The Mistake I Made (17 page)

‘When did you last see a woman naked?’ I asked, and he shook his head. He wasn’t willing to say. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I just need a couple of things from my bag.’

I walked the few steps across the room and, out of the corner of my eye, I was aware of Wayne removing his socks and underpants.

With the two condoms in my hand, I made my way towards him.

Ripping open the packets, I held his gaze.

‘One time and one time only, Wayne. That’s the deal. Are we clear?’

He nodded repeatedly.

‘I want to hear you say it.’

‘I promise,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Hurry up, can you?’

‘No. Not until you tell me you won’t bother me again. That you won’t
speak
of this again. And you absolutely will not inform anyone of my arrangement with Scott, nor the thing with the missing money.’

He screwed up his face. ‘I won’t. You have my word. Hurry, Roz, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Are we clear, Wayne? I mean it.’

‘Yes. Yes. Absolutely.’

‘Okay then.’

With Wayne suited up and ready, I turned around, put my hands on the windowsill and told him to go ahead. I didn’t want to face him. Certainly didn’t want his tongue near my mouth. I expected doing it this way would be such a turn-on for him that he wouldn’t last long.

I expected it would be over within seconds.

Except nothing happened.

I waited. Twenty seconds passed, and there was nothing.

‘Wayne?’ I whispered.

He didn’t answer. I went to turn around, but he reached out, preventing me from doing so. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he repeated, his voice catching.

‘Wayne, what is it?’

‘I can’t do it,’ he whimpered. ‘I can’t go through with it.’

Then he was rambling, something about his body betraying him. I wasn’t sure if he’d had some sort of moral epiphany or he was simply unable to sustain his erection.

‘Wayne, it’s okay,’ I said, trying to pacify him. Then I told him I wouldn’t look at him. Told him I would keep my eyes away, but I would get dressed, and then maybe we could talk.

A moment later, I was reaching for my flip-flops, almost dressed.

After that, I have no idea what he was doing, because the fucker hit me on the back of the head, knocking me out cold.

19

HAVE NEVER BEEN
knocked unconscious. I’ve fainted, but that’s hardly the same thing. In fact, I’m just going to take a moment to explain the difference between the two.

Fainting occurs when there is a lack of blood flow to the brain. It’s the body’s righting mechanism. You faint, fall over, the blood doesn’t have to fight gravity to travel up through the carotid arteries in your neck and the brain instantly receives the oxygen it’s been lacking. This is why soldiers faint when standing for extended periods on parade. Their blood is literally in their boots.

Unconsciousness following a blow to the head is quite different; it’s a serious affair. It is not like, say, in the movies, where the villain is put out of action for a few moments, allowing our hero to escape, and then he comes to, fully functioning, only a bit more cross.

No one really knows what causes a concussion, but most are agreed on this: the brain has become damaged, resulting in a temporary and sometimes permanent loss of function. Longstanding problems can occur, the extent of which are under continual investigation. After sustaining a blow to the head, patients may have permanently slurred speech, facial expressions may alter and, in some cases, personality traits change. I knew of one guy, a tradesman, who fell off a ladder, and, where he’d always been morose, the kind of unhappy, scheming type who was highly critical of other builders’ work, suddenly he became happy. It must have felt strange for him to be babbling away to folk, his face animated and joyful, while they viewed him suspiciously through narrowed eyes, none of them quite ready to believe the miracle that stood before them.

And then of course there was Mama Cass. She reportedly increased her singing range after being hit on the head with a piece of copper pipe whilst on a building site – although this story has been challenged over the years by friends of Cass Elliot, who said it was used as a way to explain why John Phillips left her out of the Mamas and the Papas for so long (his real reason being she was too overweight).

But I’m getting off my point.

I lay there on Wayne’s carpet, more or less in the foetal position but with my head extended backwards, swallowing repeatedly, as I appeared to have a surfeit of saliva. I wasn’t afraid at this point, and I was curious as to whether I was unconscious or not. Not many concussions result in a loss of consciousness, and I couldn’t say for sure exactly what had happened. All I knew was something was not as it should be.

I could hear Wayne’s voice as though through water. He was panicked and calling out my name and, in my head, I was answering. I was answering loudly, shouting as you do when your ears are submerged in the bath and you’re asked a question.

But Wayne couldn’t hear me. And I couldn’t see Wayne. And I couldn’t move my head to see where he might be located.

My auditory system was all off kilter. Wayne’s calling was diminishing, just as the hum from the aquarium, the sound of the bubbles rising up every few seconds, became insufferably loud. I tried to cover my ears with my hands. But movement wasn’t possible. And then, naturally, I thought of George.

Oddly, up until that moment, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might be in danger. Silly, really, but I was so focused on trying to wade through my thoughts, on trying to understand my immediate environment, knowing that on some intuitive level my senses were compromised, that I actually felt safe.

More saliva flooded my mouth. That’s when I was able to open my eyes and realize I had been sick earlier. The blow to the head had caused me to vomit.

I began searching the room, and my eyes came to rest on Wayne.

He was rocking to and fro on a dining-room chair, his hands clasped in front of him.

Was this how it would end?

Had the laughable risks I’d taken to try to right past wrongs led me to this?

It seemed as though they had.

It was the cruellest of ironies. In trying to free myself from a life enslaved by debt, I’d become a prisoner.

‘Wayne,’ I said, but it didn’t come out right. The word was blurred and formless. The sound was shocking for me to hear. And for Wayne, too, because he snatched his head up and stared at me.

‘Fuck,’ he whispered. Then he resumed his rocking action.

I turned over on to my back away from the vomit, with my legs straight out. After lying with my knees flexed for I wasn’t sure how long, it was a relief to stretch my hamstrings. I pulled my toes towards me, felt the stretch run right through my calf muscles and into each Achilles’. Then I tried to raise my hands to test if I’d suffered a stroke. Both arms lifted evenly, so I turned my head towards Wayne.

I smiled at him.

‘Why the hell are you smiling?’ he asked, appalled.

And I thought: Good. Facial muscles were still functioning properly. Stroke was now an unlikely event. With any luck, my speech would come back when the inflammation in my brain began to subside.

So I did nothing.

In fact, I felt an overriding tiredness, so I slept a little.

When I woke, the room was in semi-darkness.

I could sense Wayne nearby before opening my eyes. I stayed still and listened. At first I thought he was experiencing difficulty with his breathing; it sounded laboured and uneasy. But after listening for a minute or so I realized he was trying to calm himself.

I watched him for a moment and then readied myself for speaking, fearful of the sound I was about to make.

‘Help.’

To my ears it sounded normal. So I said it again, only louder. ‘Help me.’

Wayne went stock-still. Then he put his hands to his face and his body quaked irregularly as he tried to hold back his crying.

My head was throbbing. He must have got me right slap bang on the occipital protuberance. I had to keep my face angled to the side to avoid the back of my skull connecting with the floor. My tongue was thick in my mouth like cotton wool. And my thoughts were woozy and disconnected.

‘I wanted you to stay,’ he whimpered. ‘That’s all. I panicked. I just wanted you to stay longer.’

‘My head really hurts, Wayne. What did you hit me with?’

He motioned towards the desk. On it stood a small, chrome, hand-held fire extinguisher. The type you might see inside a boat’s cabin, or a caravan. It was smeared with blood. I felt around the back of my skull. My hair was matted with blood and the skin was raised around the wound.

I looked at Wayne. He was uncertain of what to do with me, which was not good. And he was sweating a lot.

I went to sit up but, at the smallest movement, pain crashed through my head, keeping me glued to the floor.

‘I’m not angry with you, Wayne,’ I lied, placating him. I kept my voice warm, steady. ‘But you really need to help me up. I need the bathroom, and I’m not steady.’

‘I won’t
hurt
you, you know.’

He said this in a way that suggested he found the thought unsavoury. Like it was beneath him. Like he wouldn’t stoop
that
low.

‘I know you wouldn’t,’ I said, going along with the insanity of the situation. ‘I’m not scared, Wayne, but I am uncomfortable.’

He stayed exactly where he was; it was as if I’d not spoken. His leaky eyes became empty as he looked past me towards the window. He must have opened the curtains after he’d hit me. ‘I won’t be able to face you at work on Monday,’ he said absently.

‘You panicked. You just got out of control for a second. It’s understandable. I totally understand.’

He blinked. ‘You do?

‘Yes,’ I said gently.

‘I shouldn’t have made you do this,’ he said. ‘It’s unforgivable. It’s not the way I wanted it to be between us. Not like this. Never like this.’

‘Neither of us is who we want to be right now, Wayne. I’m pretty sure of that. But you felt helpless. It’s partly my fault. I made you feel bad about yourself by saying I would only do this one time, by saying I wouldn’t stay. But you have to understand, Wayne, I’m only doing this thing with Scott because I’m desperate, too. Like I said, it’s not who I want to be either.’

I tried to move again, but pain shot through my skull.

‘The only way I get to keep anything is if I trap it,’ Wayne said, his voice trembling.

‘That’s not true … and, Wayne? Spare me the melodrama.’

He turned on a lamp to the side of him. It was dim, thirty watts maybe, the kind you leave on through the night when you’re breastfeeding. When you need to locate the baby without tripping over your slippers.

‘Will you go to the police?’ he asked.

‘And say what? I came here for sex because you’re blackmailing me, but you decided to knock me unconscious instead? Not sure they’d really believe that.’

‘You could say I raped you.’

‘But you didn’t.’

He rose and came close, kneeling beside me.

Oddly, even though inside I was still livid, livid with Wayne, livid with myself for getting into this situation, I wasn’t scared. I watched Wayne’s sad, apologetic face and could feel only pity.

Gently, he put one hand beneath my neck, and the other under my shoulders, preparing to lift me into a sitting position. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he said.

‘Wayne,’ I replied softly, ‘it will be okay, you know. I promise, this will all be okay. On Monday we’ll pretend it never happened and we’ll never speak of it again. No one needs to know but us.’

And he closed his eyes and shook his head solemnly, as though grappling with a deep thought. As though he knew without a doubt that it
wouldn’t
be okay. This was not the end of the matter, whatever I said.

Because how on earth could it be?

20

I COULD BARELY
remember the trip home. After Wayne got me sitting up, the pain in my head was too intense for me to remain vertical for more than a few seconds and I found I needed to rest some more. I must have either lost consciousness or slept – I wasn’t sure which – for I awoke covered with a blanket, no sign of Wayne, and then I got in the car and headed home to Hawkshead. It was a wonder I arrived there in one piece.

Now it was the following day, and I was in Petra’s kitchen, her grilling me about flaking out of the dinner the previous evening with Scott and Nadine.

‘Did you get the aura?’ she asked.

‘Aura?’ I replied, having no idea what Petra was referring to.

‘Yes, the
aura
,’ she said snippily. ‘The blurred vision, the numbness in the face, the pins and needles?’

I gave a small shrug. Took a sip of orange juice. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, you’ve not had a proper migraine then. You had a headache. There’s a world of difference. Headaches are inconvenient. Migraines are incapacitating. If you’d had one, you would know. Did you take Ibuprofen?’

‘Of course.’

‘And no change?’

‘Nope. No change at all.’

‘Did you try lying down in a darkened room?’ she asked.

I almost laughed. Kind of, I wanted to say.

‘No, I didn’t try that,’ I said. ‘I will next time.’

She looked at me suspiciously, as though she didn’t believe I’d had a migraine in the first place. She knew I’d cried off from her dinner last night without good reason, and this, coupled with her knowledge that I was playing my cards close to my chest regarding my financial situation, had got her all jumpy.

Petra couldn’t stand not to know.

She separated rashers of streaky bacon before laying them on the grill. A loud wail came from the garden, the kind of wail that would normally merit Petra running wildly though the house to find its source, breathlessly checking if her child was lying bent and crooked at the foot of the stairs.

She looked up, cast a sidelong glance to the garden, tutting dismissively. Then she went back to the bacon, rejigging it, moving each slice along a fraction, to allow her to cram a little more on to the grill.