‘Anyway, I haven’t decided yet,’ she says.
Her partner at the GP practice, Raj, had called just after Christmas – but only to tell her to take as long as she needed, that he had got in a locum, and that if there was anything to sign (the paperwork when you became a fundholder was beyond belief) he’d drop it round. Twenty-four days missing; three and a half weeks of life suspended, sleepless and confined. Like being under water, it was quiet and engulfing, and there was a strong desire to stay submerged, rather than push up into the brash world where people will ask how she is, how things are. Why can’t she stay home, arrange the house, remain loyal to Edith in her mind, and reinforced in that connection by Julie? Why wasn’t that all right?
‘Right,’ he says, pushing his keys into a shallow pocket in his joggers and zipping it shut. ‘Won’t be long.’
An hour later, she has settled at her desk to tackle some neglected household admin: a quote for contents insurance, cheque for the milkman, a meter reading. She realises she needs a stamp and walks through to Ian’s study. He keeps a stash in the central desk drawer, among paperclips and envelopes and those plastic label holders which clip onto hanging files. They clatter now under her patting hand. The drawer is sticky and won’t pull out fully. She shuffles and lifts at the front but can’t see any little books of stamps, so she pats her hand further back, among the elastic bands and stationary dust. Pens, a torch, her finger pricked by a noticeboard pin; then something solid and square, which she can’t identify from memory. She brings it out. It is a Nokia. Old and chunky. A world away from the smart phones everyone has nowadays. Grubby about the edges of the screen. On the back are glittery pirate stickers: skull and crossbones, a boat. A child’s phone. Why would he—
She runs her thumb over the edges of the stickers and they make a flicking sound, pleasingly stiff against the pad of her thumb. She turns it over in her hand again. It’s dead, of course, the battery run down. He must have found it on the ground somewhere.
She returns the phone to the back of the drawer, hearing as she does so, Ian’s key in the front door. She pushes at the drawer to close it but it judders and sticks and as she pushes again, he is at the doorway, saying, ‘What are you looking for?’
‘I just wanted a stamp,’ she says, unsure why she feels nervous. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
He comes between her and the desk and forcibly pushes the central drawer shut, then opens the drawer beside it and offers her a book of stamps.
‘Here,’ he says.
Six Days Later
Tuesday
Manon
She smiles, closing the front door, and puts her face up to the unseasonal January warmth: sharp, blinding sun, the sky too bright to look at. The air is steely-fresh in her lungs and the river sparkles like diamonds. She wonders how he’ll surprise her for Valentine’s Day. Flowers? A table at a secluded restaurant? A trip to Paris? How quickly being alone vanishes, a country seen from your departing plane – small and far below. Even a short time makes it a distant place, as if the body is quick to relish the enveloping heat in the new territory – love – forgetting it is new. One week or one month is enough to make a return unthinkable.
She sinks down into the driver’s seat, flipping the visor against the unruly sun, rummages in her handbag for her sunglasses, then starts the car. Has Alan noticed the pounds she must have gained with all their Sunday fry-ups and Friday night curries? Has it put him off, the way contentment is causing her boundaries to blur? The more she expresses, it seems, the less he does, and sometimes she wishes they could return to the cinema steps, when she was demure and he was leaning in. He doesn’t like to text or email. Those hearty messages are all from her, sent in a rush of feeling which doesn’t need reciprocity, except that when she receives no reply she notices a darkening of her inner world. An image has stored itself in her mind: that skein of birds, landing and flying off on the bank opposite his barn, one touching down as another lifts up, as if they are set in opposition.
She slows at the traffic lights, marvels at the sun’s glare off bonnets and wing mirrors, and smiles again, remembering her Sunday: head in his lap; the crinkle of the newspaper; her sleepy satisfaction as she read her book, saying, ‘Here’s a good word – agog.’
‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘so is bosom,’ giving hers a squeeze, and then they were at it again.
They are two. It’ll come. He is private; he has an English reserve which anyone would find charming. He doesn’t like to text, is all.