Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

In the past she's let herself glide through her lives. But not now.

There is a time, she thinks, at the start of any relationship, when the process of falling in love softens a personality, like wax in a warm room. And so two people in love change, just a little, pushing their wax figures together, a protuberance here smoothed down but creating a dip there. It doesn't last long, the time when love can gently change who you are, and in the relationships that she's visited over the last six months, the moment has long passed. She has been presented with the shape of her new husband, and invited to either contort to fit or reject him wholesale.

But she's trying, this time, she's really trying. She feels herself warming and shifting into this better life.

Once or twice it's too much, after a night of babysitting for example, and she calls in sick and naps all day or plays games on her phone. One time she fakes a work research trip and stays in a hotel on the other side of town, and gets lunch with Bohai who's in London again, and watches YouTube videos in bed until three in the morning and forgets to have dinner, and she is not gentle and affectionate and careful and thoughtful with Michael and does not sit with him to talk through their days and share little moments (they eat at the table, every night they eat at the table, never once on the sofa with the television on).

But most of the time she does it, she lives up to the life another version of herself has made, the life of a person whose every decision is meticulously for the best.

"Are you okay?" Michael asks her one night, three or four weeks in.

"Yeah?" she says.

"It's just you've been skipping your book group and morning yoga."

Ah. That's what "books" means in her calendar every second Tuesday. She's been assuming it means read some books , and she's been doing that, or at least she's been picking up a book and looking at the first page.

"Low energy," she says. "Winter. You're right, I'll get back on it."

It's good, though. This is the life she would design if she was drunk and trying to think through the best possible version of who she could be. Exercise every morning and some evenings too, knowing what to do with root vegetables, spending a lot of time with her niece and nephew, staying in better touch with her mum, this is stuff she's sure she's written on intentional lists in the past, and now she's doing it.

They go to an Albari?o tasting night at the wine shop near Rob and Elena's, and she worries that she's going to have to have wine opinions, but Michael is happy to take care of that side of it, and the rest of them get to concentrate on the drinking. It's not unbearable like she thought it might be, either; people do say "gooseberry aroma" a few times but mostly it's the woman who owns the wine shop being enthusiastic and excited, and people saying "Oh yeah, I can taste that actually."

It's finished by half past nine. "Let's go out," she says as they leave, stretching her arms into the night, wiggling her fingers to make the street lamp shadows move.

"Where?" Elena says.

"I dunno. Pub. Karaoke. Dancing. Bus race to the twenty-four-hour Asda at Clapham Junction."

"We can't leave Danny alone any longer," Rob says to Elena; they have a dog, here. "But I can deal with him if you two want to go on somewhere."

"There's a pub up by ours," Elena suggests once the husbands have left. But Lauren is pretty sure they're around the corner from the dessert bar where she wasted half an hour, some husband or other ago. They walk down the road; the trees have been pollarded for the start of spring, straggly tops chopped, five or six thick branches on each one stretching upwards from the trunk, crabbed hands towards the sky.

The dessert bar is busier at night. Lauren gets the rosewater ice cream again, but there's no free wafers this time. "What were we doing," she says, "this time last year?"

They pull out phones and scroll back. Elena's has pictures of herself in her living-room mirror wearing a pink faux fur coat she'd ordered in the sales. "I sent it back," she says.

Lauren's has her and Michael regrouting the bathroom.

She isn't sure what she was doing a year ago in her original world. But late January is usually a time to run out of energy and money, so nothing fun. She remembers a week of updating her CV and thinking about trying to find a new and more dynamic job and then not doing anything about it.

This is better, she thinks, and takes another spoonful of ice cream.

○○

She does, one afternoon, drag a chair on to the landing and stand on it to reach into the attic and unlock the padlock. She doesn't think about it too hard, doesn't quite acknowledge what she's doing. Michael hasn't noticed the lock, so he can't be trying to go into the attic anyway, so it won't make any difference if it's there or not.

Plus, she thinks as she pulls the ladder down and tests that it's still working, it's not safe to keep it locked. What if she needed to get into the attic fast for some reason? For example, a flood, or angry Labradors.

It's not like she's actively getting rid of him. She's just…leaving open a possibility.

And she's right: nothing happens after she takes the lock away. They go on a long, long riverside walk ending at the BFI to see a three-and-a-half-hour French film, and the walk and the film are both pretty great, even if she would perhaps not have chosen, left to her own devices, to do both on the same day.

Anyway, you can't send a husband back because he makes you too good . Especially not a husband who—she doesn't love him, not yet, but she likes seeing him when she gets home, she likes lying in bed with him, the sex now that she's got used to their range of equipment is excellent, if on the serious side, and she even likes it when he shows her a paragraph from some informative article he's reading. She wants to be better for him, for this life they've made.

○○

They're dealing with even more celeriac that Thursday—she's chopping it into large angular pieces—when someone rings the doorbell. Michael answers, and comes in with Bohai, back in London again, sodden in the rain. "Sorry," Bohai says, "sorry, I need help."

"I thought I should bring him up?" Michael says. "He was asking for you."

"Uh, thanks," she says. "Bohai. What's going on?"

This is weird. She doesn't like it. And she likes it even less when:

"It's the husband," Bohai says.

"Okay. Michael, I'll be back in a sec," and she takes Bohai down the stairs and steps out into the light drizzle and shuts the door behind her. Don't mention the husbands in front of the husbands , she thinks. "What is it?"

"Okay," Bohai says, "I turn up somewhere new and I'm in a walk-in wardrobe. I can hear the husband talking and I think he's talking to me or maybe we have guests, so I get out, like a normal new husband, right? But it turns out he's on a Zoom and the reason I'm in the wardrobe is because I'm listening in on his therapy session."

"Oh my god."

"I should have run right back into the wardrobe, obviously, but it took me a while to figure out what was going on—by the time he even reacted to me I was halfway across the room. Anyway, I don't know, probably he's just angry because, you know, you would be, right? Like, definitely don't listen in on people's therapy sessions, is my advice. But, you remember when we talked about bad husbands?"

"Shit," she says. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he says, "yeah, you know, nothing happened, it just didn't feel like a good idea to be there. He threw some stuff but not at me or anything."

"That's not nothing happening, that's—"

"So," he doesn't stop, "I left, and it was raining, and I don't have my phone, and I didn't really know what to do. So, uh, I went up to the main road and eventually there was a taxi and I came here."

"Yeah," she says, "yes. Okay. Of course."

"Thank fuck it happened in London, right? Imagine if I was in France or something."

"Do you want to come up?" she says. God, this is going to be hard to explain to Michael. "We could make up the spare room and get you back in tomorrow?"

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe? He was pretty angry. I don't think he's going to, like, bash in the door of the wardrobe or anything now that I'm not there, but also, I'm definitely not a hundred per cent sure that he's not? And if he does I'm not sure if I can still leave? So obviously I'd love to come up and play Scrabble with you and your guy but also, probably, I just need to get back in the wardrobe. I was thinking maybe you could distract the guy so I can run in? I grabbed a jacket on the way out and it turns out I have my keys, thank god, it could definitely be worse. I don't know, that's my best plan, sorry."

"Yeah," she says after a moment. "Of course. Let's get over there."

"Sorry, thank you, yes. Also, sorry, can you pay the taxi?"

"Give me a moment," she says, and goes back upstairs: uni friend, he just moved to the area, having a family emergency to Michael and I'll call you and kisses him and he seems bewildered and annoyed, you never even mentioned this guy before , but she can deal with that later. She declines a call from him in the taxi.

"I'm so sorry," Bohai says as they round a corner.

"It's fine," she says. "Do you have the guy's number? Or his name?" Maybe she can call him and pretend Bohai's hurt himself, send him to the hospital to get him out of the house.

"No," he says. "Sorry."

"It's okay," she says. "Stop apologising. We'll figure it out."

They're heading up towards Putney. It's a nice bit of town: glimpses of the river, parks, ornate fences. The house is on a little cul-de-sac, and they get the taxi to drop them at the end. The rain has slowed to an occasional spatter. The street is lined with trees and four-wheel drives. Bohai points out the house, the one with the big vine , then steps back from its sightline.

"Seriously," she says, "do you want to go get a drink first?"

"No," he says, "no, let's just get it over with. I was thinking maybe there was something we could do with the back garden but now that we're here the back garden is obviously totally surrounded by other people's back gardens."

"How about," she says after a moment, "I call the police and say I'm a neighbour and I've heard something going on. Then we wait here, and when they come you go over to the door at the same time? I can say I heard gunshots or something to make sure they turn up. Even if your husband hasn't calmed down, he's not going to start anything with the police literally there. You can just run in and new-world it away."

"Yeah," Bohai says after a moment. "Yeah, I guess that would work. I was sort of hoping to avoid actually, you know, seeing him. But that might be the way to go."

She remembers Kieran, who was probably fine really, and hiding in her own wardrobe, and just wanting him gone.

"God," Bohai says, "obviously it's not okay to listen in on someone's therapy, it's not like it's an unreasonable thing to be angry about, he might be a great husband for all I know. Yeah, come on, let's go for it."

"No," she says, "okay, we can do better. You've got your keys, you said?"

"Yeah, I think so, anyway." He fishes them out: three keys on a ring. "I guess they might be for an office or something."

It's dark, and most of the houses have their curtains closed. "Okay. I'll get him out of the house. I can give you five minutes, probably? If the keys are wrong then we'll have to think of something else later. I'll lead him up this road and then to the right, so if you go a block in the other direction and find somewhere to wait, you can see when we leave?"

Bohai looks at the house, the directions. "Yeah," he says, "yes, right, got it. Thanks. Sorry." He takes a moment to gather himself. "Good, right." Then he steps away, walks a block back, turns around, gives a thumbs-up and steps behind a tree.

Her turn. A year ago she would never have done anything like this.

She walks down the street and takes a deep breath and heads up to the door and knocks. Then she steps back. No need to get too close.

The husband opens the door. Brown hair, slightly ridiculous moustache. Wearing a knitted jumper. He doesn't look like someone who might pull a door off a walk-in wardrobe.

"Hi," she says. "My name's Sarah, are you"—she still doesn't know his name, quick glance at the wall—"is this number thirty-one?"

"Yeah," the man says, slowly.

"Great," she says. "I was out for a walk and I came across a man who was sitting on the side of the road, he said he's sprained his ankle. He asked if I could come and let you know." She should have planned this more thoroughly. "He said his name was Bohai, and he'd left his phone at home but to ask his husband at number thirty-one if he could help."

"Oh," the man says after a moment. "Thanks. Sorry he's put you to the trouble, he's always forgetting his phone."

"Absolutely no bother. He's just a couple of blocks away," she says. "I can take you over?"

"Yeah," the guy says, "of course, just give me a minute." He glances up at the sky. "Uh, do you want to come in?"

"No," she says, "I'm fine, I like the rain."

The man disappears, then returns, shoes on; takes a jacket from the hooks on the wall.

"Just this way," she says, and gestures. Around to the right, and down another road, out of sight, counting in her head how long it might take Bohai to get in. Ten, twenty, thirty. What if the guy really has wrecked the wardrobe, and it doesn't work any more? What if the keys are wrong? She supposes she'll just say Oh, he was here a minute ago, don't know what's happened to the husband and then bring Bohai back to her spare room and they'll take it from there .

Seventy steps, eighty. She picks her pace up, steps in front of the man to pass some bins sitting out on the pavement.

And as she's counting she stops hearing the thud of someone following behind her and turns to look back. And there's nobody, nothing.

Her phone dings. An unknown number again. She pulls it out, hunches against the rain to keep the screen dry. Made it. Thank you thank you thank you

So sorry, give me ten minutes to catch my breath and I'll come back to london and explain things to your husband, let me think something up

Another message: In prague?? Hope I'm not a spy

And another: You're a life saver xxxxx I'm so sorry

Are you okay , she messages back, and then calls an Uber. Her shoes are soaked through.

And when she gets back she starts to explain things to Michael—Bohai's sent her seven different ideas for good lies and asked when he should turn up to ratify them—then she just feels too tired.

She is so damp.

"Before you explain I think I should tell you," Michael says, mouth stiff, "that I know you didn't have a work research trip."

Work research trip? What? Oh, the night she watched videos in a hotel. She imagines explaining: I was just tired of trying to be good all the time . I really like you but have you ever considered eating crisps in bed? I'm not having an affair, I'm having a snack and a lie-in.

"The guy tonight is a friend," she says, explaining the easier thing first. "He just moved here from Australia. His husband was angry at him and maybe violent, and he needed help getting something important from his house. I was able to help but I wasn't in any danger, and he's okay now too."

"I'm glad he's okay," Michael says, and he seems so unhappy. "But maybe I should also tell you that I looked through your phone a while back. Which I shouldn't have done, obviously. But you'd left it on the coffee table and I saw a notification come up, and it was just a number without a name, and it said something about being in town and wanting to meet up. And you'd been acting a bit off and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And a couple of days later, and again, I'm sorry, I should have just talked to you about it at the time, but I looked through your messages and that one wasn't there any more. Obviously it could have been from a spammer."

Ah, she thinks. Well, fuck.

He wants so badly for her to be able to explain everything. And she can, but the explanation would be Yeah the message was from the guy you saw, but we were mostly meeting up to talk about how much I like you, and I didn't delete it to keep it secret, it disappeared because he climbed into a toolshed and moved to a different life.

She doesn't think it would go down well.

"I think"—she musters up the energy for the lie—"oh, did you hear that? Is there something in the attic? We should talk about all this, but could you check?"

And Michael—perfect, self-improving, better-than-her Michael, who has made her a lemon-and-honey drink to help her warm up from the rain—Michael nods; he requires no persuading to climb into the attic.