Remember Me This Way (30 page)

I could easily have taken offence, but it was Christmas. I made a pot of coffee while she was out and laid the table. I layered smoked salmon on two plates and buttered toast. By the time she walked back in, breakfast was ready. She expressed delight, surprise. She was worrying about the dog. He’d been ‘so quiet’. I told her she was imagining it. ‘He’s fine.’ I unwrapped her scarves, took off her coat, steered her to a chair. I opened champagne. We pulled a cracker. We laughed (‘A man walked into a bar . . . Ouch!’). We kissed.

I’d give Howard a day off, I decided. Seasonal good wishes.

We went back to bed. I closed the curtains and in the semi-darkness felt my way around her body, from her toes up. She came before I’d reached her thighs. I took my time. I lingered there, until I felt her move again beneath the tips of my fingers. I delayed as long as I could, played with her, stroked, toyed. Even the sound of her breaths, short or held, turned me on. When she touched my cock, I came at once.

We ate mid-afternoon. We didn’t have turkey. (I don’t like the texture.) Chicken, no gravy. Stuffing cooked in a separate tray, not inside the bird. Roast potatoes, peas. She put
Goodbye Cruel World
on the iPod and we danced to Elvis Costello there in the kitchen. I’ve never been able to dance. Mad Paul back home used to crease up laughing at the sight of me. He said I looked like a constipated donkey. But with Lizzie it doesn’t matter. I can be what I am. No front. I told her I loved her, that I’d never felt anything for anyone as I felt for her.

It was dark before we remembered presents. I had taken trouble: a gold necklace with our initials entwined, an Orla Kiely multi-stem silk scarf, pretty underwear – God knows she needs it. I wanted her to open all hers first. I couldn’t wait. I was excited in anticipation of her response. She put on the necklace, wrapped the scarf around her neck, twirled the bra set in the air, promising ‘a fashion show for later’.

I was happy. I forgot.

She kissed me.

And then she said: ‘You shouldn’t have spent so much.’

Later she came upstairs to the study to say sorry. ‘I didn’t mean it. It was tactless. But you misunderstood. I just meant – three whole presents! It’s a lot. I’ve only got you one.’

I was pretending to read. What with the champagne and the wine at lunch, the whisky I had knocked down when she was out dragging the dog, I had reached the stage where the world was blurred around the edges. I’m not defending myself. It wasn’t my fault what happened next. I am just explaining my part in it. ‘You have nothing but contempt for me,’ I said, keeping my eye on the page. ‘You don’t have to be so obvious.’

‘What I earn is yours. We share it. It’s not an issue. It’s Christmas Day. Come on. We’ve had such a lovely day. I’ve got your present here. Open it, you big grump.’

She had her arms around my neck. She was tickling under my chin, trying to make me laugh. It’s what she does with Peggy’s eldest when he is on the edge of a tantrum. But I am not a spoilt brat. I won’t be spoken to like that. I didn’t turn round.

I heard her leave the room, her steps down the small flight of stairs to the bathroom. She had left the present next to me, a small, heavy cylinder wrapped in flimsy red paper, cheap cartoon Santas climbing into chimneys. Twenty-two of them. I counted.

Inside: a yellow box. Aftershave. My favourite. My
signature
scent. Acqua di Parma. For a fleeting moment, I was gratified. The bottle in the bathroom was nearly empty. Lizzie must have seen me pressing and re-pressing to vaporise the dregs. But this was Colonia Assoluta. Wrong. Badly wrong. It is Colonia Intensa
that I wear. It’s the thought that counts. And the fact is she
hadn’t
thought. She had just grabbed it off the shelf in a hurry. Even the wrapping was patronising, the kind of paper you would use for a gift to a child.
A fucking child.

I was out of my chair and in two strides met her as she came out of the bathroom. I had time to note the fear on her face, to wish that I could wipe it off, and then I had my hand around her neck and was holding her up against the wall. I told her she didn’t love me. She pushed back. Her knee met my groin. I twisted away. She screamed. Our legs became entangled, and somehow she was falling, tumbling, not head over heels, but sideways, arm over torso, hand clutching at thin air, down the flight of stairs.

When the police came, we were sitting together at the bottom. Neither of us had the strength to move. I was cradling her head, whispering how sorry I was. The dog lay at her feet, panting. The exertion had almost done him in.

A walkie-talkie emitted disembodied voices into the night. I could feel the vibrations of the vehicle they had left idling in the street. The throb of the blue and red lights discoed on the hall walls.

The doorbell rang.

She didn’t move. She hadn’t looked at me yet. ‘You need help,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s the booze, or those pills I keep finding, but you need to see someone.’

‘I know.’

She stood up gingerly. ‘I mean it, Zach.’

‘I will.’

She had her hand on the latch. ‘Do you promise?’

The bell rang again. A face pressed against the frosted glass.

I nodded. ‘It’s not me,’ I said. ‘I can’t stop it coming.’

She stared at me, and a million silent words passed between us. An unspoken pact was made. And then she opened the door.

Chapter Nineteen

Lizzie

Pregnant. Charlotte was pregnant. Was it Zach’s?
Could
it have been? It depends on the dates.

Christmas Day 2011.

He cooked me breakfast. We laughed and opened champagne. We spent half the morning in bed, tangled with each other. I was on my guard – a shift could take place at any time, like a plunge from heat into icy water. I never knew when his temper would flare – the muscles in his face twist, his pupils enlarge. They were like fits, mercurial flashes, but I knew what to do. I would stay calm, unconcerned, quietly do everything I could to prove he came first. It was my fault. I could handle it.

That day was different. It wasn’t just the paranoia that exploded into violence. It was the dull look in his eyes, as if he’d forgotten who I was. I don’t remember much – the world turning black and white, spinning, dizziness, the exploding pain deep in my head.

Afterwards, he was tormented, tortured by his own actions. It wasn’t him, he said. It was a person inside that he didn’t want to be – the abuse he had suffered as a child, the drugs. He said he would do anything to keep me. He’d see a doctor, give up the booze. Then things would be different, the demons kept at bay. He just needed to be sure of me.

‘You can be sure of me,’ I wept.

When term started, it still hurt to swallow. The bruises I covered with long-sleeved tops. Jane noticed the broken veins in my eye. ‘Too many late nights,’ I said.

He had begun to break me. I felt responsible for his happiness and sanity. I came home straight from school to be with him. I turned down invitations to see my sister or friends. I only walked the dog, who was under the weather, when Zach could come too. I visited my mother much less than I should have done. If I felt swipes of guilt, I batted them away. It was Zach who needed me now.

Shortly after term started, I caught a cold that turned into flu. Zach rang the school to tell them I was ill. He brought me lemon and honey in bed, and scrambled eggs on toast. He read to me, and played me songs on his iPod. He took care of the house and the dog, and he bought me vitamins in Boots. Redoxon Double Action Vitamin C and Zinc and Pregnacare Conception: ‘specially formulated for when you’re trying for a baby’.

‘We need to get you fit,’ he said. ‘We need to get your body ready.’

A week off work stretched to two. Jane came to visit one afternoon. I heard them talking on the doorstep, but he came back up alone. He’d told her I was asleep. ‘But I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘It would have been nice to see her.’

He looked hurt, as if I were casting doubts on his capabilities. ‘You need to rest,’ he frowned.

I wanted to see the doctor; Zach persuaded me not to. It was just a virus, why waste their time, risk a waiting room full of bugs? He would nurse me. We would do it on our own.

I was dizzy. My limbs ached. But he still wanted to make love. He was gentle, though. And there were reasons.

We talked about the baby we would have – whether it would be a boy or a girl, have his looks or mine, whose brains. Zach wrote lists of names and looked up nurseries and primary schools in the South London area. And then he started talking about Cornwall, as he often did. I was dozing. My ear was resting in the crook of his neck. I could feel his words vibrate in his throat. The stories he told were of small children running in the surf, of log fires and village schools. He spun images of the perfect life we could live, and I heard myself agree.

When I went back to work at the end of January, I handed in my notice. Sandra asked me if I was sure. I told her I was, but that I hadn’t told my friends or my sister so I would be grateful if she could keep it quiet for now. I was ‘taking it step by step’. It’s what Zach had told me to say.

I was late back a few evenings after this – not very late, just later than I had said I would be. It wasn’t yet six. Zach was pacing the house in regular swirling patterns. He’d switched all the plugs off at the sockets, and his hands were red. He’d been washing them in boiling-hot water. He ignored me and started bashing away on his laptop, writing notes, emails, whatever it was he did, his strokes frenzied. The dog was lying under the table, still poorly. I saw Zach kick him.

I tried to explain. Jasmine, a girl in year eight who was on the at-risk register and was due to be fostered the following day, had come into the library, upset. She had started throwing books off the shelves and stamping on them, swearing and shouting. ‘It took me a while to calm her. I just had to keep talking and telling her how everything was going to be OK, and after that I couldn’t leave until the social worker came.’

I was standing at the sink while I was telling Zach this, talking too much, giving too much detail to cover my nerves. He pushed his chair back and stood up. He crossed the room and came so close his feet were on mine, crushing my toes. He stared into my face. His hands stretched out, as if he were going to caress it, and then he reached for my hair and yanked back my head. He put the tap on full force and cold water flushed on to my face, went up my nose, filled my mouth. I struggled and panicked – I thought I wouldn’t be able to get away, that he might turn the tap to hot – but as suddenly as he grabbed me, he let me go, and I sank to the floor.

Would that have been enough to make me leave him? Probably not. He was repentant, of course he was. And I blamed myself. I should have rung him. I didn’t because I kept thinking I would be able to get away, that I would be home before he noticed. And then, when I explained to him what had happened, I should have been more relaxed, less self-conscious. If he thought I was guilty, it was because I felt it.

The next thing that happened was in the second week of February. All this time we’d been trying to have a baby. Peggy had told me you needed to wait six months before you could begin to be concerned. I knew Zach wanted to let nature take its course, but what harm could it do, I thought, if I saw my GP? I could find out what our options were, just in case there was anything we could be doing to hurry it along. I made an appointment for one lunchtime.

Zach was in good spirits that week. A new dealer in Exeter, whom he’d met down at the Wimbledon studios, was seriously interested in his work – the landscapes – possibly wanted to commission more. It was a new beginning for him, a chance to put the failure in Bristol behind him. He was making plans to meet this new bloke and, after that, spend a couple of days at Gulls, getting it ready for our arrival. We’d be moving to Cornwall sooner rather than later, but that was all right, wasn’t it? How soon would Sandra let me leave?

‘She needs to find a replacement first,’ I said.

He frowned, looked baffled. ‘It’s not like anyone depends on you,’ he said.

I left the room after this conversation and lay on the bed. It was nothing, I told him, just a headache. He had no idea what he’d said. I lay there, feeling panicked. Did I want to move to Cornwall? How could I leave my mother and my sister and my friends? They depended on me, and some of the kids at school did too. I thought about Jasmine, who had started coming into the library at lunchtime, and Conor – he might not have known I kept an eye on him, but I did. Zach was wrong. People did depend on me. People other than him.

I tried to put it to the back of my mind. Zach could swing from one idea to another. It was all London, London, London when we first met. Perhaps if I just waited he would think differently. Or maybe if I got pregnant,
I
would.

I had blooked my appointment for the day before Zach was due to leave on his trip. The doctor I saw was new to the surgery. She didn’t look much older than some of the sixth-formers at school – blonde and pretty with a cheerful smile. She met me at the door to her room. They used just to sit and wait for you to knock. It must be a new directive, I remember thinking.

I sat down in the chair and said it was probably stupid of me to come, but I was a bit sad that I hadn’t got pregnant and wondered if it was worth talking to someone.

She had my notes up on her screen. She asked how long we had been trying and were we timing it at the right time of the month? Did my husband have any health problems that I knew about?

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘He’s pretty healthy. Takes a few anti-anxiety pills, but that’s about it.’

‘OK, and is your husband called Carter too?’

‘No. Hopkins. Zach Hopkins.’

She nodded, and looked back at her screen, pressing a few keys. She looked confused for a moment. ‘Does your husband feel the same as you?’ she asked perkily.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s desperate to start a family. Growing up, he didn’t have a proper one of his own.’