‘You might mean it now,’ I said, moved by both his words and the loving press of his fingers, ‘when you’re here with me. But you’ll mean it a lot less when you’re back home this evening with your family around you.’
‘Or maybe I’ll mean it more, because the reality is the boys are never at home and Sylvie doesn’t really want to be alone in a room with me, not any more.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Like I say, children fly the nest, couples move on. There might be two or three spouses in someone’s life. I have a colleague who’s on his fourth.’
‘How many do
you
plan on having?’ I giggled, if only to relieve the tension, but he remained quite solemn.
‘Don’t make a joke of it, Emily. To answer your question: one more. You. When I leave Sylvie, it will be the first and last time I leave anyone.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. It will happen. It’s purely a question of timing. Tell me you believe me.’
We stared at each other with rapt devotion. ‘I believe you,’ I said.
And he released my hands at the exact moment my body weakened with delight, causing me to fall to the side, laughing. In that moment history was forgotten and with it any woe I’d ever experienced or anticipated, the whole lot extinguished by the radiation of joy. It was the happiest I had ever felt, I was sure of it. I had reached the summit of human elation.
‘But what about the boys, Arthur?’ I had yet to use their names, conscious of my lack of right, strangely superstitious of the effect of such an utterance.
‘I’m only leaving her,’ he said, ‘not them. I’ll need to make sure I can see them as much as I do now. Alex will be off soon, it won’t affect him so much. And Hugo, I honestly think he’ll handle it fine. Sometimes I think he’s more of an adult than I am. I’ll talk to him properly about it, make sure every question is answered, every possible doubt cleared.’
‘As you say, they’re older now,’ I said. ‘They might have been more upset if they were younger.’
‘I couldn’t do it if they were younger,’ he said, ‘not even for you,’ which put me in my place all right. But it was still a place I was very happy to be put.
By then, Matt had agreed to move out. I’d insisted on our parting even before this declaration of intent by Arthur, though the truth was overlooked later in preference of the theory that I had wilfully traded up, discarding the old only when I was sure I had the new in the bag.
In keeping with the tone of our whole relationship, we were not explicit in our break-up discussions. We made no interrogations of one another and traded no recriminations. If not able to be warm, we could not bring ourselves to be cold.
‘One of us has to move out and if you don’t want to, it will have to be me.’ I stated this with little sense of the urgent necessity I felt, for it was important to avoid the inference that this was anything but a mutual decision. Still, this
was
my initiative and I had to be prepared to bear the greater inconvenience of it.
‘You move then,’ was his first response, and I agreed without argument. I then spent a fraught night considering my options, ready the following morning to begin looking for a short-term rental within easy distance of work. Away from the Grove, it would be safer for Arthur to visit, too.
But the next evening Matt announced that he had changed his mind. ‘I’m not paying this rent on my own, not even for a couple of months. I’ll go, all right?’
‘All right.’
I gathered from this that he’d mentioned his dilemma to a friend and had had an offer of a sofa or spare room. Either that or he too was seeing someone new and she, being presumably unmarried, was happy to take him in.
During this period he asked only one question that caused me proper difficulty, partly because it could be answered in so many different ways. ‘What’s going on with you, Emily?’ And there was confusion in his face, as if he no longer knew me, which gave rise to opposing pangs of pride and remorse in me. I knew I’d altered since becoming involved with Arthur, but I did not want to be unrecognisable to Matt. We’d been friends a long time.
‘What d’you mean? Nothing’s going on.’
‘Is it that posh bird at work?’
‘Charlotte? She’s not a bird, Matt. She’s a Homo sapiens.’
But his meaning was clear enough: I thought I was too good for a down-to-earth man like him; I’d developed aspirations, wanted the kind of privileges Charlotte – and most of her customers – had. I did not tell him that relations with my boss had taken a downward turn lately, ever since I’d developed a need to take time off at short notice with debilitating migraines.
‘I’m exactly the same as I’ve always been,’ I said firmly.
Matt capitulated. ‘Well, you
look
the same. Better than ever, actually.’
‘You’re not so bad yourself.’
There was a silence then that neither of us knew how to fill, but I was glad of it, of the evidence of reflection before the separation. ‘I won’t be able to give you your half of the deposit until I’ve moved out myself,’ I told him at last. ‘I hope that’s OK?’
‘Whatever. I’ll let you know the address to send it to.’ And that really was that with Matt. I haven’t deliberately cut his lines or diminished his significance. He simply was not a man to chase someone who did not wish to be chased. The damage he could have done had he chosen to stick around and stir trouble, or even avenge, was untold.
When I told Arthur I’d be officially free by the end of the month he was overjoyed, proclaiming our cause ‘halfway there’. ‘He must be insane not to fight for you,’ he said, adding, only half jokingly, ‘but he’d never have beaten me anyway, so it’s probably easier this way.’
I suspected the same could not be said for Sylvie. A devoted wife of twenty years was a different proposition from an inattentive boyfriend of five. She would not concede so easily.
We had been involved for three months when we had our first skirmish with the real world. It was an opportunistic Saturday-afternoon tryst following a cancelled appointment at his private clinic and requiring my feigning nausea to leave work at lunchtime. (‘I think it’s a side effect of the headaches,’ I told Charlotte, but she’d grown tired of my mystery symptoms, demanding with disdain, ‘Are you sure you’re not
pregnant
?’ As if her livelihood did not depend on just such reproductive inconveniences.) Late afternoon, I exited the main door of the Inn on the Hill and walked directly into the path of Sarah and Marcus Laing, out shopping, judging by their armfuls of bags from the chic-er neighbourhood stores. In using a local hotel, especially at the weekend, there had always been a risk that we’d see someone – or be seen – which was why we never left together, always allowing at least ten minutes between our departures. If second and not dashing back to work, I would have a coffee in the café, extending the time to twenty minutes or longer. Today I was first.
‘Hello, Emily,’ Marcus said, sounding genuinely pleased to see me. ‘I haven’t seen you about much recently. How are you doing?’
‘Really well, thank you. And you?’
As her husband chatted, Sarah eyed me with mild hostility and since I was not being the slightest bit flirtatious with him there could be no other reason than how I looked. I had not checked my reflection before leaving and hoped I didn’t look too obviously like someone who had had all her make-up kissed off. If there was one thing I knew about women it was that we did not like to feel more resistible than others of our sex, especially younger others.
‘Where are the kids?’ I asked her, casually jovial, though I would never have assumed such a familiar air if I were not bent on concealing my own activities – and terrified of Arthur materialising too soon behind me. But the subject of children acted as both neutraliser and guaranteed digression and, sure enough, Sarah could not help supplying details.
‘They’re at a birthday party. Rather a nice one, actually. Horse-riding in Richmond Park and then a private viewing of that new vampire movie.’
‘Wow, a bit different from parties when I was young. Aren’t they lucky? I see them in the morning sometimes,’ I added. ‘They look so smart in their uniforms. Where do they go to school?’
I had not heard of the school she named but the pride in her voice told me it was an élite one and that I’d earned myself the credits I’d fished for. Even so, I was not home free yet. After seeing her three successive glances towards the hotel entrance – we stood practically on its doorstep – I could no longer avoid explaining my business here, though I knew very well that the offering of unnecessary details was a sure sign of a guilty conscience. I didn’t want to say I’d been in the café, in case Arthur appeared and said the same. I needed a story he couldn’t possibly echo. ‘I’ve just been asking about a job,’ I said, off the top of my head. ‘I thought this might be an interesting place to work.’
‘Aren’t you at that pottery café any more?’ Marcus asked. I was impressed that he remembered.
‘No, I am, but I’ve got the afternoon off.’ More unprovoked detail; they were unlikely to know I was contractually obliged to work on Saturdays. ‘Anyway, they haven’t got anything at the moment. The recession, you know.’ A sideways glance reassured me that there were no signs in the window advertising for staff.
‘The market will pick up soon,’ Marcus said kindly. ‘And there are always other options, aren’t there?’
I’d grown adept at reading other people’s thoughts, not through any special instinct but through my dealings at work with couples just like this one, and I could guess what they were thinking. Why does she do this sort of menial work? Doesn’t she want a nice white-collar office job, a ‘proper’ career? She’s reasonably well spoken and is obviously presentable. What a prospect, what an impossible thought, in a sunny street in an affluent neighbourhood, to explain to two manifestly wealthy people that I had grown up in a climate of real financial struggle, my father having left his job to nurse my mother before her death and never able to regain the security he’d begun with, hanging on by the skin of his teeth in jobs where employers were not yet enlightened enough to understand why a man would choose to raise children on his own. There had been no money for college and now there was no money for any but the most basic care for him during his own cruel illness.
I hated myself for having wanted to agree when Arthur had called me ‘unlucky’, but I did; sometimes, to my shame, I wallowed in self-pity. But what then did that make the poor soul who used to be my father incarcerated in a hospital unit and literally not knowing if he was coming or going (neither, in that place)? Damned, perhaps?
‘I just thought it might be time for something new,’ I said to the Laings, my reply girlish, anodyne. ‘I’ve been at Earth, Paint & Fire for almost two years now and I’d like to try for a managerial position somewhere.’
‘We’ll let you know if we hear of anything,’ Marcus said gamely, and I did not look at Sarah, preferring not to see her poorly feigned agreement.
Just as I judged it safe to sidle off, Marcus was calling out Arthur’s name and raising a hand in greeting. To my relief, Arthur had not followed me through the main doors but had appeared from the alleyway that ran to one side of the hotel building, where there was a fire door. He joined our gathering with an impressively natural look of surprise.
‘I don’t know if you remember meeting at our party?’ Marcus said to the two of us.
‘Yes,’ I said, cheerfully, ‘I think I do. You’re the eye man, aren’t you?’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Sarah said, and she and Marcus laughed together at my lack of due reverence. It was clear they were in awe of Arthur and thrilled by this opportunity to have him to themselves. I eyed him shyly; he did not look as if he’d just spent the afternoon having sex with me.
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember your name,’ he said to me, apologetically, and Marcus jumped in to clarify.
‘Emily. Emily Marr. Our next-door neighbour. She of the potter’s wheel.’
‘I don’t actually make the pots,’ I laughed. ‘They all come factory-made and ready to paint.’
‘Oh, what a disappointment,’ Marcus said.
‘What, you like a woman in clay-smeared overalls?’ Arthur asked, amused.
‘No, just clay-smeared,’ Marcus said, chortling.
‘Well, we all have our weaknesses.’ Arthur spoke in the droll, self-confident tone I recognised from the men at the Laings’ party. How I admired the ease with which he bantered with this pair – or with Marcus, at any rate, for the exchange had apparently displeased Sarah, who was struggling to suppress a scowl. Like Sylvie Woodhall’s in the café, her dislike of me was instinctive. It would be ridiculous of me to protest, however, since it was fully justified, and more ridiculous still to go on wanting to be liked by them while happily making off with one of their men. I suppose I wanted it both ways and yet, standing there on the pavement with the three of them, I had never felt more out of my depth, unfit for either role, let alone both. Twenty minutes ago Arthur had told me repeatedly that he loved me, and I would have traded a hundred avowals then for a silent, secret one now. But instead he glanced at me as if he really did not know me and had no particular reason to reverse the situation.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, with a general smile. ‘Enjoy the rest of the weekend, everyone.’
I left a cautious interval before texting him:
Does that alley lead anywhere besides the fire exit of the hotel?
He replied:
It’s a short-cut to the station. I told them I’d just come from Harley Street.
Thank God. I was scared they might have guessed.
No. Don’t worry.
Sarah doesn’t like me, does she?
If she doesn’t it will be because Marcus does
.
And there’s nothing wrong with his vision, as far as I’m aware.
I didn’t care much for this theory, but I supposed it was preferable to Sarah hating me because she suspected I was having an affair with one of her friends’ husbands.
And, all things considered, I would far rather have bumped into her in that situation than into Sylvie herself – or her friend Nina Meeks.