CHAPTER 26
Ella
My nerves rattle as I step back through the front door, wiping the last of my smudged makeup.
“Hello?” My voice echoes down the empty hall.
The sound of scraping cutlery is my only reply.
Shit. My watch tells me that I am dangerously late.
I shove my shoes into their designated place, pulling on the creases of my top as though it will hide where I have been.
My left pocket vibrates. I make it three paces before my fingers itch to see what my tormentor has sent me today.
It’s a single image taken in the darkness, the streetlight illuminating the figure beneath it.
Their knees bent and leaning back just enough that the light bounces off her cheek.
I can see the darkness in their face, or know it’s there.
The image of myself taken only a few minutes ago mocks me from my palm.
He is always watching me. I bite my lip, tears coming to my eyes for Jude, for Dad, for me. My life is turning upside down, over and over, so fast that I can’t find my bearings.
“Rufus?” I step forward, trying to keep my voice light, but the tears still cling to the edge. I’m losing it all, no matter what I do, everything I touch crumbles. Only a few days ago I had the audacity to question if Jude was involved.
I take another slow step, my fingers pressing into the cool wood of the panelling.
No matter what I do, I make things worse.
Mum’s words echo in my memory, the cold sting of her hand on my cheek as the anger spewed out that I could never be, would never be, Nate.
My breath heaves out in an audible sob. Dewy fingers slam fast against my lips, desperately trying to push the emotion back in.
My eyes scrunch shut, and I press myself against the wall, waiting for the memories to pass, as they always do.
If I turn around now and leave, what will happen? To Immi and Jude, to Dad? To the people who care about who I’ve become. What would happen to Nate’s memory? What would this have all been for?
My lips are cracked and dry as I run my tongue over them.
I calm my breathing and then I push on.
In the dining room, Rufus sits at the table, eating from a large salad bowl with his phone in his hand. And no awareness of what I know. I sink into my seat, wiping below my eyes. There are no tears left.
Rufus looks at me, raises a brow and calls for Helena.
“Hello, lovely to see you. I’ll prepare your usual salad bowl and glass of wine.
There’s tea on the table,” Helena says, her steps light as she bounces into the room.
She’s wearing jeans and a simple grey top, and for the first time I wonder how old she is.
I want to tell her to go home to wherever her home is, and rest.
Suddenly, all I want is to be that hopeful twenty-something my dad remembers.
“Could I have toast?”
There’s a warble in my voice. I don’t chance a look in Rufus’s direction but I can feel his frustrations bubble.
I’m too tired.
Helena stops, turns back to me and nods. “Of course. Jam or marmalade?”
“Marmalade, please.”
She smiles before retreating to the kitchen. A smile I have never seen on her before, but one of silent recognition for what that moment meant. I cling onto it as I sit opposite Rufus.
It was na?ve to think that marrying Rufus was my only way to stay safe, but I have people who love me and I’ve made something of myself without him. I just need to find a way out of this mess. Just me.
“Where have you been?” Rufus starts.
“Can we just–” The joy from my small defeat over dinner is lost already.
We speak at the same time. He places his fork on the edge of his plate, a dollop of egg falling onto it.
“What’s gotten into you? You spend days locked in our room and I let you.
Then you disappear, and swan back in as though nothing has happened.
Whenever I do see you, you’re in the corner talking to Jude or Immi.
You’re distracted and people are starting to talk.
Do you know what that feels like?” There’s a note to his words that I’ve only seen in judgement towards others.
When we first got together, we would sit and gossip about our neighbours or friends.
Oh, did you hear…
Have you seen…
Can you imagine…
The connection grew between us as we mocked and critiqued our friends with a stinging tone. Now, the tone is directed at me.
“Where have you been?” Rufus says again, leaning forward so his shirt bunches up at the table. The critical tone is sliding off, and there’s concern in his eyes.
Something cold crawls up my spine. I can count on one hand the number of times he’s asked about the stalker since I told him.
“I’m being stalked, Rufus. What did you think I’d do?” My voice drops to a hiss, aware of Helena only a few feet away.
Rufus frowns, blinking slowly.
“So you can go out with your friends, but not me? You missed a big dinner with the Lemmings group. It was embarrassing,” he says.
I fold my arms, heat prickling under my armpits.
“That’s not really my problem. I need to find who is threatening me.” It’s hard to keep my voice steady, for me to sound natural.
Rufus’s nostrils flare, his chest rises and falls steadily. “We dealt with this, I won’t hear more of it. Colin has offered us protection, and honestly, I am doubting it’s anything more than silly threats. What do you expect when you’re making that podcast?”
He spits the last word, thick with disdain.
I bite back an answer, my thighs pressing down onto my hands.
I divert my gaze from his piercing stare, down to my plate.
What would someone else say in this situation?
What would Marcus say? I imagine him leaning forward, holding Jude close and giving her space to talk.
Instead, I watch Rufus return to his food with a steady measure.
“Are you happy?” I say eventually, an ache in my chest.
“With your behaviour? No.”
The answer sucker-punches me. His parents were like this, I know that. The room would fall into silence the moment his father entered; his exacting gaze watching Rufus’s mother’s every move as she shrank in on herself. He was a bully dressed up as a model citizen.
“I mean with us.” I lean forward.
“We’re getting married, of course I am,” he says.
The affair is now nothing but background noise.
“We don’t have to get married,” I push, willing him to look at me.
He does, his face suddenly tired.
“What’s this about?” His fork is back down and his elbows are on the table. “What do you want me to say here? For months you’ve been pushing me away, barely speaking to me.”
A heat rises through my chest and I see myself slamming my fists down, rising to my feet and jabbing at him until he reacts. But what good would that do? Projection only hurts someone else.
Instead, I open the box we’ve been dancing around.
“You’re barely here.”
“I’m working,” he says, rubbing his face.
A rhetoric I’ve heard countless times. I don’t mention the podcast or the job, or my studio full of accolades that sing to my work ethic.
“I’m being stalked, Rufus,” I say. I should confront him about Poppy, show him the evidence I have of his affair but something stops me. I want him, I need him, to care.
“Enough! I’m fixing it. You need to get these stupid ideas out of your head. It’s a few silly notes,” Rufus says. Bored; he always sounds bored when he speaks to me.
Clink. The sound of his fork again. I look up to see another version of Rufus, one I only ever saw in public. Brows drawn together, lips pressed thin, a look on his face that I hoped I would never be on the receiving end of.
I close my eyes and pin my lips shut, pushing the burning questions of who he spends his nights with further down.
“Look, the stalking is worrying. But we have a PI working on it, and Colin has some backups for us.” He folds his napkin and places it on the table.
“But I need your focus here, on us. We’ve got a few events coming, so I’ll send you the invites again.
They’ll keep your mind off things. It will be fixed in no time. ”
Rufus rises from his seat as Helena enters. He drops a kiss on my cheek, as always. And we all know that’s for Helena’s benefit.
I eat alone, waiting patiently for the tears that never fall. Rufus has shown his cards. I wasn’t expecting him to tell me about Poppy. Why would he? But there’s no compassion there. There’s no love. Mum was like that near the end, her anger that I wasn’t Nate overriding the love she once had.
“Where the hell are you going dressed like a tart?” Mum had said to me one night when she caught me leaving the house.
The living room stank of cigarette smoke, and I’d worked hard to keep it off my dress.
I was leaving for university in a few weeks, but had been asked on a date by the one local boy who wasn’t saddened by me or my family.
“I have a date.” My words were meek and muttered to the floor.
Mum tipped her head back, her laugh so loud it made me jump.
“No one is ever going to love you. Don’t you get it?
Everyone leaves women like us. The sooner you learn that, the better you’ll be.
” She turned back to the television, her head bobbing with the alcohol.
My date never showed that night, and I stayed until my fingertips turned blue. And now Rufus was leaving me, too.
“Are you done?” Helena appears on the threshold, making me jump.
“Oh, yes. Sorry, lost in thought,” I say.
“Don’t be. Good toast?” She picks up my plate, smiling down at me. She’s not much older than me, I realise with a pang.
“Perfect. Why don’t you leave early, leave the dishes,” I say, because I need the house and the space, but also because she deserves not to spend her days dodging the awkward silence that ebbs throughout the house.
Helena smiles, nodding.