Nine Perfect Strangers

‘I think that you need to shout at me,’ she said.

‘What?’ He looked up at her, startled. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘After the retreat, we’ve never properly talked about it again – the asthma medication.’

‘I wrote all those letters. It’s on the record.’ Of course, Napoleon had done the right thing. He’d found the right contacts through Dr Chang. He’d documented it all. There was never any intent to sue but he needed to make sure that what happened was on the public record. He’d written to the authorities, to the pharmaceutical company: My son, Zachary Marconi, took his own life after being prescribed . . .

‘I know,’ said Heather. ‘But you never said anything about . . . what I did.’

‘You are not to blame for Zach’s suicide,’ said Napoleon.

‘I don’t want you to blame me,’ said Heather. ‘But I just feel like you’re allowed to be angry with me. You’re allowed to be angry with Zoe, too, but you’re not going to shout at Zoe –’

‘No, I do not want to shout at Zoe.’ He looked horrified at the thought.

‘But you can shout at me. If you like?’ She looked up at him, where he stood by the side of the bed, his brow furrowed in pain as if he’d just that instant stubbed his toe.

‘Absolutely not,’ he said, in his pompous schoolteacher voice. ‘That’s ridiculous. That achieves nothing. You lost your son.’

‘Maybe I need you to be angry with me.’

‘You do not,’ said Napoleon. ‘That’s . . . sick.’ He turned away from her. ‘Stop this.’

‘Please.’ She got up on her knees on to the bed so she could look him in the eyes. ‘Napoleon?’ she said.

She thought about the home she grew up in, where nobody ever yelled or laughed or cried or screamed or expressed a single feeling, except for a mild desire for a cup of tea.

‘Please?’

‘Stop this nonsense,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Stop it.’

‘Shout at me.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not. What next? Should I hit you too?’

‘You’d never hit me in a million years. But I’m your wife, Napoleon, you’re allowed to be angry with me.’

It was like she saw the anger shoot through him, from his feet to the top of his head. It flooded his face. It made his whole body tremble.

‘You should have checked on the fucking side effects, Heather! Is that what you want to hear?’ His voice rose on an ascending scale until he was shouting as loud as she’d ever heard him shout, louder even than when Zach, at nine years old, old enough to know better, nearly ran in front of a car to chase a ball, a ball he’d been told to leave behind, and Napoleon shouted ‘STOP!’ so loudly that every single person in that car park stopped.

Heather’s heart raced as Napoleon held his hands on either side of her shoulders and shook them violently, as if he were shaking her hard enough to make her teeth rattle, except he didn’t touch her.

‘Does that make you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes, I am angry because when I asked you about side effects for a medication you were giving my child you should have checked!’

‘I should have checked,’ she said quietly.

He grabbed his phone from the bedside table. ‘And I shouldn’t have pressed snooze on this fucking piece-of-shit phone!’

He threw it against the wall.

Heather saw tiny shards of glass fly.

For a long beat neither of them said anything. She watched his chest rise and fall. She watched the anger leave him.

He sank onto the bed, facing away from her, put his face into his hands and spoke in a hoarse, heartbroken voice with only pain and regret left, so softly it was barely above a whisper, ‘And our daughter should have told us there was something wrong with her brother.’

‘She should have told us,’ agreed Heather, and she laid her cheek against his back and waited for both their hearts to resume their normal pace.