Page 79 of Mad About You

She threw her bag into her bedroom and joined him withher own beer. After a few minutes of Affleck discussing a nuclear bomb with a radiation-assessment team onscreen, Cal cleared his throat.

‘Harriet?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know when you first phoned me about the room?’

‘Yeah?’

‘How did you know about it, before it went online?’

‘My friend is an estate agent. She said,oh hey you’ll love this room, I’ll give you first dibs. I know it was a bit cheeky.’

‘Ah! Right.’

‘Why do you ask?’ Harriet set the can back down.

‘Uhm …’

There was a heavy pause where Harriet tried to make sense of a non sequitur, and the usually breezy Cal’s slightly unnatural tone.

‘… Oh my God,’ she gulped, suddenly sweating.

Looking at him, it was all over his face. He’d seen Scott’s post. He’d been discussing it with third parties. He was wondering if she was a wrong ’un, and if so, her unusual method of arrival indicated he was the next project.

She’d known there was a risk Cal would hear about it, but hoped he was distant enough from Scott Dyer that it might take a while. Not only was Harriet hurt that Cal was doubting her, it was a hammer blow, after the false ease of today’s wedding, and she felt the ever-present threat of tears begin to rise again.

Everyone knew. This was going to follow her everywhere. Perhaps, given she was unsackable at the last minute, they’dall been in on it at today’s wedding, and had a collective agreement not to mention it.

At Cal’s continued silence, which was seconds and felt like minutes, Harriet said slowly, ‘OK, you know about Scott Dyer, and this is your response? Sounding me out on whether I schemed to move in with you, to check if he was giving you a useful caution about me?’

‘No! What happened was …’

Suddenly, she was furious. Furious that of all the shit things that had happened in the last few weeks, Scott had ruined this –this– as well, and her fury near-choked her. Some blistering reality was in order.‘Scott is a liar, a gaslighter, and a coercive controller. In our time together, he nearly broke me. If you read what he wrote and think that might be an accurate description of me, then you can go to hell along with him. Good thing I’m moving out in four weeks.’

Harriet hadn’t given Cal the date, yet now seemed a good time.

She jumped up, with the sudden animation of anger suffused with self-consciousness, and pounded upstairs. She slammed her bedroom door shut and locked it, chest heaving.

‘Harriet! Harriet?’ Cal said, moments later, on the other side of the door. ‘Please let me explain why I said what I said!’

She didn’t reply, lying down and putting a pillow over her head. Scott’s victory over her felt as good as total. She’d thought Cal might be an island away from it, a place of escape. She’d even thought they might have a newfound affinity.

Harriet breathed into the material in the darkness and felta despair that was new, a hopelessness that felt all-encompassing. She imagined she’d escaped, the morning of the B&Q fight, but had she?

She could see, for the first time, that her life post-Scott had been heavily shadowed by Scott, something she’d never have admitted if she wasn’t, as Lorna would say, on her arse. She had moved on from him but she’d never really got past him, and it turned out to be a very meaningful distinction.

It wasn’t only that he’d followed her here. He’d never been fully out of her life.

Bruised, still hiding from it and psychologically jumbled, Harriet could finally admit that, subconsciously, she’d used Jon as a rehab centre. It wasn’t fair. One broken heart and one broken engagement later, both of which she inflicted on him, it was rightfully her turn.

Thanks to her doomed fixation upon interfering in something that didn’t concern her, her job was in jeopardy, and she’d been tarred as the perpetrator of the very thing of which she was victim.

Harriet lifted the pillow slightly as she caught the soft step of Cal leaving his post and going back downstairs. She rolled onto her back and heaved a sigh, tremulously.

She had been resigned to the fact no one would ever know what went on between herself and Scott. In the words of the song, that wasn’t right, but it was OK. They both had to live with themselves, and Harriet could. For a vast multitude to now have an opinion on their relationship, but haveherdown as the abuser – it was unbearable. It was Scott’s gaslighting writ large. He might not care about other people’s feelings,but he was nevertheless an absolute master of identifying weak spots, where to turn the screw.A narcissist has empathy, she once read,they know it affects you – they just don’t care.

Cal’s altered manner with her was a stark reminder – those closest to her knew the truth, but she could count them on the fingers of one hand. To the world at large, she’d have a question mark hanging over her head.

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