Work Text:
June 6, 2012, London, England
The emotional whiplash made her ears buzz with static. This morning, she had been Claire Beauchamp, A&E nurse and girlfriend of Frank Randall. Tonight, she was Claire Beauchamp, unemployed homewrecker.
More than the violent fracture that sundered her relationship into two (or was it three?) crippled pieces, more than the indignity of having her personal drama exposed to the hospital administrators, even more than finding herself suddenly homeless with a cheque for four weeks’ severance lying wrinkled in the pocket of her purse, the cut that stung the most was her utter lack of judgment. How could she have been so blindly misled?
She’d met Frank at work. He was a gifted surgeon at University College Hospital, urbane and grounded in a way that promised to anchor her in an adulthood that still fit like a borrowed shoe. His pursuit felt like a badge of merit and an easy detour around the chaotic dating scene she witnessed in other twenty-somethings. Within three weeks they were sleeping together, and only two months later she was moving the three boxes and two suitcases that represented the entirety of her worldly possessions into his Fitzrovia flat. It had been easy. It had been comfortable. It had been an utter sham.
Sleeping off a series of night shifts in the skim milk light flooding their king-sized bed, she’s woken to the sound of a key in the door. Frank was away, attending one of the medical symposiums at which he was frequently asked to present. She barely had time to sit up in the luxurious linens before a small, dark-haired woman flew into the room.
“Where is he?” the intruder yelled.
“I beg your pardon?” Claire replied, pulling the duvet towards her neck defensively. “I don’t... get out of my flat! At once!”
“Your flat?” The woman cackled like this was the best joke she’d ever heard, all while opening the doors to the closet, peering into the ensuite bathroom. “Your flat?! This flat than doesn’t belong to you any more than that bastard does. You’ve got a nerve, you fucking whore!”
“I... there’s been some mistake. You need to leave. I don’t know who you think I am, but I can assure you this is my home. I live here with my boyfriend...”
“Frank Randall,” the woman interrupted with a cruel twist of her lips. “You selfish, stupid girl, you have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”
Claire could feel her body start to shake, an earthquake of realization spreading from her limbs to her brain. She’d never met this woman before, but she had one thing right: she was a very selfish, stupid girl.
The story that emerged had the sordid intricacy of a soap opera. The woman, Amelia Randall, had been married to Frank for nearly ten years. They’d met at Oxford. When his job took him to London, she’d stayed behind in Oxfordshire, where Frank visited as often as his brilliant career allowed. Amelia had known he was unfaithful, of course, and had chosen to remain married to him, dishonourable man that he was. But when word reached her that he was actually living with one of his young mistresses, an invisible line had been crossed.
“I don’t care for my own sake. He can fuck whoever he wants. But I have children to think of, and I’ll be damned if you get your claws on their inheritance...”
Children. Frank had children. Small people who looked forward to his visits, briefcase stuffed with toys or special treats. Little rosebud lips that called him Daddy.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked into the duvet, now twisted tightly in her fists as she rocked senseless back and forth. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
***
She had no recollection of how she came to be at the hospital. There was a swirling black fog that threatened to suck her down into a hellscape that lived in the corners of her memory. It sucked the air from her throat and replaced it with burning acid, the taste of bile painting the back of her tongue.
She had one coherent thought - she wasn’t going quietly. If the perfect world she had assembled turned out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors, then she was laying waste to it with her own hands.
Frank’s car, a vintage burgundy Aston Martin, was parked in his reserved space in the doctor’s lot. Popping open the boot, she grabbed the tyre iron, and then she began to swing. She didn’t stop until two security guards dragged her away, her feet scuffing and kicking the floor and every vulgar word in her extensive vocabulary echoing off the concrete ceiling of the car-park.
***
It took the head nurse less than thirty minutes to obtain and print her letter of severance. In that same time Claire slowly drifted back into herself. She was appalled at her actions, but the damage was done. There was a small kernel of satisfaction in imagining Frank’s face when he caught sight of his beloved car.
Leaving the hospital, she wandered aimlessly amidst the bright bustle of London in springtime. She found herself at the London Zoo. Sitting on a bench watching the lions pace relentlessly in their fabricated environment, she finally broke down. She sobbed bitterly until her brow felt like iron and her guts like sand.
Eventually, she opened her phone and scrolled through her contacts. She had a small circle of acquaintance in London, but they all knew Frank. Her family was dead. Childhood friends were scattered about the globe. She hesitated over one name: Geillis Duncan. They had been good friends in nursing school, but hadn’t kept in touch over the past two years. Geillis had never met Frank. She was a feisty and outspoken Scot with a personality as large as her carefully disguised generous heart. Claire closed her eyes and dialed.
***
“Ye ken ye can stay as long as ye need, Claire. The spare room is yers.”
She’d returned to Frank’s flat only long enough to stuff her clothes and a few precious objects into her suitcases, then taken the Tube to Spittalfields, a gritty neighbourhood as far from Fitzrovia as the moon. Geillis had welcomed her with open arms and a full bottle of whisky, which they were steadily emptying as Claire spilled her story all over the well-worn pine floors.
“Thanks, Geil, but it’s just for a few days. Just until I figure out what to do with myself.” She was already slurring her words, the combination of lack of sleep, no food and strong liquor hitting her square between her golden eyes.
“Nae rush. I cannae believe ye took an iron tae that bawbag’s car, ye wee fierce thing. I wouldna want tae fight you.”
They lapsed into silence. Claire’s mind was a rushing torrent, with images and thoughts slipping from view before she could grasp onto them. She kept hearing Amelia Randall’s voice, laced with pity. You selfish, stupid girl. She’d been so certain she knew who she was, but now everything was tainted with doubt. It would take time and distance to find herself again; to excavate down to her bones, where everything was true. She would throw her youthful self on the pyre of redemption, and stand by while it burned. It was what she deserved.
“I know what I’m going to do,” she announced out loud, half-forgetting Geillis sat nearby.
“Wha’s that, hen?” her friend asked.
“I’m going to volunteer. As a combat nurse. In Afghanistan.”