Caroline Corcoran - Through the Wall

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright Caroline Corcoran 2019

Cover design by Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs Magdalena Russocka/Arcangel Images (apartment block), Shutterstock.com (women)

Caroline Corcoran asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008335090

Ebook Edition October 2019 ISBN: 9780008335106

Version: 2019-09-06

To S, S and B, my team.

Contents

I sit, listening to the drip, drip, drip from a shower that only runs for a short time to prevent me from trying to drown myself.

There is a loud, unidentified bang at the other end of the corridor. A sob that peaks at my door and then peters out like a siren as it moves further away towards its final destination.

I slam my fist down on the gnarly grey-green carpet in frustration. Pick at a thread. Trace the initial that is in my mind: A. A.

A psychiatric hospital is such a difficult place in which to achieve just a few necessary seconds of silence.

Nonetheless, I try again, pressing my ear against the plaster and shutting my eyes, in case dulling my other senses helps me to hear whats being said on the other side of that wall.

It doesnt.

My eyes flicker open again, angrily. I look around from my position on the floor and take in what has now become familiar to me after my admission four weeks ago. The mesh on the windows. The slippers not shoes that are never far from my toes. The bedside table up there and empty of night creams, of tweezers, of the normal life of a bedside table.

And then I go back to trying to focus on what they my imminent visitor and her boyfriend are saying. Because its too good an opportunity to miss, when I can hear them, right there.

Both of them again, announces the nurse as she flings the door open.

She looks at me sitting there on the floor, raises her eyebrows. I stand up slowly, move back to the bed. If she thinks my behaviour is odd, she doesnt say it. I imagine she gets used to behaviour being odd. Gets used to not saying it.

Just sorting out the paperwork and then well let her in, she says. He said hes staying in the waiting room again. Not sure why he bothers coming.

But he does. Every time its the two of them, in a pair like a KitKat.

I press my ear against the wall again, so hard this time that it hurts. But since when did pain bother me?

I listen to them have sex, frowning at how uncouth it all sounds.

And then I think what a hypocrite. Because here I am having sex myself. With a man who I think is called Eli. I wonder if the couple next door can hear us too; if they are having similar thoughts.

Over Elis naked, olive-skinned shoulder I glance at the TV. I have no idea who turned it on but they have put it on mute, a breakfast news segment on turkey farming. What an odd juxtaposition, I think, to all of this sex.

As Eli finishes, I look away, embarrassed, from the poultry, then pull my dress back down over my thighs.

Id better head to work, he says, no eye contact. I barely have the energy nor inclination to nod.

Doors unlocked, I reply, and he slips out without another word.

I exhale and reach down to the floor to pick up my glass then take a sip of amaretto and Coke. Its 7 a.m. but I havent been to bed yet so its not quite as bad as it sounds. Plus, its there and Im thirsty. The door slams.

I rest my head back against the sofa, look around. Half-full glasses, Pinot Grigio bottles, cigarettes stubbed out into old chocolate dessert ramekins. Crisps, squashed into vinegary hundreds and thousands on a cushion. Student scenes; not what I had thought my life would be at thirty-two.

I turn the TV off and return my attention to the couple next door. I think they are doing it on their sofa, this couple, because intermittently the arm of their furniture is knocking up against the wall. Sorry, wrong pronoun: its knocking up against my wall.

Tom, we need to do it, I say. I have a provocative way like that.

Hes sitting on the sofa in his T-shirt and pants, shovelling in a spoonful of porridge with one hand and scrolling through social media with the other. I pull off my pyjama top without waiting for an answer because the stick said to do it and we are slaves to the stick. Tom knows this is compulsory even though he has tired eyes, will likely now be late for work and really wants that porridge.

But he goes away tonight for three days, so its now or not at all. Not at all when youre thirty-three years old and two years into trying for a baby is not an option.

Tom takes off his pants one-handed without removing his eyes from his phone. You learn, when trying to get pregnant, to multitask in ways you could never imagine.

I move the porridge to one side, being careful to rest it somewhere where it wont get knocked off. This isnt I have to have you now sex so much as I have to have you now because the stick says so but weve obviously got time to move the porridge to one side because no one wants to get sticky oats on the DFS sofa sex.

Dont worry, I whisper breathily. We can be quick so youre not late.

Tom swallows a mouthful of porridge and waits until the last second to give up scrolling. Half an hour after he leaves I am still lying on the sofa, knickerless, with my legs up against the wall, hoping as I always hope despite increasing evidence of its uselessness that this gravity-boosting move helps to propel things along.

I was pregnant, once. It never happened again.

Now, I think of pregnancy as less of a yes or no thing, rather as something more cumulative. A spectrum, on which I am in a segment marked Unequivocally Unpregnant.

My underwear goes back on gingerly. Dont upset the potential embryo. Dont disturb the sperm.

I stand up. I can hear my neighbour, Harriet, moving around next door, ticking across her wooden floor in heels, keys rattling, front door opening.

I know I should feel embarrassed in case she heard something just now, but Im so focused on my only current goal that I cant muster up the pride to care.