I walk out of the house, turn right and then left on to Kingly Road. Past the pub – the Rose. We used to go there all the time; I can’t remember why we stopped. I never liked it all that much, too many couples just the right side of forty drinking too much and casting around for something better, wondering if they’d have the courage. Perhaps that’s why we stopped going, because I didn’t like it. Past the pub, past the shops. I don’t want to go far, just a little circuit, to stretch my legs.
It’s nice being out early, before the school run, before the commute gets going; the streets are empty and clean, the day full of possibility. I turn left again, I walk down to the little playground, the only rather poor excuse for green space we have. It’s empty now, but in a few hours it will be swarming with toddlers, mothers and au pairs. Half the pilates girls will be here, head to toe in Sweaty Betty, competitively stretching, manicured hands wrapped around their Starbucks.
I carry on past the park and down towards Roseberry Avenue. If I turned right here I’d go up past my gallery – what was my gallery, now a vacant shop window – but I don’t want to, because that still hurts a little. I tried so hard to make a success of it. Wrong place, wrong time – no call for art in suburbia, not in this economy. Instead, I turn right, past the Tesco Express, past the other pub, the one where people from the estate go, and back towards home. I can feel butterflies now, I’m starting to get nervous. I’m afraid of bumping into the Watsons, because it’s always awkward when I see them; it’s patently obvious that I don’t have a new job, that I lied because I didn’t want to carry on working for them.
Or rather, it’s awkward when I see her. Tom just ignores me. But Anna seems to take things personally. She obviously thinks that my short-lived career as a nanny came to an end because of her or because of her child. It actually wasn’t about her child at all, although the fact that the child never stops whinging did make her hard to love. It’s all so much more complicated, but of course I can’t explain that to her. Anyway. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been shutting myself away, I suppose, because I don’t want to see the Watsons. Part of me hopes they’ll just move. I know she doesn’t like being here: she hates that house, hates living among his ex-wife’s things, hates the trains.
I stop at the corner and peer into the underpass. That smell of cold and damp always sends a little shiver down my spine, it’s like turning over a rock to see what’s underneath: moss and worms and earth. It reminds me of playing in the garden as a child, looking for frogs by the pond with Ben. I walk on. The street is clear – no sign of Tom or Anna – and the part of me that can’t resist a bit of drama is actually quite disappointed.
Evening
Scott’s just called to say he has to work late, which is not the news I wanted to hear. I’m feeling edgy, have been all day. Can’t keep still. I need him to come home and calm me down, and now it’s going to be hours before he gets here and my brain is going to keep racing round and round and round and I know I’ve got a sleepless night coming.
I can’t just sit here, watching the trains, I’m too jittery, my heartbeat feels like a flutter in my chest, like a bird trying to get out of a cage. I slip my flip-flops on and go downstairs, out of the front door and on to Blenheim Road. It’s around seven thirty – a few stragglers on their way home from work. There’s no one else around, though you can hear the cries of kids playing in their back gardens, taking advantage of the last of the summer sunshine, before they get called in for dinner.
I walk down the road, towards the station. I stop for a moment outside number twenty-three and think about ringing the doorbell. What would I say? Ran out of sugar? Just fancied a chat? Their blinds are half open but I can’t see anyone inside.
I carry on, towards the corner, and without really thinking about it, I continue down into the underpass. I’m about halfway through when the train runs overhead, and it’s glorious: it’s like an earthquake, you can feel it right in the centre of your body, stirring up the blood. I look down and notice that there’s something on the floor, a hair band, purple, stretched, well used. Dropped by a runner, probably, but something about it gives me the creeps and I want to get out of there quickly, back into the sunshine.
On the way back down the road, he passes me in his car, our eyes meet for just a second and he smiles at me.
RACHEL
Friday, 12 July 2013
Morning
I AM EXHAUSTED, my head thick with sleep. When I drink, I hardly sleep at all. I pass out cold for an hour or two, then I wake, sick with fear, sick with myself. If I have a day when I don’t drink, that night I fall into the heaviest of slumbers, a deep unconsciousness, and in the morning I cannot wake properly, I cannot shake sleep, it stays with me for hours, sometimes all day long.
There is just a handful of people in my carriage today, none in my immediate vicinity. There is no one watching me, so I lean my head against the window and close my eyes.
The screech of the train’s brakes wakes me. We’re at the signal. At this time of morning, at this time of year, the sun shines directly on to the back of the trackside houses, flooding them with light. I can almost feel it, the warmth of that morning sunshine on my face and arms as I sit at the breakfast table, Tom opposite me, my bare feet resting on top of his because they’re always so much warmer than mine, my eyes cast down at the newspaper. I can feel him smiling at me, the blush spreading from my chest to my neck, the way it always did when he looked at me a certain way.
I blink hard and Tom’s gone. We’re still at the signal. I can see Jess in her garden, and behind her a man walking out of the house. He’s carrying something – a mug of coffee, perhaps – and I look at him and realize that it isn’t Jason. This man is taller, slender, darker. He’s a family friend; he’s her brother or Jason’s brother. He bends down, placing the mugs on the metal table on their patio. He’s a cousin from Australia, staying for a couple of weeks; he’s Jason’s oldest friend, best man at their wedding. Jess walks towards him, she puts her hands around his waist and she kisses him, long and deep. The train moves.
I can’t believe it. I snatch air into my lungs, I realize that I’ve been holding my breath. Why would she do that? Jason loves her, I can see it, they’re happy. I can’t believe she would do that to him, he doesn’t deserve that. I feel a real sense of disappointment, I feel as though I have been cheated. A familiar ache fills my chest. I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it.