The Last Time I Saw You (18 page)
At eight-thirty a.m. he texts to say he’s arrived, and I clatter down the stairs, weighed down by the picnic I stayed up until midnight assembling (I needed a distraction, there was no way I could sleep). I look up and down the street, but there’s no sign of him, until he unfolds himself from a tiny yellow vehicle that looks more like a gob of phlegm than a car.
“Don’t say it,” he says, smiling ruefully. “You try hiring a car at six o’clock on a Friday.” Some part of him must have fought tooth and nail to escape from this.
“It’s very—colorful. Who’d you rent it from, Ronald McDonald?”
He’s wearing jeans, actual jeans, and his face is covered by a light peppering of stubble, which seems to somehow smooth out that rigidity that often imprisons his features. He’s wearing a green sweater over the jeans, which brings out the hazel flecks in his deep-set eyes—at the very second I notice them, I remind myself who most likely picked
it, think of her rifling through my student wardrobe, the “chuck” pile turning into a tower, deaf to my protests. “It’s the new you, Olivia Berrington!” she said, holding up a brown turtleneck like it was nuclear waste.
“It’s my sister’s—they keep it in the garage for dire emergencies. If it breaks down, I’m relying on you to push.”
I flip the passenger seat forward so that I can deposit my goods and chattels in the back.
“Traveling light?”
“Oh,” I say, embarrassed. “I brought a picnic in case we didn’t have time to stop—they’re like, the law, on long journeys in my family.”
“So what’s on the menu?”
“I hard-boiled some eggs, which I know can smell a bit farty, but with celery salt they’re really nice. And there’s some hummus sandwiches, and tangerines. And some Green and Black’s for pudding.”
I stand there, swinging my carrier bag of boiled eggs, suddenly feeling like the world’s biggest nerd.
“Thank you,” he says, his eyes soft, and the feeling transforms into something far sweeter. Until . . . until I remember what it is we’re here to do.
William drives fast, but I don’t feel remotely unsafe.
“Is it weird?” I ask, tentative. “Driving, I mean?”
“I can’t start thinking like that,” he says, effortlessly moving the spitball of a car into the path of a BMW, proximity perfectly judged. “I’ve only ever had one, stupid accident. Madeline doesn’t need me turning into a neurotic wreck.”
“What happened?”
“I hit a rabbit,” he says, smiling. “Near my parents. I could see it, hopping off, half dead. I couldn’t bear it, so I went in pursuit.”
“What, to finish the job? What would you have done?”
“It was just instinct, I hadn’t thought it through. Anyway, the police came past and saw me crawling around on a grass verge, with the car door hanging open. One breathalyzer test later I finally convinced them.”
I love that you did that, I think, that the welfare of a single rabbit mattered that much. I put on the radio, swallowing the thought before I accidentally say it out loud. It’s tuned to Magic: William’s sister clearly has excellent taste. I’m about to swivel the dial to something more fusty and impressive but William stops me.
“No, leave it on. This is definitely one of my desert island discs.”
It’s “Wichita Lineman,” that mournful, heartbreaking ode to an ordinary love affair. We listen in silence, until I have to break it.
“I love it too,” I say, “but it’s too sad.”
“It’s too romantic to be sad.”
“How can you say that? He wants her more than needs her. I can’t think of anything worse.”
My flesh crawls at the very thought of it, a life lived in codependent torture with someone you know isn’t the love of your life. Who wants to be a prisoner who tossed away their own key?
“But he needs her for all time,” says William, insistent. “That’s impossibly romantic. Despite the fact that he knows her flaws, he’s pledging to be there for eternity. He’s not giving up.”
“Only because he needs her, not because he wants her. He’ll probably be sat in the basement glued to a PlayStation, scratching his balls and demanding his dinner. For all time.”
William laughs as he looks over, and with just our eyes we agree to differ.
After we’ve listened to more Phil Collins than even I can stomach, we finally get off the M3 and start driving up the coast. I had no idea how beautiful and windswept it would be, the beaches deserted, the sea choppy. The sky is that crisp autumnal blue that only lasts a few short weeks.
“Shall we stop for a hard-boiled egg break, or do you think it’s too cold?” says William, who’s been increasingly quiet since we left the motorway, his dread silently mushrooming as we get closer to the house.
“I’m hardier than I look,” I say, and he swiftly swings into a beachside car park.
I grab the picnic from the back seat as he rummages in the trunk, reappearing in the world’s most hideous jacket. It’s a sludgy tan, cut to just below the waist, cinched in with plastic toggled strings. I forgot to adjust my face quickly enough.
“That bad? Bonfire worthy?”
I can’t believe Sally let him wear that in public.
“It’s . . . it’s quite brown.”
I see him visibly cringe, and I automatically reach out and squeeze his sludgy arm before drawing back.
“I don’t know what possessed me. My parents just sent it to me.” He gives a sheepish smile. “I think my father might have one.”
Man, I’m glad my parents don’t dress me anymore: I was always pleading to pick my own look, rather than being subjected to Jules’s washed-out hand-me-downs. But then, I’m thirty-five, so it’s no great surprise they’ve given up trying.
“They must really want to keep you warm,” I say, setting off down the beach.
We sit on the rocks, exhaling steamy puffs of dragon breath, our sandwiches balanced precariously on our knees.
“You’re right about the celery salt,” says William.
“It’s my secret picnic weapon.”
Neither of us are in any rush—despite the biting wind, we last a good half hour chatting companionably about nothing very much.
“Are you ready?” asks William eventually, his face suddenly blank and distant.
“When you are.”
“Two more minutes,” he says, pulling me to my feet and running to the water’s edge. He skims a couple of stones with fierce concentration, rewarded with a satisfying series of bounces.
“You try.”
“No point. I’m hopeless,” I say, throwing one at the water and watching it sink without trace.
“It’s all about the wrist,” says William, and just for a second James jumps to mind, with his four hundred male euphemisms for “I’m wanking over you,” and I have to stifle a giggle. “May I?” says William, putting a stone in my hand and taking my wrist before I’ve replied. His grasp is firm and gentle at the same time, and I relax into it despite myself. “Now, go.” And with his hand encasing mine, the stone surfs the water, bouncing through the surf like a
joyous fish. “Told you!” He is grinning with satisfaction. I smile back, my gaze meeting his for longer than it should, before I’m poleaxed by the reality of today. I spin away, look to the car. He follows my gaze, and we start the walk back up the pebbly beach, feet sinking into the stones. The distance feels like an eternity.
The road squiggles and twists like spaghetti, a thick canopy of foliage overhanging us. I can sense my mounting anxiety as we drive ever further from home, from everything that’s familiar, but it seems too insensitive to articulate it, even though the words might chase the feeling away. Instead we drive the last few miles in silence, without even the radio for company.
When we reach the house I try not to gasp. It’s not just its size—it’s big, very big, with outbuildings and stables visible in the distance—it’s also the sheer magnificence of it. It’s old, Victorian I think, but perfectly preserved, the gray stone gleaming like a well-fed cat, the leaded windows polished until they sparkle, with a wide gravel drive that sweeps up to the heavy doors like a swishing tail. I stare up at it, dwarfed.
“First things first,” says William, coming around the car to open my door for me. “Let me find you a cup of tea.”
We walk through the dark, high-ceilinged hallway and into a large, well-appointed kitchen, dominated by an Aga along one wall. There’s no note, nothing left behind to ease William’s journey, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He flicks on the kettle and opens the fridge.
“Ah, Doris has left some milk.”
“Doris?”
“Lady from the village who helps out.”
He turns out to be terrible at tea, the bag steeped too long and with the merest dash of milk, but I don’t have the heart to tell him; instead I sip it politely, sitting at the bare pine table, dread wriggling around my solar plexus. Sally would have sat here, at this very table, looking out onto the barn which now holds the debris of her life.
“Are you sure about this?” he says, his strong hands clasped around his mug.
“Yes,” I say, trying to sound stout and certain.
He gives me a tense smile, then hauls himself to his feet. He leads me across a beautifully tended walled garden, to the barn, which has been converted into something much smarter than the word would suggest. Stacked inside its cavernous interior is box upon box,
HARRINGTON
written in marker pen, with the rooms marked underneath.
BEDROOM
reads one, and I feel a shudder go through me, assailed by memories of makeshift student moves, our possessions shoved into flimsy boxes from the corner shop, then piled up in the back of Sally’s tiny hatchback until she could barely see out of the back. And now I’m here, unpacking her life, with her torn out of it. I sense William steeling himself, before striding forward and stripping the packing tape from the first box.
“Madeline’s toys,” he says, a smile of relief wreathing his face. A stern, old-fashioned-looking doll emerges, and he pushes it back in the box, scanning the rest of the pile.
“These will be her clothes,” I say, spying some wardrobe boxes, trying to keep my voice from shaking. He rips the tape off like a Band-Aid coming off a livid scab. It’s dress after dress, packed in tightly, suspended from a rail. William bunches the fabric of one up in his hands, and I turn away, look out of the window; perhaps he inhales her scent,
buries his face in it, it’s not for me to know. By the time I turn back he’s standing away from them, surveying them critically.
“I shudder to think how much these cost,” he says. “Do you want . . .”
I shake my head, before he can say it. I step forward, pull out a sapphire blue sheath, the fabric cut into a deep V at front and back. It’s a size zero. How beautiful she must have looked in it.
“Oxfam,” I say, swallowing. “Oxfam know how to get a proper price for designer clothes. Or eBay.” I pull out a couple more dresses, catching the top note of Chanel No. 19 and struggling to continue. “Or you could keep them for when Madeline’s older.”
Now it’s William’s turn to shake his head, his face set.
“Oxfam’s the answer. At least they’ll be doing some good.” He writes it in large capital letters, the nib of the marker pen biting into the cardboard. “Let’s keep going.” He’s barely looking at me, his gaze turned inward, the fleeting ease of the car journey a distant memory. A wave of fear breaks over me, a sense of being so far out of my depth that the shore is no more than a pinprick. I feel the fabric scrunch between my fingers, the smell of perfume catching in my throat and it gives me a fragment of comfort, a sense of a time when, rightly or wrongly, she was my anchor. He’s pulling open a box full of toiletries now, face creams and body lotions, abandoned half used—I feel almost sorry for them.
“This one’s easy,” he says, starting to tip the contents into a rubbish sack. I can’t stand it—I feel my hand shoot out before I can rein myself in.
“William, wait. Please . . .”
“Do say if there’s anything you want.”
“It’s not that!” I say, trying not to sound harsh.
“I’m just mindful of the fact you’ve got a train to catch,” he says. I can see the rigidity in his jaw, how tight it is.
“Here,” I say, making my voice as gentle as I can, taking the bag from his clenched fist. “I’ll do it.”
And I lay them in the bag, bottle by bottle, consciously feeling the solid presence of each one as I hold it in my hand. I open her face cream, rich and thick, the peaks and troughs created by the pressure of her fingers. I rub some into the back of my hand before I consign it to the bag, inhaling its smell.
There are boxes and boxes of books, and William kneels on the floor, sifting through them. “Shall I carry on with the clothes?” I ask, but he doesn’t respond. I stand there, awkward, looking down on his bowed head, the subtle recession of his hairline. He looks so vulnerable to me.
“Sorry,” he says eventually, looking up, a hardback in his hands. After a few seconds he turns the cover toward me. It’s
The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene, a beautiful old copy. “One of my favorite books. First edition. I gave it to Sally on our first Valentine’s Day.” I wouldn’t know how to receive that, I think, however beautiful the edition. He’s staring at the inside cover, the inscription out of my sight line. “Yes, do please carry on.” He is distracted. “We’ll stick with the Oxfam plan.”
I work my way through a box of beautiful knitwear. I should probably just scrawl Oxfam on it and move on, but it seems disrespectful somehow. I lift each piece out, then stack it up, lifting the pile back into the box at the end. William is going through her jewelry now, holding up beautiful necklaces and earrings. I watch him, unsure if he wants
to feel there’s someone here, or prefers to work in bleak isolation.
“They’re beautiful too.”
He doesn’t even turn, and I go back to the boxes, cowed. He grabs a rough handful of necklaces, and pushes them back into a jewelry box. It takes all my will power not to cross the barn and detangle them, lay them carefully in their velvet case.
“Surely you’re going to keep them?”
“No. No, I’m not,” he says, his voice as cold and black as oil.
I feel my hackles rise, and try to breathe myself back to an unsteady calm. Why is he being like this? He thrusts the jewelry into a cardboard box and starts pulling out magazines.
