Page 55 of Rock Paper Scissors
Adam abandons the car with its flat tires, and storms back inside the chapel. I follow him through the boot room, the kitchen, then the lounge, until we are both standing in the middle of Henry Winter’s secret study. Adam stares around the room. I’m not sure what he’s looking for or hoping to find. I preferred it when I thought we were leaving.
White rabbits are definitely a theme in here… they leap all over the wallpaper, the blinds, the cushions. The interior design choices are unexpected for a man in his eighties who liked writing dark and disturbing books. But then as Adam always says, the best writers tend to have nothing and everything in common with their characters.
Adam stares at me with a strange look on his face.
“If you know anything about what is really going on here, then now would be a good time to tell me,” he says, in a tone he usually reserves for cold callers.
“Don’t start trying to blame me. This place belongs to the author whose novels you’ve spent the last ten years of your life adapting. Ineverliked him. Or his books. And everything I’ve seen this weekend suggests thatyou’rethe reason we’re trapped here.”
Adam looks at the antique desk again, the one that used to belong to Agatha Christie. It’s made of a dark wood, and quite small, but there are ten tiny little drawers built into it, which I only really notice when he starts pulling them out. Each looks like a miniature wooden box, and when he tips the first onto the palm of his hand, a small bronze statue of a rabbit falls out.
“I’ve seen this before,” he mutters, already moving to the next drawer.
Inside that, he finds an origami paper bird, just like the one he always carries around in his wallet. I watch in silence as the color seems to drain from his face.
I do not enjoy seeing my husband like this. Other people all see a different version to the man I know. They have no knowledge of his moods, or his insecurities, or his regular nightmares about a woman in a red kimono being hit by a car. He doesn’t just wake up breathless and covered in sweat when he dreams about her, sometimes he screams. Adam has spent a lifetime running away from the things that scared him the most, and although the boy now looks like a man, he hasn’t changed so much.
Not in my eyes.
He opens another drawer and holds up an antique-looking iron key.
The next is filled with copper pennies. There must be over a hundred of them, each one with holes for eyes and a carved smiley face.
POTTERY
Word of the year:
monachopsisnoun.The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place. Unable to recognize your intended habitat, never feeling as though you are at home.
28th February 2017—our ninth anniversary
Dear Adam,
Our house doesn’t feel like our home anymore, but at least you didn’t forget our anniversary this year. That’s something, I suppose. You’ve been busy writing again, and I have made myself busy doing other things with other people.
We opted for a quiet evening in—just like we do most nights—but with a bottle of champagne and a takeaway tocelebratemark our nine years of marriage. We both agreed that eating in the lounge while watching a movie was the best way to go—sitting in silence only highlights our struggleto have a conversation these days. You gave me a printed voucherpurchased from a last-minute websitefor a pottery class. I gave you a mug that saidGO AWAY I’M WRITING. I’ve considered suggesting that we see a marriage counselor, but so far, the time has never felt quite right. We’re both treading so carefully we’ve come to a standstill.
I felt a mix of relief and excitement when the doorbell rang and saved us from ourselves. You jumped up to answer it, and spent so long out in the hallway I presumed it was someone you knew. But it was my friend from work. She was crying. I had a slight wobble when I saw the two of you together. I try not to talk about us with her, but she always asks, so it’s hard not to without sounding rude. I guess I just wanted to keep her to myself, a friend of my own who had nothing to do with you, silly as that might sound.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, taking in the sight of you both standing there in the doorway, you in your slippers, her in high heels with tears streaming down her face.
She started as a volunteer at Battersea Dogs Home last year. If we actually had to pay everyone who works for the charity, we’d soon be bankrupt. Volunteers help staff with just about everything: caring for the animals, washing them, walking them, feeding them. They clean out kennels, they help raise awareness and funds at events, and some even help me in the office. That’s how we met. In return, I helped her get a full-time, paid job earlier this year, so now we see each other almost every day.
My colleagues didn’t warm to her the way I did. They made jokes that we could be twins were it not for my hair being blond and straight, and hers a mop of mousy brown curls. But I think most of the bitchy comments were green-eyed. Gossip is almost always jealousy’s love child. She’s shy and socially awkward, in that way that makes people suspicious. She’s also a tad too quiet, and always speaks as thoughdoubting everything that comes out of her own mouth, trying the words on for size as if worried they might not fit. But not tonight.
“I’m so sorry to turn up like this, uninvited,” she said, wiping her tearstained face with the back of her hand. She was wearing an enormous puffy coat with a hood, which didn’t match the heels at all.
“What’s happened? Are you all right?” I asked and she started to sob. “Come in—”
“No, I really can’t. Adam says it’s your anniversary…”
Your name on her lips sounded foreign to my ears.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ve been married for almost a decade; we don’t even have sex anymore.”
The look you gave me then was priceless.
I wonder what my own face did when she accepted the invitation, stepped inside, and lowered her hood to reveal a head of blond hair. The mousy curls were gone, instead it was styled straight just like mine, and dyed exactly the same shade.
