Chapter 9
Johnny and I are pretty good at creating the illusion of a nicely united front, I notice.
In the waiting room of the relationship counsellor’s office-slash-house, people are looking over at us with intrigue, and at what they assume to be a reassuring hand on my knee.
There are a few of us coming and going; people who decided that the first week of January was the best point in time to address whatever big relationship problems they had.
The couple ahead of us storm out, deep in their own nuclear winter.
The counsellor who comes to meet us looks young, worryingly so for someone who works out of a Maida Vale redbrick.
I want to feel the metaphorical bosom of a sage old veteran, not the eager handshake of the freshly qualified, working up her hours.
‘How are ya?’ I say a little too loudly, as if we are acquaintances meeting for a companionable weeknight drink.
She nods in response, and mutely leads us into a room, the only feature of which I can register at first is the box of tissues on a side table.
Later, I realize that we are speaking in what must normally be someone’s sitting room, where large white cloths are draped over the TV and bookshelves.
Although she is not in fact wearing one, the therapist, Venetia, is a waterfall cardigan in human form.
She may be twenty-eight, thirty tops, but she is all pashmina, orthopaedic loafers and meaningful, sympathetic nodding that makes me want to claw my own throat out.
Exactly the sort of daughter my mother wishes she had.
The very gentleness of her, and the prospect of us being metaphorically held by her for fifty minutes, makes Johnny inhale sharply through his nose, which is, as best as I can tell, a precursor to crying.
I feel him letting go of something internal and long-held.
He grabs at one, two of the tissues while I try not to make any strange, sudden moves.
He has never been like this and I don’t want to alert him to my presence, in case it makes whatever this is start and go away.
‘So. Things have been challenging for you two,’ Venetia offers.
‘Where to even begin,’ Johnny says, eyeing the tissues.
‘OK. So we’ve been married about five years, and started trying for a child about three years ago.
It wasn’t easy, but we eventually got there and, you know, there was major excitement about all of that.
We were – are – both really looking forward to becoming parents.
But then Esther lost the baby when she was about four months’ pregnant. ’
I notice the use of the word ‘Esther’ here, and the lack of ‘we’, as he goes on to tell the entire sorry story. Venetia’s eyes dart to me every so often, checking for some sort of emotional pulse, and good luck to her. We are in a bad, bad way – even I can see that.
‘It’s a hard thing to get your head around when you’ve been each other’s soulmate for as long as we have,’ Johnny admits, voice breaking.
He’s never mentioned the word ‘soulmate’ before and that makes me sadder than ever.
My eye snags on a corner of white painter’s cloth and stays there. I’m too scared to say anything.
‘Does any of this ring true for you, Esther?’ Venetia asks. Suddenly, I feel bone-shreddingly tired.
‘Obviously I thought we would try again not long after, but any conversation around what we are going to do next has just stalled,’ Johnny explains.
‘And I suppose we are both processing all of this, fair enough, but it doesn’t feel like we’re doing any of it together.
And I’ve been reading up on it: so many couples break up because of things like this. ’
He’s been reading up on it?
‘I’m not … ready for that to happen,’ he falters. Another sharp inhale.
‘There’s other stuff going on that Esther needs to process, from her past.’
This kicks me back to life.
‘We’re not going to break up,’ I reassure Johnny, although he and Venetia both flick their heads to the coldly stern edge in my voice.
‘But where ARE you, Esther?’ Johnny nearly shrieks.
A hateful giggle escapes him. ‘Like, where is your mind at? If we’re not going to break up, why does it feel as though we are very, very close to that?
What are we doing here? Because I’m not going to have the next six months be anything at all like the last six months. I just won’t do it.’
He turns to Venetia. ‘I still love my wife. There is so much here to fight for, there really is. He angles his body back to mine. ‘But you will need to want this too. Because I hate this. What we’ve just gone through …’
‘Have either of you attended grief counselling in order to process your loss?’ Venetia asks. We both shake our heads.
‘Unfortunately, grief isn’t my area of expertise as I am a relationship therapist, but it is a path that I would nonetheless suggest you both take, perhaps separately. And then you might both have the right emotional toolkit to move forward in this, but together.’
We are all but spat back out on to Venetia’s lovely birch-lined street, with an instruction to work on our own shit separately – I am paraphrasing here, as if Venetia has ever said the ‘s’ word in her life – before reuniting to try and manage our marriage together.
Both of us have exposed ourselves within that room, with its drapes all over the TV, one of us with words and one of us with inaction, and the vulnerability hangs between us.
‘Getting dumped by a therapist on our first day,’ Johnny says to fill the silence.
I’m afraid to laugh, afraid to agree.
We stop walking and stand on the street, looking at each other. We turn our heads for a quick, precursory peck before walking separately.
‘Bye, then.’
‘Bye.’
I wish we’d arranged to go to the pub after, but I’d remembered that I needed to meet Carrie. I should have realized beforehand that I would be about as likely to be in a mood to meet someone as I would want to punch myself in the jaw. But here we are.
As we walk to the nearest park, Carrie is telling me how she has just flown in from a business trip in New York, a world in which aloe vera is apparently an even bigger deal than it is here. She looks different. More relaxed. The look is somehow looser. Never thought I’d see the day, truly.
‘So how are things with … yer man?’ I remember his name full well, but a petty and horrible side of me wants her to think that I regard all of this as a frivolity.
‘Yeah, really good,’ she says primly. I sense a chill between us. Definite fucking nip in the air there, yeah.
I raise my eyebrows, urging her to go on.
‘What?’ She laughs. ‘There’s really nothing to tell. It’s … just lovely.’ She gives the sort of mysterious smile designed to enrage any sane person.
‘I’m definitely being kept on the outside of whatever’s happening,’ I tell Johnny later. ‘Like, deliberately.’
‘Stop. You’re being a bit paranoid. I’m sure she’s just being cautiously optimistic. Not wanting to jinx it or whatever.’
‘I’m one of her best friends. What are friends there for if not to shout about new boyfriends? It’s at the top of the contract. Lord knows I’ve had to hear about all the assholes.’
‘Well then, say it to her yourself.’ Johnny shrugs, irritated, as he heads towards the shower.
As I hear him lathering up, I remember that he took an old photo of Carrie and me at the Reading Festival years ago. I go to his phone to retrieve it, but instead of finding Carrie and me in festival mode, I find a message from someone I don’t know. Melanie.
‘I love that for us, hahahaha xxx,’ she has texted. I didn’t know you could feel an emotion that’s a midway point between curiosity and dread, but I have found that rare outpost.
Looking into his inbox, I see that Johnny has also deleted all of his sent messages. Curiouser and curiouser.
I never had any reason to believe that Johnny might have an affair, and the fact that I never suspected, and yet he might be doing it anyway, makes me second guess everything.
I’m still feeling thrown for a loop when he emerges, freshly showered and somehow different and more attractive than when he went in.
‘Who the fuck’s Melanie?’ I ask, hoping I sound smooth as an assassination arrow. Even the taste of her name in my mouth – Melanie, the name of breakfast TV presenters and WAGs – feels metallic.
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Why are you even in my phone?’
‘Well, that’s the wrong response to this line of enquiry, for starters.’
‘Melanie’s someone on the curation team. We’re talking about a project, nothing more.’
‘“I love that for us”? “Kiss kiss kiss”?’
‘So she’s a bit of a flirt!’
‘So you think that’s OK?’
‘Because nothing is going on here, yeah, I do.’ Now it’s his turn to get indignant. ‘But thanks for your trust, Esther, yeah. Très helpful.’
I can’t think of anything to say, but I’m damned if he’s getting the last word. ‘Well, ooh la fucking la.’
We get into bed together, and Johnny gives his pillow a too-hard punch and bounces down on his side, facing away from me.
I stare at the ceiling, summoning Ted in my mind’s eye as a sort of revenge for this whole scenario.
If I think hard enough, I can see Ted look at me with pure desire.
I look back at him, acknowledging a loveliness that passes between us.
‘You know nothing can ever happen here between us, I’m a married woman,’ I will tell Ted.
‘I know, and that’s OK. I just needed to express how I feel, even though I understand we can’t be together. I will always love your sense of commitment,’ he will say.