Where Love Lies (27 page)

But she sounded uncertain.

‘You told me once that you wanted to be extraordinary. Does he help you do that?’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘If you love him, why are you attracted
to me?’

‘I – I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are. That’s why you don’t want me here. You’re married to him, but you’re attracted to me. And you don’t trust yourself not to do something about it. Is that why you haven’t seen me for a week?’

Her hands were clenched in her lap. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘You can’t deny it, Flick. You know it as well as I do. There’s still something between us. You
kissed me.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘But you did. It’s still there. What we felt all those years ago.’

He touched her face, stroked her cheek. He took her chin in his fingers and made her look at him. Her eyes were as he remembered them, soft and green.

‘We shouldn’t have split up,’ he said. ‘It didn’t get us anywhere. We’re not happy without each other, are we? Be truthful.’

‘I don’t know. I’m
not sure what happiness is any more.’

‘I’m sure. Because the only time I’ve felt it lately is when I’ve been with you.’

She swallowed. He felt it through his fingers, all through his body. She’d always shown every emotion she felt, imprinted on her face. He could see the desire there now. The doubt.

‘We hardly knew each other,’ she said. ‘We don’t know each other at all, now. We’ve only spent
a few hours together.’

‘So why did you find me, at exactly the right time? If it wasn’t for this?’ He stroked her bottom lip with his thumb.

‘I’m not even sure I like you very much,’ she said. But she was breathless. He could hear it. He knew what it meant.

‘I’m falling in love with you,’ he told her. For a moment, he saw her real answer in her face. Then she shook her head.

‘No. You’re not.
You can’t be.’

‘I didn’t care about anything. I’d thrown away everything. But you gave me back my life. You gave it meaning again.’

‘That’s not true. You still have a daughter. You can still have a job if you want it. I’m not the only thing. I’m not that important to you. It’s just—I just happened to be there.’

‘You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.’

She pulled back from him.
But she didn’t get off the sofa. ‘If you want meaning in your life, you should get in touch with your daughter. She’s the one who needs you.’

‘It’s too late for me and Rebecca. It’s not too late for me and you. We’ve been given a second chance.’

‘Ewan, I can’t. This wasn’t meant to happen.’

‘I think it is meant to happen,’ he said, and he took her face in his hands again and kissed her.

I’M NOT FEELING
anything but Ewan’s hands on me, his lips on mine. My mind and heart aren’t playing any of their tricks; I’m nowhere but here on Lauren’s sofa, on a Friday afternoon when I thought it was Wednesday. I am in my right mind. I have no excuse.

I kiss him back. I feel the second chance he was talking about: the present, the past, our bodies, no thought of anything
else in our lives but each other. He is entirely familiar, and yet he isn’t, and is it the familiarity or the strangeness which makes me wrap my arms around his neck? Which makes me respond to the sound he makes in his throat when he shifts on the sofa so that he can cover my body with his?

I know it was always this way with Ewan, this desire that we could barely control. His hands roam over
my body, as if he wants to touch all of me at once. He pulls down my top to kiss my neck, my chest. I can’t breathe, or rather I’m breathing so quickly that I can’t feel the oxygen. I dig my fingertips into his arms and arch up against him, wrapping one of my legs around his. I feel alive. I feel every inch of my body, aware and awakening from what seems like a long sleep.

He smells of sweat
and faintly of cigarette smoke, of soap and coffee. He does not smell of frangipani. But my body still burns, and curves up towards him, and tells me yes. And his tongue in my mouth and his breath in my ear, hot shivers as one of his hands strokes up my bare leg underneath my skirt. I want him like I did when I was twenty. And I shouldn’t.

Or is this what it was all for? All the scent and the
longing? Back to this, the sound of his shirt tearing as I help him push it off, my body seemingly acting of its own accord to touch his naked chest?

I close my eyes and there he is, in the darkness behind my eyelids, looking at me out of the painting my mother did. The portrait of a young man in love.

I push him away and struggle to sit up. ‘Ewan,’ I say, my lips and tongue clumsy. ‘Ewan.’

The name feels like a kiss. I hear it as if someone else has said it, and can’t work out whether it’s a protest or a plea. His eyes unfocused, he reaches for me again.

‘Ewan, we—’ I begin, but before I can say any more I hear the door of the flat open.

I DON’T HAVE
time to get off the sofa, to pull away from Ewan. I do have time to think,
Please let it be Lauren
, and then I hear Quinn’s voice: ‘Hello, love? The door was op—’

He appears, carrying two canvas shopping bags. He drops the bags on the floor. Something breaks.

I scramble off the sofa and hold my top together with my hand. ‘Quinn,’ I gasp. ‘I didn’t—’

Quinn is
staring. From me to Ewan, who is still on the sofa, his shirt off. His hair disarranged from where I have tugged at it. His mouth red with kissing me.

‘Who is this?’ Quinn asks.

His voice is not patient and pleasant. It is low and quiet.

Ewan stays on the sofa. ‘Are
you
the husband?’ He appears to be as surprised as I am.

Quinn does not look surprised at all. He is pale and very still.

‘Ewan,’
I say. ‘You need to leave, right now.’

‘The door was open,’ says Quinn. Beside him, a pool of clear liquid seeps from one of the shopping bags.

‘I can explain,’ I say, although I can’t.

‘I don’t think you need to,’ says Quinn.

‘I didn’t mean for you to—’

‘Then perhaps you should have closed the door.’ He sounds dangerous. I never thought he could sound dangerous. Ewan is still staring, his
shirt crumpled on the floor. I scoop it up and hand it to him, but he doesn’t take it.

‘I thought he’d be different,’ Ewan says.

‘Ewan, please go. You’re making this worse.’

‘It can’t get much worse,’ says Quinn. ‘Unless of course you’d like to take your clothes off too, Felicity.’

I have never seen him like this.

‘Is this the first time, or the dozenth?’ he asks us. ‘Have you been doing
this the entire time you’ve been gone? Is this the “old friend” you told me you were seeing?’

‘It’s not what it looks like. We weren’t going to …’ My sentence fades away under his anger. I don’t know if we were going to have sex. I was about to stop Ewan.

Or was I? I was pushing him away. I was saying his name. I was going to tell him to leave. I was going to pull him closer. I was entirely
myself.

I can still feel his hands on my skin. With Quinn looking at me like this, I feel as if the places that Ewan touched me, kissed me, are glowing red.

‘I love her,’ Ewan says. ‘She saved my life.’

‘You’re in love with my wife,’ Quinn says, in his new quiet, dangerous anger.

‘He’s not,’ I say. ‘He might think he is, but he’s not. Ewan, go away. Leave us alone, please.’

‘I am,’ Ewan says.
‘I’m in love with her.’

It’s the last straw. I kick Ewan in the shin. I’m barefoot, and the impact is enough to make me wince.

‘Flick! What the—’

‘I need you to go.
Now
.’

He looks from me to Quinn. Quinn’s eyes have narrowed to dark slits.

‘He isn’t going to hurt you, is he?’ Ewan asks me.

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Just
go
.’

The two men stare at each other for a long moment and my crazy mind,
chasing itself, thinks that they are going to start fighting. Launch into a brawl right here in the middle of Lauren’s Canary Wharf flat, knocking over furniture, sending papers flying. But these things don’t happen in real life.

Quinn’s fists are clenched.

‘I need to speak with my wife,’ he says finally, in this new voice. Ewan keeps steady for another minute, and then he shrugs. He pulls his
shirt over his head.

‘I’ll call you,’ he says to me. ‘I love you.’

Under Quinn’s gaze, I wince.

Ewan walks past my husband without giving him another glance. He slams the door behind him. It echoes and then it’s quiet.

‘Quinn,’ I say. ‘We didn’t sleep together. We kissed, and that was it. It was a mistake, a very bad mistake. I was just about to tell him to leave.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

I’m still holding my blouse together with my hand. I button it, my fingers trembling.

‘It’s been going on since you left. Or before?’

‘Nothing’s been going on. It – this just happened.’

‘I’m stupid, Felicity, but not that stupid. Not any more. Do you know what I thought? I actually thought you might be ill. I thought you might not be taking care of yourself properly. Now I know better, don’t
I?’

He is still straight, his full height, no smile, no tenderness in his eyes. He is a stranger, more of a stranger than he’s ever been, even when I didn’t know him. There’s a button missing from my blouse.

‘I trusted you,’ he says.

‘Nothing’s happened.’

‘He says he loves you.’

‘He’s crazy.’

‘Did you leave me because of him?’

‘I did have to work. And I did need to think.’

‘Did you leave
me because of him?’

‘Partly,’ I whisper.

‘Who is he?’

‘I knew him ten years ago.’

‘You were lovers?’

‘Yes.’

‘And now?’

‘No. We’re not, Quinn.’

‘You are. If you haven’t actually had sex, it’s just a technicality.’

‘I was about to tell him to stop.’

He makes a sound of contempt. I can’t argue.

‘Do you love him?’

‘No. I don’t know.’ He waits. ‘Sometimes I think that I do.’

‘I’ve loved
you with everything I have in me,’ Quinn says. ‘I’ve given you everything that matters. And it was never enough for you. I don’t know what would be.’

‘It’s not that it wasn’t enough. It’s that it was too much.’

‘How could I love you less?’ he cries. ‘Was I supposed to hold something back? Was I supposed to lie to you? Cheat on you? Find
an old friend
? What do you want, Felicity? Do you want
me to do what you’ve done to me?’

‘No, I—’

‘Ever since I’ve known you I’ve done nothing but try to please you. I thought that if I could make you happy enough, you’d keep loving me. And this is what you wanted? Someone else?’ He’s shouting now, gesturing at the door that Ewan has closed behind him. I’ve never heard him shout before.

‘I don’t—’

‘Everyone said it. Not to my face, but I knew
they were thinking it.
She’s not going to stick around for long, mate. She’s too different. Doesn’t fit in. She’ll find someone else, someone to suit her better, someone who won’t tie her down in a tiny village
.’ His face twists as he says it. ‘When you left, I said you were working. Everyone knew, but I thought they were wrong. I said …’ His voice falters.

‘I never meant to hurt you, Quinn.
I don’t want to hurt you. I’m so sorry.’

‘Too fucking late.’

I hold out my hand to him, hoping he’ll let me touch him.

‘I know what you think about me, about my job, about my family. You thought our life was too small. You thought I was your … puppy.’ He spits the word out. ‘But you’re wrong. It’s more than you’ll ever know. It’s more than you’ll ever deserve. And I …’

This time he raises
his hand to his eyes, and I step away from the sofa towards him, every part of me wanting to comfort him, even through my shame, but when he lowers his hand, his eyes are dry.

‘I deserve more than you,’ he says. Coldly. So coldly. ‘Goodbye, Felicity.’

I watch him walk out of the door. He doesn’t slam it behind him; he closes it, and that’s enough.

I could run after him, try to explain. But
everything he said was the truth. I did, sometimes, think that my life with him was too small. I did want Ewan. And Quinn does deserve better.

The puddle under the shopping bag has grown and started to make a small trail of liquid across the floor, like a pointing finger. I get a tea towel from the kitchen and wipe it up. It smells like elderflower, and the broken cordial bottle in the bag confirms
it. He’s brought me tea and cordial, cartons of fresh soup and packets of biscuits, a ripe mango and a bunch of sunflowers. There’s a Mervyn Peake paperback in the bag that had the cordial, and a little pocket sketch book of the kind I like. Both of them are wet and sticky from the spill.

I unpack each thing and put it on the floor, in a line. Then I pick the pieces of glass out of the bag and
put them into the tea towel. A splinter of glass cuts my finger and I put it in my mouth, tasting blood mixed with elderflower.

I don’t know if I was going to stop Ewan. I’d like to think I was, but I can’t be sure. But whatever choice I was going to make in that moment, it’s now been made for me. I’ve destroyed my marriage to Quinn.

The door buzzer goes. My finger still in my mouth, I pick
up the receiver.

‘Flick,’ says Ewan. ‘Let me in.’

‘It’s not a good idea.’

‘I know he’s gone.’

Quinn is gone. I wipe my wet cheek on my bare shoulder. I recognize the sickness in my stomach, the feeling of anticipation.

‘I need some time to think,’ I tell him.

‘But you’ll talk to me? You’ll see me again? I meant what I said.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ I say.

‘How long?’

‘I don’t know. I have
to … I have to work things out. A couple of weeks? A month maybe? Please don’t contact me, Ewan. Let me sort this out, and then I’ll call you.’

‘Is that really what you want?’

‘Yes.’

‘We still have a chance,’ Ewan says. I put down the phone.

And then the sickness in my stomach and in my heart resolves into the scent of frangipani and I lie down on the sticky floor, tears leaking from my eyes,
waiting until I feel in love again, until for these few moments at least, I no longer have a choice.