The Art of Losing Read online

  Numbed by shock, I had felt detached and clinical as I sorted through these memories, and I was caught off guard by the sudden fury that shot through me. I thought of all the times that Lydia had held Louise up as the reason, the only reason, why she could not leave Martin, her pious declarations that she could not bear to tear a father apart from his child. I saw them for what they were. She was a coward, not wanting to face up to the reality of toppling herself off the lofty pedestal of Martin’s adoration, not wanting to dirty her own name, even to a man she no longer loved. Or had she been merely playing with me all along? Waiting for me to demean myself and tell my wife that I was leaving her for another woman, only to turn around with politely raised eyebrows and dismiss me as a fantasist for some secret sick gratification of her own? Ugly possibilities tangled themselves up in my head.

  I was on my feet now, my hands shaking. I snatched a vase from the sill and threw it with all my force at the wall, watching glass foam and splinter against the pale blue tiles and scatter around my feet. It wasn’t enough, did nothing to quell my rage. I had been a fool – a puppy panting after his mistress. I had thought that our secrets were bound up together, that only with each other were we truly honest. Now I saw that she had been playing with fire, torn between her physical desire for me and her reputation, not caring enough to tell me the truth. I saw the family we could have had – the two of us and Louise, other children. It slipped through my hands like water. The chance to grasp it had passed me by six years ago, and I had never known.

  There was a knocking at the door, soft at first, then more persistent. ‘Nicholas!’ Martin was calling, his voice distant and fuzzy in my head. ‘Nicholas, are you all right?’

  I unlocked the door and he pushed it open, his mouth forming into an O of surprise as he saw the glass shattered at my feet.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and looking at him then, my words were genuine; I had never felt more sorry for him. ‘I lost my balance and the vase fell.’ My words seemed to come from some way away, stiff and robotic.

  ‘Don’t worry, old chap, no problem at all,’ Martin was saying, scurrying forward, then retreating again, as if at a loss what to do. ‘But are you all right?’

  ‘I’m not feeling very well,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what’s come over me. I think I should go home.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Martin exclaimed. Haltingly, he held out a hand to help me over the mess of glass. I took it and stepped shakily forward. His hand felt warm, solid, in mine. ‘Please, do call me and let me know you’re feeling better tomorrow,’ he said anxiously as we went to the front door.

  I nodded and turned to leave, but a thought struck me and I turned back. ‘Do you have a piece of paper?’ I asked.

  Martin looked briefly quizzical, then appeared to shake the curiosity from his mind, as if it was more important that I should have what I wanted. He pointed towards a pad of notepaper next to the telephone. ‘This is Lydia’s,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I tore off a sheet. It was bordered with delicately drawn bluebells, picked out in cerulean against the cream notepaper. ‘I’m sorry for all the drama. I’ll call you soon.’ I left him in the doorway, wringing his hands in nervy concern, peering after me as I glanced back, his head bobbing up and down as he tried to digest my strange behaviour.

  Out on the street, I turned the corner and stopped the car. I pulled a pen from my pocket and smoothed the notepaper out on the dashboard. I wrote without pause for consideration, gripping the pen tightly to stop my fingers from shaking, letting the words flow by instinct on to the page.

  Lydia,

  There is so much to say and what I could say would never be enough. Suffice it to say that the scales have fallen from my eyes. I see you now for what you are: selfish, complacent, poisonous, evil. I only regret that it has taken me this long to end what should never have begun.

  There is no point in answering this letter. I don’t want to see you, speak to you, touch you: you are dead to me. The first time I saw you, I knew that I would always love you. But sometimes over time the things we know unravel into nothing more than the things we thought we knew. This time I was wrong.

  Nicholas

  I folded the paper back into my pocket, got out of the car and strode back down the street. Rain soaked through my jacket and clung coldly to my skin. It splashed over my shoes, scattering bright skeins of raindrops around me as I walked. By the time I reached the end of the street I was drenched through, my hands stiff and cold. Awkwardly, I unlatched the disused postbox. I wiped my hands on the inside of my jacket, took the folded paper out and pushed it to the back of the box, its edges just visible in the dark. I knew that Lydia checked the box routinely, even though I seldom needed to write to her any more. Occasionally, I would send the odd love note, singing her praises like a hapless idiot. At the thought of these notes, anger flared up again, bright and sharp like a knife, making me hiss through my teeth and clench my hands.

  Her face flashed into my mind, as I had seen her the night before, anxious and imploring in my bedroom doorway, asking what I was going to do. Here was her answer. It would not be the one she was expecting. I slammed the postbox shut. I tried to slam shut, just as decisively, the all-too-automatic feelings of yearning as her image swam before my eyes. She did not love me, and I would not love her. As I returned to the car and drove away from the temptation to tear up the letter, every nerve in my body nagged me back, whispering that I should forgive her, that perhaps there was a good explanation. I despised myself. I drove home slowly, carefully, not trusting myself to do otherwise. The windscreen was clogged with drives of rain, trickling too fast for the wipers to push them away, and so it didn’t seem to matter so much that I was crying; it didn’t seem to matter at all.

  The next few hours passed with surprising normality. By the time I arrived home, I had composed myself sufficiently to face Naomi. Not having expected me home so soon, she was rattled and edgy, prepared for an argument. I embraced her and apologised, told her that I had been tired and irritable. She was wary at first, trying to probe deeper to find a reason for my earlier coldness. Again, I told her I was sorry, and this was a rare enough event for her to forgive and forget.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ she said, her face buried in my shoulder as we stood hugging in the hallway, Adam looking on placidly and uncomprehendingly from his playpen. ‘I feel like I haven’t been the best wife recently. I know we haven’t had as much time together since Adam.’ Hearing and recognising his name, Adam let out a conversational whoop. I smiled, breaking away from Naomi to go to the playpen and take hold of his outstretched hands.

  ‘It’s inevitable,’ I said, staring down at my son’s beaming face. ‘Things will get better. I know it.’

  We spent the afternoon playing with Adam, watching television, eating toast and drinking freshly brewed coffee as the rain continued to pour down outside. Cocooned as we were in the warmth of our sitting room, the morning’s events felt like a dream. I didn’t want to revisit them, not yet; didn’t want to think about Louise, and much less about Lydia. Automatically, I stroked Naomi’s curls as she lay on the sofa, her head in my lap. The scene was eerily familiar. We had played it out dozens of times before, and would doubtless do so dozens of times again. It felt routine. It felt fine. Comfortably desensitised, I told myself that I could cope with this old way of life, the same way that I had coped before Lydia had come back into it and torn it apart. This was my destiny: a wife, a son, and whatever the future held for us. I knew that the emptiness I felt would gradually suck in on itself, growing smaller and smaller until it was barely noticeable; that the hard, dense weight in my heart would lighten into nothingness. It had to, because to think otherwise was almost unbearable.

  As the film finished Naomi rolled off the sofa, sighing. ‘It’s almost six,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll take him upstairs and give him his bath, read him a story. That is if you don’t want to do it?’
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  I shook my head. I wanted to be alone. ‘I think I’ll just stay and watch this,’ I said, channel-flicking at random. I landed on a studio talent show, all lurid colours, pumping music and inept performances. Naomi shot me a look of surprise, but didn’t comment, instead gathering Adam into her arms and carrying him out of the room, softly talking to him. Alone, I switched off the television and sat staring at the blank screen. The silence seemed to push me, inviting me to think about all the things I didn’t want to entertain. Was this how it would be? I would have to surround myself with people, never giving myself a moment’s peace in which I might drop my guard, relent and return to Lydia. The thought made me recoil. I pressed my hands to my temples, which were gently aching, as if all my nerves were pulled into tight, tender strings running through my head. Closing my eyes, I gently massaged the skin above my ears. Flashes of colour swam before me in the blackness. I was very tired. I had just begun to formulate the idea of going upstairs to have a nap when I sensed it. My eyes still closed, the darkness briefly took on a deeper quality, as if a shadow had fallen across the dull light streaming in from the window behind me.

  I opened my eyes and looked sharply behind. In the same instant I heard an angry screech of brakes, saw the white car swing itself recklessly into the driveway. It ground to an abrupt stop, the wheels spraying fountains of dirt and gravel. I should have walked away, but I stood transfixed. Lydia leapt out of the car, slamming the door shut. Her face was wetly streaked with make-up, mascara darkly rimming her eyes. She was wearing a white dress which fell to her knees, the hem picked out in vivid red. The rain moulded the white linen to her body, lovingly clinging to its lines. As she ran, I saw her breasts rise and fall underneath the translucent fabric, almost obscene. In another moment she would be at the front door. The thought galvanised me into action, my body and mind wrenched unpleasantly into wakefulness. I ran to the door and stepped out into the rain, barring her from entering.

  She ran at me without a word, struggling to get past, arms and legs kicking out at me. I kicked the door shut behind us and held her, forcing her away from me. Still neither of us spoke. I could hear her gasping for breath, ragged and harsh, as she flailed against me. Anger made me too rough, and she winced with pain as I dug my fingers into her arm, but she didn’t retreat. Even if I carried her bodily to the car, I couldn’t make her drive. Wildly, I looked around. I strode to the side of the house, dragging Lydia with me. Out of sight, we stood together, inches apart, under the huge spreading apple tree by the side wall. Its branches hung heavily, clogged by rain, sending up a heady sweet smell of dust and decay. Underneath, I could smell the faint scent of apricots, the perfume she always wore, and it made me feel light headed and sick.

  ‘I had to come,’ she said, almost accusingly, gulping for breath.

  No, I thought, you didn’t. You do as you like; you of all people don’t do anything just because someone else has made you. Out loud, I said, ‘I don’t have anything left to say.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ she half shouted, pushing back her wet hair with her hands. I could see tears starting to her eyes. ‘How could you say such horrible, hurtful things? Yesterday you said you loved me, you said you were going to sort everything out. I don’t understand.’

  Her face was hot with passion, her breasts rising and falling beneath her white dress. The rain had picked her nipples out; I saw them, straining darkly through the cloth. I couldn’t help looking, couldn’t help remembering the dozens, hundreds of times that my lips had closed around them, caressed her, tasted her. Vitriol spat and sparked inside me. I thought, You have broken this, not me, and the thought made me grit my teeth.

  ‘No, I’m the one who doesn’t understand,’ I said levelly, my voice soft and controlled. ‘I don’t understand why you came here, when my letter must have made it obvious that I never wanted to see you again.’

  ‘Because I deserve an explanation!’ she screamed, grabbing my sleeve, pulling me towards her.

  ‘And that’s not all I don’t understand,’ I continued, as if she had not spoken. ‘I don’t understand why you claim to love me, when it’s clear that you barely know what love is. I don’t understand why you have stayed for all these years in a marriage that is so clearly wrong for you. But most of all, I don’t understand why, when the chance came for you to leave that marriage, to be with the person you claimed to love and to have a child with him, you chose instead to hide the fact that his child even existed, to stay with your husband and to lie to everyone who is foolish enough to love you.’ The words were not rehearsed, but they poured out of me smoothly and swiftly, as if cut out by a knife.

  For a few moments there was no sound but the rain falling heavily through the leaves. I hadn’t been able to look at her as I spoke, but when I had finished I looked straight into her eyes and saw something I had never seen there before – fear, and guilt. She was trembling, her mouth half open in shock as she groped for words. She blinked once, twice, looked down at her feet. She was wearing pretty red shoes, smeared with mud and scuffed by her reckless struggle against me. I found myself staring at them, my eyes stupidly tracing the lines of the silly silver buckles that sat on top of them like bows on a Christmas present.

  ‘How did you find out?’ she whispered, and I realised that she had considered and discounted a denial in those few silent moments.

  ‘Your husband gave you away,’ I said, spitting out the words. ‘The small matter of Louise’s real age. I don’t know how you ever thought you could keep up this pretence. Did you even stop to consider how this could possibly work, if we were ever together as you said you wanted us to be? If I ever spent any amount of time with our daughter at all? If I was there when her next birthday came around? How could you be so fucking stupid?’ Somewhere along the line I had lost control. I was shouting at her, my hands gripping her shoulders, shaking her as she stood pliant before me, her head dropped low. ‘How could you do this to me?’

  She whispered something, cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I would have told you.’

  I released her. In an instant, as quickly as it had come, my anger had drained away. I felt numb, indifferent. I looked at her and wondered what she had ever done to make me think she was worthy of all this, that she was worth all this pain. ‘Just go,’ I said.

  My words seemed to send her into hysterics. The tears that shock had kept to a minimum spilled over her cheeks, mingling with the rain. ‘Don’t leave me, Nicholas,’ she sobbed. ‘I know I’ve been selfish, and stupid, I know all that. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe … maybe I wasn’t sure what I wanted before, but I know now. I want you.’

  Despite the pain that briefly twisted my heart, I laughed. ‘Well, I suppose that’s what they call poetic justice,’ I said. ‘Because for the first time, you can’t have me.’

  She looked at me for a long moment, as if trying to judge my sincerity. Her face was white with shock, her green eyes glittering sharply with hurt. I saw her breasts rise and fall shakily in a sigh. When she spoke again she was calmer, and her voice was quiet, almost reflective. ‘You can’t escape me,’ she said.

  In the years to come I would wake again and again from dreams that played back those few seconds to me so exactly, so perfectly capturing the sad certainty of her voice and the ghostly look of her face and her body clad in white, that they left me shivering and sweating, gasping for breath. She spoke those words as if she somehow knew how true, in a manner that I could never have guessed at, they would turn out to be. In the unfriendly dark of those moments, I often wondered whether they were a premonition, or a threat. In that instant, though, as she stood in front of me, they enraged me. I felt my hand jerk up from my side as if pulled by some alien force. As hard as I could, I slapped her across the face. I felt my hand connect with the soft, cool flesh of her cheek as she tried to turn, a fraction too late. When she raised her head again a red rash blazed and swelled across her left cheekbone. For a moment I thought she would speak
. I saw her throat convulse as she swallowed, biting back the pain.

  ‘I—’ I said. Part of me wanted to say I was sorry, but the words stuck. I wouldn’t apologise to her, not now.

  She turned on her heel and walked away down the path, placing her feet precisely one in front of the other, her heels clicking wetly on the gravel. Her blonde hair was plastered down her back, moulded to her white dress. Lower, the material clung to her narrow hips, the red hem branding the backs of her knees like a slash of blood. I followed her around the corner, watched her walking towards the car. As she opened the door and started the ignition I could see her hands shaking crazily, but her face was set and serene. She reversed quickly down the drive, but as she went she shot me a look. The light had gone out from behind her eyes. She looked at me as if I were a stranger, and in that moment I felt like one, to her and to myself.

  I stayed for a few minutes looking at the blank space where she had been. Then I felt for the key in my jacket pocket and unlocked the front door. As I stepped inside I caught a glimpse of myself, reflected in the hallway mirror. I looked ugly and ill. I ran my fingers through my drenched hair, listening. I could just hear the gentle splash of bathwater above. That aside, the house was silent. I thought of Naomi and Adam upstairs, bound together in their innocence. Slowly, I approached the staircase. I crept up the stairs and turned left along the hallway, bypassing the bathroom. I took a towel from the radiator in our bedroom, sat on the bed and wiped my face and hands, rubbed it across my hair. I looked down and realised that I had been standing outside in my socks, which were cold and water-logged, sticking to my skin. Carefully, I peeled them off and dried my feet, put on another pair. I didn’t know what to do next. Time passed; I wasn’t sure how much, perhaps twenty minutes or more. When I stood up again blood and air rushed to my head. I descended the stairs, my vision fuzzed and dreamlike. I went to sit back down in front of the television, but I couldn’t do it. I went to the hallway and pulled on my shoes, let myself out again.