Page 72 of Things We Never Said
Sean swallows hard. Because only now that he is looking at this photo does he realise that he has been dreading it.
He raises it close to his eyes and studies Catherine’s face, and wonders if he imagined it, if time has, perhaps, played tricks on his mind. But no, there it is, that vacant expression, that tongue just visible at the corner of the mouth, that pale transparency, an impression that she was there and yet not there, like a hologram, perhaps.
They had gone down to Margate to visit Catherine’s mother, who had recently become single again. But Catherine had been absent, distracted and generally peculiar all weekend, like a bad, amnesiac actor unconvincingly playing the role of wife, mother and daughter. Even Wendy had spotted that something was wrong with her. ‘What’s up with that one?’ she had asked Sean, nodding towards the lounge.
‘Nothing,’ Sean had said. ‘Nothing at all.’
But even as he pretended to Wendy, as he pretended to himself, he had known that something was wrong and that it was no little, insignificant thing, either.
He had avoided any kind of reflection on the subject for the entire weekend; he had resolved to simply hold the question until his wife returned to him long enough to answer it. But when they’d got the photos back a few weeks later, he had bravely asked the question. ‘What were you thinking about when I took that photo?’
‘Um?’ Catherine had said.
‘What were you thinking about all weekend in Margate? For that matter, what are you thinking about now? Because whatever you are thinking about, it’s not here and it’s not now, is it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Catherine had replied. ‘Everything’s absolutely fine.’ And because ‘absolutely fine’ had never once before figured in Catherine’s vocabulary, he had known, definitively, that she was lying.
He had pretended to believe her, though – not for any altruistic reason, but because it had been easier for him.
He had just been made a partner at Nicholson-Wallace and was having to work all hours. He didn’t have, he feared, the time or the energy to deal with whatever was going on in Catherine’s head, so he chose, selfishly, to leave it be.
He had surprised himself by his ability to pretend. There had been a feeling, deep inside, like a stitch when you run, like a sorrow, like a shadow, like a loss. Of course there had been. But he had managed, by concentrating on the demands of work, to keep it for the most part out of consciousness.
Cassette #23
Hello Sean.
I’ve really not been looking forward to this, but in the interests of full disclosure, here goes. I’m so sorry, baby.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before and I’m not sure if you’ll remember it now, as it was such a long time ago. But you once said, ‘One day, we’ll be dead, and we still won’t have known each other. Not properly. Because no one ever does.’
What followed was this long and complicated discussion about how well it was truly possible to know another person. We all had, you said, secret gardens, sexual fantasies and shameful things we have said and done, things we would never admit to another living soul.
I deftly turned the conversation to you by pretending to be shocked and asking you what your secret fantasies were. Which put an instant end to that conversation. You didn’t, evidently, have any. But the reason you’d asked me that question was that weekend in Margate, when you’d accused me of being distant, and had quite rightly sensed that something was wrong. You were totally right, actually. I was there with you in body, but my mind was somewhere else entirely.
Everything had been great between us, so don’t ever think that what happened reflects on you in any way. Everything was hunky-dory: you’d been promoted, April was being lovely, Solo’s fur had remained lustrous and our home was a happy home. I wasn’t looking for anything at all; in fact, had you asked me, I would have said that I didn’t even have room in my life for anything else. But then I met someone. I met Jake, and for a while he knocked me off my feet.
He came into the shelter one day to get a kitten for his daughter. He was divorced but his daughter came for weekends and school holidays, he explained, and he wanted a cat so that she’d feel like his place was still home. It was early June and we were overrun with abandoned kittens, but though there were plenty to choose from, most were still too young and were waiting to be weaned or waiting for their shots, or to be sterilised, before we’d let them go.
Anyway, Jake walked through the door one evening, just as I was about to close up, and I thought, simply,Wow!
Now this is where the whole thing is going to get tooth-numbingly embarrassing and where it’s probably all going to sound horrifically shallow, too. But this is supposed to be about honesty, and part of that honesty is for me, as well. It’s about admitting to myself that we humans are still animals at heart, no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise, no matter how sophisticated we’d like to think we are.
So here it is: the first thing that struck me about Jake was his clothes. I’ve always had a thing for guys in suits, and I know that you know that and I know that you’ve always done your best to ignore the fact for the simple reason that you pretend to hate wearing one. You and I both know that the truth is that, for some inexplicable reason, dressing up in anything out of the ordinary embarrasses you. But that’s been a shame, really, because my so-called thing for men in suits is actually quite a powerful thing. You see? I told you that this would make your teeth hurt. It’s certainly making mine hurt to say these things we never say.
Jake was a lawyer. In fact, he almost certainly still is. And not a humdrum lawyer either, but a fairly high-flying, corporate lawyer. So he walked into our lowly, shabby cat shelter wearing an opulent, perfectly tailored, five-hundred-pound suit and a silky, perfectly knotted polka-dot tie and a crisp white shirt with cufflinks and braces. And it’s entirely silly, but it all made me go a bit weak at the knees.
He had electric-blue eyes and what people like to call a strong chin, and good skin and a nice arse and big smooth hands coming out of those thick white cuffs, and when he smiled, which was often, he revealed a set of lovely white teeth.
He smiled and reached out to shake my hand and said, ‘Hello.’
When I tried to reply, I just croaked. It took me three attempts before I could even speak.
I hope you don’t think that I’m trying to rub your nose in all of this, because that really isn’t my intention. I’m just trying to explain what happened in a way that, perhaps with time, you’ll be able to understand. It wasn’t a choice, you see. At any rate, it never felt like a choice. It felt like ... I don’t know. A compulsion, maybe?
Anyway, Jake strode in, shook my hand, smiled and said, ‘Hello.’ He touched his tie in a sort of straightening gesture, which somehow made him look keen to please, which was cute. And something strange happened to me. I felt drawn to him. I felt hot and a bit faint and my throat constricted.
He came back three times before he made his final choice, always after work and in his work clothes. He was always very nice and hung around a little longer than required, asking questions about the shelter, and every time he left I spent half an hour thinking about him and then another hour convincing myself that I was being stupid, foolish; reminding myself that I was married, and happily married at that.
