She was palpably aware of her heartbeat, of his leg just inches away from hers, his left hand on the wheel, the way he kept clenching and unclenching his fingers.
‘Evelyn,’ he said again, this time more assertively. ‘I need to hold you again. I can’t know you went back to London and I didn’t get to do that.’
She could hear her pulse: a loud whishing in her ears, so distracting that she wasn’t sure if he had said it or if she had imagined it. She opened her mouth to reply.
Yes was poised to come out.
But then she saw Mark’s kind face, and her life, and their home, and his trust.
‘No,’ she said, and then, ‘I’m sorry! I can’t do this!’
She dove out. As her foot met the pavement, she stumbled and twisted her ankle slightly. She hobbled quickly for the refuge of her house, registering the tingling pain and the embarrassing melodrama. Her rejection of him weighed on her like an albatross around her neck. She could feel his gaze attaching itself to her, could feel the enormity of his regret. When she quickly glanced back, he was still sitting there. His hands were clutching his head as though he was having some sort of brain burst.
I mustn’t look, she thought. I can’t bear it.
THIRTEEN
He didn’t come the next day, or the next. She made trips over to the mainland to buy groceries and cat food, pay bills, to peruse the windows of the estate agencies – anything to keep busy. One afternoon, she went back to Bamburgh and sat in the exact same spot where she had sat with him, wondering why she lived her life always trying to recreate things.
There was a man on the beach with his son. She watched the little boy run full throttle to the water and then stop short before it touched him. Sometimes, she missed being a mother so deeply that she had to just fold in on herself and let the anguish of the lost opportunity roll over her. Maybe a baby would have made her more settled, more content, given her less time on her hands to think about herself. I want that man to be Eddy, and that little boy to be our child, she thought, in rampant desperation, recognising the drama of it – how it had all suddenly stepped up. Her common sense was telling her to get a grip; she had a different life to this alternate one she suddenly thought she wanted, and it would be best that she went back to London and got on with living it.
By day four she was going insane. She rang Mark and listened to his voice. There had been a family gathering with all his nephews. The youngsters were tiresome in their mischief. Their friends, the Bradbury-Coombs, had done the dastardly thing of popping in unexpectedly when Mark was in the middle of his dinner. His meal was entirely ruined. He thought they’d never leave. Timothy Bradbury-Coombs drank nearly all his Scotch. Mark told her how dire the weather was, and how the Tube workers might be going on strike again.
She could have been talking to an occasional friend or a second cousin. If anything, it left her feeling guilty that she failed to miss him or to hugely long to see him. ‘Do you think you would mind if I stayed on here a bit? There’s still so much to do . . .’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Do? What, for instance?’
‘Well, painting. And I was thinking about the floors—’
‘Floors?’
The lie lay in her conscience like a tumour. She had never deceived Mark, other than to tell him the shop had lost his dry-cleaning, to avoid confessing she’d forgotten to have Tessie send it in.
‘I thought you were just freshening the place up, Ev. Not rebuilding it from the ground up.’ There was a petulant note in his voice.
‘I thought we said I’d stay here for as long as needed.’ She was feeding him a lie that he would recognise as a manipulation.
‘You said you would extend your ticket if you had to – yes. But I honestly didn’t think you’d have to.’ Mark had a way of appealing to her higher conscience for the right thing to prevail. When she didn’t answer, he asked, ‘Well, how much longer do you think you need?’
She heard the emptiness. The abandoned puppy. Despite his age and his accomplishments, there was a part of Mark that had stayed a little boy. He missed her like a child would miss his mother.
‘Perhaps another week.’
‘A week?’ His disappointment was palpable. It should have mattered, yet all she could think about was the need to buy herself more time. Her heart pounded as she waited for his answer.
‘Well, do as you will,’ he said.
She tried not to let out her relief until she had hung up. For a brief second, she felt she’d signed a lease on freedom.
Then she did something that she knew crossed a line.
His street was a long row of pre-war terraces. She peered at numbers until she found his. It had fresh paintwork and a mint-green door. Out front by the gate were a child’s pink bike and a pair of tiny pink plimsolls. Evelyn was driving her mother’s old car. She parked it two houses away on the opposite side. After sitting there for about ten minutes, she got out and crossed the street, focussing on the clip of her heels to try to ignore the wild pounding of her heart.
She gave three tentative raps. She hadn’t fully decided what she’d say if his wife came to the door. She tried to remember that, as far as Laura knew, she was just Mrs Coates’ daughter. No one was going to read her face and know any different.
She could hear music from a radio indoors. Suddenly, she got cold feet. She was just on the point of turning around and sneaking away when the door opened and Eddy appeared.
‘Evelyn?’ Shock and mild annoyance registered all over his face. She heard a voice say, ‘Who is it, Edward?’
‘It’s nothing,’ he shot back, stepping outside and letting the door close part way. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, in a rushed whisper.