WOUNDING Read online

  ‘Thanks, Hannah, you’re a star.’

  ‘You looked like you needed a coffee. How’s it all going?’

  ‘Good, thank you. Just finishing the report for Dave and then I’m all done for the day. You? How was your weekend? Weren’t you going on a hen do?’

  ‘Oh my God! It was mental! Jenny got completely shit-faced and ended up snogging the face off some bloke in a bar. Then Cathy threw up in the taxi back to the hotel. Honestly, I haven’t been in such a state since college.’

  Cora laughs, ‘You’re a lunatic, Hannah! I don’t how you do it.’

  ‘Hard work and determination…and lots of practice! Right, I’ll leave you to it and finish off my spreadsheets for old Saggy Pants before he starts shouting the odds and reports me to you.’

  ‘You do that. Thanks for the coffee, I owe you one.’ Cora leans back and straightens her grey, pleated skirt, smoothing it over her thighs before sliding her feet back into her shoes. This version of Cora is fun and well-liked. She is good at her job and is kind to her staff. Everyone likes Cora at JJ Beadle Ltd and she likes them back. She watches everyone around her, she works with them most days and yet she knows nothing about them. They’re strangers who laugh and joke with each other. They go out and get drunk on a Friday together and moan about the boss and their crappy bonuses at Christmas. She turns back to her computer and reads through her work, putting stupid thoughts out of her mind. Here she is free to think only of herself, to exist in the air-conditioned vacuum of financial services, completing her tasks, achieving her carefully set, line-manager agreed objectives. Emotions are not required here, in fact they are discouraged. Unprofessional. Here all the rules are explicit; Cora knows exactly who she is.

  She stands up and walks the short distance to her boss’s office. Three of its walls are glass and she can see him sitting at his desk, talking to someone on the phone. He is tall and slim, with expressive, elegant hands. He has a short neat moustache and some of the others joke that he looks like a pervert. Cora imagines him trimming it every morning with a pair of tiny nail scissors, snipping away at the coarse hairs around his mouth and nose, his little finger cocked high. His suit is impeccably pressed but he always smells of stale tobacco smoke. The ban on smoking is torture for Dave MacAdam and he usually conducts his meetings standing outside on the pavement with a cigarette between his teeth, regardless of the weather. He looks up and, seeing Cora at his door, he waves her in as he puts the phone down.

  ‘Cora, to what do I owe the pleasure?’ His face folds up into a smile exposing his yellowed teeth.

  ‘Well, Dave, I’m thinking it’s time to come back to work full-time. I’m grateful that you gave me the part-time hours, but I need to come back now, if that’s possible. What do you think?’ She remains standing, her heels pressing into the nylon carpet. One doesn’t sit without invitation in Dave MacAdam’s office.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He leans back in his chair and stretches his arms out in front of him, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt. ‘What about the family?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean how do they feel about it? Will you be able to manage working full-time with the children and everything? I know how hard it can be.’ He presses his bottom lip up under his moustache as if confirming it is still there.

  Cora shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her body swaying slightly, rocked by the urge to throw something at him.

  ‘It’s my decision actually and I’ve decided to work full-time and I’m absolutely sure that I can manage.’ She wants to both hit him and beg him to let her come back. He has the power to save her and the family.

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Dave blinks quickly in defence, his eyes twitching. ‘I’ll speak to HR, but we’d be delighted to have you back at full capacity, I’m sure.’

  ‘Thank you. That would be great. Will you let me know?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ He nods and turns towards his screen, ending the conversation.

  She looks at her watch. She has forty minutes left before she has to go home. Her stomach contracts into a small hard ball. She has to return soon, it’s expected: more than that, it’s required. It’s her turn to cook. Her turn to collect the children from the childminder. She walks back to her desk, panic flows like an electric current around her body. She must be responsible, a mother and wife. That’s what she is. More importantly, it’s what she chose to be, not knowing just what the choice might demand. A thin line of sweat gathers above her lip. An email pings in her inbox: it’s from her husband. She stares at it unopened for a few seconds before clicking it open.

  Hey Darling,

  Fancy a takeaway tonight? If you feed the little ‘uns, I’ll grab noodles and that curry you like from the Thai on my way home.

  Love you x

  She blinks in the light of the screen. He is trying to help her, doing little things like this to make life easier for her. She knows she should go home, pick up the children and make them dinner. She could make a stew or something like that. She could have it ready for him when he gets in, have the children bathed and ready for bed. She could be a good wife and mother. She could be a success. She must try. But she can’t. She can’t begin to think about how to achieve all of that without something going very wrong. She could drop a pan, or slice herself with a knife, she might burn the children or set fire to the kitchen. She emails back:

  That sounds like a plan.

  C x

  She leans back and watches the second hand on her watch erase the time she has left.

  In the women’s washroom she stands and washes her hands, rubbing the soap into her skin, rinsing under the tap and then starting again, squeezing the thick pink liquid out of the dispenser. She watches herself in the mirror, confronting herself, like a liar evading the truth, shifty-eyed. The lighting is cold and hard and bounces in sharp angles off the mirror and stainless steel fittings. She looks tired and pale, her hair dull and needing a cut. Her thin brown hair falls in not-quite-curls to her shoulders, her brown eyes are round and short-lashed, her nose has an uptilt at its tip, a small bump that she hates. Her mascara collects in dried black crumbs around her eyes. She rubs at them, making the smears worse. A group of women walk into the room talking and laughing and gather at the mirror next to her.

  ‘You alright, Cora? Long time no see.’

  Startled, Cora looks across at the woman who spoke. ‘Hi Sonja. Sorry I didn’t see you there. Yes, thanks, all good. You?’

  ‘Yeah, all good. Girls, this is Cora from Comms, she was my boss before I moved up with you lot!’

  The other women nod and smile. They are polite as could be, sweetness and light. Sonja leans in towards the mirror, applying lip-gloss with a small brush.

  ‘How’s it going up there?’ Cora asks, shaking her hands.

  ‘I love it! I miss you all, obviously, but I love it.’ Sonja rubs her lips together before pouting in the mirror and then turns back to Cora. ‘We’re going out for a glass or two of wine. Fancy coming along?’

  Cora hesitates. ‘I’d love to, but I have to get back for the kids. Another time maybe.’ The knot in her stomach twists tighter. She has no choice, no space to move, she is trapped. One wrong move from her could spell disaster. She is a potential murderer, one bad decision and that would be it. The other women spread lipstick over their mouths and use corners of tissue paper to tidy the edges, carefully outlining their lips. It’s mouths that she notices. Cora is surrounded by mouths. Like a mother bird, precarious on a nest edge, she is surrounded by open, hungry mouths. Mouths that tell, ask, shout, demand, whisper – mouths that swallow whole.

  ‘Ah, yeah. Another time, always welcome. You’re lucky, you are. I can’t wait to get married and have kids. I need to find someone who’ll have me first though!’ She laughs loudly, her head tipped back showing the dark fillings in her back teeth, the other women laugh too. ‘They alright, your
little ones?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Cora smiles, her lips stretched thin, and picks up her bag. ‘Have a good time tonight.’

  ‘Oh OK then, will do!’ Sonja says as Cora abruptly turns and leaves the rest of the women adjusting their make-up and hair in the mirror. The door swings shut behind her. She strides out of the building, through the heavy glass doors and past security, pushing past the men and women crowding the street, she has to be quick. Her heavy bag jolts against her shoulder and thigh, her shoes pinch her feet and her head pounds but she can’t slow down. She must be on time.

  There are no delays, no inconsiderate suicides sticky on the tracks, no leaves on the line. So far so good. She even manages to get a seat on the crowded train. She will arrive at the child-minder as expected, punctual and responsible. She leans over and picks up an abandoned newspaper from the seat opposite. She looks at the pictures but doesn’t read the articles. Her head swims, the movement of the carriage making her feel sicker than she did before. The train stops at a station and the carriage empties. A thickset man in jeans and royal blue football shirt sits down in the seat opposite. He catches her eye for a second before crossing his arms across his chest, leaning his head back on the seat and closing his eyes. His knuckles are coated with a grey substance and his jeans are dirty. His face and head are clean-shaven, exposing skin as shiny and pink as a boiled ham, but black hair covers his arms and sprouts above the neckline of his shirt. He snores softly. Cora watches him sleep, his hairy arms curled around his belly. He has a lion tattoo on his forearm, its sharp teeth on show.

  He grunts and shifts in his seat and scratches his face without waking. He reminds her of her father. Short and strong, with a hard-faced look. She leans her head back against the seat. Opposite, he opens his legs, spreading himself across his seat to get comfortable the way only a man can. She envies his ability to sleep like this, like a baby, sleeping anywhere the need takes him, entirely unafraid.

  Like her father used to settle into his armchair. The brown velour chair placed just so, with the best view of the TV and closest to the gas fire. The chair reserved just for him, her mother ready to bring him anything he needed, jumping up for his cups of tea, his beer, his scotch. Fetching his slippers, bringing him the paper, while he snored through the football or the wildlife programmes he’d chosen for them all to watch. Sometimes Cora would climb up onto his lap and snuggle up with him, leaning back against his heavy body. Her mother left alone on the frilly sofa, a bag of sweets at her side, her feet tucked up under her, reading a magazine.

  Cora gathers herself up, pulling her self in tighter, getting ready to go home.

  I have secrets too. But it doesn’t matter, because even though you are lying there next to me, pretty in your cotton nightgown, a pinch of fluff caught on your lip, you are not there. I’ve no idea where you are, what you think about. I have no idea what to do. I feel like I’m a time traveller, reporting back from the past in order to secure you to our present. An anachronism, I drift between there and now, trying to find my wife in amongst all the stories we create around ourselves. I wonder if I’ve made us up, if all the memories are false, everything lost. You wouldn’t be interested in my secret, I know that: you are only interested in the children and their day-to-day adventures. You’re wholly a mother. Perhaps that’s it, you’re only a mother now, you’ve ceased to be my wife. Something has slipped away. Something I just about see in the periphery of my vision but can never focus on.

  I watched you picking at your food this evening, as if you were rifling through it for something disgusting or dangerous, as though you didn’t trust the meal I’d made you. Imagine that. As if I could ever hurt you. It was like watching a hostage consume their first captive meal, picking through to find razor blades or ground glass or poison. It seems that nothing I do is enough, whatever I try to do for you, whether it’s cooking or cleaning up or buying you a silly little treat to try and make you smile, you just look disappointed.

  What I want to say is that I am fucking trying, trying so hard to be everything that you and the kids need me to be. You know, I am so afraid of losing you, that you’ll disappear for good and take the children with you. I will do anything to make this work. Just tell me what I need to do. You and the kids – you’ll always belong to each other. You’ll always be a unit. No matter what happens, the courts would give you custody. A man is always on the outside with no real access to that closeness, that bond between mother and child. And I can’t be the man left alone, the man who only sees his kids every other weekend, living in a small flat, my life cut up into pieces. I know how it goes, I’ve seen it. You get the house, the kids, half my pension. I get meals for one, sitting in the pub on my own and Christmas at my sister’s. I get to watch my wife with another man, in another life. I can’t be him. I won’t. I can only imagine there is another man, but you wouldn’t do that, would you? Would you do that? Would you let another person into our marriage? What else could it be? And I’m too afraid to ask, too afraid to hear the answer. I’m trapped into this silence.

  You turn over and face me, blinded by sleep. You don’t see me, lying here looking at you, listening to you, listening out for the kids who’ll stir any minute now and need feeding. We need a holiday. Just the two of us. Like the one we took in Cornwall, when we were first together, in that tiny house. The one with the low ceilings that I smashed my head on over and over again, and the short bed that my feet dangled from. You laughed and said I was a giant in the house of small lovers. The kitchen window was tied shut with string and the sofa covered with dog hairs. There was no heating except the open fire in the sitting room. We fucked like Trojans there. I made you come with my tongue and you said that it was the first time for you. I felt like a god. Yes, we should go away, just the two of us. My parents could have the kids.

  I want you to remember how I taught you to skim stones, and when you tied bacon rinds to the end of a piece of string and went crabbing, collecting the sharp-clawed little bastards in a bucket. I wish you would remember. I wish you would remember what it’s like to be happy with me, because the memory might become a reality. That can happen.

  I watched you smoking, looking out to sea, a strand of your hair stuck to your cheek. Later I twisted a tissue to a point and removed the sand from between your toes because you didn’t like the grit on your skin. I warmed your jumper on the radiator in the morning before you got up. You made tea in those chipped enamel mugs. You seemed so tiny, and me so big and brutal next to you. You ran naked into the freezing sea late at night, shouting at me to come in and I stood on the shore laughing at you, gorgeous you, and I wrapped you in a towel when you emerged laughing and shivering at the same time.

  I asked you about your parents and your childhood, and you told me that your dad was wonderful and funny, that your mother was a good mum, always there. Nothing more. You never mentioned friends or old boyfriends from the past, though I’ve seen pictures of you smiling, in a crowd of other young smiling people, with your arm around someone. You keep your secrets close, Cora.

  We lit candles, we drank wine, we began to smell of each other. We did all the things you’re supposed to do to prove love, to prove that you’re falling in love and making all the right memories which we will use to shore up against the future, against drudgery and loss. Memories, which should act like flotation devices upon which we’ll pile our hopes and plans. The memories that I’m relying on now. You wore a green parka with patches at the elbows. You looked like a skinny boy in your jeans and wellies. Your grey sweatshirt that hung over your frame. So unlike my blonde mother and sister, with their tennis obsession and outfits for every occasion. Your freckles darkening over your upturned nose. So different from the polished office version of yourself.

  I told you all about my family and you listened intently, cradling a glass of wine in your hand. You always seemed so interested in me. I told you about Sally and how protective of me she was, my little sister, t
raining to be a doctor, part-time tennis coach at my mother’s club. Engaged to David, another medic, just back from Pakistan where they’d volunteered for the Red Cross. I told you about my mum and dad, his accountancy business and mother’s social events and charity work. All facts that sum them up. Good people, my people. Now I’m pretty sure you don’t like them. But I can’t think why. They’ve only ever been good and kind to both us and the kids. But back then, sitting there on the sofa, my arm slung across the back in a half-embrace, your legs tucked under you so you took up hardly any space, I couldn’t wait for you to meet them. I wanted you to be part of our family: I knew then that I would marry you.

  My parents used to have sex a lot. God, what a funny thing to remember like that. Sally and I used to hear them at night. My mother confided in Sally that our father was very highly-sexed and that she couldn’t quite manage all his desires. I can’t imagine Sally’s response, whether she hooted with laughter as she always does when she’s embarrassed or whether she affected her furrowed brow and vaguely professional air. Sally never told me her response; only that mother was relieved that age had calmed him down.

  Once I saw them, actually saw them at it. It was hideous, as you would imagine. Christ, it’s still so vivid! It was the afternoon and I’d been out with Reuben and Nicolas setting rabbit snares in the woods, we were obsessed with hunting at the time, and I came down the drive and round the side of the house towards the terrace. I was late and covered in dirt and so was sneaking about to avoid my mother. I was around ten I think, still at St. George’s Prep, certainly still pretty innocent.

  And there they were in the conservatory, his pink wobbly bum going like the clappers, her legs waving about in the air. I didn’t know what to do. Did I go back the way I came, hoping they wouldn’t see me? Or walk in on them? Or walk past the conservatory to the French doors of the dining room? I can’t really place how I felt all that time ago, but I know that I wanted them to stop. I remember that very clearly, that it had to stop. That it made me feel sick and that I never really felt the same way about my mother again, if I’m honest. They both seemed changed, removed from me. Not my parents, just some adults, not quite strangers, subject to ugly convulsions. Perhaps I was jealous that I wasn’t part of their bond as a couple. That I was on the outside. Rejected. That they existed without Sally and me. Maybe it’s just revolting for a child to see the sex act. It does look pretty bloody dreadful. So I made a noise and stomped towards the conservatory as if I’d not seen them and opened the door, while they jumped up and straightened their clothes and my father started wittering about knocking before entering rooms. I remember that I was pleased by their discomfiture. It was never mentioned by them again. Just one of those things. But I’ve never told anyone about it. Not my friends, not even my sister. I wonder if I will ever tell you.