The Rose Petal Beach Read online

  Once again it’s me who can see what a mess they’ve got themselves into and it’s me who has the solution. Anyone would think it was my marriage.

  6

  Tami

  Anansy and Cora are tucked up in their beds, so excited they can hardly keep still. Beatrix is looking after them tonight so she’s brought over a sleeping bag to use on the roll-out bed we have between their beds.

  ‘You’re not going to sleep tonight, are you?’ I say to the three of them as they peek out from under their rainbow of covers.

  ‘We will,’ they reply in unison – even Beatrix.

  My body sags in defeat at how this is going to pan out. ‘All three of you are going to be a mess tomorrow,’ I state. ‘I’m going to suffer for this when you all get really tired really early and nothing I do will be good enough.’

  ‘We’re going to be good,’ Cora says, her mouth hidden by her yellow duvet, but her little nose and tapered, large brown eyes shining with unvented exhilaration.

  ‘Very good,’ Anansy, with her pink duvet tucked under chin, her expression the mirror image of Cora’s, adds.

  ‘Really, very good,’ Beatrix ends. Her eyes are green, her hair is blonde, her skin is pale but she looks exactly like the girls – as if the intoxicating thrill of Christmas, their birthdays and every holiday ever been on have been torturous compared to this.

  ‘Right. I trust you.’ Said by me with a hitch of my eyebrows and the quiet resignation of a person who knows their kids and knows her friend. I don’t, of course, I don’t trust them. I don’t think I’ll ever completely trust another human being again after what he had done. This is what this is about: Scott has asked me – begged, actually – to talk. I do not want to talk. I want to forget this awful thing is happening, I want to skip to the future when we’ve dealt with it; or I want to go back in time to the point where my marriage was so horrible that he had to look elsewhere and stop it from happening at all. I don’t know when that moment was. I can guess, I can imagine, I can think I feel it but I don’t know. I have no way at all to place the pad of my finger at that location on the map of my life and know that’s where it all started to fall apart.

  ‘I love you, see you tomorrow.’ I kiss Cora. ‘I love you, see you tomorrow.’ I kiss Anansy. ‘I love you, thank you and see you tomorrow.’ I smile at Beatrix. She offers me back concern and courage wrapped in a smile.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ she mouths at me.

  I nod, knowing I won’t be.

  We haven’t spoken as we walk into town. Scott has been taking his laptop with him on the school run these past couple of days, looking like a packhorse with his workbag, his laptop bag and the girls’ bags hanging off him, so he can stay out of the way until the girls are home and he can have them as a barrier to me ignoring him. So he’d had to ring earlier to ask what sort of food I fancied while we talked. I’d hung up on him in reply.

  I cannot speak to him. Every time I try to, a text message will pop into my head, the image it conjures up like a knife to the guts. I’m not sure which causes more trauma, more bruising: the emotional messages or the sexual ones. But they all hurt, they all bring me up short.

  ‘Are we not going to speak at all?’ he eventually says. Scott can’t handle silence, which is why he has been trying to get me to talk, why he needs the girls to be around before he is alone with me. ‘We can’t carry on like this, we need to talk.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘TB—’

  ‘I’ve told you not to call me that. I know I can’t ask much of you, but I’d really rather like it if you didn’t insult me by calling me things that remind me of the life we once had.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘What is there to talk about, Scott?’

  ‘How we’re going to repair this marriage. Unless you want to break up our family without even trying?’

  We’re walking along Church Road, the road that feeds another road that feeds another road all the way into Brighton. Usually we’d walk along the seafront, we’d pause and stare at the water as we talked, we’d casually sling our arms around each other, move in close to share body heat, gaze at each other and kiss, a stupid grin on our faces. Scott had been heading there, but I had set the route, up here, with the darkened shops, and odd splashes of light from a restaurant or a shop with their lights left on all night. It seemed appropriate: sombre with an unsubtle hint of hopelessness.

  I have not answered his question by the time we pass Tesco, which is brightly lit, full of people who seem to move slowly and aimlessly like zombies gathering supplies, and move on towards the end of George Street. I am reticent and hesitant about answering because I do not know if I want to save this relationship.

  ‘Do you want to save this relationship or not?’ he asks, indignantly. ‘Because we both have to work on it, we both have to make changes.’

  ‘I don’t know if I do want to save it, actually.’

  Outside the Italian restaurant that hugs the corner of Ventnor Villas and Church Road, Scott halts.

  ‘You don’t know if you want to save us?’ He is incredulous. A tremor of anxiety trickles through his surprise.

  Before stopping too I shift to one side so a young couple, arms linked, bodies close, can pass us. I gaze longingly at them as they pass – so much ahead of them, so much innocence. I am standing in the island of light the lamppost casts and Scott joins me, putting us under a spotlight. My line of vision strays to the restaurant, to the diners who are seated in there. Eating, drinking, living. I wonder how many of them are cheating? How many of them have been cheated on. How many of them feel the absolute agony of loving the one person they can’t be with any more. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘What about what I want? Does that count?’

  Yours are the only wants that have counted for a long time, I say in my head. But I would never hurt him by saying that, especially not when his body is so tense and fretful, his hands are itching to grab me, shake sense into me, make me rethink what I am saying.

  ‘Look.’ I speak like him. More than I should, more than I want to. I’m sure it’s because we grew up in the same place, I’m sure it’s not because I’ve lost my identity, being with him. ‘Our situation is too damaged, it can’t be fixed.’

  ‘You’re not being fair. You’re deciding to break up our family without giving us a chance.’

  ‘I wondered when you would come out with that and admit you think it’s my fault that you cheated.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have looked somewhere else if I was happy in the relationship,’ he states, less desperate and more righteous.

  Those words aren’t unexpected, I knew he was going to throw them at me because he’s been throwing variations of them at me since he told me the truth, but to hear them is a different experience altogether. I am suddenly outside of myself, I am perched atop the lamppost, looking at the two of us, and I can see myself clearly. My hair needs washing and re-twisting to smooth away the escaping strands. My skin is dull and blemished, my eyes are beleaguered and red from the constant rubbing, my lips are dry from constantly being bitten and mashed together in anxiety, my body has shed weight so my clothes are starting to swamp me. This is what Scott sees, this is what he is telling me he has been seeing and has found wanting. This is the woman who wasn’t enough for him so he had to look elsewhere. This is who I am.

  ‘Do you know, I expected you to say that. And if the man I married, the man I loved all these years, had said it, it would have devastated me, but from you, it’s water off a duck’s back.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I am the man you married.’

  It’s my turn to sneer, whether I do so on my face or not, I’m not sure. ‘The man I married wasn’t a porn user, obsessed with money and making sure he looked good at all costs. He was kind and had a hug or kiss for me that wouldn’t always have to lead to sex. Pornstyle sex, obviously. The man I married listened when I talked, he cried when his daughters were born and he held my hand
sometimes just for the sake of it. The man I married once gave a Big Issue seller his last fiver because it was cold and he wanted the man to have enough for a cup of coffee. The man I married wrote my name in the stars. He found me one hundred pebbles on Brighton beach just because, then put them all back where he found them because he didn’t want to further ruin the miniature ecosystem of the beach. The man I married once played horsey with his girls in the garden even though it was more mud than grass and so had to bin his favourite pair of trousers. And he stayed up every night for a week when one of his daughters had chickenpox to stop her from scratching, to keep an eye on her temperature and to read her stories. You are not that man.

  ‘I don’t know where the Scott Challey I married went, but it’s not you. It’s like every day you killed the real Scott Challey a tiny little bit until he completely disappeared and all that is left is a man who could have an affair and would behave in ways that would not only see him arrested for sexual assault but would make me think he was capable of it. You’ve taken away my best friend, my lover and the father of my children.’

  All those words have not been formed like that in my mind before. I didn’t realise that was how I felt until I was telling him those things. It’s true, though. I don’t know who he is any more. What has happened has dragged me out of denial, out of that comfortable coma of getting through the day into the waking world of living with a complete stranger.

  Scott has been taking in what I have been saying with an impassive face. He is not incredulous or shocked any longer, he has stepped back to anger. And I see him again: the boy who told Mr McCoy he would cut out his heart with a spoon and feed it to his dog. He rears up in Scott’s body, unveiling himself on his face, in the sinews of his body, in the way he stands and breathes. His hands curl into fists as his face twists and he opens his mouth.

  ‘You’re so hard done by, aren’t you?’ he jeers. ‘So hard done by but you have no problem spending my money, living in my house, driving my car, do you? And what about me? The person I married was this cool, laid-back woman who was hot and sexy and up for trying out different things. She was funny and welcoming and I could trust her. And now I have to live with this neurotic, frumpy prude who can’t be bothered to put on a bit of lippy so she doesn’t show me up when we’re out together. And sex? What’s that? There’s not a man out there who would put up with no sex like I’ve had to. And let’s not even bother thinking about you doing something for me without first fretting about how it’ll affect the kids. Because that’s all you care about, isn’t it? Your ridiculous need to micromanage every aspect of the children’s lives at the expense of our life together. When was the last time we even had a decent conversation, hmm, Tami? Are you at all surprised I needed someone else to rely on? To hold me? To make love to? I was getting none of that at home, from the person who was meant to give me all that.’ He comes right up to me, his face is contorted with anger, accentuated by the orangey light of the lamppost, and his voice a vicious snarl. ‘Why wouldn’t I look elsewhere when I’ve got a wallflower at my table and an ice block in my bed?’

  His words settle like dust all over us, another layer of accusation and hurt upon what I have said. There is an oddly satisfying irony to this: he started the conversation to make me agree to ‘rescuing’ our marriage, and now he’s come round to the same conclusion as I have.

  ‘So you agree, we’ve nothing left to save?’ I say. ‘We can get on with the process of splitting up?’

  Scott immediately pulls back, physically, emotionally. His body changes, his face alters, his whole manner is now conciliatory. ‘No, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that neither of us is perfect. I don’t want to split up.’

  ‘Why not?’ I shriek at him. ‘I’m terrible, I’m awful, I’m a frigid frump, why don’t you want to split up? This is your chance to start again with your perfect woman who’s interesting inside and outside of the bedroom. You can go be with her.’ With Mirabelle. Even though it’ll be a knife through my heart if I have to see them together, and the children will not understand why he’s living there and not with us, but I will get used to it, we will get used to it. ‘This is your chance at the life you obviously don’t have with me.’

  ‘I don’t want to split up,’ he insists. He is calmer, gentler, softer. ‘I want us to work this out, not to split up.’

  I want to work it out, too, of course I do. I love him. I’m not sure how my life would function without him in it. How I would wake up each morning and be able to breathe without him there or knowing he was going to be there? Even in all this misery, I still see flashes of the old Scott, the real Scott. But if I stay, it will be more of the same. Too much of the new Scott, slivers of the old Scott, and always the knowledge that he was capable of giving himself to someone else. Body, soul, heart. What was left for me were the entrails of his personality. Even in everything, everything I know I deserve better, more.

  My feet take charge, turning me around and continuing the walk towards Brighton, towards our destination. Scott is forced to follow. We have to talk about this some more, I have to make him see that splitting up is the only way I will be able to stay sane.

  We’ve walked together, we’ve sat down together in this restaurant, but we have not talked together since we were standing outside the other restaurant. I am thinking about the dissolution of our lives. I am thinking about divorce.

  There is so much to sort out, the house, my work, telling people. Telling the girls. Every time I think about that my brain veers away from the realities, the practicalities of separating.

  Divorce. The word is a nightmare all on its own. It is huge, and frightening and insurmountable. I am standing at the bottom, staring up and up and up but I still cannot see the top. How can I climb it when I have no realistic concept of how big it is? From my position at the foot of this Everest-type word I lower my head, turn to my right, trying to see to the end of it, trying to see how far it stretches, to see if I can see the final ‘E’, but no, it is too far away, it goes on for too long. How can I even begin to think about going around it if I cannot see how long it goes on for? There is no way to get over it, or around it, I have to go through it. And it looks terrifying in there. It looks like I will be battling through long, lightless tunnels, feeling my way as I go, stumbling, falling, hurting myself and knowing that to turn back will only mean I will probably have to go through it again, and this time it will seem even scarier because I will not know how to get to the other side.

  I am getting divorced. This was not meant to happen to me. To us. To our relationship. To our family.

  ‘Remember that time we had that two-day stopover in Turkey on the way to Egypt?’ Scott says to me.

  I nod, my gaze lowered to the stiff white tablecloth underneath my bread plate, butter knife and little rectangle of pale, unsalted butter. ‘Yes,’ I mumble.

  ‘Remember when we got to the hotel and they refused to give us a double room because we weren’t married and they didn’t want us lowering the reputation of their flea-pit hotel by us sleeping in the same room?’

  I nod again, the smile nudging at the edges of my mouth as the memory is ignited and I’m being tugged back to the sights, sounds and smells of that time.

  ‘And remember, after you’d given them the dressing down to end all dressing downs, they totally backed off but would only give us a twin room?’

  The smile wants to get bigger, to show itself on my face, in the movements of my body.

  ‘And remember we went out to get some food and ended up eating in the equivalent of that horrible greasy spoon in Brighton? And then when we came back to the hotel we found that a cat had got in through the open window and peed on your bed? And we were scrunched up in my little bed and you kept going, “I know I shut that window before we went out. Do you think they let the cat in on purpose and just opened the window to cover their backs?” And I kept saying, “You’re really very optimistic to think it’s a cat. I mean, how would
a cat know to pee on your bed and not mine?”’

  We’d talked and laughed, our bodies spooned together but both still hanging a little over the edge of the bed. Those were the types of memories that welled up when you thought of all the reasons why you loved someone.

  ‘Remember?’ Scott asks.

  ‘Yes, I remember, Scott, what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I … just … Splitting up … Tami, I know you don’t want this, and I don’t want this. Please. We had something so good, so special. Somewhere along the line we lost sight of that. But I think we should fight for what we had, what we could have again.’

  I shake my head. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want all those memories, like the ones he’s just talked about to be rewritten, unwritten actually, by the process of staying together in the reality of an affair. An affair is like unpicking the thread that binds your marriage then using that thread to make something completely new and, of course, tainted. Our relationship is tainted, no matter how we move on from here, and if I have to look at him every day, finding out new things about how and when he betrayed me, I know my memories will not withstand the invalidation of significant or even subtle rewrites. I don’t want to fight to stop any unpicking, unmaking, undoing. I want to keep what I have intact and to do that, I have to walk away now.

  ‘We can’t do this to the children,’ Scott says, ‘without knowing we tried everything to make it work.’

  I think of telling the girls that Mama and Dad wouldn’t be living together any more. That they wouldn’t see both of us every day from now on. I can’t imagine the look on their faces, the horror that will slowly dawn on them that their family is over. They have friends with divorced parents, who have two homes and who are fine. They are happy, healthy, thriving. But did they get that way instantly? How did they feel in the first few weeks, days, hours? How did they manage to make sense of it? I conjure up Cora’s face, how she will shut down, stiffen her lips and knit her forehead together in a frown; I picture Anansy’s face, how her eyes will widen and her mouth will open as she starts to breathe fast and anxiously. Can I really do this to them without trying everything first?