Chapter 12
The very, very worst of mornings, as though an actual assault has happened. The mobile phone’s ping bounces off the walls, making Johnny tense in the bed next to me. Google news alerts me to a brand-new article, published on the Toronto Standard website only a few minutes prior.
Ted Levy spotted with blonde beauty as he conquers Hollywood
Canadian actor Ted Levy is now reportedly spending time with Alice Andre.
My stomach feels as though it’s trying to make a run for my arse. Things blur for a second, and then I can’t get the words into me fast enough. I am up and out of the bed with more energy than I’ve had in days.
The two were spotted emerging from Barney’s Beanery in LA after a relaxed lunch, during which onlookers described them as ‘never taking their eyes off each other’.
After previously sparking dating rumours with actors Frank Bustard and Marc Benjamin, the Swedish-Canadian model (29) proves she certainly has a type.
Andre, lithe in a figure-hugging grey cashmere ensemble, walked arm in arm with her new paramour Levy (43), who kept it casual in black sweats and sneakers.
‘Alice is single and happy to be, although there’s always time for catching up with friends,’ a rep for Andre told the Toronto Sun. Single or not, it looks like exciting times ahead for the beauty, who recently signed on as the face of Urban Decay cosmetics.
Everything about this makes me miserable as sin.
I study every single inch of Alice Andre, zooming in on the photo.
Her skin is the colour of a lightly toasted bagel; her blonde a shade that you could pay a hairdresser five figures to achieve and they’d still never manage to get it right.
There’s her perfect, pianist-fingered hand clamped on the softness of Ted’s left hip.
His hands, as familiar to me as my own by now, rest heavily on her bony shoulder.
Truly, I’ve seen more body fat on a sparrow’s fucking ball-sack.
She is all limbs, all fine-sand skin, all jewellery that I can hear jingle from across an ocean.
She doesn’t know it yet, but Alice Andre is my brand-new enemy.
I make a mental note to spend the afternoon at work finding out as much about her as I can.
I start to email Violet, but she beats me to it.
‘ALICE bastarding, fucking, shitting ANDREEEEEE,’ I can hear her shriek, even in textual form.
‘Cannot BELIEVE he would even go there with this actual skin equally, the impulse to delete it doesn’t exactly overpower.
I don’t tell Violet about the thought that’s been bubbling in my head not just for the last five minutes, but for the weeks and months before that.
I need to get myself to Toronto, and get hold of this man once and for all.
Take the life that is rightfully mine before a walking pair of clavicles beats me to it.
Just then, I realize that the ‘Online Now!’ icon is ablaze on Ted Levy’s MySpace. He is looking at his home page at the exact same time as I am, somewhere. And for a brief moment, that gives me a stroke of peace.
Later on that day, in what feels like a fever dream, I move the ￡12,000 ‘Just in Case We Need It for a Baby’ money from our barely touched rainy-day account on to a credit card.
I book a one-way flight to Toronto for the end of October, and a week’s stay in a hotel near Kensington Market on Expedia.
I then compose an email to Naomi before I can talk myself out of it.
Dear Naomi,
I’m having a good day today, for a change, and I hope you are too!
I don’t want to come across as too forward, but I am coming to Toronto for a few weeks, and would love to meet you while I am there. I think it would be lovely to put a face to the name. I already feel we are friends of sorts, in any case.
Maybe let me know if you are free for a coffee? I’ll be there at the end of October.
With every best wish,
Esther
As it always is, her reply is near enough immediate.
Wow, that is awesome news and a lovely surprise! Vacation or business? Coffee, or maybe something even stronger, sounds like a really great idea. I’m not working at the moment so I’m pretty free for anything. Hit me up with an email as soon as you land. Really can’t wait to meet you properly.
On the Tedettes’ page, I share my news. Well, part of it.
‘Guess who’s thinking of heading to Toronto at the end of the month?’ I write in a post.
‘Wow, for a vacation?’ Layla asks.
‘Maybe longer, not sure,’ I write. Layla sends back a GIF of a man’s head exploding. No one is waiting for Violet to go with her reaction first, which is what normally happens around here.
‘Just gonna hang out for a bit, see what’s what. Apparently it’s a great city to live in.’
The other bit of news is too good to keep in.
‘You’ll never guess who I’ve been in touch with,’ I write in the comments. ‘Ted Levy’s step-sister, Naomi.’
‘OMG you actual stalking bitch!! I love it tho. Wer[weofoig[qwoe,’ types Maxi.
‘Whoa, how did you even meet her?’ This from Juliet.
‘It turns out we have a professional connection, within the therapeutic industries,’ I reply. ‘We’ve just been chatting online.’
Immediately a private message pings through from Violet.
‘Your husband going with you?’
I sense her anger. She does not seem best pleased about this. I seem to have crossed a boundary I didn’t know was even there.
‘It’s not like that!! I’m just going to Toronto to visit the city. I don’t even know if Ted will be there. Or even Naomi, for that matter.’
Her lack of reply says enough. Meanwhile, everyone else is on the Facebook post, taking their turn to have a shit-fit.
The day before I am due to leave, I am studying Johnny closely for the first time in ages.
He moves about the kitchen with ease, as though it’s just another regular day.
Which, I guess, it is for him. He has stopped wondering about when I might start grief counselling.
He has precious little idea that I am leaving, perhaps for a few weeks, but maybe forever if the fates are especially benevolent.
Johnny probably thinks I would never have it in me, this steady, cautious wife of his, and up until about three days ago I probably thought that too.
I have a packed suitcase in the cloakroom in the hallway and it’s like the bloody thing is throbbing in there, waiting to be found.
Earlier, Johnny came in from work, opened the cloakroom door and kicked his boots into the darkness, which made my insides run to slime. For a split second, I hoped he would find it, would erupt in fury and create all-out war, beg me to stay. The bigger part of me is relieved he didn’t.
I dampen down the idea that’s constantly threatening to heat up: that in going to Toronto, I am somehow betraying Johnny.
I’ve started to realize something terrible.
There’s so little left of our marriage, just rubble and awfulness, that it barely feels worth the effort to save it.
Besides, Johnny would be a fine one to talk about what’s considered ‘appropriate’, having a ‘work wife’ who Loves That For Them.
The way I see it, Johnny might see me running away to Toronto as a betrayal, but to me this feels like living authentically.
I am not betraying myself, at any rate. The twelve grand is effectively mine; it was my grand-uncle.
If I were to go to Toronto, I’d be honouring my truth, as Carrie would have said with her life-coach cap on.
I decide to travel first, compose an email to Johnny explaining at the airport, and seek forgiveness at a later date, if indeed the time ever comes.
Thinking of Carrie makes me check her Facebook page, which I muted in a temper ages ago.
The baby is here, a girl. Has been in the world for a few weeks now: 9 pounds, 5 ounces.
Carrie has called her Marianne, and there’s even something about how adult and sensible her baby-name choice is that physically rips through me.
I think of Carrie’s body, primal and animalistic, opening like the jaw of a python to let this whole new person out into the world.
She feels like even more of a stranger now.
‘Congratulations! Hope you and Marianne are doing well, and I can’t wait to meet her!
’ I type as a comment below the photo. I’m weirded out at how formal and stilted I sound, as though I’m congratulating my boss’s wife, not my best friend, but then nothing about this whole scenario is at all recognizable to me.
Later in the evening, Johnny surprises me by gingerly lighting a candle and placing it on the table between us as we have our spaghetti bolognaise. ‘I dunno, just something nice …’
He shrugs, while also looking at me out of the corner of his eye, seeking a reaction. That he still sees an ember of hope flickering in our future makes me want to cry a little. Instead, I say, ‘Fancy a fuck?’
We are no longer screwing according to the calendar or the basal temperature or the app or whenever someone or something else instructs us to on account of the right type of mucus, so the offer genuinely takes Johnny by surprise.
He’s practically loosening his belt at the dinner table, the cooling spag bol all but forgotten.
Within minutes, we have sex on the kitchen work surface that’s so urgent and vigorous and grunty and athletic and almost deliciously hostile that, for the first time in ages, my mind doesn’t wander off-piste, wondering what’s the difference between a raisin and a sultana, or whether a meadow is the same thing as a glade.
We both climax at the same time – a sign we’re doing OK, if you’re going by Cosmo magazine wisdom – and afterwards, I can tell he senses we might finally be moving back closer towards each other.
He doesn’t see this sex for what it is.
Leaving at dawn is both thrilling and petrifying, like pulling a pin on a hand grenade.
In the taxi, I type a response to the Swede about today’s disciplinary meeting. ‘Sorry I won’t make it in today for that meeting,’ I type. ‘I’ve come down with a really bad case of Go Fuck Yourself.’ Pressing ‘send’ feels better than whatever Alton Towers has to offer. A small laugh escapes me.
‘Going somewhere good?’ asks the taxi driver.
‘I’m moving to Toronto,’ I reply. Saying it out loud feels incredible.
‘You’re travelling awful light for a move to another country, ain’t ya?’ he says.
‘Well, who needs luggage when you have a fresh start?’ I tell him. ‘I don’t need too much anyway. My … boyfriend’s place will have all the stuff we’ll need.’ I feel a thrill as I hold my fantasy life up to the light.
‘Moving out for a fella? He must be a good ’un.’
I’m quite enjoying this. ‘He is. He’s a well-known actor.’
‘Oh yeah, would I have heard of him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘Ted Levy?’
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Don’t know that one.’
‘You will do, one day. He’s pretty amazing at what he does.’
‘Amen to that, my love. Well, here’s to your fresh start.’
At the airport, as I tear into a croissant and latte at Costa, I compose an email to Johnny. Adrenaline is keeping me going, making all the decisions around here. I type:
You’ll have noticed by now that I’m not where I am meant to be. But in some ways, Johnny, I am exactly where I am meant to be.
We are not in good shape, and haven’t been for a while.
And I don’t know what to do about it. I especially don’t know what to do about it while I’m there, living with you.
I am not leaving my life outright, or leaving you, but I just need some time on my own.
An indefinite amount, sorry. I need the space and I need to just do what I need to do for myself to feel like a normal human being again, and I have to do it alone, and without you on this leg of whatever journey this turns out to be.
Please don’t try to find me, and please don’t reply to this email as I will only delete it without reading it first. I will be back in touch when I have made some kind of progress.
Knowing that the Tedettes are fully invested, I post a picture to the Facebook page of the airline screen at the gate, focusing on the word ‘Toronto’.
Within minutes, Maxi has responded. ‘OMG so unbelievably jealoussss,’ she writes. ‘If you meet and marry our boy you will absolutely have to invite me to da wedding!!!’
I am warmed by this vote of confidence.
Violet messages me privately. ‘I can’t believe you are doing this in actual real life,’ she writes. ‘Promise me you will keep me updated on everything that happens, good & bad. And if you find Alice Andre, give her a massive punch in the tits from me.’