Through the Wall

From then on I went back to biting my tongue so often that it must have been scarred.

Meanwhile Lexie, I hear her, shouts and speaks and argues and still gets to live out everything I want, just centimetres away through the wall. She and Tom make meals, the kind that Luke and I used to share before dinner became a chore for one. They curl up on their sofa and watch films, as we did, and make plans, as we did.

And I listen to the life I should have had, and am expected to exist alongside it. I sit as close to the wall as I can and I listen to them laughing, and I know something purely and clearly: I cannot let Lexie and Tom have a happy life. I cannot let Lexie steal my happy life.

I think of what happened before. I think about how, when someone steals my life, I am capable of doing anything to get it back.

14

Lexie

January

I smear lipstick on then panic that lipstick isn’t in any more. Is gloss back? My reference points stop in time when I stopped in time. It’s one of the reasons I need this.

I need to snap myself out of my rut, so I am going on an official night out.

I need to leave this box. I can’t exit the one in my brain, but the front door of the flat is easy to open when you make yourself do it – and when you take your pyjama trousers off – and that’s what I have to remember.

Tonight is a leaving do for my former colleague Shona and I am on the bus, heading to a cocktail bar in Dalston.

Tom does a low-level whistle at my pencil-skirted bum as I walk past.

‘You’re just trying to make me feel better about looking fat,’ I say, embarrassed.

‘Untrue,’ he says, shaking his head firmly and looking back at the TV. ‘You look hot.’

I have been edgy about going out all day, my hand shaking when I made a bad attempt at doing my eyeliner.

Mostly, I’m going so I can tell myself a story of my existence as the kind where I go on nights out – sometimes I feel I need to justify the fact I live in Central London and see so little of it – but also because I know it’s the kind of thing I should do to network.

How, I wonder, did I end up in an industry that revolved around contacts when I am this antisocial? Or am I? Is this new? The worst thing about current me is that I genuinely have no idea. I am so lost, I can’t even remember where I started. What’s new, or a problem, or fertility-related, and what’s always been there. I have no courage of my convictions, no decisiveness.

Then as I go to leave, I hear a baby crying next door. There is no baby next door. Is there? Could Harriet have got pregnant and had a child without me realising any of this was happening through the wall? Will I need to hear that every day, a baby growing into a toddler, giggling and needing milk and talking?

‘Did you hear that?’ I ask Tom.

‘Hear what?’ he asks, and I try to forget it, hope – or dread – that I am imagining things now, hearing children where there are no children. It is suddenly possible. Again, I am flailing.

When I cross the road I pause and look up at our apartment block.

I crane my neck but our flat, on the fifteenth floor, is anonymous, out of reach and far away.

A few floors up I can see a lamp on, a window slightly ajar. On the ground floor, a man sitting on the windowsill smoking a cigarette and shouting, furious, into his iPhone. The flat next door to him oozes Nineties pop music and shrieking laughter. The couple above them have lit a candle and are framed in the window – he is kissing her on the cheek like a motif.

All of these people, I think, suddenly outside my bubble, living these lives in such close proximity to me and yet, I have no idea who they are.

They are below me and above me, side by side. They are kissing, fighting, sleeping and dancing. Are they ill, in pain, feeling sad? Did they have good days today, or bad days? Did they have life-changing days? Have they broken up with their first love today, fallen for someone, or just been to the supermarket to buy some frozen peas? I stay there for five minutes, wondering what my life would look like from this perspective. Wondering who I am to people on the outside; what questions I inspire. In my mind, every single one of those people in there is like Old Me, not New Me. Not feeling their hands shaking, dabbed with sweat, as they put their phone back into their bag, simply because they are going out for the evening.

A few minutes later a bus comes and I am caught up in a wave of other people, swiping and taking our seats.

This used to be my day to day; now, I flinch when people move close to me. I look down at my hands and see that I shake, still.

On the bus I am next to a mum who is staring out of the window, her child talking to himself in the buggy in front of her.

I pull tongues at the toddler.

‘I like your giraffe,’ I say to him.

He blows a raspberry.

I stick out my tongue again and I smile.

When the bus begins to move, I look across the road and see Harriet coming out of our building. I stretch to get a better view, but the bus moves before I get the chance.

It’s been a few days since I lost my temper over the doctors and Tom broke down and, finally, I’m starting to come back to life. Right now, the sun’s toasting me through the bus window on an incongruously warm January day and some positive feelings are finding a gap to make their own way in, too.

I get off the bus with the hint of a grin and walk the few metres to the bar.

‘Lexie!’ bellows a man I used to work with who has definitely had at least three beers.

I order a glass of red wine and a few more and refuse to feel guilty about fertility advice not to drink. We have a plan now. This is my last hurrah.

‘Pitch to me!’ says my old editor.

‘I will,’ I promise, and I mean it.

And you know what, I think, as I look round the bar full of men with their ties pulled off and a waiter walking around asking anyone if they ordered chips, no one else is perfect, either. I am okay. I am going to be okay.

‘You’ve been so off radar, Lexie, we’ve missed you,’ says Shona as she squeezes me in a one-arm cuddle.

And because we’re on our own at the table, everybody else standing, I make a snap decision.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, one-arm cuddling her back. ‘I’ve had some fertility stuff going on. I don’t think I’ve been dealing with it well.’

I hold by breath. I said that out loud, I think. I did it.

‘Oh, bloody hell, Lexie,’ she sighs. ‘I wish you’d told me. Me, too. That’s why I’m leaving work, to be less stressed.’ She pauses. ‘And that’s why …’

‘You’re drinking Diet Coke,’ I fill in, laughing. ‘Oh God, the booze guilt is the worst, isn’t it?’

‘Only beaten by the sugar guilt, and the wheat guilt, and the ‘are you having enough sex’ guilt,’ she replies, eye-rolling.

I’m laughing harder than I have in a long time and it’s that easy not to feel alone. You confide and you’re confided in and you empathise, and you find the comedy in the awfulness. Why did I imagine some invisible rulebook that said I had to keep this to myself? That no one wanted to be burdened by my problems? That it was kind of … tacky to bring it up?

A psychologist would probably track it back to my childhood. I think of my mum, flitting into a room and out again, and my dad, heading away for work for two weeks at a time, and I think – there were no windows. There were no windows available for people to ask for help or to analyse. Was that deliberate? Did my parents – the children of postwar stoics – avoid leaving any windows open, so that things didn’t get too emotional?

‘I hope things get better for you soon,’ I say, still squeezed into her, close. ‘You’d make such a cool mum, even though I know it’s crap when people say that.’

She cuddles me, tight.

‘We should meet up soon,’ I say to her, mid-hug. ‘I’ll go nuts and buy you an elderflower pressé.’

I feel her shoulders shake and I don’t know if she is laughing or crying, but I tighten my arms around her, just in case.

I am not the only one here living this, consumed by it. They’re everywhere, the other mes. I’ve just been so wrapped up in my own narrative that I haven’t seen them. But I want to. I want to help them, and bond with them, and cuddle them. I hold onto Shona, even more tightly.

15

Harriet

January

I am in a bar, watching Lexie. Similar to when I followed Tom, I just want to know how she works, what she does when she has a moment alone. But Lexie doesn’t have time alone; she makes sure of it.

Lexie is laughing and sipping wine and I am drinking wine too, faster than her, and I am not laughing.

I am not worried about Lexie seeing me because it is dark in here and busy, and she is surrounded – of course – by friends.

So I am able to sit at this safe distance and stare at her as she touches her hands to her hair and face, pulls at the side of her skirt. Nerves, Lexie? Thinking about that YouTube baby you heard crying before you left the flat? I see her drinking and I judge her. From my now extensive online research on fertility issues, I know that alcohol is a fuel to them. Tut-tut, Lexie. Does Tom know you’re throwing away your baby chances with every sip of that large red? It’s almost like you don’t deserve it anyway. It’s almost like you don’t deserve your whole lovely fucking life.

‘Want some company?’ says a man who is too small for me anyway but pretty.

I examine his clothes and I can tell: he isn’t someone who people would view as cool. I steadfastly ignore him, fixed stare in place. He goes to say something but he can’t think what and he simply retreats. A little smaller now, a little less sure. Briefly, part of me feels guilty. But I need to focus.

I see Lexie having a deeper chat than the others, a personal one. I tilt my head to one side thoughtfully, trying to read Lexie and the girl’s facial expressions and work out what they are saying. The other girl sips Diet Coke. They hug, at a certain point, like one of them is dying.

When Lexie goes to the toilet I go along – like girlfriends do! – and slip into the cubicle next to her. I stay in there while she washes her hands and reapplies her lipstick, humming to herself happily.

‘How’s freelancing going?’ asks the woman next to her.

‘It has its ups and downs,’ says Lexie plainly. ‘But mostly I’m glad I did it.’

Something we have in common actually, Lexie. Perhaps we could be friends. If I wasn’t about to ruin your life.

She continues. ‘Nice to keep your own hours but a bit lonelier than the old office.’

‘No Thursday crisps for dinner club?’ her friend asks, spraying musk perfume that drifts into my cubicle.

Lexie erupts in a guffaw.

‘No Thursday crisps for dinner club,’ she laments. ‘Oh God, I miss crisps for dinner club.’

I go back to my spot at the side of the bar, where I pick up my bottle of wine and top myself up then carry on watching Lexie.

Lexie leaves at 11.30 p.m. and I slip out after her. She stops at the corner of the road and swaps her heels for ballet pumps. I’m close enough to hear her sigh of relief as her toes yawn into the shoes.

We even take the same bus home. I’m a few rows behind her, face buried in a scarf, but she wouldn’t notice me anyway. Her own face is buried in her phone.

I look at her social media as she updates it and see comments on a selfie telling her she looks good. She did. I glance up. She does. But I log into the account that I’ve created under a new name and tell her she doesn’t. Tell her the opposite. Tell her that she looks hideous, and old. I watch her shoulders fall and I know, even from here, that she is reading it. Glass, Lexie, thin glass. Smashable, which is convenient.

She gets in the elevator and our night together ends. I loiter outside and head up a few minutes later.

When I get home I can hear him, playing computer games and speaking to drunk, drunk Lexie in a tone that sounds concerned and gentle. Not annoyed. Not furious.

‘Really, Tom?’ I say out loud. ‘You’re not even a bit pissed off that she’s drunk when you’re trying for a baby?’

I think of how Luke reacted when I got drunk. He never liked it. Compounded my hangovers by telling me how embarrassing I had been. Whereas drunk Luke was popular and hilarious, according to him, according to his friends.

I throw my handbag at the wall.

When I’ve calmed slightly I sit on my sofa and write my reply to Tom.

Thanks so much for your advice.

That’s all I have. I’m wary of anything that sounds too flirty; I suspect Nice Tom would run a mile. But I need to make sure I don’t kill the conversation. I need to know him better. The sounds through the wall aren’t enough and the likeness to Luke is driving me crazy. This is the closest I can get. It’s why I played the baby noises. Just a few things to tip them over the edge, make the misery greater than the joy. And then things can reset. Lexie can move on; Tom can be with me.

Plus, ever since I heard Lexie’s voice, raised and ranting, and Tom’s, bleak and beaten in response, I’ve wondered whether things are as perfect as I thought they were anyway. Or was I hearing something unreal?

In hospital, my therapist would have said that I was projecting Luke and me onto Tom and Lexie, I’m sure. Seeing them as more perfect than they were, as I used to do with us.

But we’ll never know: I decided to stop seeing my therapist despite her repeated insistence that we have a lot more ‘work’ to do. Despite her suggesting that I had been a victim of abuse. I stopped seeing her. I didn’t like her being mean to Luke.

I hear something bang down on a table. A beer? A laptop? Is Tom checking if he’s heard from Rachel? I tell him I’ll order the book and that the work experience contact would be great. And then I add some drivel about passion.

I am making myself feel nauseous but still, I send it and get no reply, which irritates me because all he’s doing is watching some non-event 0–0 draw; I know the result because I mute my TV and then watch what he’s watching, for insight.

He updates his social media too, some football-based joke with an image from his TV, metres away from me, and I feel a surge of anger that I – Rachel – am low down on the priority list.

Then, despite the fighting the other day, I hear him and Lexie chatting normally. Fuck them and their eternally happy relationship. I throw the remote control at the wall.

I go to bed and make sure I slam my door, and I think about Tom, but when I think about Tom, it is hard not to think about Luke. I’m drifting again, the two of them merging.

Luke met me when I was at my lowest ebb. I had broken up with an ex-boyfriend, Ray, six months ago because I knew people thought he was uncool. Because I wanted them to think I was better than that.

But I missed him, that man with jeans that were too short for him, whose ability to make me laugh was obscene.

Ray had moved on, though. To someone who was proud of him; who was confident enough in herself, most probably, not to care what other people thought. Since then, I had been all over the place. Tried on some different crowds. I played at being artsy, picking up baggy patterned trousers and talking loudly about my love for the playwright Joe Orton before landing on something that was easy to pick up: party girl. This one was brilliant, because you didn’t need to learn a hobby for it, or acquire any accessories. Unless a hobby was chucking liquor down your throat most nights until 2 a.m., when you vomited in an unknown sink and your accessory was cheap vodka.

I slept with anyone, everyone. I missed Ray and I disliked myself, and I was trying, even back then, to dilute me.

Then one night I was drinking sherry at the home of a pretentious mutual friend who had just got back from a gap year in Europe and become obsessed with everything Spanish.

‘No one actually likes this stuff though, right?’ a guy at the party had asked bluntly with a grin. ‘It tastes like mushrooms.’

I was horrified. I wouldn’t have ventured anything other than polite agreement and awe at her sophisticated drink choices. The friend was new, someone from work, and I was trying to impress. Or rather, not to offend. Are they the same thing?

Either way, I thought this man was fearless and impressive with his honest sherry feedback. Everyone laughed and slapped him on the back; he was popular and down-to-earth. And handsome, I thought with a jolt as I looked up at him, so handsome.

Luke’s confidence soared even more as he drank and I listened to him take on somebody’s views on bullfighting and somebody else’s thoughts on Rioja. He put arms around people’s shoulders, nudged them playfully in the ribs.

Then he turned his attention to me.

‘Have you ever tried any English wines?’ he said out of nowhere, focused in my direction. ‘They’re making some really good stuff down in Sussex.’

He placed his hand on my waist, steered me to a sofa in the corner next to the back door. I hadn’t even thought he had seen me. I was shaking.

I muttered an intimidated no, sneaked a glance up at his messy curls.

The idea of dating someone like this man, Luke, with his wine knowledge and confident views? This was a world away. This was what I had been looking for. But I knew there was no way he would be interested in me.

Except then when our friend turned off the music and started to read aloud from Hemingway like a primary school teacher introducing the class to Roald Dahl, Luke whispered ‘Shots?’ in my ear and took my hand.

The crowd big enough for our friend not to notice, he led me out of the back door and down the street to the British pub in town, making me cry with laughter at his impressions of the Hemingway reading as we walked. I had drunk enough now to stop being quite so mute.

‘I wish all American bars were like this,’ he said, two notes too loudly, as I looked around, confused, at the snooker table. I had never been in a British pub before. I could see why.

He ordered us some drinks and it was only as we sat down that I realised just how drunk he was. Conversation became hazy and nonsensical and we got up to dance, though it wasn’t a dancing vibe and, really, I felt too self-conscious to move my limbs.

‘Come on!’ he said, twirling me around in a different beat to the music. ‘You’re too beautiful not to dance! Dance, dance, dance.’

It was almost a chant. My protests were ignored and half an hour later, my mouth was full of yeast and hops as he kissed me, forcibly and deep. I was sober enough to be aware that like it wasn’t a dancing kind of bar, it wasn’t a kissing kind of bar either, but I tried to block that out. His Roman nose knocked against mine. I had my hands at the nape of his neck, just at the start of his dishevelled curls.

‘Shall we go back to mine?’ he slurred.

I wanted to go home to sleep and he was barely coherent enough to be company. But I went home with him because he was beautiful and he wanted me and he had fixed his eyes on mine, and we had brief sex that felt like a one-night stand.

Until two days later when he sent me a message.

I’ve found a place that stocks English wine. Come and sample with me?

It felt glamorous and clever and new. It felt like being in my twenties should feel. It felt fancy and impressive. Luke wasn’t just a boy to drink beers and have sex with; he was sophisticated and a grown-up, clutching a fresh white from the British countryside.

Minutes later, a message pinged in from our mutual friend.

Saw you leave with Luke the other night. He’s a charming guy but just … be careful, okay?

I rolled my eyes – how novel, someone being jealous of me – and didn’t think about it again. Instead, my thoughts for the next few months were taken up with the French restaurants Luke took me to and the plays he booked. With the way he stared at me so intently and told me I was beautiful. With the books he lent me and the movies he recommended. With his height, with his curls, with his long arms steering me into his car or into a beautiful hotel room with a deep, plush bath.

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