The Sleeper (2 page)

He is staring at me, not at the things I am pointing at, so I turn my head to look at him.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And those grabby things.’ He gestures to the equipment at the docks. ‘And the huge metal things that lift stuff. It’s picture-book heaven.’

I reach out and touch his arm. The hairs on it are springy and blond. Even this exchange has taken us too close to the topic that I am trying to avoid, just because there is nothing more to be said about it. I change the subject, sipping my tea (which, as it so often is, is about half the strength I would make it myself), and gesture at the houses over to our left.

‘And over there. How many different lives can we see? Thousands of homes. All those windows. All the things that go on behind them. I bet there’s weirder stuff happening out there than you could possibly imagine.’

He squints at the houses. ‘Than I could, or anyone?’

‘Anyone,’ I clarify, possibly too quickly.

Sam shifts his cup of tea into his other hand and puts an arm around my shoulders. I lean into him. He is big like a bear, broad but not fat. I have always liked that about him. While I recoil from the idea of being the sort of woman who wants a big strong man to look after her, I do, nonetheless, enjoy his solidity.

‘You remember that my friend’s coming over this afternoon?’ I say. ‘The one I met on the ferry.’

‘Oh yeah. You did say. What’s her name again?’

‘Iris.’

‘Yes. Iris.’

He disapproves. He doesn’t like anyone else being part of our life. We do not really have friends. I have invited Iris over precisely because I want to change that.

‘But this feels like the first time in ages we’ve just hung out,’ he says. He sounds nervous. ‘You know. It’s nice not to have the big conversations all the time. We made our plans and fate laughed in our face.’ I brace myself for the bit about everything happening for a reason. ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ he continues. ‘And I think all this has happened to bring us closer together, and because there’s a child out there somewhere, in China maybe. Or the Himalayas, like you always say. A child who needs us. That’s what’s meant to be, I’m sure of it.’

‘You just changed this into a big conversation.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

I breathe deeply. ‘That’s OK,’ I say. He has made that little speech hundreds of times before, and maybe he is right. Perhaps infertility and everything else happened for some fuzzy, indefinable reason. Perhaps there is a child on a mountainside in Nepal who is destined to be ours. We don’t have the option of getting on a plane to go and find out. Even Visa, lenders of money to all and sundry, are declining to fund our further adventures.

Sam is right: I always talk about the Himalayas. I always longed to go there, to rent a house on a mountainside and live for months and months in the crisp fresh air, to walk and look and exist. I would do it tomorrow; but even when we had more money than we knew what to do with, I never went because my husband never fancied it. He always diverted me to what he called ‘a proper holiday’.

Perhaps my baby is, indeed, waiting for me out there, but I cannot get to her, or him. The thought is unsettling.

‘I love you,’ he says. ‘We may be all out of money, and all out of options with no child to show for it, but I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ I assure him hastily.

‘Lara.’

We lean into each other, feeling the sun on our bare arms and the tops of our heads, and stare out at the view and drink our tea. There is not much else to say.

I want to scream, and sometimes I do. On occasion, I scream as loudly as I can, but never when Sam is in the house. When he is anywhere nearby, I keep the angst repressed and internal. I cannot tell him anything close to the truth, and so, I suppose, our marriage is not what he thinks it is. He thinks we are solidly in love, battered but optimistic, ready to start on our new journey, one we did not foresee but whose destination is all the more wonderful for that. He thinks we will always be together, here in Cornwall, hundreds of miles from our two difficult families. He thinks we are a unit.

I would rather be single. I cannot possibly say that. I am secretly glad that we didn’t manage to have that baby. He would be heartbroken to hear it. Nothing in particular has happened: neither of us has been unfaithful, and he has never been anything worse to me than incredibly, cringingly annoying. I married the wrong man, with an inkling at the time that that was what I was doing, and so it is my fault and I am stuck.

I wonder what he would say if he knew that I have always had an escape plan, always a bag packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. It is not because of him, but all the same, it is telling.

I convinced myself that the baby, if it arrived, would solve everything by giving me a new focus and something to love. I knew, really, that life does not work that way. It is lucky for the baby that he or she never made it.

Half an hour later I laugh out loud as I realise I look like the world’s most submissive housewife: I am taking two halves of a cake out of the oven, using floral-patterned oven gloves and wearing a frilly apron, a cheap appropriation of the Cath Kidston effect. I feel like an interloper in someone else’s life. I am a creature from science fiction, wearing an earth body to disguise my true self. Inside is someone Sam barely knows at all. The creature within is ugly and angry, cold and frustrated and mocking. I strive to keep it hidden because Sam does not deserve what would come with its unleashing.

The truth is, I do not love my husband. I do not love him at all. I like him, on a good day. I can see that he is a far better person than I am, and this makes me despise him all the more. It also, somehow, stops me leaving him. I hate the tea he makes: it is warm watery milk, coloured beige by the briefest of flirtations with a tea bag. When I drink it I wince in secret, but I knock it back because after five years of trying to get him to make it the way I like it, I have given up.

When he calls a crane a ‘huge metal thing that lifts stuff’ with ‘a grabby thing’ on the end, I want to run, screaming, all the way back to London. I am married to a man who calls a phone charger ‘the pluggy-in thing’, and the remote control ‘the buttony thing for the telly’. This, once almost an endearing habit, is now an affectation that drives me to the brink of homicide. I have to clench my teeth and force myself not to say anything, again and again and again.

For years I suggested a trekking holiday in Nepal, but even though he knew it was the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world, he repeatedly found reasons why it couldn’t be done: a hypochondriacal ‘bad knee’, an aversion to altitude, not enough time off work to make it worthwhile. He always steered me towards beaches, to the Canaries or France; but we have beaches here, and anyway, beaches are boring. I want mountains.

The two halves of the cake are perfectly cooked. That is because when we moved to Cornwall from London we still had money, so we bought a top-of-the-range Smeg cooker. We had no idea that we were about to pour all our savings into three fruitless cycles of IVF. If we had, I would have made do with an oven that was thousands of pounds cheaper, and it would have been fine, though these particular cakes might have been a little less springy.

It never occurred to either of us that nature might not fall in with our plans. We were, in our own eyes, successful and fabulous super-people who made things happen. We were London professionals moving to a little house above Falmouth Docks, to start a family. Sam wanted us to have a girl, then a boy, and then a third child (no gender preference). They were going to be blond and wholesome, learning to sail in little dinghies and playing rounders on the beach.

I tip the two cakes on to the wire cooling rack, and put the tins in the sink to soak. I am good at this Earth stuff. No one watching me would ever suspect. It is lonely, being an evil alien in disguise.

Iris has a boyfriend she’s ambivalent about, too. That was what drew me to her. We recognised it in each other; I am sure we did. That is why I have baked her these cakes.

I sometimes wish I loved him, but if I loved him I would not be myself. I would rather be myself, living a lie, trying to screw up the courage to do the right thing, than the simpering housewife he needs.

When the kitchen is tidy, and Sam, I see from the balcony, is in the garden below, cutting the grass, I rush to check my email. Once again, the only contact from the outside world comes from my trusted friend
moneysupermarket.com
.

I sit down and start typing. My heart pumps so hard that I feel it throughout my whole body.

Leon
, I write.
Any news? L x

Then I send it, and delete it from the sent messages folder. Sam would never go through my email account, but I like to be safe.

The doorbell rings at exactly half past three, and when I open the door and see Iris, I grin, suddenly happy. If I do not talk properly to someone soon, I will probably murder my husband in his sleep.

She is wearing a floaty skirt with bare legs, and a bicycle helmet is swinging from her arm. Her hair is long and thick and tangled. It is dark brown, but blond at the ends.

‘Did you cycle in that skirt?’ I say, instead of hello.

‘You know, I didn’t even think about it. If anyone was at all interested in the view, good luck to them. I’m pretty sure, though, that they weren’t.’

‘Come in.’

I see women out in town, school-mum types, the sort of arty women who can manage to live here and scrape a professional living as a designer or a writer or an illustrator, and I think, often, that I would be immensely happier if I had a group of friends like that. We could sit in the Town House bar, just at the bottom of the hill, and drink cocktails and bottles of Pinot Grigio, and laugh about our annoying husbands. That is what people do.

Iris is my first step in that direction. She is, I think, around my age, or possibly a little older. I like her eccentricity. I know she has that boyfriend, the one she finds exasperating. I have not met him yet, but I would like to.

She is looking at me with a small smile, and I wonder what she sees. Does she see the perfect little blonde housewife, wearing her cotton dress and leggings, putting the kettle on and carrying an impeccable Victoria sponge to the table next to the window in the house with the view? Or does she glimpse the evil murderous alien? I want to ask.

‘How are you?’ I say, since I can’t.

‘Oh, fine,’ she replies. ‘Great, actually. The bike blows the cobwebs away.’ She puts her fingers through her hair and tugs at a tangle.

‘It’s quite hilly, isn’t it?’

She nods. ‘That’s the point. You kill yourself getting up some precipice, then have the joy of freewheeling down as fast as you dare, and you’re halfway up the next one before you slow down. It takes nerves of steel in the traffic, but it’s worth it. I didn’t cycle for years, because I was afraid, and then I thought, you know, sod it. Who cares? I just did it one day and it’s been brilliant.’

I look around. Sam is still outside.

‘Look, I’ve made a cake. All those years of university paid off. We could have a cup of tea, or would you prefer a glass of Prosecco?’

I know that she can tell what I want from my expression, and happily she obliges.

‘Well, Prosecco would be lovely,’ she says, ‘if you’re sure.’

‘Oh, I am.’

‘No one seems to mind if you’re tipsy in charge of a bike. There’s almost certainly a law against it, but the only person you’re going to hurt is yourself, I suppose. The police, luckily, have better things to do.’

‘Does your boyfriend cycle?’

She nods a little nod. ‘Used to. Not so much these days. He’s … well, he’s a bit of a recluse now.’

I want to know more, but instead I open the bottle, which gives a pleasing ‘pop’, and we sit down. When Sam and I bought this house, our future family home, it had swirly carpets and a gorgeously dated seaside feel. We did the minimum of work, because I liked it the way it was. All the same, the carpets had to go, and varnished floorboards arrived. The Artex went, and plasterwork took its place. The horrible fireplace was wrenched out (slightly against my better judgement: it was so nearly horrible enough to be cool), and the inevitable wood burner now occupies its space. The house is lovely, as prisons go. It is nice to show it to someone.

When we had children we were going to extend, to make more bedrooms and a playroom and a tree house and all sorts of other things. Sam used to fantasise about sticky fingerprints on the windows; but the windows have remained pristine.

‘This is glorious.’ Iris is looking at the view.

‘You never really get used to it, because it’s different every day.’

‘I bet. If I lived here I’d just stare out of the window all the time.’

‘That’s pretty much what I do.’

She laughs, but I am serious. I have nothing else to do. I haven’t even been able to find an admin job. Every time I apply for anything, they come back with the same word: ‘overqualified’. Yet there is nothing for which my qualifications would be any use. Every job in my field, in property development and architecture, is already taken. I have flirted with the idea of Asda, but Sam has stopped me.

‘How’s the proofreading going?’ I am pleased that I remember that. Iris and I met on the ferry to St Mawes one afternoon. We got talking in an idle way, and discovered that both of us were going over there on a whim, just for the boat trip. When we got there we walked around in the harsh wind, and her hair blew all over her face and even mine started to escape from its grips and pins. Then we went and sat in a dark little pub up a side road and drank bottled lager. It was random, and transgressive, and I liked it.

‘Oh, fine,’ she says. ‘I like working from home. Being able to set my own hours, take control of my work life.’ Her face creases right up when she laughs, and this makes me think of a baby laughing. ‘That sounds like I’m operating sex lines, doesn’t it? Or posing on the end of a webcam. I specialise in legal books. Rock and roll. But it’s going fine, thanks. I should keep a diary. It would be the world’s most boring document. Every day just precisely the same.’