“Successful actresses are either beautiful or they’re good at acting…”
The more he drank, the worse it got.
“You are neither of those things.”
It was as though he wanted to hurt me, provoke a reaction.
“I keep wondering who you fucked this time to get the part.”
He succeeded.
I didn’t mean to slap him, I know I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m deeply ashamed of myself. But I’ve spent a lifetime thinking that I wasn’t good enough, and his cruel words echoed my own insecurities so loud and clear, something inside me just snapped. I’ve never felt that I’m good enough at anything; no matter how hard I try, I just don’t fit. If my husband can see it, then surely it’s only a matter of time until everyone else sees it too.
My response wasn’t just physical. I told him I wanted a divorce, because I wanted to hurt him back. If he had let me have the child I wanted, I would have given up the career he said had come between us, but the answer was always the same: no. He didn’t trust me in more ways than one. We were going weeks, sometimes months, without a shred of intimacy, as though touching me might accidentally get me pregnant. I’m so lonely now it physically hurts.
I’ll never forget what he said as I walked out of the restaurant, or the expression on his face when I turned back to look at him. I don’t think it was just the drink talking, he looked as if he meant it.
“I’ll ruin you if you leave me.”
I head upstairs, pull off my running clothes, and take a shower. The water is too hot, but I don’t bother to adjust the temperature. I let it scald my skin, as though I think I deserve the pain. Then I head into the bedroom to get dressed for work. I open the wardrobe slowly, as though something terrible might be hiding inside. It is. I bend down and remove the shoebox I found in the attic, then sit on the bed before lifting the lid. I stare at the contents for a while, as though touching them might burn my fingers. Then I remove the stack of plain vintage postcards and spread them out over the duvet. There must be more than fifty. The white cotton provides a lackluster camouflage for the yellowing rectangles of card, so that my eyes are even more drawn to the spidery black ink decorating each one. They are all identical: the same words, written in the same feminine scrawl, by the same hand.
I know who you are.
I thought we had thrown all of these away. I don’t know why Ben would have kept them. For evidence I suppose … in case the stalker ever returned.
I put the cards back in the box and slide it under the bed. Hiding the truth from ourselves is a similar game to hiding it from others, it just comes with a stricter set of rules.
Once dressed, I head back downstairs and stare at the huge bunch of flowers on the kitchen table, accompanied by the tiny card reading, Sorry. I pick them up, needing both hands to do so. My foot connects with the large stainless-steel pedal bin and the lid opens obediently, ready to swallow my rubbish, but also revealing its own. My hands hover above the trash while my eyes try to translate what they are seeing: two empty black plastic bottles that I’ve never seen before. I pick one up to read the label. Lighter gel? We don’t even have a barbecue. I put the empty bottle back and push the flowers down on top of them inside the bin, a mess of petals and thorns hiding everything that lies beneath.
Sixteen
Essex, 1987
I wake up in the pink-and-white bedroom with a terrible tummyache. I can see daylight behind the curtains covered in rainbows, but when I pull them back, there are bars on the windows and a big gray sky. I’m hungry and I can smell toast, so I creep over to the door and listen. My fingers reach up for the handle; it’s higher than the ones at home. As I slowly open the door, it makes a shh sound on the carpet, so I try extra hard to be quiet.
The walls in the hallway all look as if they have peeled, and it’s cold. Something bites my feet when I take a step forward,