His family would welcome this new person with open arms, relieved that Richard had found someone suitable. Perhaps, ultimately, the newcomer would become his wife, a stepmother for Matilda. Natalie herself would be spoken of in slightly hushed tones: the first wife, the mother of Richard’s first child – because probably there would be other children – someone of whom it wasn’t quite right to speak ill.
He would always be a good father to Matilda, she was sure: kind, committed, just. And how, or who, would she be? She didn’t know.
‘I don’t deserve you,’ she told him, ‘but for what it’s worth, I do still love you.’
‘I know you want me to say it back, but I can’t, not now,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe that love can feel like this.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Natalie said.
What more was there to say? She stood up and went slowly and heavily upstairs, got ready for bed, lay down in the dark and waited for sleep.
She listened to Richard’s footsteps creaking on the landing below. He used the bathroom and went into the room she had begun to think of as his. After a while she heard snoring.
Something still didn’t feel right.
She got up again and, as quietly and gently as she could, closed the bedroom door.
There was no couch in the counsellor’s office, just two overstuffed pastel armchairs next to a coffee table with a large box of tissues on it. Natalie imagined patient after patient – no, client after client – blubbing, and Louisa Mead delicately nudging the tissues towards them until they took the hint and blew their streaming noses.
Louisa invited her to take the other seat and Natalie perched, edged her buttocks back, tried to relax, wriggled, fidgeted, felt squeezed. The armchair was simultaneously cushiony and difficult to sit on. Something smaller and harder would have suited her fine. This was already like being loved to death.
Like the furniture in her office, Louisa was soft-looking, substantial and dressed in spring green. She had a round face with worried brown eyes and a sensible iron-grey haircut that reminded Natalie of Bella Madden, though Louisa seemed gentler, less of a cheerleader, more subtle. So this was the kind of person who made a living out of patching up the woes of married couples: motherly but a little mournful, blending the nurse’s dispassionate nurture with the tactful practicality of an undertaker.
‘So, Natalie, how are things?’ Louisa asked.
There was a large kitchen clock mounted on the wall by the door. Natalie’s session had officially started at 3.00 p.m., and it was now five past, which meant she had already had nearly a fiver’s worth of therapy.
‘Not too bad, I suppose,’ Natalie said, ‘could be worse. Could be better, obviously.’
There was more she could have said: how she was living from day to day, trying to get out of the house and keep busy, but not quite able to forget that Richard would have to return from work eventually, and that her heart would sink as soon as she heard his key in the door. She knew he was furious and hurt and distraught, and she could understand why, but her only defence against pure self-loathing was to withdraw from the way he saw the world and regard him as a hostile presence to be resisted and ignored.
Preserving her equanimity took effort – an effort so great it was difficult to concentrate on anything else. While Richard suffered and Matilda fretted, Natalie was dazed and distracted; she dropped things and forgot things and went from confusion to muddle to mess. It seemed to be impossible to ever focus her thoughts on the task in hand.
Even food had lost its appeal. She had not consciously made any decision to eat less, but all her clothes were noticeably looser. She was shrinking.
She had dreamed the night before that she was pregnant, and nobody could believe it because she was so thin. In the dream it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder how she could possibly be having a baby when she hadn’t had sex since that solitary attempt shortly before Matilda’s birth, which had not concluded in ejaculation. Still she’d woken up feeling surprisingly happy, until she’d remembered Richard was downstairs. Even in his sleep he emanated humiliation, anger and grief.
‘Tell me, Natalie,’ Louisa said, ‘why are you here?’
What would be an acceptable answer? ‘Because my marriage is in difficulty?’
Louisa nodded.
Phew! That was easy! I hope all the questions are like that!
Then Natalie realized that Louisa was going to let the silence drag on until Natalie filled it. A fiver’s worth of complete non-communication was a distinct possibility.
Natalie shrugged. ‘I’m here because Richard and I agreed that this was the best way forward.’
‘You understand the rationale behind me seeing each of you separately before I see you together? It’s so that you can speak freely about anything that is making you feel unhappy or uncomfortable or worried. Anything at all, whether it’s to do with friendships, family relationships, work, or caring for your baby. It’s Matilda, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
Louisa consulted the personal details form on her lap. ‘Nine months old.’
Natalie nodded.
‘Who’s looking after her today?’
‘A friend.’
Richard had asked Natalie not to tell Tina where she was going; he preferred not to disclose ‘this difficult stage we’re going through’ to anyone outside the family. Natalie had not respected this, which was something else to feel bad about. But Richard didn’t know that both Tina and Lucy had some idea of what had happened with Adele, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him – she’d let him down badly enough as it was. So
she’d told Tina about the discovery of the drawing, and the counselling, and it had been a relief not to have to come up with a lie.
Richard had pointed out that she could take some time off work, so that Matilda would be in the care of the nanny they were sharing with Jessie Oliver, but Natalie didn’t think this would create a good impression, not so soon after coming back from maternity leave. As for Richard’s suggestion that she could have asked her mother to babysit instead – could even have confided in her – no way.
She knew exactly how Pat would react if she told her; she would be angry, and distressed, and she would say, ‘But are you sure? What brought this on? What about Matilda?’ and then, if Natalie held her ground, she would start to blame herself. Natalie was going to need to be feeling very strong and sure indeed to face up to any of this.
‘Tell me about your friendships,’ Louisa said.
‘I don’t really see that as a problem area.’
‘So would you say you have generally good relationships with your friends?’
‘Yes, of course.’
There was a pause. Natalie added, ‘We’ve had our ups and downs. That’s inevitable, isn’t it? Over time, you change, sometimes you need a bit of space, then you come back together. I’ve known some of my friends since university. You can’t live in each other’s pockets. You have to cut people a bit of slack.’
‘Do you have any particularly close friends?’
‘Well . . . I suppose my favourite friends, though
I don’t actually see them all that often, are Tina and Lucy. They had a massive falling-out last year, but everything’s kind of patched up now.’
‘So do they often fall out with each other?’
‘Oh no, that was very unusual.’
‘And have you ever fallen out with either of them?’
‘I like a peaceful life, personally. I don’t get into fights with people.’
‘So are you happy with these friendships?’
‘Yes, I think I am. I think, you know, we’re all very different, we’re different personalities, but that’s part of what’s good about it. I mean, I’m the quiet one, really, the one in the middle. The other two are both quite strong characters. But they need me there. I’m sort of the jam in the sandwich.’
‘So are you happy with all your friendships?’
The clock ticked for perhaps half a minute before Natalie said, ‘I’m a little sad about one of my friendships.’
‘Why don’t you tell me about that,’ Louisa said and waited.
How many minutes would it take, how much would it cost to explain who Adele was, what they had done, what it meant? Best to be brief.
‘It’s a friend I met through antenatal class. She’s actually broken up with her partner now, and got together with someone new. He’s a single dad. She met him through her son’s nursery. Anyway, we were close for a time, and now she’s back at work and in a new relationship and we’ve kind of fizzled out. Which, you know, isn’t the end of the world; friendships come and go. But it’s a shame.’
‘So one of the relationships in a social network that you and Richard were closely involved in, that you joined for support, has broken down.’
‘It has, but to be honest I’m not sure how much of a chance she and Marcus really had. They never seemed very together. They hadn’t been together very long before they had the baby. I think he might have been a bit of an accident.’
‘Would you and Richard have seemed to be “together”, do you think?’
‘Oh yes. We’ve been together for ages. More than a decade.’
Louisa glanced down at the form in her lap. ‘So I see. And did you plan to start a family?’
‘Yes. I was pushing for it for ages before Richard agreed. I thought it would . . .’
‘Yes?’
Natalie shrugged. ‘I thought it would satisfy me. I thought if I had a baby, everything else would make sense.’
‘And did it?’
‘I think it did the opposite. I wanted to change my life, and my life had changed, but it wasn’t enough.’
‘You mentioned that you miss your friend. What was it you liked so much about her?’
‘Oh . . . I think I was really impressed by the way she was in the classes. If she felt something she didn’t bother to try to hide it. She said what she thought, and she did what she wanted to do. She didn’t care if people thought she was strange. She didn’t feel she had to be cheerful all the time, either. Or nice. Or careful. I just
really admired her for being willing to live like that.’
This was all true enough, but she knew it wasn’t the whole truth. She was selling Adele short.
She decided on a bold experiment: to see how it would sound out loud.
‘She was beautiful, of course. I didn’t see it at first. But then I did.’
‘You were attracted to her?’
‘I suppose I was. Especially once I knew that she was interested in me. I was flattered. And especially flattered that she wanted to draw me. I’m not exactly a remarkable physical specimen. But she made me feel like I was.’
‘Would you say the relationship was more than a friendship?’
Natalie sighed. ‘We had an encounter. A tryst. I suppose you might say she seduced me. A one-off. I didn’t really expect it to lead to anything, though, and it didn’t.’
‘Were you disappointed?’
‘No. Why would I be disappointed? What had happened was an absolute gift. She made me feel alive.’
‘Does Richard make you feel alive?’
‘Not in that way. No.’
‘Did he ever?’
‘I wasn’t with him because he made me feel alive,’ Natalie said. ‘I was with him because he made me feel safe.’
‘Safe from what?’
‘I didn’t want to be the person I might become if I crossed the line.’
‘What line?’
Natalie exhaled. ‘Why does it all have to be so public?’ she said. ‘Why can’t it just be private like it is for everyone else, just two people in a room, in a house, in a café, seeing if they can get along?’
‘All genuine relationships are ultimately private,’ Louisa said.
‘I know. I know they are. But . . . before you can be comfortable with someone, you have to go through all the sex and uncertainty to get there, don’t you?’
‘Is that a bad thing, do you think?’
Natalie hesitated. The clock ticked on.
‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s what I want. I think. It’s what I’m missing. It’s what I’ve never let myself have.’
‘All intimacy, all communication, involves risk,’ Louisa said. ‘The same goes for being here. But it seems to me that it’s a risk you’re willing to take.’
‘But it’s not. I haven’t wanted to risk anything. Not for years,’ Natalie said. ‘What happened with Adele happened with somebody before, a long time ago. So long it seems like another life. I was travelling – I was in New Zealand, which is where my brother lives. People often do things when they’re on holiday that they wouldn’t do normally, don’t they? I met this woman in a pub – we were staying in the same hostel. It was a complete fluke. I was only there because I couldn’t get a bus to Auckland till the next day. Surely nothing really life-changing could happen that much by chance? I knew I’d never see her again. But still, when Richard and I went to visit my brother a couple of years ago I had this fear, which was really almost a hope, that I’d bump into
her. But I didn’t, of course. I remember reading
Fear of Flying
and thinking that she was my zipless fuck. But I didn’t allow her to liberate me.’
There was another silence. Natalie remembered her mother saying:
Happiness doesn’t mean you’re immune to regret
. Then she rallied and went on.
‘I was seeing Richard when I met her, too,’ she said. ‘But the stakes were much lower. We were just girlfriend and boyfriend. We had a chance to get out of it then. I did tell him, and we broke up . . . but . . .’ She willed herself not to cry. ‘I missed him. We met up a couple of times . . . it was just such a relief to be with him. That’s when I decided he was what I wanted. I told him it was just something I had to get out of my system, and he gave me the benefit of the doubt.’
‘And does he still?’
‘This will sound odd, but I think the only way I can retain his trust is for us to make a clean break of it.’
‘And is that what you want?’
‘I have never really known what I want,’ Natalie said. ‘What I do know is what I don’t want. I don’t want to be on my own. I don’t want to be a divorced single parent. And I don’t want my parents to have to be ashamed of me.’
‘Why should they be?’
‘If they knew what had happened. What I’ve done. They’d be appalled. They’d be disgusted. They’d think I needed to get myself sorted out and save my marriage.’
‘And do you?’
‘If I don’t, why am I here? If my marriage fails and it’s all my fault they’ll never forgive me.’