And then closes it again.
She can’t.
‘Let’s go for dinner,’ she says simply. ‘I’m sure we can find somewhere to eat.’
The women exchange a look.
‘Paula, please,’ Ivy begins, sitting down and pulling Paula down onto the bed with her. She encircles an arm around her friend’s shoulders. Paula pulls away, standing back up and grabbing for her coat. It’s in a pile at the foot of her bed and as she tries to turn it upright, something clatters to the floor.
It lands at Teddy’s feet. She reaches for it as Paula’s eyes widen. It’s John’s notebook. It’s fallen out of her pocket.
‘Give me that!’ she says in a high pitch as Teddy regards her with shock. Paula swallows and shakes her head. ‘Sorry, I mean, can I have that back, please?’
‘What is it?’ Teddy asks, holding firm to the thin notebook. Paula resists the urge to grab it and make a run for the door. This is all too much.
‘It’s . . . It’s just a . . . Nothing,’ Paula finishes lamely. ‘Just a notebook, nothing.’
Teddy stares at her and then down at the unassuming grey pad in her hands. ‘Is it yours?’
Paula blinks. ‘Um, no,’ she admits. ‘It was . . . John’s. I found it after he died. Can I have it back? Please?’
Teddy takes a second and then, reluctantly, reaches out to hand it back to Paula. It is Ivy that stops her.
‘Paula,’ she says with determination. ‘There’s clearly something going on. Something you want to tell us about, but can’t, for some reason.’ She pauses, her sweet expression perplexed and vulnerable. ‘Please. You can trust us, please believe that.’
Paula swallows hard, looking at her young friend. Another long moment passes.
‘OK,’ she says hoarsely at last. She turns to Teddy, who is still holding out the notepad. She nods towards the book without taking it. ‘OK.’
Teddy frowns and then nods back. She moves to the bed, taking a seat there. Inhaling deeply, she opens its pages. There is silence in the room as Paula watches her friend making her way through the scribbles inside. She looks up at last, still frowning.
‘I don’t understand,’ she says simply. Audrey moves to sit beside her as Ivy takes Paula’s hand, squeezing it.
‘What is it?’ Audrey asks, taking the notebook and scanning its contents for herself. She shakes her head. ‘It’s just pages and pages of numbers. The whole notebook, it’sfull of them. What does it mean? Are they dates? Times? Something else?’
Paula’s breathing is ragged as she fights back a confusing bundle of feelings. She has to stay steady for this. If she’s going to tell them the truth of it all, then she has to stay clear-headed and present.
‘It’s both,’ she says at last. ‘I found it not long after John’s accident. It took me a while to understand what it meant, but you’re right: it’s pages and pages of times and dates, going back years. I sat up all night, trying to put it together, and when I did, it all fell into place.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘It’s my . . . It’s a list of my . . . movements.’
There is silence in the room again, but this one is not full of expectation. It is dawning understanding. It is disgust.
‘John was . . .’ – Ivy swallows – ‘tracking you?’
‘Everything I did, for years,’ Paula nods. ‘Everywhere I went, he documented.’ She moves to the cabinet where tall bottles of expensive-looking still and sparkling water stand side by side. Carefully, she pours herself a glass, amazed that her hands are not shaking. They have done every time she’s thought of the notebook over these last few months. Every time she thought about anyone finding it. She takes a long sip and looks out of the window and into the distance. ‘I’ve been telling everyone – and myself – that I loved him and that we were happy. I even believed it some of the time.’ She turns to her friends, eyes wide. ‘Honestly, my whole life was turned upside down by losing him. I had no one and nothing, and I missed him so much. My John was the centre of my universe.’ She swallows with some difficulty. ‘But the trouble with that is that hemadehimself the centre of my universe. He made it so I had nothing else. He never left mealone, never let me have any freedom or choices. I belonged to him.’
Paula takes another long sip of her drink trying to steady her breathing. The last thing she wants to do right now is cry.
Ever since she heard the news about John’s fiery car crash, she has been trying not to cry. She didn’t want to cry because the tears would not have been for him or his death. They wouldn’t have been for their lost love or their many years of marriage. Any tears she wanted to shed in the last few months would’ve been for herself. They would’ve been for the thirty-three years John had stolen from her. They would’ve been for the friends he stopped her seeing. For the family she barely spoke to because of him. For the day she got a call to say her mother was dying, when he wouldn’t let her go visit to say goodbye.
‘He took so much from me,’ Paula continues in a shaky voice. ‘Not long after we got married, I told him I wanted to be a nurse, but he said I was too stupid. I think he wanted me to stay a carer, working in a care home because then he knew exactly where I was all the time. He would turn up there a lot, to check I was where I was supposed to be, I suppose. He was making notes about my routine even then. He was very jealous, too, and would fly into rages about me speaking to any other men. I think it suited him that I spent my working days around older people who were less likely to show any interest in me.’ She pauses. ‘Although the irony is that a lot of those elderly men were very handsy. They were much worse than many younger men.’ She turns back to the window and continues after a moment, ‘He didn’t want me driving, though I used to love it when I was young. He said it was because I was such a terrible, dangerous driver, and then hesaid I’d end up crashing with our children in the car. I believed him. I thought I was a danger to everyone around me.’
‘No wonder the first thing you wanted to buy was that car,’ Audrey murmurs, standing up and coming to stand beside Paula. She takes her arm, squeezing it hard.
‘I love my car,’ Paula says fiercely before looking down. ‘He didn’t let me have any money.’ She can barely hear herself speak, as the thoughts and realisations come faster. ‘He gave me a few coins for the bus every day but I couldn’t have my own credit card or access to our joint account. He told me we were hard up, so I couldn’t question anything. He took care of the mortgage and the bills. I never even knew how much things cost until he was gone. Tilly had to sit down and go through it all with me. She got me access to the account and ordered me my own card. But I think she just thought I was a hopeless, clueless idiotic little woman. Like I’d wanted, or asked, for John to take care of everything.’
‘So Tilly and Seb don’t know any of this?’ Audrey asks nicely.
‘No,’ Paula shakes her head. ‘And I’ve tried so hard to keep them from knowing. I didn’t want them to have to carry that; I wanted to protect them.’ She takes another deep breath. ‘How could I tell them how unhappy I’d been, or that their father was a cruel, selfish man who followed my every movement’ – she waves at the notebook on Teddy’s lap – ‘and wrote it all down so he could more easily control me.’ She pauses. ‘Their father wasn’t a good person.’
