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39
April 2017
It was nearly three in the morning. Despite the warmer weather by day, it was cold now and Rachel could see her breath. She turned the corner to the place she’d arranged to meet the Uber and watched the driver’s progress anxiously on her phone until he finally arrived, his headlights cutting holes into the night-time mist, and she climbed into his back seat and said that yes, she was fine, thank you, how are you and then watched London through the window, the sleeping curves of it, the drawn curtains, the occasional pixel of light here and there, the gentle stretches of empty road, the calm waits at red lights for nobody and nothing, the soft pulsing click of the driver’s indicator and then the lights shining off the filthy dark water of the Regent’s Canal, white fairy lights strung across a barge, the peculiar shape of her building, theupended fridge, the glow of the nightlight in the entrance hall, her key in her front door, the smell of a neglected home, a fan of mail on the doormat. She dropped her bag at her feet, then collapsed on to her knees, tears running down her face, down her neck, into her pyjama top.
Rachel woke up a few hours later. She was in her own bed. The sheets had a dull, musty tang. She should have left her bed with clean bedding before she’d moved to Michael’s but she hadn’t thought. And last night she had been too broken to think about changing them. She had stood for half an hour in the shower, the pressure turned high, as high as it would go, tears mingling with the water as it poured down over her head. Now she was wearing pyjamas that she had not worn for many, many weeks, which still smelled of the fabric conditioner she used here in her own home. Her skin felt tight and raw from the hour of sickened, nauseated, rageful crying she’d done the night before.
As she awoke, she passed through a clear white moment of innocence, as fleeting as a snowflake, before she remembered that last night her husband had raped her. Then it exploded inside her mind’s eye, the feel of him on her, his hand over her mouth, around her neck, the blood pulsing through her eyeballs. In the mirror she could see burst blood vessels in her eyes, a livid red streak on her throat. Between her legs there were bruises that hurt even without her touching them. She stood in the shower for another half an hour, until the water ran cool. She made coffee without milk and drank it on her balcony in her towelling dressing gown. The day was bright and soft. A flower-bedecked barge passed lazily down the canal below with two brown spaniels sitting on the foredeckwith their legs stretched out. She hadn’t looked at her phone yet. She did not want to look at her phone ever again. She did not want to see his words. His lies. His filth.
She went to her laptop instead, the back-up one she’d had for ten years which looked fatter and bulkier with every year that passed. She opened up her private business email account, the only one that Michael didn’t have an address for. There was an email from Lilian Blow, the fine jewellery buyer at Liberty:
Rachel, I’m ccing Rosie Havers in here. Rosie is the Director of Buying and Merchandising here at Liberty. I.e. the big boss. I’ve been chewing her ear off about your stuff and now she’s a massive Rachel Gold fan too. I thought we might get together for a lunch sometime this week, just to get this off to a fun start, get to know you a bit better and talk long-term plans, hopes and dreams. What do you think?
Rachel blinked at the words on the screen. They were words that belonged to another world. Another person. Another version of her life. She caught herself in the mirror across the room. She tried to envision the person she saw in the reflection sitting in a chichi Soho back-street restaurant with Lilian and Rosie from Liberty. She imagined them fussing over the cocktail menu and then deciding to order water instead, or complicated tea infusions. She imagined statement wedding rings and teenage children with interesting names, and manes of glossy hair that had never been held tight inside the fists of their husbands as they raped them. She saw herself between them, rope-haired, stinking of victimhood and stale bedsheets.
Then she shook this out. Shook her head hard.
‘No no no no,’ she muttered to herself. ‘No no no nono.’
She slapped her own cheek and cleared her throat and ran her hands down her hair. ‘NO!’ she said again. Then she typed:This sounds amazing. I’d love it! Just name a time and a place and I’ll see you there. Really looking forward.
She pressed send and watched it jump from her screen, imagined it appearing in the gilded inboxes of Lilian and Rosie. She would be fine by then, she told herself. Absolutely fine. She just needed to get through today. Get through today, one minute at a time. Get dressed. Get to work. Get lunch. Get a lawyer. Get Michael out of her life.
She opened a new email, addressed it to Dominique:
Hey fatty. ‘Shit has gone down. I need an email address for your lawyer friend, the one with the red hair, I can’t remember her name. I think I might be getting divorced. Please don’t say a fucking word to anyone. And please only contact me on this email address. I’m not using my phone at the moment. Love you.
Then she went to her bathroom, pulled open the cabinet and took out her old make-up bag. She made herself look nice in the mirror. She covered the mark on her neck with foundation. She combed her hair out and then pulled it back into a bun. She put on perfume and some nice clothes and then she walked to her father’s house.
‘Baby girl! Come in! What a wonderful surprise! I wasn’t expecting you!’
She returned his embrace fulsomely, breathing in the smell of Dad.
‘You looked tired.’
‘Oh, thanks, Dad. And I made such a special effort not to!’
‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m sorry. What was it? A late night?’
‘A very late night. Yes. And … other stuff.’
‘What other stuff?’
‘Make me a cappuccino and I’ll tell you.’
Nothing made Rachel’s dad happier than using his expensive coffee machine and she saw the bounce in his step as she followed him towards the kitchen.
‘Semi-skimmed, yes?’
‘Yes please, Dad.’
‘Any syrup?’
‘No thanks. Just basic cappuccino.’
‘Chocolate on top?’
‘Of course.’
