She hurries into a bedroom and peers out of the rain-spattered window to the front of the house, hoping to see Jayne and Emily, but they’ve disappeared.
Her fear feels visceral. It makes her doubt everything Jayne said earlier, and she feels cross that she was hoodwinked by Jayne’s rationality and her reasonableness, which suddenly strikes Ruth as pedestrian and a sort of weapon that both Jayne and Mark wield to give themselves the upper hand socially.
But neither Ruth nor Toby buys into it entirely.
Toby’s always been quick to point out that Mark used to sound like a West Country lad. It was at their boarding school that Mark got rid of his accent, to assimilate better with the posh boys.
Mark already had good looks, sharp humor, and physical prowess of the sort that’s lauded at the cruelest institutions, and once he’d learned to speak the right way he yomped across the social divide and was officer class by the time he left university to join the army.
And Ruth can’t help thinking of Jayne the same way, sometimes, as someone who might have learned to assume an air of authority but hasn’t necessarily earned it.
But then isn’t that true of all of us in a way? she asks herself. Toby and Rob pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, just like Mark did. They were at the same school, with similar backgrounds. Likewise, Paul transformed himself from rugby coach to entrepreneur.
And I feel like an imposter in my job, for the same reason, she thinks. Because I’ve got authority that I don’t believe I deserve.
So, what if Jayne’s wrong to insist that this is just a hoax? Ruth asks herself.
Edie will know that we’ll assume it is. But perhaps that’s part of the joke she’s playing on us. Perhaps it’s a truly sick joke, and Edie has hurt someone.
She unscrews the bottle and takes another long drink.
Her gut instinct tells her that she’s right. It convinces her that something very bad has just begun. She drinks again and sinks down, to sit on the floor.
She’s so tired. It hits her like a train. Admitting to the fatigue she’s been suffering since Alfie’s birth hasn’t been an option, however debilitating it’s become. Not to the brilliant Flora, her own mother, who apparently juggled motherhood and a career effortlessly; not to her friends, who she’s barely seen since having Alfie and wouldn’t want to admit weakness to anyhow; and not to Toby, who can’t wait to hand the baby over like a baton when Ruth gets home from a late shift, performing that swift, crablike scuttle to his study as if staying in the room with his wife and child would hold him back somehow, tether him somewhere he doesn’t want to be.
The light under his study door stays on late, a slim yellow strip symbolizing rejection. She knows she should knock on the door, go in, massage his shoulders, talk to him, but something has shifted between them. He hasn’t touched her for so long. The physical absence of him is an ache and she doesn’t know how to treat it because she no longer feels like his equal, nor does she believe he thinks of her that way. Having Alfie has diminished her in her marriage. Physically, emotionally, mentally. She and Toby don’t talkany more about anything of interest. It’s all domestic trivia, worries about the baby that preoccupy her. She can see him switching off and she can’t understand it.
And there is worse, another layer of fear underpinning these anxieties, but this is all she can face up to just now. She pushes the rest back, things that are too painful to think about, even through the blissful numbness that the vodka is just starting to bring her.
She stands, grateful to ease the pressure her waistband is inflicting on her midriff. And even that reminds her of how much time she spends examining her shortcomings nowadays. How she is reduced to wondering what is wrong with her, to trying to figure out the puzzle her marriage has become. How she feels as if she doesn’t even recognize or even trust herself any longer.
She returns to look out of the bedroom window and takes in her surroundings a little more than the first time. This is the best bedroom, a glance into the others has told her that. Why shouldn’t she and Toby have it, for once? They usually acquiesce to the others, stronger characters all of them, more insistent on what they want. But this weekend is already different. Edie has made sure of that. And the men. By not turning up.
Did Toby lie about needing to see his sister tonight? Is he doing something else? She’s not sure and it’s hard to think about.
But she is starting to feel calmer and allows herself a scrap of optimism as she looks at the double bed, with its pretty cover, its simple wooden headboard, and its endless view down the valley. Perhaps here, away from home and from Alfie, perhaps Toby will want her again.
If he touches her, she’ll know that everything will be all right. She’ll forgive him the months of sexual drought in a heartbeat, she’ll do her best to forget the times when she noticed him look at Alfie as if the baby was a stranger, and at her as if he doesn’t recognize her any longer; she’ll relegate to history the endless eveningsspent in the same house yet apart, and the other troubling things, puzzle parts that she hasn’t dared to piece together for fear of what they’ll reveal.
She fetches her bag and puts it on the double bed, to claim the room. She scrutinizes what she can see out of the window, looking for Jayne and Emily, seeking the bright red of Jayne’s coat through the haze of the rain, but they’re nowhere to be seen.
The thought dogs her again: if I was a better mother, better wife, I’d be out there with them. Ruth wonders if they’ve found a phone signal yet. She takes another drink of vodka.
She’s going to try to put on a brave face, the way she always does, but it’s been harder and harder lately.
The awful truth is that this letter plays into a fear she’s been nursing, and trying to forget, but unable to. A fear that Toby is not who she thought he was.
That’s why she didn’t go out. Because only vodka can treat that fear.
And if she’s going to hold it at bay, she desperately needs Jayne and Emily to find a signal and confirm that Toby’s alive and well and where he said he was going to be, and that Alfie is still safely in the care of her mother.
“Hey,” I say, softly. We’re parked in a small market town, on the high street. Imogen’s head lolls against the car window and a slick of drool dampens her chin. I resist the urge to wipe it away with the side of my finger.
“Sleepy head,” I say. “Sorry to wake you.”
“Where are we?”
“I have to run an errand and I thought you might want to hang out here while I do. I shouldn’t be long.”
