Page 33 of We Live Here Now

I use the toilet in the dark, not caring if I splash, and then head back to bed. It’s five thirty. If I can shake off my annoyance, I can get another hour of sleep before heading back to the London office. It’s my last week there and thank god for that, because between the mess I’m in, Emily, and the traveling, I’m exhausted.

“Shit.” I feel a sharp prick on the sole of my foot, thankfully before I’ve put all my weight down, and when I crouch I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I left my phone downstairs to avoid temptationin the night—You’re in enough trouble, Freddie—but the moonlight from the window makes it easy to see.

A nail with a bent tip.

It’s sticking out the wrong way up, from a splintered hole with black drops that in daylight would be rusty red dried blood on the edges. I stare at it. It’s not just any nail. It’sthenail. How the fuck did it get back in the floor?

Emily.

I look up, through the open bedroom doorway, and for a moment I think she’s waking up, but she lets out a small moan and rolls onto her side, and then half back again, twitching, restless in whatever dreams she’s having.

I pull at the glinting nail, expecting it to be firmly embedded, but it slides out of the wood with ease. Did Emily find it in the rubbish and put it back? Why would she do that? The bees are buzzing in my head again, discordant, as I sit back on my heels, an answer coming to me. Emily likes to be right. She always has.

Instead of getting back into bed, despite the cold, I sit on the end of the mattress, my back to her, and stare at the sliver of moonlight coming through the gap in the curtains. The bees buzz louder. Did she open the window on purpose? So the cold would wake me and take me out into the corridor? Was it a lure so that I’d stand on the nail? So she could say,Look, look, I told you so!

Another thought comes to me. Does she even know she put it back? She wrecked a room downstairs and put it neatly together again and doesn’t remember it. Dr. Canning says it will pass. But what if it doesn’t? Is she going mad? Outside, a raven caws, the first birdcall of the dawn even while it’s still pitch-black outside.

I should get back into bed. I should try to sleep for another hour. I’m so tired. But the bees are buzzing too loud in my head,buzz-buzz-buzzingwith irritation at Emily, devouring any sympathy I might have. Ghosts and nails and windows. The madness of Emily, my beloved wife.

Maybe if she went mad, that would save me.

42

Emily

At first I’m sure it’s a ghost sitting on the end of the bed.

Startled, I half sit up in the gloom, staring at the stiff figure, and then I realize who it is. Not a ghost at all.

“Freddie?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even twitch. His back is straight, his hands resting on his thighs. He’s sitting perfectly still with his back to me, staring at the streak of pale moonlight slicing through the gap between the curtains. It’s cold in the bedroom, as if the window’s been left open again.

“Freddie?” I’m louder, but he doesn’t move, and my voice in the quiet and his stillness disturb me. A quarter of his face is visible, and he looks empty. Not like my Freddie at all.

“Go back to sleep.” His voice is as hollow as his expression. Maybe he’s half asleep himself. Maybe he’s been sleepwalking. I lie back down, expecting him to climb in beside me, but he doesn’t.

When the alarm finally goes off an hour later, I pretend to stretch as if I’ve just woken up, and Freddie gets quickly to his feet as ifhe’sjust got up, but we’re both liars. As he heads into the bathroom, barely glancing my way, I try to cling on to the dregs of the joy I’d found yesterday in the new quiet calm of the house, but Freddie’s foul mood since he got home yesterday has drained it out of me. As the shower bursts to life, I get my dressing gown and hobble downstairs, not wanting any awkward conversations while he’s getting dressed. The closeness of the weekend feels like a dream now. When did our marriage become this pendulum of instability?

The kettle’s boiling when I see his iPhone sitting on the kitchencounter. He didn’t take it up to bed. Why? We always take our phones with us. He normally charges it by the bed. I pick it up and my fingers prickle with possibilities. Freddie—like everyone these days—is never far from his phone.

My heart picks up pace. Freddie’s been so moody. Up and down. Are there secrets in his phone? Things I don’t know about? It makes me feel sick—I don’t want to eventhinkthe wordaffair. That would be some irony, wouldn’t it? All the guilt I’ve been feeling over my awful one-night stand with Neil at work, and what if Freddie’s having an actual affair? Neither of us has ever been the jealous type, and I’ve always figured it’s because neither of us is the cheating type, but it turns out I was—if fleetingly. Maybe he is too? Does fidelity change over the years? Have I been smug and complacent?

Sex with Freddie had been sparse for a while before my accident because of my own guilty secret, and then I was in the hospital for months. Freddie was alone for a long time. I stare at the black screen, my body fluttering with temptation. I have neveroncegone through Freddie’s phone. I’ve never been that person. I take a deep breath. I’m not that person. But I’ve never been so confused by him either. These strange moods. The business with the nail. The window. Something’s going on with him. I need to know what.

The pipes are rumbling so I know he’s still in the shower. It’ll be at least fifteen minutes before he’s downstairs. It’s now or never. When will I get the chance again? Before I can change my mind, I turn on the phone and then put in his passcode, relieved that he hasn’t changed that.He wouldn’t, I remind myself as his home screen comes up, a photo of the two of us sitting behind the icons.Because he would never believe for an instant that you’d look at his things without asking.Phones are so personal. Private. That doesn’t stop me looking.

There’s nothing unusual in my scan of his texts. Then his WhatsApp. Again, nothing I don’t recognize. And when I click into the threads from his work colleagues I’ve never met, wondering if maybe he’s disguised a lover with a different name, the messages are all about meetings and nothing at all interesting, let alone clandestine.I check the archive; nothing there either. His Facebook messages and his Instagram and then his email are free of anything suspicious. It’s all normal.

I’m stumped and beginning to feel ashamed of myself when something niggles me. I think back to finding him in the bathroom on the night of the Christmas dinner and the Ouija board, so focused on his phone when he said he’d had to answer a work email. I go back into his inbox—there’s nothing for that night. Nor is there anything in his sent items. He doesn’t delete emails; I know that because he tells me off for deleting stuff I might need later, and why would he delete just one? I look through last weekend and this and there are no work emails at all. So if he hasn’t been emailing work, whathashe been doing on his phone? And whatever it is, why has he deleted it?

I’m so lost in my thoughts I don’t realize he’s out of the shower until I hear him at the top of the stairs. With fumbling fingers I quickly turn off the phone, put it back where it was, throw a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, and start making the coffee.

He’s got a girlfriend somewhere. My stomach knots. It’s the only explanation. I was in the hospital for months and he got close to someone. These things happen all the time. Freddie’s not used to being on his own and he’s never liked it. There was temptation and he gave in to it.

“Do you want coffee?” I’m amazed at how normal my voice sounds when inside I feel like my heart is in a vise, being crushed to implosion.

“No, I should head out.” He’s already pulled on his coat. “I’m so glad this is the last week of this commute. I’ll be back Thursday. Got my leaving drinks on Wednesday. Shouldn’t be too wild. It’s not like I’m leaving the company.”

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