Page 115 of The Ring
Don’t get me wrong, I love my house—it’s regal and grand, but sometimes also cold. The photos in the Chapmans’ home were taken by them. In my house, the photos were taken by a professional photographer, trying to make us seem like the perfect family, which we were not. The furniture in my house was all chosen by an interior designer, but in Martha’s and John’s, the furniture was a little mismatched—you could feel it had been chosen by them.
While I ate cookies and looked around their house, they called my grandmother, who then called Anthony to pick me up. He arrived mortified and, needless to say, fired the au pair. And for the next few weeks, he never let me out of his sight.
After that day, I visited their house once every few months. I loved it there and felt that we had become friends. As I got older, I visited more often. When I graduated from Edelweiss, it became a routine to go to their house for tea and cookies on the third Wednesday of every month. Sometimes, TJ joined me.
The tradition lasted until two years ago, when they sold their house and moved to L.A. to be closer to their only daughter, who, after years of trying, finally got pregnant.
I never thought about buying the house myself. I didn’t realise I wanted it until it was sold. By then, it was too late, so I tried to push it out of my mind. It never occurred to me that TJ had bought it. But that’s the thing with TJ—he has always known me better than I know myself.
I haven’t been here since the day after I found TJ with my mother—the day before I ran to Paris. That day, when Anthony finally left me alone for a moment, thinking I fell asleep afterhe tried to console me and coax me into eating, I snuck out and came to the house.
I needed to take my anger out on something. I couldn’t take it out on TJ since I didn’t want to see him. So, I took it out on the house.
What happened was probably the textbook definition of female rage.
I threw paint all over the furniture—pieces that had been custom-made, brought in from all over the world. I shattered anything breakable, knocked over anything that could fall. I screamed. I sobbed. I destroyed. And when there was nothing left to ruin, when my voice was hoarse and my body was spent, I collapsed in exhaustion.
While I loved this house—and I still do—in that moment, I hated it with every fibre of my being. It was a monument to the life we had been trying to build, the life we could have had, but he had destroyed it. And I wanted it gone.
Ever since that day, ever since I got back, I’ve done everything I could to avoid this place. Not just the house, not just the street, but the entire Belgravia neighbourhood.
There are very few things I’m really ashamed of having done. This is probably the top one.
Now that I’m here, standing in front of the black door, bracing myself to enter the house, I fear what’s waiting behind it.
I know TJ hasn’t sold the house. When he bought it, he put both our names on the deed, and to sell it, he would need my signature.
I don’t even know if he ever found out what I did. One of the masons could have told him, or maybe he saw it himself. He used to come by often to supervise the renovations, but he never mentioned anything. That makes me think that themoment we broke up, he dropped everything related to this house.
I’m scared to face the damage and how deranged I must have acted. I know it was a lot, but I don’t remember it clearly—it’s all a blur.
The best way to take off a bandage is to rip it off. So instead of standing frozen, I take my key, slide it into the keyhole, turn it, and the lock clicks open.
It’s a good sign.
There was always the possibility TJ had changed the locks.
I take a deep breath and step inside.
As I step inside, for a second, I think I’ve walked into the wrong house.
I blink a few times.
I haven’t.
The house has changed from what it looked like when Martha and John lived here, but it still holds that cosy feeling I love. It’s a little more modern now, but not much. TJ designed the floor plan for the renovations. He likes open living spaces, the kind that encourage aliving-room family.But he also likes preserving Georgian architecture—the mouldings, the pillars.
But that’s not what makes me think I’m in the wrong house.
It’s the fact that everything looks exactly as it did before I came here and destroyed it.
What the hell?
Did I hallucinate it?
I’m certain I didn’t.
I actually cut my little finger while doing it. I remember being mad about it because it made wearing rings on that finger painful, and the cut made my finger look ugly.
