Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

The new husband smiles at her, but she hates him straight away, hates his face, his beard, pushes past him and up the steps to the attic in case she can somehow call Carter back. The light bulb shines and buzzes, a food processor on a chair in the corner sparks, and he's not there, he's gone, and she pulls her head back down and sends the new husband away and the next one comes, the reset wiping away her tears, her face clean again. But she hates this one too. New tears start to swell and new chemicals surge through her body. If she swaps fast enough, maybe the attic will create another Carter.

Another husband, and once again for a moment her throat functions like normal, her refreshed new-world body is behind the news; but she can't change what happened, and again it's only a couple of seconds before the physiology of anguish re-establishes itself, and she's feeling it all again. Then there's another new husband, and another, and she can't get a good set of tears going, every new husband clears everything away, ten of them, fifteen, it's like smashing plates, like throwing bricks. Send him back, send him back, until finally she peters out.

On a man who, it turns out, is called Pete. He seems…fine. "You okay?" he says as she showers and puts on pajamas and tells him she's going to have a nap, and he touches her gently on the shoulder.

She's not going to keep him: it's no start to a relationship, having the husband you really like swapped for some guy with an insufficiently maintained moustache. She lies in bed, trying to think and then trying not to think. She gets up in the late afternoon feeling nauseous. The storm has still not broken.

She wants Carter back.

She sends Pete away and gets a husband with weird-shaped elbows. The one after that has an accent that reminds her of Carter's and that seems like a bad idea. Then a man who is red-eyed and hung-over and attempting to resolve the issue by having two different beers at once. Then a man who is maybe ten years older than her and the house is too clean, honestly, and the shelves are empty, where are her books? Where's the little cactus pot she made with Elena?

She is aware that she is being unfair.

Okay. She tells too-clean husband that she's going out for a walk, and heads away from the railway station and up the hill to the park, where she dodges happy families and dog-walkers, heads to the lake, looks at ducks. She's vague on the details of duck mating but she knows it's unpleasant and involves a corkscrew-shaped penis, so arguably things could be worse.

Under a tree, out of the drizzle, she tries to talk herself out of feeling bad: she barely knew Carter, this isn't a divorce, this is like a third date with someone who never replies to your message. But even if she didn't know him well they were still married , the third date became a thirtieth and a three hundredth became a life.

Maybe she should take off for a week, go to Milan or New York, get into debt on a nice hotel and room-service pancakes. Come back and hope the husband is still around to let her reset everything.

The drizzle is getting worse, turning into the storm she waited for with Carter that never came.

Her phone rings, and it's Felix, who she supposes is the husband.

"Hey," he says, "it's bucketing down, where are you? Do you want me to drive round and pick you up?"

Drive. They live in London, what do they have a car for? It's ridiculous. Maybe that's why there weren't any books in the flat, they had to sell them to pay for petrol.

Still. It's very much raining.

"Yeah," she says as she retreats further under the tree, watches the ducks splash. "Yeah, that would be good. I'm in the park, I can get to the big gate?"

"I'll come now. We should be heading off soon anyway."

Heading off. The last thing she needs on a day like this, wet and stroppy, is an excursion. Why would they have planned anything for the day after a wedding? What is it? A mother-in-law? A bottomless brunch? A trip to IKEA? She'll fake illness and send this Felix off on the excursion on his own and get a few hours to herself, she thinks. Exchange him when he gets back.

○○

The car that pulls up is…nice. It's dark green, and she doesn't know cars but it looks new. Is this right? She didn't pay that much attention to the husband earlier but she leans forward to check his face before getting in and it's him, right? She's not getting into a strange man's car?

She is, but it's a strange man she's married to. "That came on suddenly," the husband says.

"Yeah," she says. "I guess it was holding off till after the wedding."

"Very thoughtful." The husband is white, with grey eyes and a slight accent that she can't quite place. Perhaps he is Swedish, or Norwegian. He's older than she thought at first—she'd imagined maybe ten years on her but it's probably at least fifteen. But he has thick hair and a calm demeanour.

In addition to the calm demeanour he also has, she discovers, a house in the country.

○○

It happens like this. "Oh, could you have a look in the attic later?" she says as the car waits at a pedestrian crossing. "I'm trying to find that big red blanket. I want to send it over to Elena when she gets back from the honeymoon, she always loved it when she lived here. I couldn't see it, but maybe I was missing something?"

"I'll have a look," Felix says. "But maybe it's at home? I thought we moved those boxes over?"

"Oh," she says. "Maybe. Never mind."

"I'll check, though."

"No," she says, "you're right." She doesn't want him disappearing until she's figured out what he means by at home .

Back at the flat she has to let the husband go ahead of her through the doors, because instead of keys they have a number pad and an entry code. Her suspicions grow stronger as she makes coffees, with a pod machine this time, trying milk-no-sugar for Felix and finding that the fridge is almost empty: the milk, some butter, a cluster of pickle and jam jars towards the back.

They don't live here.

On her phone, she summons up a map of photos arranged by location. They cluster in South London but also near a village to the south-west, the opposite direction to the farm where Elena got married just yesterday. It's not far from where she and Nat grew up, actually, but that can't possibly be why she's spent so much time there. She checks the pictures. Some fields; a sheep; a glass-walled conservatory with wicker furniture; flowers, and more flowers, and trees, and even more flowers.

She checks her work email and finds that she doesn't in fact have work email, or at least not on her phone. It isn't clear to her whether this means that she doesn't have work , but her calendar gives no indication of meetings: there is only a dinner, a coffee, "the girls." Is she a lady of leisure ?

○○

After the coffees Felix says he has a couple of things to deal with, and opens his laptop on the table. She takes the chance to look in her wardrobe, and it's almost empty. A man's suit, a few shirts, a dress and a jumpsuit, which like the car are…nice. The jumpsuit is from TOAST, a shop she is tangentially aware of but has never thought about because—and she confirms with a search—everything costs an absolute comedy amount, in the case of this jumpsuit: ￡465. The dress is asymmetrical with a collar she doesn't understand, and comes from a shop she hasn't even heard of, but it seems from what she can tell like a recent purchase that came in at ￡1,125.

This isn't taxi-to-Zone-4 rich. This is rich rich.

"Hey," Felix calls out, "this is taking longer than I thought, could you make sure everything's ready for the guests? If we get going in the next hour or so we could stop at the Shepherd on the way back?"

She's putting it together: they live somewhere else but she still owns this flat; this is an Airbnb. This is her Airbnb, which is to say she runs it, which she confirms by opening the app and seeing landlord-side messages. They didn't camp over at the farm last night because they have a car , so they just drove back here, a convenient stop halfway between the wedding and their real home.

She never thought she'd marry for money, but Felix is handsome enough in his lightly professorial way, and he drove out to pick her up; she's had worse husbands. She is still, she thinks, in no mood to give him a fair chance. But she could absolutely be in the mood for a holiday.

Out in the country, far from London, it'll be logistically awkward to exchange him down the line—but you know what, she thinks, let's go. She's been directing everything towards the wedding and the perfect husband, and the wedding's over, the perfect husband has vanished from everyone's memories except her own. So why not fuck off to a life of luxury for a week?