Ellen saw me and then quickly looked away, almost like she was embarrassed or guilty, as if she was the stalker, not me.
That’s what Patrick calls me. A stalker. I got such a shock the first time he said it. How could I be a stalker? I wasn’t some deranged stranger. We’d lived together. We’d tried to have a baby together. The only reason I follow him is because I want to see him, to talk to him, to try and understand.
But perhaps, technically, that’s what I’ve become. A stalker.
Never thought I’d be forty-three years old and alone. Never thought I’d be childless. Never thought I’d be a stalker.
I shook my head at Ellen because I didn’t want to upset Jack if Patrick started acting like I was a potential murderer. I try to be invisible when they’re together. It’s my own personal code of stalker ethics.
I didn’t see any point in following them all the way up to the mountains today. I don’t like those winding roads, and also I didn’t want Patrick speeding with Jack in the car. So I got as far as the freeway, just to confirm that’s where they were going, and then I took the next exit.
“Have fun!” I called to the back of their car as it disappeared into the distance. And then the whole of Sunday lay in front of me, like a malicious joke. As I drove home, I imagined them talking in the car. So much to chat about and plan. The wedding. The baby. What they’ll all have for dinner tonight. I wonder if Ellen prepares Jack’s school lunch for him. Has she slipped into the Mummy role as easily and enthusiastically as I did? I can still remember the lunch I made for Jack’s first day of school. Ham and cheese sandwich on whole-meal bread. A peach. He loved peaches. Little box of sultanas. Carton of apple juice. A buttered slice of his favorite banana loaf. I planned it so meticulously. Talked about it with Mum. “Did he eat everything?” she rang up to ask that night. “Everything except the sultanas,” I told her. Patrick had no idea what Jack had in his lunch box. Food doesn’t really interest him.
When you’re responsible for a child, when your days are filled with the tiny details that make up a child’s life—his lunch box, his schoolbag, his shoes, his favorite T-shirt, his friends, his friends’ mothers, his TV shows, his temper tantrums—and then you’re told that you are no longer responsible, that you are no longer wanted, that your services are no longer required, that you have been made redundant, like an employee walked to the door by security, it is difficult.
It is quite profoundly difficult.
Jack must have asked for me. He must have been so confused.
I let him down. I blame myself for my mini-breakdown or whatever it was that happened to me when Patrick broke it off. I couldn’t stay in the same bed, so I went to stay at my friend Tammy’s place. Tammy. Whatever happened to Tammy? She tried so hard to stay friends with me, but then she sort of slid out of my life along with everyone else.
I remember waking up in Tammy’s room five days later, and realizing it was Friday morning and that Jack had swimming lessons straight after school, and I always had to remember to pack his things the night before, and who would take him? I worked nine-thirty to two-thirty p.m. I had rearranged my working hours so I could pick him up from preschool, and now for the last few weeks, school. I was happy to do this. I had more flexibility than Patrick and I loved picking him up. I was Jack’s mother. I didn’t mind when I missed out on a promotion because I wasn’t working full hours. That’s what all mothers do; they put their careers on hold for their children.
So I called Patrick, to remind him about swimming lessons, and that’s when all this started: my habit. My “stalking” of my old life.
Because Patrick treated me like a stranger. As if Jack’s swimming lessons were nothing to do with me, when just the week before, I’d been at swimming, helping Jack adjust his goggles, talking to his teacher about maybe moving him up a class, making arrangements with one of the other mothers for a play date with her son. “It’s fine,” Patrick had said. All irritable and put out. As if I was interfering. As if I’d never had anything to do with Jack. “We’ve got it all under control.” The rage that swept through me was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I hated him. I still loved him. But I hated him. And ever since then it’s been hard to tell the difference between the two. If I didn’t hate him so intensely, maybe I would have been able to stop loving him. I know that doesn’t make sense.
If he’d just let me ease my way out of being his wife—I thought of myself as his wife—and Jack’s mother, if he’d just listened to me with the respect I deserved when I called up to remind him things about Jack, if he’d just sat down with me and let me talk and let me say how much he’d hurt me, if he’d ever just said, “I’m sorry,” and meant it, then I think I could have let it go. Perhaps then I would have eventually healed, like people do. Instead it got infected. It spread. Like gangrene. It took hold. It’s his fault. I know what I do is unacceptable. Deep down I do know this. But he started it. Mum used to say that when she met my dad it was like a perfect love story. I thought Patrick was my perfect love story. Except he’s not. He’s the hypnotist’s love story. I’m the ex-girlfriend in the hypnotist’s love story. Not the heroine. I’m only a minor character.
Or perhaps I’m the villain
No one spoke as they left the graveyard and drove toward Frank and Millie’s place.
Jack sat quietly in the backseat absorbed in his game again. Patrick concentrated on driving the winding mountain road.
Ellen tipped her head back against the car seat. The nausea was still there, but it was manageable, as long as she didn’t have to wait too long to eat once she got to Frank and Millie’s place. One dry piece of bread would do the trick.
She watched the world whip by outside the window like a movie on fast-forward. Quaint little mountain villages with cafés and secondhand bookshops and antique stores. She remembered a romantic weekend in the mountains with Jon in the very early days of their relationship. She let the memory slip away. He was getting married. So was she. Life was moving forward. She needed to keep her eyes on the road ahead. So did Saskia. So did Patrick, actually.
She wondered if he was thinking about Colleen right now, comparing her with Ellen, wondering what his life would have been like if she hadn’t died.