Page 34 of We Live Here Now

“Okay, good. The others’ll be here Saturday morning. I’ll get the party stuff organized.” I’m desperate for some kind of reassurance, but he doesn’t even look at me. Was that why he was up in the night, sitting on the bed? Thinking about his affair?

“I’ll see you Thursday then.”

“Drive safely.” I should confront him. But with what? That I just went through his phone without his permission and found nothing suspicious but I still think he’s having an affair? I’d sound like some paranoid, jealous wife. And I’m not that. I don’t want to be that, even as my heart is breaking with fear. Karma’s coming for me again. I slept with someone because I was drunk and stupid and had always had a little crush and thought it might get me a promotion. It was so mercenary that it must be way worse than if Freddie met someone he liked when I was in a coma. But still, the jealousy stabs at me. The idea that I could have been dying and he was in bed with someone else.

He opens the door, cold air sweeping through the house, and then, as if it’s blowing away his mood, he turns back. “Call me if anything worries you. Love you.”

“I will. Love you too.”

And then he’s gone.

The toast pops up, but I can’t even think about eating. Could Freddie really have cheated on me? I take my coffee and go through to the sitting room, dropping onto the sofa. I can’t imagine it. But then I can’t imagine what he was going through when I was in the coma. Maybe it was a one-night thing with someone from work like I had? Or at least a short-lived fling. Some comfort that got out of hand?

A thought strikes me. A glimmer of hope. Maybe he’s been trying to end it. My heart lifts suddenly. Yes, maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why he’s been having such odd moods. He’s never been good with pressure. Maybe he’s told her it’s done and she’s hurt and he’s trying to smooth it over? Hiding in toilets and messaging and then looking guilty. That fits. He still loves me. He must. Otherwise why would we have moved here to start afresh? He’s moved to the Exeter office away from London.Ifthere was an affair, then he’s left her, not me. I sit back, a jangle of conflicting emotions.

I know Freddie. I know him better than anyone. We’ve had a terrible year, and anything that’s happened in it—and I have to remindmyself that I don’t have proof that anything has happened at all—as long as it’s over, I have to let go. After what I did, I have to.

Invitations. I’ll distract myself with the invitations for the party. But as I carefully climb the stairs to shower myself, my spirits are low and my heart aches. In the bathroom I stare into the mirror where the steam from Freddie’s shower has become running drips of water, making it look like my face is melting in the reflection, turning me into someone I don’t quite recognize. I have changed a bit since my accident, I can’t help that. Maybe Freddie can’t either.

43

Emily

The weather has definitely turned. There’s no hint of sunlight in the heavy ash-gray sky, the day barely a perpetual gloom that permeates the house, making the shadows longer and the flock wallpapers darker even with all the lights on. I try working in the sitting room, making lists of drinks and food, but I find myself staring out the window at the leaden countryside, once again thinking about Freddie. I can’t stop thinking about Freddie and what he might have been doing while I was hanging in the balance between life and death. It sticks in my craw that I might have been dying while he was sleeping with someone else.Maybesleeping with someone else. The understanding of his situation I felt earlier is fading now that he’s gone and I’m here alone again. Who cheats on a desperately ill wife?

You don’t know anything for sure, I tell myself over and over as I add sausage rolls to my list.You have no evidence of anything.My evidence is thelackof things. An email that wasn’t there. That’s it. So ridiculous when I think of it that way, but still I can’t let it go.

I’m constantly plagued by the opposite of evidence, ever since I’ve been in this house. Even when Fortuna Carmichael told me,There are no ghosts at Larkin Lodge, I took it as evidence there were. A message telling me toFind itand I’ve found nothing.

After my shower I updated my notebook with the events of the mirror and added in that Freddie always feels cold here, and I kind of wish I hadn’t because with the bleakness of the weather outside, a purgatory of gray, it’s hard not to feel creeped out in the big house on my own. My eyes keep darting to shapes in thewallpaper that seem like they’re moving in the corner of my eye, but when I look at them, everything is normal. It’s disconcerting if not frightening, and I’m tired of second-guessing my own imagination. I’m doing it with Freddie and I’m doing it with the house. It’s as if either everything is wrong or nothing is wrong and my brain can’t decide which, leaving me in limbo and going round and round in circles.

By midday I feel like the rooms are shrinking around me, and unable to bear the oppressiveness of my own thoughts any longer, I get my coat and keys and head out to the car. I’ll go mad if I stay here alone all day. Freddie will be home on Thursday and I’ll talk to him then, I decide. Have it out. Evidence or no evidence.

“They’re quite something, aren’t they?” Paul says with a smile, seeing me look up, aghast, at the stained-glass windows. The dull yellow lights in the church turn every crease in his face into a crevice, making him look almost threatening, as if he’s a different person underneath, but even that is preferable to some of the images in the glass.

“I know I’m not an expert, but I thought stained-glass church windows were supposed to depict saints doing good deeds?” Therearesome saints in the images, but they’re surrounded by demons in reds and blues with pointed tails, sharp teeth, leering and grinning, aiming tridents at the naked figures of terrified humans trying to flee, running them into raging fires.

“Modern ones, maybe. But this church is hundreds of years old. And the fifteenth century was not kind to this part of the world. Plague. Smallpox. Famine.”

“Surely people would want comforting images while they prayed.”

“Want and need are different things. Good and evil lives in us all, and those years of hardship and fear brought out the worst in people, including, sadly, a lot of those in the Church. They blamed all the misfortune on supernatural forces, and that created panic and hysteria. A fair number of men and women in this part of Devon were hanged or drowned as witches. People believed in demons, andso these pictures were designed to remind them of the punishments awaiting those who strayed from the path of good Christians.”

“No one ever thought to change them?”

“They’re part of the nation’s heritage now. The past teaches us about the present. And in the summer we get a lot of tourists coming through and popping a pound or two in the collection box to see them. How do you think we got the new roof?” He sits down on the front pew and pats for me to sit alongside him. “Now, what brings you out to me on this dreich day?”

“Well, Joe and Sally suggested we have a party to get to know some local people. I was going to invite the people I know—you, the Watkinses, and Mrs. Tucker, as well as a few London friends—but I wondered if there was anyone else who might be nice to meet? I don’t mean in a useful way, just locals who are nice or are maybe on their own or lonely? Maybe four or five more people?” I hold up my little stack of cards. “If you wouldn’t mind?” I feel embarrassed, but Paul looks pleasantly surprised.

“Consider it done,” he says, taking them. “But let’s get into the vestry. I’ve got some hot chocolate in there and both bars of the fire on. Can’t have you getting cold.”

I follow him through to the back of the church as he talks about a few neighboring farmers I should invite, and despite the worry in the pit of my stomach about whatever Freddie may or may not have deleted from his phone, I feel slightly warmed to be becoming part of a small community.

Maybe we should stay here for longer. If Freddie’s affair has been in London, suddenly I don’t want to rush back there. But do I really want to stay in Larkin Lodge? It’s not the kind of place I want to stay forever.

44

Emily

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