The Bed I Made (16 page)

I’d expected him to ring and try to talk to me the next day but he didn’t and there was nothing the day after or the day after that. With every one that passed I became more and more convinced that I had been an entertaining diversion, something to enjoy as long as it wasn’t any trouble, and I told myself bitterly that I’d been a fool to believe it could have been real. The knowledge that he’d been married all along scored through my memories, making a lie of them. I barely left the flat and instead stayed on the sofa watching rubbish on television for hours at a time, drinking endless cups of tea, eating nothing. And yet part of me was waiting for the phone to ring or for an email, anything to tell me that he was thinking about me, that it had meant at least something. I wouldn’t call him – I didn’t want him back, I couldn’t have him – but I just couldn’t comprehend that it had all been a lie. Even if he had been married, I couldn’t make myself believe that it had meant nothing to him. It just didn’t make sense to me.

A couple of days into the New Year, more than a week later, I’d run out of milk for tea in the early evening and gone up the road to buy some. When I’d returned, he was sitting on the low step at the front door of the building. I’d stopped dead as soon as I saw him. His head was in his hands but he raised it when he heard my footsteps. In the dull glow of the automatic light, he looked wiped-out. His eyes were small and strained-looking, their usual challenge completely absent.

‘I can’t do this,’ he said.

‘What?’ My heart had started pounding.

‘Pretend I don’t love you.’ He looked away, as if he couldn’t say the words to my face. ‘I’ve been trying to leave you alone to get on with your life but I don’t think I can do it.’

I gripped the metal railing round the stairs to the basement flat, feeling suddenly light-headed. I’d wanted to hear the words so much but not like this.

‘I’m so lonely. I work and work – what for? None of it means anything – it’s all pointless.’

‘What about your wife? Doesn’t she keep you company?’

He put his head back in his hands and addressed the mosaic tiles that covered the floor under the portico. ‘Things haven’t been right between us for a long time. It’s not a real marriage any more. And she’s ill.’

‘Really? What’s wrong with her?’

‘She’s depressed – seriously depressed. She can’t work, she doesn’t go out. All she does is sit at home and cry or stare at the television. She doesn’t eat. She says she thinks about dying. I’m terrified that if I leave her . . .’ He scuffed the ground with his foot. ‘I couldn’t live with myself. But I’m so tired of trying to make things better. She’s been ill for five years and I just don’t know whether she’s ever going to get better, whether this is it – for the rest of our lives.’ He reached into his pocket and took out his cigarettes. I stood and watched while he lit one and took a drag that suggested proper need. I was surprised; I couldn’t have imagined the Richard I’d known for the past six months admitting to a weakness like needing cigarettes. I’d always thought of him as a social smoker, someone who saw it as an amusing minor vice in a life of otherwise effortless self-control.

‘Then I met you,’ he said. ‘And suddenly, there was hope. I began to think maybe life didn’t have to be this great cycle of sadness and trying and hopelessness. When I was with you, I felt different – as if there was someone who understood me.’ To my horror there was a catch in his voice. His hands were held out now, fingers stiff, as if imploring me to accept the truth or trying to coax the difficult words out of his mouth. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘After what I’ve done, you should hate me. I just wanted you to know why.’ He coughed. ‘Ever since Sarah got ill, I’ve felt totally alone. And you seemed to understand what that feels like.’

The light timed out and plunged us into darkness; I swung my arm to trigger it again. ‘The night we met,’ I said. ‘When I came back with you, why wasn’t she there?’ I thought of how bare his flat had been, the thrill of the strange emptiness which I had interpreted as evidence of his pared-down, masculine way of life.

‘We had a trial separation but it made her even worse. She moved back in a couple of months ago.’

‘Which is why you never minded coming here instead.’

‘When I met you, we were on the way to sorting things out. We’d talked about divorce and agreed that it was the right thing to do. But then she got worse again. At least if she was with me I could keep an eye on her, stop her doing anything stupid . . . And then she begged me to let us give it another go, told me that she worried about herself, her state of mind . . . I nearly broke it off with you then, I came all prepared with what I was going to say, but when it came to it, I just couldn’t do it. I relied on you – the support you gave me without even knowing.’

He stood up suddenly, pulling himself wearily to his feet. ‘Look, I’m going to go. I just wanted to tell you this so that perhaps you’d be able to understand a bit. Not hate me, anyway.’

The wind blew along the street and I pulled my cardigan round me. Thinking I was only going up the road for a pint of milk, I hadn’t put a coat on and I was suddenly cold. Above us the stars were masked by banks of speeding cloud coloured sepia by the light pollution. ‘I don’t hate you,’ I heard myself say.

He came down the steps until he was next to me. I could feel tension radiating off him. He seemed to be struggling, as if there was something else he wanted to say. I looked at his face and his eyes met mine only with difficulty. My chest ached.

He reached out his hand and very gently stroked the side of my face. The sensation spread out across my skin. I tried to imagine what it must be like, living with someone who was a danger to herself, afraid to end the relationship, that threat hanging over everything.

He took a step away. ‘Bye, Katie,’ he said.

‘Richard –’

With the hand that wasn’t holding the milk, I reached up and touched his cheek. He hadn’t shaved and the stubble was rough under my fingertips. His eyes widened, as if in amazement that someone might possibly understand. They were shining, the tears I thought I’d heard close to the surface again.

Tentatively he reached up and covered my hand with his. Then he moved mine round so that my fingertips were against his lips. I could feel his breath. His eyes didn’t leave mine for a second. All of a sudden, his arms were around me and he was holding me so tightly I thought he would crush me. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too.’ My voice seemed to come from outside me.

And then he was kissing me. The desire that flooded me every time he touched me flowed through me again and the light-headedness returned. The pavement seemed to move under my feet and he sensed it and held me even tighter.

He took the keys that had been looped round my fingers and opened the front door. ‘Are you coming?’ he said, standing on the threshold. Within seconds, it seemed, we were upstairs in the tiny hallway inside my front door under the mistletoe that I hadn’t yet taken down. ‘I’ll make everything right,’ he whispered into my ear. I took lungful after lungful of his scent, breathing deeply as if I could internalise Richard himself, make sure that I was never without him again. ‘I’ll sort things out with Sarah. We’ll be together properly, you and me. I promise.’ He pulled back and looked into my eyes. I couldn’t look away; it was too much to take in, the swoop from the abject misery of the past week to this new state, the promise of a future that I had only let myself think about in the most glancing of ways even when things had been their best between us.

He undid the top button of my cardigan and traced his fingers over the notch at the bottom of my throat. His expression was serious, the light in his eyes gone strangely flat, and I heard him swallow. My pulse leaped in response to his touch.

‘Wait,’ I said, putting my hand on his chest. ‘Wait.’

‘What?’

‘Have you got children?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘You promise me? Because I couldn’t . . . My mother . . .’

‘I promise. I want them, though.’ He held my face between his palms. ‘One day, I’d like to have children.’

When we reached St Catherine’s I pulled up in the car park with the view out to sea. We’d brought chicken sandwiches and Helen poured coffee from the thermos she’d found in the back of the corner cupboard. When we’d finished eating she rolled the window down a couple of inches and lit a cigarette. ‘I understand it now,’ she said. ‘Why you wanted to come here. I can feel my head clearing already.’

My eyes were on the horizon, the line where the sea met the sky blurring as I looked at it. ‘Do you think you’ll always live in London?’ I asked.

‘Depends. I’ve got no reason to move at the moment and there’s work, obviously. But I don’t think I want to get old there – there’s something a bit beleaguered about old people – really old people – in the city. But if I don’t want that, I’ll have to move somewhere before then and start from scratch. I wouldn’t know anyone.’

‘You’d make friends, easy.’

‘Would I, though? You meet people through work but how do you do it otherwise, unless you join weird clubs and societies that you wouldn’t be seen dead at in your real life? I mean, are you meeting people?’

I hesitated. ‘No. But I’m not really trying. It’s my own fault.’

‘I don’t believe this crap about cities being faceless and hostile. It’s small communities that huddle together and are all defensive.’

She turned her head to blow her smoke through the sliver of open window. It bloomed outside the car, the heat in the freezing air. ‘I’ll have to find someone to move with, that’s the answer. From now on, I won’t go out with anyone who isn’t from a picturesque part of the world.’

‘Have you met any candidates recently?’ I was embarrassed to realise that I hadn’t asked in the whole day we’d spent together, and excused myself only by thinking that she would have mentioned it.

‘No one nearly good enough.’ She laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know – it’s a vicious circle, isn’t it? I don’t meet people because I’m always at work but then at least if I work hard, I can afford my flat and have a decent life if I do end up on my own. I could work less hard and still not meet anyone. What are you supposed to do?’

Although she’d only been with me for a day and a half, that evening felt like the last night of a much longer visit. I dreaded her leaving and silence falling in the house again. There was still so much I wanted to talk to her about, to tell her about Richard, but I hadn’t found the words.

It was nearly nine o’clock when we finished supper and left the house again, and the sky presented a deep blue background for the cloud that was scudding across it like milk curd, lit by the moon. As we came up Bridge Road, I could see that some Christian soul had been out to scrub at the ragged red letters on the wall of the churchyard; only their ghosts remained visible in the muted street-lighting.

The Bugle Inn was the beautiful half-timbered Tudor building on the Square; its interior, we discovered, demonstrated a more eclectic approach to history. The original flagstones were visible in some places, there were framed prints of characters in eighteenth-century outfits and the ceiling had its original dark-stained beams but the bar was modern, a pine island which extended out into the room. The streets had been empty, of course, so it was a surprise to find the place relatively busy; more evidence, I thought, that the life of the town went on behind closed doors. Three men in their sixties sat on stools at the bar and there was a table of four just behind them. Other voices and shrill female laughter were audible from around the corner. Helen sat down in the bay window and I went to the bar.

‘So this is where it all happens,’ she said, as I put the glasses down.

‘Seems like it.’ I took a mouthful of the wine, which was a little sweet but not bad, and looked around. There were enough people in the bar to create a burr of noise that was more than the sum of its parts, and we were flanked by spare tables. No one would overhear. ‘Helen,’ I said. ‘You know you asked me whether I was afraid of Richard?’

She took a sip from her glass and looked at me, suddenly alert.

‘I’m not afraid, exactly. I mean, he doesn’t know where I am, so even if . . .’

‘You think he might come after you, if he did know?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you said he never hurt you.’

I wondered how I could explain.

‘If he had, you would have walked away, wouldn’t you? That’s the rule: no matter how much you like someone – or love them – the moment you get the slightest hint they might harm you, you walk away.’

We’d talked about it for years; it was one of our core beliefs, an inviolable principle. Part of our friendship, at least in the early days, had been built on our idea of ourselves as strong, brave women who brooked no bullshit. I couldn’t let her see how much of a lie I had allowed that to become. Suddenly my desire to tell her was gone. There was no point anyway, I told myself; it wouldn’t achieve anything.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course. I don’t know. It’s nothing specific. Just, I know it will have made him angry, that’s all, when I refused to talk to him.’

‘Let him be angry,’ she said. ‘He lied and cheated – he deserves it.’

We finished our wine and Helen bought some more. As she handed me my glass and sat down again, my attention was caught by a man coming in. He was tall, easily a foot taller than the woman who came in with him, and I realised with a jolt that it was Peter Frewin and Sally. He hung his jacket on the back of a chair at a table not far from the door and they went to the bar together. Sally spent at least a couple of minutes scrutinising the wine list and in the end asked his opinion. I didn’t hear his answer but he sensed the weight of my stare and glanced up to identify who was watching him. I saw a hint of recognition on his face but also puzzlement, as if he couldn’t place me. Seeing him looking, Sally also looked over. I smiled but her face stayed oddly blank. I raised a hand; still nothing.