Through the Wall. Caroline Corcoran
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