Page 37 of We Live Here Now

“What’s this?” He comes forward, staring not at me but at the coffee table and the few pieces of paper laid out on it.

“You promised never again,” I say eventually, as he picks up the final demand and the overdue credit card payment letters that I found in the postbox. “After uni. After you nearly destroyed us. And this is worse than that time, isn’t it? One of those credit cards is in my name, Freddie.” The heat of my anger and disappointment andhurtburns into my face and tears fill my eyes, threatening to spill. “I knew you were keeping something from me. When I walked in on you in the bathroom when the others were here. You were on a gambling site, weren’t you?”

He slumps into the sofa while I sit in the chair, my back ramrod straight, the stronger one despite everything I’ve been through.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry.” He lowers his head into his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

“How bad is it?” My voice is sharp. I know it’s bad. The final demands show that it’s bad. But still I’ve been clinging to some joke of a hope that we’re not completely ruined.

“I wanted to get the money back so you’d never know. But it just got worse.”

“How bad, Freddie?” I repeat, my stomach churning so much it sends bile burning up my throat. He shrugs, not wanting to answer. Oh god, can it be worse this time? The last time he gambled away his entire inheritance from his parents and was working his way through our savings when he finally confessed. I’d told him ever since we’d been together that I hated his love of gambling, but he’d always told me it was just a casual thing, like men who go out and get pissed once a month or whatever, but he did it with cards or racing. Until his parents died. Then I realized the hobby wentwaydeeper and was an addiction. An everyday thing. A secret thing.

“I told you I’d leave you if you ever did this again.”

“I know. I know. And I’m so ashamed.” He looks up at me, hopeless and forlorn. “It’s a disease, Emily. You know that.”

“That’s what you’re going with? That’s supposed to make it allokay?” I want to punch him in the face. “Yes, it’s a disease. But there are doctors for it. You go back to Gamblers Anonymous. You talk to someone. You don’t gamble away all our money.”

“I thought you were going to die.” His eyes fill with tears. So that’s his excuse. Poor, hapless Freddie. I used to think he was sweet but actually he’s just weak. More fool me.

“Everyone thought you were going to die. It broke me. I couldn’t imagine life without you.” He sniffs, loud and snotty. “At first it was just once. Just once, and then I didn’t do it for ages. I hated myself for it. Then when you got sepsis and were in the coma—I—well, it all went to shit. It was worse. Way worse than before.”

“How could it be worse than before?” I feel sick. “Just tell me, Freddie.”

“It wasn’t just the apps.” He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Before the holiday, the guys from work, they’d been to some late-night unlicensed drinking den after a dinner. I hadn’t gone with them, because I hate that drinks-and-strip-club shit they do, you know that.” His words are coming out fast, as if now that he’s been caught, it’s a splurge of a confession. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand as he continues. “But the next day they said they’d gone to some poker night thing in a den in Denman Street, and obviously I was doubly glad I hadn’t been, and honest to god, Emily, I didn’t think about it again. Not for a long time.”

“But then you did.” I take a sip from the wine beside me, but it tastes sour. How could he do this to us? To me? Suddenly I feel better about my own guilty secret. At least I only did it once and it didn’t wipe out our savings.

“Not until after your accident. I was trying to hold it together, working even though you were getting worse and worse and… and I could see in the doctors’ faces that nothing was positive. It was like one minute there was you and me, and then the next you’re nearly dead and the doctors are telling me you’d been pregnant and everything I’d wanted had been so close to reality but had been snatched away. Like a ‘here’s what you could have won’ moment. Everyone thought you were going to die. I thought you were going to die. Oneday after work I couldn’t face going home, so I went out on my own and got drunk. I don’t know how I found the place, to be honest. The addict part of my brain must have taken me close to the street and then, well, there I was. Denman Street.” He looks at me and pauses as if this is enough explanation, but it isn’tnearlyenough.

“And? That was it? You were straight back down the bookies and in the apps?”

“No. Worse than that. It was like I’d pushed a self-destruct button. I was going to the card game most nights. Started off small. But every time your situation got worse I would gamble harder. Bigger. I ended up owing money—a lot of money—to some people. Not the sort of people you ever want to owe money to.”

“Jesus, Freddie.” I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. For me, the coma was an empty sleep that lasted both a second and an eternity, but all this was happening while I was in the void. “How much did you owe them?”

“A lot.” He’s shrinking into the sofa, becoming smaller in front of me. I’d thought he was glued to my bedside, holding my hand for weeks, but no, he was off getting himself in a huge mess. Did he think of me at all, or was he totally preoccupied with how to save his own skin?

“Oh god.” Suddenly it dawns on me. Everything falls into place. The enormity of his lies. “When you said we should sell the flat to move here, that wasn’t about me at all, was it? You used the profits from the flat to pay off your debts to these gangsters, didn’t you?”

He says nothing for a long moment. “I’m so sorry, Emily. It was the only way. I was going to meetings by then—I hadn’t gone to any games, not since they threatened me, but I was on the apps. I convinced myself I could win enough to then have the one big win. To get everything back before you realized there had been anything wrong.”

“Are you fucking insane?” The swear word comes out of me like a bullet and it stuns Freddie into silence. I don’t swear much, it’s never been my thing, but my rage formed it like a weapon in my mouth. “When has that ever worked for anyone? How much of a clichéare you? Like a character from some shit British crime straight-to-DVD film?” I reach forward and grab some of the final demands, holding them up in his face. “Clearly your plan didn’t work. You’ve got thousands of pounds of credit card debt here, according to some of these letters. All from after the move. Is there any money left? Anything?” I sit back in my chair, the truth of it finally hitting home. We’re broke. We’ve got nothing. If there was any money, he’d have paid off the cards.

“Only whatever you have.”

“Why did you let me get the people around about the garden?” I’m beyond anger and into exasperation. “That’s twenty-five thousand pounds of gardening work I’ve just said yes to.”

“I thought—I hoped—I just…” His mouth opens and closes like a drowning fish. There’s nothing he can say. He hoped it would just go away. That some miracle would come along.

“I thought you were dying,” he says again, as if this explains everything, all his weakness. “After that last time, I never thought I’d ever gamble again. I thought I was past it. I thought one or two card games wouldn’t matter.”

“It was me who was in the hospital, Freddie. It was me who nearly died. And now that somehow makes it my fault that you couldn’t stop yourself from gambling away all our equity?” I stare at him as he cries.

“You know, I keep thinking about what Russell said that Christmas night about how we’re never with the people we fell in love with. I thought you were so sweet and kind when we met. It was refreshing that you weren’t trying to be alpha all the time. But now I see that was just hiding how weak you are at heart. It’s why you wanted a traditional marriage with a wife at home with the children, so you’d always have someone to need you. But it’s why you’ve never been promoted too far. Why do you think I wantedmypromotion so badly, Freddie? Because one of us had to succeed. It wasn’t just for me; I wanted it for us.” I say it so convincingly I almost believe it, and maybe it’s in part true, but I wanted it mainly for me. That doesn’t change his weakness though.

“You just had to be strong thisoncefor me. But you weren’t. And then you lied. Acted like everything was normal. If you couldn’t be strong, you needed to be honest. And you weren’t that either.”

---