Nearest Thing to Crazy (22 page)

I didn’t really know what it was, specifically, that I was searching for. Anything, perhaps, that would prove to me that I was not being obsessive and irrational. I needed what they call in counsellor-speak
‘validation’. Diaries? Hardly. Not Dan’s style at all. Phone bills, hotel bills? They’d barely had time to inscribe their affair into any kind of hard paper evidence. I just wasn’t sure that I knew Dan any more. I needed to find out whether the man I was married to was the man I thought I was married to, if that made sense. Even though I felt Dan’s behaviour provided a full justification for what I was doing, my stomach felt sore, as if it had been punched from the inside out, and my limbs felt heavy, as though they were trying to swim through mud and all my energy had been silted up by the flow of misery inside me.

I tried to pull open the top drawer of the filing cabinet but it didn’t budge. It was locked. I snagged my nail under the handle thanks to the unexpected resistance. Surely people only locked things when they had something to hide? I felt even more coldly determined to find out Dan’s secrets. I turned my attention to the drawer which slotted beneath the table. My hands shook but I steadied them. He was meticulously neat, and I was careful to replace the little piles of business cards, the Pritt Stick, calculator, Sellotape dispenser and so forth exactly as I had found them, but I couldn’t see any keys. I slid the drawer closed and looked around the room. There was nothing obvious on the desk, no little boxes or containers likely to contain a tiny key. Damn it. I still had the small cupboard to search, where he kept his stationery and computer bits and pieces. But, again, everything was neatly piled and placed with no obvious ‘key’ receptacle. I returned to the desk and sat down in Dan’s chair. Then I picked up the Campbell’s soup tin full of pens and tipped it upside down onto the desk.

There, in front of me, wasn’t just the filing cabinet key, but another, more interesting-looking, intricately fashioned, antique key which I didn’t recognize. I felt an adrenalin rush of euphoria, and the sick feeling in my stomach intensified. At last! I had been afraid that maybe Dan took the key with him. I picked it up and examined it closely, as if by doing so it would tell me where it belonged. But whatever it was, it couldn’t be here in the study. The only things on the floor were a couple of piles of magazines and the log basket, and I’d searched the solitary cupboard. No, whatever it was had to be somewhere else in the house. Still, at least I could make a start on the filing cabinet. I unlocked it and slid open the top drawer and quickly scanned the little tag labels on the top of each divider. They were the usual mundane, domestic-type categories: electricity, water rates, tax, bank. Towards the back of the drawer I found one marked telephone, but when I opened it I realized it was only for the house land line. I searched at the back of the file hoping that I’d find his mobile account, but there was nothing. And then I remembered it was paid for by the company. I wasn’t going to find any mobile evidence because all the bills would go to his office. I replaced the file in its sleeve and slammed the drawer shut and swore aloud.

Then I opened the bottom drawer and found myself staring at a space devoid of files, but filled by a large wooden casket. I just stared at it. I had never seen it before. The surface of the casket was silky smooth and cold to my touch. In the centre of the lid was a tiny inset brass square, engraved with Dan’s initials, D.E.B. I tried to lift it, but I couldn’t get my fingers under it. I slid the whole box towards the front of the drawer so that I could get some leverage from the back, and then managed to manhandle it up from the drawer. It was very heavy and awkward but I soon had it sitting on the floor in front of me. I picked up the key from Dan’s desk and then got back onto my knees, praying that it would fit the lock. It slotted in easily and I heard a gratifying click as the mechanism turned. I paused, feeling queasy and lightheaded with a mixture of guilt, curiosity and fear of what I was about to discover. But the fact that it existed, the fact that Dan had possessions which were locked and barred against me made me certain that I had a right to know. Obviously we were living a lie. Obviously I didn’t know my husband at all. Obviously the man I thought I knew inside out was a stranger to me, a deceiver and a liar.

But even through my fervent conviction that I had to know, a little voice warned me that I still had a choice before I crossed the Rubicon. I could turn the key back and replace the box in the cabinet, and let Dan keep whatever secrets he wished to keep from me hidden away. I could allow him his privacy and protect myself at the same time. There are some occasions when you are on one of life’s precipices and you know that once you have stepped off it there is no going back; life will never be the same again. The little voice of rationality was still there, warning me that this was one of those occasions, and that I should step backwards. But it was too late. Like an assassin who has centred his target in the crosshairs, I was already squeezing the trigger. My hands were already on the rim of the lid, and I started to lift it.

The first thing I saw was a bundle of letters tied with a blue silk ribbon. I recognized my own hand on the envelopes, although it was a hand both neater and smaller than my current untidy scrawl. They were letters I had written to Dan during our courtship. They were post-marked south-west London and addressed to Dan at LSE; letters that he had kept from me to him, lovingly wrapped and stored in his little treasure chest. Seeing them there was almost as powerful an admonishment for what I was doing as Dan himself walking in on me and catching me in the act. How could I do this? But I was long past the point of no return. I picked them up and put them to my nose and breathed in – what? – memories? The paper felt smooth and cold in my hand, and the silky ribbon slipped through my fingers as I carefully untied the bow, releasing the pile so that the envelopes fluttered freely onto the floor in front of me. I opened the nearest one and started to read, and as I did so I was transported back to a small bedroom late at night, propped up against the pillows and crafting the words in my best handwriting.

‘My darling Dan, It,s now exactly one hour and twenty two minutes since we said goodnight, and I wanted to tell you how much I am missing you and wishing you were here with me right now, in my little bed. So when I finish writing this, I shall turn off the light and imagine you are here and think of all the naughty things I could do to you. I can barely breathe for thinking about what will happen when I see you at the weekend. It seems like forever, although I know it,s only three more nights. And by the time you read this I shall hopefully be seeing you tomorrow!!!! I am going to be a very good girl and not ring you, so that you can get on with your revision, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you with all my heart and more . . .

C xxxxxxxxxxxx

I laughed bitterly. ‘I am going to be a very good girl . . .’ even then it was obvious where the balance of power lay in our relationship. I was always the one wanting more than he was prepared to offer, always the one having to be careful not to swamp him with the huge amount of love I had to give, and which I now knew Dan saw as neediness. It was over thirty years ago, but the memory of how I was feeling then was as vivid as if it had been last night. I was happy and in love.

I plucked another letter from the pile at random.

‘Darling Dan,

I am writing this letter to you to tell you that I understand completely. The last thing in the world I would want is for you to worry about me. I shall be fine. Like you said, it must be hard being at university and making all those new friends and being tied to a girlfriend. I really do understand and I just want you to be happy. It would be nice to keep in touch and to know how you are. It,s been a wonderful eight months and maybe it would have been better if we,d met up later on. But then we can,t choose what life throws at us, can we? I just hope that you do really well with your course. I know you will, because you are very clever, unlike me, ha ha. Maybe we,ll bump into each other in the pub and if we do I,d hate it if you felt you couldn,t still say ‘hi’. It would be good to know how you are. Anyway, see you around, as they say. C xx

P.S. I hope you won,t mind if I pop and see your mum some time. She was so kind to me over Dad . . .

I remembered struggling to write those brave lines, saying how I would be all right when in reality I was devastated, completely falling apart. Dan had said he needed space, that it was all too much, we were getting too serious and he wanted a break. I suppose I had leant on him quite a bit after Dad . . . Nothing helped like being able to talk to Dan about how I was feeling. I couldn’t talk to Mum because she was far too caught up in her own grief to have room for mine and she was . . . well, she was who she was, and so I just felt incredibly lucky having someone special of my own. And Dan understood because he’d lost his own father when he was fourteen to heart disease. All very different to the way I’d lost my dad, but I guess the grief, the loss, the hole left in our lives was the same. Dan seemed so sorted about everything and it was good for me to see that he’d survived it and seemed to be okay. The distraction of a love interest was brilliant for me. We used to have two-hour-long phone conversations late at night which, at the time, neither of us wanted to end. We’d go through those silly games of ‘You put the phone down first . . . no . . . you . . . Okay, on the count of three . . .’ and then ‘Are you still there . . . ?’ It was me who was
always
still there.

But the break, for me, wasn’t great timing. He had told me that my neediness had made him feel claustrophobic and trapped. He said we were too young to be so serious. He said that it would be good for me to see other people, that we both needed space to grow up a bit. He wanted to be able to play football on Saturdays and go out drinking afterwards with the boys. He wanted to go on the uni ski trip with his mates and not feel guilty about going without me.

A couple of weeks later I had gone to see his mum and she had told me, a bit awkwardly, that she thought part of the reason we’d split up was because my grief had brought back bad memories for Dan, which made me feel even worse. But then I heard through a friend that he’d started going out with some girl on his course straight after the split, and when I asked her name I realized I’d met her. She’d been in the pub a couple of times and I remembered noticing the way Dan smiled at her and touched her arm when he talked to her. It didn’t last long, though. She dumped him after a few months for a medical student. He was miserable and drunk late one night and so he called me. And I was just so damned grateful.

But I wasn’t doing this to revisit our love affair, was I? I knew what was in those letters and didn’t need to waste time on some self-indulgent reminiscence of all our good, and bad, times. I carefully retied the bundle and delved once more into the box. There was a collection of photographs of Laura, and some of the important childhood paraphernalia that we all like to keep, such as the Father’s Day cards she had made for him. I almost tossed them aside carelessly, because these were not the things I wanted to find. I didn’t want to find things that showed me what a sweet person Dan was. A good father, a kind man. A softie who kept silly little mementoes from his little girl’s childhood. This was not the sort of thing I wanted to know about him – oh no, not at all. And then I found a postcard, standing on its edge, so tight up against the side of the box that I could easily have overlooked it. I slid it out. It had a picture of the Trevi fountain on the front. I was euphoric. This was more like it. Yes, this was definitely more like it. I nearly laughed out loud. Rome. How wonderfully appropriate. Rome.

I turned it over and started to read, struggling to keep my trembling hand still.

THEY SAY ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. AND YOU WERE THERE WHEN IT MATTERED.

ARRIVEDERCI AND REMEMBER LA FIAMMA DELL,AMORE CONTINUA A BRUCIARE.

XXXXX

No signature, just kisses. And what the hell did that mean? Something of love continuing to something. There was no date on it. All I could say for sure was that it was from Rome and that it was from a woman.

I stared at it as if by looking at it for long enough some truth would reveal itself. But I wasn’t looking for truths, I was looking for lies.

I think if I’m honest with myself, I’d known for years, but it had been easier to pretend. At least when I say ‘I knew’, I mean I suspected. I had suspected so strongly that I had confronted Dan about it. I knew instinctively. I don’t know how, but I did. His client seemed particularly demanding. I couldn’t understand why it was that Dan had to keep flying over there, spending a week at a time. And when he came home there was something about him, something almost indefinably different. It wasn’t that he wasn’t loving towards me. I’d say, if anything, when he first got back from his trips he’d be more so. And I got presents that seemed far more generous than usual. A gold bracelet one time; another time a set of dolphin earrings; a designer handbag. Lovely presents. But after the initial burst of romance upon his return, I sensed his withdrawal from me. He would disappear into his study after supper, saying he’d got papers to write, reports to read. And long after I’d gone to bed, I’d hear music playing down below. I remember thinking at the time that he was behaving a bit like a love-sick teenager. Eventually I had confronted him, sort of jokingly at first. I remember saying something like, ‘God, Dan, you’re going over there so often anyone might think you’ve got another woman . . .’ and I remember to this day the look on his face when I said that. It was a look of sheer, blind panic. And I knew. Right then, just like that, I knew. Everything suddenly made sense. The presents, the guilt-fuelled attention towards me, followed by the pining for
her.
I’d backed off, of course. I mean I had a baby, a tiny baby. Laura must have been all of a year old. And I had to be careful. I had to be really careful what I said, and to know what the consequences might be. I had to be sure that if I did confront him, seriously confront him, and he told me that yes, he did have another woman, that I knew what I’d do if he said he was leaving me, going to live with her. And I didn’t want that. I really couldn’t have coped with that, after everything else. In the end I decided that I should just wait and hope that it would blow itself out. Instead of talking to Dan I talked to the professionals, and they gave me drugs that numbed my feelings so that I wouldn’t have to suffer the pain. I can’t say I forgot about it. You don’t ever forget about those sorts of things. The memories cruise like hungry sharks just below the surface of your subconscious, ever watchful for the next feeding opportunity. And right now they were back. Oh yes, they were back. I could feel them inside me, snapping away at these latest morsels.