Chapter 15 Freya
FREYA
“I’m in the kitchen,” Charlie calls out unnecessarily as the pungent aroma of lemongrass and coconut fills the air.
“Hey, what are you doing home?” I ask.
“I thought I’d take the evening off and spend it with my wife.” He steps away from the stove to plant a lingering kiss on my lips, the show of affection oddly disconcerting. But I pretend that it’s completely normal, even though something tells me it’s far from it.
“Everything okay?” I ask, not sure if I want to know the answer.
“Of course,” he says, smiling. “What have you been up to?”
“Oh, I just popped into town,” I say, going to the fridge and taking out a bottle of sparkling water. “I took some clothes to the secondhand shop, thought it might bring in some extra pennies.”
“Great idea,” he says enthusiastically. “If you’re not wearing it, why not make some money? What did you sell?”
“Oh, just some old stuff,” I offer, unable to shake off the feeling that I’m being interrogated. Or maybe that’s just my guilty conscience. “The red dress I bought for that charity ball.”
Charlie stops chopping the lemongrass and turns to look at me. “But you looked incredible in that dress.”
I smile, remembering how he hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself during the champagne reception, whispering what he’d do to me when he got me home.
But as was usual back then, we both knew we wouldn’t be able to wait, so had met for what we liked to call “a comfort break” in the disabled toilet somewhere between the starter and the main course.
“Yeah, but when was I ever going to wear something like that again?” I say.
“There’ll be a time,” he says quietly.
“Well, it’s too late now. Some other woman will be wearing it this time next week.”
“But she won’t look like you did,” he says, looking at me as if he actually means it.
It takes all my resolve not to cry, remembering a time when that’s how he made me feel every time he looked at me.
We’re in odd territory, somewhere I can’t remember being for a long time.
Normally, I know where we’re at—and these past six months have invariably been spent holding each other at arm’s length, for fear that one of us will say something the other doesn’t want to hear.
But tonight feels different, as if he’s trying really hard to love me the way he used to.
“Did you go into the office today?” he asks.
I pick at the shredded chicken on the board. “No, I did a few bits on that Unicorn House project I told you about, trying to find a way to help them, and then I went into town.”
He turns to look at me, as if waiting for me to say something else. “So a relaxed day,” he says, more as a statement than a question.
I murmur my assent.
“Oh, and that woman from the meeting called,” I say, busying myself with laying the table to avoid the judgmental look I know I’m going to get. But I can’t hold it off forever, and seeing as he’s in a good mood, I reckon I’ve got as good a chance as ever to get a favorable reaction.
But as soon as he stops stirring the pan, I know I’ve called it wrong. “What woman’s that then?” he asks.
“The one who came up to us at the end. Tess is her name.”
“What did she want?” he asks, his attention still fully focused on me.
“She just asked if I wanted to meet up for a coffee or a bite to eat.” I’m at pains to keep my tone light and airy, as if he’ll find the idea of it less threatening.
Though why I should—and why he would—I don’t know.
“I thought it might be quite nice to have someone to talk to—who’s been through it and come out the other side. For me and for you…”
His jaw clenches. “I don’t think that’s a good idea” is all he says, as he turns his attention back to the job in hand.
I’d expected a natural reticence—for him to be hesitant about our two worlds colliding—but I didn’t think he was going to shoot it down so vehemently.
“But she seems really nice,” I offer, trying again.
Because whether he likes it or not, I am going to see Tess.
He doesn’t get to dictate who I can talk to—and right now, I could do with a friend, though it would be a whole lot easier if I didn’t have to hide the only one I’ve got behind a facade of lies and subterfuge. Though isn’t that my life now?
“Isn’t it already hard enough to manage?” he asks. “To have to go ten miles out of our way to meetings, for fear that someone might recognize us? To pretend that living here has always been our dream?”
He’s making it sound as if it’s a me problem.
“And now you want to invite the one person who has a hold over us into our lives?”
I want to tell him that Tess is the least of our worries, but I have to save my battles for the right time. So for now, I’ll concede.
“You’re right, we don’t need to complicate things.”
He stops stirring and comes to me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I get that you want to make friends, but please, not her. I sat in that meeting and put my heart on the line, which in hindsight, probably wasn’t a very good idea.
They lull you into a false sense of security, making you believe that it’s a safe space and that you can say anything. ”
“It is,” I say, not wanting him to be put off from doing it again.
He pulls a skeptical face. “Until the person sitting next to you starts calling your wife, wanting to meet up for a coffee.”
I hate to admit it, but I can see his point.
He tilts my chin up and kisses me softly on the lips, a physical reassurance I’m not used to. I wonder if it’s because he senses I need it, or that he feels compelled to give it. Either way, I can’t help but be pathetically grateful.
“We need to be more careful,” he says. “I need to be more careful. It’ll only take one slipup for people to start putting two and two together. We have to have our wits about us—even with people we know.…”
“We don’t know anybody,” I say, wanting him to see how isolated I feel.
“You know what I mean,” he says, turning to the hob and preparing to dish up.
“Even with your mum today—I know it’s not ideal, but you have to be superaware of what you say to her because before we know it, she’ll be inventing her own conspiracy theories.
” He tries to laugh, but it takes me a second to catch up to him, still caught on the line before.
“I haven’t spoken to my mum today.”
His looks at me, his eyes questioning, as he sets the plates down on the table. “I thought you said she’d been up?”
Had I? My brow furrows, wondering why I would have told him that if it wasn’t true. A simmering heat prickles the soles of my feet as I doubt myself.
“Not today.” I stop before I trip myself up by telling him I saw her in London last week.
His jaw spasms and I know I’ve said something wrong, but I can’t work out what it is. He’s right. I need to be more careful.
The conversation falters as we eat, and for anyone looking in, they’d think we were on an awkward first date, the pair of us skirting around the real issues in favor of mundane small talk that we hope won’t get us into trouble.
What has our marriage become? When we’d rather discuss how well the radishes are doing in Maureen Radcliffe’s garden than acknowledge the thundering noise of elephants stampeding through the room.
I should be telling him I saw Marcus Harding. He should be telling me he saw Coco. But the outcomes of both are never going to be good, so maybe it’s best that we keep quiet, protecting ourselves to protect each other.
“I think I’m going to go to bed,” I say, as soon as we’ve tidied away. “I’ve got a headache coming on.”
“Okay, I’ll be up in a bit,” says Charlie, trying to smile through the weight of all that’s on his mind.
I ease the lock on the bathroom door silently across and drop to my knees in front of the vanity cabinet, reaching under the sink for the plastic bag I know is wedged up behind the pipes.
I pretend that the vodka is going to be in line with where I last left it, its volume discreetly marked with a brow pencil.
But as much as I fool myself that the horror of that night has driven the addiction away, the fear of someone dying, the fear of being caught, the strategically hidden bottle only proves that the addiction has been driven further underground.
But it’s not the near-empty bottle that jolts me as I take it out from the carrier bag; it’s the Patek Philippe watch that falls out with it.