14 May 2004
‘This time next year, we’ll be on your hen do,’ Mum says, as we walk back from town.
Marilyn slaps me on the back. ‘You’ve got stamina, Kerry, I’ll give you that. Never thought it’d last.’
We’ve been out for Mum’s birthday, to a seafront club packed with wild people: gorgeous transvestites and screaming hens. We danced till they threw us out and now us Smith girls are tottering back, fuelled by chips smothered in ketchup.
‘It’s lasted because Tim’s a decent person.’
Marilyn does an exaggerated yawn. ‘He fell on his feet with you. Money, sex and a carer for his mother. She’s getting sicker, isn’t she?’
‘No! She’s fine,’ I lie. If even Marilyn has noticed, it must be bad.
It’s past midnight but Brighton is buzzing; the Fringe is in full swing and I’m making the most of being out tonight, before I go back to revising for my A level resits. A man whistles in our direction.
‘Reckon he’s after you, Kerry, unless he’s got a fetish for pregnant women,’ Marilyn says. My first niece or nephew is due in November. Not that it’s stopped Marilyn dressing on trend: her Sienna Miller-style boho dress floats over the small bump and shows off her immaculately St Tropezed legs.
‘The joke’s wearing very thin now.’
‘OK. But this just isn’t what I imagined for my kid sister.’
‘Leave her alone, Marilyn.’ Mum links arms with me. ‘Nothing wrong with being the sensible one, Kerry!’
Marilyn pouts: she’s not used to Mum taking my side. ‘This is love we’re talking about. You should let your heart rule, not your head.’
Mum reaches out to grab my sister and links arms with her too, to create an ungainly chain as we walk down the street. ‘What matters is that Tim loves Kerry and Kerry loves Tim. Right, sweetheart?’
‘Right, Mum.’
Except Tim seems distant lately, compared to how we were in India last summer. Obviously, the honeymoon period couldn’t last forever, but we haven’t even had the real honeymoon yet. I hope it’ll be better after he gets his exam results, but what if it’s not?
What would happen if I share what are probably normal doubts for a bride-to-be? Marilyn would try to persuade me to call off the engagement right now, and even if I refused, I bet she’d be straight in there at the wedding when the priest asks if there’s any reason Tim and I shouldn’t marry . . .
The thought makes me dizzy. Everything is mapped out: he’ll qualify, I’ll go to medical school, we will be the perfect doctor couple, and in five years’ time, I’ll be laughing about my silly last-minute nerves.
I work Saturday night and when I get home first thing Sunday, I climb straight into bed: I’ve been looking forward to this, to having the double bed to myself, starfishing and flinging off the covers without worrying about waking Tim, whose sleep is an elusive and delicate thing.
Tim’s away at a public health conference in Leeds, giving a talk about our Indian experience. Speaking at events will give him more kudos when he’s applying to deaneries for his foundation years. I think when I’m a medical student, I’ll aim to wow them with my clinical skills, but as Tim never stops telling me, it’s different when you have to do it for real . . .
It’s only once I’m lying in bed that I notice the envelope on the bedside table, my name written on the front in his neat handwriting. (He jokes that he loses points in exams for never mastering the spidery scrawl of a true doctor.)
Has he suddenly developed a romantic streak, leaving me a note to make up for going away? I open the envelope.
There’s no flowery card, just a folded sheet from the lined foolscap pages he used for revision notes. I unfold it. Half a page of dense writing:
Dear Kerry,
I know I’m a coward for doing it this way. More proof of why I don’t deserve you. But I thought it would give you time to get used to what I’m about to say, so when I get back from Leeds you have any questions ready for me.
I close my eyes. The marriage is off. He can’t do it. I file away the flutter of relief in my chest, even as my brain begins to list all the pre-booked arrangements I’ll have to cancel. But at least he’s told me now: we should get most of the money back.
There’s no easy way to say this. I’ve failed my exams. This isn’t the fake panic everyone used to indulge in after we came out of an A-level exam. It’s stone cold certainty. I messed up my last paper totally, and the other was – at best – borderline.
I should have told you last week, but like I say, I’m a coward. Which means every day we get closer to the result, I loathe myself even more for being a liar as well as a failure. You’ve given up so much to help me through medical school. The problem is me. I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. I’ve screwed everything up. You’ve every right to hate me.
I’ll be home mid-morning on Sunday. I’ll try to answer any questions you’ve got. As for what happens next, it’s 100 per cent up to you.
With all my love, and all my apologies, but knowing none of it will be enough.
Tim
It’s as though someone’s plunged me into an ice-cold bath.
I re-read it three times. Each time I believe it less.
Tim can’t have failed. There’ve been moments over the last four years when I’ve wondered if he can really handle the human side of medicine. But I’ve never doubted his academic ability, not since he got straight As in his A levels.
Yet . . . why would he lie?
There has to be more to this.
I get up, pull on my dressing gown, and begin to look for secrets, starting with his drawers in the flatpack IKEA tallboy in the corner of the room. The loose bolts wobble as I open each drawer in turn, wincing at the noise because the last thing I want to do is wake up Elaine.
I rifle through his underwear, his T-shirts, all neatly folded and arranged in colour order. I don’t even know what I’m searching for.
Love letters, perhaps. What if he’s still shagging Laura and the guilt has messed him up? But she’s engaged herself, now, to a handsome vascular surgeon.
Money, then?
He’s had the same work desk since sixth form, a fifties roll-top bureau, ugly but solid, designed to withstand nuclear Armageddon. As I push up the concertina lid, I know I’m crossing a line.
But I deserve answers.
Three piles of colour-coded revision cards sit to the right, along with uni correspondence. I scan the letters: his exam results last year weren’t spectacular, but he passed.
I roll the lid down again. What if it’s all in his head? Burnout, a breakdown?
Underneath the desk, there’s a matching oak filing cabinet. As I unlock it with the key from his sock drawer, I let myself consider that he isn’t lying. Resentment bubbles up and I try to push it down. Surely he could resit in the autumn. Even if he had to repeat the year, it’s not that much longer in the scheme of things.
Though I’m meant to be applying for medicine myself in September. It’s my turn.
I pull out the hanging files. Medical: vaccination certificates, blood-group card, a yellowed leaflet from the school nurse about exercises for flat feet. Credit card: a couple of grand of debt I already knew about; at my suggestion, he’s been transferring the balance to lower rate deals. I am surprised he’s still using it to buy food and drink at the hospital, though. We take cash from our joint account each week to pay for everyday stuff. So what is he using the petty cash for?
As I put the statements back, my hand touches a pocket notebook I’ve never seen, hard-backed with a green cover. Inside, two columns: dates on the left, and on the right a list of numbers. Pages and pages, nearly three years’ worth, though with breaks, including a long gap from when we went to India in July, till late October. Is this column amounts of money? And if so, is it going out, or coming in?
The first date is 28 September 2002. The day of my sister’s wedding. The day he came back from work and interrupted me and Joel kissing . . .
I refuse to think about Joel now.
There’s nowhere left to search. I put everything back where I found it, and read his letter again. What aren’t you telling me, Tim?
I stare at my reflection in the wardrobe mirror. I look wrecked.
The wardrobe! I haul his big suitcase out from the densely packed clothes. He uses it to store the last clothes that haven’t been eaten by moths – we had an attack last month that wiped out the hall carpet and our honeymoon fund by the time we’d paid the pest controller.
There’s no paperwork, but his smart suit is in there, the one he wore to my sister’s wedding. It says a lot about how mundane our lives are that he hasn’t had to wear it since. There’s a strong smell of mothballs, along with something else . . .
Weed.
Could that be it – a secret cannabis habit? No, this is the first time I’ve smelled it on his clothes.
As I lift out the suit, the smell gets stronger. Is there a joint in here? I rifle through the pockets of his trousers and jacket. Nothing.
I almost forget to check the inside pocket too, but when I do, my fingers touch plastic. I pull out a tiny bag, the resealable kind, only big enough for buttons and beads. And drugs.
The bag is empty. But it’s enough to help me join the dots.
I sleepwalk through breakfast with Elaine as she speculates on how Tim’s talk has gone and whether he and his doctor chums had a wild night out afterwards.
We’re in the living room when I hear the wheels of his case outside. As he walks up the path, I see the apprehension in his face, and I turn to Elaine.
‘He looks green around the gills,’ she says, sounding proud of him for having a hangover.
I let him say hello to her, and, without meeting his eye, say, ‘Before we hear how you took them all by storm, I reckon you need a walk around the block.’
Elaine smiles approvingly. ‘I hope you were celebrating a standing ovation!’
He grimaces.
We get all the way to Dyke Road before I dare to look at him again. His eyes are hooded and his skin is lined from dehydration: a snapshot of the man he’ll be when he grows old.
‘You read it?’ he asks, his voice dry as parchment.
I nod and keep walking. ‘How much of it is lies?’
He catches my arm. ‘None of it. I’m sorry. I know it must be a shock but it’s all the truth. I promise you.’
I shrug him off. ‘Like you promised me it was going to be my turn next?’
The streets are busy with Sunday couples and their Labradors and their pushchairs. ‘Kerry, it will be. We’ll find a way. If you even want to be with me anymore. I’d understand if you don’t—’
I stop suddenly. ‘This is your last chance to be honest, Tim. I can handle you failing, but not that you didn’t tell me till now. So. Any other skeletons in the closet?’
Or baggies in the jacket pocket?
Panic flickers across his face.
I can’t do it, I can’t let him lie to me again.
‘For fuck’s sake, Tim. I found your notebook. And the little bag in your suit. You failed your exams because you’ve been taking drugs!’
Please, please, please let there be another reason.
What little colour there was in his face drains away. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
‘Aren’t you meant to deny it? Tell me you’re all doing it, that medics pop pills like Smarties?’
He stares at me. ‘They do. But . . . probably not as often as I do.’
The first honest answer he’s given me. That’s something. ‘What do you take?’
‘Depends on what I need. I’ve struggled with the course, with the patient contact, with everything. It felt like any port in a storm.’
‘Everyone struggles, Tim. That’s medicine. If you’d talked to me, if you’d tried to get help then, none of this . . .’ I stop, realizing how futile it is. ‘OK. You’ve got to tell me everything.’
He holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Right. Number one, why did this kick off on my sister’s wedding of all days? That’s the first date in your bloody green book.’
Tim sighs. ‘Because of Joel.’
That kiss. Or worse, what went before it? Joel’s cardiac arrest, my actions, Tim’s failure. How dare he!
‘You’re blaming ancient history for ruining your career, my career, our entire future?’
‘No.’ He looks up at the sky. ‘I’m blaming Joel because he was the first person to sell me drugs.’