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7. SPRING 2013

A speck of dust lands on the pillow. No one else would hear it, but Catherine does. She hears everything — her ears are wide open. She sees everything too. Even in the pitch-black. Her eyes have become accustomed to it. If Robert woke now he would be blind, but Catherine isn’t. She watches his closed eyes, the twitching lids, the flickering lashes, and she wonders what is going on behind them. Is he hiding anything from her? Is he as good at it as she is? He is closer to her than anyone else and yet she has managed, over all these years, to keep him in the dark. It doesn’t matter how intimate they are, he just can’t see it and she finds that thought frightening. And by keeping everything locked up for so long, she has made the secret too big to let out; like a baby that has grown too large to be delivered naturally, it will have to be cut out. The act of keeping the secret a secret has almost become bigger than the secret itself.

Robert rolls onto his back and starts to snore, so Catherine gently propels him onto his other side so his back is to her. She doesn’t want to wake him — she cannot risk a conversation this deep in the night — but she moves close enough so she can smell him.

She remembers the moment, twenty years ago, when he put his arm around her and said: “Are you okay?” She was not okay, but she hadn’t wanted him to notice because she couldn’t tell him why and she wasn’t as good then, as she is now, at covering up. She had said, “No, not really,” and had felt tears behind her eyes but she stopped them from falling because she knew if they fell they would be followed by a torrent of words. If she had cried she wouldn’t have been able to stop everything else coming out. So she didn’t cry, she made a confession, but it was a false one.

“I want to go back to work. I feel bad even saying it. I know I’m lucky having a choice to stay home, you’re earning enough for both of us, but… I’m lonely. I’m depressed…” It was the beginning of her digging a tunnel of escape from herself, but from Nicholas too. Her son was a constant reminder, but she couldn’t tell Robert that. She couldn’t say that being on her own with Nicholas was sending her mad, that his presence threw up memories she wanted to wipe out.

“Do you understand?” she asked. And she remembers looking up into Robert’s eyes and wondering whether he could see through into hers.

“Of course I do,” he said and then pulled her close and kissed her. But she felt his disappointment. He tried to hide it with his kiss; he tried to cover up his regret that she had confessed herself unable to be the kind of mother he wanted for their son. He never said this, he never voiced his disappointment, but she knew it was there, unspoken, between them.

There was a moment when she nearly told him the truth. But instead she lied again and said that she was going to stay with an old school friend for the weekend. It was a friend he didn’t know well, a friend who lived outside London; he would never find out. She told him it was an emergency — that the friend was having a breakdown. She packed a bag and left straight from work on Friday, leaving the new nanny to pick up Nicholas from school and getting away before Robert got home from work. She took a taxi, not the tube — she didn’t want to risk bumping into anyone she knew.

When she came home on Sunday evening, Nicholas was already in bed. Robert told her she looked pale and she said it had been a pretty ghastly weekend and that she was exhausted. That was all true.

“I need an early night, that’s all,” she said and then changed the subject, asking him about the new nanny.

“Seemed to go well. Nick was a chirpy little thing when I got home on Friday.”

“That’s good,” she said.

And then in the morning she made sure she was fine. There was a little colour back in her cheeks, and she had to get Nick ready for school before going to work, so there was no time to talk, for him to notice if she was distracted. Work too was hectic. She was up to her eyes and that’s what she wanted. To be so busy that there was no room left in her head for remembering. And she succeeded in emptying her mind of the past. That was the point. That’s what drove her. But now the past has elbowed its way back in, shoving everything else aside — standing there, chest puffed out, demanding her attention.

The book still lies on the table next to the bed. She can’t finish reading it. She has tried, but each time she retreats like a coward, going back again and again, rereading the same words. She is trapped in its middle. She peels away from Robert and slides out of bed, picking up the book as she goes, then creeping downstairs like a burglar.

She thumps the book down on the kitchen table and turns her back on it, a feeble act of rebellion. Today is Sunday, a day of rest, but not for her. She makes tea, takes it up to the spare room and sits on the floor. There are five boxes here waiting to be unpacked: two have Nicholas’s name on them; three are marked SPARE ROOM. She can’t remember what’s in them. She feels light-headed from lack of sleep and her hands are shaking as she pulls things out, tearing and ripping at newspaper, unwrapping knickknack after knickknack, all pointless, useless things. She’d hoped for a clue — a note, an envelope, anything which might be connected to the book and help her trace its route into her home, but there is nothing. She tries another box. Book after book after book, which she dumps on the empty shelves, not bothering to stand them up, allowing them to slip and slide against each other, leaving some to tumble to the floor with a thump.

She eyes Nicholas’s boxes. He was supposed to have come a week ago to sort through them but he hadn’t, and she had wanted to do it for him, but Robert had stopped her. They were Nick’s things, not hers. And Catherine had been frustrated because she damn well knew that Nicholas wouldn’t do it properly. And the point was, he didn’t have a bedroom here anymore. What they had now was a spare room. For guests. Of course Nicholas could come over whenever he liked. Of course he could. And if he ever wanted to spend the night, then of course he could do that too. But in the spare room. He has his own flat now. Pays his own rent. And that’s good. He is twenty-five years old. He has done better than they had ever dared hope. He has a job. A routine. Independence. And that’s what Catherine wants for him. A chance to be the best he possibly can be. The rush of thoughts leaves her breathless, as if she has spoken each one out loud.

“Darling?” Robert’s voice is gentle, but still it makes her jump. She looks up at him from her nest of torn newspaper, her hands black from it. It is nine o’clock and she has already been up for four hours. She sees concern on his face. She looks wrecked. At forty-nine, you can’t get away with not sleeping and think it won’t show. Of course he notices her pale, dark-ringed face.

“I wanted to make a start before Nicholas comes. To make it easier for him,” she lies and looks around at the chaos.

“It can wait. There’s no rush. Let him do it.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. “Scrambled eggs?”

She nods. She is starving. She always is now she doesn’t sleep. She follows him downstairs and slumps into a chair at the kitchen table, a dead weight in the room.

“Shall I do lunch?” he suggests. Nicholas is coming for Sunday roast and she has bought a chicken.

“No, no, I’d like to,” she says. She knows it will make her feel better if she can play her proper role and disguise herself in the smell of roasting meat juices.

She can see the book at the far end of the kitchen table. She had hoped that removing it from their bedroom would give her some peace. Robert is watching her, nursing questions in his head. Is she depressed? Is it the move? He is about to speak, but Catherine gets in first. She has been nursing her own question, preoccupied, playing with it, and so doesn’t notice Robert’s intake of breath, his preparation for speech. If she had she might not have plucked up the courage to ask:

“Is that your book?”

She makes sure her mouth is full so she appears casual as she nods to the end of the table. Robert glances over and reaches for the book, sliding it towards him. He takes a while to answer, but when it comes, his answer is dismissive. A shake of the head.

“Any good?” He picks up the book, turning it over, reading the blurb on the back.

She swallows. “Not really. Bit slow.” She watches him turn it over again and look at the cover.

“The Perfect Stranger,” he reads. “What’s it about?”

She shrugs. “Oh, it’s nonsense really. Weak plot. Implausible.” And he tosses it aside. Carelessly. No thought. Treating it in a way she wishes she could.

“Why?”

“I thought it might be yours,” she ventures.

“Thanks,” he says, but she misses the smile in his voice.

“I don’t remember buying it, that’s all. I wondered where it came from…” And her voice trails off as she stands and takes her plate to the dishwasher. Robert shrugs at the book, wondering why she’s so interested in it, thinking it’s just a diversion from the thing that is really worrying her. He is convinced that she is trying to make conversation and this worries him. They’re not that kind of couple. They don’t need to “make conversation.” They are close, closer now than they’ve been in years. But he recognises the signs. Catherine at home with too much time on her hands, too much time looking inwards, thinking about herself.

“Cath. You’ve done a great job on the house — it already feels like home. But I know you too well. You’re itching to get back to work, aren’t you.”

She looks at him. He really believes that.

“I love that you’re not a domestic goddess. You should be off making another film, not stuck here unpacking boxes and dressing the house.” Her eyes fill with tears, confirmation to Robert that he is right. He is her rock. She lets him believe it.

“You’re right, I know I’ve been distracted—” He cuts in.

“So go back — there was no need to take two weeks off. Most of it’s done now anyway and the rest we can do together in the evenings, weekends. There are only a few boxes left anyway. Why not?”

“Yes, why not,” she says and manages a smile. And then her brain sparks to life. She remembers. She remembers how the book came to be in their home. It’s seeing it sitting on the table. An image she remembers. It was just after they moved. The table had been littered with stuff. A box full of glasses half unpacked, screwed-up scraps of newspaper tickling the book’s cover as it sat there patiently, waiting for her to pick it up. A pile of unopened post and a jiffy bag, its grey fluff exposed where she’d ripped it open. And from which she had taken the book. The envelope had been forwarded on to them. She remembers the thick red ink which had crossed out their old address and written on the new. She can feel Robert’s eyes on her as she clears away the rest of the breakfast things; her renewed energy confirms to him that he was right. He knows her so well.

Thoughts fizz through her head: the book was sent to their old address, so whoever sent it doesn’t know where she is now. They did not come into her home, into her bedroom. She will telephone the family who moved into their old house. She will ask them not to forward anything else. It’s too much trouble, she’ll say. She’s happy to come and collect anything. Perhaps she will go further. Perhaps she will say that they’ve had a couple of nuisance letters, nothing too serious, but they’d rather not have anything else forwarded. And if anyone asks for their address, please would they just say that they don’t have it? Or their phone number, no they mustn’t give out the phone number. She decides all this while kissing Robert on the forehead and going upstairs to have a shower. She will do all this tomorrow though, not today. Today she will concentrate on Nicholas, on her family. On having a proper Sunday together.