When Tom first got home, I could hear anger, despite Lexie and him having been apart for weeks. I knew he was coming back today from a social media picture of a beer he was drinking at the airport, so I cancelled my meetings, staying in and composing. Composing is a fake verb. The real verb was waiting.
At 5 p.m., Lexie opened the door and that was when the voices became raised; though they quickly subsided and then I could hear Lexie crying, the sort that says someone is inconsolable, like the cries I had in the days and weeks after breaking up with Luke.
But then I could hear the gentleness in Tom’s voice and the effect of whatever had caused the row earlier seemed to have dissipated. It pissed me off. Was that it? Instant forgiveness? When I, who had never picked fights, flattered Luke, didn’t criticise, had my life ruined out of the blue one day? Ended up not only alone, but also contained, in a bed in a psychiatric hospital? The universe is unbalanced. Sometimes all I want is just to balance it out.
I consider my tactics carefully then and check my emails, just in case. But the one that makes my stomach lurch doesn’t do it in a good way.
My mom writes:
Harriet, now I’m even more worried. Please, get in touch.
And that irritates me, too. Because why is it my responsibility to make her feel better? Who’s making me feel better? If I reply to that message, how does this work? She feels relief, gets on with her life and, meanwhile, nothing changes in mine – I’m still without Luke, without Tom.
But maybe I don’t have to be without Tom. I can see, realistically, that it will be difficult to find a way back for me and Luke, but the more the relationship between Tom and me develops, the more I can see how I could move on. Tom is the fresh slate I’ve needed. The future hangs on Tom. With just one obstacle to shift out of the way.
Now, I am so fixated that I can’t work or sleep. I just roam around the flat listening for clues. On Sunday, I sent Tom another topless picture. On Monday, I went to a club on my own and got thrown out for being too drunk. I don’t remember writing it, but my phone tells me that I sent Tom a long and graphic email about the life-changing sex he was missing out on by not meeting up with me, Rachel.
Now, I hear him go out and I follow him to the bookshop.
My stomach contracts as I watch through the window and see Tom browsing the shelves. Sure, we are having a tricky stage with this Rachel thing, but he doesn’t know that I am her. We can start again; I can disown Rachel, ghost her like a boring school friend, and make this work.
Tom and Lexie are drifting apart and there is room in the gap for me to slip in between.
Tom can make me better, introduce me to his friends, take me to his places and build me a life. I’ve let it happen before; I can let it happen again. We could pick up from where Luke and I left off.
I go home, pour myself a drink and grab the iPad.
I’ll delete the messages, I write to him. If you meet me for a drink.
Send.
The next day, I let myself in for a morning browse at Tom and Lexie’s. A special treat after I watch them go out for breakfast. Top of my list is Tom’s strange old-school diary and he’s left me a gift: a new entry.
Lexie isn’t the only one who woke up that morning in Sweden with self-loathing. The aperitif, the wine, the special whisky someone ordered that I had to try despite loathing whisky … I was almost as drunk as she was. I just had the moral high ground of the person who is slightly less drunk than the drunkest person.
Funny, Tom, funny.
But I was annoyed. I want Lexie and me to be in this together; I don’t want us to become people who shout at each other in the street at 1 a.m. I felt angry that she’d made us that couple. And I felt sad about the miscarriage and gutted that Anais had got there first too, actually.
My heart races because in the next paragraph, I see the word Rachel.
Which is the only reason I would ever, ever have become a cliché like this. I knew Rachel was flirting and I didn’t stop it. I even lamely, drunkenly, tried to join in.
But what I did think is that it would pass into the history of stupid things, and I would in time forgive myself and forget about it. But she’s back, sending photos of her breasts and telling Lexie that I’m cheating with her.
I am all over this flat now – I can feel myself. I am Rachel, in the diary, I am in the condoms that now live in Tom’s drawer, and in the pretty knickers that I was almost tempted to keep for myself after I bought them. I am in Lexie’s tears, when she read that nasty tweet on her anniversary. I am everywhere, everywhere, crawling all over their broken life. And I won’t stop. I want to break it further. I want to stamp it into tiny pieces. I have experience, after all, of doing exactly that.