My Husband the Stranger Read online

  Rebecca Done

  * * *

  MY HUSBAND THE STRANGER

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MY HUSBAND THE STRANGER

  Rebecca Done is a copywriter and lives near Norwich. Her debut novel, This Secret We’re Keeping, was published in 2016. My Husband the Stranger is her second novel.

  1

  Molly – present day

  And today I lie awake for a moment, as I do every morning, waiting and hoping for the smallest of signs that my husband has come back to me. The empty space on his side of the bed is my first clue that he has not; but so long as I stay here, I can hope. It’s a game I play – that I’ve just woken up from a horribly vivid nightmare he’s about to soothe me out of with whispers and kisses. Perhaps he’s downstairs in the kitchen flipping pancakes just like he used to, humming along to some obscure radio station, handsome and bare-chested, fair hair clustered up by sleep. And when he turns to look at me, his smile will strike me all over again. His is a double-take smile, the kind it takes a moment to recover from.

  But I never recovered from it. Which is why it’s my coffee I’m sure he’s making right now, my pancakes he’s lovingly dousing in maple syrup and butter. And when I finally take a breath and push open the kitchen door, I know – I know – everything will be just as it was.

  Everything will be beautifully, perfectly ordinary.

  Today’s the day. I can feel it.

  Through the window the air carries the first warm breath of a summer’s day. I open the bedroom door, but I can’t smell coffee or pancakes. That’s okay – maybe we’ll go out for breakfast, to the cafe in the village that stencils stars into the cappuccino froth. And Alex will exchange pleasantries with the couple at the next table and crack jokes with the waitress because he’s just that sort of guy, and over eggs Benedict and coffee we’ll plan our day, both knowing how lucky we are to have the small things.

  My heart races in anticipation as I head down the stripped stairs to the door of the living room, dodging dust and dirt as I go. It is there that I pause; and it is there that both my heart and hope deflate. He is hunched up across the room, back against the sofa, in T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms like always, temporarily transfixed by blank space. His hair is messy, long and unattended to, because no one has been able to persuade him to a barber’s.

  He has been awake a while: I can tell by the cereal bowl on the ageing carpet next to him, the dried-up dregs of his sugar-laden breakfast now clinging to its contours.

  And then he turns to look at me, my handsome husband. But his face does not light up, and he doesn’t knock me over with his whole-face smile. He simply takes me in, and it is the neutrality of his expression that is once again unbearable. I swallow my tears, turn round and head back upstairs, disappointment complete for one more day.

  I wash quickly, my customary beginning to each exhausting morning. The flow of our shower is weak, and the water sputters and spits. Still, today I’ve been organized for once – pressed my favourite polka-dot shirt and black skirt ahead of time. (This is more of an achievement than it sounds, since ironing comes about as high on my priority list these days as sorting my sock drawer or steam-cleaning my curtains.)

  I’m trying to impress them at work – mainly because they’ve finally snapped and issued me with a verbal warning. Constantly teetering on the edge of being fired is something of a problem, so trying to look groomed and at least turning up on time seems like a reasonable way to begin trying to solve it.

  From beyond the bedroom window, the sound of a tractor grinding along the back road leading out of the village instils me with urgency, reminds me that country life moves too slowly for me to be idle first thing in the morning. As swiftly as possible I blow-dry my hair, apply make-up and perfume, fasten jewellery.

  Ready.

  I make my own coffee these days. Back downstairs in the kitchen, I find a clean cereal bowl on the draining board and decant some muesli before opening the fridge for the four pints of milk I bought a couple of nights ago. But it is not there.

  I frown. ‘Alex?’

  Pause.

  An eventual monotone. ‘Yep?’

  ‘Where’s the milk?’

  Another pause. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Well, what did you have on your cereal?’

  Longer pause.

  ‘Milk.’ What a stupid question, his tone implies.

  I sigh, but it takes me less time to make breakfast at work than it does to play fifteen rounds of guessing games with Alex, so I open the cupboard to replace my empty bowl. And there is the milk, squatting quite audaciously between our his ’n’ hers Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb mugs, relics from our last-ever holiday.

  I put my hand against the carton and it’s warm.

  ‘Brilliant, Alex. Well done.’

  I would have said it under my breath if I’d known he was standing right behind me.

  ‘Well done for what?’ he asks, because I have, after all, just said his name.

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell him, wrenching the top off the milk and pouring it down the sink.

  And the reality is, it is nothing. Or at least, it’s four pints of milk. It cost me a quid at the corner shop, and I can replace it within minutes. If I was to stop and think rationally, I would know that it’s a mistake anyone could have made – I could have made the same one myself, if I was knackered enough. But my instinct, of course, especially when I’m tired, is to always put it down to his brain.

  Because I am tired – it’s the last day of a long week. I am exhausted, in need of coffee and fuel, and nervous about work.

  In the end, it’s the little things that get to you. It’s the insults he levels at strangers that come out of nowhere. It’s our favourite joke in our favourite film, missed for the umpteenth time. It’s being handed black tea with the tea bag still in. It’s not holding hands any more, because – for reasons my compassion can’t comprehend – holding hands no longer feels natural to the man who’s been by my side for almost seven years. And yes – it’s the sour carton of milk on a Friday morning.

  So when I say nothing, I mean something – but Alex is rarely up for wordplay, and especially not this early in the morning. So as the milk glugs from the upturned carton into the sink, he reaches out and tries to grab it. ‘Hey!’

  It’s milk, and it’s sour, so instinctively I tighten my grip. For a couple of ridiculous seconds, we try to wrestle it from one another, before his strength wins out as it always does. The milk, predictably, is flung upwards with force. It lands in my hair, all over my shirt, my face, my skirt. Some of it goes up my nose. A lot of it goes in my eyes. I gasp, inhaling the foul smell, the sourness.

  Momentarily blinded and short of breath, I grope for a tea towel and smear it across my face to clear my eyes. I’m furious: another avoidable fight, another avoidable mess. The milk carton is on its side at my feet
, soaking into the soles of my tights. Stinking fluid is leaching across the concrete floor – the exposed innards of this cottage a constant reminder of our half-finished dream renovation project – snaking under the fridge and ancient kitchen units like something toxic. We might as well have just stuffed rotting mackerel into the wall cavity.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

  Alex’s hair may be long now – grown out like a surfer’s – but his temperament could not be less mellow.

  ‘Forget it,’ I tell him, quickly swallowing away my hurt and frustration. ‘I’ll clean this up.’

  ‘You’re an idiot, Molly,’ he says, wrenching open the back door and steaming out into the garden. ‘That was your fault.’

  This makes me well up, and I know it is partly my fault – pretending each day when I open my eyes that the old Alex is back. That game can never be a fun one, and I’m always going to lose.

  My chest is heaving, my eyes damp with frustration, but don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry echoes in my brain. I can’t show up at work with red eyes on top of everything else.

  I see Alex pacing outside in the tangled undergrowth of our garden, so I take the opportunity to slip back upstairs, trying not to panic about the fact that I’m going to be late.

  The sour stench in my nostrils is already unbearable. I bend down and roughly pull off my tights, discarding them in a sopping, stinking ball into the sink. Then I remove the rest of my clothes and climb back under the shower, where a frustrating dribble of lukewarm water makes a half-hearted attempt to dilute the milk in my hair. We’ve had the plumbing redone here, but for some reason the shower still carries no pressure, and Alex is no longer interested in being handy around the home. So property defects remain just that until I beg his brother for yet another favour.

  A couple of tears escape, along with a thought that blindsides me where I stand, a pathetic picture as the shower sputters over my naked frame. It strikes me with such force that I virtually keel over.

  I can’t live like this any more.

  By the time I make it back downstairs, it is nine o’clock and I am supposed to be at my desk, conducting a telephone interview for this month’s lead feature on the magazine I work at.

  Alex is in front of the TV once again, sports news on a rolling loop as it so often is. He is fixated these days with watching sports as opposed to partaking, and he hasn’t worked – or at least, held down a job – since his accident just over three years ago.

  I hesitate before I speak. ‘Alex, could you please clear up the milk in the kitchen? I don’t have time.’

  He shakes his head and tuts, like that is just about the most unreasonable thing anyone has ever said to him. ‘Why should I? You spilt it. It was your fault. I’m not clearing up your mess.’

  My tears threaten to fall, but I push them back. ‘Please, Alex. If you don’t it’s going to smell terrible …’

  His hair has flopped over his eyes; he pushes it back. ‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

  I exhale. ‘Of course not …’

  ‘You’re taking the piss?’

  ‘I just want you to clear it up so it doesn’t –’

  ‘I can’t smell it, can I?’ It is a challenge, an accusation.

  Alex hasn’t been able to taste or smell anything since the accident, which is basically like having a permanent head cold. He can tell the difference between sweet and sour, and he knows when something’s spicy – which is why he’s always got a bottle of hot sauce appended to his palm – but we don’t go to restaurants any more, and he no longer shows any interest in cooking. Because he loved to cook and eat, before. That was part of his soul.

  No wonder it gets him down.

  I make a single, shallow breath. ‘I know you can’t. But –’

  He is on his feet now. ‘You clear it up! You’re always doing this – leaving me jobs to do while you swan off to work! How do you think that makes me feel, Molly? Everything’s all right for you, at least you get to leave the house!’

  ‘You could leave the house! You could, but you don’t! You just need to try …’

  ‘Just go to work, Molly. Earn all that money, feel superior. Go on – go.’

  He couldn’t make it any clearer, so that’s exactly what I do.

  I arrive at work an hour late, a thick slick of sweat across my back. The air con no longer works in my car, I can’t afford to get it fixed, and the weather is stifling. The sprint up the stairs in my building doesn’t exactly help either.

  As I enter the open-plan office at Spark (ironic, because I’ve never worked anywhere more depressing), I see him straight away. Sebastian, standing next to my desk, laughing about something with my colleagues. Then he spots me and his face slackens slightly, like the jaw of a dog before it goes in for the kill.

  We’re facing one another in the meeting room (despite his efforts to convince us otherwise, Seb isn’t enough of a big shot yet to have an office he can call his own). It’s hot and airless because the windows are jammed shut from an ongoing lack of maintenance, and there is peeling paint and carpet tiles so scuffed they could no longer accurately be described as carpet. I am personally of the opinion that a public toilet would engender more creativity than this room.

  ‘So, Molly, why exactly are you an hour late?’

  I am not about to confide in Seb, primarily because he’s a duplicitous snake.

  ‘There was an … incident at home.’

  Seb leans back in his chair and throws me a sarcastic smile that tells me if I’m not about to be cooperative, then two can play at that game.

  ‘And the jeans?’

  Paul, our CEO, hates his employees wearing jeans in the same way as most employers would hate them making out across desk partitions. He doesn’t normally work Fridays, being the sort of company director who sees four-day weekends as non-negotiable, but it would be just my luck today if he swanned back in because he’d forgotten his sunglasses.

  As Paul’s right-hand man, Seb enforces his rules with a vigour that borders on sociopathic.

  ‘I couldn’t find anything else,’ I tell him. (Subtext – nothing else was clean.)

  But he’s already moved on. ‘Your interview was at nine. There were three senior executives at a blue chip company ready and waiting to take your call.’

  I nod. ‘I know. Look, I can call them back …’

  Seb laughs like a cartoon villain. ‘Yes, okay, Molly. Because I’m sure they’re hanging around in their boardroom just waiting for you to dial in.’

  The way he’s mocking me reminds me a bit of Alex, only Alex has a slightly better excuse for it than simply being a bell-end. I fantasize for a moment about the day I will quit this soul-destroying job and as part of my resignation speech run through my back catalogue of Sebastian’s various character defects in very slow and painstaking detail.

  ‘Dave stepped in, luckily for you,’ Seb informs me. ‘So what you need to do right now is go back to your desk, plug in your headphones and speak to that company in Brussels. Ten thirty.’

  I work as a writer on a magazine that interviews companies from around the world, then charges them to publish PR pieces that make them look fantastic. We sit on a bank of desks, calling the companies, interviewing executives (in English, fortunately), writing the articles, filing them. Then we do it all over again.

  The work is robotic and feels soulless, but I had to take the first job I could after Alex’s accident. I could no longer commute to London, where I was a copywriter at a large advertising agency. It was a job and a company I loved – the sort of place where people wore sandals and drank espresso, did the odd impromptu yoga pose on the stripped walnut floorboards. The decor was all exposed brickwork and exotic pot plants – some of which even bore miniature fruit that no one dared to eat – and (get this) there was even the luxury of climate-controlled air. We got free lattes, macchiatos and mochas, filtered water, snacks. And to top it all off they indulged our highly strung creative brains with a pool
table and video games and mini trampolines, as well as a roof terrace with spectacular views of London. Plus the variety of shops, bars and restaurants on our doorstep was mind-boggling. It was the kind of creative haven that people like to mock, but I loved it.

  I was desperate not to quit, but I could no longer justify the time away from Alex. So after three months of compassionate leave then six months of back and forth, with the company trying their best to be accommodating, I reluctantly resigned. I considered freelancing, but doing so from our ramshackle cottage or shelling out for office rental were not options, and we needed money fast. So I took the first job that came up in order to keep paying the bills (thank you, Seb). Which is why I’m now working at Spark, on an out-of-town industrial estate between a used-car dealership and a discount furniture warehouse, where we have only a furred-up kettle and undisclosed asbestos issues to keep us amused.

  ‘Oh, and Molly?’ Seb takes his final shot as I stand up to head back to my desk. ‘Consider this your second verbal warning. The next one we put in writing and the one after that …’ He spreads his hands and gives me a self-satisfied little shrug, like he’s just cheated at poker and stolen all my chips.

  I swallow, think about Alex, and do my best to fold my face into a serene smile, though it probably looks more as if I’m passing wind.

  There are about twenty of us in the main office, with all the staff writers sitting on a bank of desks, headphones in like we’re in a call centre (which I guess, in a way, we are). I inhale the scent of coffee I didn’t have time for this morning and realize I am craving it as I stare at my darkened computer screen, trying to remember where my notes are for the interview.

  My deskmate, Dave, is a bit like the new Alex in that he doesn’t really go in for observing social etiquette, which is why he regularly ends up falling out with Seb. I suppose it’s because Dave’s spent most of his working life in a newsroom being a hack (until he was made redundant and had to take the next job that came along, which unfortunately for him was this). He’s constantly pushing his luck, turning up unshaven and in fabrics resembling denim. I suspect that if he was any less than brilliant at his job, Seb would have fired him by now. But he knows Dave’s his best writer: as an ex-journalist he’s a fantastic interviewer and can churn out articles at double the speed the rest of us can. He even knows shorthand, for God’s sake.