Chapter Twelve

 

 

IT’S WHEN IT GETS TO night-time it’s the worst. With the house quiet and no nearby traffic like there is in mine and Gage’s neighbourhood, the silence feels deafening. The thoughts in my head have no distraction.

I stand in my new pyjamas and bed socks, staring out of the window at the shed at the bottom of the garden. He’s not in there anymore, of course. He’s in bed with Mum now. Everyone’s asleep but me.

It took Emily a while to get off to sleep tonight, so we’ve agreed she will stay off school for the rest of the week. I’ve arranged with Warrick for her to have plenty of playdates with the Jones twins and for Emily to have a day out with Grandma Fitzpatrick, too. I’m fairly expecting Granny F to cancel on us last-minute – she always does – but she can’t say I haven’t tried. Gage’s relationship with his mother Nora is just another item on a long list of things I never understood about him.

Cradling the hot water bottle to me, even though it’s cold now, tears continue sliding down my face as I stare at the world outside. It’s not just Gage; it’s a part of me that has died, too. He’s taken so much with him and he never could have imagined the hurt he had the potential to cause, not in a million years, and yet I still feel vindictive and bitter towards him. I hope a part of his soul is as much tormented as mine. Another part of me believes he never had the capacity to love me in the same way I once loved him. I wonder what or who I will be saying goodbye to at the funeral – my memories? A ghost? Or the love I once had which clearly went away? I can’t compartmentalise it all right now; it’s going to take a long time to process.

Memories sweep through my mind on a loop. He was so sweet when I discovered I was pregnant with Emily. He told me we’d get a house and everything would be okay. Then my mother whispered words in his ears about it not being right to live together out of wedlock, let alone bring a child into the world outside the institution of marriage. He acted on her words and presented me with a ring in bed one morning. Overwhelmed, I didn’t have time to think and I said yes. We had a small register office wedding and had the marriage blessed at a church later on, owing to Gage not being religious enough to warrant a full church service.

There were times when I was utterly content. I would spend my days walking Emily out and about in the pram. I’d meet Mum for coffee, or Hetty. Sometimes friends from uni would even show up at my house with tales of debauchery, before remembering all that was behind me. Then they’d leave. Only a few – like Sam – remained true friends.

At first, I was entirely content to mother my child and my husband, who seemed never to have been taught how to use a washing machine, make beans on toast or brew a good cup of tea. Then tensions grew. I grew. I yearned for more. Was it wrong of me to yearn for more?

It really was when Hetty got together with Joe that I became more reluctant to continue wiping up his mess and washing his clothes as though I was merely a mother, not a wife or partner. In the back of my mind, I’d always yearned for more. I would have been entirely content to stay home, look after his children and look after him – except for the fact that there was nothing I was getting in return. I would have happily scrubbed the floors each and every day if it meant him coming home and giving me love and appreciation in return.

But love wasn’t a part of the bargain, was it? And it is love I’ve always yearned for.

Being his cleaner, and the mother of his kids, was the role he was happy for me to fill. That was the vacant position he’d held open for someone like me – someone content to put up and shut up.

He never saw me as a sexual being and he hardly (if ever) made me come.

Is his death retribution for his own actions? Or my punishment for sleeping with Sam? I still haven’t decided which. I just know the timing couldn’t have been worse. I just know that life is something we all take for granted even though it can be stolen away at any time, just like that – and it’s the people left behind who hurt, not the ones gone. That’s the utter diabolical truth of it.

When I met Gage, I was like a mouse. That’s probably how I appeared, anyway: quiet and twitchy and withdrawn – always veering from conflict. However, the real me has always been here – just dormant – and the more unsettled I became with our life, the more I displayed my displeasure and the more we grew apart. He didn’t appreciate my true self when I finally did speak up.

And now he’s dead because we grew apart.

He died because he didn’t have a mother nursing him anymore.

Recently, I began failing as his replacement mother and he died because of me.

He also died because his own mother never encouraged him to look after himself.

There’s my own tragedy, too: I’m nearly twenty-five years old, with two children and a dead husband, and yet I’ve never once been on a romantic holiday – not even our honeymoon was romantic. Gage took more trips abroad in one month sometimes than I ever have in my whole life. It was never said but it was insinuated that my job was to keep the home fires burning while he went and did as he pleased. My tragedy is that I married him and stayed with him, even when I was severely unhappy. My tragedy is that I never thought I deserved any better.

My tragedy is that the squeaky mouse continues to hold me hostage, all the while my true self gets buried and shelved because of my own fears.

I have no way of knowing if I would have actually gone through with it and left him. No way. I probably would have gone back to him. I would. I’d have done it out of fear. I’d have done it because life is dangerous. It’s a risk. What I had with Gage was a safe existence, but it wasn’t living. It was surviving. It was getting by. It was wishing, day after day, that my husband would just for once surprise me or make love to me passionately, or even just tell me that he couldn’t live without me. I’ve never had that. Never.

And I know why.

It’s that man in the next bedroom.

Dad.

He never taught me my own worth.

In fact, he taught me the opposite.

Withdrawn and distancing himself from me, he only taught me that I wasn’t important.

And so, when a man gave me a baby and a house, I felt important for the very first time.

But I didn’t see that feeling important is much different to feeling loved.