else, an unseen, unknown someone, and I feel a hot flush of shame. ‘I know he must have left without me, but I just wondered if we’d had a disagreement about things and that’s why he left.’ I raise my eyes to look at her, as she sips from her travel mug again, gripping it tightly in her hands as if afraid I might snatch it away.
‘No, not that I’m aware of,’ Liz says briskly, but her eyes slide away from mine, and I get the feeling that maybe she’s not telling me something. ‘He’s probably at home wondering where you are.’
‘Oh God, probably. I need to go. Thank you for … everything.’ The urge to leave overwhelms me and I push back the chair roughly, slipping my sandals back onto my feet, the straps rubbing across the top of my foot. Startled, Liz gets to her feet but I hurry out of the front door before she can speak again, calling out a goodbye to Neil, and step out into the cold January air. Frost glitters on the front path, and I carefully make my way across the square to my own house, where I can make out the glow of the Christmas tree lights through the front window, calling me home. Home, to Gareth. Hoping that he can shed some light on what happened last night – why I can’t remember anything … and why my body feels as though something, or someone has broken into the very core of my being.
As I walk up my own front path, the chill morning air making my exposed toes shriek with the cold, I realize that I don’t have a door key. My heart sinks at the thought of having to ring the bell and not only face Gareth’s wrath at not coming home, but also waking him up. Gently I press down on the door handle, sighing with relief when it gives under the pressure. I slide in through the door, closing it on a whisper behind me. Maybe if I can make it into the front room without being seen and get my shoes off, Gareth will just think I spent the night on the couch. I’m not sure why I feel like this is the best course of action, maybe because after everything that has happened between us over the past few months I doubt if he’s likely to believe that I spent the night at Liz’s, alone. I desperately want to avoid us having another row – I don’t want to start the New Year with us fighting. And I don’t know right now if he’ll believe me when I tell him that I don’t know what happened last night.
I blink back the hot tears that sting my eyes and pull off my shoes, before I push open the door to the living room. As I step into the room, Gareth stands from where he has obviously been sitting on the couch, waiting for me. He looks tired, the skin around his eyes grey and wrinkled, worry pulling at the corners of his mouth. He still wears the shirt and jeans that he pulled on to wear to the party.
‘You decided to come home then.’ His voice is flat, his eyes cold. ‘That’s good of you.’
‘Please, Gareth,’ I force the words out, too tired and feeling far too fragile to be able to argue with him right now, not when I can barely stand up straight. ‘Can we talk about this later?’
‘Later? Are you kidding me?’ As the level of his voice rises, so does the pounding at my temples, and once again I have to fight the urge to be sick. ‘Rachel, you don’t get to stay out all night, especially after what you’ve done, and then tell me we’ll talk about it later.’ He snorts in disgust. ‘Look at the state of you, you’re a disgrace.’ His words sting, just as they are supposed to, and I close my eyes against the nausea that the words induce.
‘Look, I didn’t stay out on purpose, OK?’ I rest a hand on the back of the couch, to steady myself, the heightened emotion making me feel dizzy. ‘I was at Liz’s, I swear. I … I stayed in the spare room. Please, Gareth, I don’t want to argue.’
‘Oh right, that’s OK then, isn’t it?’ He steps towards me, a flash of anger in his eyes, and I feel ever so slightly afraid of him at that point, afraid that he’s so angry he’ll go one step further than just shouting at me. When he speaks again, his voice is low, the words catching in his throat, and it’s as if all the rage has suddenly drained out of him. ‘I’m not an idiot, Rachel.’
‘You can ask her!’ I take a step backwards, stumbling slightly as I pull my hand away from the couch, dizziness making me lose my footing. I close my eyes briefly, wanting the world to stop for just a second. ‘I swear to you, Gareth, I stayed at Liz’s. On my own.’ I push away the thought of the soreness in my thighs, the bruise on my upper arms, the layer of fear that sits just under my skin, jangling my nerves and making me afraid to remember.
‘You said you were going to stay for one more drink, Rachel. That was just after midnight, and now you’re only just getting home, ten hours later.’ Gareth raises his eyes to mine and I am shocked to see they are bloodshot and raw, as though he’s been crying. ‘What the hell am I supposed to think? My wife stays out all night, with no explanation, and I’m supposed to just be OK with it?’ Before I can answer he speaks again, his voice hard once more, the flinty edges of his words scraping at my nerves. ‘I saw Ted there, Rachel. Don’t take me for a fool.’
‘Ted?’ Confused, I try to think, did I see Ted? Was Ted there? Nothing, I can’t remember anything, just that gaping black void and a sense of vulnerability. ‘What does Ted have to do with things, Gareth? I told you, anything between Ted and me is over, it’s been over for weeks.’ He huffs out a noise that sounds like laughter, but isn’t, cut with a sharp, bitter edge, before pushing past me towards the kitchen. Angry, confused, and desperate to clear this up so I can just go and lie down and try to get things straight in my head, I follow him as he stalks over to the work surface and snatches up his phone.
‘Gareth, please. Why would I lie to you? I told you it was over with Ted, we agreed that we’d try and make this work, so why would I jeopardize it? I chose you, Gareth.’ I want to reach out to him, but he bristles with animosity, so instead I tug my sleeves down over my hands. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come home, I slept in the spare room at Liz and Neil’s house, I swear.’
‘Then why didn’t you answer your phone?’ Gareth throws his phone across the kitchen table at me and I fumble to make the catch, almost dropping it. Swiping across the screen I see the unanswered calls and text messages that he’s sent to my phone over the course of the previous evening.
‘I …’ I lay his phone down and run my hands over my hips, even though I know the cheap, tacky leggings don’t have any pockets, and my phone isn’t in there. It hasn’t even crossed my mind to think about my phone, so intent was I on getting home to Gareth. ‘I don’t have my phone; I don’t know where it is. I must have lost it.’ I picture the room I woke up in, Liz’s spare room, but I don’t recall seeing my phone anywhere – definitely not in the jumble of my clothes that I found on the bedroom floor.
‘You had it last night. I asked you, before I left, if you had your phone and you waved it at me. So, if you had it then, where is it now?’ He folds his arms across his chest and waits for me to answer.
‘I told you, I don’t know. I must have dropped it somewhere at the party. I’ll call Liz and ask her if she’s seen it.’ I move towards the landline phone that hangs on the kitchen wall, before I remember that I don’t know Liz’s number, not off by heart. It’s stored in my mobile, like everybody else’s.
‘Leave it, Rachel. I don’t want to hear any more, OK?’ Gareth sighs, and scrubs his hands over his face, wearily. ‘You can tell me whatever you like, stories about staying at Liz’s or whatever, but I don’t want to hear it. Not now. Did you even stop to think about Robbie? About what he might think about you staying out all night?’
‘Where is he?’ Guilt creeps over me in a hot wash, as I realize that Robbie, my boy, the one thing that has kept me going through all of this with Gareth and Ted, will know that I didn’t come home last night. My cheeks burn with shame. ‘Is he home?’ I don’t want him to hear us arguing – he might be eighteen, but he’s had to listen to us rowing for long enough, no matter how hard I’ve tried to protect him from it. When Gareth and I agreed to make this work between us, I swore to Robbie that the rows were over.
‘No, he’s not home. He stayed at Sean’s last night, if you remember.’ Gareth