Seb doesn’t see it, of course; he’s too obsessed with his own pain as he shouts, ‘And you have no idea how messed up it is feeling like your body is slowly starving, literally dying, Ro …’
Through his shirt she can see his muscles moving in and out, the chaotic beat of his heart, but she doesn’t, she won’t soften – not in front of him, anyway. Suddenly she just feels so exhausted. As though her whole energy quota for the day has been used up in the last few seconds, it takes all her effort to move close to him again as she says, ‘I want you to go now Seb.’
He stares at her with dull, expressionless eyes before he starts packing up his disgusting laptop and his notepad and pens. Rosie watches him numbly and just before he heads towards the door she says, ‘Don’t you dare tell anyone anything else about me. Or try and make out like you shagging a prostitute is my fault. If you do, I swear to God I’ll happily let everyone know the shit you really are.’
And just before he walks away, a part of Rosie expects to hear him say her name, apologize or even try to touch her again, and a bigger part of her is terrified when he does none of those things.
Chapter 14
Seb’s body is bright with adrenaline. He slings his rucksack on his back, leaves the house he isn’t sure he can still call home and walks, as fast as he can, back to Eva’s. It feels like he’s pulling his slimy heart, heavy with shame, along the pavement behind him. Rosie had looked at those websites. She knew that he’d lied to her again. He can’t even really remember why he lied in the first place, but he remembers the moment he made his choice.
It had been after another one of their awful arguments last spring, when he was preparing for the head teacher interview. He’d opened his laptop to watch porn but, at the last minute, clicked on an advert for another adult site. He felt like some kind of beast that had been starving for hundreds of years finally being fed. He’d gone back again and again when the hunger to feel something with this body of his overwhelmed him. First at home in the early hours of the morning. Then at work, and then whenever he started to feel angry or afraid or unlovable, which he did, most of the time. He scrolled through thousands of pouting, beautiful women. More and more. Some pushing their breasts up, some with their arses aimed at the camera, some dressed up in corsets, some naked, some tall, some white, some Black, some strong, some thin; the array was dizzying. All of them told him through their plump, moist lips the same thing, the thing he needed to hear more than anything. The thing that Rosie wouldn’t – or couldn’t – seem to ever tell him. They told him that they wanted him. When he looked at them, he stopped worrying about Rosie. They wanted him, day or night, and whatever he wanted, they wanted. Whenever he wanted them, they wanted him too and, for a few short minutes, Seb felt less alone.
They were better than porn, these women; there was a realness to them, knowing they were just a train ride away. Some of them urged him to pay them to dance for him. They wanted him to pass over his card details so they could tell him all the stuff they longed to do to him, but Rosie tracked their credit card statement online and always asked Seb if there was a payment she didn’t recognize. It was enough, for a while at least, knowing that he could pick up the phone and just call one of them.
Until the night that Rosie told him she’d cancelled the counsellor he’d booked for the second time. They’d argued, ugly and loud, and Rosie had told him again that she didn’t care, didn’t fucking care what he wanted, what he did, and had disappeared into the bathroom. Seb had taken his laptop downstairs, his entire body electric with rage, and he’d opened the websites to scroll, to lose himself in flesh, to disappear for a while in the aching fantasy of being with one of them. But that night, they stopped working. Where usually they’d move him from anger to desire, he just felt numb. He was still hungry. They all felt too fake suddenly, the screen of his computer and his limp dick in his hand too real. Shame flooded him, Rosie’s words ringing like a bell in his ears.
I don’t give a shit!
Rosie had made it clear again and again that she didn’t want him, and now these women online weren’t working either. He felt the great maw of loneliness opening for him, but he wouldn’t, he couldn’t turn towards it. So instead he picked up his phone as he opened the website for one of his favourites – a Brazilian in West London. Moving faster than his doubt, he called her, but the line was dead. He tried another favourite, and another, until finally one of the women who’d only existed in the abstract opened her mouth and said, ‘Hello, Emma speaking.’
Back at Eva’s he goes straight to his room like a moody teenager and hardly sleeps. He walks back to Rosie and the kids as the sun comes up. The morning is the usual combination of routine and frantic rushing; Seb’s the last to leave as he pulls the front door closed behind him and steps out into the bright morning. The kind of morning that makes the promise of winter seem like a bad joke. Martin is there again, across the road, standing on the pavement, his two girls on their bikes staring back at their dad impatiently, while Martin pats himself down like he’s lost something.
‘Morning, Martin. Hi, girls.’ Seb waves as he crosses the road towards his neighbour. ‘You all right, need some help?’
‘Seb,’ Martin responds.
‘What have you lost?’ Seb asks but Martin looks away and says, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Daddy left his phone at home,’ says the older girl, bored by her dad’s prevaricating.
‘I can keep an eye on these two if you want to run home and get it?’ Seb offers.
Martin’s eyes widen, like Seb’s just suggested they run away together. ‘No thanks, Seb, that’s fine.’
‘Really, Martin, I’m not in a rush, I don’t …’
‘I said no, Seb. OK?’ Martin pushes past Seb and, waving his hands, calls, ‘Come on, girls, let’s get going.’
The younger girl narrows her eyes at Seb, her mouth open.
‘Is he the man you and …?’
But Martin, flustered, interrupts her, ‘Come on, I said let’s go!’
He grabs her bike between the handlebars, pushing her forward, leaving Seb standing alone on the pavement.
It’s nothing, Seb tells himself as he turns left to take the longer way to school again. Martin has always been over-friendly, too keen. His wife has probably finally drummed it into poor old Martin that he needs to be less eager, that’s all. Seb keeps walking and as he approaches school he realizes that he’s being left strangely undisturbed. A parent whom he recognizes as a friend of Rosie’s passes him but keeps her head down, feigning absorption in something her son’s telling her. Vita, usually so overwhelming, keeps her eyes fixed on her phone, smiling and pretending not to notice him as he passes; another parent glues herself to a wall to avoid him. It’s like it’s his first day on the job at this school and no one knows who he is. The students seem normal, some calling out, ‘Hi, Mr Kent,’ while others totally ignore him.
As he walks through the school gates Seb falls into step with Mr Clegg.
‘Morning, Ben.’
Ben nods and Seb notices how his eyes widen. ‘Seb, hi.’
‘Have I got a massive boil on my face or something?’
Ben’s lips curl into a half-smile on one side of his mouth as he replies, ‘You haven’t checked your work emails yet, have you?’