And then it happened. Just as I was rounding the corner to take the last small flight of stairs to the top floor, something moved in the shadows. My stomach lurched. A figure stepped out in front of me. I made an involuntary sound, more a gasp than a scream.
'Be quiet,' he hissed, drawing back into the darkness.
'Danny.' I took a ragged breath.
His whisper was serpentine. 'Did it turn you on?'
The floor tilted beneath my feet and I put out a hand to steady myself.
'Greg and Rachel. That is what you've just been watching, isn't it?'
Shame flooded through me.
'Did they look good? Come on, you can admit it. They're sexy together. You probably needed reminding what that looks like.'
'Why are you doing this?' I kept my voice low.
'I'm just looking out for Lucas. We talk, Joanna. And I see the way things are between you. Do you really think you stand a chance?' He laughed very gently and the sound of it hung around him like smoke. 'You and Lucas will never work out.'
'That's not true.'
'Oh, it is. Maybe you used to have a chance, when Lucas was slumming it, trying to do it the hard way, but he always had this coming.' He waved his hand around him in the half light. 'You can't compete, Joanna. He's in another world now and you can't follow him.'
'Danny, this is horrible, please ...'
'You're insignificant. He clings to you because of his misguided ideas, but it's over. Don't you wonder,' he went on, and I saw his teeth glint as he moved just for a moment into the moonlight, 'don't you wonder why you and Lucas aren't the ones downstairs fucking in front of the fire? It's because you're not good enough for him. Take my word for it.'
'I won't let you intimidate me.'
He laughed softly. 'What are you going to do? Tell him? Are you going to explain what you were doing wandering round the house in the dead of night, peeking through cracks in doors? Or would you like me to tell him?' He stepped back into the darkness and a second later I heard his bedroom door gently close.
When I reached Lucas's room I slammed the door shut, tore off the jumper and threw myself into bed, forgetting to be careful not to wake him. I could feel the heat of my cheek burning against the pillow. The blood was pushing through my brain so fast my temples were aching.
Lucas stirred. 'Everything OK?' he mumbled.
'Can't sleep,' I answered, turning on to my back and tangling the sheet still further.
'I'm sorry we argued,' he said.
'Me too.'
He propped himself halfway up and put a slightly sour kiss on my cheek. 'Friends again?' he said.
'Of course. Go back to sleep.'
I lay awake for the rest of the night. My heart was galloping and nothing I could do would return it to a normal rhythm. I tried lying motionless and controlling my breathing but still it continued its mad syncopation. My mind, too, was tearing across a new and twisted landscape, images of the scene in front of the fire tangling with visions of Danny stepping out of the night like a haunting. The thought of him brought a fresh coat of sweat. There was no ambivalence in our relationship any more: his animosity towards me had broken cover. I knew, though, that there was no way I could tell Lucas what had happened; I couldn't run the risk of him confronting Danny and Danny telling him that I had been watching Greg.
And on top of that, despite every attempt to distract myself, I couldn't get the image of Greg and Rachel out of my head. It looked like sex as it should be - powerful, adult, real. I also knew that I had never had sex like it. It wasn't about affection and warmth and messing around for fun but about men and women and want. I wondered whether all these years I'd got it wrong and shied away from precisely what I found most erotic, scared of what would happen if I let myself go. In the scene in front of the fire I had been looking at domination and surrender and I wanted to know what it felt like. Martha would be horrified if she knew I was thinking about sex like this, but in the remaining hours of that night I didn't care. I asked myself whether I had been so bound up in my politics and beliefs about relationships that I'd argued up a wall between myself and the stuff that really existed out there in the adult sexual world. I also wondered if this was why I had so often gone out with men with whom I'd been friends first. Perhaps in doing that I'd filed their teeth down, rendered them anodyne. There was no doubt that I had not been watching Greg and Rachel. I had been watching Greg. I wanted to be Rachel and to know what it was like to be overpowered by him. To lose myself to him.
I looked at Lucas sleeping next to me, his hair ruffed up on the pillow like the breast feathers of a baby owl, and felt immediate guilt. I loved him, I knew that, but I wondered whether it could ever be in that ecstatic, self-abandoning way in which I had seen Rachel respond to Greg. To my shame, it was exciting and made sleep even more of an impossibility. For a mad moment I thought of waking Lucas but knew I could never forgive myself for the dishonesty - the faithlessness - of it.
And then there was the question of the morning, getting ever closer as the dawn seeped across the ceiling like a stain in a tablecloth. In just a few hours I would have to sit and eat breakfast with a man who knew that I had watched him make love to his girlfriend. A man who had raised his head and smiled at me, knowing I had been there all along.
In typical contrary fashion, I finally managed to sleep just as everyone else was getting up. Lucas left me in bed and I stayed there for another hour and a half, drifting in and out of a dreamless exhaustion. In the end I could put it off no longer, got dressed and went downstairs.
The smell of bacon drew me to the kitchen. From the corridor I could hear the sound of it crackling under the grill and the sawing of a loaf of bread. As I rounded the corner I saw that it was Greg and Rachel who were cooking. I had to stop myself running from the room.
'Morning, Jo,' Rachel said, with a normality of tone that told me that she hadn't seen me last night and Greg hadn't said anything to her.
Greg looked up from the tin of tomatoes he was opening. He was standing behind her and could have pulled any number of expressions. His face was completely straight. 'Morning.' He emptied the tomatoes into a saucepan.
I muttered something about finding Lucas and backtracked out of the room, retracing my steps along the passage to the hall. Under that ceiling I could feel the rushing in my ears again, the pounding of blood too fast. It seemed to be resolving into a sort of beat now, like quiet tribal drums, full of menace. The floor was rising up to meet me, the walls crowding in. I had only fainted a couple of times in my life but here was the candy floss feeling at the top of my head, the chequering at the edges of my vision. Instinct told me to kneel down before I fell, but even in that state I had another, stronger instinct: I didn't want to be alone under that painting. I looked up and saw Zeus looking down at me with judgement in his eyes. He knew. Panic whipped through me. I staggered the last few steps to the drawing room and half sat, half fell on to the nearest chesterfield.
Martha and Michael were reading the
Sunday Times
in companionable silence on the other sofa, she with the news review section, he with travel. They were sitting at either end, facing one another, their socked feet intertwined.
'You OK,Jo?' asked Michael. 'You look pale.' He lowered the paper and looked at me over the top of his glasses.
'Oh, I'm fine. Just tired.' I rested my head on the edge of the sofa and waited for the buzzing to pass. Today I wasn't sure if it was my nervousness at seeing Greg, fury with Danny or the house itself that was causing it. Martha was still looking at me, concerned. 'Honestly,' I said, 'I'm OK.' As soon as I could, I picked up the main section of the paper and took it over to the window-seat. It was cold away from the fire and I could see that the garden was full of a low-lying mist.
Rachel called to tell us breakfast was ready. I got up, feeling steadier on my feet, but Lucas came in and held me back. He waited until the others had gone then sat down on the arm of the sofa and pulled me in front of him. 'Jo, about last night ...'
My mind raced. What was he going to say? Had Danny spoken to him? 'I'm sorry,' I said quickly, the first words to come into my head. I realised that it was an apology, however feeble, for a crime he knew nothing about.
'No, I am. I didn't think enough about what it would mean for us, my moving out here so soon. If I had, I might have left it longer, until we were more established.'
'Lucas, I don't ...' Relief was coursing through me.
'Ssh.' He wouldn't let me speak. 'What I want to say is that I'm sorry. Also I love you and I'm committed to making it work between us.'
Trapped. The word flashed into my mind and out again almost before I had a chance to register it. I was shocked; I'd never thought that was a reaction I could have to the idea of being with him, especially as my instinct was to fight tooth and nail to prove Danny wrong about us. I made my eyes meet his. His pupils were dilating, as if to take more of me in. I could see myself in them, the big round head, the body disappearing underneath it like a seal's. I hated that person. I wanted things to be pure again, to be starting out on something with him that wasn't compromised. I didn't want to have seen Greg last night or to have the new feeling whatever it was - about him. Lucas's face was balanced, full of expectation but not sure of what. He was preparing to hear that it was over between us but hoping that he'd said enough for it not to happen. I made a decision. I would not give up yet. I would stand my ground against Danny. He wouldn't have Lucas to himself to use and manipulate, not while I had any influence. And besides, there was too much that was good to let it go easily. I couldn't throwaway all those years of loving Lucas before I knew I had really tried to make it work. I gave him a tentative smile. 'Let's try it,' I said.
The look of relief and happiness on his face told me I'd made the right decision. And made me feel like a bitch.
Over breakfast I began to think that maybe Greg hadn't seen me after all. He gave me no reason to think that anything out of the ordinary had happened. I was acutely conscious of him, aware of the way his hands moved as he served the bacon and sausages on to plates, watching the shape of his shoulders and back when he turned to cut more bread. Of course I'd known before that he was attractive but that morning it was like seeing him in an extra dimension. I was terrified that he would catch me staring at him but at the same time I couldn't look away.
I was also aware of Danny, whose usual morning malaise had today been replaced with an uncharacteristic energy. Presumably he thought victory was imminent. Well, he would learn otherwise.
I reached for a slice of toast, realising too late that the butter was on the other side of the table, between Lucas and Greg. 'Lucas,' I said, 'could I have the butter, please?'
Greg reached for it and held it out to me. I hesitated, nervous of catching his eye and seeing either accusation or, perhaps even worse, what I had read as the amusement in his smile of the night before. Again, though, there was nothing. Maybe I was off the hook. Maybe he had just happened to raise his head at that moment, his expression one of pleasure, nothing to do with me at all. I blushed nonetheless and as the blood rose from my neck to my face Danny looked at me and raised the corner of an eyebrow. A thought occurred to me: did he see my reaction? I felt suddenly as exposed as if I had been lying naked across the table. If Danny discovered that, he would make my life unlivable.
'Lions match today,' said Lucas.
'We're going to miss it, I'm afraid,' said Rachel, applying jam to her toast. 'I've got this designer who's over from New York and the only time we could meet was this afternoon.'
'Bad luck, mate,' said Danny, clapping a hand on Greg's shoulder.
Greg shrugged. 'Perils of having a successful girlfriend.'
Martha looked as if she'd had a bright idea. 'Why doesn't Greg come back with us? He can watch the match here and then get a lift with Jo later on. If you don't have any other plans? That wouldn't be a problem at all, would it, Jo?'
I looked up, feeling the flush intensify. I caught his eye. Surely this time? But again there was nothing to suggest he knew me as the horrible voyeur I was.
'If you're sure you don't mind?' he said. 'I'd really like to see the match.'
'No,' I heard myself say. 'Of course.'
'And you'll want to see the match, won't you, Jo?' said Danny. 'You'll want to watch?'
I loved the bathroom that Lucas and I shared at Stone-borough. It was tiny compared to the other rooms, even to most of the other bathrooms. A huge cast-iron radiator belched out heat at all hours of night and day and the tropical feel was enhanced by a six-foot yucca plant and a collection of shells and sea urchins on the glass shelf over the sink. The bath was on the outside wall and the sash window was set low enough for me to lie there and look out across the garden. I ran a full tub and lowered myself gently in, acclimatising my skin and watching the water lap at the overflow hole. As it settled, there was total peace. The others were downstairs watching the match but I couldn't bear the idea of being in the same room as Danny any longer than necessary. My nerves were completely frayed. After breakfast, I'd washed up and then we'd waved Rachel off. As she'd rounded the corner in the drive, out of sight of the house, she'd given a pip on her horn. I'd jumped visibly. 'Jo,' Lucas had said with concern, 'try to relax.'
I picked up my copy of
Bleak House
and attempted to find where I had left off. After five or so minutes, my eyes on the same half-page, I gave up and tossed the book over the side. Something else was bothering me. Had Lucas really talked to Danny about our relationship, as he had claimed last night? I hated the thought that he would do that, discuss something so personal and expose me. But I could imagine it. He wouldn't have started the conversation; instead Danny would have invited his confidences, presented himself as a concerned friend, all the time storing the information gleefully, hungry for ammunition. Lucas wouldn't have suspected him at all, would have seen only someone trying to help. I found the idea intensely painful. Danny's presence made me want to fight him but when I was by myself the seeds of doubt he planted began to germinate.
The bathroom was full of steam; I had run the water a little too hot even for me. Outside, the mist of earlier that morning had slunk away and an intense rain was falling. The dark trees at the end of the lawn looked as if they had been brushed up into the sky. I slipped down deeper into the water, feeling the embrace of it around my shoulders.
My sleepless night and all its emotions caught up with me. My eyes closed and I let the water take the weight of my limbs. I tried to imagine the stress running down from my shoulders and leaving my body at the fingertips, draining away into the bath. To some extent it worked and I began to feel calmer. It looked like Greg hadn't seen me after all and Lucas still wanted to make a go of things. Don't fall asleep in the bath, I thought, as drowsiness pulled me harder towards it.
I came round conscious that something was different. I opened my eyes and saw why: Greg was sitting on the edge of the tub. 'Christ.' I pulled myself into a foetal position.
'That's not fair,' he said. 'How come you get to see me naked but I'm not allowed to see you?'
I was totally exposed, without so much as a sponge for cover. He loomed above me, fully clothed. My skin glowed up through the water, the hyperreal deathly pale of Millais's
Ophelia.
I looked at my legs, their image distorted as it reached the surface. I wanted to look better than this: white and rounded like an albino whale. My mind presented me with Rachel's long, lean image. For a moment neither of us said anything. The water that I had disturbed by my sudden movement slapped at the edges of the tub and the cold tap dripped into the waves.
'Is this some sort of revenge attack?' I said. 'I'm really sorry about last night - beyond sorry. I couldn't sleep and came down to make some tea. When I heard a noise in the library, I thought someone else was up ...'
'I know. I just came to say I didn't mind.' He reached down into the water and traced his fingertip over my left nipple. I felt it stiffen treacherously under his touch. The cuff of his shirt was wet, the damp turning the pale-blue material a vivid turquoise. He smiled at me and walked away, shutting the door behind him.
I stayed in the bath until the water was almost cold. The tap was still dripping, but now the surface was flat and rings spread out across it, cause and effect. I focused on the way that the meniscus clung around my body where it rose from the water and the fine hairs that stood up on my arms as I got cold. I couldn't quite believe what had just happened. And again my response had been to feel sexually enlivened in a way I'd never experienced before. My skin was humming, my nipple the centre of a little quake. There was a bang on the door and I jumped, sending the water splashing again.
'Are you still in the bath?' Lucas's voice. 'The match has finished - you've been in there for hours. I've brought you some tea.'
'I won't be a minute.'
'Come to my room, I'll help you get dry.'
I pulled out the plug and watched the water twist away, the plumbing swallowing it rapaciously. I knew what I was about to do was wrong but to have refused Lucas then would have set us right back again and I couldn't let it happen. I would show Danny just how wrong he was about us. When the bath was empty I got out, shivering, and wrapped myself in the nursery comfort of a towel straight from the radiator. My feet left damp prints on the carpet as I walked slowly along the corridor.
I made love to Lucas that afternoon with a reel of images of Greg in my mind: in front of the fire smiling down at Rachel, leaning forward to touch me as I lay in the bath. My body was as dishonest as my mind. It responded at the slightest touch and I was ready at once. The look of pleasure on Lucas's face was almost unbearable.
We left Stoneborough just after seven. The rain had stopped but there was still thick cloud cover and the stars were completely hidden. A great night for wreckers. I leaned against the side of the car while Michael and Martha clambered into the back seat. It had been decided that Greg needed the extra legroom afforded by the foot well on the passenger side. Lucas came round to say goodbye. It must have been obvious to everyone that we'd spent much of the afternoon having sex; although I was trying to hide it, he had an easy, slightly knackered smile and was kissing me more obviously in front of the others than I could remember him having done before. Now he pushed the hair away from my ear and leaned in, pressing me against the car with the full weight of his body, his pelvis hard against mine. 'Thank you for giving us another chance,' he said.
Greg came down the path, carrying his rucksack. I caught his eye over Lucas's shoulder. He quickly looked away as if embarrassed to have impinged on our privacy and ducked round to the back of the car to put his bag in the boot.
Danny was striding up and down on the gravel like a husband who has suffered his in-laws all weekend and now can't wait for them finally to clear off. As soon as I knew Greg wouldn't see, I pulled Lucas towards me again and kissed him hard, taking him a little by surprise. It had the desired effect: Danny spun on his heel and stalked back into the house, determined not to give me the satisfaction of an audience.