Invisible

Barbara
Copperthwaite
is a
journalist with 20
years experience
, who has been
editor of a number of national magazines in the UK. She was raised in
Skegness ,
Lincolnshire, and now lives in Birmingham with
her dog, Scamp.

Copyright 2014 by
Barbara
Copperthwaite

The moral right of
the author has been asserted.

All characters and
events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are
fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the
author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than
that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For Paul, whose generous spirit changed my
life

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger;

Thanks to everyone who has made me stronger.

Tues 15

There really isn’t a thing
to say. A year ago I’d have tried to say something. I’d have wracked my brain
to find some inane comment to make. Probably about the programme we were
watching. We’re both sitting here watching the news, maybe I could say
something about one of the stories…another soldier killed in Afghanistan, a big
company announcing job cuts, the Prime Minister visiting a school somewhere or
other…
Not exactly light, chatty topics.

The newsreader’s voice
drones on, but I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I wonder if Daryl will get
curious about this diary and decide to have a sneaky read. I hope not, but it
wouldn’t surprise me; he hates secrets, likes to know everything that’s going
on in my head. Just the thought of him reading this though…damn, I’ve crinkled
the paper, my hand clenching at the corner just at the thought of what he’d
say. He’d be furious. But I’ve got to get my thoughts out somewhere, haven’t I?
I can’t, simply can’t face talking to him about this. Not yet.

From the corner of my eye I
can see Daryl glancing at his mobile, thinking I won’t notice. Or maybe he just
doesn’t care
any more
whether I noticed or not, in
the same way that I’ve stopped caring about filling the silence between us. So,
is it just me he doesn’t have anything to say to
any more
?
Are there other people out there that he actually bothers communicating with
properly?

Funny
how I have so much to say to myself.
In my head I can’t shut my
internal monologue off. Is this what happens to all marriages? Slowly but
surely you just run out of interesting stuff to say and slide into the mundane,
and finally into total silence. Like those couples in restaurants, who are
clearly only there because the woman has insisted on a romantic night out or
she’ll kick off, so the bloke’s given in for a quiet life. And they sit there,
opposite each other, one more dressed up than the other because the evening
means more to
them,
and each making polite
conversation.

‘How’s your food?’

‘Great,
very nice.
The sauce is just right. How’s yours? Looks
nice…’

‘
Mmmm
,
lovely…’

Then silence.
An awkward glance around the room, trying to find something to
comment on.
The waiter surreptitiously looking over,
fighting a smirk at the desperate atmosphere at the table.
The clink of cutlery on plates filling the pause that grows longer
and longer.
A throat clearing.
‘It really is
very
nice food…’

So I’ve started this diary,
just so I have somewhere I can air my thoughts. Then I realised I’d nothing to
put in it but the humdrum. Still, maybe that will galvanise me to actually do
something to change my life, because on the very first, pristine page I wrote a
little something, a sort of mantra I suppose, to try to focus myself.

If
you’re not happy with something, change it; if it won’t change, get rid of it.

Doubt I will though– haven’t
so far have I? Let’s face it, the vast majority of us start off in life thinking
that we’re going to do something amazing with our time on this planet
 
– didn’t Shakespeare or Oliver Wendell Holmes
or someone say something about how ‘nothing is so commonplace as the wish to be
remarkable’. Life kind of sucks you dry of those feelings though.

Actually it’s not even that
dramatic, it’s just that all the other stuff of life gets in the way of really
living; you know, the falling in love, getting a job to pay the bills, even
watching telly, it all just conspires to stop you thinking about the big
picture, and before you know it you’re married to a man you barely say two
words to, in a house that’s all right but nothing special, in a job that’s…beige.
Bland, nothing special or inspiring about it.
That’s
what happened to me anyway. Sometimes I think if something exciting doesn’t
happen to me soon I’ll go mad.

Beside me, Daryl grabs the
remote and switches over without even asking me after a report about some
horrible rape up in Manchester pops up on the news. Sounds like she only just
got away with her life. Do I pipe
up,
say something to
Daryl about turning over, given that I was watching that?
No,
of course not.
I can’t be bothered. How am I going to motivate myself to
do the extraordinary when I can’t even be bothered to speak to someone sitting
right beside me?

What is it with men and
remote controls anyway? Why do they feel the need to keep hold of them? He’s
sat there now, holding it, finger running over the buttons absently. I wonder
if cavemen only had clubs because they were remote control
substitutes?

Sat 19

The highlight of my weekend
so far has been nipping to the supermarket for an hour or so. Daryl was too
exhausted to come; he didn’t arrive until the wee small hours of last night
having spent most of the week driving his truck on the continent. When I got
back, he was up though, watching football on telly.

‘Your mates came round,’ he
said, eyes never leaving the match.

‘Which mates?’ I groaned with
the effort of lifting onto the kitchen counter a bag that was threatening to
burst with shopping – not that my husband seemed to notice.

‘Don’t remember their names.
Saggy tits, crazy hair – that was one of them. Yes! Did you see that?!’ This
last comment was about a goal. No, I hadn’t seen it. No, I wouldn’t have cared
even if I had. As for the ‘saggy tits’ comment, sadly this is about par for the
course. Daryl’s not great at remembering the names of any of my friends (to his
mind they aren’t important enough to make that kind of effort) so instead they
are described as a list of mainly unattractive attributes.

There is nothing even
remotely saggy about Amy’s boobs, they are just really rather big. As for her
hair, she has fantastic shoulder-length pre-Raphaelite-type curls. Yet my man
always,
always refers to her as ‘saggy tits’ with the
sometimes added extra of ‘crazy hair’. She probably came round with Hannah, aka
Bossy Cow, or sometimes Lesbian-Haired School Mate (we used to go to school
together, and she currently sports an Audrey
Heburn-esque
crop).

‘Did they leave a message or
anything?’ I asked tentatively. He held his hand up to silence me because
something interesting was presumably happening on the box. I hate it when he
does that.

Giving up on a reply, I went
out to the car again and fetched another bag then struggled back into the
kitchen, leaning to one side at a dangerous angle to compensate for the weight.

‘Jesus, sorry, I’ll help
you,’ said Daryl, finally jumping up,
a gent
at last.
He brought the rest of the shopping in for me, bless him, but don’t think I
didn’t notice that it was because it was half time.

Weds 30

I’m so very, very tired of
being alone. I love Daryl but I have serious doubts about his love for me. Or
at least, I know he loves me but I wonder what that love actually adds up to. I
have a problem trusting him, but there’s absolutely no reason why I feel like
that. He’s never cheated on me. So maybe that’s just my problem: that I’m
somehow always vaguely suspicious of him. It’s because he’s never around. He
does so many hours, driving his lorry
all round
the
country and Europe that he’s often away all week and some weekends too.
Sometimes I feel like I barely see him. Maybe we’ve just grown apart.

He just doesn’t seem very
interested in me. When I speak he doesn’t bother listening half the time. Even
today, we were talking over dinner and he asked what I’d been up to.

‘Well, work was just work,
you know… But I went jogging this morning, and it’s starting to go really well.
I’ve built up to fifteen minutes non-stop, and did that twice, with just a three
minute walk in between to catch my breath! And you know what? It felt good!’

‘Oh don’t worry, you’ll get
there,’ he said, glued to the news on telly.

I felt like screaming, ‘Yes,
if you’d been listening properly you’d know I’m already getting there!!!!’ He
quite clearly hadn’t been listening to a word I’d said, the goings on of
Manchester police were far more riveting.

Maybe my jogging isn’t
interesting to him, but he knows how hard I’ve been working on it and that it
means a lot to me. I’ve always been a lard arse and now I’m finally making an
effort to get fit. Because if I’m overweight, it’ll be harder to get pregnant…
not that we’re trying at the moment because he doesn’t feel ready.

I just feel so desperately
lonely. I’m 31 years old and have spent most of my adult life alone, because Daryl
is never here. His work doesn’t allow him home much, he sells days off and
refuses to book holiday in advance most of the time because he never knows when
he’ll get a last minute trucking job.

Worse though, I feel lonely
sometimes when I’m with him. Like at dinner just now.
Like
watching telly yesterday.

I want a husband who is a
partner, someone who is there for me through the tough times, who likes
listening to
me
witter on, who wants to spend time
with me, and have kids. I don’t want to be alone any more.

Even if Daryl desperately
wants to be with me, his job will never allow it. If I don’t have children I’ll
blame it on him and resent him, and I don’t want that to happen. For all those
reasons I don’t see how Daryl and I can go on.

I know we made a commitment
to one another when we married but…I feel lost. And I want a child so much! My
clock is ticking so loud I think the alarm’s about to go off. Life is slipping
away, I feel as though I’m trapped in the top bulb of a huge egg-timer and each
hour is a grain of sand slipping away beneath me, each day makes my footing
more treacherous. Life is escaping, my chances of having a child are
dissipating, and I’m not doing anything about it!

One day soon I’ll wake up
old, alone, no kids, a shitty career, and a relationship where I spend 60 per
cent of my time alone – in fact, no, closer to 80 per cent, or even 90 per cent
of my spare time.

Would things be any better
if we had a child? I don’t know. I’ve a horrible feeling the answer is no
though, because it wouldn’t change the fundamental problem – the amount and
quality of time we spend together.

For all those reasons I
don’t see what future we can have together – or at least what happy future we
can have.
Bugger.
Am I really thinking of ending my
marriage?

Thurs 31

I can’t do it. I know as
soon as I see his face I’ll crumble because, sensible or not, I love him. Oh
bloody hell.

This is just a blip. We just
have to try harder.