There is, Coralie conceded.But I won’t be able to.
Could you ask Adam to come home?
She didn’t want Lydia to lose patience with her. She had hogged the role of Friend in Crisis for too long.I’ll try!she wrote back, with a fake and cheerful exclamation mark.
When do you think you’ll come home?she texted Adam.
Hi gorgeous, definitely before midnight, he replied.I love you. CYK.
Consider yourself kissed.When she was happy, it felt so romantic. When she was broken, it felt like a slap.
•••
Grief is theprice we pay for love, that’s what the Queen had once said. The price Coralie paid for love was fear and getting lost. Something was wrong with her, it set her apart—she couldn’t beinlove, but she couldn’t be out of it either. If she didn’t love, she was half a person. But if she did love, she’d never be whole. Her hands shook as she packed her bag. Mother, writer, worker, sister, friend, citizen, daughter, (sort of) wife. If she could be one, perhaps she could manage. Trying to be all, she found that she was none. A high-summer night, still light outside—the seagulls soared and screamed. She loved him so much, more than anything. But when Adam came home, she’d be gone.
22
She woke at nine the next day with a sense of unreality and a very furry mouth. Daniel had given her one of Barbie’s sleeping pills. She was downstairs in Amhurst Road, in the guest suite they kept for Barbie’s sons. How nullified she felt, how empty. But because no one was around her, needing things from her—how safe. If she could just be herself for a while, be by herself, andforherself—she might begin to get back on her feet.
Upstairs, Daniel made her toast with butter and honey. As she held her coffee cup in both hands, she felt as shattered as she had both times after giving birth. But now there was no perfect baby to look after. There was just fucked-up, pointless oldher. It was horrible. Tears slid down her cheeks.
“Go to someone else’s house if you want to cry like that,” Daniel gently teased.
“Sorry,” Coralie whispered.
The doorbell chimed. After a few minutes, Daniel brought Adam in.
“Oh,” Adam said. “Sweetheart.”
“I can’t smile.”
“You don’t have to.” He wrapped his arms around her frombehind. She rested her chin on his forearm as though his hug had snapped her neck.
They all sat at the table. Adam accepted a tea. “Where’s Barbie?”
“Pilates.”
“Well, then,” Adam said. “What are we going to do about our Coralie?”
“Do you know what you want to do, Cor?” Daniel asked.
Die, she wanted to say. Or be alive again. But not be like this, a dead person going through the motions. A dead mother scaring the kids.
What she wanted was to be alone somewhere safe. But she couldn’t be without her children. And she couldn’t bewithher children, not in that ceaseless, unrelenting way. She tried to explain that.
“And what about me?” Adam’s face, which had been attentive and tender, became white with sudden terror.
“Remember my flat,” she said. “When we met.”
“Of course.”
“You stayed there. And I stayed at yours. You didn’t make us be together. You let me be on my own. It helped me,” she said, “to fall in love.”
“You’re never on your own anymore.” Daniel watched her. “Are you, Cor?”
She shook her head, tears sliding out again. “I don’t exist.”
“The Graham Road flat,” her brother said. “One of you can stay there—but who?”
