5. Chapter 5
5
K atie stood in the living room in the middle of a pile of boxes and suitcases filled with clothes, books, and other paraphernalia. The house appeared caught somewhere between burglary-gone-wrong and charity-shop-clear-out. Strewn across the room, shirts and trousers and socks were stirred in with shoes, mixed with electronics, blended with half-empty bottles of shower gel and aftershave.
She threw a pair of barely worn blue check drainpipe trousers onto the top of a box of clothes and shoved Ryan’s copy of Who Moved My Cheese? into a box on top of an unread copy of The Mountain Is You, and a pristine edition of Money: Master the Game. Ryan frequently bought self-improvement and business books and left them lying about the house, but he seldom progressed beyond the first chapter.
There were big gaps on bookshelves and faint lines of dust where photo frames had stood until that day. All the carefully chosen and curated books and nick-nacks of a life built together were gone. Five years to collect and assemble all of it, a few days to pack it up and get rid of everything. She didn’t want a trace of him left.
An empty silver photo frame lay on the sofa, a pair of scissors beside it. The picture of them taken on their first anniversary was in tiny pieces in the kitchen bin.
Katie hitched up her sunflower pattern dungarees, the cheerful design at odds with the expression on her face, and pulled a photo of Ryan receiving his first Employee of the Month award off the shelf. Holding it between finger and thumb to avoid contagion, she dropped it into the clothes box where it nestled amongst some boxer shorts.
The doorbell rang. Katie sighed, tossed a packet of protein powder into the book box, and stepped over a pile of shoes on her way to the door.
Dragging it open, she found Jess on the doorstep, holding up a shopping bag and a bottle of wine.
‘I’m the reinforcements,’ she said.
Katie’s face crumpled, and she slumped against the door frame.
‘Oh, darling.’
Jess stepped into the hall and wrapped her arms around Katie. Katie was too exhausted to lift her arms and return the hug. She hunched into Jess, tears coming in ugly gulps and gasps, snivelling. She could feel the wine bottle in Jess’s hand pressed into her back, as Jess valiantly held onto the shopping and the wine as she hugged her friend.
After a few moments, Katie pulled back, and Jess peered at her.
‘You look awful,’ Jess said.
‘And there was me thinking this was my finest hour.’
Katie snivelled, dragging her sleeve under her nose, slinging the door shut behind them, and leading the way into the kitchen.
‘Self-pity isn’t going to get you out of this,’ Jess said, following her in and setting the wine on the counter. The shopping bag fell sideways, and a tub of ice cream rolled out.
‘But wine and ice cream will?’ Katie retorted, folding her arms.
‘Got to start somewhere.’
Jess shrugged, then walked up to Katie, a calming vision in a loose cream jumper over taupe leggings, in stark contrast to Katie’s bright flowery dungarees over a hot pink t-shirt.
Taking her by the shoulders, Jess said, ‘Is this where you tell me you do need me to push that sleazy fucker off a wall?’
Katie gave a half-hearted chuckle, then frowned. ‘I think I’d rather do it myself. And replace the wall with a cliff.’
‘That’s more like it!’ Jess said, giving her arms a squeeze.
‘I love your violent tendencies,’ Katie mumbled.
‘These supplies,’ Jess gestured to the shopping, ‘will give us the energy to empty this house of every last trace of that cheating shit-head.’
Jess banged a small clenched fist on the counter as she swore.
Katie nodded, sniffed, and raked through the bag, pulling out a big bag of crisps and tearing into them.
There was another ring at the door. Katie’s eyes flew to Jess’s face.
‘I’m not expecting anyone,’ she said in a panicked voice, muffled by a mouthful of cheese puffs. ‘What if it’s him?’
Jess’s face was grim, her brows knitted into a hard line. ‘You stay there,’ she said, holding her hand up. ‘I’ll go.’
Katie stood frozen to the spot. She didn’t even chew her mouthful of cheese puffs, she just strained to hear who was at the door. She had told Ryan to stay away, that she would call when it was convenient for him to collect his things.
He had tried to insist he come over to pack his things himself, but Katie had said that he wouldn’t leave the house with all his appendages intact after what he had done. After some angry exchanges, he agreed that Katie would pack his things and that he would come by with a van to collect them.
Katie was exercising very specific criteria of what was his and what was theirs and hers. Anything that was theirs—whether gifted to them both or bought jointly—she fully intended to keep as payment for suffering, she had told Ryan. Anything of his that she fancied keeping, like his ergonomic office chair, she might just forget to put in the pile for collection. His clothes, though, she had screwed up and gleefully shoved in boxes. Shades of grey, charcoal, and some occasional blue relief. Ryan was not an imaginative dresser.
There was a kerfuffle in the hallway and muffled voices. The front door banged shut, and then her mother appeared, pausing in the kitchen doorway for dramatic effect.
Katie watched, wide-eyed, still forgetting to chew her cheese puffs, as Susan took in the array of half-packed boxes, and Katie standing in socked feet in the middle of it all, clutching her bag of crisps.
Susan shucked off her leopard print trench coat, dropped it to the floor, and crossed the room with arms out.
‘My baby girl!’ she cried, stalking across the kitchen in high-heeled red suede ankle boots and enveloping Katie in a hug and a cloud of Chanel.
Susan clutched Katie to her chest, the metallic threads in her black and silver blouse scratching at Katie’s cheek.
Katie stiffened when her mother pulled her in. Then her shoulders slumped and a roll of tension in her belly unfurled. Susan was stroking Katie’s hair and making shh-shh sounds into the top of Katie’s head as if she was five and had just clambered up after a nasty fall. Except she was an adult and the damage from this particular fall didn’t leave a mark anywhere. Katie let out a long and shaky breath and her body juddered.
Susan released Katie and peered at her face before something on the kitchen stool beside them caught her eye.
‘My darling! I mean,’ she picked up a pair of pin-stripe drain pipe trousers that Katie had just taken out of the laundry basket. Susan held them up in her blood-red, manicured fingers. ‘What on earth did he think he looked like in these? He doesn’t have the height or the arse to carry these off.’
Katie, who had finally remembered to chew her cheese puffs, snorted and started choking.
‘Dear heart,’ her mother said, thwacking her on the back as Katie found her breath and wiped at her eyes. Slipping her arm through Katie’s, Susan squeezed her into her side. ‘Jess tells me there’s wine and,’ she flicked her wrist to check her slender diamanté encrusted watch, ‘the sun is after the yard arm.’ She paused. ‘On a Saturday. Dear heart, I want to know everything. Tell me how you are since I last spoke to you, darling. We’re going to come up with a plan,’ her gaze took in the three of them, ‘to get you back on your feet.’
Katie allowed herself to be coaxed onto a breakfast bar stool as her mother winked at Jess and pointed at the wine.
It was barely lunchtime, but her mother had always had a flexible attitude to drinking times. As Susan liked to say, she didn’t drink much, but she drank when she wanted. Katie and her brother Joe felt the first part was debatable.
Susan was reaching for glasses and bringing them down from the cupboard.
‘I hope you’re not giving these away, darling. Your father and I bought you these. They were for you both, but there is no both now, is there,’ Susan said bluntly, passing the glasses to Jess, who had cracked open the wine.
Katie gulped.
‘So they are yours, darling. Yours. ’
Katie found her voice. ‘Mum, what are you doing here? I mean… I didn’t know you were coming over.’
Jess passed Susan a glass of wine, and Susan sniffed it appreciatively.
Susan ignored Katie’s question and shook her head, large gold hoops shaking under her bright red hair. Katie inherited her hair colour from her mother, but these days Susan’s was from the bottle.
‘I am,’ Susan pressed a hand to her ample bosom, ‘absolutely disgusted at what that boy has done. I can’t believe,’ she reached across the kitchen island, ‘that he could do that to you. To my Katie.’
Jess slid a glass of wine across to Katie, who felt like, when in Rome… She took a sip, and the sharp, cold wine slid down. She realised she hadn’t had anything except a cup of black coffee first thing that morning. She let out a long, shaky breath and concentrated on keeping her voice even.
‘I’m okay, Mum,’ she said. Realising that wasn’t quite true, she corrected herself. ‘I’ll be okay. I’m just getting rid of all his things. He’ll pick them up sometime next week. If he doesn’t,’ she glanced at the piles of stuff, ‘I’ll take them to the local tip.’
‘Good,’ Susan said. ‘I’ve already taken down all the photos in the house that had him in them, and I gave that jacket he left there last time you came over to a homeless charity. Though honestly,’ she pursed her lips, ‘you’d have to be truly desperate to wear it—’
‘Mum!’
Susan looked unapologetic and sipped at her wine. Katie looked pleadingly at Jess.
‘Um, Susan, I think what Katie wants to do today is just get all of Ryan’s stuff packed up and ready for him to collect. That’s what we’re here to help with. Maybe we should…’ Jess gestured, taking in the shirts half dragged from the washing machine, the box on the counter with three kinds of multi-vitamins for men, and a dog-eared stack of Men’s Health magazine.
Susan ignored Jess and kept her eyes trained on Katie.
‘Dear heart,’ she said, studying Katie’s face. ‘You don’t seem angry. Why aren’t you angry?’
Katie felt tears well up. Her mother’s direct question cracked something open inside her that she had been keeping locked up tightly these past few days.
In a small, strangled voice, she replied, ‘I am angry, Mum. I’m furious.’
Her fingers were gripping the edge of the counter so tightly that her nail beds were white.
‘Who behaves like that? Who tells someone they love them one moment and then gets in their car and drives to… to someone else. The lies he must have told, the effort he put into deceiving me.’ Her cheeks flamed. ‘The thought of him sleeping beside me night after night when he might have just been with… her. ’
Her voice shook, and her throat burned as she grated the words out.
‘But I’m also devastated.’ Katie’s voice shook, and her mouth felt dry. ‘I thought we’d be together forever. I can’t make the two things add up. I hate him, what he’s done. I’ll never forgive him. But I…’ Tears were flowing now. ‘I had thought we’d get married, thought we’d have kids.’ She choked on that last word. ‘And then I’m confused. Was it me? Was there something wrong in our relationship and I didn’t see it? Did I get boring? Was there something I should have done?’ She shook her head, her blood rising. ‘And then I get furious again, and I want to burn his clothes and key his car and kick him in the balls for being a,’ she clenched her fists, ‘lying,’ she banged the counter, ‘cheating,’ banged it again, ‘bastard.’ Bang,
The kitchen island vibrated under the impact.
She stopped only because she ran out of breath. Her nails were digging into her palms, and she slackened her grip, glancing down at the angry red half-moons pressed into her hands. She looked up, eyes roving between her mother and Jess, both standing stock-still, her mother’s wine glass held halfway to her mouth.
‘It’s not one feeling, Mum. It’s a whole bunch of them. All fucking horrible.’
The room was silent and still for a moment, and Katie felt the burning in her hands as her shoulders shook and tears rolled down her face.
Susan, collecting herself, put her glass down smartly on the counter, slid off the stool, and went to her daughter.
‘My baby girl.’ she wrapped her arms around Katie, pulling her in. Katie leaned her head limply and a little awkwardly on her mother’s shoulder. ‘Of course you’re hurt.’ She swiped at Katie’s tear-streaked face with a ring-laden finger, and she pushed Katie up, holding her by her shoulders. Susan’s eyes narrowed. ‘But he’s behaved abhorrently. The lowest of the low. Tap into the anger,’ Susan said, tapping Katie on the collarbone, ‘whenever you feel sad about what you think you’ve lost. Tap into the anger about what a shit he’s been and tell yourself what a lucky escape you’ve had. Some people invest decades in a relationship before they find out what their partner is really like.’
Susan patted Katie on the arm, stepped away, and wandered around the counter, picking up her wine and sipping at it.
‘Look at your Auntie Jocelyn. She thought butter wouldn’t melt in your Uncle David’s mouth. They’d been together nearly twenty years before she found out he had a second family on the Isle of Wight.’ Susan sniffed. ‘The Isle of Wight, of all places.’
As if David’s mistake was not so much the fifteen-year-long affair and love child, but more the choice of where he had hidden them.
‘You’re in your prime, darling.’ Susan waved her glass. ‘Plenty more fish—’
‘Don’t say it, Mum.’ Katie held up a hand. ‘I know you mean well, but I don’t need trite sayings right now. I honestly can’t imagine being with anyone ever again. What I need now is time on my own. I can’t imagine trusting anyone again after this.’
She wiped the back of her hand across her damp face and looked around at the open drawers and piles of belongings strewn across the kitchen. It was the same in every room of the house. The physical mess of a breakup, the emptying of cupboards and drawers to divide up cookware, books, clothes, towels, artwork, and photographs. It was so much easier to calculate and deal with than the emotional mess.
‘I just need help to get every trace of him out of here.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say his name. ‘All his stuff, I want it gone. I don’t care where, and I don’t care how.’
‘Well, if that’s the line we’re taking, we should start by boil-washing his cashmere jumpers before you pack them up.’ There was a gleeful glint in her mother’s eye as she assessed the laundry pile near the utility room door. ‘Honestly, Katie, no man needs to be such a slave to trends. There’s a fine line between pride in your appearance and simple vanity.’
This, Katie thought, coming from a woman with a walk-in wardrobe and dressing room, but she kept quiet, not wanting to interrupt her mother’s flow of support for her.
Her mother, now on a roll—pouring her second glass of wine—said, ‘Ryan thought the most beautiful person in any room was him.’
Susan lifted the wine bottle to the light to check how much they had left before reluctantly passing it to Jess.
Jess chimed in, adding, ‘Yes, and if he wasn’t listening to the sound of his own voice, he looked bored.’
Susan cackled as she lifted her glass. ‘Quite, quite. And,’ she said, watching with a beady eye as Jess topped up her own glass and then Katie’s, ‘I don’t think he really pays attention to who he’s talking to. Last year at Christmas, he told me the same boring story about a housing sale collapse three times.’
Katie’s mouth was slack as her eyes ranged between her mother and her friend. ‘Mum! Jess!’ she gasped. ‘Didn’t you like him? We were together for five years!’
Jess looked contrite, and her eyes flicked to Susan as if to say, get us out of this.
Susan straightened her shoulders and fluffed her curly red hair. ‘Darling, parents don’t get to choose their children’s partners for them.’ She sighed, pressed a hand to her chest, and said, ‘I mean, do you think we’d have chosen April for Joe?’
Katie paused for a moment as the comment sank in, then tittered. April was her brother’s rather high-maintenance girlfriend. The list of things April would or would not eat changed with each visit, depending on which articles she had read recently.
‘Let’s just say,’ Susan continued, twirling her glass, ‘if we lived in the days where gentlemen had to ask for a father’s consent to marry or,’ she glanced around, ‘to move in with their daughters, I rather think your father would have refused his consent to Ryan.’
‘Mum!’ Katie was sitting bolt upright now. ‘I can’t believe you and Dad didn’t say anything!’
Susan pursed her lips and planted a hand on her hip.
‘What? And incur your wrath? Have you declare that if we didn’t like him, that was tough luck, and you wouldn’t bother visiting anymore if you weren’t both wanted? Make every future family event even more awkward than it already is while we have to sit and listen to April explain to us all why we shouldn’t be eating potatoes. Tsk— potatoes, for goodness sake!’
Susan rolled her eyes, and her heavily mascaraed lashes dusted little black flecks onto the tops of her cheeks. ‘I’m going to sit and eat a giant jacket potato in front of her the next time she comes over. With a large glass of red wine. It’s not five minutes ago they were telling us red wine was good for you.’
Katie’s mouth twitched. April was a passionate nutritionist who never met someone she didn’t think needed to reform their lifestyle. Susan was a passionate hedonist who had never met a food or drink she didn’t like. They unwittingly provided great entertainment for everyone else.
Jess was leaning against the counter, enjoying the show while she sipped wine and tried to look innocent, though Katie suspected she had something to do with her mother being there in the first place.
‘Well, come on then,’ Jess said, catching Katie’s eye and sending a supportive smile her way. ‘Put us to work. What do you want us to do?’
Katie glanced around and opened her mouth to reply when her phone vibrated on the counter. She hesitated, the rattling vibration sound against the worktop loud in the room. All three of them stared at it.
‘That better not be him ,’ Susan said.
Her mouth curled when she said him , and she put her glass down with a heavy ding on the counter.
Katie picked up her phone. Ryan had sent countless messages and made dozens of phone calls after Katie locked him out of the house the night she found out. She had left a note on the front door suggesting that as she now knew he was a lying bastard who preferred Melissa’s company to hers, perhaps Melissa could offer him a bed for the night because he wouldn’t be sleeping there.
She had lain in bed upstairs with all the lights off, tears trailing down her face, soaking the pillows, listening to him knocking at the door and plaintively calling her name through the letter box. He had phoned her constantly until she turned her phone off. He had backed off in the last couple of days after Katie had made it clear she had nothing to say to him and he would only be able to set foot in the house to collect his stuff once she had it packed and ready.
Glancing at the screen, she didn’t immediately recognise the name on the Instagram message and started to look away, then did a double-take and checked again.
Tom Bellden.
Tom.
She clicked open her phone to read the message.
‘Well? Katie? Is it him?’ Susan asked as she upended the wine bottle over her glass, in hopes Jess hadn’t finished it.
‘Um, no.’ Katie swallowed.
‘Katie?’ Jess prompted. ‘Who is it then?’
‘It’s from…Tom.’
Susan and Jess looked blank.
Katie swallowed. ‘The man I told you I saw outside the house that night. Melissa’s boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend now, I suppose.’
‘Oh!’ Susan would have raised her eyebrows, but Botox prevented it. She blinked rapidly instead. ‘Well? Why is he contacting you?’
Katie cleared her throat. ‘He writes, Hi Katie, this is Tom. I think you know who I am. I feel like right now, you might be the only person who knows what I am going through. I wondered if you would like to meet and commiserate or plot revenge together. I get that I might be a horrible reminder of what’s happened, so feel free to say no! Hope you’re okay.’
Katie lifted her face from the message, her eyes burning, head spinning. Jess’s eyes were wide. Her mother was nodding approvingly.
‘Plot revenge, eh?’ Susan opened the fridge, surveying the contents before digging inside for a half-drunk bottle of wine. ‘I like him already.’
Susan topped up her glass generously, then put a splash into Jess’s before setting the bottle on the counter.
Katie was still holding her phone, and she opened her mouth to protest about not being offered any wine when Susan waggled a finger at her.
‘None for you, Katie darling. Go and get changed. Time for you to go out.’