Chapter Nine
Present Day
The late afternoon light spooled in through the windows and suffused the entrance hall with an autumnal haze. The DS agent placed Elizabeth's bag down on the table and then nodded his goodbye. Elizabeth murmured a 'Thank you' in reply, the door clunked shut, and the house tumbled into silence.
Henry was sat behind his desk in the study, a stack of essays in front of him. He watched her, but the moment she caught his eye, his gaze darted back to the page. He lifted his bottle of beer from the table and took a quick swig before setting it down with a thunk. Even as she stepped towards him, his gaze clung to the text.
Elizabeth stood next to him, towering over him. She waited, then—"Henry." He hunched over, one hand rising to rub the back of his neck. Elizabeth arched her eyebrows at him. Who was being immature now? "Henry, you haven't even got your glasses on so I know you're not reading that."
His jaw clenched. He dropped the essay to his desk and then swivelled to face her. He leant back in the chair, and meeting her eye, he took another swig of beer. Elizabeth held her hand out for the bottle. He clutched it close to his chest for a moment, the dull brown glass mute in contrast to the glint of his wedding ring, but when she curled her fingers towards her palm, he relented and passed it to her.
"Are the kids home?" She took a long sip, the beer cool and smooth as it dragged over her tongue. He nodded, and she handed the bottle back to him. "Please will you get them. There's something I need to show you."
He pivoted back and forth in the chair, eyeing her as though this were a game of Risk and he was deliberating what move to make next. "I'm meant to be working." He gestured to the heap of papers on his desk.
Her pulse surged. "You're pissed at me, I get it, but you wanted me to talk and that's what I'm trying to do. So will you please just get the kids and come sit in the lounge."
He stared at her, eyes wide, the belligerent look swept from his face. He placed the bottle down and nodded.
She took a deep breath. Then paused. Her tone softened. "Thank you."
Whilst the thud of Henry's footsteps disappeared upstairs, Elizabeth retrieved the recording from her bag and carried it through to the lounge. She placed the disc in the DVD player and then skipped through the interview until she reached the point just after they had discussed her parents' car crash. The image froze on screen—herself and the interviewer sat across from each other in matching blue armchairs. A cosy feel as they broached the most uncomfortable of subjects.
"Hey," Stevie said as she stepped off the bottom of the stairs, "is this your interview?"
"Yeah." The word came out as a rush of breath. "The recording at least." She gestured for Stevie to take a seat on the sofa, and then Alison and Jason too as they joined them.
"Can't we just watch it when it airs on Wednesday?" Jason said. He sank down onto the cushion at the far end of the sofa. "I was kinda busy."
Alison snorted. "Facebook-stalking Piper, you mean."
"I wasn't." Jason's cheeks flooded red, his lips disappearing into a pout, and he lunged across Stevie to take a swipe at Alison.
"God, Jason." Stevie pushed him off as he squashed her against the cushions.
Alison scrambled up onto the arm of the couch, out of reach. She rolled her eyes at her brother. "You're such a psycho…Just because she's moved on and found herself a new boyfriend—"
Jason jumped to his feet. "You know what? I don't have to put up with this." And he stormed towards the stairs, almost bowling into Henry as he strode down the last step.
Stevie glowered at Alison. "Don't be so insensitive."
"How's that being insensitive?" Alison scowled at Stevie. "It's true."
Stood by the armchair next to the couch, Elizabeth shook her head to herself and pinched the bridge of her nose. How hard was it to get them to watch a simple video? She lifted her fingers to her lips and gave a high-pitched whistle that cut through the room. "Everyone, stop—right now."
Stevie and Alison ceased bickering and looked up. Jason froze on the second step and turned back to face the living room.
Elizabeth pointed to the couch. "Jason, sit down." And as Henry hovered near the bottom of the stairs, she turned her gaze on him. "Henry, you too."
Henry held her gaze as he steered Jason towards the sofa and guided him to the seat right at the end, as far from his sisters as possible. Then he took the spot next to Stevie and patted her knee. Elizabeth lowered herself onto the armchair, the remote control still clutched in her hand. She stared at it a long moment, and in the lull, the tension in the air thickened. She looked up, and her gaze darted to each of them in turn. Four sombre expressions. Four worried frowns.
"I have something I need to tell you, and this isn't exactly what I'd planned—" Elizabeth paused. She shook her head to herself and then swallowed, her throat tight. "But I couldn't find the right words and time ran out, so I need you to watch this now." She aimed the remote at the television.
Henry leant forward in his seat, bringing himself right up to the edge of the cushion. "Elizabeth—"
"Please, Henry." She met his eye, begging. "Just watch." He retreated, and she pressed play. As the interview kicked in, she hunched forward over her knees, half-watching her family, half-watching the screen. Her heart pounded, a low buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom that thrummed through her, pulsing through every cell.
"So, let's turn now to what happened after your parents' accident," the interviewer said. "In April 1984, you were admitted to hospital, resulting in a six month stay as an impatient. Tell me about that."
The family's gazes swivelled to Elizabeth, and she buried her blush in the back of her hands. Her breath trembled through her chest, and she fought to steady it. In, two, three. Hold. Out, two, three.
The camera panned to Elizabeth and zoomed in, ready to catch every flinch of her hands, every flicker of her expression.
"Without having many close friends at school, my parents had always been my biggest support. When they died, everything changed in an instant, and it felt like my whole life had been thrown into chaos, like I had no control." Elizabeth shook her head to herself, and the studio lights shimmered off her hair and reflected from her glasses. "But I found solace in numbers, in equations; they were reliable, predictable, rules to follows." The barest flicker of a smile graced her lips. Then she paused, mouth open. "The trouble began when I started applying those rules to my own life, in particular to my food." Her gaze dipped to where her hands rested in her lap, but only for a second before she forced herself to meet the interviewer's eye. "I could surrender my thoughts to calculations: how much I had eaten, how much I needed to burn…It stopped me from thinking about my parents, about questions that I couldn't answer. And it gave me a set of rules too: just do this and you'll feel better, just do that and everything will be fine. It was easy to be lulled into the belief that I was in control." Her lips twisted into a wry smile. "Of course, the more ingrained those thoughts became, the less control I actually had."
"Just to clarify. You developed anorexia?"
Elizabeth's throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Yes."
Though Elizabeth knew the word was coming, had spoken it only hours before, the starkness hit her like a punch to the stomach. She bit down on her knuckle and closed her eyes.
"What?" Jason said, and he let out a nervous laugh. "You're not serious…right?"
"Oh my God!" Stevie said. "Mom!"
"Now we're not going to go into the precise details of your illness itself, but could you tell me what led you to seeking treatment?"
"I was fortunate that my aunt noticed my illness early on," Elizabeth said. "After the death of Karen Carpenter in '83, and with more public figures talking about their issues with eating disorders, people were becoming increasingly aware of the problem." She paused to adjust the frames of her glasses. "I was lucky. I received the help that I needed and I was able to make a full recovery." Her lips tensed. "So many others are not so fortunate."
"And how were things for you after you were discharged?"
"Fine." Elizabeth gave a taut smile. "I went back to school, back to my normal life, and it hasn't been an issue for me since. As I said, I'm one of the lucky ones."
Lucky. That was putting it mildly. After talking to Alice, hearing what it was like to deal with these issues day after day, she felt like a unicorn. Recovery was possible for a select few, many had to settle with remission, others with cycle after endless cycle, and the rest, well…
"And I understand this is the first time you've spoken openly about this. Why's that?"
"My aunt feared the stigma that I would face. She thought that if I admitted what I had been through, people would see me as weak, and so she discouraged me—and my brother—from talking about it at all. Instead, she insisted on telling people that I had spent the summer with her in London, and she maintained that throughout her life."
The interviewer arched her eyebrows. "And you maintained that story too?"
"I didn't have to," Elizabeth said, "not after those first few weeks at my new school. I was worried initially that it would feel like I was hiding something, but as other things became more important—my studies, friends, clubs—the illness faded into the background. It no longer felt like part of my life, and that summer soon became so insignificant to me that it really could have been a trip to London."
The kind of memory that you couldn't be sure was real or not; when the past has become so distant that it feels like a dream.
"If it was so insignificant, why have you decided to talk about it now?"
"Preparing for this interview forced me to confront that summer," Elizabeth said. "It brought back a lot of old memories; not all of them welcome." She gave a small smile that looked more like a wince. "And I realised that a big part of me feared what people would think when they found out, and for the first time, it started to feel like I was keeping a secret."
Keeping a secret from Henry, from her family—one that they needed to talk about, even if she couldn't find the words.
"And that bothers you?"
"It bothers me when my behaviour is dictated by fear." She shook her head, and her expression hardened. "I don't live like that."
And fear was what flooded her veins now, feeding every fibre of her being. Fear of what would happen when the footage stopped, when the living room fell silent, and when she finally faced her family.
"Do you think your aunt was right to stop you from talking about that summer?"
"I don't know," Elizabeth said. "I can't tell what my life would've been like if I had spoken about it. I'd like to think it would have been the same, but as my aunt told me at the time, that's probably rather naive." Her eyes turned distant for a moment, and she gave a soft snort. She looked up at the interviewer again, her expression sobered. "My aunt urged me not to talk about my illness because she didn't want it to define me, but perhaps by speaking about my experience and the issue now, I can stop this illness from defining anyone else."
Elizabeth pointed the remote control at the television and zapped the screen to black. The faraway chatter of voices from people passing by hummed through the room, disrupted only by the caaw-caaw-caaw of crows and the hop and scutter of their claws against the tiled roofs. Those sounds had never been so prominent before; perhaps because her family had never been so quiet.
She dared to look at her children and her husband. Alison and Stevie were staring at her, never more alike with their worried frowns; Jason's gaze held steady on the coffee table in front of her, not quite strong enough to meet her eye; whilst Henry…his mouth hung open as he tugged at his chin, and his eyes were so distant that his gaze whistled straight through her.
"I realise this must be a shock," Elizabeth said, "but I needed you to know."
Stevie clutched her knees, her pale pink nails digging into her jeans. "Is this why you've been so freaked out about the interview?"
Elizabeth nodded. "There was a data breach that led to my file getting out. But maybe it was time to speak about this anyway." Maybe one day… "I went back to the hospital this weekend and spoke to one of the doctors there. It made me realise how lucky I am to not have lived with this."
"But I don't get it," Alison said softly. "You love food."
"I do love food, Noodle, almost as much as I love the four of you—" Elizabeth offered them a small smile. "—and I loved food back then too. Even at my worst, I loved food. It was all I could think about, all I could dream about." She shook her head. "But it's not about food, and it wasn't about weight either, not at first."
"Then what?" Jason said, and at last his gaze met hers.
"Control. After my parents died, it felt like my food, my weight, my body were the only part of my life that I could control." Do you honestly think that you—Elizabeth—are in control now? Elizabeth gave a bitter smile. "Until the illness took over, and then it controlled me."
"But you can't go more than three hours without food," Stevie said. "You get all weird and shaky and hangry. How did you ever…"
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "Starve myself?"
Stevie's eyes widened, and she nodded.
Elizabeth let out a huff of breath. "I became a different person." She looked to Henry, and her heart sank; he was still staring through her as though the person he had known and loved had gone.
"How come you never said anything before?" Jason said. He leant forward and clutched his hands in front of him. His lips drew into a tight bud that made him look just ten years old again.
"Because it wasn't an issue," Elizabeth said. She shrugged. "I never really thought about it. And if I did, it didn't feel real. It didn't feel like part of me." She sank back in the armchair and massaged her brow. How could she explain? "Look—" She leant forward again. "—I had the flu when I was fourteen, but I don't go round telling people about that."
"That's different," Alison said.
"Not in my mind," Elizabeth said. "Everyone's experience is different. This is mine." She looked at them in turn. Henry now avoided her gaze completely and stared at the floor—God, what was going through his mind? "Would you have wanted me to tell you?"
"Yes," Stevie said, whilst Jason just shrugged.
Alison tugged her lips to one side. "You know I've struggled to accept the way I look, especially when everyone compares me to you and Stevie." Stevie lowered her gaze at that, a faint blush gracing her cheeks as she chewed on her lower lip. "It would've been nice to know what you'd been through."
Elizabeth paused. Her illness hadn't been associated with her looks or wanting to fit in or feeling the need to meet some ideal; it wasn't driven by the same pressures that Alison faced today. She swallowed. "I'm sorry, Ali. It never occurred to me." She laid her hand against Alison's knee. "It was never my intention to hide this from you—" She glanced to Henry. "—any of you."
And after what felt like an eternity, Henry met her eye.
Henry
Henry looked up at Elizabeth. Leant forward in the armchair with her gaze trained on him, she fiddled with her wedding ring, twisting it round and round; all the lightness from her face had gone. Though her mouth moved, the whir of his thoughts drowned out the words, until they became nothing more than the rush of the sea lapping against the shore.
How had he not known? Then again, how could he have known? She was so…so…normal. She had never dieted; she had always had a profound appreciation for her body; even during her pregnancies she had been fascinated by the way her body had changed, how it accommodated each new life. But perhaps that wasn't normal. How many other women had he met like that? Perhaps it was only because she had been through hell and come out the other side that she was the way she was. Perhaps…
Elizabeth glanced down to the floor as she shook her head. The ends of her hair danced around her shoulders, golden blonde catching the light that filtered in from the windows behind. She let out a long sigh and then rose to her feet. When she met his gaze again, her eyes were glistening, like periwinkles flecked with beads of dew. "I—" Her voice hitched. She swallowed and looked away, and then running one hand through her hair, she retreated to the staircase. She paused on the bottom step. "I get that it's a lot, Henry, but you can at least have the decency to talk to me." With that, she trudged upstairs.
Henry's mind reeled. "Wait, what?"
"Mom was talking to you," Stevie said, "and you were just sat there gawking at her."
Oh God, had he? He surged to his feet, nudged past their children and hurried after her. Taking two steps at a time, he rushed up the stairs. "Elizabeth, wait."
When he reached the doorway to their bedroom, he paused. Elizabeth was sat on the bed with her back to him, and as the orange glow of sunset bled through the net curtains, it cast her into silhouette. She dabbed at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve and stifled the sob that shook through her. Henry's heart ached. He closed the door, and she flinched as it clunked into the frame. He walked towards her, and with each step, her whole body tensed, a winch winding tighter and tighter. She held up one hand—stop—and her voice wavered as she said, "Don't, Henry. Just don't."
He sat down on the stool in front of her, and she raised her hands as if to shield herself, her fists forming a cross that she pressed to her brow. Even with inky smudges of mascara that trickled down her cheeks, she had never looked more beautiful. "Look at me," he said. And when her eyes remained closed—"Elizabeth, look at me."
She took a deep breath that trembled through her, and then she opened her eyes. They were awash with such pain, such shame, that she could barely hold his gaze.
"I love you," he said, and he knelt down before her.
She studied him for a moment, her gaze flickering over every line of his expression. She almost winced as she prompted, "But?"
He shook his head. "No buts." He placed a kiss to each knee, his eyes straining to keep a lock on her gaze. "I love you, all of you."
Elizabeth lowered her hands from her forehead. She slid her palms down her thighs, fingers spread, until they came to rest over her knees, covering the spots he had just kissed, as if she could preserve the touch, a relic cast in amber. "So…you're not mad at me?"
"Why on earth would I be mad at you?" He took hold of her hands and brushed his thumbs back and forth over her knuckles. "I trust you, and if this hasn't been an issue for you, then it was up to you whether you wanted to share it with me or not." His thumbs stilled, and he squeezed her hands. "I just wish that you'd told me when it came up again, rather than worrying over this interview."
"I tried to," Elizabeth said, and her tone spiked. She stood up and brushed past him as he sank back on his heels. With one hand on her hip, the other gesturing in the air, she paced the carpet at the end of their bed. "But then you made that comment about not understanding why those models made themselves so thin."
Henry rose to his feet. He leant back against the window ledge, and the cool pocket of air that had gathered there prickled over him. With his arms crossed over his chest, he shook his head. "I only meant that it bothers me that we live in a society where young women feel so unhappy about themselves that they see dieting as their only option. Of course I don't blame them for that."
Elizabeth paused. She turned to look at him, her face an 'Oh' of realisation. But then she frowned, and mirroring him, she folded her arms across her chest and hugged herself tight. "And you said that you find it sexy that I enjoy my food." A light blush rose through her cheeks, so subtle it could have been the glow of sunset, a reflection of the fading light that seeped through the blinds.
"Yeah, I find it sexy." He dragged his gaze over her. Then he eased away from the window ledge and stepped closer, until the heat radiating from her washed over him. "The fact that you appreciate your body, that you nourish yourself, that you get pleasure from your body and food…" His lips quirked. "—that's hot." He skimmed his palms up and down her arms before bringing them to rest just above her elbows. "And the fact that you've struggled in the past doesn't change that." He leant in to press a kiss to her forehead, but she shied away, and he let his hands fall back to his sides.
Her gaze dropped to the floor. She shook her head, and her brow pinched again before she met his eye. "Then what about all that stuff—" Her fingers flared from where she had tucked her fist beneath her elbow. "—about needing to know someone before you marry them?"
"I don't expect a couple to know everything about each other…" He sat down on the bench at the end of their bed and curled his fingers over the edge. He shrugged. "Besides, I was talking about Stevie, not us."
Her voice rose again as she gestured to the door. "But down there, watching that clip, you were looking at me like I'm a different person."
He shook his head. "Not different; deeper." She frowned at him, and he caught hold of her hips and urged her closer so that she stood between his thighs. He stared up at her. "As your husband, I have the privilege not only of sharing your present and helping to create your future, but also collecting these fragments of your past and piecing them together into all these layers—the layers that make you you—and for every layer I add, my understanding of you deepens and I fall in love with you a little bit more."
Elizabeth's face softened. She looked down at her feet, and her lips tugged into a small smile. When she met his gaze, her eyes sparkled—sunlight refracted in the dewdrops. "So you don't think I'm crazy or damaged or weak?"
"No." He smiled back at her. "I think you're brave and compassionate and beautiful." Then he shrugged. "Maybe a little crazy." She swatted his arm, but he caught hold of her hand and tangled her fingers through his own. "But that's okay, because I'm totally crazy about you." She grinned, and a burst of warmth blossomed in his chest. He tugged her down onto the bench next to him. "Speaking out like that took a lot of courage. It was powerful."
She shook her head to herself, and her smile faded. "It was also political suicide."
"No, it's not." He cupped her cheek, bringing her gaze back to his. "It's one small part of the interview, one small piece of you." He pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "People will appreciate your honesty and your vulnerability."
Her throat bobbed. "Even the White House?"
"Conrad, Russell…they know you're not like others in politics, and that's why they're backing you. They don't want someone who's going to do the same old thing; they want someone who will shake things up." He tucked her hair behind her ear. "A breath of fresh air."
She pulled at the fingers that knotted with her own. "And things are okay between us?"
"Of course they are." He kissed her forehead again, but this time kept her close, his lips brushing against her skin as he spoke. "I told you: I love you, and nothing's going to change that."
She drew back just enough that she could nuzzle his nose, and her breath fell in hot puffs against his lips. "And you're not going to change the way you treat me, start acting like I'm fragile?"
"I wouldn't dream of it." He shivered as she glided her hand up the back of his neck and then toyed with the hair at the nape, fingertips swirling over the delicate skin. He leant in and nipped at her lips, tender at first, testing. But then he caught her lower lip and sucked gently, eliciting a gasp of breath. His hands found her hips, and he urged her up before guiding her backwards towards the bed. She fell back onto the mattress, and he climbed on top of her. This time when their lips met, he kissed her harder. No, she wasn't fragile. Not at all.
Elizabeth
Henry grabbed the sheet and draped it over them, shielding their bodies from the cool air. Sweat still tingled against Elizabeth's skin as she curled up on her side, a contrast to the soft warmth that Henry brought her as he nestled against her back. He pressed a kiss to the base of her neck, whilst his hand fluttered against her stomach, pulling her impossibly closer. With his chin resting against her shoulder, he whispered, "Tell me something, anything."
"About that summer?" The words drifted through the darkness of the room, lone vessels bobbing along the waves at night.
"Anything you can," he said. "Something that's just for me and you."
She closed her eyes and went back, back, back to the flashes, the traces of intangible dreams. As she did, she stroked his hand, fingertips tracing up and down his fingers. "There was this alarm," she said, and as she spoke the BLARP, BLARP, BLARP echoed in her mind. "Some of the patients on the ward suffered with psychosis, and they'd have these episodes—at least, that's what the nurses called them." She shook her head to herself. "They would get agitated, and the ward would go into lockdown, and this alarm would just ring and ring and ring whilst the nurses dragged them into the isolation room." Her hand stilled against his, and in the lull, his heartbeat thumped against her back. "It was terrifying at first, but what was more frightening was how normal it became: that alarm, seeing people in that state, watching them being subdued." She lowered her chin to her chest. "By the time I left, I wouldn't even flinch." She swallowed, her throat thick, and then she gave a bitter chuckle. "When I started out at the CIA, my mentors were impressed by how calm I remained during interrogations, how I could have someone yelling in my face and not so much as blink, but once you've seen that…" She let out a short sigh.
Henry hugged her tight. His lips brushed against her earlobe as he said, "I'm sorry you had to go through that."
She shook her head, though her heart ached. "Maybe I had to. Maybe that's what needed to happen in order for me to be where I am today."
"I'm still sorry," he said. He moved his hand to her side and trailed his fingertips up and down, hip to waist, hip to waist. "Thank you for telling me."
She hesitated, mouth open. It wasn't important, not really, but she wanted to know. "What would you have done if I'd told you back then, when we first started dating?"
The thud of their heartbeats filled the silence: his, hers, his, hers. "I don't know," he said. His throat clunked as he swallowed. "I'd like to think I'd have understood, but we were still kids back then." His hand stopped at her hip. "Maybe it would have been too much."
Her heart sank, a kind of loss tugging it into murky depths. Perhaps her aunt was right; perhaps her belief that truth and acceptance went hand in hand was nothing more than naive, a kind of fairytale people told themselves to shield themselves from a harsher truth. Not everyone in this world will accept you—all of you—unconditionally. A few words back then might have parted her and Henry, but they were different people now, grown together, until the broken seeds beneath the soil no longer mattered so much as the way their lives had intertwined.
"Do you understand now?" she asked. He tensed behind her, and his fingernails bit into her hip. The silence that followed held his reply. "I don't either." She shook her head. "Logically, I guess I can see why…but I still don't understand how I became someone who wasn't me, who was my opposite in every way."
"Maybe understanding, true understanding, is too much to ask for," he said. The murmur of his voice buzzed through her, resonating in her chest. "Maybe all we can hope for is acceptance and compassion."
"Acceptance and compassion." Her voice lifted as she tried out the words. They had a ring to them, a kind of heady truth. She eased herself over, bringing them chest to chest, and she slipped her leg between his thighs. His heart thrummed against her as she drew delicate whorls over his scalp. "Do you accept me?" She met his eye.
His throat bobbed, and he nodded. "Every last bit of you." His eyes had darkened, and in the dim light they were nothing but pupil. He dragged his fingers down her spine, causing her to arch into him.
She bit her bottom lip as she smiled. "Even my crazy desire to change the world?"
"You have changed the world—" He nipped at the corners of her lips. "—and I can't wait to see what you do next."
