He was in the living room when I finally woke up and went out to find him. It was dark outside. He said, ‘I was going to get pizza.’
‘Okay.’
I sat down on the sofa. Patrick moved his arm so that I could be against his side, facing into him, with my knees up so that I was a ball. I never wanted to be anywhere except for there. Patrick, working around me, called the delivery place.
I ate. It made me feel better. We watched a movie. I told him I was sorry for what had happened. He said it was fine … everyone has etc.
*
I met Ingrid for lunch in Primrose Hill. It was the first time she had left the baby, even though he was eight months old. I asked her if she missed him. She said she felt like she had just got out of high security prison.
We had manicures, went to a film and talked through it until a man in the next row asked us to please put a sock in it. We walked to the Heath, looked at the Ladies’ Pond, swam in our knickers. We laughed our heads off.
As we walked back through the park, a teenage boy approached us and said, ‘Are you the sisters from that band?’ Ingrid said we were. He said, ‘Go on then, sing us something.’ She told him we were on vocal rest.
I felt intensely good. I didn’t tell Ingrid that a week ago, the same day, I was in hospital because I had forgotten.
Patrick never mentioned it again but a short time later he said maybe we should leave London, in case London was the problem. At the beginning of winter, tenants took over our flat and we moved to the Executive Home.
24
AS WE WERE driving out of London, following our removal truck, Patrick asked me if I would consider making friends in Oxford. Even if I didn’t want to and I was only doing it for him, he didn’t mind. He just didn’t want me to start hating it too soon. He said, at least until we’ve unloaded the car.
I was in the passenger seat looking for pictures of Drunk Kate Moss on my phone to send to Ingrid because at the time we were communicating primarily by that means. She was four weeks pregnant, not intentionally, and she said seeing seeing pap shots of Kate Moss falling out of Annabel’s with her eyes a bit shut was the only way she was getting through the day at this point.
I told Patrick I would, although I didn’t know how.
‘Maybe, not a book club obviously but like a book club.’ He said, ‘You don’t have to get a job straightaway either if –’
I said there weren’t any jobs anyway, I had already looked.
‘Well in that case, it makes sense to focus on the friends thing. And maybe you could think about doing something else workwise, if you wanted to. Or, I don’t know, do a masters.’
‘In what?’
‘In something.’
I screen-shotted a picture of Kate Moss in a fur coat ashing a cigarette into a hotel topiary, and said, ‘I’m thinking about retraining as a prostitute.’
In the middle of overtaking a van, Patrick shot me a look. ‘Okay. First, that term isn’t used any more. Second, you know this house is in a cul-de-sac. There won’t be the foot traffic.’
I went back to my phone.
Nearing Oxford he asked me if I wanted to drive past the allotment he had put his name down for. I said that unfortunately I didn’t since it was winter and presumably it was a square of black mud at the present time. He told me to wait – by summer we would be entirely self-sufficient, in the area of lettuce.
That night we slept on our mattress in the living room surrounded by boxes, which I had opened one by one and become overwhelmed by when none of them were all just towels. The heating was too high and I lay awake thinking through the catalogue of terrible things I have done and said, and the much worse things I have thought.
I woke Patrick up and gave him one or two examples. That I sometimes wished my parents had never met each other. That I wished Ingrid didn’t get pregnant so easily and that everyone we knew had less money. He listened without opening his eyes, then said, ‘Martha, you can’t honestly think you’re the only one who thinks things like that. Everyone has terrible thoughts.’
‘You don’t.’
‘Yes I do.’
He rolled away from me, and started to fall asleep again. I got up and turned the ceiling light on. Back beside him I said, ‘Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever thought. I bet it’s not even remotely shocking.’
Patrick moved onto his back and bent his arm over his eyes. ‘Fine. At work a while ago they brought in a man who was in his nineties. He was brain dead from a stroke and when his family got there I explained that there was no chance he was going to recover and that it was a question of how long they wanted to keep him on the ventilator. His wife and son said, essentially, to go ahead but his daughter refused and said they should wait in case of a miracle. She was incredibly upset but it was midnight, and I’d been there since five o’clock in the morning and all I could think was hurry up and sign the jolly thing so I can go home.’