The development was very private, quiet. The apartments were exclusive, practically deserted. There was something else that Fiona didn’t want to say to Mark. Fiona thought they were the perfect place to stash a captive.
Or a body.
29
Kylie
Friday 20th March
I keep drifting into a peaceless sleep and then waking again, shivering or sweaty. Hungry, unrested. Each time I wake there is a split second when I forget I am in this room and I think, am I with Mark? Am I with Daan? The usual question that I ask myself whenever I wake. Usually, whichever answer presents itself, unrolls into some level of organisation and I take control. But now when I wake up, it takes a moment to remember, I am alone. Time sloshes around me. I might drown in it. What can I do other than wait it out? I think it is Friday. If it is, then no matter who is responsible, the world must know I am missing by now.
The world must know I am a bigamist.
All I ever wanted to do was give the boys a happy home but now they will know their home was faulty, fractured.
In most marriages there is a problem with time. There often is not enough of it, sometimes there is too much of it. Naturally with two marriages I have this problem doubled, intensified. However much I plan, compartmentalise, organise, sometimes the two worlds blur, they collide. At Christmas, for example, I can’t be two people and I have to be in one place or another. I have to choose. Until this past Christmas I always chose to be with the boys, with Mark. How could I not? Christmas is for kids. Daan is not a kid. But he is my husband, so it hurt being away from him. I told him I needed to be with my mother on the actual day, that we could celebrate another day, what did it matter to us? And he agreed. So on the twenty-fourth we drive up to Mark’s parents’ home, sit on the motorway for long hours, nose to tail with all the other cars full of people trying to get to their families; compelled by love or duty, or a blurred blend of the two. Love and duty can be smudged together like two different coloured packs of playdough; once teased, mauled, handled they can never be completely separated. Both bright colours smirch into a duller shade.
Our Christmas Days pan out very much like everyone else’s we know, I suppose. An early start, the kids bouncing on our bed, bony knees and elbows landing indiscriminately, stockings already opened, a chocolate orange quickly consumed, the evidence of which is smeared on their faces. There are paper hats and too much food, too much drink, a polite pretence that new slippers are the ideal gift from my mother-in-law. I drown in a mass of plastic and tantrums, and sulks and laughter. Then it is all over by 4 p.m. By that time, Mark’s parents are usually dozing on the sofa, not replete, stuffed. The boys are huddled in the corner of the room playing with new toys, sometimes contentedly but most likely low-level bickering abounds. A full row might erupt or be avoided because the turkey sandwiches and trifle are served. Food none of us need or really want but we have to have it because, ‘Christmas isn’t Christmas without turkey sandwiches and trifle, is it, pet?’
Mark’s parents are nicer to me at Christmas than they are at any other time of the year. They are never horrible or mean to me, but they are – despite stereotypes about northerners – cool towards me. They see me as an interloper. To them, I am not simply Mark’s wife. I am Mark’s ‘second wife’ or worse, his ‘new wife’. That is how Mark’s mother once introduced me to a neighbour. We’d been married six years at that point. Longer than he and Frances were ever married. But at Christmas, a morning sherry, Frank Sinatra crooning, maybe my elaborate, well-thought-through gifts seem to soften them. I might get a kiss on the cheek or be pulled into a hug. I don’t blame his parents for their coolness though, their distrust. They are right not to trust me, aren’t they? The other stereotype about northerners – the one that specifies that they are a canny bunch, and that you can’t pull the wool over their eyes – that may be true. Maybe they sense something in me. I always think his mother can see right through me. I wonder what she thinks about my disappearance.
Good riddance, perhaps.
Daan and I make more of the season generally, because we can’t focus on the specific day. Our celebrations are very different. We have never done late-night trolley dashes around Toys R Us, nor do we get stressed about booking our supermarket delivery of the Christmas shop around mid-November, because Daan and I do not shop as though the apocalypse is coming. Which is a relief because who would opt to do that twice? By contrast, we glide around Harvey Nichols food department, slipping delicacies into our basket: New Zealand Manuka honey, Jamon Iberico crisps, large hunks of pistachio nougat. Our groceries are delivered by a series of local artisan food experts: greengrocers, butchers, bread makers, fishmongers. We celebrate Christmas on the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, depending which day Christmas has fallen on. I tell Mark I need
