Missing You (16 page)

Sean walks into Membury services and immediately something is different. Usually Belle and Amy are waiting for him in the foyer. More often than not, Amy is looking at the comics in the rack outside the newsagent’s and Belle is standing beside her, checking her watch and watching, but not really watching because her mind is already on the weekend ahead. Today they aren’t in the foyer, but Sean knows they are somewhere in the services because Belle’s little gold Mazda is in the car park. He parked beside it.

He hangs around in the foyer for a while, looking at the headlines and the pictures on the front pages of the newspapers. Some minutes pass, with no sign of Belle or Amy, so he wanders into the restaurant . . . and there they are: Belle, Amy and a casually dressed older man who has to be the Other, sitting at a table together, like a proper little nuclear family. Sean’s immediate instinct is to turn and leave. He’ll get in his car and drive. He’ll just go. He’ll phone Belle later and say there was an accident or something – he’ll think of something. She’ll be angry, sure, but . . . but it’s too late.

‘Daddy!’ Amy calls, and there is such joy in her voice that Sean has no option but to try to make his face look normal and walk towards the table. Amy is already weaving through the other tables to greet her father. She throws herself into his arms. Her greeting is so dramatic and so much more emphatic than normal that it must be a show for the benefit of the Other. Sean is hopelessly grateful. He vows never to deny Amy anything she desires ever again. He picks her up and she wraps her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, and kisses his cheek. Her lips are sticky. Her hair smells of the inside of Belle’s car. Sean gears his anxiety down a notch or two and relaxes into the now familiar state of dislocated existence. Here is another situation over which he has no control, which he did not know was coming, and in which he has no idea how to react. Should he punch the Other’s well-groomed, leathery old face or shake his well-manicured, leathery old hand?

At the table, Belle is using handfuls of paper serviettes and making a big deal out of mopping up the milkshake Amy has just spilled. The Other looks intensely uncomfortable, which gratifies Sean.

‘Wow, ’ says Sean, standing beside the table, Amy still clinging to him as tightly as seaweed to a rock, her breath hot on his neck and her fingers knotting themselves in his hair. ‘A delegation. To what do I owe this pleasure?’

He knows this is an arsey thing to say but it comes out of his lips anyway.

‘What?’ asks Belle, frowning.

‘What’s going on?’ says Sean, scratching his chin.

‘Nothing, we just . . .’ says Belle.

The Other stands up. He holds out his hand to Sean. That hand has touched Belle. Those fingers have touched her most private places. Sean cannot touch them. He’d rather cut off his own. He ignores the extended hand and looks at Belle. She looks back calmly.

‘Hello, I’m Lewis,’ says the Other. Sean ignores him.

‘Just what?’ he asks Belle.

‘Lewis and I, we wanted to speak to you about where we go from here.’

‘That’s easy,’ says Sean. ‘East to London, west to South Wales.’

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Why does he keep talking rubbish?

‘Sean,’ says Belle, ‘can’t you just sit down for a minute? Can’t we just—’

‘No,’ says Sean. ‘No, we can’t. You didn’t warn me there was going to be an ambush.’

Belle shakes her head. ‘It’s not an ambush. For God’s sake, Sean, this isn’t a war, don’t be so—’

‘I’m in a hurry,’ says Sean. ‘I’ve got things planned for this evening. Where’s Amy’s bag?’

‘In the car.’

‘Come on, then.’

He turns on his heel, still carrying Amy. She burrows her face further into his neck as he strides out of the services. Belle is trotting behind him.

‘Sean, I know it’s difficult but—’

‘No, Belle, you don’t know what it’s like at all.’

‘I’d like us to be adult about this. There are things to sort out.’

‘All right,’ he calls, ‘let’s be adult, let’s sort things out, get divorced, whatever you want.’

They are outside now, in the car park. Sean is still walking very fast, very powerfully. Belle is half-running in her heels to keep up. Amy is clinging so tightly that he has no need to support her. She gives him strength. She makes him strong.

Belle catches him at the car. ‘What did you say?’

Sean unlocks the boot of his car. He flips it open and steps back.

‘I said OK, let’s get divorced. Do we
need
to talk about it? No doubt you’ve already decided what you want. Can’t you get your solicitor to write to my solicitor or whatever?’

‘It will be cheaper and . . . friendlier if we work together,’ says Belle. She takes Amy’s bag out of her car and passes it to Sean. He avoids touching her but takes the bag and puts it into his boot, and slams it shut.

‘I don’t want to work with you, Belle.’

‘Sean . . .’

Sean peels Amy’s limbs from his body, slides her into the car seat, fastens her in and closes the door.

Then he turns to his wife. He speaks quietly, so that Amy won’t hear.

‘Belle, I’ve finally taken your advice. I have stopped hoping that one day you will change your mind and ask me back. I have stopped blaming myself for what has happened. I am getting on with my life. One day I’m sure we’ll be able to be civilized together, you, me and that pervy old Lothario back there, but not now. Write me a letter. Tell me what you want. We’ll take it from there.’

He gets into the car and starts the engine, and Belle has to step out of the way as he reverses out of the space, then he heads noisily out of the car park and back to Bath without another glance in her direction.

Sean calms down as soon as he pulls out onto the motorway, and when Massive Attack come loud and moody out of the stereo he feels more like a man again. He turns to smile at Amy, who is sitting very straight with an anxious look in her eyes.

‘It’s OK, honey,’ he says. ‘Everything’s OK.’

‘You shouted again.’

‘I know and I’m sorry. When we get to Bath I’m going to call Mum to apologize.’

Amy relaxes and sighs. ‘I don’t like Membury.’

‘Me neither.’

‘It always makes you cross.’

‘Yes,’ says Sean. ‘Yes, it does.’

twenty-two

‘Please, Fen, slow down. You’re giving me a headache,’ says Vincent.

Fen has taken it upon herself to give the bookshop a proper clean, the first in a long while. She has already brushed the ceilings and shaken the cobwebs out into the yard, where the homeless spiders scuttled for shelter in the cracks of the cobbles and the wall. Now she is working methodically, shelf by shelf, taking down the books, dusting them, and cleaning the woodwork. So much dust has been displaced that they’ve had to prop the door open, and the sounds and the smells of the city in summer freshen the musty air.

‘What’s got into you?’ asks Vincent. ‘I preferred you how you were before. All quiet and introspective.’

Fen thinks: You should be asking
who
’s got into me.

‘Oh Lord,’ says Vincent, reading her face or her mind. ‘You’re not in love, are you?’

‘A little.’

‘Dear girl!’ Vincent leaves his desk and comes over to Fen, taking her hands in his and leaning forward to kiss her. ‘Thank goodness! And about time too!’

A gaggle of students come into the shop, speaking a language Fen can’t place. She carries on with her work and Vincent withdraws and attends to them. When they have left he says: ‘It’s not that lodger of yours, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought as much. It’s obvious every time he comes in that he holds a torch for you.’

‘Don’t say anything to anyone, will you, Vincent?’

‘Of course not. It’s nobody else’s business. But he’s a good sort, is he? He treats you well?’

‘Yes, he does.’

‘Well,’ says Vincent, rubbing his hands together, ‘I think we should put the kettle on, don’t you? To celebrate?’

‘By “we” you mean me?’

‘You make coffee so much more nicely than I do, Fen.’

Fen smiles. ‘You sweet-talking charmer, you!’

She goes into the kitchen, and while the kettle boils she rummages through the cluttered, door-less cupboard until she finds what she is looking for. She makes Vincent’s coffee in the
Man and Superman
mug and hers in
Great Expectations.

twenty-three

It’s a perfect Wednesday.

Sean and Fen have both taken a day off work, and they are making the most of every precious minute of their time without children or responsibilities. Fen feels like a teenager again, like she did before everything went wrong; she feels fresh and new and sexy. They left the car parked on the verge of a lane and walked for miles along overgrown paths full of brambles and nettles and tiny moths and shafts of sunlight. And now here they are, just the two of them, and it is like a place in a fairy tale: a secret glade beside water that ripples in the sunlight’s glare, that’s smooth and oily and cold and clear, so clear that you can see the fish in the reeds, the pebbles at the bottom and the freshwater oysters. Millions of tiny insects, like dust motes, shimmy above the water and the leaves in the trees rustle as a little breeze skips through the branches. It is a perfect day. It’s one of those days, Fen knows, that she will never forget – a day that will come into her mind when she’s lonely or frightened or old, a day that will always bring a smile to her lips.

‘We should do this more often,’ says Sean. ‘Let’s go away. Let’s have a holiday. We can catch a plane and go somewhere warm.’

‘I don’t have a passport,’ says Fen.

Sean squints up at her. The sunlight refracts from the tiny droplets of water caught in the hairs that cover her body, making her dazzle like an angel.

Sean is lying on a towel in the long grass of the meadow beside the weir. Fen sits beside him, rubbing her arms with a towel. They have been swimming in the river, and now the blood is fizzing in her veins and her body feels hard and sinewy and strong.

‘How can you not have a passport?’ he asks. ‘Everyone has a passport.’

‘I don’t.’

He pulls a face.

‘There are lots of things I don’t have,’ she says. ‘You know that.’

‘I know you don’t have a computer or a car or a screwdriver. But a passport?’

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she says. ‘I’ve never needed one.’ She shakes her hair, spraying Sean with tiny droplets. ‘God, that water is cold!’

Sean lazily reaches up his arm, takes her wet hair in his hand and pulls her face down to his. He reaches for her with his lips and they are warm, and his mouth tastes of beer.

His finger hooks under the leg of her swimsuit and works its way around from the back.

‘Stop it,’ she says, but already she is sinking like the
Titanic
into what seems to her to be a bottomless ocean of desire. She shifts a little on the rug to make her body more available to him, and as she does so a breeze parts the leaves of the tree canopy above them and sunlight dazzles her eyes, burns her retina.

He rolls her onto her back, kissing her so hard she can hardly breathe, and she pushes him away with her hands.

‘We can’t,’ she says, ‘not here. Anybody could come by.’

‘What are you talking about?’ He is panting, his breath hot as flame on her cold neck. His hand is down inside his shorts. ‘We’re miles from bloody anywhere! I want to take you to Paris,’ he tells her, tugging at her costume. It’s wet and sticks clammily to her skin. She feels the goose pimples everywhere. She smiles up at him lazily, like a cat, she thinks, who is about to have the cream.

‘I want to take you to Venice and Rome and Madrid and Bordeaux. I want to sail you down the rivers, I want to swim you in the seas.’

He takes her hand and guides it down and she holds him, strokes him with her fingers.

‘I want to fuck you all the way through Europe.’

She reaches up for his lips and they kiss again, and as he covers her she can feel the ridge of her spine and the wings of her shoulder blades pressing into the hard ground beneath the rug, and she has to half close her eyes against the sunlight.

‘I’ll get you a passport and I’ll get you a suitcase and I’ll buy you a big bottle of sunscreen and nothing will stop us,’ he says.

He tilts his head back so she can see the underside of his throat, where the tiny hairs darken the skin and there is a red flush, and he finds her and sighs deeply.

‘You’re so cold on the outside, and so hot on the inside,’ he whispers.

She measures his back with her hands, the pressure of his muscles, his gentle strength as erotic as anything else. Over his shoulders, she sees two white butterflies dancing together, going round and round one another, spinning in the sunlight, and she thinks: It has always been like this – it was no different for the first people who evolved, it was no different for people ever – this is how every woman feels, this is how it feels to have a man you love inside you, and nothing else really matters.

She tries to bring her mind back to the sex, but Sean is too far gone now, so she wraps her legs around his waist to help him and he comes in a moment and drops his lips to her shoulder, as he always does.

‘Oh God.’ He sighs. ‘Oh God, that was lovely.’

Fen smiles to herself and strokes the hair around his ear. She listens to the water splashing down the weir; it’s such a good sound.

‘You know,’ says Sean, ‘for a while, last summer, I didn’t think I could ever be happy again.’

‘Mmm . . .’ she says, too lazy to speak, too happy in her own moment.

Sean props himself up on one elbow and she shifts a little for he’s heavy on her hips. He picks a piece of grass and sketches her nose, her eyebrows, her chin.

He smiles.

‘But you know what?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘This is as good as it ever gets. This is amazing. I want to feel like this forever.’

‘Good,’ she says, smiling, but from nowhere a sadness seeps into her belly and behind his back she crosses her fingers to ward off bad luck; just in case.