and not get so angry so easily any more. I think how nice it would be if this afternoon were to mean a turning point in our relationship – maybe things will return to how they used to be between us, before we had Maggie and everything got a bit crazy. It would be worth hanging in there, through all the crazy stuff, if it just meant we could maybe get back to that.
‘Happy?’ you ask and I turn to you and smile. ‘You know what? I am. Today has been really, really lovely, hasn’t it? We should make an effort to do things like this more often.’ You smile and nod your agreement, and I am just so relieved that everything is OK.
‘Sal, I’m putting Maggie to bed – do you want to get us some dinner on?’ you shout down the stairs to me, a little while later. I smile and put the newspaper I’m reading to one side. You must really be making an effort to rein it all in, to make a change. Maybe this is the start of a new you, not just a new stage in the never-ending cycle that we usually live in. You very rarely put Maggie to bed, even on the evenings when you are home, preferring to let me deal with it all, saying you don’t have the patience for finding numerous stuffed toys, drinks of water, chapters of whatever book Maggie and I are reading together. I go into the kitchen and dig the chicken out from the fridge. Picking up the small wicker basket that we keep by the back door for collecting our spoils I head out the back door for the vegetable patch, ready to pick some salad to go alongside the chicken for our evening meal.
When I reach the vegetable patch I stop, my heart racing. My mouth hangs open in shock. What the hell happened? The gate that secures the patch is hanging off its hinges and the entire patch is destroyed. Every single thing I’ve grown from scratch with Maggie has been pulled from the earth and thrown into piles in every corner of the plot, so there is no chance of saving anything. This is not the work of rabbits, or of foxes; this can only have been done by a human being. And there is only one person who would know how badly something like this would hurt me. I should have known that an illicit day out at the beach wouldn’t go unpunished. I put the basket gently down and sink to my knees in the hard earth, stones and small rocks digging into my skin. Nothing has been spared, not a single tiny cherry tomato, all of which have been pulled from their plants and squashed underfoot. My heart breaks a little at the thought of all the hard work Maggie and I have put into our little patch. Maggie. She’s going to be devastated, especially as it’s now too late in the year for us to even try and fix things and grow something else.
A shadow falls in front of me and I look up to see you sneering down at me.
‘You didn’t actually think you could get away with it all, did you?’
‘What? Get away with what? Taking Maggie to the beach? Giving her a little bit of freedom from here? From you?’ I am so angry I am past caring about the consequences of losing my temper with you.
‘That’s it, Sal. Lying, going behind my back, leaving my car in a fucking state. Leaving crap all over my car, which I pay for – not you. I pay for it, it’s mine and when I do let you use it you treat like it’s just another piece of shit that belongs to you.’
You loom over me as I look up in confusion. ‘Charlie, what are you talking about? There’s nothing in the car. I drove it to the beach and back. Nobody had anything to eat in it; it was clean. And nothing justifies what you’ve done here. This wasn’t just mine, it was Maggie’s.’ I thought this was about the beach, not the car.
‘Clean? If you call a stinking baby bottle full of curdled milk clean! And sand, fucking sand, everywhere. We haven’t even got a fucking baby, Sal, so why the hell is there a filthy, stinking, kid’s bottle rolling around in the back of my car?’ Shit. I realise that when Laura pulled Fred out of the car yesterday when we returned from the beach she must have left Fred’s bottle in there. I was so exhausted when we got back that I didn’t even think to check the car.
‘So what’s this then, Charlie? Revenge? I can’t believe you would do this to me. To us. This was just as much Maggie’s as it was mine. This will break Maggie’s heart.’ This time you have gone too far. Hurting me I can deal with for Maggie’s sake, but when you bring her into it? No, no way.
‘It’s about respect, Sal. It’s about thinking about other people, having respect for their things, respecting the stuff they care about. It’s about not lying to your partner, covering things up so you can sneak about with other people behind my back. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about supporting your other half in the relationship instead of just taking, taking, taking all the time, and putting me under so much pressure. Maybe if you actually gave a shit about our relationship you would understand.’
‘If I gave a shit about us?’ I feel my temper fraying, and although I know there will be consequences I can’t help myself. ‘Why do you think I put up with all of this, Charlie? Why do you think I let you treat me the way you do? Because I don’t care? I stay because, believe it or not, I do love you, and I love Maggie and I want us to be a family! I put up with everything you throw at me so we can be a happy family – so Maggie grows up with two parents!’ You look down at me, still sitting on my hands and knees in the dirt, your lip curling in disgust.
‘Really, Sal? I treat you so badly? Don’t you think that maybe you get treated the way you deserve to be treated?’ With that, you turn on your heel, the sole of your shoe landing on my fingers as you storm off. I feel the bones crunch under your heel and a shocking, sharp twist of pain makes me feel sick to my stomach.
CHARLIE
I turn on my heel, catching Sal’s fingers under my shoe as I storm out of the little vegetable patch and head back towards the house. I am still shaking with rage. Why doesn’t Sal understand that people get treated the way they deserve to be treated? Sal needs to realise that I don’t do the things I do out of hatred; I do them out of love. This is all Sal’s fault – you can’t lie to your partner and think you can get away with it.
I pour myself a whisky and sit at the kitchen table, waiting for Sal to come back in from the garden. Maybe I did go too far with the allotment; perhaps I did lose control a little bit. But the rage was all-consuming and I’m not too sure I could have stopped myself even if I had tried. Thinking back to that first summer we were together, I remember how once Sal had moved into the shared house with me and the two other housemates, our relationship began to feel more stable. I loved nothing more than coming home and knowing that Sal would be waiting for me. There was the odd hiccup, where I arrived home and no one was there, with no note or anything to say where Sal was, or who Sal was with, but once I got the message home that I needed to know if Sal wasn’t going to be there, and ideally that Sal would be home each evening when I got back from work, things were much better. It was one Sunday, a few weeks after Sal had moved in, that it was decided I must meet Sal’s family, so we travelled to Kent on a sunny but chilly October afternoon.
‘They’re going to love you – and you’re going to love them, I promise.’ Sal tucks cold fingers into the crook of my arm as we walk up the path to Sal’s childhood home.
‘Let’s hope so.’ Sal knocks and the door is flung wide open immediately. Sal’s mother appears, her wide frame filling the doorway, a shock of dark curls, so very similar to Sal’s, standing out around her head.
‘Sally! Oh, my baby, it’s so good to see you! And this must be Charlie!’ She squeezes Sal hard and makes a move towards me. I hold out my hand stiffly before she reaches me, and she pauses for a moment before shaking it, smiling at me all the while.
‘Nice to meet you.’
‘And you, Charlie. I’ve heard so much about you. It’s nice to put a face to the name and see exactly who’s been keeping our Sal from us!’ She turns towards Sal. ‘And YOU! You look … well. It’s been so long. We didn’t see you all summer, so don’t be cross but your sisters are here, too. They’ve missed you!’ She ushers us into the house and through into a poorly lit living room, which is probably quite spacious but it’s hard to tell given the number of people