Jane
Ten months later
It’s cold today: December first. The town is in full preparation mode, same as it is every year, only this year of course, things are different. The tree has been put up at the crossroads by the town sign, and the lights were switched on last night. Jack and I didn’t go – Sandra volunteered to take the kids and we let her. That’s happening more and more these days. I find it hard to be around other people. God knows what Jack is thinking. Some nights, if the children are elsewhere or in bed, I look out of the window and see him sitting outside our back door, his body freezing against the wood, the cold biting at his ankles and ears.
On other nights, when the children are in with me, he goes out driving. He tells us it’s work and slips out into the night, sinks into the driver’s seat and starts up the engine. I don’t know where he goes – I imagine him heading out of town, out to where the anonymous fields rush by and the sky feels huge, where there are no nosy neighbours wondering what he’s doing. I imagine him stopping the car in the layby where we used to meet sometimes to talk. It’s what I’d do, if I could leave the children. If I could leave at all.
Sometimes when he comes home, he looks like he’s been crying. I never say anything anymore, I just let him get on with it. As long as he doesn’t confess. The other night when he was getting undressed I saw little purple welts at the tops of his thighs, up high where the children will never see. They are nothing compared to what Ian Edwards must be suffering through in prison. Useless wounds, child’s play.
It’s been ten months since the arrest, and the inside of my head doesn’t feel any easier. The trial is set for the new year; Ruby Walker is telling anyone who’ll listen, which is everyone. I thought I would feel a sense of relief when they arrested Ian, but I don’t, even now, all these months later. It’s not enough. He is awaiting a jury, awaiting a verdict – it isn’t over yet. The charges could still be dropped, and until he’s sentenced, I can’t relax. I do my very best to keep calm and clear-headed, forcing myself to think about everything we stood to lose, watching the children, my family, my family who would have been taken away from us, ripped apart at the seams. We didn’t deserve that. We still don’t.
I don’t see Rachel very often; none of us do. She’s holed up inside the house, and the curtains are drawn more often than not. Occasionally, I’ll see a glimpse of her in the back garden, standing outside, looking up at the sky. She is thinner than ever. I did catch her late one afternoon, as I was hanging the little lights in the tree outside the front, some new red ones the children clamoured for last week. She had a big winter coat on, clumpy brown boots.
‘Rachel,’ I said, ‘how are you?’
She had her head down, her arms wrapped around herself as if to keep out the cold.
‘I’ve been visiting Ian,’ she told me. ‘They don’t exactly celebrate Christmas in there.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t imagine they do. But let me know if you ever want to pop round to ours, we’ve far too many mince pies to go round.’ I was trying to be nice but perhaps it came out wrong. She looked like she was going to cry. I put my hand on her arm, tried to give it a rub, but her coat was so thick that I could barely feel anything. Eventually I let her shuffle away from me, busied myself with rearranging the wreath I’d bought for our front door.
It’s not that I want poor Rachel to be unhappy; of course I don’t. But I have to protect my husband, our family.
‘Perhaps she’ll leave the town,’ Sandra hisses at me one night over a glass of mulled wine. ‘I mean, what’s left for her here?’ She shakes her head sadly. ‘All those memories. If it were me, I’d up sticks and go. Start again.’
I think about what Sandra said later that night, lying awake with the moonlight spilling into the room. Jack doesn’t sleep very much, pacing around downstairs long into the evening, so I’m left with my thoughts more often than not. I imagine a For Sale sign up next to the bird bath, movers coming and carting away Rachel’s belongings. A new family next door; a couple, perhaps, children. People I could be friends with. A woman who would sit out in the back garden with me, nod along admiringly when I showed her the wisteria that climbs up our back wall, the pretty garden furniture that sits around the chinenea on the large flagged patio. A friend as well as a neighbour – someone who might pop round for dinner, exclaim at the shine of my kitchen, run a hand over the beautiful silver candlesticks when she thinks I’m not looking. We’d laugh together about the goings-on at the school, the lascivious husbands in the town, the children. She’d join our book club, maybe even the PTA. We’d swap recipes, babysitter numbers; shoes, at a push.
I let myself imagine that, just for five minutes. What it might have been like. What it could be like in the future.
Jack doesn’t trust me. I can tell by the way he slopes around the house, coming home from the surgery late, avoiding my eyes as we sit at the dinner table, focusing his attention on the children as if he thinks I won’t notice what he’s doing. I need to try to talk to him, to rebuild things. Otherwise all this has been for nothing.
‘Jack,’ I say quietly one night, coming up behind him in the sitting room as the television flickers. I don’t think he’s even watching it properly. He flinches when I put my hands on his shoulders, actually flinches, as if he can no longer stand the feel of my touch.
‘Don’t do that,’ I say, ‘don’t flinch away from me when I touch you. I’m your wife, Jack. Your wife.’
When he turns to me, his face looks different, and something about it scares me. He doesn’t look like the man I married, the man I fell in love with all those years ago on Albion Road. He looks haggard, beaten down by what he has done. I try not to blame him, but I know he blames himself. We are in this together, ‘til death do us part. I see it in my mind’s eye; the registry office, our clasped hands.
Slowly, I walk around the sofa and sit down next to him, treating him carefully, as if he is a china ornament, the ones my grandmother used to collect and line up in a neat row above the cooker.
‘Jack,’ I say, ‘I did it for you. For our family.’ A pause. ‘He won’t be in prison for ever. Besides, they’re like gyms these days anyway.’ I smile, but he ignores me.
It’s as if I haven’t spoken; he continues to stare at the television. I can see the images reflected in his glassy eyes, the colours fading in and out. A memory comes to me, of us just after we’d first got together. We’d been to the cinema but not seen much of the film. Afterwards, strolling down the high street, we’d passed the entrance to Regent’s Canal, a sloping dark tarmac edged by overhanging willow trees.
‘Fancy a walk?’ Jack had asked me and I’d taken his hand, pulled him down the slope. The water glittered beside us, the usually crowded bank was quiet, as though all the cyclists and runners and dog walkers had cleared the way just for us. I’d stared at the shimmer of the glassy water, at the colours of the boats reflected in the shine, the reds and greens and navys blurring as the water moved.
We’d started walking, not saying much, but the silence hanging between us felt loaded. Prior to Jack, I hadn’t felt close to anybody for a very long time. I hadn’t felt able to, I suppose.
‘Jane,’ Jack had said, his voice breaking the strange stillness, his hand suddenly slick in mine. ‘Would you be frightened if I told you I loved you?’
My mouth was on his before he had time to be nervous. It was a good job nobody came by the towpath that evening.
‘I love you, Jack,’ I whisper now, sat beside him on the sofa, and as I say the words, I wonder if they are really true. Do I love this man? We have built a life together, against the advice of counsellors, friends, family. I have lied for him, multiple times, for days and weeks and months. A man is now awaiting trial for a crime he did not commit.
When my husband doesn’t reply, I slowly stand, feeling as though my limbs are leaden. Have I always moved this slowly? Or is it all finally catching up with me – the drinking, the guilt, the constant pretence to be something I am not. My past catching up to me. Perhaps I am my father’s daughter, after all.
Every part of me wants to go to bed, to strip off my clothes, stand under a hot shower and burn away the day, then slide myself under our crisp white sheets and place my head beneath the pillow. I used to do that a lot when I was single, before I met Jack. Instead, I walk into the kitchen, pour myself a glass of red wine, and open the cutlery drawer. I’ve already looked here, I know I have, but my fingers run through the same desperate steps – feeling underneath the silver, underneath the mess of our lives that is discarded birthday candles, random nails, Jack’s screwdriver that he never uses, a pair of balled up gloves. My nightly ritual, of late. My hand scrabbles against the wooden bottom of the drawer before I slam it in frustration. It’s not there. I know it’s not there.
‘Jane.’ Jack is standing in the doorway, his hands either side of the frame. ‘Is what you said about Ian hitting Rachel even true?’
I know he wants me to tell him it is, give him that small crumb of peace. It could be true, I suppose. But I doubt it. And I’ve told enough lies. When I don’t answer, he eventually goes away.
I finish the rest of the wine, thinking about the idea of a For Sale sign next door. Perhaps then I’d feel free of it all.