Apple Tree Yard (23 page)

When I was younger, I would have been scared of a man like you. I would have run a mile. But you came to me at an age when I believed I didn’t need to be scared any more. Which men to be scared of – it’s something any girl or young woman learns, instinctively, as soon as she is old enough to leave the house on her own; the man in a suit who stands too close to you at the bus stop; the wet-lipped old guy who waits in the middle of the pavement, staring as you approach; the loud, drunken lads in the pub who will shout obscenities at chucking-out time.

But now I know how wrong those instincts can be. Now I know it can come from any direction, even one you believe to be so innocuous that there is no harm in getting drunk, in being alone with him in a room, because this one doesn’t seem at all dangerous, does he? And, hey, even if he does make a pass at you, you can handle it, can’t you? You’re a mature woman. You have degrees to prove it. One good hard slap, that’s all it took.

I’m not afraid of dangerous men any more. I’m afraid of friendly, ordinary men. I’m not afraid of burglars or strangers after dark. I’m afraid of men I know.

At that point I stop and stare at the screen for a long time. I read through what I have written, close the letter, feel grateful that no one but me will ever read it, then send you a text.

Dear You. What we have been doing was a game but something has happened that was all too real. I know how difficult this has been for you.
I stop at this point, begin to cry.
So, probably best if we are not in touch for a while.
I stop again. I have to be unequivocal.
It’s really better that way, so don’t call or text. I’ll be in touch when things look up. I’m sorry.
I sob a little, salty tears of self-pity flowing down my cheeks. I am aching to sign off with affection, to tell you how much I want you and need you now, but instead I write:
I’m going to press send now before I lose my nerve. My husband is home so that’s it for now
.
Yx.

I press send. Then I put the phone down on my desk, cover my face with my hands, and cry a solid, loud, hearty cry. Guy won’t be back for another two hours. I can cry as loudly as I want.

After a while, I stop crying. I wipe at my eyes with the sleeve of my top and see immediately that, as it is a light green top, I have smeared mascara over it. I liked that top, I think to myself. Oh well. Silly cow. Serves you right. What did you expect? I imagine myself telling someone – a police officer, or a jury, perhaps? – the whole story. The vast majority of people would think I deserved everything I got. Maybe they’d be right too. I think of young women who this happens to, how they must feel defined by it. I am fifty-two years old. I have lived a lot and done a lot and, with luck, will live a lot and do a lot more. I feel the strange wash of weary calm that always comes after a long cry.

I pick up the phone and look at it, turn it over once in my hand. I know there has been no immediate response from you because there has been no buzz or vibrate but I still look at the messages folder, just in case. Then, on an intake breath, I turn off the phone.

*

The first day without you is painful in a way that is almost exquisite. I imagine quitting smokers must feel like this, or crash-dieters – the early determination, where the loss of what you have given up is replaced with the adrenaline of denial. Then there is the fine business of tormenting oneself, of picking at the loss. I had a friend in the first office I worked in, Siobhan, who was prone to ear infections. When she got one, the itching would drive her crazy. She used to try to clean the inside of her ear with cotton buds but that only made it worse, pushed the irritation further in. So she would sit at her desk sometimes while I watched in appalled fascination, and screw a tissue up into a point, dampening it slightly with her tongue, twisting it round and round until it formed a long, fine conical shape. She was a small woman, with pale skin and gamine features. She would concentrate very hard as she rolled the tissue, the tip of her tongue protruding from her mouth. Then, with an expression of intense concentration, she would insert the spear of tissue into her ear and prod inside, deep in her ear, at the source of irritation and itching and pain. She would tell me that it would make a tiny
doink doink doink
sound inside her head, this action. It had no lasting effect, she knew that before she did it. It was just that, for the few seconds of that small motion, as the itch was temporarily satisfied, she would have the illusion of rapture.

In the same way, that first day, I turn my phone on and check it every hour, as if to prod at my pain, to prove to myself you will not reply. And when I see that you have not replied, I feel a piercing combination of vindication and dread – I have poked at my grief for a few seconds.
Doink doink.

The first day turns out to be the easy bit. Even on the second day, I still feel a perverse satisfaction in my ability to make myself suffer. I tell myself the lack of response from you vindicates my decision. Perhaps you really did want out but didn’t feel able to say so under the circumstances. Very probably, you are relieved.

On the Thursday morning, I return to my desk at home after going to the loo, and see that on my regular phone, my normal one, there are three
blocked missed calls
. I pick up the phone and look at it. It could be you, or it could be the spam calls I was getting a month or so ago. I turn on the pay-as-you-go phone to see if you have left a message there but there is nothing. I turn off both phones.

*

For a few days more, I have the illusion that I have done the right thing and that doing the right thing means I am getting better. I am kind to myself. I bathe often. I am nice to Guy. I try to think as much as possible about Guy. I go for walks in the park. I tell myself the worst is over. It is time to put it all behind me now.

*

I go into the Beaufort Institute again, returning to my regular work schedule. There is one loose end to be tidied up. I send an email to Sandra.
Hi Sandra, Just to give you a heads up, I thought I should let you know I won’t be returning to the external examining position next academic year – I thought the more notice I gave you the better. It looks like I might be doing a full-time maternity cover here and so my diary is going to be stuffed. I’m sure you’ve got a list but let me know if you want me to suggest some names for you. I hear Mahmoud Labaki is very good, a hard marker. Guy has worked with him a lot and really rates him – let me know if you need his contact details. See you soon I hope, Yvonne.

After this, I send an email to Marc in Human Resources. The person he found for the maternity cover has just pulled out on him, so I know he will be pleased when I tell him I can take it on after all. He emails me back immediately, delighted. It’s working, I think to myself, that’s all I can do for now, keep busy.

*

A week after my mother’s cremation, while her ashes were still in a pot-bellied urn on a shelf in the kitchen, my father came home one day with a present for me; a new kit. It was the February half term; I was off school. I think my aunt must have told him I needed something to take my mind off what had happened. It was a resin kit, for making paperweights and keepsakes and jewellery. It came with metal bottles of liquid that needed mixing together with spatulas, then pouring into moulds. I spent the whole of that half term making things. I had to spread newspaper over the kitchen table, at my aunt’s insistence, and then pour liquid from the large bottle into the mould. When I had done that, I mixed in a few drops from a much smaller bottle of hardener. It fascinated me – that something that was liquid could be made solid by the simple addition of a few drops of a different liquid. What caused that? How did it work? The little moulds came in different shapes, circles, ovals, squares. You could sink things in the liquid – flower petals (but they turned brown), strands of hair, beads. My most successful object was an oval, into which I sunk a tiny plastic ballerina that I think was once a cake decoration. The objects hardened overnight. By the end of the week, I had quite a collection of them. I went round the house and hid them in as many different sorts of places as I could find; in the bathroom cabinet, in my father’s wardrobe, on a window sill on the half-landing. I had the idea that I, and other members of my family, would, in future, stumble across the objects accidentally, and be pleased. No one ever commented on them, though, and eventually I forgot them myself, finding one or other of them many months later, in a box or cupboard or on a shelf, undiscovered, covered in dust.

13

The quality of blue that the sky has in May is quite unlike the quality it has at other times of the year. Summer throws everything it’s got at us then, as if to remind us what it’s all about: dense blue, impenetrable. June is more confused: muddled skies, showers. In June we are reminded, yes, the British summer, this is what it’s like. It’s rubbish, really. Why do we live on this damp island? July is unpredictable: it does it on purpose. It likes to let us know it could go either way, depending on its mood. Most of the time we are philosophical, but every now and then, the odd blasting hot day arrives to give us a bit of false hope. In August, a kind of collective stalwartness sets in. Rain lashes down on the Bank Holiday but we are British, we can handle it. We never expected any different. The false hopes of July, the muddled skies of June, even the blank blue of May – none of it had us fooled, not for one minute.

It was a long summer, my love.

*

I try and get out of the house. I go to the Beaufort more often than I need to, considering my full-time post doesn’t start until September. The woman I am doing the maternity cover for, Claire, is huge with twins. When she walks down the corridors at work, people give her wide berth, as if they are worried about bumping into her and setting her off like a car alarm.

London is a city of over eight million inhabitants; it is heaving, this summer, but it is empty without you. Guy and I moved out to the very edge of London to get away from it but all our journeys are back in; as if we are iron filings drawn to a magnet. Living on the edge of a city means you get to see a lot more of it than if you live right in the middle. You get to traverse it every day.

Our local station is a terminus. ‘There’s only one problem with the end of the line,’ Susannah said when we moved there: ‘it’s the end of the line.’ When I get the Tube into town, I travel overground for half an hour, watching the dense expanse of suburbs passing by, relentlessly, the houses that back on to the railway line, the washing hanging out, the children and dogs in the small square back gardens. All these millions of people: what’s the point of any of them, when none of them are you? It is a relief when the train goes underground at Finchley Road. The population shrinks to the inhabitants of my carriage and I know that none of them are you already. 

*

What is it I am pining for, exactly? We had so little time together and I’m too traumatised to miss the sex. I am missing the way that you concentrated on me. I am missing how the beam of your attention seemed to create a protective barrier around me that nothing else could penetrate. I am missing who I was when I was with you. Maybe I’m just missing myself.

Maybe this is all it is: the price we pay for what we do is proportionate. Maybe all that endless summer amounted to was the inverse of the heady spring you and I had spent together: the secrecy and excitement of what we did, the exhilaration – and yes, the joy, the joy of doing something that wasn’t wise or logical, merely desired. Then I had to pay. You go into a shop for an ice cream, you have to give the man behind the counter some money. It’s really not difficult.

*

When I am at work, I cannot permit myself to imagine you only a few streets away, that would be too painful – so the way I deal with it is to imagine you gone, vapourised. It’s easier when the school holidays start, because I know your children are still school-aged, so you are probably in France or Spain or Italy – somewhere. I imagine you on a windy beach, playing cricket with them, bowling at them with long, easy, over-arm strokes, your T-shirt billowing away from your back in the sea breeze, the children jumping and shrieking, your wife lying on a towel a few feet away, reading a book. In September, it will get harder again but in September I will start my maternity cover and that, along with my freelance work, will mean the next six months will be very full.

Throughout the summer, I set myself false deadlines.
By the end of May, I will start to be better
– OK then, by the time Guy and I take that long weekend in Rome in June, or when I come back from it, I will start to forget everything that has happened, him and you. Rome is good. In Rome, I can walk down a street and not bump into anyone I desire or dread – but my loneliness returns with renewed force the minute we step off the plane at Heathrow, the minute I am back on the same island as you. Absurdly, I scan the people waiting at the barriers in the arrivals hall, the minicab drivers with their signs, the anxious parents, families. Do I really think you would have somehow found out I was away, checked the inbound manifests and disguised yourself as a driver just so that you could wait at the barrier to catch a glimpse of me? At such times, I feel a fleeting fear for my own sanity.

*

At the end of August, Adam comes home. It is the first time we have seen him for nearly two years. We have spoken to him seven times during that period, only two of them at any length. The first we know about his visit is when he sends Guy a text, the Thursday after the Bank Holiday.
Might come by tomorrow for couple of days, OK?