Dead To Me

14

GILL WORKED TILL half eight then called it a day. Drove home and found Sammy playing on the Xbox, his friends gone. She thought she could smell the faint trace of tobacco, but wasn’t sure enough to challenge him.

‘Revision?’ she asked.

‘Done a bit.’

‘Enough?’

He nodded his head.

‘OK.’

She put the fresh tuna on the griddle and dug out some salad, emptied leftover potatoes into a dish for the microwave. She had got into the habit of making extra food to use up the following day and save herself time.

The kitchen wasn’t too messy, though the waste bin was overflowing with plastic pop bottles and pot noodle containers. Why was it beyond Sammy to make use of the recycling bins? She took the bottles outside. The temperature had plummeted and the cold nipped at her fingers and nose. She could see lights glowing from the windows of the farmhouse on the moor. Above, the cloud had cleared and she could make out some stars. Not many, not like on holidays. That was one of the things that was so memorable about trips away, so vivid. The wealth of stars under foreign skies. Sitting on a veranda with Dave while Sammy slept soundly, exhausted by the day’s snorkelling or skiing. Gill relishing their time together. They had some brilliant holidays – not many, it had been a nightmare getting their diaries in synch for time off. Especially as they had to go in school breaks. So when they could pull it off, they went all out. Splurged on the Maldives, the Rockies, or a safari in Kenya. Scuba-diving. White-water rapids. They worked so hard the rest of the time. ‘We deserve it,’ Dave would say. And she agreed.

All that had changed. No fancy holidays now.

She dashed back in and put the food on her plate. Once she’d finished eating she dug out the chocolate from its hiding place in the top cupboard. As if by magic, Sammy wandered in.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, seeing the slab.

‘Mine.’ Gill narrowed her eyes.

‘One piece – go on.’

She gave him a black look, broke off a bit and handed it to him. ‘Give you spots,’ she warned.

‘I’ve already got spots,’ he said. ‘Oh, it was well good…’ his eyes lit up, ‘in the Russian test, the one before ours, this girl said she felt ill and the teacher said she couldn’t leave the room and she just barfed, like threw up everywhere. And the worst thing was’ – his face animated, relishing the memory – ‘the rest of them had to stay there and do the test after that!’

‘They cleared it up?’ Gill said.

‘Yeah, but you could still smell it. We could even smell it in the afternoon. They should give us extra marks.’

‘In your dreams, matey.’

‘A bit more?’ He nodded at the chocolate.

‘No. You’ll be sick.’

‘Har har.’

‘Want me to test you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Gonna watch Peep Show.’

‘You start.’

They shared a love of good comedy and there wasn’t much else they watched together. Sammy liked extreme sports and adventure stuff. Gill’s guilty pleasure was costume drama. Something a million miles away from work, that she could deride and poke fun at, but that felt cosy, comforting, the televisual equivalent of hot chocolate. She heard Sammy laughing from the other room. He was a good kid.

Three years since she and Dave split up. Sammy wasn’t doing so bad, but Gill still couldn’t tell whether he was putting a brave face on things for her sake. She had done her best not to slag Dave off in front of Sammy, always referring to him in a civilized tone, but the boy wasn’t a fool, he knew Dave had wrecked the marriage, that it was Dave who had been shagging around and who now lived across town with the uniform from Pendlebury. Sammy had been hurt; he missed his dad, although recently they had got into the routine of weekend visits together.

It was Janet who Gill had turned to for help in the wake of walking in on Dave and said uniform. Her own house, her own bed, her own so-called husband, arse in the air, blonde bimbo with a fake tan, cooing, ‘Ooh, Dave, ooh, Dave!’ as Gill stood there, sick, seething.

There had been a vase of lilies on the dressing table: big, white, waxy flowers, a heavy, thick glass vase. Gill had grabbed it, hurled with all her might before escaping downstairs and out of the house. Beside herself with fury and the pain. To tell Janet. To get drunk.

‘I can’t sling him out,’ Gill had said to Janet. ‘I’m back in Grimsby on Monday on the dock job – nearly done but I can’t blob now.’ A double murder, body parts recovered from tea chests on the dockside. North Yorkshire force had got nowhere in nine long months so asked the crime faculty for input.

‘The packing case?’ Janet said.

‘Hah!’ Gill laughed at the pun. Thinking: How can I laugh? How is it possible to laugh? Why is something still functioning when I feel so broken? ‘He’ll have to look after Sammy. But I can’t stay with him, not in the long run. I won’t.’

‘Have you talked to him?’ Janet said.

‘No.’ Gill shook her head. ‘I can’t look at him, can’t bear the sight of him.’

‘You have to talk to him,’ Janet said.

‘I know. She can’t be more than twenty-five, the whore.’ Gill groaned: ‘I feel such a fool.’

‘You’re not.’

Gill pressed her hands to her temples. Took a breath, exhaled slowly. ‘I knew.’

‘What?’ Janet had peered at her, surprised.

‘Maybe not name, rank and badge number, but… the flirting… the charm offensive. Easy to pretend that’s all it was, but-’ She thought of all the moments, little jarring moments, like missteps in a dream. Over the years, so many glances from Dave to… well, pick a woman, any woman. Then there were those occasional phone calls: Is Dave there? Her thinking, and who the fuck are you? Smelling deceit, but playing the game. Years of lies about where he’d been or who he’d seen. With Gill traipsing around the country, he had free rein. ‘You remember when I started at the faculty? Ten years ago. I thought he was having an affair then. Sammy was four at the time. I came back for the weekend and Dave had changed the sheets?’

‘You thought the nanny had done it,’ Janet said.

‘That’s right, thanked her, not part of her job. She hadn’t. I couldn’t let it go. He swore there was nothing going on. Then he got the hump. Slung his phone at me, diary, the lot. ‘Look at it,’ he said, ‘all of it.’ And I didn’t. I chose to believe him. I didn’t want to know, Janet.’

Janet nodded, a wry smile on her face.

‘Same way I’ve tuned out the gossip over the years. Little snippets. Bastard! In our bed! In our house!’ She wanted to punch something. Rip up his clothes, batter his car with a sledgehammer, superglue his cock to his arse, cut off his balls and post them to Pendlebury. She wanted to weep. ‘Did you know?’

‘That he was having an affair? No,’ Janet said.

‘Affairs plural,’ Gill asked. ‘You knew he was putting it about?’

Janet paused. Gill trusted her to be honest, they’d been through too much together not to be. ‘Like you say, there were rumours,’ Janet said.

‘But you never came to me. You didn’t think I should know?’ Gill asked her, anxious now, fearful of losing Janet, too. Of feeling betrayed by everyone that mattered.

‘They were rumours, Gill. If there had ever been something concrete staring me in the face, then I would have told you. Of course I would.’

Gill nodded, relieved. But the anger and the sense of humiliation flooded back through her. ‘I can just imagine it when word gets out.’ She dragged a hand through her hair. ‘All the clichés. I’m a walking fucking cliché. Wifey the last to know. Cat’s away and the mice – fuck!’

‘You’ll be all right. It doesn’t feel that way now, but you will.’

‘I hope she gives him herpes. I hope they get scabies too, and that everything they touch turns to shit. This is killing me. I can’t do it. It’ll kill me.’ She caught the twinkle in Janet’s eyes, saw Janet fighting not to laugh. Gill punched her in the arm. ‘I’m allowed to be melodramatic,’ she said. ‘If ever there was a time for melodrama, this is it.’

‘I’ll give you that.’

‘I am not going to be that woman who stands by her man, smile glued in place,’ Gill said.

‘Whatever happens, you’ll be all right. You’ve got a fantastic job, you’ve got Sammy, you’ve got mates.’

‘And a big fuck-off house,’ Gill added. ‘He’s not getting his paws on that.’

‘Can you afford to buy him out?’

‘Probably not, but I’m not losing that house. I’ll live on bread and dripping first. Take in lodgers, anything. But I’ll keep that house.’

‘Good,’ Janet said.

And I have, Gill thought now. Still here, living and breathing. She opened the fridge and poured herself a glass of milk. Took it through and sat down on the sofa. Sammy moved over, raising his feet so she could massage them.

‘You showered?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Forget it then.’

He laughed and slid his legs off her knees.

Gill smiled and turned her attention to the screen where one of the characters was going into meltdown. She should make a date with Janet. Hard with so much on, but you let things slide and when you finally look up your social life has curled up in a corner and died. Yes, she’d do that. Time they had a proper catch-up.