could take anyone in a fight.
‘What do you want to do?’ whispered Reese and Camilla just shook her head. ‘They won’t say anything to us, don’t worry.’
I found that really weird. If I was out and saw my mother or she saw me, I would immediately go over to her to say hello.
I knew that Camilla didn’t like her mother and stepfather, but until that moment, I had really just thought it was a kind of a leftover teenage rage thing.
I assumed that, like most people, she would eventually find a way to get along with her parents.
She didn’t get up and go over to them, instead just kept staring down at her bag.
And what was even stranger was that they saw her.
I know they did because Coach, as she always called him when she wasn’t calling him the arsehole, looked over at us and then said something to Camilla’s mother who turned to look at us as well. And then both of them just left.
‘Are you okay?’ Reese asked after they were gone, and Camilla snapped at her.
‘I’m fine.’
Our names were called and we went to get our coffees and then we just pretended we hadn’t seen them. But I remember exactly what he looked like.
Bert Upton is a burly man with large shoulders and a rounded stomach in the photo. His team came third in the competition. There are no other pictures of him and his team after that, although there are mentions of him in old articles from his school’s magazine.
The most recent entry is a death notice. I study the words as I think about my mother and father who are in their late sixties.
Bert Upton died peacefully after a long battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his family, including his wife, Jean, and two children, Sophie and Lia. Bert’s funeral will take place on Wednesday the 16th of September at Louisville Park Cemetery.
Sophie and Lia are the girls that Camilla’s parents fostered and later adopted.
I remember that now. Camilla is not mentioned, which I find really odd.
Although she did hate him with a passion.
Perhaps she stopped speaking to her parents entirely.
I remember she was barely seeing them the last time I spoke to her, although she had established some kind of a relationship with Sophie and Lia, something I found strange because she essentially believed they had replaced her.
Frustrated, I tip my head back on the sofa and close my eyes. I can feel myself drifting into sleep when I hear the ping of an incoming message and I grab my phone. I’m suddenly wide awake when I see it’s from Camilla.
Remember what you did to me? Remember the things you said? Watch what happens now.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ I mutter, knowing there’s no way I’m getting to sleep now. This is not good, really not good.