The House Swap: A Novel - Hardcover

HOME
Caroline, December 2012
 
I wake up alone again. In my sleep my limbs have uncurled and stretched, sprawling across onto his side of the bed. The sheets are smoothly cold. I can’t remember if we started the night sleeping together or apart.
 
The bedside clock reads quarter to seven and the room is filled with dull gray light, seeping through the curtains. I lie there for five or ten minutes, listening for sounds inside the silence. Nothing. Slowly, I clamber out of bed and pull on my dressing gown. An ache is already spreading across my temples and I reach for the glass of water I keep on the bedside table, but it’s empty. I fumble for the little packet of painkillers anyway. Swallow two down, wincing at the scrape of chalk against the back of my throat. The sight of my own face, briefly caught in the tilted mirror by the door, brings a strange throb of vertigo. Pale skin, eyes stained with rubbed mascara. I seldom bother to take it off before bed these days. Like so many things, the point of it seems lost, sucked up into the effort of existing.
 
I step quietly into the hall. Now I can hear the tinny relentless waves of sound ebbing from the living room: dramatic music, the staccato murmuring of voices. I push open the door and peer inside. Light buzzes from the computer, faintly illuminating the darkness. He’s sitting there, head propped on one hand, elbow resting on the arm of the sofa. Staring at the screen. Some kind of Scandinavian cop show: cream and beige furnishings, haggard men in uniform speaking a foreign language in clipped miserable tones.
 
“Francis,” I say, but he doesn’t react.
 
I’m shivering as I perch on the edge of the sofa. “You didn’t come to bed,” I say. It’s a guess but he doesn’t challenge it, his shoulders moving almost imperceptibly in a shrug.
 
“Fell asleep here,” he says at last. “Then woke up.” His eyes are flat and glazed, still focused on the screen. These days he seems to do little but sleep, and yet to look at him I am reminded of nothing so much as the black and white photos I have seen of torture victims, kept awake for days on end by their captors.
 
“That’s a shame,” I say uselessly. If anything is shaking him awake in the middle of the night, I have no idea what it is. His head is no longer the open cave it once was. I used to be able to climb inside it as easily as breathing, read and touch the quality of his thoughts as if they were my own. Now it’s a fortress. I spend my time fumbling in the dark for a key that isn’t there.
 
The episode on the computer ends. Credits roll, small and blurred against a gray -washed background. A wall of sound unfurls bleakly behind them; the kind of sinister, relentless music that makes me feel as if I am suffocating. I realize that my skin is hot. For a moment I think I might faint. Blinking hard, I press the tips of my fingernails into my palms. “Are you working today?” I ask. “Any appointments?” As I ask, I realize that I can’t remember the last time he definitely went to the clinic. I try to imagine the man next to me sitting in his therapist’s chair, listening to his patients. It’s worryingly hard to do.
 
Francis looks vaguely jaded, as if I have reminded him of something unpleasant. “No.”
 
“OK.” I hesitate, knowing I shouldn’t continue. It’s too late; the words are rising to the surface and pushing themselves out of my mouth. “So what are you going to do, then? Any plans?”
 
He slams the laptop shut, and with it the light snaps out of the room, plunging us into near darkness. “No,” he says again after a while. I watch his profile for a few minutes, willing him to turn his head and look at me, but he doesn’t move, and in the end I just get up and leave.
 
In the bathroom I wipe clean last night’s makeup and put the new day’s on. I focus on my face in fragments, minutely scrubbing and rebuilding one small area after another. I smear foundation thickly over my skin, trace shadow carefully over my eyelids, run black liner to the corner of my eyes. Last, I choose a dark pink lipstick and apply it slowly across the width of my mouth, pressing my lips together to set the color. Only then do I step back and stare at my reflection. I look good. Better than I should. Even so, I don’t like looking myself in the eye these days. I’m afraid of seeing something there that I don’t want to transmit. Disappointment, maybe, or sadness. Anything at all.
 
“Mummy, Mummy.” Eddie’s voice drifts from down the hallway, amicably querulous. I glance at my watch. Already half past seven, and I only have an hour to get us both ready and out of the house. Then the hurried journey to nursery, the bus back into town to the office, eight hours of sitting at my desk turning over the mental picture of Francis on his own in the house and wondering what he is doing, what he is thinking. The thought of it all is exhausting.
 
I could go back to bed. The idea falls into my head, clear and sweet as water, as I walk down the hall and push open Eddie’s bedroom door. Call in sick, pull the covers over my head, and sleep for another eight or nine hours. But I won’t.
 
“Good morning!” I sing, opening the curtains. I bend down by his bed and pull him into a hug, feeling his hot little fingers closing around the back of my neck.
I start the routine. Clothes, breakfast, teeth brushing. First one thing, then the next. This is how you get through life. This is how it goes.
 
“Nursery today,” I tell Eddie. “What do you think you’ll be doing?”
He cocks his head to one side, an exaggerated parody of thoughtfulness. “Don’t know,” he says slowly. “Playing, I think.”
 
“That sounds about right.” I smile and he beams at me, aware he’s somehow made a joke. “Well, make sure you have fun,” I add.
 
At half past eight I brush his blonde hair carefully twenty times, counting each stroke in my head. He is murmuring quietly to himself, moving two plastic animals across his lap in some complicated game. “What are they doing?” I ask, but he doesn’t reply, swiveling his gray eyes up to mine and narrowing them in what looks like amused mistrust. Sometimes, his expressions strike me as oddly mature, brewed for far more than the two and a half years they have had to arrange themselves on his face.
 
I finish the brushing and straighten his T-shirt. “Go and say goodbye to Daddy,” I say, and he trots eagerly off to the living room. I hear Francis’s voice, complimenting him on his smartness, advising him to be good and have a nice day. He sounds pleasant, doting even. Completely normal. The thought lifts me for a moment, and I hurry down the hall to join them. Sure enough, he’s smiling, stroking the top of Eddie’s head with the flat of his hand.
 
“We’ll be off then,” I say. Eddie slips out of the room, knowing the drill, clattering down the hallway toward the front door to wait for me. The instant he is gone, the atmosphere drops and folds in on itself. Francis sits down again, wrenching the lid of the computer up and intently focusing on the screen.
 
“Yeah,” he says.
 
“You won’t forget to pick Eddie up? I’ve got that work party tonight, remember?” I ask.
 
He glances up, irritation flashing across his face. “I know,” he snaps. “You told me already. Three or four times.”
 
I bite back the retort that springs to my  lips—the accusation that what he remembers these days seems to be entirely arbitrary, filtered through some invisible system that can hang on to the slightest perceived misdemeanor or thoughtless word for years, but let dates, times, and appointments drift through it like clouds of finely spun sugar. “Fine,” I say, knowing my voice is harsh and unkind. “Well, don’t wait up.” The petty cliché falls uselessly between us.
 
Francis leans back in his seat and sighs, a short defeated exhalation that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. “See you,” he says flatly, and all at once I’m thinking about touching him, wondering how it would change things if I walked over and knelt in front of him and pressed my hands to his forehead, smoothing his hair and kissing his lips. The idea is strangely compelling, but I don’t move.
 
I tell him goodbye, and search my head for something else to say. But there’s nothing.
·
The bar is hot and dark, its walls prickled with flashing Christmas lights. Glancing at my watch, I realize it is already almost ten o’clock. I’ve been dreading this party for days, unable to imagine getting into any kind of festive spirit, but now that it is here, I am flooded with relief. Lately it seems that I have shuttled between the house and the office like a rat on a wheel, the cycle broken only by the odd half-hearted dinner with a friend filled with platitudes and lies that ends by 9 p.m. It has been a long time since I have been out with a group, and dressed in the short sparkly dress that I brought to change into.
 
Glancing down, I smooth it over my thighs, watching it shimmer, and for some reason I find myself giggling. It strikes me that I am already quite drunk. My head feels pleasantly fuzzy, anesthetized. Across the table, Steven is raising his voice in some vague attempt at managerial authority, rambling out a toast. “We’ve all worked hard . . .” I catch. “Time to celebrate and look forward to another year of . . .”
 
Whatever it is we have to look forward to is drowned in a general chorus of agreement and clinking glasses. It doesn’t much matter what it is in any case; in the world of media sales there’s only so good it’s going to get. I snatch my own glass up and join the toast, not caring that the liquid sloshes over my hand. I tip the rest down, wincing as the alcohol burns the back of my throat. I don’t drink much these days. My head spins, and I decide to go to the bathroom. I nudge Julie next to me, indicating that I want to get out, and she shifts across the bench, half falling into the lap of one of the junior salesmen, who looks none too displeased. “No need to hurry back,” she calls, winking at me. I roll my eyes good-naturedly, but I can’t help feeling a brief prick of something like envy.
 
I make my way across the bar. The music throbs loudly around me, but I can hear the smooth click of my high heeled shoes on the polished floor inside my head, neat and rhythmical, each click vibrating through my body. Spotlights glimmer above me, reflecting and blurring on to the smooth metallic bar. As I draw closer I see that Carl is waiting there, jostling in the throng. He’s checking his phone, head bent, squinting at the lit-up screen.
 
“You’ll never get served like that,” I say as I pass, and he looks up and laughs, tucking the phone away into his pocket and glancing back toward the bar.
 
“Yeah,” he answers, “got distracted. It’s taking fucking ages. I can’t even remember what anyone wants.”
 
“Just get a few lemonades,” I shrug, grinning.
 
“Right,” he says. “They’re all so pissed they wouldn’t notice anyway.”
 
“Not like you,” I fire back.
 
“Or you. We’re the sensible ones,” he says.
 
“You got it.” It’s easy to fall into this kind of banter with Carl, as easy as breathing. Eighteen months of walking around on the same bit of carpet for five days a week has created a friendship between us that I have grown to value. He’s almost a decade younger than I am, but we have the same attitude toward the job we’re  in—the same mix of bored familiarity, frustration with our colleagues, and occasional flashes of excitement and interest.
“Having a good night?” he asks, angling himself away from the bar and toward me, the attempt to attract the barman’s attention forgotten.
 
“ Yeah—it’s great,” I say, leaning forward earnestly for emphasis, and as I do so the heel of my shoe twists under me and I trip slightly, lurching against him, the sleeve of his blazer brushing against my bare skin.
 
“Steady on.” He rights me, his dark eyes amused, flashing in the beams of light glittering across the bar.
 
“Sorry,” I say, laughing. “I didn’t, um, I didn’t mean to throw myself at you like that.” It’s meant to be a joke, the kind of lightly flirtatious banter that we’re well used to making in the office, but somehow in this setting—the dark  perfume-scented air, the red-tinted spotlights and the crush of people around us—it sounds different. Loaded. Frozen by sudden embarrassment, I find myself staring into his eyes, and I have just a second or two to register that there is something strange in this mutual silence before he shrugs and smiles.
 
“No worries,” he says. “Must be all those lemonades.” He twists away from me suddenly, motions toward the barman and reels off a long list of drinks, seemingly at random. I take a few deep breaths, composing myself. “So,” he says when he has finished,
“how are you doing?”
 
“Er. I’m all right.” The question is too vague to be worth replying to in any detail. “On the edge of mental collapse,” I elaborate lightly. “That was a joke,” I add a moment later, though it wasn’t really.
 
Carl leans back against the bar, his arms folded. “Things still bad at home?” he asks.
 
I shrug. The implicit reference to Francis stabs me unpleasantly, and I realize I have barely thought of him all evening. The picture slides into my head— his body slumped apathetically on the sofa, lost in sleep or oblivion, the lamp burning in the corner of the cold gray  room—and out again. “Not great,” I admit. I think about saying more, but I can’t quite find the words. Carl knows more than most about the way things are, and we’ve always been good at striking a balance between friendly intimacy and respectful distance, but tonight I can’t trust that I can find that balance. I have the vague, worrying sense that if I started talking, I might not stop.
 
He’s watching me closely, but when he speaks his tone is light. “Well,” he says, “if you need a shoulder to cry on you know I’m around.”
 
I nod. I know I should say something, but my mind is suddenly blank. “Better get to the bathroom,” I say, and turn abruptly away, realizing that my legs are shaking.
 
In the bathroom I splash cold water onto my face and watch my reflection in the mirror as the drops trickle down my skin. My eyes look wide and intense, sparkling in the glowing red light. I turn my head slightly, monitoring my profile, evaluating myself from this angle and that. The room lurches around me, and I blink hard, trying to drag myself back down to earth. One more drink, and then I’ll go home.
 
For the next hour I sit in the tight little circle of my workmates, listening to the conversations flowing around me, barely in the room. When I get to my feet and say my goodbyes, Carl comes ’round to wish me a happy Christmas.
 
“See you in the New Year,” he says, “have fun.” His hug is friendly, vaguely affectionate. It lasts about two seconds, and yet it sends something unfamiliar ricochetin...