There are two versions of today, I have decided, there is a counterfactual.
There is the version in which I sit on the sofa muttering about Facebook friends who post endless updates on their kids’ toilet-training.
And then there is the other version, where I have been out at a meeting and welcome Tom back from his work trip to Leeds with a homemade risotto.
In version two, I am happy. And I’m making up to Tom for the last three days, when I’ve been frosty and passive-aggressive in all talk of motherfucking Sweden.
I put old Nineties tracks on and dance around the kitchen, singing badly to Sophie Ellis-Bextor. I pour two glasses of Malbec and place them next to the organic mushrooms. I look around. It’s the scene of something we have not been for a long time. But it’s so convincing that I’m almost feeling it. Maybe this is how to make us happy again, copy the old us and hope they reappear.
‘Woo-woo,’ Tom whistles, opening the door and taking in my dress and make-up. ‘Hot.’
He takes his trainers off to the soundtrack of our life, Harriet at her piano.
‘She’s off again,’ he says, rolling his eyes as he puts his slippers on and sighs a contented sigh. He’s home and he likes being here, and I am part of that. We have that. I hand him a glass of wine.
‘She’s been at it all day,’ I tell him, laughing. ‘At least, when I’ve been here.’
Because we’re in version two here and in version two, I didn’t sit through the wall seething at Harriet’s jolly singing all day and resenting someone I haven’t met.
This is my brain now. Fury, guilt, self-loathing.
I know how resenting other people’s happiness is a force for bad. We have Instagram inspo quotes. We have #goals. Women are supposed to champion each other, to want success for each other, and yet … here I am.
Over dinner, Tom tentatively brings up the trip again. We book my flights to join him and then agree to book an appointment at the doctors for when we get back.
‘I’m so excited!’ I say, smiling.
I’m trying to make it feel genuine but it still doesn’t. I still don’t want to go to Sweden; still hate the delay. He looks at me oddly and I wonder if I have overdone it with the fake joy. We’re jarring, lately. Misjudging. Not quite meshed.
At 9 p.m., we are watching a film when I think I hear the baby crying again.
‘Can you hear that baby again?’ I ask Tom.
He stares at the movie.
‘Probably just a mate of Harriet’s brought her child over,’ he says, barely registering.
‘At this time?’
He just shrugs.
I will sound crazy if I go on about how often I hear it, fixated.
So I wait for Tom to leave the room and when he goes to make tea, I leap up. I put my ear to the wall but it’s stopped. Or it never started?
And then my feet are cold, so I go into our room to the place that holds the best selection of socks, Tom’s drawer, but something catches my eye. Not his diary, which I know is in here and would never touch, but a flash of red, a familiar branding.
‘Tom, why have you got condoms in your drawer?’ I ask, marching into the kitchen before I can stop myself.
‘What?’ he asks, pouring boiling water into mugs.
‘Condoms. A brand new box of condoms. Why would you buy condoms? Why would you buy condoms now?’
He tells me he didn’t and looks back at the tea because he doesn’t think this is important. But it is important. Because I am doubtful and he now gets drunk and lies about it, and there are things, aren’t there, that if I’m honest have felt strange. I got in the other night and the flat felt different. Like someone had been here. There’s a possibility that I’m going crazy, but there’s also a possibility that I’m not. The last few months have been hard for Tom, too. What routes do people take out of that?
But what else do you say?
I have no idea what I think but I sit back down, grip his hand and I try to hold on to something.