Breathe, Rebecca. Breathe.
This is a panic attack. You’re going to be okay.
It’s working. My heart slows and I lean back against the wall and close my eyes.
The door behind me moves, a forceful judder that sends me scurrying across the room.
I scamper across the carpet and sit on the edge of the bed, the covers pulled up around me.
BREATHE. ACT NORMAL. THEY ARE WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVEMENT.
‘Rebecca? Are you okay? I heard some noise?’ Marlene is back. Standing in the doorway, her hand hitting the light switch, before casting her eyes around the room and seeing me.
I squint at the brightness of the lights, rubbing my eyes to hide any tears and to add to the pretence that I’ve just woken up.
‘I must have knocked the bedside cabinet in my sleep,’ I say.
The actress in me is playing it down so as not to draw any more attention to myself as I nods to the mess on the floor and try to ignore the hammering in my heart.
It’s enough… the nurse believes me.
After helping me pick everything up, the nurse leaves the room, turning the light off before she goes and plunging my room back into darkness.
I laid in bed, my head whirling as I try to piece everything together, because it wasn’t the nightmares that woke me up this time.
It was something else. A realisation.
Thoughts that have been niggling from the darkest recesses of my mind have surfaced.
Did Jamie tamper with the tapes?
Because he’s the only other person who was in the house.
And why had he come home early? Right then… when I’d been in the garden.
He said that his meeting the next day had been cancelled. But, why didn’t he do what he normally did and stay at the hotel, regardless? It was all booked and paid for.
Why would he come home in the middle of the night, passing up a rare night of uninterrupted sleep?
Right then?
There’s something else too.
The clothes he picked out for me?
Jamie was always so well turned out and meticulous, and he wanted everything in his life to be a reflection of him. He couldn’t have picked a worse selection to dress me in. A ratty old jumper, and a pair of dirty worn jeans.
Unless he’d done it intentionally?
So that I look the part he wants to convince them all I’m playing.
I think about all our arguments lately. About the way he was with Jenna.
I lean over the side of bed just in time to throw up the contents of my stomach, the acidic residue bitter in my mouth.
Jamie has been doing all this to me. And I know deep in the pit of my stomach it’s true.
But why?
Because he regrets marrying me? Because he’s fallen for Jenna? He wants to take Ella away from me?
Or has he found out? Does he know the truth?
That I’m not the woman I’m pretending to be.
I have secrets.
And if Jamie is trying to set me up, trying to force me out of his life for good, out of Ella’s life for good, then I needs to play him at his own game.
I need to be smarter, stronger, and cleverer than him.
And I need to get the fuck out of here.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘It’s all lies,’ Rebecca says, staring the doctor dead in the eye while making a conscious note to stop fiddling with the frayed edges of her bandage.
Sitting up straighter, drawing her shoulders back, she maintains eye contact the entire time, knowing she needs to stay focused and in control.
‘I need to be honest with you.’ She pauses, gearing herself up for her confession. ‘I’m actually really embarrassed… Because… I made it all up. There was no intruder. Nobody has been following me. No one’s been watching me. That’s why you can’t see anyone on the tape. And that’s why Jamie doesn’t believe me. It’s why he thinks I’m going crazy. Because he can see through my stories.’
‘So you’re now saying you’ve made all this up?’ the doctor asks, clearly not convinced at her sudden admission.
Rebecca holds up her hands, showing complete surrender.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she says, letting him know that she’s coming clean, that she’s laying everything out on the table for him. ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t play these games.’
The doctor shuffles awkwardly in his seat, purposely not interrupting so that she can explain herself properly.
‘My husband has been having an affair,’ Rebecca declares, staring down at the floor. Her face is ashen, awash with shame as if the words are harder to voice than she anticipated, fighting back tears, struggling with the conflicting emotions inside of her.
The shame and guilt of being exposed as a liar.
The raw pain of admitting that she’s being cheated on by the man she loves. Despite herself, Rebecca laughs. The noise unexpected, catching them both by surprise. The doctor raises a brow and she shakes her head in wonderment before attempting to explain.
‘Do you know, that sentence has been eating away inside of me for months. You’re the first person I’ve said it to out loud to. You are the first person I’ve told. My husband has been having an affair,’ she says it again. As if wanting to feel the words roll off her tongue once more.
Only her expression crumbles.
‘It’s funny how cold and final it sounds when you say it out loud. It’s just one sentence. A few words. People have affairs all the time, don’t they? But this… it’s my life…’ She trails off, wanting the doctor to understand her torment. The pain and angst she’d been made to feel. ‘Jamie said he loved me. We have a child. And it’s completely broken me inside.’
Still, the doctor doesn’t speak, just nods, allowing her to continue, which Rebecca takes as a good sign.
He’s listening finally.
‘It started when I was pregnant with Ella. Such a cliché, isn’t it? A pregnant, fat, exhausted wife at home. I don’t know why I ever thought Jamie would be different? I believed him, you know. When he told me that he’d never hurt me. I trusted him.’
If the doctor is surprised by any of her frankness, he doesn’t show it. His expression is of no judgement.
And Rebecca expects that these four walls have seen and heard it all, and much worse, a million times over.
‘He tried to hide it from me at first. But it’s obvious, isn’t it. You get to know the signs. All the secret phone calls. How he started hiding his phone, making a point of never leaving it absently lying around. And then he started going on lots of “business trips” overnight. Heading straight for the shower when he got home. Christ, he must have thought I was stupid not to know what he was doing. Washing away all the telltale scents of whatever woman he’d been screwing behind my back. But I could still smell them. Their cheap lingering perfume or a smudge of make-up on his clothes.’
Rebecca was crying openly now, tears streaming down her face as she spoke.
She eyes the doctor. Poised with his pen on his notebook as he listens.
‘I always wanted a family all of my own. I never really had that.’ Rebecca gives the doctor a small smile. Coy, almost embarrassed that she’s laying herself completely bare. ‘Do you know the only thing worse than the man you love cheating on you? Than the father of your child humiliating you like that?’ She shakes her head again, laughing again. The pain inside her so raw and so revealing. ‘It’s what it turns you into. What that rejection, that ultimate betrayal makes you become. It dissolves you as a person. It makes you completely pathetic. That’s what it did to me. It left me crippled with anxiety and jealousy and the feeling of not being good enough for Jamie. Of not being worthy of him. Worthy of him. That cheating, lying bastard.’ She shakes her head. ‘And the moment you know the truth, that’s when you know you should walk away, isn’t it? Have a bit of dignity for yourself! Have some self-respect! If they do it once, they’ll do it again. That’s what everyone says, isn’t it? Only I didn’t walk away, I couldn’t. I stayed. For all the wrong reasons, maybe. For Ella’s sake. For mine, for a million different reasons.’