realize I must have stockings and suspenders somewhere. I decide it would be nice to find them now, to take them with me. It might be good for both of us.
I move to the wardrobe. I choose a dress, a skirt. Some trousers, a pair of jeans. I notice the shoebox on the floor — the one that must have hidden my journal — now empty. I wonder what kind of couple we are, when we go on holiday. Whether we spend our evenings in restaurants, or sitting in cosy pubs, relaxing in the rosy heat of a real fire. I wonder whether we walk, exploring the town and its surroundings, or drive to carefully selected venues. These are the things I don’t know, yet. These are the things I have the rest of my life to find out. To enjoy.
I select some clothes for both of us, almost randomly, and fold them, placing them in the cases. As I do I feel a jolt, a surge of energy, and I close my eyes. I see a vision, bright, but shimmering. It is unclear at first, as if hovering, out of both reach and focus, and I try to open my mind, to let it come.
I see myself standing in front of a bag; a soft suitcase in worn leather. I am excited. I feel young again, like a child about to go on holiday, or a teenager preparing for a date, wondering how it will go, whether he’ll ask me back to his house, whether we’ll fuck. I feel that newness, that anticipation, can taste it. I roll it on my tongue, savouring it, because I know it will not last. I open my drawers in turn, selecting blouses, stockings, underwear. Thrilling. Sexy. Underwear that is worn only with the anticipation of its removal. I put in a pair of heels in addition to the flat shoes I am wearing, take them out, put them in again. I don’t like them, but this night is about fantasy, about dressing up, about being other than what we are. Only then do I move on to the functional things. I take a quilted wash-bag in bright red leather and add perfume, shower gel, toothpaste. I want to look beautiful tonight, for the man I love, for the man I have been so close to losing. I add bath salts. Orange blossom. I realize I am remembering the night I packed to go to Brighton.
The memory evaporates. My eyes open. I could not have known, back then, that I was packing for the man who would take everything from me.
I carry on packing for the man I still have.
I hear a car pull up outside. The engine dies. A door opens, and then shuts. A key in the lock. Ben. He is here.
I feel nervous. Scared. I am not the same person he left this morning; I have learned my own story. I have discovered myself. What will he think, when he sees me? What will he say?
I must ask him if he knows about my journal. If he has read it. What he thinks.
He calls out as he closes the door behind him. ‘Christine? Chris? I’m home.’ His voice doesn’t sing, though; he sounds exhausted. I call back, and tell him I am in the bedroom.
The lowest step creaks as it accepts his weight, and I hear an exhalation as first one shoe is removed, and then the other. He will be putting his slippers on now, and then he will come to find me. I feel a surge of pleasure at knowing his rituals — my journal has keyed me into them, even though my memory cannot — but, as he ascends the stairs, another emotion takes over. Fear. I think of what I wrote in the front of my journal.
He opens the bedroom door. ‘Darling!’ he says. I have not moved. I still sit on the edge of the bed, the bags open behind me. He stands by the door until I stand and open my arms, then he comes over and kisses me.
‘How was your day?’ I say.
He takes off his tie. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘let’s not talk about that. We’re on holiday!’
He begins to unbutton his shirt. I fight the instinct to look away, remind myself that he is my husband, that I love him.
‘I packed the bags,’ I say. ‘I hope yours is OK. I didn’t know what you’d want to take.’
He steps out of his trousers and folds them before hanging them in the wardrobe. ‘I’m sure it’s fine.’
‘Only I wasn’t exactly sure where we were going. So I didn’t know what to pack.’
He turns, and I wonder whether I catch a flash of annoyance in his eyes. ‘I’ll check, before we put the bags in the car. It’s fine. Thanks for making a start.’ He sits on the chair at the dressing table and pulls on a pair of faded blue jeans. I notice a perfect crease ironed down their front, and the twenty-something me has to resist the urge to find him ridiculous.
‘Ben?’ I say. ‘You know where I’ve been today?’
He looks at me. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I know.’
‘You know about Dr Nash?’
He turns away from me. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You told me.’ I can see him, reflected in the mirrors arranged around the dresser. Three versions of the man I married. The man I love. ‘Everything,’ he says. ‘You told me about it all. I know everything.’
‘You don’t mind? About me seeing him?’
He doesn’t look round. ‘I wish you’d told me. But no. No, I don’t mind.’
‘And my journal? You know about my journal?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You told me. You said it helped.’
A thought comes. ‘Have you read it?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘You said it was private. I would never look through your private things.’
‘But you know about Adam? You know that I know about Adam?’
I see him flinch, as if my words have been hurled at him with violence. I am surprised. I was expecting him to be happy. Happy that he would no longer have to tell me about his death, over and over again.
He looks at me.
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘There aren’t any pictures,’ I say. He asks what I mean. ‘There are photos of me and you but still none of him.’
He stands and comes over to where I am sitting, then sits on the bed beside me. He takes my hand. I wish he would stop treating me as if I am fragile, brittle. As if the truth would break me.
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ he says. He reaches under the bed and retrieves a photo album. ‘I’ve put them in here.’
He hands me the album. It is heavy, dark, bound in something meant to resemble black leather but it doesn’t. I open the cover, and inside it is a pile of photographs.
‘I wanted to put them in properly,’ he says. ‘To give to you as a present tonight, but I didn’t have time. I’m sorry.’
I look through the photographs. They are not in any order. There are photographs of Adam as a baby, a young boy. They must be the ones from the metal box. One stands out. In it he is a young man, sitting next to a woman. ‘His girlfriend?’ I say.
‘One of them,’ says Ben. ‘The one he was with the longest.’
She is pretty, blonde, her hair cut short. She reminds me of Claire. In the photograph Adam is looking directly at the camera, laughing, and she is looking half at him, her face a mixture of joy and disapproval. They have a conspiratorial air, as though they have shared a joke with whoever is behind the lens. They are happy. The thought pleases me. ‘What was her name?’
‘Helen. She’s called Helen.’
I wince as I realize I had thought of her in the past tense, imagined that she had died too. A thought stirs; what if she had died instead, but I force it down before it forms and finds a shape.
‘Were they still together when he died?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘They were thinking of getting engaged.’
She looks so young, so hungry, her eyes full of possibility, of what is in store for her. She doesn’t yet know the impossible amount of pain she still has to face.
‘I’d like to meet her,’ I say.
Ben takes the picture from me. He sighs. ‘We’re not in touch,’ he says.
‘Why?’ I say. I had it planned in my head; we would be a support to each other. We would share something, an understanding, a love that pierced all others, if not for each other then at least for the thing we had lost.
‘There were arguments,’ he says. ‘Difficulties.’
I look at him. I can see that he doesn’t want to tell me. The man who wrote the letter, the man who believed in me and cared for me, and who, in the end, loved me enough both to leave me and then to come back for me, seems to have vanished.
