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‘Excuse me, are you Aimee?’ asked an elderly gentleman with a kind smile.
I felt confused, a little sick; he was nothing like the handsome young man in the profile picture I had seen. I considered fleeing from the shop.
‘Another customer came in earlier; he bought this and asked me to give it to you. He said it was a clue.’ The man beamed as though this were the most fun he’d had in years. Then he held out a neatly wrapped brown-paper parcel. With the tension removed from the situation, things seemed to fall into place and I realised this was the owner of the shop, not my date. I thanked him and took what I guessed was a book, grateful when he left me alone to unwrap it. Inside, I found one of my childhood favourites: The Secret Garden. It took a while for the penny to drop, but then I remembered that the florist on the corner shared the same name as the book.
The woman in the flower shop grinned as soon as I walked in, my entrance accompanied by the tinkle of a bell on her door.
‘Aimee?’
When I nodded, she presented me with a bouquet of white roses. There was a note:
Roses are white.
So sorry I’m late.
Can’t wait for tonight.
You’re my perfect date.
I read it three times, as though trying to translate the words, then noticed the florist still smiling in my direction. People staring at me has always made me feel uncomfortable.
‘He said he’d meet you at your favourite restaurant.’
I thanked her and left. We didn’t have a favourite restaurant, having never eaten out together, so I walked along the high street carrying my book and flowers, enjoying the game. I replayed our email conversations in my mind and remembered one about food. His preferences had all been so fancy, mine … less so. I had regretted telling him my favourite meal and blamed my upbringing.
The man behind the counter at the fish-and-chips shop smiled. I was a regular back then.
‘Salt and vinegar?’
‘Yes please.’
He shovelled some chips into a paper cone, then gave them to me, along with a ticket for a film screening later that night. The chips were too hot, and I was too anxious to eat them as I hurried along the road. But as soon as I saw Ben standing outside the cinema, all my fear seemed to disappear.
I remember our first kiss.
It felt so right. We had a connection I could neither fathom or explain, and we slotted together as though we were meant to be that way. I smile at the memory of who we were then. That version of us was good. Then I stumble on the uneven pavement outside the cinema, and it brings me back to the present. Its doors are closed. The lights are off. And Ben is gone.
I run a little faster.
I pass the charity shops, wondering if the clothes in the windows were donated in generosity or sorrow. I run past the man pushing a broom along the pavement, sweeping away the litter of other people’s lives. Then I run past the Italian restaurant where the waitress recognised me the last time we ate there. I haven’t been back since; it feels as if I can’t.
I am paralysed with a unique form of fear when strangers recognise me. I just smile, try to say something friendly, then retreat as fast as I can. Thankfully it doesn’t happen too often. I’m not A-list. Not yet. Somewhere between a B and C I suppose, a bit like my bra size. The version of myself I wear in public is far more attractive than the real me. It’s been carefully tailored, a cut above my standard self; she’s someone nobody should see.
I wonder when his love for me ran out?
I take a shortcut through the cemetery and the sight of a child’s grave fills me with grief, redirecting my mind from thoughts of who we were, to who we might have been, had life unfolded differently. I try to hold on to the happy memories, pretend that there were more than there were. We are all programmed to rewrite our past to protect ourselves in the present.
What am I doing?
My husband is missing. I should be at home, crying, calling hospitals, doing something. The memory interrupts my thoughts but not my footsteps, and I carry on. I only stop when I reach the coffee shop, exhausted by my own bad habits: insomnia and running away from my problems.
It’s already busy, filled with overworked and underpaid Londoners needing their morning fix, sleep and discontentment still in their eyes. When I reach the front of the queue, I ask for my normal latte and make my way to the till. I use contactless to pay, and disappear inside myself again until the unsmiling cashier speaks in my direction. Her blonde hair hangs in uneven plaits on either side of her long face, and she wears a frown like a tattoo.
‘Your card has been declined.’
I don’t respond.
She looks at me as though I might be dangerously stupid. ‘Do you have another card?’ Her words are deliberately slow and delivered with increased volume, as though the situation has already exhausted her of all patience and kindness. I feel other sets of eyes in the shop joining hers, all converging on me.
‘It’s two pounds forty. It must be your machine, please try it again.’ I’m appalled by the pathetic sound impersonating my voice coming from my mouth.
She sighs, as though she is doing me an enormous favour, and making a huge personal sacrifice, before stabbing the till with her nail-bitten finger.
I hold out my bank card, fully aware that my hand is trembling and that everyone can see.
She tuts, shakes her head. ‘Card declined. Have you got any other way of paying, or not?’
Not.
I take a step back from my untouched coffee, then turn and walk out of the shop without another word, feeling their eyes follow me, their judgment not far behind.
Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s fear postponed to a later date.
I stop outside the bank and allow the cash machine to swallow my card, before entering my pin and requesting a small amount of money. I read the unfamiliar and unexpected words on the screen twice:
SORRY
INSUFFICIENT FUNDS AVAILABLE
The machine spits my card back out in electronic disgust.
Sometimes we pretend not to understand things that we do.
I do what I do best instead: I run. All the way back to the house that was never a home.
As soon as I’m inside, I pull out my phone and dial the number on the back of my bank card, as though this conversation could only be had behind closed doors. Fear, not fatigue, withholds my breath, so that it escapes my mouth in a series of spontaneous bursts, disfiguring my voice. Getting through the security questions is painful, but eventually the woman in a distant call centre asks the question I’ve been waiting to hear.
‘Good morning, Mrs Sinclair. You have now cleared security. How can I help you?’
Finally.
I listen while a stranger calmly tells me that my bank account was emptied, then closed yesterday. Over ten thousand pounds had been sitting in it – the account I reluctantly agreed to make in joint names, when Ben accused me of not trusting him. Turns out I might have been right not to. Luckily, I’ve squirrelled most of my earnings away in accounts he can’t access.
I stare down at Ben’s belongings still sitting on the coffee table, then cradle my phone between my ear and shoulder to free up my hands. It feels a little intrusive to go through his wallet – I’m not that kind of wife – but I pick it up anyway. I peer inside, as though the missing ten thousand pounds might be hidden between the leather folds. It isn’t. All I find is a crumpled-looking fiver, a couple of credit cards I didn’t know he had, and two neatly folded receipts. The first is from the restaurant we ate at the last time I saw him, the second is from the petrol station. Nothing unusual about that. I walk to the window and peel back the edge of the curtain, just enough to see Ben’s car parked in its usual spot. I let the curtain fall, and put the wallet back on the table, exactly how I found it. A marriage starved of affection leaves an emaciated love behind; one that is frail, easy to bend and break. But if he was going to leave me and steal my money, then why didn’t he take his things with him too? Everything he owns is still here.
