Chapter 17 #2
‘Well,’ she says hesitantly, ‘when I get grief, or criticism, or even when I think I might get given a hard time, I can’t shake it off.
Like, it paralyses me.’ She says the last part in a voice so small I have to lean forward to hear her over the din of the music and our fellow skiers.
I put my hand over hers and give it a squeeze.
‘Paralyses you how?’
She dips her head. ‘Maybe that’s the wrong word, but it…
blocks me. It’s like this thought, or feedback, or criticism, or whatever, is a balloon inside my head, and it swells up and drowns everything else out, and I just get filled with this horror.
Absolute horror. I can’t let it go, and I obsess over it, and I can’t make room for anything else in my head.
It’s the mental equivalent of swallowing a golf ball and then trying to digest as normal. ’
She still won’t look me in the eye. I squeeze her hand harder. ‘Bloody hell, sweetheart.’
‘And now you’re going to think I’m crazy.’
‘I don’t think you’re crazy. Hey—look at me.’ She does, and I shake my head. ‘I don’t think you’re crazy at all. I just think that sounds really rough, and I’m sorry you have to live like that.’
‘Yeah.’ She makes a face. ‘It’s not great.’
‘Do you… Have you spoken to anyone about it?’ I ask, mainly because this is way above my pay grade.
‘No.’ She shakes her head quickly, as if she won’t even entertain the idea. ‘I’d rather just get on with it.’
‘Do you think it’s the stress of the last few months that’s got to you?’ I ask gently. ‘Because what you’ve been through would be a huge strain for anyone.’
Another shake. ‘No, I’ve been like this my whole life.
I only ever got into proper trouble twice at school, and both of those occasions are still drilled into my memory.
I still feel sick to my stomach any time I think of them, even now.
I think about them, and then I’m right back there, and I can physically feel the horror and the shame of it in my body. ’
Well, fuck. I barely know what to say to that. ‘I can’t imagine you getting into trouble,’ I tell her. ‘I got detentions all the time. I used to work out the cost-benefit—like, if I don’t do this hour-long piece of homework, I’ll get a fifteen-minute detention, so I’ll just do that.’
She stares at me as if I’m an alien. ‘How could you be so blasé about it? Didn’t you care that the teachers thought badly of you?’
‘Not remotely. All I cared about was maxing out my free time. Couldn’t give a flying fuck if they disapproved of me or not.’
‘God,’ she groans. ‘What would that feel like, to be able to live like that? I get so worried about what other people think that I tie myself up in knots even before I do anything.’
She looks so forlorn I can’t bear it. I push my chair back from the table and pat my thigh with my spare hand. ‘Come here, sweetheart. Let me give you a hug.’
‘But I’m so heavy with these boots on,’ she protests.
‘You’re light as a feather. Come on.’
She gets up and clomps around to my side of the table. I open my arms and she lowers herself over my thighs. I close them around her and pull her in tight against me, pressing a kiss to her temple. Her skin smells of sunshine.
‘Now,’ I say, ‘tell me about the times you were in trouble. What did you do—torch the science lab?’
‘It was at pre-prep school—I was five or six,’ she says, and my heart fractures a bit.
She was that young, and she still remembers that shit?
What the actual fuck? ‘It was in Year One. You won’t believe me, but my teacher’s name was Mrs Tremble, honest to God, and she was so old and scary.
She had this dyed jet-black beehive hairdo. ’ I snort and hold her close.
‘We’d had a really nice afternoon,’ she continues, ‘and it had felt very chill, so when it was time to go home, I made some throwaway comment, like “It didn’t feel like we did much work today.” I didn’t mean anything by it, obviously—like I said, I was super small—but she just said in this quiet, scary voice, “Stay back after everyone goes, will you, Selena?” And then, when it was just me and her, she absolutely laid into me. ’
‘What the fuck?’ I ask. ‘Why?’
‘She said I was being cheeky and disrespectful and that it was very rude to basically suggest that she hadn’t been doing her job properly and letting us slack off.
I was so completely shell-shocked that I just stood there, apologising over and over and over, and then when she let me go, I ran to Mum and burst into tears, and I just couldn’t stop.
And I never, ever got over it. Even now, if I drive past that school, this cloud comes over me.
How disapproving she was, and how badly she thought of me. ’
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ I explode. ‘Sweetheart, please tell me you realise that she was a nasty old bitch and that that was all on her and not remotely on you?’ How fucking dare she. I am absolutely livid.
‘I know that in theory,’ she says, ‘but it’s like it’s a physical scar over my heart, and every time I think about it, it’s like someone pulling at the scar tissue until it starts ripping. I can’t really explain it. I know how crazy it sounds.’
‘I told you, not crazy,’ I say gruffly. It’s clear as day to me that the sky-high walls my wife erects around her are there to shield a very soft centre, but this is a whole other level of vulnerability. ‘It sounds a bit like emotional haemophilia, though.’
That gets a little laugh out of her. ‘Yeah. That’s kind of how it feels, too.’
‘It must make getting through life really hard.’
‘I’m used to it. But some things set me off.
Like, when Xavier came to break off the engagement, that caused an absolutely massive episode for me.
’ She shudders, and I tense. ‘I don’t mean heartbreak,’ she says hurriedly.
‘More like a shame spiral. It felt like this avalanche of horror that everyone would be judging me for not being good enough for him, and the force of it almost knocked me out physically. I was a wreck.’
‘You shouldn’t care so much what people say,’ I tell her, peppering the side of her face with kisses, but she cranes her neck away from me.
‘That’s like me telling you that you should care what people say. It’s impossible and unhelpful.’
I backtrack quickly. ‘Fair enough. And yeah, I get it. I’m sorry Xav made you feel like that. It must have been a hell of a gut punch.’ I recall her fragile, defeated demeanour the next morning, the redness of her eyes beneath her always-perfect makeup, and it slays me.
Clearly, as her husband, I’d like to think I can play a part in protecting her from whatever these insecurities are, or at least make her feel like she has someone in her corner. Someone who’s always Team Slinky, no matter how brutal she finds the rest of the world.
I can’t promise that I understand her issues, but I resolve to do better in being there for her when she’s struggling with them.
If she’s brave enough to open up to me, then I can step up for her.
It’s the least I can do.