My phone.
It’s in my hands, and I’m staring at it, and then I’m in the app lookingat the call button for Claire. I’m not coping. And I wish she was here to answer for what she’s done and to help me breathe. I want her here to please, please make everything okay in the way only she ever could. Please.
But Claire cannot fix this for me. She will never be able to fix anything for me again.
And my head is on the steering wheel. And my heart is somewhere out of my body, unprotected, already attacked, already failing. And I’m desperate. And my mother’s number is still in my phone. And she was so contrite when we last spoke. So contrite. And my finger is hovering over the unblock button. And I want to. And I almost do.
I almost do.
My thread is badly frayed and I’m moments away from it snapping. But I can’t let it snap. If it snaps, if I come undone, James gets away with everything, and I’m left vulnerable. And I’ve been working hard to change. So hard. But the only thing I can see to hold myself together, to seal up the fraying thread, is that ugly anger nestled inside me. I can’t even say it’s been sleeping. It’s been wide-awake for so long. But I’ve kept it in a cage, or at least behind a fence. But I need it. I need it if I’m going to survive this.
And so I think about James. I think about everything he’s taken from me. I think about everything he’s allowed me to believe. I think about the time he’s wasted and the daughter I’ll never have. The daughter I would have raised right, and loved, and shaped into a Good Person. And I think about how she’d have finally made me a Good Person. I think about how much I’ve failed. My biggest failing after Claire.
And I feel how angry it makes me. I feel how much it makes me hate him. And I reach out to that feeling like the last lifeline. I twine my fingers around it, sure of finding myself steady again, solid in my anger.
But the lifeline is slippery this time. I can’t quite get a firm grasp on it. Just as I feel I’m heaving myself upright on even feet, it slips through my fingers and I’m drowning again.
Once more for luck. I think about Marc, about Luca, about George. I think about Claire. I think about what my weakness allowed them to take from me, and I find a semblance of steadiness.
A text flashes up on my phone screen. Will.
I tap the message open.
Spoken to some lawyers like we said. It’s going to be hard, but I think we can nail him for this.
The words float in front of my eyes. Don’t sink in. What am I meant to do with this information right now? How am I meant to feel?
You should speak to some lawyers, too.
Jesus. I toss the phone onto the passenger seat, try deep breathing.
In, two, three, four.
Out, two, three, four.
Letting the push and pull of breath become my entire world feels good. But I know I can’t sit here in my car forever. Even so, how can I go home to James right now? How much more of the truth can I swallow? How many more lies dipped in honey can I speak? If my suspicions about him are right, then he might be more dangerous than anyone I’ve known. Falling apart in front of him could be a deadly mistake.
Will? My eyes flicker to the discarded phone and away again. I’m still not sure I trust him. And if I go there, if James finds out, he will immediately know that I’m onto him.
My fingers shake as I turn my key in the ignition. I wonder if my racing, chaotic thinking is the same thinking that Mad Mary submitted to in her easy slip into insanity. This woman I’ve never known suddenly looms large in my mind. I don’t want to be like her. Can’t be.
A pause. A deep breath. All I need to do is focus on the next five minutes at a time, on just getting through those five single minutes. And then the next, and then the next. That’s doable. I can keep an even head if only thinking about that, and I need an even head in order to move this car.
And so it’s the next five minutes I’m thinking about as my car slowly pulls into the road. I’m not entirely sure where I’m going yet, but that doesn’t matter. I just need to drive. And this five-minute focus is working, although it’s a little like having goggles, blinkers, and earplugs on in a neon rave. I can focus on what’s immediately in front of me, but I can feel the weight of everything else pulsing against me, fighting for attention.
After the first five minutes pass, I know that the next must be spent formulating a plan, or at least a destination. Not to Will’s. Not home. Not yet. Friends. Good friends. I had those once. Not anymore. Not in the same way. But I do still have friends.
Friends I can call on?
Five minutes.
That’s all I need to do. That’s all I need to plan. And it works. I have a destination in mind. It’s a very long drive away, and I don’t even know if she’ll be there, but it’s something.
I think about texting a heads-up, and then don’t. And then I do my best to think of nothing at all except getting to where I need to be. If I try to think of anything else, I might fall apart.
And so when Emily finds me on her doorstep, approaching ten o’clock in the evening, she’s surprised, to say the least.
“Natalie?”
