Behind Her Eyes

I have more energy after his afternoon call. He says he’s going to be home late. He’s meeting two charity organisations apparently, through which he can help with some community recovery patients.

I murmur all the right things in response to his awkward broken sentences, but inside I’m thinking about exactly what those poverty-stricken junkies in shit-filled tower blocks will think when David – the faux middle-class exterior he worked so hard on during his medical training now soaked through his skin like a teak stain – turns up to talk through their problems with him. I can only imagine the laughs they’ll have at his expense when he’s gone. Still, it’s his personal flagellation, and it suits my plans. I have plans now. That realisation makes my stomach fizz.

For a moment I almost feel sorry for him, but then remember that it might not even be true. He could be going to get drunk, or going to meet someone, or anything. It wouldn’t be the first time, fresh starts or not. He’s had his secrets before. I have no time to check up on him. Not today anyway. My mind is too excited, too fixed on other things.

I tell him I’ve picked some colours for the bedroom and that I think he’ll like them. He pretends to care. I tell him I’ve taken my pills to save him having to ask. I think, if he could, he’d come home to watch me swallow them, but instead he has to accept my lie as truth. He wants me pliable. I’ve enjoyed our few days of almost contentment, but it can’t last. Not if I’m to save our love. But for now, I play along. I’m taking care of things. I just need to be brave. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

Once the call is over, I go back up to the bedroom and paint the lines of colour thicker and longer on the bedroom wall. Sunlight dapples them, and from the other side of the room it looks like all the colours of a forest. Leaves, definitely. I should maybe have got some pale browns too, and yellows, but it’s too late now. The greens will suffice. I look at the wall and think of leaves and trees, and so will he. I think maybe it’s all he thinks about. Can’t see the wood for the trees.

I wash my hands, cleaning away irritating dried drips that cling to my skin, and then go down to the cellar. The movers, under David’s guidance, brought several boxes straight down here. He didn’t ask me where I wanted them, but then he knows that I wouldn’t care. Not really. The past is the past. Why unearth graves all the time? I haven’t looked in these boxes in years.

It’s chilly under the ground, away from the windows and sunlight, and a single yellow bulb shines on me as I peer at the boxes, trying to find the right one. No one cares what cellars look like. The grime and grit of bare walls is in some ways more honest about the soul of a house.

I tread cautiously, not wanting to get dust on my clothes. A paint spot is fine, but dust could be questionable. David knows I don’t like a dirty house. I don’t want him to ask where any dust came from. I don’t want to lie to him any more than I have to. I love him.

I find what I’m looking for against the furthest damp wall where the pale light struggles to reach it. A stack of four cartons, wearier than the brighter brown of others we’ve stored down here – extra books, old files, that sort of thing – with far more age in their creased, sagging sides. These boxes themselves are old, nothing in them ever unpacked, and the cardboard is thicker and more sturdy. Solid boxes for hiding the remnants of lives in. All that was rescued from the burned-out wing of a house.

I move the top one carefully to the ground and peer in. Silver candlesticks I think. Some crockery. A delicate jewellery box. I move on. It takes me a while to find what I’m looking for. It’s hidden amongst the odds and ends of photographs and picture albums, and books that avoided the flames but still smell of charring. They don’t smell of smoke. Smoke is a pleasant smell. These smell of something destroyed; blackened and bitter. I push past the loose photos that flutter through my hands, but in one I catch a glimpse of my face; fuller, glowing with youth, and smiling. Fifteen maybe. It’s the face of a stranger. I ignore it and focus on my search. It’s in here somewhere. I hid it where I knew David wouldn’t look, amongst these relics that he knows are mine alone.

It’s right down at the bottom, under all the junk, but unharmed. The old notebook. The tricks of the trade as it were. It’s thin – I tore the last few pages out years ago because some things should stay secret – but it’s held together. I’m holding my breath as I open it, and the remaining pages are cool and warped slightly from years in the dark and damp, giving them a crisp, autumn leafy texture. The writing on the first page is careful – neat and underlined. Instructions from another life.

Pinch myself and say I AM AWAKE once an hour.

As I look at them it feels as if those words were written only moments ago, and I can see us sitting under the tree, and the breeze is wonderful and the lake ripples. It’s vivid and present, not a memory from a decade ago, and a strange sharp pain stabs in my stomach. I take a deep breath and suppress it.

I replace the boxes exactly as I found them and take the notebook upstairs, holding it like some fragile ancient text that might crumble in my hands when light hits it, rather than a cheap exercise book scavenged from Westlands all those years ago. I hide it in the zipped-up outer section of my gym bag where it won’t be seen.

It’s what Louise needs. I can’t wait to share it with her. She is my secret, and soon we’ll have our secret.

He isn’t too late home after all, coming through the door at five past seven. With the kitchen filled with cooking smells – I’ve spent my time waiting for him making a delicious Thai curry – I drag him upstairs to look at the colours in the bedroom.

‘What do you think?’ I ask. ‘I can’t decide between the Summer Leaf Green on the left or the Forest Haze on the right.’ Neither of them are the real names, but he’ll never know. I’ve made them up on the spur of the moment. Perhaps it’s overkill or over-excitement. I’m not even sure he hears me anyway. He’s staring at the strips that shine in the dying sunlight. He can see everything in them that I saw.

‘Why these colours?’ he asks. His voice is flat. Level. Dead. He turns to look at me, and I see it all in his cold eyes. Everything that sits between us.

Good, I think, steeling myself against the rage or silence to come, preparing bitter barbs to battle with.

And now it begins.