LITMIR.BIZ

       Caroline, 2010

      ‘Caroline?’

      She can hear Andrew calling her from downstairs but she can’t bring herself to answer. She lies on their bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, her thoughts half-disappearing into a grey sludginess that teeters perpetually on the brink of sleep. The curtains are drawn and fluttering gently as draughts filter through the gaps in the window frame.

      They had been meaning to get the whole house double-glazed for months. Now, it seemed unlikely she would ever care enough to make it happen. Bricks and mortar did not seem to mean very much any more. The house had become a void; an unconvincing imitation of the home it had once been.

      It seems almost funny to think of how concerned she used to be with how it looked, of how she had spent hours leafing through interminable sofa catalogues and pale, tasteful paint samples until she found the perfect combination of style and homeliness. She had liked the act of redecoration, of papering over something that she did not want to see. The smell of fresh paint, of clean, glossy newness, was soothing to her.

      She had spent years refurbishing the house, stripping back the damp, acrid-smelling carpets, sanding the floorboards and covering them artfully with thick, woven rugs. She had painted every single wall and skirting board herself, from the duck-egg blue of the downstairs bathroom to the delicate ivory hues of their bedroom, offset by the wrought-iron bed frame and the dark, almost blackened wood of the wardrobe. She had discovered that you can learn taste quite easily. The home she had created for her family bore little relation to the Artex tiles and pebble dash of her youth.

      There was one room she left untouched so that, now, still, after everything that has happened, the walls are magnolia, the floor is carpeted in a brownish-grey that does not show up the dirt. There are two stripped-pine bookcases on either side of the fireplace, the shelves devoid of books so that they stand empty as a toothless mouth. The wardrobe door bears the pitted marks of blu-tack and the shallow black dots of drawing pins withdrawn. The sheetless single bed, covered by a thin, tartan blanket, looks hollow. In this room, it is only the spaces that have been left behind.

      Sometimes, when she passes the door, she thinks she sees him there in a lump beneath the blankets, sleeping in, wasting half the day, snoring gently. But it is always a trick of the light, or of the mind. And then she is forced to remember, all over again.

      ‘Caroline!’ Andrew’s voice resurfaces, this time more impatient. She knows she should answer but she thinks hazily that if it is important, he will come upstairs to find her. She stays sheltered underneath the duvet, numbed against any sense of time by those oblong white pills the doctor has given her to blot out the sharpest edges of her grief. Xanax, they are called, and the name makes her think of a creature from science fiction, an alien being burrowing away inside her, reshaping her internal moonscape.

      ‘These should make you feel a bit better,’ the doctor had said, in an attempt to be reassuring. But they do not make her feel better so much as remove the need to feel in the first place, so that her distress becomes strangely separated from her sense of self. The pain is still there but it begins to exist almost as a curiosity, a thing to be looked at and acknowledged rather than the awfulness that envelops her, that makes existing on any sort of practical level seem impossible.

      Most of the time these days, she finds that the best way of dispersing the encroaching shadow, the slow puddle that spreads across her consciousness like spilt ink, is to take another pill. She is aware that she is ignoring the doctor’s advice. The printed label on the front of the brown plastic bottle tells her she is allowed a maximum of four over a period of twenty-four hours. Yesterday, Caroline took six, convincing herself that she needed them, craving the consolation. Also, if she is truly honest, part of her likes the thought that she is deliberately causing herself harm. There is something so comforting in the thought of self-destruction, in the thought of painting herself out altogether.

      ‘Caroline! Where are you?’

      But there is Andrew to think about, of course. There is always him. Always, always Andrew . . . She hears him bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time and the mere thought of this makes her feel exhausted. She is mystified that he can still possess so much energy. There is something unseemly about it, she thinks, something untrustworthy about his absurd good health. His hair has turned grey in the last twelve weeks but oddly this change appears to suit him, emphasising the prominent incline of his cheekbones and the dark hazel of his wide-set eyes. He has grown into his looks, the weathering of his flesh lending him an air of self-contained purpose.

      By contrast, Caroline’s looks have been slipping away from her, as though her physical appearance is no longer under her control. Her skin, once fair and smooth, has turned sallow. She has dark circles under her eyes and a delicate web of faint wrinkles at each corner, radiating outwards. Her lips have narrowed and dried so that she finds herself licking them without thinking, running the tip of her

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