‘Right,’ he nods, but there’s a spark in his eyes that tells me he isn’t fooled.
‘Not that I want you to think I don’t mean business,’ I elaborate, ‘because I do …’ My hand snaking across the space between us now, slipping around to the inside of his thigh and feeling the tautness there, creeping slowly higher until he hisses through his teeth and bats me away.
‘Control yourself,’ he says. ‘I want to get there alive.’ He switches the radio on and music floods the car, and we’re both laughing, high on the tension between us. Sun is streaming in and dazzling through the window pane, and in this moment all the sadness and complication burns up and everything is perfect.
We reach the hotel just after two; a small, unobtrusive place with low brick walls and a dark green awning, a badly painted logo and the words Silver Birches stamped in looping script on to the whitewashed entrance doors. I stand next to Carl as he checks in and chats to the receptionist about the opening times of the restaurant and the pool, all the while looking for some kind of suspicion in her eyes which isn’t there. She smiles as she hands over the key, and it hits me that, here, we’re just a normal couple like any other. The thought is intoxicating and, as I hurry after him along the corridors towards our room, it swirls around and around in my head, so fast I can barely form it into words even to myself: the idea of us together, fresh out of the box, and starting on a journey that is anything but a dead end – one that is going to go somewhere, that could make us both happy for a long, long time.
‘Not too bad, is it?’ he says, swinging open the door. Dark red walls, a double bed covered with a duvet in the same colour and pillows edged with white piping. There’s a picture on the wall above the headboard: an abstract field of poppies, their petals splashed across the canvas like blood. The air is warm and the curtains are drawn, a lamplight shining dimly next to the bed. My heart is still thumping with the force of the thoughts rushing through me. I toss my overnight bag on to the floor and move forward into his arms.
‘I like it.’ I press my body up towards his, tilting my hips slightly upwards to press against the hardness of his crotch. His lips graze against mine, once, twice. ‘So,’ I say, ‘shall we go and have a swim?’
‘Sure. If that’s what you want,’ he says. His hands are working their way slowly down my body, sliding underneath the waistband of my skirt and slipping slightly inside the bikini bottoms I already have on beneath my clothes. I’m shivering, but I nod. I don’t want this to happen quickly, not today. I can wait just as long as he can.
He looks into my eyes and, in the darkness of his pupils, I see my own reflection. A long moment, then he smiles and exhales. ‘Good girl,’ he says, and pulls away, affecting disinterest, lazily doing up the buttons of his shirt I hadn’t even realized I had undone.
We go down to the swimming pool – a small white-tiled room flanked with green, waxy-leaved plants that look shinily plastic, the pool a glittering splash of bright blue. It’s cold, and I ease myself in in stages, exclaiming as the water inches over my thighs and soaks into my bikini. Carl is already in, making his way down the length of the pool, sending droplets scattering in his wake. I set my teeth and submerge myself. When I surface, I know I’m grinning stupidly with the weird, giddy pleasure of floating that always hits me when I’m in water. I swim over to him and he pulls me into his arms, my limbs coiling wetly around his. I wipe the hair back from his eyes, slicking it back across his scalp.
‘I love this,’ I say. ‘I always have.’
‘I can see. Funny. I didn’t know that about you.’
His tone is light, but I can’t help thinking that we really know so little, both of us, about each other. I move on to his lap and kiss him, resting my legs gently on his, suspended in the water. And for a moment, I want to tell him everything I can think of about myself, good and bad – pour it all out and have it done with, make him know me as well or better than anyone ever has. But I have no idea where to start and, in the end, I just bite my lip and twist out of his arms, swimming away down the pool.
We stay in the water for almost half an hour, chatting about the week we’ve had and unimportant programmes we’ve seen on TV, then spend a few minutes in the sauna. The wood is so hot it feels as if it’s branding my back, etching ridges of memory into my skin. He’s watching me from above, in the dim, reddish light; the darkness of his stubble shadowing the bones of his jawline, his eyes glittering blackly down at me. Sweat is trickling over me and impatience makes me shift restlessly back and forth – wanting his mouth hot on my skin, his tongue licking the path of my sweat down my body, giving me what I want so much now that it feels almost impossible to deny it any longer. I’m dizzy and defenceless, the walls of the small, hot room lurching uncontrollably around me.
‘Christ,’ I say, scrambling up. This desire is too much; scares me, almost. ‘I need to get out.’
Outside, the sun is shining, but the breeze blowing through the propped-open window is blissfully cool and we go for a walk in the small grounds, wandering across the lawns and finally coming to rest on a bench at the far edge of the rose garden. He puts his arms around me and I lean back against his chest, looking back at the hotel behind us. I have the strange sense of these moments being both fleeting and lasting, the knowledge that, whatever happens, I won’t forget this.
‘I wish you could come with me tomorrow,’ he says suddenly. It’s the first time he’s mentioned anything like this. Despite our deep connection, our lives are fundamentally divided. We’ve never met each other’s family or friends, never been able to announce our relationship publicly – never done any of the things that would make it real in the eyes of the world, or perhaps even to ourselves.
‘I wish I could, too,’ I say. There’s a lump in my throat. I know that if I suggested I could come after all, he’d laugh and dismiss it. As far as he’s concerned, I don’t exist for him anywhere but in the private spaces we’ve carved out for each other. He knows the score, and he’s made his peace with it. For the first time, I wonder what this really is to him, this no-man’s-land he’s created. I imagine him lying awake at night and thinking about what the hell he’s doing, how he’s just wasting time with me. I wonder if he wishes he’d never met me at all.
‘Hey,’ he says, smoothing the hair back behind my ears. ‘Don’t look so sad.’
‘I am sad.’ My voice is so quiet it would be easy to pretend I hadn’t spoken at all, but I force myself to speak louder, looking up straight into his eyes, only inches from my own. ‘I don’t want this to end.’
He sighs and continues stroking my hair, his hand moving rhythmically and tenderly across my skull. ‘Nor do I, Caro,’ he says, ‘but it has to happen soon. I know we’ve been talking about it for ages, but you know I’ve always wanted you, and I haven’t been able to resist this, but it doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t …’ He pauses, tries to sort his thoughts into words. ‘You must see I can’t be in a long-term relationship with someone who’s married.’
I feel the breath draw up through my body, and it’s the closest I’ve ever been to telling him. That I’m really not sure what Francis and I are still doing together – that the way we live now reminds me of two strangers skating around each other on thin black ice, unhappily circling the rink of our marriage. And that now I’m here with him I’m surer than ever that I’m in love with him, that I’m terrified I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life if I let him go. I don’t know why I can’t say it.