My insides collapse. Because how do you come back from that?
He lies back on the bed.
I take a deep breath.
‘I realise it’s not easy,’ I say. ‘But it’s also not easy for me. In fact, having your whole life blown apart and your body splashed on the internet and your career taken away and your husband disappearing on you and not wanting to touch you is fucking hard.’
I tell Ed to stay at the hotel alone because we have paid for it and we could do with the space and I drive home at 4 p.m., leaving Poppy at her grandparents’ house anyway and thinking that it’s a good job I didn’t get Joseph’s phone number. Tonight I would have used it.
I go to sleep late, sad, wishing I could tell my mum friends what just happened; wishing they knew the whole story. With our marriage in such a mess now, I am aching to talk without omission to people who love me.
19
Scarlett
6 June
When Ed gets home the next morning, Poppy is still at his parents’. I couldn’t face explaining to them what had happened. Left the plans in place instead. We aren’t due to collect her until lunchtime.
Ed stands in the doorway to the living room.
I wipe away the flakes of black mascara that I know must be beneath my eyes. There were a lot of tears last night, as I sat here alone, Ed at the hotel, working out if my marriage could be saved. If I even wanted to save it. I still don’t have the answer.
Ed unframes himself and comes in. Plonks down on the sofa. I stay at the other end. A bit of space was good for us; a bit less space might be even better. Kiss me, Ed, I think. Touch my forehead. Put your arms around me. I am so tired. Make it simple again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He sounds exhausted. I suspect he had no sleep either.
Then my husband slams the sofa in frustration.
‘I just … I need this video thing to be resolved. Then I can try to move on.’
I nod. I. I.
‘It has to be one of them,’ he seethes. ‘One of them is lying, clearly.’
I tilt my head back into the cushions. So tired. So tired.
‘I don’t know, Ed. They say they didn’t do it. I don’t know.’
I look at him then, so far away, like we have never been the people in this same spot with their legs draped over each other sharing salt and vinegar crisps and arguing over who is going to put the kettle on.
‘But did you push them on it?’ he says, looking irritated. ‘They’re going to say it’s not them, aren’t they? That’s obvious.’
I bristle at the implication of my stupidity.
‘Well not really,’ I say. ‘If they wanted to blackmail me why wouldn’t they say it’s them?’
Ed stares at me.
‘Unless he has another motive,’ Ed says. ‘Stalking you, wants to sleep with you again, wants to break us up?’
We both look away, talk of a break-up too close to the bone.
‘Or wants to ruin your life,’ says Ed. ‘Bitter?’
I shrug. ‘Nothing gave that impression,’ I say. ‘They were both all right, not mean, not cruel.’
We are silent then. Nowhere to go.
‘Well, last night was a waste of time then,’ Ed says, finally. ‘I missed George’s birthday drinks for nothing.’
And there was me thinking I couldn’t confront any more.
I’m not tired, suddenly. I’m enraged.
‘God forbid that you shouldn’t go to every single event that’s ever on, Ed,’ I say. ‘That a night away to try and save our marriage was a waste of your time. I have had to leave my job – which I love, incidentally – for good through all of this and you haven’t once asked how I feel about that.’
He looks like he might interrupt me but I can’t let him. I need to get all of this out.
‘Instead, I’m supposed to snap straight into my natural role as a stay-at-home mum who sits around drinking coffee all day with people I barely know …’
This time he manages it.
‘Barely know?’ scoffs Ed. ‘Oh come on. What about the ones you go boozing with at any opportunity?’
We stare at each other. Who will break?
I want to tell him how complicated it is. How much I need my NCT friends, how much I depend on them. How close we are in some specific ways; how much we are still working each other out in others. How I do barely know even them when it comes to their pasts, their depths, their non-mum selves, but then how still, in other zones, they are everything.
‘Did you not make any mistakes, Ed?’ I ask, quiet. ‘Not even when you were young?’
He doesn’t answer. Perhaps because there is no time before I am off again.
It’s been stored up.
‘I’m sorry about all of this, Ed,’ I say. ‘And I’m sorry that I’ve been getting too drunk sometimes lately.’
‘Sometimes …’ he mutters.
‘Yes, sometimes. Sometimes too often, sometimes too much, but sometimes. I’m here, I’m a good mum to Poppy, I love you and, sometimes, I balls up. But you know the video? That actually wasn’t my fault, Ed.’
Ed doesn’t reply and we stand there in our hall where we have yanked muddy boots off each other’s legs after long walks and opened the door for hot pizza in our pyjamas and now we are here, with nothing left to say and nothing left to do.
Our home, I think, and I realise that I am starting to hate it here now, in what was supposed to be, as we drove towards it behind the removal van that day, our countryside idyll.
Ed goes to collect Poppy and we spend the rest of the day playing with her, ignoring each other.
When she goes to bed, I can’t take any more.
‘I need some air,’ I tell him, as he stares at the TV. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
Pushing my feet into trainers, I walk out into
