Tears are blurring my eyes and I see their echo rising in his own, and by the time he kisses me we’re both crying and I can feel the wetness on his skin.
‘Come on,’ he says after a while, wiping his hand across his eyes. ‘This is stupid. We’re not here for long, and we should enjoy it. Let’s go back in and get an early dinner. OK?’
‘OK.’ I dry my eyes with the back of my sleeve, blinking the last of my tears away. I know he’s right. Whatever the time is for this conversation, it isn’t now. As we stroll back over the lawn together, his hand in mine, I feel the happiness sweeping back, ironing over the last few minutes as if they were never there. I won’t think about them. Not now.
We eat our dinner in the near-deserted restaurant, laughing at the awkward plastic flowers poking out of the tabletop vase, taking our time poring over the laminated menus and in the end choosing almost at random. When the elderly waitress brings a bottle of wine, she smiles indulgently at our clasped hands, radiating bonhomie and approval. I could change her expression, I think, if I told her what was really happening here. As I taste the wine, cool and crisp, the idea of being some sort of scarlet woman suddenly seems funny. It isn’t who I am. It’s not how this feels.
‘It’s all right, this, isn’t it?’ Carl comments halfway through dinner, indicating his food with an air of mild revelation.
‘It’s actually really nice.’ I up the ante, widening my eyes in surprise. The food is pretty bog standard, if I stop to think about it, but in this moment everything feels amplified, ten times better than it really is. ‘Not as good as your cooking, of course.’ My sole experience of his cooking has been hastily cooked pasta one night in his flat when we were both too wired and strung out on sex to want to go out for dinner, but he nods as if accepting his due.
‘Yeah,’ he says, with no attempt at false modesty, ‘I’m pretty good at that. Pretty good at most things,’ he adds, smiling wickedly across the table.
Abruptly, we’re standing up and walking fast across the restaurant, pausing only to give our room number to the waitress and ask her to put the meal on the bill. My heart is beating fast and my legs are weak as I follow him down the corridor. He unlocks the door and I’m barely inside before he’s slammed it behind me and pressed me up against it, forcing my body back against the hard wood. He takes my hands and pins them above my head, keeping them there with his hand gripped around my wrists as he kisses me hard, his tongue in my mouth and his teeth biting at my lip, the smart of blood bursting in my mouth. ‘Tell me you want it,’ he says into my ear, and I hear myself saying things I thought I’d never say, the words tumbling out as I impatiently arch my hips up to his and he pushes down my skirt with his free hand, ripping it away.
He picks me up into his arms and, in another moment, we’re on the bed and I catch sight of us in the long mirror on the far wall, my hands tangled in his hair and his body on mine, the strong, lean muscles of his shoulders rolling as he eases out of his shirt. The curtains are still drawn and the lamplight casts our shadows on to the wall, moving together, and I can hear my breath coming fast and urgently as I wrap my legs around his and he pushes his way inside me. We move slowly at first, his hands unhurried and intense on my body. He says something I can’t catch. Harder, I say. Yes.
‘Ask me nicely,’ he says, his eyes burning intently into mine.
‘Sorry,’ I whisper. ‘Please,’ and I feel his body tense, and after that he does what I want without my having to ask because he knows what to do with me and he always has, even without being told, because this chemistry between us is something that can’t be taught or explained. ‘I can’t get enough of you,’ I find myself whispering, and he smiles that teasing smile that tells me I don’t have to say it out loud because it’s so brutally obvious that a blind man could see it.
We lie in the bed together afterwards, talking, and when the sky outside has darkened and I can hear the first beginnings of rain pattering on to the window, we move into each other’s arms again and I climb on top of him, my hair hanging down and brushing over his chest, his hands reaching up warm and hard on my skin. I tell him that I love doing this with him, and he says it back, and it would take so little to slip over this boundary and say what I really mean, but I still don’t do it – and when, much later, he’s fallen asleep beside me and the rain outside has deepened into a hot summer storm, I lie awake half the night staring at the shape of his face in the dark and I say it then instead, knowing he can’t hear me and that I don’t have to wait for him to reply.
When the buzzer sounds, I don’t quite believe it at first. I’ve been sitting in the living room all afternoon, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a minute at a time. I’ve just been here. Waiting. Breathing. These two things suck up as much effort as I’ve got to give. In the back of my mind, I’d accepted that they wouldn’t come. But now, the sound jars through the air again and I’m crossing to the intercom and saying ‘Hello?’ and hearing a voice that I now know sounds like Caroline’s spilling out explanations and justifications, even though I invited them in the first place.
I let them into the building and then I listen to the sound of Eddie’s footsteps pattering eagerly up, his grandmother’s following more slowly behind. There’s no time to prepare myself. They’re here, framed in the doorway, the boy glancing at me briefly and then losing interest almost as quickly, dashing to the hamster’s cage in the corner of the room and unlocking the top.
‘Thanks for letting us pop in,’ Caroline’s mother says. ‘He’s been talking about it all day at school, apparently. We won’t take up much of your time.’ The words are polite but her eyes are darting around all over the place, betraying her uncertainty. On some level, she knows there’s something here she doesn’t trust. And by a process of elimination, she knows it must be me. The silence lasts a fraction too long, long enough for me to understand I should have filled it. ‘I’ll make us a quick cup of tea,’ she says at last. ‘I know where everything is.’
I listen to her moving around the kitchen, briskly filling the kettle, clattering the mugs on to the worktop. Without realizing it, I’ve moved closer to Eddie. He’s crouched down on the floor, cradling the little silvery hamster in his hands, cooing and muttering some babyish private language to it as it sniffs the air. His fair hair falls over his forehead.
‘He’s mine,’ he says clearly, not looking at me but raising his voice so that it’s clear who he’s talking to. ‘I look after him.’
‘I can see that,’ I say. I pause, testing the next words that have come to me inside my head. They gather in the air, like delicate balloons. ‘And who looks after you?’ I ask.
He shrugs, still intent on the creature in his hands. ‘Lots of people,’ he says.
‘Your mummy?’ I ask, and he nods. ‘What would your mummy do for you?’ I ask. And at last he looks up at me, his large grey eyes clouded by a confusion and a suspicion that seem far older than his years, alerted to the fact that something in my voice has changed and that this means something, even if he doesn’t understand what. He stares at me unblinkingly, silently, still and watchful. Blood is pumping in my head, making me dizzy.
‘Would she kill for you?’ I say.
Away
Caroline, May 2015