a person at the door. Someone called Thanks, the front door slammed, then a motorbike started up outside.
He hadn’t …?
She thumped down the stairs and into the kitchen. He had. The utter bastard had got an Indian delivered just for himself. ‘Why didn’t you get me something?’
‘You said you didn’t want any.’
She thumped around the kitchen and made herself a bowl of muesli.
To punish him, she slept in Vinnie’s bed.
When she woke on Sunday morning, everything that had happened seemed far less dramatic. Clearly, she’d been really stressed at work and finding it hard to adjust to Ed being away Monday to Friday. Whatever had happened to her in that mad hotel – and it probably hadn’t been an actual seizure – was the result of stress. Everyone had overreacted because they were drunk.
She and Ed were not falling apart. Everything just needed to be made normal again.
In their bedroom Ed was asleep. Even in slumber he looked worried.
‘Ed?’
He jumped awake, looked frightened, then his face softened into a smile. ‘Honey.’
‘We should talk.’
‘Okay. Right.’ He rubbed his eyes.
‘I’m afraid, Ed. I don’t want to have a label. I don’t want to have an “eating disorder”.’
‘But you have a label, you have an eating disorder.’
She hadn’t been expecting such a spirited comeback. ‘I can think myself better. I don’t need all this hospital stuff.’
‘You do need it.’
Frustration rose. In the past, Ed’s willingness to Follow the Instructions had seemed like a cute personality trait. But now he simply seemed wilfully stubborn.
‘Seriously, Cara, if you won’t get help, I can’t stay.’
Incredulously she asked, ‘Are you … threatening me?’
‘I guess I am.’
He couldn’t be serious.
On the pillow beside his head, his phone vibrated. ‘I’ve got to take this.’
Startled, she listened. What could be so important?
‘Scott,’ Ed said. ‘Thanks for calling back.’ He listened to whatever this Scott said. ‘You can? That’s great, man … Mostly Louth. I’ll email you the brief.’ He listened some more. ‘For a week anyway. Maybe longer. We can touch base on Friday. I’ll have a better idea then … Yeah? Great. Thanks, I owe you.’
He hung up, and Cara said, ‘What the hell, Ed? Did you just get someone to cover your work?’
‘A freelancer. Yep.’
‘Why? You’re staying here to spy on me? Ed, don’t be such a – a prick.’ She’d never before spoken to him in that way. ‘Tomorrow I’m going to work as normal.’
‘You need to go into hospital.’
‘You just want a skinny wife who doesn’t give you any trouble.’
‘Why would you say that?’ He sounded distraught. ‘When have I ever …? Cara, I love you. And you’re unhappy. I wish you were happier. Not for me. For you.’
She didn’t know how it had happened, but they were on opposite sides of an unsolvable problem.
‘Fuck you.’ She clambered off the bed. ‘Just fuck you, Ed.’
All morning they avoided each other. She ironed her uniforms and the kids’ clothes but picked out everything of Ed’s and left it, wrinkled, in the basket.
Had Ed gone actually insane? It was impossible to understand why he was making such a thing of this. But his mind worked in straight lines. Everything was black or white: there was no room for nuance.
Is this the hill that we die on? she wondered. Then, This can’t actually be happening. Hanging her crisply ironed shirts in the wardrobe, she was infused with sudden happiness. In far less than a second, a scenario played out like a movie: tomorrow morning leaving for work fifteen minutes early, stopping off at Tesco in Baggot Street, scooting round the aisles, picking up her favourites, sitting on ‘her’ bench, visiting ‘her’ bathroom, then showing up, bright and breezy, to start work at 10 a.m.
It was astonishing – after Friday night, her decision had been final: there would be no more of that behaviour. But the thought had popped back into her head, ambushed her, despite her iron resolve. This was Ed’s fault. All his talk of eating disorders had half convinced her that she had one. Hand on heart, she had to admit that she could no longer be a hundred per cent certain that she wouldn’t buy chocolate tomorrow. How utterly mortifying would it be to pass out, have a seizure, whatever it was, at work? They’d have to sack her. And what were her chances of getting a good reference?
For several minutes, she remained in the bedroom, trying to recapture the rigid resolve of earlier that morning, but it remained out of reach. No matter which way