The Lying Game

The truth.

I WAKE WITH Freya beside me, but the rest of the double bed is empty and for a moment I can’t work out why I feel so wretched and ashamed, and then I remember.

Shit. Did he sleep downstairs, or come up late and leave early?

I get up very carefully, pile the duvet on the floor in case Freya wakes and rolls off the bed, and pulling my dressing gown on, I tiptoe downstairs.

Owen is sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and staring out of the window, but he looks up as I come in.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, straight off, and his face crumples with something between relief and unhappiness.

‘I’m sorry too,’ he says. ‘I was a complete dick. What I said –’

‘Look, you’re entitled to feel that way. And you’re right – I mean not about the breastfeeding, that was horseshit, but I will try and involve you more. It’s going to happen anyway. Freya’s getting older, she won’t need me as much, and besides, I’ll be going back to work soon.’

He stands up and hugs me, and I feel his chin resting on the top of my head, and the warm muscles of his chest beneath my cheek, and I draw a deep, tremulous breath, and let it out.

‘This is nice,’ I manage at last, and he nods.

We stand like that for a long time, I don’t know how long. But at last there’s a noise from above, a kind of chirrup, and I straighten.

‘Crap, I left Freya in the bed. She’ll roll off.’

I’m about to pull away, but Owen pats my shoulder.

‘Hey, new resolution, remember? I’ll go.’

I smile, and nod, and he sprints up the stairs. As I put the kettle on for my morning cup of tea, I can hear him, cooing at Freya as he picks her up, her squeaking giggles as he plays peekaboo with her comforter.

While I drink my tea, I listen to Owen padding about in the room upstairs. I can hear him pulling out wipes and nappies to change Freya, and then the sound of our chest of drawers as he gets out a fresh vest for her.

They take a long time, longer than I would over a nappy change, but I resist the urge to go up, and at last there are footsteps on the stairs and they appear together in the doorway, Freya in Owen’s arms, their expressions heart-meltingly similar. Freya has a com-ical case of bed-head almost as good as Owen’s, and they are both grinning at me, pleased with themselves, with each other, with the sunny morning. She reaches out a hand towards me, wanting me to take her, but, mindful of Owen’s words, I just smile at her and stay where I am.

‘Hello, Mummy,’ Owen says solemnly, looking at Freya and then back at me. ‘Me and Freya have been discussing, and we’ve decided that you should have a day off today.’

‘A day off?’ I feel a little spurt of alarm. ‘What kind of day off?’

‘A day of complete pampering. You’ve been looking absolutely knackered, you deserve a day not worrying about us.’

It is not Freya I’m worrying about. In fact, in many ways, she’s the only thing keeping me sane right now. But I can’t say that.

‘I don’t want to hear any protests,’ Owen says. ‘I’ve booked you an appointment at a day spa already, and I’ve paid in full, so unless you want me to lose my money, you’ve got to be down in town by 11 a.m. Me and Freya are going to manage all by ourselves from –’ he glances at the kitchen clock – ‘from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., and we don’t want to see you.’

‘What about her feed?’

‘I’ll give her one of those cartons of follow-on milk. And maybe –’ he chucks her under the chin – ‘maybe we’ll go wild and have some mashed broccoli, won’t we, funny face? What do you say?’

I don’t want to. The idea of spending the day at a spa with all this in my head – it’s, it’s obscene somehow. I need to be moving, doing, pushing away the what-ifs and the fears.

I open my mouth … but I can’t find anything to say. Except …

‘OK.’

As I wave goodbye, there is a sickness in my stomach at the prospect of being left with nothing to think about but Salten and what happened there. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t work out like that. For the Tube journey I am tense, gritting my teeth, feeling the tension headache building at the base of my skull and in my temples. But when I arrive at the salon, I give myself over to the practised hands of the spa therapist, and somehow all the obsessive thoughts are pummelled out of me, and for the next two hours I think of nothing but the ache in my muscles, the tightness at the back of my neck and between my shoulders that she is pressing away.

‘You’re very tense,’ she murmurs in a low voice. ‘There’s a lot of knots at the top of your spine. Are you carrying a lot of stress at work?’

I shake my head blearily, but I don’t speak. My mouth is open. I feel the cool slack wetness of drool against the spa towel, but I am so tired, I can’t find it in myself to care.

Part of me never wants to leave here. But I must go back. To Kate, Fatima and Thea. To Owen. To Freya.

I emerge from the spa blinking and dazed some four or five hours later with my hair light around my neck where it has been cut, and my muscles loose and warm, and I feel a little drunk – drunk with possession of my own body again. I am me. Nothing is weighing me down. Even my handbag feels light, for I left at home the Marni tote I’ve used since having Freya – a big capable thing with space for nappies and wipes and a change of top – and decanted my purse and keys into the bag I used before she was born. It’s a tiny thing, not much bigger than a large envelope, and covered with impractical decorative zips that would be a magnet to an inquisitive baby. It feels like the old me, even though it’s only big enough for my purse, phone, keys and lip balm.

As I walk home from the Tube, I feel overwhelmed with a rush of love for Owen and Freya. I feel like I’ve been away for a hundred years, over an impossible distance.

It will be OK. I am suddenly sure of that. It will be OK. What we did was stupid and irresponsible, but it wasn’t murder or anything close to it, and the police will realise that, if it ever gets that far.

As I climb the stairs to the flat I cock my head, listening for Freya’s cry … but everything is silent. Are they out?

I slip my keys into the door, quietly, in case Freya is asleep – and call out their names, softly. No answer. The kitchen is empty, filled with summer sunshine, and I put on a coffee and then take it upstairs to drink it.

Except … I don’t.

Instead I stop dead in the living-room doorway, as if something has hit me, and I cannot breathe.

Owen is sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands, and in front of him, sitting on the coffee table, are two objects, laid out like exhibits at a trial. The first is the packet of cigarettes from my bag, my tote, the one I left behind.

And the second is the envelope – postmarked Salten.

I stand there, my heart hammering, unable to speak, as he holds up the drawing in his hand – the drawing of me.

‘Do you want to explain this?’

I swallow. My mouth is dry, and my throat feels again as if there is something lodged in it, something painful I cannot swallow away.

‘I could say the same thing,’ I manage. ‘What were you doing spying on me? Going through my bag?’

‘How dare you.’ He says it softly, so as not to wake Freya, but his voice is shaking with anger. ‘How dare you. You left your fucking bag here, and Freya went through it. She was chewing on these –’ he throws the packet of cigarettes down at my feet, spilling the contents – ‘when I found her. How could you lie to me?’

‘I –’ I begin, and then stop. What can I say? My throat hurts with the effort of not speaking the truth.

‘As for this …’ He holds out the drawing of me, his hands trembling. ‘I can’t even … Isa, are you having an affair?’

‘What? No!’ It’s jerked out of me before I have time to think. ‘Of course not! That drawing, it’s not – it’s not me!’

I know as soon as it’s out of my mouth that that was a stupid thing to say. It is me – it’s self-evidently me. Ambrose is too good an artist for me to be able to deny that. But it’s not me now, is what I meant. It’s not my body – my soft, post-pregnancy body. It’s me as I was, as I used to be.