The Godmother (15 page)

“Tess, you OK?” I heard Ben run up the stairs, push open the bathroom door and gasp at the sight of me on the floor, a bloody sponge in my hand.

“I can't get the blood out,” I cried. I thought I was going to be sick, but Ben grabbed me, pulled me up, put the lid of the loo down and sat me on it. He opened a window and told me to stay put. A few minutes later he returned with orange juice and a banana.

“Eat, you're having one of your funny turns.”

I felt like an idiot. I am mildly hypoglycemic. Sometimes, if I'm stressed, tired or don't eat, my blood sugar level drops through the floor. Or my insulin goes through the roof. That day, I was all three. I practically swallowed the banana whole and drank half the carton in a couple of glugs. I handed back the carton to Ben.

“Come here,” he said and pulled me into his chest again. Tears overwhelmed me. I must stop crying like this, none of this is happening to me. He stroked my hair. “Hey, you, ssh. They'll be all right. They've got each other, those two, they'll be all right.”

I mumbled into Ben's chest. “When Claudia came round, she said Al would leave her now.”

He held me away from him and looked at me. “Al would never leave Claudia. What they have is real. Based on a lifetime. I promise you, he would never leave her.”

I sniffed. Ben offered his sleeve. Then he tucked my hair behind my ear. “Come on, funny face, we've got some painting to do.”

I nodded. As we walked back down the stairs, I asked him how he knew Al would never leave.

“Because I asked him once, after one of the IVF treatments had failed. Told him he could consider, you know, another route.”

“You suggested he leave Claudia?” I asked, suddenly cross.

“We were just discussing it. He jumped down my throat too. Said he'd never even considered it. I guess I was having a bad time with Sasha and was feeling disillusioned about marriage. Anyway, he was right. Women like you and Claud don't come around very often.” He looked back up the stairs to me. “Actually, they don't come around more than once.”

I looked away, because he didn't. There was the photo on the wall. The one of Ben in traction. His leg smashed to smithereens. Ben followed my gaze. We
looked back at each other. He stood two steps below me, our eyes were level. Everything went very still. It made me think about Claudia's baby.

“The stain in the carpet,” I spluttered, and ran back upstairs.

Ben was still painting the last wall when I left to get Claudia from the hospital. When we returned, not only was it finished, the paint pots had vanished, there was fresh soup and bread on the kitchen table, and a bottle of soft red that Claudia likes. Ben hugged her. In the absence of Al, he was the next best thing. Ben had spoken to Al just as he was about to board his plane home. Al hadn't said any of the things that Ben said he had. Al was in total shock, he could barely speak, but Ben knew Al well enough to know what he would have wanted to say, and he did it perfectly.

I heated the soup up for us all as I listened to Ben talk to Claudia. He didn't try and make it better. He didn't tell her it was for the best. He told her to mourn. He told her to think about having a small service. He told her to frame the picture of the scan if she wanted to. He held her when she sobbed and didn't tell her to try and stop. I waited in the kitchen, stirring the soup until the crying had ended of its own accord. Afterwards, when we had tucked Claudia into bed, I kissed Ben on the cheek.

“Thank you,” I said. “I couldn't have done this without you.”

“You don't have to,” he said. We sat in the kitchen and finished the bottle of wine. We talked in circles about what Al and Claudia would do now. Would they go for it again? Would they go abroad to adopt? Russia? Sri Lanka? China? Would they travel? Move away? Collapse? Survive?

“They'll survive,” said Ben.

I nodded.

“They will, Tess.” Ben stood up and stretched. “Do you need a lift home?”

“No. I'm going to stay here until Al gets back.”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“On the sofa.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?” asked Ben.

“No. I'm OK. There's no room, anyway.”

“We've slept on that sofa before.”

“Only when we've drunk so much I don't register your snoring.”

“And I don't feel your bony elbows.”

“I haven't got bony elbows.”

He kissed me on the forehead. “Yes, you have. And you fart in your sleep.”

I pushed him away and followed him to the front door. For a long time we hugged again. It had been that sort of day. He tucked my hair behind my ear again.

“You are a great friend, Tess. It's us who couldn't do without you.”

I was too tired to speak. Too tired to trust myself to speak. I just stared up at him through emotionally drained eyes. He held my face in his hand and gently stroked my cheek with his thumb.

“Thank God you were here. Thank God you were back,” said Ben. Then he leaned closer and kissed me on my lips. It wasn't that it was a fraction longer than usual that made the bolt of electricity shoot through me. It was because he still had his hand cupped over my cheek. I felt his fingers move around the side of my head and spread through my hair. Our faces were still inches from one another. Neither of us moved. All I could feel was the gentle massage of his thumb in my hair.

“I missed you more than I should have, Tessa,” said Ben.

I put my hand up to his cheek, expecting to move it away, but instead my hand glued to his and I found myself being pulled into his gravity. We moved closer so slowly that when our lips touched again it was like someone had burnt me with a flame. There was no salve but pressure. The kiss spread to every part of our lips. My heart was pounding in my chest as we stood there, stuck to one another, not daring to move. And then the dam burst and without any warning signal both our lips parted, our heads angled away from each other, our arms snaked around each other's bodies and for a split second an invisible line was crossed and the kiss changed shape completely.

“Al? Al? Help me!”

The retraction was instant. We stood facing one another, breathing hard, for another second or two. I shook my head, I don't know why—in disbelief, in warning, in shame? Claudia cried out again; I turned away and ran up the stairs.

When I came back down, Ben had gone. I sat at the top of the stairs, staring out between my fingers, feeling foolish and confused. What had happened? Had anything happened? A kiss on the lips was no big deal; Ben always
hugged me when things were bad. Surely my mind was playing tricks on me. That was all. Nothing had happened. Nothing was going to happen. Ben was married, Ben was my friend; he would remain my friend. End of story. Eventually, my eyes rested on the photo of him with his leg in traction. I walked up to it and took it off the wall. I carried it through to the sitting room, lay on the sofa with the rest of my glass of wine and stared at the picture until my eyes watered.

I never indulged myself with this old, locked away memory, but the day had been no ordinary day, and life seemed more magnified because of it. It was the summer. I had just got my A level results. They were better than expected and I had got into law school. Ben and I were in Camden alone. Al had gone up to Cheshire to see family, Claudia was doing work experience in Reading, Mary was away with her parents and Ben, for once, had decided not to go. His mother was in the west country celebrating the summer solstice and my parents were completely relaxed when I told them I was going to stay at Ben's for a week. Why wouldn't they be relaxed? It had happened so many times before. I don't know whether I told them Ben's mum was away, but as they didn't have her down as the responsible type I don't think it played a large part in their decision-making process. I'd worked hard and stuck to the rules. This was my reward.

We didn't see or speak to anyone else for four days. We watched
Halloween 1
and
2
in bed together and freaked ourselves out. We cooked and drank wine in the sunshine and chatted constantly about our adult lives ahead. We spent a lot of time in the pub. I started to ache with longing on the second day. I would put myself in his path just to feel his hand on me as he maneuvered me out of the way. I would tickle him, punch him, put my arm through his, poke him in the ribs. I was addicted. I delighted in watching him go about doing normal things. Ordering a pint, picking out a T-shirt, making me a cup of tea. There was a cheap Italian near his house where you could eat spaghetti bolognaise for £1.99; we had dinner there on the third night. I must have drunk too much cheap red wine because I started making suggestive comments that had always been out of bounds in our friendship. He thought I was taking the piss.

That night I lay awake next to him, consumed by lust and fear in equal
measures. The brush of his skin along mine made the hairs on my arm bristle. I had to breathe with my mouth open, so suffocating was the sensation of being so close yet not able to touch him. At about four o'clock in the morning I reached out and took his hand. He squeezed it. I squeezed back. Neither of us let go. The squeeze got harder and harder, the blood in my fingers pulsated as my breath shortened. Sounds absurd now that holding someone's hand could be so erotic, but it was. Every thought I'd had about him, every moment I'd nearly told him what I was feeling, every time I'd thought I'd caught him looking at me and dismissed it, raced through my hand to his. More was communicated in that tightening grip than I could have said, anyway. It was a physical declaration of desire. I think I reached orgasm during that clench; as the muscles in my hand burned with the exertion of holding on so hard, so did all the other muscles in my body. Perhaps it wasn't a physical orgasm, perhaps it was more in my mind. Not that I imagined it, but that it happened at a deeper level than my simple flesh and blood could measure. I loved him. I loved him with all the energy I could muster, and all I could do was hold on. Not a word was spoken. We fell asleep holding hands. In the morning neither of us referred to what had happened and I began to wonder if it had all been in my imagination.

The next day Ben suddenly had things to do that did not include me. I felt deserted. Cut loose. Confused. It made me panic. I called some friends up from college and met them in the park. I went through the motions of a picnic, Frisbee, warm wine and cold sausages, but all the while I was thinking about his hand in mine and whether I'd been the only one experiencing the lightning. I went home that night. Rather than back to Ben's house. I had to force my feet to get there, though, step by step, in the opposite direction to where I wanted to run. My mother was awake. She called me into their room.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Ben's called. I thought you were with him.”

“He had things to do, so I saw some mates from college.”

“Well, he's rung, I think he was worried.”

I played dumb. “I'll give him a call now.” I've been playing dumb ever since.

We didn't have mobiles then. I dialed his home number. What did he expect? That I'd wait home for him all day?

“Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Oh.”

And? Oh and what?

“I didn't know how long you were going to be.”

“I was only signing some papers for the new job, I told you that.”

Had he? Was I being completely over-sensitive? Irrational? Why had two hours out of the house felt like a betrayal? “Sorry. I misunderstood. I thought you had things to do all day.”

“As long as you're all right.”

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“OK. We'll speak tomorrow then.”

“OK,” he said. I put down the phone and groaned.

The following night Ben arranged to meet me for dinner at a more upmarket restaurant than we'd ever been to before. We talked around the subject of us. How spending this time together had been so great; that he'd missed me when I hadn't been there last night; that he had no real inclination to talk to Mary. I didn't know if he was leading on to something or referring to our “friendship” in order to remind me of the boundaries. Everything could be taken either way. He told me he adored me. But I knew that. What I didn't know was in what way. Or how much.

On the walk back from dinner we cut down a narrow passageway. There was one street lamp at the end. Our footsteps echoed off the high walls as we walked in silence towards the puddle of yellow light. Something caused us to stop walking. A noise? Intuition? Who knows, but we both turned towards each other. It was the tunnel that did it. It made it feel as if the world no longer existed. There was no Mary. No foursome of friends. No expectations. Just Ben and me. Our world. Brought on by four days alone together.

“What's happening?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“This is driving me mad.”

“Me too,” was all I managed to say.

“What are we going to do about it?”

About what? We couldn't even say out loud what it was we were talking about. I didn't dare speak. I wanted to. But I was terrified of ruining everything we had. He stepped towards me…What would one kiss do? Lead to another. Then more. How long would that last? We were eighteen. It wouldn't last for life. We'd split up in the end, and we'd ruin our friendship in doing so. I panicked. Instead of pulling him towards me, I took hold of his hand.

“Let's go home,” I said and pushed him towards the end of the passageway. I needed time to think. Because once we'd kissed, there would be no going back.

If only I'd had the courage of my convictions. If only I could have followed my heart, not my head, and spent a little more time lost in that passageway, the cyclist would have sailed by and I wouldn't know the name Elizabeth Collins. If only I had answered him with a question. Or poked him in the ribs and laughed at him as I had countless times before. Or just kissed him, like I wanted to—would it have been so bad? But I didn't. I chickened out. I said, “Let's go home”—put it off, sleep on it, think about it, delay it, run from it, anything other than face it.