The Second Wife Read online

  I shower and dress quickly, then call a taxi to the hospital. By the time I get there the morning visiting hour will have almost started. There’s more traffic than usual on the roads and progress is slow. I find myself staring vacantly out of the window, watching the slow cycle of movement, the passers-by trudging along the seafront, shoulders braced against the wind, and the cars crawling past them.

  When the squat, grey building looms into view I pay the taxi driver hastily and duck inside, hurrying along the gleaming white corridors towards the ward. Jade is half sitting, propped up in bed and staring at the small TV screen next to her, and I’m surprised by how much more alive it makes her look. I step forward, pulling her mobile from my pocket and brandishing Sidney, the soft toy rabbit – one in each hand, like a conjurer presenting his spoils. ‘Morning, darling,’ I say. ‘I got you these last night, from the house.’

  Jade’s eyes light up and she instantly snatches the mobile from my hand, bending her head over the screen as she taps in the pin code and waits for a tense second before she smiles in triumph. ‘It’s still working,’ she says. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘That’s all right. Thought you’d want it.’ I’m still holding the rabbit. She doesn’t seem to have noticed it, and her gaze doesn’t stray from her screen as I place it down on the bed beside her. Its fur is bluey-grey and worn in places, the cotton eyes frayed. I remember the way she used to clutch it to her chest, unable to sleep without it pressed against her, and my heart clenches with what feels like something close to grief.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jade says, not looking at me. ‘I’m just …’ She trails off, her thumb skimming back and forth across the screen in the swift messaging motion I still haven’t totally mastered. ‘Sorry,’ she says again, and places the phone down beside her on the pillow.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I’m just glad you’re feeling better.’ But it feels like an effort, sorrow still weighing on my chest as I watch my daughter, so close to the child she was and yet so far away.

  Jade clasps her hands in front of her. ‘I am, a bit,’ she says, ‘but my head aches all the time. The doctor said it happens sometimes, when you’ve breathed in a lot of chemicals like I probably did. And I’m worried about the burns. I don’t want scars. Do you think I’ll have them?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I know from my conversations with Doctor Rai that it’s unlikely these scars will ever heal completely. I’ve already been thinking about the livid red line across her temple, thinking about how she might grow her hair in a fringe to conceal it if she wanted. But of course she’ll still know it’s there.

  I try and think of something else to say, but I soon see that she’s mentally moved on. She’s staring at me with what looks like expectation, and with a flash of intuition I divine that she’s thinking about our last conversation, and that maybe she wants it to continue.

  ‘What you told me yesterday, about the man in the house …’ I begin tentatively, and am rewarded by her lack of surprise. ‘Can you tell me any more about what happened?’

  She presses her lips together briefly, remembering. ‘I was up late because I realized I’d forgotten to do my homework, so I was up doing it in my room and I saw a shadow moving outside the door – you know, when you can just tell there’s someone there? The door was a little bit open and I bent back to look through … I thought it was Natalie, come to check up on me or something. But it wasn’t. I only saw him for a second, because he moved straight past, but it was a man.’

  The words have poured out of her fast and softly, and she breaks off to draw in a breath. ‘I got up and went over to my wardrobe and opened it and I got inside and shut the door,’ she says. ‘Maybe it was a stupid idea but I didn’t know what else to do. I thought I should hide. I don’t know how long I stayed there, it seemed like ages. And then I realized there was something else wrong – the noise, like something crackling, and I could smell the smoke, and then I was even less sure what I should do, I didn’t know if I ought to try and get out or stay where I was and I didn’t know where the man was and …’ She stops again, pressing her fingertips swiftly to her eyes.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say quickly. ‘It’s over.’ I reach out and squeeze her knee gently.

  ‘But that’s not all, Dad,’ she says, her voice muffled. ‘The man – it’s not the first time I’ve seen him.’

  ‘What?’ I say sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve seen him several times,’ she whispers. ‘On the street. Outside school. Never for long.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s the same man?’ I ask. I can hear the desperation in my own voice, the need for her to be wrong.

  Jade nods slowly. ‘I wasn’t at first,’ she says. ‘When I saw him in the house, it was the first time I’d ever really seen him up close. But the more I think about it, the surer I am. I can’t explain exactly how I know. I just …’ She blinks, screwing up her eyes with the effort of finding the right words. ‘I just feel it,’ she says at last, the words barely audible. It’s the kind of pronouncement that from most people I’d find laughable. I want facts, evidence. But even so, there’s a cold, subtle chill of unease, working its way beneath my collar and bristling the hairs on the back of my neck.

  My hand goes reflexively to my pocket. I don’t have time to consider what I’m doing – I just pull out the photograph I’ve been keeping there, unfold it and show it to Jade, gesturing towards the man. ‘Is this him?’

  She only has to look at it for the briefest of seconds before she shakes her head. ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Jade nods vehemently. ‘Yes. This man looks nothing like that. He’s got blond hair, almost white, like maybe he dyes it or something. He’s … big. Not fat, you know, but just …’ She gestures vaguely in the air around her shoulders, sketching out muscle. ‘Big. He’s not that tall. Not short, but not as tall as you. And he’s – I don’t know, he’s got a funny sort of face. It’s hard to describe.’ She hesitates. ‘A bit like it’s made out of clay or something like that.’

  ‘OK …’ I say, trying to commit all these details to memory. I’m searching my mind for anyone I know who might match this description, but nothing comes. In any case, the essential facts are the same. If there was a man in our house on the night of the fire, then we need to track him down. ‘You know,’ I say to Jade, ‘you will have to tell the police about this.’

  She looks shocked at that, leaning her head back against the pillows, and I can see that our conversation has tired her. ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’ Her eyes are uncertain, a little unfocused. ‘Do I have to do it now?’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘But maybe in a day or two, when you’re feeling stronger.’ Logically, my head is telling me that it would be best to report this as soon as possible, particularly in light of the barbed conversation I had with the policeman at the house yesterday, but I don’t want to push my daughter too hard too fast. In any case, the police will take her more seriously when she’s stronger. I know that short-term memory loss and confusion is a common side effect of the kind of trauma Jade has been through, and even though I don’t doubt her, I can’t help feeling that they might.

  ‘Dad,’ she says. She’s lain down again, rolling on to her side, and her left arm is reaching out, her fingers grazing the edge of the blue rabbit, moving back and forth against the worn cotton in what could be unconscious comfort. Her voice is half muffled by the pillow, her head averted from me as if she’s embarrassed to say what’s on her mind. ‘Am I safe now?’

  I’m still thinking about that question as I walk back towards the hotel. When your child asks you that, there’s only one answer you want to give, and I gave it instantly, with the conviction I knew she needed. Turning it over in my head, I think it was true. Right now, in the hospital, protected and guarded by doctors and nurses day and night, I believe she’s safe. But after that? When she’s back at home – wherever that will be – going to school, tracing her own path through the world, and it becomes impo
ssible for me to shadow her every minute of every day? I’m not so sure.

  Dimly I register that my phone is ringing, and I dig it out and answer it without first glancing at the screen. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Alex?’ It’s James, my fellow manager at the office. It’s a shock to hear his voice, clipped and professional, coming from another world. A surreal realization dawns: it’s Monday morning. Work has barely entered my head since the night of the fire. ‘Where are you, man? I thought you were in all day?’ He barely pauses for a second before pressing on. ‘Look, we’ve got a bit of a situation with the Cooler Cola campaign. The client’s come back wanting to change the ads at the eleventh hour and they’re looking to have a call to talk it through at one fifteen. I don’t really want Gav and Carly to handle it on their own. I could sit in but you’re a lot closer to the project than I am. So are you coming in?’

  I should just tell him, of course. James lives and breathes our work but if I told him that my house has burned down and my daughter is in hospital, he’d be left with no choice but to tell me to stick on my Out Of Office and take all the time I need. And yet there’s something about the way he’s talking to me … There’s no awkward sympathy, no embarrassed attempt to offer solutions, and I’m surprised at how much I need this right now. ‘Yeah,’ I say before I have a chance to consider further. ‘I’ll be in in twenty.’

  Fifteen minutes later I’m at the office, tapping my key-card at the entry button and climbing the two flights of stairs. It’s an automatic ritual, but today its familiarity feels poignant, as if I’ve just returned from years away – a traveller uncovering long-forgotten, dust-laden possessions, and finding some unexpected stab of emotion in what he might have once thought mundane.

  ‘All right, Alex,’ James mutters as I come into the office and make for my desk. ‘Late one last night then, was it?’ He barely lifts his eyes from his screen.

  ‘You could say that, yes.’ I sit down at my desk and then freeze, realizing I don’t have my laptop. It must be in the house still, though I have no idea what state it’s in. I can’t understand how I didn’t think to check, but the past few days have thrown everything up in the air, and some of the things that have slipped through my fingers have been the ones I wouldn’t expect. I stare at the desk in front of me, wondering what to do.

  ‘Oi oi,’ Gavin shouts jovially across the office, ‘not with it this morning, Alex? Do some fucking work!’ This kind of banter is two a penny in most ad agencies – we take a stupid sort of pride in smashing down the hierarchy barriers, and the fact that Gav is probably on thirty grand less than I am is no reason in our world for him to treat me like his boss – but right now it feels totally alien. I make myself smile, raising my hands in surrender.

  ‘Come in without my laptop,’ I say, ‘what a prick.’

  ‘Sure you haven’t left it out on the piss again?’ Gavin fires back. I lost my last office laptop a year ago, and have never heard the end of it. It had been half-inched from a coffee shop in broad daylight, actually, not abandoned on a piss-up, but I can’t be bothered to argue the toss.

  ‘It’s all right, Alex,’ Carly says, trotting up to my desk, brandishing the spare computer. ‘You can use this one.’ She smiles brightly, tossing her high blonde ponytail. She’s had her roots dyed over the weekend, a strange light pink colour. She lingers by my desk briefly, clearly expecting a comment, but I just thank her and take the computer, forcing another smile, and she spins on her high heels and prances away again, her hips moving briskly in her tight tan leather skirt.

  I fire up the laptop and connect to the server, downloading a few of the files from the cola campaign. A soft drink brand looking for a bold new TV and print run, something that will divert from their crazily high sugar content and reel in the young, trendy consumers they’re after. It’s the kind of project I normally love. I read over the latest version of the ads, look at some of the artwork. I can barely remember anything. My mind feels soft and woolly, my thoughts dripping slowly like treacle. There are too many other paths to wander down: the state of our home, Natalie and everything she’s told me, the photograph still burning a hole in my coat pocket, my daughter in her hospital bed asking me if she’s safe.

  Take a breather, I think, when it’s clear that I’m not taking the files in in the way that I should. I bring up the browser and log into my email. I run my eye down the list, taking in the familiar generic messages from sites I’m subscribed to, and then I see something that pulls me up short. An email from SRUK. You have a new message.

  My first instinct is to delete it without looking. It belongs to a part of my life that’s over. But there’s something in the very strangeness of it – my account has been inactive for so long that I can’t imagine who would be messaging me – that reels me in. Slowly, I move the cursor to the message and open it, then click the link. I haven’t been on for over six months, but my fingers move swiftly in the shape of my password, as if it’s been less than a day. There’s a short, tight pause before the site loads, and as I wait I can’t help but remember the feelings the sight of this black anonymous screen with its thin red lettering in the centre – SECRETROOM – used to stir in me. The impatient hunger, the addictive pull of its cheap thrill. The letters emerge, a dark curtain unfurling to reveal them one by one; their edges fuzzily scarlet, fizzing with mystery. The inbox at the top of the screen is showing five new messages. Even if it hadn’t been so long, it would be surprising – on this site, there was never a lot of unsolicited contact from women. There was a kind of unspoken rule that the men were the predators here; it was up to us to make the first move.

  I’ve never cheated on Natalie, not physically. I apply my own standards to myself, and I’ve always thought I’d find it harder to forgive a drunken one-off kiss at a party than several months of loaded conversations. For me, the physical is where it becomes real. And yet part of me knows I was always bullshitting myself about secretroom. It wasn’t right. Why else would I have given it up before we got married? I wanted to mean my vows, and that meant turning out the dark pockets of my life and throwing out the trash.

  The main reason I had done it in the first place was that keeping this small covert piece of myself hidden was a way of keeping real intimacy at bay. I’d been through the mill once before, with Heather. I was afraid to let anyone get close, and in some small stupid way these little forays of flirtation reassured me that I wasn’t completely obsessed with Natalie and that, albeit in the most meaningless way, I might still be keeping my options open. But in the end I got tired of being afraid, and that’s when I cut the chains.

  I click on the inbox, knowing I shouldn’t. Instantly I see that all five of the messages are from the same person: Cali. Of all the women I used to talk to on secretroom, she’s the one with whom it lasted longest, and the last one I was in contact with, before I logged off for what I thought was the last time. I don’t know why the connection stuck. With most of the women on this site, it was a one-off thing; a half-hour or so of dirty talk that served a primal purpose and burned out almost as soon as it had begun. With her there was something that had kept me coming back. Nothing emotional, nothing that deep. But something. A chemistry.

  The messages are all brief and intense.

  I’m waiting for you.

  Can’t get you off my mind … You want me to beg?

  Tried a lot of others but there’s no one like you. No one who gets me like you do. Come on …

  Still waiting.

  And the last message, sent yesterday morning, months after we’d last been in contact. Are you OK?

  I stare at that last one, thrown off base. There’s something different in its tone. Maybe it’s just because I’m not OK right now that it feels so loaded. But this woman never really cared how I was, surely; we didn’t even know each other. I saw into the darkest corners of her desires, but I never saw her face. She was barely real. She could have been a computer, churning out automated obscenities.

  I flick back t
hrough the message history, my eyes furtively scanning the lines of text. I’d forgotten how much we’d said, how fast any inhibitions had fallen away. I’d talked to this stranger in a way that I’d never talked to anyone, including my wife. It’s over, but it happened, and turning your back on something isn’t the same as erasing it. I’ll never be able to do that. I’m thinking of this, feeling sick with guilt and trying to make it into something more palatable, when I see that the little box at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen is flashing with a message. Cali is online.

  I move the cursor swiftly to close the window down, exiting the site instantly. My heart is thumping again, this time with panic, and I can’t help thinking about the message that will have been flashing on Cali’s screen at that exact same moment, telling her that I was back. That for those few brief seconds we were there in the same virtual space, the invisible connectors between us bristling with electricity.

  Natalie

  September 2017

  I SPEND THE morning battling the panicky sense that everything is spiralling out of control, telling myself that this is all OK, everything can get back on track. But there’s too much evidence to the contrary. The fire, Jade’s hospitalization, and now this seismic shift between me and Alex; the split-second decision I’ve made to tear a hole in the fabric of the past and let it begin to spill through. In the cold light of day, I’m not sure I’ve done the right thing. I could have styled out the photograph, explained away the documents somehow. I can think on my feet. Maybe I shouldn’t have given in to that impulse, powerful and seductive though it was, to let him in just a little bit more. It’s too late now, though, and I need to figure out where to go from here.