I know it’s more than that, but I don’t comment, letting her hear the echo of her own words in the silence. ‘How much has he told you?’ I ask instead. ‘About me. About our relationship.’
She seems on safer ground now, drawing herself up and meeting my gaze again head on. ‘Everything.’ Her face twists, as if she might say more, but she presses her lips together and half shakes her head, a little internal self-check.
Without wanting to, I’m giving that one word its context. Images are rising inside me, headed with increasing speed towards that final still point: the road outside the Silver Birches hotel, the place where I last saw you. I see Amber watching me, and I wonder how much of what I am fighting hard to suppress is written over my face, and if she really knows, if she really understands. For so long I have believed that our secrets have existed only between you and me, in a tight, unhappy little club of two. It’s an unspoken bond, stretching across the distance. It’s kept me in your life, and you in mine, whatever the facts might say. The thought that the circle might have expanded to include her disorientates me.
‘Look.’ Her voice cuts into my thoughts. ‘That message you just sent me.’ With a shock, I remember the reason I texted her. ‘I don’t really understand what you were asking. You’re asking why I didn’t tell you Carl lived here?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That first day we had coffee, when I asked you if you knew the person who owned the house I was staying in, you said no. Why didn’t you tell me it was him?’
She frowns, clearly thrown off base. ‘Why would you think that?’ she asks. ‘Carl lives here. Here. In this house, with me.’
I blink, trying to take in what she is saying. It makes no sense, and yet it rings true. The crockery in her kitchen, the bright-coloured walls, the stark black-and-white prints in the hallway. These are your taste, not hers. I can imagine you here in this house, in a way I’ve never been able to imagine you at number 21. The mental images of you here flood my brain with a certainty that tells me she isn’t lying.
I’m wading through treacle, trying to catch up with a meaning I can’t quite grasp. Does number 21 belong to another of your girlfriends, someone who trusts you and lets you into her home and whose absence you’ve timed to coincide with my arrival? Have you posted her details on the house-swap website without her knowledge? Somehow enlisted her, obtained her keys and intercepted mine? Or do you own both houses? But every idea that comes to me feels implausible.
‘When is he coming back?’ I ask at last. I need to drag the conversation back to firmer ground. The here and now is what we need to concern ourselves with; it’s the only thing we can deal with right now.
‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ she says, and she can’t suppress the lift in her voice for an instant, her face momentarily illuminated by the private happiness the thought is giving her.
I clench my hands into fists, digging my fingernails into my palms. I’m not due to return to Leeds for two more days and, although I still don’t understand how, you must know that. You’re choosing to return early. Why would you do that? Surely only because you want to see me?
‘We need to decide what to do,’ Amber says bluntly. ‘I’ll be honest, I don’t think you should stay. I don’t think it will do any good for you to see him. No good for you, or for him. Or for me,’ she adds – casually, but I know that this is what must be burning brightest in her mind.
My immediate reaction is to defy her, but I have the sense to keep my mouth shut and bite my tongue. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I say at last. ‘I’ll text you in the morning.’
Amber nods, and I see her body sag in the armchair, as if drained by the intensity of our conversation. ‘OK.’ She rests her head back, half closing her eyes.
I stand to leave, but when my hand is on the door I can’t help turning back and asking the question that has been nagging at me ever since I knew that she was the one person who could give me the answer. ‘How is he?’ I ask simply.
She raises her head slowly, looks at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Fine. Happy.’ Her voice is soft and non-combative, but each word has the feel of a muffled gunshot, killing off further questioning. I think about these words, turn them over in my head. They don’t fit with what she said the other day, when she talked about your remoteness, the feeling she often had that you weren’t quite there. But I don’t have the energy to work out which I would prefer or which is more likely to be true, and I just nod and leave the house, closing the front door quietly behind me.
Somehow, in the few hours I’ve been asleep since I returned from Amber’s house, I’ve managed to work my way across the bed towards Francis, so that when I wake my lips are pressed into the crook of his neck and his arms are wrapped loosely around me. He’s still sleeping, his breath coming evenly, stirring the hair that falls across my face. Lying with the warmth of his body pressed up against mine, the surreal midnight encounter with Amber seems like a dream.
Francis is stirring, stretching and yawning. ‘Hello,’ he mumbles, tightening his arms around me in a hug. ‘It’s good to have you here.’
I push my face into his shoulder, my eyes suddenly stinging senselessly with tears. ‘Morning.’ His hand is resting lightly on the top of my head, then sliding to the back of my neck, applying a little pressure to encourage me to look up at him. I blink the tears back. ‘Did you sleep well?’
He frowns gently, his face angled down to study mine. ‘I slept all right,’ he says, ‘but when I woke up at one point in the night, you weren’t there. Where did you go?’
‘I couldn’t sleep. I was just downstairs for a bit,’ I say quickly. Too late, I realize I have no idea if he went in search of me and found the house empty. My muscles tense, but he doesn’t contradict me.
‘You know,’ he says instead, at last, ‘I really am worried about you. I have been all week. I know we’ve had some tense moments, particularly the other day at the museum, and I’m sorry for my part in that, but it’s not just that. You’ve just seemed … troubled. Jumpy.’ He pauses, as if searching for the definitive comment on my behaviour. ‘Absent,’ he finishes.
The word sends a shiver through me. Absence – detachment – is a dangerous thing between us. I used to come home to a man who seemed not so much a husband as a robot put in his place, a hologram with Francis’s face and nothing inside. At first, I fought back with anger, pouring double the emotion into the empty space that his disappearance from the relationship had left. I’m not even sure when the anger turned to an indifference that numbed me to the bone and sucked up my love. But I know what hardened it and made it set in: you. And now, after all this time, you’re starting to do it again.
I wrap my arms around his neck, trying to bring myself back. ‘I know,’ I whisper. ‘I’m sorry. I just …’ I release him and roll over on to my back, staring up at the shadowed sunlight flickering warmly across the ceiling. ‘I’m not happy here,’ I say honestly. ‘I know we looked forward to coming away, but I feel strange. I miss Eddie, and the flat. I miss being at home.’ As I speak, I feel the resolve strengthen inside me. Amber was right. I have the opportunity to cut this mess off before I’m tempted to have any further contact with you. ‘We could just go home today,’ I say.