“He makes me sick. And so do you.” And then she does something that I would never have expected from someone with her girls’ school training. She spits on the pavement in front of me, turns on her heel, and walks away.
It is the sort of gesture that once would have called forth a spew of vicious words. But they don’t come. I stare at her retreating back with my mouth open, indignation pulsing through my veins.
I walk to Mum’s, unsettled. I had assumed that my phone ringing off the hook was her trying to get through to me, but now that that woman has put paid to that theory, it feels, suddenly, important to check she’s all right. We may be in the midst of our worst argument to date, but usually we’d have patched things up by now, begun a tentative remediation. I unblock her number and try to call her as I walk, but it goesstraight to voicemail. I have no leverage with her anymore. Perhaps she meant it when she said she never wanted to see me again. The thought makes me feel inexplicably sad.
When I get to the house, there is no twitch of the curtain on my approach, and when I ring the bell, nobody comes to the door. Perhaps Tilly changed her mind and really did call the police.
—
When Jack getshome that evening, I wait until he is seated at the table before I broach the subject of the woman.
“Blond, red lipstick. Tall, about five eight. Do you know her?”
I watch his reaction carefully, and—yes—there it is. Once again, his eyes flick to the left. He takes a careful sip of wine. I log it but don’t react. Just continue to spoon pasta onto his plate. A simple dinner this evening; I wasn’t in the mood to slave away in the kitchen all afternoon. Not when Mum’s phone continues to go to voicemail. Not when I’m still fizzing from my encounter with that woman.
“It must have been Serena,” he says eventually.
“Serena?” Voice nice and light. Even though the bitch spat at my feet like I was nothing. Like I meant nothing. “She was…very angry to see me.”
He clears his throat. “Yes. I’m not surprised. Serena was…” A pause—slightly too long. I pause, too, as I’m spooning pasta onto my own plate. “An ex of mine.”
An ex. It would explain the vitriol. It would explain the fury. It wouldn’t explain why she knew exactly what Alice’s clothes looked like. Unless he did the same to her: dressed her up like a child’s doll just to stopper the chasm her absence left behind. Maybe I misjudged Serena. Maybe she was playing the exact same role I am. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Jack had an affair before me: He’s famouslycagey about his past. But what doesn’t make sense is how concerned she seemed about Alice. Too concerned for some jilted ex.
I decide to let it lie. Jack doesn’t like it when I press. But I mull over the problem in my head as I shovel pasta into my mouth.
It’s a few seconds later that I realize Jack’s looking at me. His brows are pulled together as he watches the fork travel to my mouth.
“Everything OK?” Sweet, light, girlish. Even as the problem of Serena churns over and over in my mind.
“All fine,” he says, but I don’t believe him. “It’s just—you’ve got quite a big portion there. That’s a lot of unnecessary calories.”
I place my fork—still full of spaghetti—back onto my plate. He did not just say that. The fury is so intense, I’m sure there’s a flicker of it on my face. I shut it down, force myself to breathe. This isn’t him. He’s pushing me away, testing my loyalty.
“Of course,” I say. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
But later, in bed, his words come back to me and the fury rises again, and I release it on him. I take control, tighten my fingers round his throat until he is gasping for breath. He is stronger than me. And it’s not long before he is on top of me, and his hand is tangled in my hair, and his breath is hot on my face as he pulls my head back by my scalp.
“Good girl. Good girl, Alice,” he says as he finishes.
Thirty-eight
I smear another pieceof white bread with butter. The full-fat stuff. Not that “naturally light” bollocks he has in the fridge. Fuck the diet. Fuck this new version of Jack. Fuck it all. Today I’m going to eat what I like. I cram the piece of bread into my mouth until it is bulging. A globule of jam lands on my chin, but I don’t wipe it away. I swallow, take another bite. The waistband of my—Alice’s—jeans is cutting into my stomach, but still I stuff in more and more and more.
“Am I interrupting?”
I look up. Martha is standing in the doorway, a bulging plastic bag clutched in her fist. The bread is still claggy in my mouth, so at first I can only chew at her. Then—with a not inconsiderable amount of effort—I swallow and wave my hand across the kitchen.
“Not at all. Go ahead.”
“I came to see you, actually,” she says.
I blink at her. This is unexpected. I have gone out of my way to avoid Martha since our first unfortunate encounter, and I can’t help but feel she has been doing the same to me.
“Why?” Brazen, bold. Entirely unlike the image I’ve been going to great lengths to portray to her.
She’s quiet for a moment. “I thought you might be hungry. He told me to bring some food.”
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine. So he doesn’t need to worry.”
