Page 36 of Behind Her Eyes

I think of my fragile friend, running to answer calls and take pills and cook dinners, and I’m angry. How can he treat her like this? With suchcontempt? If he doesn’t love her then he should set her free to love someone else. Someone who’d treat her as well as she deserves.

‘Go home,’ I say, cold. ‘Go home and sort your shit out with your wife. I can’t deal with this right now.’ He doesn’t say a word, but stares at me, his eyes starting to glaze with alcohol. Is he driving? I don’t care, I decide. That’s his problem. Right now, I just want him gone. ‘Go,’ I repeat. ‘And stop drinking. You’re a fucking mess.’ I want to cry, for him, for Adele, and for me. Mainly for me. I don’t want to fight with him. I want to understand him.

I don’t look at him as he leaves, and I don’t return the squeeze he gives my hand as he passes.

‘I’ll fix it,’ he mumbles from the doorway. ‘Somehow. I promise.’

I don’t look up. I give him nothing. I may be a bitch and duplicitous, but enough is enough. I want him, but not like this. I can’t do this any more. I really can’t. Him and Adele are tearing me in two.

After he’s gone, I pour another glass of wine and fight the stupid urge to cry by calling Adam. Even his bubbly joy can’t lift my spirits and as he tells me about their day at the water park and the slides he went on with Ian, part of my mind is playing back the conversation with David. I make all the right sounds, and it’s lovely to hear my baby boy, but I’m also relieved when he says he has to go. I need the quiet. I feel empty and exhausted and sad and a whole heap of other stuff I don’t want to examine. It’s our first argument and maybe our last. I also realise, too late, that I don’t think he hit Adele. Not deep down. Not any more.

Even though it’s not yet nine o’clock, I take my wine and crawl under the duvet. I want to forget about it all for a while. Sleep it away. Maybe in the morning everything will somehow be better. I feel numb, but still part of me hates myself for sending him away when we could be in bed together. In bed withmyDavid, not Adele’s. I keep seeing the look on his face when he realised I was wondering if he’d hit his wife. That awful disappointment. But then I also keep seeing the bruise on Adele’s face. All her fear and secrecy on display in those sickly greens and muted blues. Whether he hit her or not, something isn’t normal in their marriage. But then nothing about this is normal, and I’m probably the worst of the three of us.

I feel trapped. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I do the only thing I can and drain my wine glass, my head buzzing with the alcohol, and then close my eyes. Adam will be home soon and then I can cocoon myself in him, in the safety of us. I focus on thoughts of my boy. The one person I can love without guilt or recrimination. I sleep.

This time, as the sticky shadow tendrils reach for me and I open the Wendy-house door, I don’t go to my childhood home, but instead to the house that Ian and I lived in when we were first married. When we were both still happy. I’m in the garden and it’s a perfect sunny day – not too hot, but beautifully warm, and I’m playing with Adam. He’s six though, my Adam as he is now, not the tiny baby he was when we lived here, and we’re at the pond and trying to catch tadpoles. Our feet are muddy and wet, but we’re both laughing as we dip our nets and jam jars into the slimy surface of the water.

The smell of meat cooking on a barbecue drifts on the air, and even before I’ve consciously thought of him, I hear David calling out that the burgers are ready. We turn and smile, and Adam runs to him. I’m about to follow when I see something glitter in the pond from the corner of my eye. A shape under the surface. It shimmers at the edges as it forms, almost silver beneath the dark water. I frown, confused. This is my dream – I’m controlling it – and yet I don’t know what this is. I step out, onto the pond’s surface, and walk across it like Jesus – and almost laugh at that, I am the God of my dreams – until I can crouch beside it. I dip my hand into the liquid, rippling it, but the glowing shape beneath stays in place. It’s another door, I realise, and the edges glow brighter as if to confirm my thoughts. I look for the handle, but there isn’t one. A door without a handle that I haven’t purposely imagined. I don’t know why it’s here.

I stare for a moment longer, and then David calls for me again, and Adam too. They’re waiting for me before they start eating, and I want to be with them. The shining door fades, and then there’s nothing but pond beneath me.

I wake up early, just after five, dehydrated from the wine, and I’m disappointed with myself. The dream I created had been so perfect, the three of us playing happy families, and despite the thirst, I do feel rested, like Adele said I would. My self-disgust bites a little. I should have imagined Adele in the dream. My loyalty should lie with her. She’s been nothing but kind to me, whereas David is a cheating unreliable drunk and God knows what else, but still, if my dream is anything to go by, I want him madly. I might not have let him fuck me in my bed, but I certainly did in my head. Not just fuck me, either. In my dream I made him love me and I loved him and we were a family, no sign of Adele anywhere. I wiped her out of existence.

I groan and then get up for water and put the kettle on. I’m wide awake after my early night, and there’s no point in trying to go back to sleep just for an hour or so. As the kettle boils and I try to shake the vividness of my dream life away, I look into Adam’s bedroom and get a pang of excitement that he’ll be home soon, after which maybe I should ease myself out of my friendship with Adele. Take Sophie’s advice. Be free of both Adele and David and this stupid stupid mess I’ve got myself into.

I have a shower to wash away the dregs of my mild hangover, and then get dressed and ready for work, but by the time I sit down with a second cup of tea it’s still only 7 a.m. Sunlight glints on the dusty TV screen, and the second door in my dream, the shimmering one I saw in the pond, comes to mind. I get the notebook from its home in the kitchen drawer. Maybe Rob saw one too. My heart races. After last night I shouldn’t read any more. I’m doing enough damage here without delving into their pasts. But I can’t help it. I want to know about them. And the second door is my excuse.

It’s so easy. I can go wherever I want. Mainly I go to imagined places because I’ve never been fucking anywhere and there’s no fucking way I’d choose to go home. Wherever I am, Adele’s always there though. I don’t even really imagine her there but she just appears. Maybe that’s cos I’m always thinking about her. Not in a want-to-fuck-her way, something way better than that. Something purer. We get high a lot in my dreams. It’s kind of what I like best. I can get off my face as much as I want with no comedowns and no fall-out.

Adele’s sleeping properly again. Everyone at Westlands fucking loves us now as if they had something to do with our recoveries – we’re like their wet dream patients. I’m happy about it though. That she’s sleeping. I know she’s not lying because I sneak to her room and look at her for a few minutes most nights. Man, I sound creepy reading that back. But she’s like Sleeping Beauty and I’m watching over her. It’s sort of peaceful and I don’t need to sleep so much now that I’m clean and what sleep I’m getting isn’t full of night terrors. Only at the beginning before I control them. Sometimes I choose to stay for a while for the thrill. Like going on a rollercoaster. I know they can’t harm me because I’m in charge.

Yeah, it’s good that she’s sleeping properly. She’s got a lot to catch up on after weeks of trying to stay awake and she needs to put all that shit behind her. It’s weird worrying about someone. I worry about Adele and I’ve never worried about anyone before. Not my shitty family, and barely myself. Everyone’s been grey before Adele. No one mattered. I never actually thought it was possible for someone to matter before. Is this what love is? Maybe I do love Adele in my own way.

Does she imagine me in her dreams, or is it always the legendary bore that is David? I worry most about David. I don’t know why she’s so caught up in him. I don’t think she can see what he’s really like. She TRUSTS him she says. Yeah right. I bet he loves that. She trusts him so much that she’s signed control over all her money and stuff to him. A fucking fortune and he’s in charge of it all. That’s what her solicitor was doing here. Finally she told me. I knew she would. She doesn’t like secrets. But what the actual fuck? So David’s off at unifuckingversity getting his endless degrees and living the high life while she’s in this mental home, and she’s given him control of all the estate and money and everything.

I can’t believe it. I nearly shouted at her but she looked so uncomfortable telling me that I couldn’t. And it’s done now. She said it was temporary because she didn’t want to think about it and they were getting married anyway, but who the hell gives all their money away to someone else? Even for a little while. I mean, why would she do that? There’s love and there’s stupidity. She doesn’t get people like I do. She’s been protected all her life. What she hasn’t figured out is that everyone’s out for themselves. I don’t even really blame David for taking the money – at least it’s something less DULL that he’s done, but I hate that she’s let him. Money fucks people over, and David’s one of those people who nearly had quite a bit of money from the farm – and then his dad pissed it all up the wall. Funny how now he’s got a lot of money anyway. Thanks to Adele.

I bet he won’t sign it back to her when we get out of here. I bet he’ll come up with excuses. David, the poor farmer’s boy who now has a fortune at his fingertips. It actually makes me want to laugh because it’s so crazy. I get so angry that it stops me getting back to sleep when I wake up at night. It’s got me thinking too – what really happened to Adele’s parents. I mean, how was he driving by in time to save her in the middle of the night? Was he driving by in time to start the fire too?

This has worked out pretty well for him from where I’m sitting. Our time here is nearly done, but if Adele thinks that I’m going to forget her and all this, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to look out for her. Because I don’t for one fucking second think that David is …

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. We’re in his office, separated by his desk. I’m trembling. I’ve been trembling since putting the notebook down this morning.

‘I know I’d been drinking, but I meant it when I said I’ll sort things out,’ he continues. He’s quiet. Thoughtful. Probably hungover. ‘I know my marriage is bad. I know it. And I shouldn’t be messing you around like this. What you said last night—’

‘I didn’t come in here to talk about last night.’ I’m cold with him, cutting him off. I feel like I’ve been dunked in freezing water. I’m burning to see Adele and find out if my suspicions are true. ‘I need the afternoon off. My boiler’s playing up and the plumber just rang and said he could come out between two and six. Sue says she’s got a light afternoon so she can check your clients in and work at my desk.’ He’s got four appointments booked and I’m glad about that. I won’t have to worry about him coming home and seeing us together.

I texted Adele as soon as he got to work this morning, knowing she’d be alone and safe. I didn’t say what it was really about, I didn’t want her to feel defensive or worried, so I sent:

There was a weird second door in my dream last night. No handle? Couldn’t open it? You ever had that? I’ve got the afternoon off if you fancy lunch?

All light and easy, despite how my hands shook as I typed. She answered straight away with a yes, suggesting a little bistro place with outdoor seats not too close to the clinic and also slightly off the main roads in a more residential area. She doesn’t want to get caught either.

‘Sure,’ he says. My palms sweat as he looks at me, and for the first time he’s like a stranger. Not my David, not Adele’s David, but maybeDavid’s David, the one who always gets what he wants. I silently say my thousandth thanks that Adele has agreed to lunch. I couldn’t wait until Monday. I need to know, and she’s the only one who can tell me. I’m starting to complete the jigsaw of their crazy marriage and I don’t like the picture it’s revealing.

‘I hope it’s nothing too serious,’ he says. ‘Boilers can be expensive.’ He looks up then. ‘If you need any—’

‘I’ve got an insurance package.’ I cut him off again. Was he really going to offer me money? Whose? His or Adele’s?

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