“Pretty pathetic,” I say, going back to the kitchen, dumping the ingredients unceremoniously on the table.
“Ha! Not if I dig you up an onion,” says William, looking pleased with himself.
“But you’ll drown!”
“I’d rather drown than have you starve.”
I smile more fondly than I should, and out he goes, reappearing ten minutes later, ruddy-faced and bedraggled.
“M’lady,” he says, bowing, and presenting a huge white onion and a handful of chives.
“You’re soaking!” I scrabble around to find tea towels.
He shakes himself like a big dog, rubbing hard at his sopping wet hair and as he does so, it feels like something is being sloughed away, like he’s losing that layer of pristine rigidity that keeps him so untouchable. My heart squeezes in my chest, beating its way into my consciousness, and I have to look away, busying myself with finding a knife and a chopping board. He sits down at the table, half an eye on the paper, his glass of wine at his elbow. Again, that yawning gulf between what it looks like and what it is.
“I’ve got to call James if I’m not coming back,” I say, digging my phone out of my bag, stirring the sauce as it rings. It’s Saturday night, so I’m expecting to leave a message, but he actually picks up.
“Hi,” he says, voice flat. “You at the station?”
“No. Where are you?”
“Living room. I’ll come get you if you like.”
I don’t think I’ve ever known James to stay in on a weekend night without either a promise of sex or a deathly illness. Charlotte, I think, heat rising, but he would never have picked up if she was there.
“No you won’t, not from here,” I say, glancing at William. He’s ostensibly reading the paper, but I get the sense he’s tracking me. “I’m . . . I’m still in Dorset. With William,” I add. “There’s a storm raging and the car’s broken down.”
“How Gothic,” says James, an edge to his voice.
“At least it means I can give him some more help.” William raises sad eyes toward me, and I start to feel awkward. “Listen, I’ve got to go, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I hang up, oddly flustered. “Sorry about that.” William pushes the paper away.
“It’s very kind of you, but I meant what I said earlier. Just helping me start the task made all the difference. I’ll worry about it tomorrow when you’ve gone.” He reaches over, filling our glasses almost to the brim, clinking his against mine. “And I don’t mean to take issue with the cook, but something’s burning.”
It’s not my best effort, the onions more blackened than browned, the tomatoes sharper than I’d like, but William pronounces it delicious on his first bite.
“But William it’s not,” I say, surprised to find how much it matters to me. I want to know that he is able to tell me the truth, rather than feel like he’s tossing out platitudes the way he’d throw bread to the ducks; I suspect he spends most of his life telling people what they want to hear.
“I’m enjoying it,” he insists.
“That’s different from it being objectively delicious. You don’t have to flatter me.” Where’s my edginess coming from? It’s guilt in part; that plastic tag still digging into me, the sense I’m sitting opposite Sally’s husband, her seat still warm. “I was always the cook when I lived with Sally,” I add, looking at him. Was it wrong to mention her? She feels so strong here that I couldn’t not, couldn’t risk him thinking I’m trying to obliterate her.
“I can believe that,” he says, his fingers gripping his glass a little more tightly. “She was a great one for eating out.”
“Did she ever learn to cook?” I ask, the atmosphere palpably shifting, an icy dampness engulfing us.
“No.” Our forks scrape against our plates, every sound magnified by the pregnant silence. Sometimes it’s as though he disappears when she appears, like they’re two tiny figurines in a weather house; maybe he can only stand to be alone with his memories. “She hated it,” he adds, emotion surging. “Which was her prerogative, of course, I’m not some kind of Victorian patriarch.”
“She didn’t have the patience for it.”
“Sally was never a fan of delayed gratification,” mutters William, his face a mask. I wish I’d never gone here, stumbled from the warm and friendly path we were ambling down. There’s nowhere to go, nothing to distract us, the silence an ocean.
“Fancy splitting a ginger snap for dessert?” I ask, hating my feeble attempt at levity.
He turns his heavy-lidded eyes toward me.
“I’m sorry, Olivia, I don’t know why you’re putting up with me.”
“It’s not a sufferance,” I say, my voice catching. “I promise you that.”
He stares at me, as if he’s holding up what I’ve said to the light.
“And I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier. It was totally unnecessary.”
“Don’t worry. You’re under so much stress.”
“It’s just . . .” He’s looking at me, but his eyes don’t seem quite able to see me. “There’s something not right.”
“What kind of not right?” There are so many kinds of not right that it’s hard to pin one down. He pauses as if he’s weighing up whether or not to speak. When he does his voice is low and hard to hear.
“There’s things I can’t seem to find. There’s a pair of diamond earrings I gave her for our anniversary, an S necklace she used to wear all the time. I don’t know where they can be.”
He looks at me, his face an appeal, pain etched there. My suspicions start to swim to the surface.
“There’s something Madeline said to me, at the museum. About her and Sally having a secret place. I just wonder, if there are things missing—”
“It won’t have meant anything,” he says, quick as a flash, his face shutting down. “That’s what they were like together. She often used to treat Madeline more like her best girlfriend than a little girl. Sometimes when I got back from a trip it was as though I was intruding.”
His eyes are burning, that fat worm of stress throbbing in his temple, and I know instinctively that I’ve gone too far. It’s so confusing the way he’ll venture toward opening the door on whatever secrets Sally might have had, but then slam it shut like he can’t bear to look inside. No wonder he won’t entertain the idea of suicide: if she had taken her own life, he wouldn’t have the luxury of keeping the door locked.
“Oh William . . .” I feel out of my depth again, suddenly longing for a platitude of my own to throw into the lake of his grief. “I’m sorry. Perhaps Richie and Mara will know?”
He looks at me again, his gaze intense, my words lost somewhere between us.
“Can I show you something?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say, anxiety clawing its way up my spine.
He crosses to the counter, picks up his phone. Then he tells me what it is—the footage of Sally’s last minutes. The very idea of it makes bile rise up my throat, but I can’t refuse to watch it, because to do so would be to abandon him. I reach out a shaking hand, and he presses play. It’s CCTV footage that the insurance company has tracked down, the car a tiny speck, zigzagging its erratic path through the traffic, almost like a video game. You can see other cars swerving to avoid it before it jackknifes down a ramp and then barrels into the median strip, driving straight for it, the impact all too obvious from the way it crumples. I look up at him, the blood drained from my face. I can’t speak.
“Livvy, I’m sorry,” he says, his face filled with concern. “I shouldn’t have thrust that on you. Let’s get you some brandy.”
He pours me a measure and I gulp it back, the fire of it bringing me back to the here and now.
“It’s all right,” I mumble, my teeth chattering with the aftershock. I’m searching for something to say, but I’m all out of answers. Seeing the car’s haphazard progress it’s hard to believe that it could be an accident. I look at him, my eyes welling up with tears. He crosses around to me, and puts his arm around my shoulder.
“I know how shocking it is. It was too much to expect of you.”
I’m so grateful to feel the living warmth of him, it anchors me in this universe, makes the ground feel solid again. I sink a little further into him, and he settles into the chair next to mine. I can feel his body breathing, his sweater soft against my cheek.
“Are they saying it confirms it?” I whisper.
“They can say whatever they choose,” he says, hotly. “It means nothing of the sort.”
How can he be so sure?
“No of course, but . . .”
“It certainly helps their case. The police haven’t yet agreed to reclassify it, but a hearing looks increasingly likely.”
“And . . . are they . . . the exhumation?” I say, my voice still little more than a whisper. I hate the thought of that, of them rousing her from where she lies and pulling her around like she’s no more than a carcass.
“I won’t let that happen,” he says, his whole body tensing.
We sit there for a little while, alone with our thoughts.
“Was it like that?” I ask him, my voice soft, the question coming almost unbidden.
“What do you mean?”
“Being married to her.”
He stiffens, and I wonder if I’ve crossed that invisible line, but then he speaks.
“It was lots of things, it could be the most incredible fun, but . . . she used to say people were drains or radiators, and I think I know what category she thought I fell into.”
“You’re not a drain!”
“Coming from you, that’s a huge compliment,” he says, smiling down at me. “Certainly not a deserved one.”
I reach for his free hand, almost unconsciously, and he doesn’t pull it away. I press my thumb into the palm as
he continues to talk, hoping it will stop him from floating up and away.
“I suppose my job’s not one you can do by half measures. I wasn’t around as much as she’d have liked.” He looks exhausted even talking about it.
“Did you ever think about doing something else?”
“We had quite a lifestyle,” he says, and I think of the clothing mountain that’s sitting in the barn, each item a piece of art. “And she’d given up so much.” I see her there, arms flung wide, “Manhattan!” Sally was never one for self-sacrifice, whatever he believes. I stay quiet, my thumb still tracing his palm. “She took me away for my birthday last year, booked this beautiful hotel in the Catskills. We had the most incredible dinner on the first night, we . . . it had been a long time since we’d made love.” I can feel him blushing, without even needing to look up. “We . . . we did . . . we walked in the mountains and then . . .” He swallows and I turn my gaze to him. “It was like a switch flicked, like I was someone else. She was so distant all of a sudden. I kept going over and over in my mind what we’d done that day, where I’d lost her.”
“She was just like that, William. It wouldn’t have been you.” He gives me that reflexive smile of acknowledgment I’ve come to know so well, but I can see my words aren’t touching the sides.
“It felt like that happened more and more the last few months. I’m sure it was deeply unattractive, me begging her to tell me what I’d done wrong. Sometimes I felt like . . .” his voice drops, “like she despised me.”
I feel a surge of anger on his behalf, then realize that it’s not just for him, it’s also for that younger version of me, blindsided by those swift, brutal changes of mood. I want
to reach back in time and tell her what William won’t yet believe—that it wasn’t down to some horrible inadequacy that only Sally’s X-ray vision could see. I grit my teeth, search for the right words.
“Of course she didn’t despise you.”
“I did actually ask her straight out, a couple of months before—before it happened—if she wanted a divorce.”
“What did she say?”
“She was distraught. I’d seen her upset, but never like that. It took me hours to calm her down.”
“And what did
you
want?” I ask, tentative.
“I didn’t want to carry on as we were, but I certainly didn’t want a divorce. It’s not . . . it’s not what I believe in.”
There’s such a determination about how he says it, like he’s the last little boy in the class who believes in Father Christmas.
“It does happen—cases have been recorded,” I say, then hate myself for the sarcasm of it.
“I’m well aware, but to my mind there should always be a solution once there are children involved.”
“But what if you’ve married the wrong person? That’s what my mom and dad did. I wish they’d got divorced a hell of a lot sooner. It was like living in a phony war.”
I think about it, about Dad’s routine little life. I’m not sure it’s what he believes. I wonder if he did find his one, but then found he wasn’t the one for her.
“I don’t think my mother’s had it easy with Pa, but she’s never faltered.”
“How so?”
“Oh . . .” He shakes his head, like he doesn’t want to go there. “Besides, I’m sure it was an ordeal for you when it happened.”
“Yeah it was, of course,” I say, thinking of Sally, how she would laugh me out of my moments of melancholy, keep me wrapped up in the fun of my new life. I push my thumb into his palm, embarrassed by how far we’ve strayed from the path. “Did it get better after that?”
“Without question. She seemed happier. We had some lovely family time. And then . . .”
He looks away, lost in his own personal hell. It must make those final moments all the more torturous: was that brief second honeymoon an illusion, a fantasy that Sally was weaving as she plotted her next move, or was it a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been? I draw my hand away, suddenly seeing us from above, his arm around me. What would she think of me? To my surprise he pulls it back.
“Thank you,” he says, burying his head in my hair, and drawing me toward him. I feel as though I’m stiffening and softening all at once. He pushes my bangs out of my face and I risk raising my eyes toward his. “You’re the only person I feel any vague semblance of myself with.”
That’s what we all want, isn’t it—the person who sees all our lumps and bumps and loves us anyway? At least, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.
“You’re an angel,” he breathes, tilting his face downward to kiss me. I put the flat of my hand against his chest to push him away, but then I accept him, let logic and context melt into a puddle of nothing. He pulls back and looks down at me.
“Olivia,” he says, his eyes full of concern, “is this acceptable?”