I step forward boldly and take the glasses out of his hand and put them on the kitchen worktop.
‘It’s late. I’m exhausted. Please?’
He shrugs.
‘OK, if that’s what you want.’
I follow him back down the hall, hardly daring to hope that it’s nearly over, that he hasn’t realised he’s slipped up mentioning Nathan. A minute more and I’ll be locking the door behind him, and then I will be able to think.
He puts his hand on the Yale handle, poised to push it down.
Come on, I will him silently. Open the door.
His hand stops. He turns to look at me. Just open the door.
‘I can’t, Louise.’ His voice breaks, and on the door handle I can see his fingers shaking.
‘What do you mean? Can’t what?’ Breathe, just breathe.
‘I can’t leave. Not yet. I’m sorry.’
‘You can.’ I try to control the rise in my voice, to disguise the fear, the panic.
‘No, it’s no good.’ With a dart of pain that surprises me, I see there are tears in his eyes. In fifteen years together I never once saw him cry. He looks down. ‘You know, don’t you? Because of what I said in the car, about Nathan Drinkwater?’
I look down too, at the whorls and knots in the oak floorboards that we chose together, the dust gathering in the corners by the door mat.
‘I don’t know anything.’ My voice is a rasp, constricted by the muscles in my throat, which are seizing up, barely leaving room for the air to flow in and out.
‘You do, I can see it in your eyes. I told you at the reunion that I’d never heard of Nathan Drinkwater, and now you know I was lying. You’re frightened of me. You know.’ He’s not angry. In fact I’ve never seen him look so desperately sad, and the love and despair on his face screw the knot inside me even tighter. I sway slightly, my head spinning.
He reaches out to touch me but I jerk my arm away. His face falls.
‘Come and sit down,’ he says. ‘Let me explain.’
He doesn’t wait for an answer, but walks back to the kitchen, his tread heavy and slow, reluctant. I hesitate outside Henry’s room, his nightlight glowing through the crack where Sam left the door ajar. I gently pull it closed and follow Sam down the hall on legs that will barely carry me.
Sam has taken the wine bottle from where he left it on the worktop and is sitting at the table pouring two glasses. He gestures for me to sit down next to him, so I do, my body heavy, filled with lead.
‘Remember when we first got together, Louise?’ he says, twisting the stem of his wine glass. ‘We were so happy, weren’t we?’
I would agree with him no matter what he said, but this one is easy. Yes, we were happy. For the first time in my life, I was with someone who knew what I had done and still loved me. It lessened the burden of guilt somehow. When he kissed me outside that pub in Clapham, I felt lighter than I had done in years.
‘It was such a relief to be with you. You loved me so completely, so… innocently.’ It seems a strange choice of word considering the things we had done together. He must have seen something of this on my face, because he insists, ‘It was innocent, Louise. Or maybe pure is a better word. The things we did together, we did out of love. You wanted it as much as I did, didn’t you? I never forced you, did I?’
He is almost pleading. I shake my head. No, he never forced me. Or perhaps more accurately, I never said no. A shiver runs through me, revulsion laced queasily with the remnants of desire. At first it had been liberating to be released from the confines of the vanilla sex I’d had with previous boyfriends. There was something about the letting go, the relinquishing of control, that excited me, freed me. But there were times, especially after Henry was born, where things went further than I was comfortable with. I thought it was because I’d become a mother, that I’d changed. But I didn’t say. I never said because I could feel him slipping away from me by then and I didn’t want to give him a reason to leave.
‘I didn’t want to hurt Sophie, I swear.’ Sam turns the wine glass around and around in his hand, the liquid slopping about dangerously.
‘No, of course not,’ I say, tasting bile. Oh God, what did he do?
‘I just wanted her to be quiet, to stop saying those things, things that someone else might have overheard. But she wouldn’t shut up, she just kept on saying it, saying she’d seen me with Maria at the leavers’ party, asking me what happened, if Maria had said anything, if I said anything to her. I kept telling Sophie it was nothing, nothing happened, that I left Maria in the woods, that she was fine the last time I saw her.’
‘What are you talking about? What do you mean you left Maria in the woods? When?’
He doesn’t answer, just twists the wine glass even more furiously.
‘Sam?’ My need to know is overriding the fear I feel. Am I on the brink of finding out the answer to the question that has been clawing at me since I was sixteen years old? ‘Is this something to do with Matt?’ I think of Matt’s eyes boring into mine at the reunion, his insistence that we should all keep quiet. A wild hope surges in me that what Sam is about to tell me is that he has been covering up for Matt all these years.
‘Matt? No, it’s nothing to do with him. He’s just worried that it’ll come out that he supplied the E.’ My heart sinks. ‘It was hard,’ he goes on, placing his glass carefully on the table. ‘Seeing you still so torn up about it, all those years later. Knowing that with just a few words I could put an end to your guilt, your shame. But also knowing that it would mean the end of you and me. The end of us.’
I stare at him, wanting yet not wanting him to continue. He takes my hands in his, enfolding them, his thumbs circling my palms over and over. He puts his face in my hands, so that I can’t see his eyes as he speaks, the words rushing out, unstoppable, his hot breath on my hands.
‘You didn’t kill Maria, Louise. I did.’
Chapter 38
Louise doesn’t talk to anyone about the details of her and Sam’s sex life. She is too ashamed of her response to being dominated, pinned down, helpless. She did tell Polly a bit when things got bad after Henry was born, but even she doesn’t know the full story.