pouring myself another. With the bottle and glass in hand, I go up to our bedroom where I change into nightclothes and jump into bed, wrapping the duvet close round me to stuff up any shafts
of air.
In the ceiling above the bed is a large glass apex with no blinds or curtains to hide the stars. David and I had ideas that we’d lie here watching the turning of the heavens, and it makes
me laugh that we ever had conversations like that. But there must have been a love of sorts once, or at least I believed there was; fear and control won out in the end, but for a while the fresh
brilliance of being held convinced me it was love. In reality we rarely spend waking time together in here, this place which was designed as the energetic centre of the house; after David has sex
with me, we turn away from each other in silence and sleep with eye-masks.
I drink some wine and put my laptop on my knees. The battery is dead. From my bed I scan the room for the charger, looking across the furniture and mirrors carefully placed to create the maximum
positive chi. David’s self-help and NLP books have their own built-in bookcase for easy bedtime reference, and some of the other shelves are given over to books on movies, art and music:
100 Books You Should Read Before You Die
. Even though I’ve never seen David read any fiction, I’ve often heard him quote from Dickens or Kerouac, the text chosen depending on who
he’s talking to; his ability to sum up the person in front of him and mirror back what they most want to hear has never ceased to amaze me. Currently on his bedside table is
Meditation for
Dummies
.
The charger isn’t here so I get up and walk into the adjacent dressing room where David and I have a wardrobe each, divided in the middle by a mirror. My work bag is on the floor next to
the cupboard but the bag is empty. The drawers inside my wardrobe are open and I push them shut, checking first that the old McVitie’s biscuit tin from Mum’s house is still safe in the
bottom drawer underneath my scarves and belts. Inside this tin are all my precious things: ticket stubs from a gig I went to see with a friend at uni, dried flowers from Mum’s garden, some
old textbooks marked up by a teacher who was kind to me. Dad’s letters. The only other items I brought from Mum’s house were the few pieces of Dad’s clothing he left or forgot
when he moved out. I kept them in a bag because they smelt, but when we moved to this house, David put them out for the bin men. ‘What are you doing carting around those old rags?’ he
said. ‘You hardly knew your father anyway. Time to let go of the past, Rachel.’ I rescued the clothes and hid them in a cardboard box in the garage. There’s a shirt with a tear,
some gardening trousers and a large woollen overcoat.
All the things that matter to me are concealed. Everything of David’s is on display.
I give up on the charger and go back to bed, taking another gulp of wine as I sit on the edge of the mattress, then deciding to finish the glass. The liquid settles my stomach, like a blanket
over fire, but it doesn’t take away the pain. Lying down, the duvet tightens round me as I squirm to get more comfortable, and I drift into thoughts which cross over with dreams and back
again so that I can’t tell what’s real: an endless tarmac lit by car headlights, rolling and rolling, the edges of my vision falling to black. The man in the woods, his body in
time-lapse, maggots and worms eating him in frenzied circles until all that’s left are white bones.
I raise myself from the pillow and check the time: 10.58. David is still out. Perhaps I’ve got away with it tonight, the dirty tissue message enough. Or maybe I’ll
wake tomorrow, as I have before, to find the bedcovers trailed in paw marks and the bloodied end of a rabbit on my pillow. The dry-cleaners couldn’t save the antique throw that used to belong
to my mother – she used it to cover our sofa at home – so
of air.
In the ceiling above the bed is a large glass apex with no blinds or curtains to hide the stars. David and I had ideas that we’d lie here watching the turning of the heavens, and it makes
me laugh that we ever had conversations like that. But there must have been a love of sorts once, or at least I believed there was; fear and control won out in the end, but for a while the fresh
brilliance of being held convinced me it was love. In reality we rarely spend waking time together in here, this place which was designed as the energetic centre of the house; after David has sex
with me, we turn away from each other in silence and sleep with eye-masks.
I drink some wine and put my laptop on my knees. The battery is dead. From my bed I scan the room for the charger, looking across the furniture and mirrors carefully placed to create the maximum
positive chi. David’s self-help and NLP books have their own built-in bookcase for easy bedtime reference, and some of the other shelves are given over to books on movies, art and music:
100 Books You Should Read Before You Die
. Even though I’ve never seen David read any fiction, I’ve often heard him quote from Dickens or Kerouac, the text chosen depending on who
he’s talking to; his ability to sum up the person in front of him and mirror back what they most want to hear has never ceased to amaze me. Currently on his bedside table is
Meditation for
Dummies
.
The charger isn’t here so I get up and walk into the adjacent dressing room where David and I have a wardrobe each, divided in the middle by a mirror. My work bag is on the floor next to
the cupboard but the bag is empty. The drawers inside my wardrobe are open and I push them shut, checking first that the old McVitie’s biscuit tin from Mum’s house is still safe in the
bottom drawer underneath my scarves and belts. Inside this tin are all my precious things: ticket stubs from a gig I went to see with a friend at uni, dried flowers from Mum’s garden, some
old textbooks marked up by a teacher who was kind to me. Dad’s letters. The only other items I brought from Mum’s house were the few pieces of Dad’s clothing he left or forgot
when he moved out. I kept them in a bag because they smelt, but when we moved to this house, David put them out for the bin men. ‘What are you doing carting around those old rags?’ he
said. ‘You hardly knew your father anyway. Time to let go of the past, Rachel.’ I rescued the clothes and hid them in a cardboard box in the garage. There’s a shirt with a tear,
some gardening trousers and a large woollen overcoat.
All the things that matter to me are concealed. Everything of David’s is on display.
I give up on the charger and go back to bed, taking another gulp of wine as I sit on the edge of the mattress, then deciding to finish the glass. The liquid settles my stomach, like a blanket
over fire, but it doesn’t take away the pain. Lying down, the duvet tightens round me as I squirm to get more comfortable, and I drift into thoughts which cross over with dreams and back
again so that I can’t tell what’s real: an endless tarmac lit by car headlights, rolling and rolling, the edges of my vision falling to black. The man in the woods, his body in
time-lapse, maggots and worms eating him in frenzied circles until all that’s left are white bones.
I raise myself from the pillow and check the time: 10.58. David is still out. Perhaps I’ve got away with it tonight, the dirty tissue message enough. Or maybe I’ll
wake tomorrow, as I have before, to find the bedcovers trailed in paw marks and the bloodied end of a rabbit on my pillow. The dry-cleaners couldn’t save the antique throw that used to belong
to my mother – she used it to cover our sofa at home – so
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