Saving Nathaniel (28 page)

'
I
'
m sorry, Megs. I had to ask.
'

'
No you didn
'
t! If you knew him at all you would know he wasn
'
t capable of such a thing.
'

'
All men are capable, Megs. It
'
s just a matter of doing it
…
and getting away with it.
'

'Don't say another word, Becks.'

'
It
'
s only because I care about you Meg. I honestly do. You may be older than me, but you still need someone to watch out for you.
'

'He didn't do anything.
If you must know, it was me. I started it. I didn
'
t want him to be lonely
…'

'…
and so you took him to bed like a lost teddy bear?'

'Why do you have to be so cruel, Becks?'

'And
what thought, if any, did you give to me during all this
…
palaver?
'

'You!
Why would I think about
you
? I can't see how it can be any of your business?
'

'How about
considering how
I
was going to feel on Monday morning when I did the laundry; when I handled the fine linen sheets that graced the bed on which my sister fucked my boss.
'
Megan said nothing.
'
I thought not.
'

Rebecca stood up quickly, knocking her chair backwards. It clattered noisily on the floor as she stormed from the room
, the sound of her running up the stairs, was closely followed by the muted slamming of her bedroom door.

Megan folded her arms on the table and rested her now throbbing head on them. And there she stayed for half an hour or more, mulling over the previous night with Nat and what could have been going through his mind when she left him alone in his study that morning. She had agonised over whether or not she had done the right thing by leaving him at all, but he had made it quite clear he didn't want her there.

From the open fronted larder cupboard, she took a
packet of chocolate biscuits. They been a reliable comforter in times of distress since childhood, and by the time Rebecca returned to the kitchen, more than half were already gone.

Rebecca said nothing as she picked up the dropped chair and set the kettle to boil again to make fresh tea.

'
I
'
m sorry I flew off the handle like that. It came as a bit of a shock to find out you've just spent the night screwing my employer,' she said, rinsing the teacups at the sink.

'
It really has nothing to do with you,' Megan said as she wetted her finger and dabbed at fallen biscuit crumbs.

'It has everything to do with me.
I
'
ll not be able to look him in the eye now without feeling some sort of shame or embarrassment. Tell me to fuck off if you want, but I'm going to stick my oar in and make a guess at how this story went. It has a horribly familiar ring to it, so
feel free to
stop me if you
'
ve heard any of it before. He came to you with tears in his eyes, feeling all sad and lonely. He pitched you a tale of woe about how he couldn
'
t go on like this any more, life wasn't worth living yada yada, and when he cried and hinted that he might harm himself if he was left alone, you jumped right into bed with him to save him from himself. Am I right?'

Megan could only stare at the scrubbed wooden tabletop as the sound of Rebecca hitting the metaphorical nail squarely on its head echoed in her mind. The same thing had happened throughout her adult life, over and over and over again in a seemingly perpetual cycle of want, need, comfort and rejection. Yet this time, it was different. 'This is different,' she said.

'How?
You hardly know him well enough to make that judgement.
'

'
I know him well enough, and h
e's not like the others.
He
'
s
…
.
'
She struggled to come up with the right description; lonely, desperately unhappy, needy? They were accurate, but all sounded so trite.

Rebecca filled in the missing words.
'
He
'
s a
man
. They're all the same.
'

'That's a very jaundiced and unfair assessment
, Becks. Just because you had a bad experience doesn't mean they are all tarred with the same brush.'

Rebecca's mouth twisted with bitter rancour. '
You want to call what happened to me a bad experience? You think finding out a week before your wedding that the man of your dreams, the man you're pregnant by, is already married, was a bad experience?'

'No...'

'And losing the baby because of the strain and shock,was that also a bad experience?'

'Becca, please...I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I know you've had it rough in the past, but it was a long time ago, and none of it is Nat's fault.'

'Men are men the world over.'

'Even Paul? He's a man.'

'Leave Paul out of this.'

'You said yourself you really don
'
t know that much about Nat, so you are in no position to judge him so harshly.
'

'
I know enough to know that blokes like him use women like you, Megs. You know it too.
'

Megan shook her head emphatically.
'
No, Becks, you are absolutely, totally wrong about him. And even if you were right,
I
don
'
t regret a single minute of it. It was the best I
'
ve ever had,
ever
. No-one else even came close, and nothing you can say can cheapen it.
'

The kettle whistled. Rebecca
stuffed the rest of her biscuit into her mouth as she got up to make fresh tea. She re-took her seat, held her mug in both hands and blew on the tea to cool it. For over a minute, the women didn't speak, nor did they look at one another. Finally, she said:

'Describe yesterday to me?'

Megan frowned quizzically. 'What? Why?'

'I want to get the full picture.'

Reluctantly Megan detailed the day's events from the first silent phone call, through finding Nat drunk and unconscious on the study floor, to how upset he was because of the anniversary, and how she stayed with him until after midnight before retiring to the guest room.

'
How many times have you slept with him?
' Rebecca asked.

'
Just the once.'

'
Where?
Did he take you to his bed?'

'
No. We stayed in the guest room. Why?
'

'
Because his bed was
her
bed - Joanna's. He never uses his own bed. To him it would be like violating a sacred altar.
'

'
But it was my choice,
'
said Megan. 'I invited him in.'

'After he came calling on some pretext or other.'

'Yes. He brought me a toothbrush.'

'Uh-huh.'

Megan began to feel distinctly unsettled. It was as if Rebecca had witnessed the whole scene.
'What are you trying to say, Rebecca? Are you suggesting he was so devious he staged the whole thing in order to trick me into bed?'

'It's possible.'

'No, no way, he wouldn't do that, not to me.'

'Why not?'

Megan sipped at her tea
and considered the evidence - the silent phone calls she couldn't resist investigating; her conveniently missing shoe preventing her from leaving; him bringing her a toothbrush of all things in the middle of the night. He had become emotional, helped along by the drink, certainly, but it had been genuine, she was sure of it. And her lost shoe? That wasn't sinister. Of course he didn't take it. She must have kicked it away by accident. It was her own carelessness. He wouldn't be so malicious.

'No,' she said determinedly. 'You've got it all wrong. He called me, yes, but h
ow could he have known for sure I would come?'

'An educated guess from past behaviour. You nursed him when he was sick. You stayed with him when he had his loopy session on the stairs...'

'And when I got there, he was intoxicated almost to a coma. I thought he was dead. If I hadn't been there when he was sick, he could have died on the study floor, choking on his own vomit. No one would deliberately risk doing that to themselves not knowing for sure if they would be found. I won't believe it.'

'You can believe it or not, it won't change the facts. And it
won
'
t come to anything you know. He
'
s still too hung up on his dead wife
'
s memory to let her go. You are wasting your time. Walk away from it before you get in too deep.
'

'
It
'
s too late for that.'

'What...?' Rebecca's face then creased into stunned realisation. 'Oh my God, no! Please, Meg, don't tell me you've fallen for him. Not him.' Megan's silence was all the confirmation she needed. 'No, Megs. No! You can't! As sure as eggs is eggs, he'll break your heart.
You've got to walk away, now.'

'
I can
'
t, Becks. I won
'
t.
You really don
'
t understand. If you had seen him like I have, he
'
s so
…
so dreadfully lost. And you know how important it is not to be lost.
'

'
Does he love you?

'
Probably not, but I don't care whether he does or not.
'
She was lying to herself. She did care. She cared very much.

'
Then what
is
the point?' said Rebecca. 'Unrequited love is the ultimate waste of time and energy. You'd be better off taking up knitting. At least you would have something to show for it at the end.
'

Megan stood and tucked her chair under the table. '
I don
'
t want to talk about this any more, Becks. I
'
m going to have a lie down. It was a long night and I didn't get a lot of sleep.
'

The conversation came to an abrupt end, and this time, it was Rebecca
'
s turn to be left alone.

Chapter 24

He knew she had gone. He felt her presence in the house simply fade away, and his heart sank. The clock on the mantle chimed eight times.

She'll be home now. She should be here…with me. I should have asked her to stay. Why couldn't I ask her to stay?

He forced himself out of his chair and up the stairs where he showered and dressed.

As he crossed the landing to return downstairs, he glanced through the open door of the guest room at the unmade bed with its duvet thrown back and its untidily rumpled sheet.

She hasn't made the bed,' he thought. And why the hell should she? She doesn't work here any more.

He went into the room, straightened out the cover and sat on it. Beside him lay the robe Megan had worn. He picked it up and put it to his face. He inhaled and filled his head with the smell of soap and her rose-scented moisturiser. The cherished perfume stirred his memory of the previous night. He could recall every breathtaking moment and he felt a tight, griping pain in his stomach; a physical manifestation of desire and regret. Clutching the robe he lay down with his head on her pillow, and with thoughts of her dwelling on his mind, he closed his eyes. It took next to no time before he was lost to exhausted sleep.

He woke sometime after one o'clock. The groggy headache that often accompanied too deep a sleep conspired with the remnants of his hangover to punish him.

Wending his way downstairs, he went into the kitchen and found the aspirins, swallowing two with a glass of water. He opened the fridge and perused the shelves for something to eat. Nothing appealed; he wasn't hungry. He turned on the radio to break the suffocating silence of a lonely Sunday afternoon, allowing it to chunner away in the background.

Through the kitchen window, he watched the birds coming to the feeding table Megan had persuaded him to buy. There was no food for the poor creatures and they quickly flew away, disappointed and hungry. She might not be here to feed them but that was no reason for them to starve.