But she feels no relief at all, except on Alfie’s behalf.
Clutter and mess seem to close in on her as she walks through their house. In the kitchen she fills a tumbler of water and drinks greedily. It spills down her chin. Laundry has dried crisp and crumpled over a clothes rack in the corner, shoes are piled in a messy heap in the hallway. Washing-up lies waiting for attention. The highchair needs a wipe and traces of Alfie’s last meal here before Ruth’s mum picked him up are all over the kitchen floor.
When did I start letting everything go? Ruth wonders. When did the chaos of early motherhood segue into neglect? Neglect by her standards, anyhow. She would never have left the house in this state earlier in her marriage.
Where has Toby gone? When they came in, he slipped upstairs quietly. After everything she thought about him while she was away, it feels horrible to be alone with him now.
It’s as if the air in the house has thinned, as if this place no longer harbors them but has conspired to ruin them, turned them into people she hardly recognizes compared to the couple they were when they met.
She guzzles another glass of water.
A creak from above tells her that Toby is in the upstairs bathroom.
She thinks about going up there and confronting him with everything she suspects about him. She has to, now that she’s told Jayne. She can’t bury it any longer.
She remembers the shock on Jayne’s face and wonders if she can trust Jayne not to tell anyone else. Jayne will tell Mark, for sure. Unless Mark’s dead.
But Ruth finds it hard to connect to her earlier fear about the letter, since she has Toby with her and after what happened to the Elliott family.
So much has happened in such a short time. She feels as if her whole life has been turned upside down.
And she realizes her fear only felt real when she thought that Toby was likely to be Edie’s victim. She never considered whether the other two husbands might be in danger.
It seems impossible now. The letter is definitely a hoax.
What an unbelievably reckless thing for Edie to have done. A dangerous thing. A catalyst for a chain of events that has ended in a real tragedy. Her head is so muddled that she struggles to work out whether John Elliott’s suicide would have happened anyway. Shamefully, there is so much that she doesn’t remember about last night. She wonders if Emily will ever talk to her or Jayne again, after this.
And as for her own behavior. The guilt and embarrassment are overwhelming. Did she really point a loaded gun at her friend this morning?
I need help, Ruth thinks, and admitting this to herself gives rise to more feelings of panic and claustrophobia. She is afraid of what needs to be done next, to put everything right. She’s afraid of the confessions and confrontations that must happen and unsure if she has the courage to face up to any of it.
She wants her domestic dream to be intact. She’d give anything to make it so.
She wants Alfie home, desperately wants him. She’ll call her mum and tell her they’re back early but not go into the detail of why. She’ll just say she felt unwell, but she’s better now and can cope with the baby.
But shouldn’t she confront Toby first? She should. She will. They’ll have a talk. Now. It’ll be calm. They’re in a difficult situation but perhaps he can explain everything, and it will all be innocent,and life can go on and Ruth can get help and this will eventually be a blip in their relationship that they can forget, or look back on as a challenge they overcame. Together.
I’ll go upstairs now, she thinks. And say something.
She looks at the wine rack on top of the fridge. It’s empty. Which is a shame because a drink would help her get through this conversation. Never mind.
I’ll talk to Toby gently, she thinks, so he doesn’t feel as if I’m flinging terrible accusations at him, so he knows I love him and doesn’t suspect that I’ve been so horrified by what he might have done before talking to him about it.
She opens a pantry cupboard. On the top shelf, among old bottles of soy sauce and cider vinegar, she sees some cooking brandy.
Toby and I are rational people, professionals, we love each other, we’re parents. We can have a calm dialogue about this. He’ll explain to me why I’m wrong but understand why I’m asking.
She reaches for the bottle. It’ll take the edge off her nerves, calm the trembling that seems to have taken hold of her whole body.
As she reaches, she catches a whiff of body odor. Gross, she thinks. I need a shower. Perhaps I’ll take one first and then talk to him. It can’t be a civilized conversation if I’m unkempt and smelly. If I disgust myself I’ll surely disgust him, too.
Her firm belief that there are limits to other people’s tolerance of her, that she will offend or upset them if her behavior is just a little off kilter, means that the idea of presenting like this, of having been like this for most of today, even though she could hardly bathe at either of the Elliotts’ properties while they were going through such horror of their own, repulses her. And she expects it to repulse Toby, too. To reinforce his physical and emotional rejection of her.
She unscrews the lid of the brandy and puts it to her lips. Drinks. The liquid burns its way down her throat. She coughs.
“Ruth,” Toby says. “What are you doing?”
She turns. He’s behind her, his back to the light and his face in shadow. He’s angry. Disappointed in her. Disbelieving that he’s caught her like this. This, she knows, even before he speaks.
