back to that bar and seeing if he’d turned up to find me. But, of course, life isn’t a romcom. And he’s married. And I’ve been an idiot. I’m not bitter, merely sad. I can’t tell Sophie any of these things because then she’d feel sorry for me, and I don’t want that, and it’s just easier to find it all funny. It is funny. And it’s not like I sit at home bemoaning my singledom every night, as if no one could ever be complete without a man. In the main, I’m pretty happy. I’m a grown-up. I could have it way worse. This was one mistake. I have to deal with it.
I scoop up a handful of Doritos and Sophie does the same.
‘Curves are the new thin,’ we say in unison, before cramming the crisps into our mouths and nearly choking as we laugh again. I think about me hiding in the toilet from him, full of panic and disbelief. It is funny. Everything is funny. It might be less funny tomorrow morning when I have to face the music, but for now I can laugh. If you can’t laugh at your own fuck-ups, what can you laugh at?
‘Why do you do it?’ I say later, when the bottle of wine is empty between us and the evening is drawing to a close. ‘Have affairs? Aren’t you happy with Jay?’
‘Of course I am,’ Sophie says. ‘I love him. It’s not like I’m out doing it all the time.’
This is probably true. She’s an actress; she exaggerates for the sake of a story sometimes.
‘But why do it at all?’ Strangely, it’s not something we’ve really talked about that much. She knows I’m uncomfortable with it, not because she does it – that’s her business – but because I know and like Jay. He’s good for her. Without him, she’d be screwed. As it were.
‘I have a higher sex drive than he does,’ she says, eventually. ‘And sex isn’t what marriage is about anyway. It’s about being with your best friend. Jay’s my best friend. But we’ve been together fifteen years. Lust can’t maintain itself. I mean, we still do it, sometimes, but it’s not like it was. And having a child changes things. You spend so many years seeing each other as parents rather than lovers, it’s hard to get that passion back.’
I think of my own short-lived marriage. The lust didn’t die with us. But that didn’t stop him leaving after four years to be with someone else when our son was barely two years old. Maybe she has a point. I don’t think I ever saw my ex, Ian, as my best friend.
‘It just seems a bit sad to me.’ And it does.
‘That’s because you believe in true love and happy ever after in a fairy tale way. That’s not how life is.’
‘Do you think he’s ever cheated on you?’ I ask.
‘He’s definitely had his flirtations,’ she says. ‘There was a singer he worked with a long time ago. I think maybe they had a thing for a while. But whatever it was, it didn’t affect us. Not really.’
She makes it sound so reasonable. All I can think of is the pain of betrayal I felt when Ian left. How what he did affected how I saw myself. How worthless I felt in those early days. How ugly. The short-lived romance he left me for didn’t last either, but that didn’t make me feel better.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand it,’ I say.
‘Everyone has secrets, Lou,’ she says. ‘Everyone should be allowed their secrets. You can never know everything about a person. You’d go mad trying to.’
I wonder, after she’s left and I’m cleaning up the debris of our evening, if maybe Jay was the one who cheated first. Maybe that’s Sophie’s secret at the heart of her hotel-room trysts. Maybe it’s all done to make herself feel better or to quietly get even. Who knows? I’m probably over-thinking it. Over-thinking is my speciality. Each to their own, I remind myself. She seems happy and that’s good enough for me.
It’s only a little past ten thirty, but I’m exhausted, and I peer in at Adam for a minute, a soothing comfort to be found in watching his peaceful sleep, curled up tiny on his side under his Star Wars duvet, Paddington tucked under one arm, and then close the door and leave him to it.
It’s dark when I wake up in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, and before I’ve really registered where I am, I feel the sharp throb in my shin where I’ve walked into the small laundry basket in the corner. My heart races, and sweat clings to my hairline. As reality settles around me, the night terror shatters, leaving only fragments in my head. I know what it was though. Always the same dream.
A vast building, like an old hospital or orphanage. Abandoned. Adam is trapped somewhere inside it, and I know, I just know, that if I can’t get to him, then he’s going to die. He’s calling out for me, afraid. Something bad is coming for him. I’m running through corridors trying to reach him, and from the walls and ceilings the shadows stretch, as if they’re part of some terrible evil alive in the building, and wrap themselves around me, trapping me. All I can hear is Adam crying as I try to escape the dark, sticky strands determined to keep me from him, to choke me and drag me into the endless darkness. It’s a horrible dream. It clings to me like the shadows do in the nightmare itself. The details may change slightly from night to night, but the narrative is always the same. However many times I have it, I’ll never get used to it.
The night terrors didn’t start when Adam was born – I’ve always had them, but before him I would be fighting for my own survival. Looking back, that was better, even if I didn’t know it at the time. They’re the bane of my life. They kill my chances of a decent night’s sleep when being a single mum tires me out enough.
This time I’ve walked more than I’ve done in a while. Normally I wake up, confused, standing either by my own bed or Adam’s, often in the middle of a nonsensical, terrified sentence. It happens so often it doesn’t even bother him if he wakes up any more. But then he’s got his father’s practicality. Thankfully, he’s my sense of humour.
I put the light on, look into the mirror, and groan. Dark circles drag the skin under my eyes down, and I know foundation isn’t going to cover them. Not in full daylight. Oh good. I remind myself that it doesn’t matter what the-man-from-the-bar aka oh-crap-he’s-my-new-married-boss thinks of me. Hopefully, he’ll be feeling embarrassed enough to ignore me all day. My stomach still clenches though, and my head thumps from too much wine and too many cigarettes. Woman up, I tell myself. It’ll all be forgotten in a day or so. Just go in and do your job.
It’s only four in the morning, and I drink some water, then turn the light out and creep back to my own bed hoping at least to doze until the alarm goes off at six. I refuse to think about the way his mouth felt on mine and how good it was, if only briefly, to have that surge of desire. To feel that connection with someone. I stare at the wall and contemplate counting sheep, and then I realise that under my nerves I’m also excited to see him again. I grit my teeth and curse myself as an idiot. I am not that woman.
ADELE
I wave him off with a smile as he leaves for his first proper day at the clinic, and the elderly lady next door looks on approvingly as she takes her small, equally frail dog out for his walk. We always appear such a perfect couple, David and I. I like that.
Still, I let out a sigh of relief when I close the door and have the house to myself, even though that exhalation feels like a small betrayal. I love having David
