‘No, they just met,’ she says.
You don’t say any more. You pull up outside the main house, turn off the engine, sit for a moment. From inside the house, you can hear the dogs’ muffled barks. Nothing else.
‘You were holding my hand,’ she says.
You look at her. She turns her head to face you.
‘Yes,’ you say.
There is a brief pause.
‘You want to come in?’
Sarah
Pushed against the side of the kitchen table, Sarah thinks: I want to remember this.
She has forgotten what this hunger feels like. She has forgotten the feel of another person’s hands on her skin, being held, gripped by someone stronger than she is, being kissed hard by someone who tastes, faintly, of wine and distant memories. He smells of some aftershave, clean sweat, warm skin. His cheek is abrasive against hers. All of these things are like a whisper of the past coming back through the fog, falling away again.
Her fingers are numbed by the alcohol, clumsy.
‘You’re sure?’ he asks, against her throat.
‘Mmm,’ she responds, as if she’s forgotten how to speak along with everything else.
‘Come on, then,’ he says, stopping abruptly and leading her by the hand, out of the kitchen.
She catches a glimpse of Tess, watching her. She imagines Tess’s expression is vaguely judgemental and this makes her giggle.
‘It’s cold up here,’ he says, in the bedroom. ‘Are you cold?’
She shakes her head; she feels hot, peeling off the layers. It’s not exactly erotic, but she can’t remember how to be alluring. You’re supposed to tease, aren’t you? It feels a bit late for that. And besides, he’s seen it all before.
If she weren’t quite so pissed, she thinks, she would be worried about all the bits of her that were firm last time they did this, over twenty years ago, and now aren’t: the fact that she has a tummy pouch that held her babies, faded stretch marks, saddlebags.
He does not seem to notice or care – and it’s dark, and he is in a hurry, pulling down his jeans and taking hold of her again before he’s even got them off properly – is reassuring.
You’ve drunk enough for this not to matter, she thinks.
He says, again, ‘You sure about this?’ as if he’s expecting her to throw him off suddenly. He is sober, after all.
She feels a surge of something: hunger, frustration, desperation. ‘Just fuck me,’ she gasps.
He does.
Sarah wakes up and it’s still dark.
Her mouth is dry, her tongue like a lump of rubber, because she has been sleeping on her back with her mouth open. Most likely snoring, too, although since there is nobody but the dogs to hear it that doesn’t matter.
Aiden, if he was really here, has gone.
She lies still for a moment, thinking about the pub. How much did she drink? It hadn’t felt like a lot, at the time, but Sophie kept topping up her glass and telling her it was good that she wasn’t driving for a change. And she had been nervous, too, about introducing Aiden to everyone. She needn’t have worried, of course. He’s such a charmer. Everyone seemed to love him.
She sits on the edge of the bed for a moment before she trusts her legs to support her; goes to the loo and washes her hands, which feel sticky. Then she drinks a whole glass of cold water, straight down, gasping at the end of it. She refills the glass and takes a few sips, turns off the bathroom light and takes the glass back to the bedroom.
The clock tells her that it’s half-past three.
Outside, the wind has picked up again and she can hear it buffeting the window. The weather is always noisy up here; even with double glazing, the wind is always pushing against the walls and the glass and trying to get in. It moans and sighs and catches something in the mortar, ending on a tuneless whistle. She settles down again in the warm bed.
She remembers Aiden holding her hand; she doesn’t remember going outside. She remembers sitting in the car outside the house, inviting him in. She remembers the feel of him, hard, strong, against her.
He kept asking her if she was sure, didn’t he, as if he wanted to back out but wasn’t quite brave enough to do it himself.
Shit, she thinks. I’m never drinking again. I’m not confident. I don’t remember how this works.
Aiden’s car is gone when Sarah takes the dogs for a walk. She wonders if he has done a runner – decided against staying after all and gone to London, or to stay with friends, or something. She wouldn’t blame him. In the dull, greyish daylight, showered, fully dressed, everything she can remember about last night feels horribly awkward.
For most of the day her brain feels solid, dense, like cream that has been whipped too far; she carries a bottle of water to the studio and sips it as she stares at the illustration she has been working on for The Candy Cotton Piglet at the Circus. No animals in her circus, of course, at least, not in the traditional sense. Her acrobats are mice, her ringmaster is an elephant, the clowns are a flock of crazy seagulls. She thinks the seagulls aren’t working; considers that they really should be monkeys. But she hates being predictable.
It feels pointless, today. It won’t sell.
Eventually she puts the sketch to one side and ends up copying a picture of Louis as a toddler, one of her favourites, in which he’s holding up an empty snail shell, his brows drawn together in a frown of scientific discovery. Seconds after the picture was taken, his two-year-old fingers had squeezed a bit too hard and shattered the shell. He’d been inconsolable.
She has a drawer in the studio full of sketches and watercolours of her children, at every age of their lives, some copied from photographs, some from memory.
There are more pictures of Louis than there are of Kitty. It wasn’t that she favoured her son, more that his expressions fascinated her: everything about him was curious, open, delighted. Kitty had been much more of a challenge as a small child. She had some delayed speech, and as a result spent much of the time seething with barely repressed fury at being unable to express herself. Tantrums were frequent, often inexplicable, and exhausting. For several months Sarah barely left the house, having spent so much time and energy apologising and eventually not even bothering to do that, so fed-up was she at the looks on people’s faces. Bad mother, they all thought. Spoiled her, let her get away with it. Nip it in the bud, that’s the way to deal with behavioural issues. Louis had always loved his sister, from the moment she was born; but even he had seemed baffled as to how to react to the fury.
In the end, staying at home with Kitty had helped where going out had not. In her home environment Kitty was calmer; she had the time and the space to make choices, to get things for herself. And gradually, with the peace and quiet, her speech had developed and the tantrums became less frequent and eventually stopped altogether. But Sarah remembers them well: the stand-offs, the red cheeks, the brows knitted together, bared teeth, screams so ferocious your ears rang with them afterwards.
Strange, then, that it’s now Kitty she can turn to; Louis who has stopped communicating.
At lunchtime she tries to call her daughter. She has essay deadlines frequently and Sarah tries hard not to interrupt, but much of every day is spent imagining what she’s doing. If she’s not in lectures; she’ll be in the library, or working in her room. Sarah has left two voicemails since Aiden arrived, and Kitty has done the same.
‘Mum! At last. I keep missing you.’
‘I know, you’ve been busy. How’s it going?’
Kitty has just started her second term. Since Christmas things have been noticeably better for Kitty, and noticeably worse for Sarah. Last term Kitty had been homesick; she’d phoned almost every day. But by Christmas she had made friends, had joined a film-making club and was writing scripts for them, had started running with another girl from her shared apartment. By January she had been desperate to get back and Sarah, facing the prospect of several months before Kitty was planning to come home again, felt hollow with the
loss of her.
‘It’s good.’
‘How’s the flat?’
‘Oh, it’s fine apart from the bloke upstairs with his bloody drum kit. We’re all going to talk to him, though; Oscar thinks it’s way too loud.’
‘Oscar?’ This name has cropped up a few times recently, but, if he was bothered by the drumming, it meant he’d spent time at Kitty’s flat.
‘Yeah,’ Kitty says.
Sarah can hear the smile in her voice. Wants to ask, but decides to leave it for now. If there’s something to say, Kitty will share it when she’s ready. Change the subject.
‘I’ve got a new neighbour, by the way.’
‘Really? What do you mean?’
Kitty is probably expecting Sarah to tell her that she’s adopted a goat to keep the grass down in the field. This has been an ongoing plan which has never quite come to fruition.
‘You remember Aiden, Dad’s and my friend from uni?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘He’s back in the UK, so he’s staying in the cottage for a while.’
And we fucked last night, she almost wants to add, just to make it real. Of course she doesn’t want to say this. Kitty doesn’t need to know. She’d be horrified.
‘Oh,’ Kitty says. ‘That’s nice for you. Is it? I mean, he is all right, is he?’
‘Of course. Anyway, I’m not going to see much of him; he’s got his own space. I think it’s good to have someone nearby, though. It’s incredibly quiet without you home.’
‘You’re kidding! You’ve got Basil and Tess, and I can’t imagine for one minute that Sophie’s not round every five minutes. You were always complaining you never got a moment to yourself.’
Sarah laughs. ‘I know, I know. How’s the workload? Are you exhausted yet?’
Another swift change of subject, neatly done. The next ten minutes is taken up with Kitty listing her responsibilities, reading lists and everything else she’s got on – although there still appears to be time in the schedule for nights out.
Sarah feels relieved that she’s managed to explain the Aiden situation at last. It’s felt odd, having something so dramatic happen to her without having discussed it with her daughter first. It feels as if Kitty is slipping away.
After the call ends, Sarah tries Louis’s mobile. There’s no reply, and no option to leave a voicemail. Louis conducts his business entirely by email and text, not that he ever replies to her. She sends him a message anyway.
Hope you’re OK. Call home if you get a chance. Love Mum xxx
She knows he won’t respond. This does not seem to matter as much as usual.
At four, a little past their regular time but she is only just feeling up to it, Sarah feeds the dogs and takes them out to the back field. It’s not much of a run but with the aid of a ball she can ensure they get a fair amount of exercise. As usual, Basil chases the ball with manic enthusiasm, as though this is what he was put on the earth to do. Tess steals the ball from Basil when he drops it, then she runs away and abandons it, leaving Basil to complete the cycle and bring it back to Sarah to throw again. It’s almost as if Tess enjoys teasing him.
At the top of the field Sarah walks the length of the dry stone wall separating her land from the moor beyond, checking for loose stones when the mood takes her, until it becomes almost too dark to see. The field is too big for her, really. When the weather warms up, George’s gardener will come over twice a month with his tractor to cut the grass back and collect it. He charges her £10 for the privilege, and sells the grass on. She should think about letting it out for grazing, but it’s nice to be able to walk the dogs up here without worrying about them chasing livestock, or rolling in muck every few paces.
The valley begins to light up as a hundred kettles are boiled for a hundred post-work cups of tea. The cottage is lit. The car is back; perhaps he’s going to stay, after all.
She has not been hungry all day but Sarah forces down a piece of toast, listening to the news. She thinks about going back to the studio, although it’s raining now; she can hear it against the window. Thinks about ringing Kitty again. What she really wants to do is call Sophie, tell her about Aiden, get it all out there like a proper confession. Is that what it is? Does she need to be cleansed? But Sophie and George have gone to some constituency dinner tonight, planned for months. She won’t be home until the early hours.
In the end she runs a bath, hoping that it will make her sleepy, because now she’s started thinking about it – Aiden – she can’t stop. She undresses slowly, automatically, folding her clothes and putting them on to the chair. As she leans forward and slips off her bra, the soft cotton brushes lightly across her breast, and instantly the exposure reminds her of last night and a rush of liquid heat floods her.
The shock of her arousal is followed within seconds by a dangerous prickling behind her eyelids. She invited him in. She was drunk. She shagged him. He didn’t stay. He hasn’t come over to see her, hasn’t texted, even though he’s just a few yards away he might as well be back in Japan, or wherever it was he’s been all this time.
She sits up in the bath, sniffing, trying to contain it. Here it comes, the wave of misery; tears pouring from nowhere. She rests her face in hot, wet hands, sobs.
You bastard, she thinks. I’d forgotten what a shit you are.
Aiden
There are many things you have resolved in the past week. Your life has changed irrevocably, and at times it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on. Who you are supposed to be. How you are supposed to behave.
You have resolved that you are not going to tell her. You will not tell her anything. Already this is becoming difficult. You wondered how much Jim had said, and you are certain now that she knows nothing at all about why you left, where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing. This gives you all the more reason to keep quiet about it. To say anything now would do no good at all, certainly not for her. It might make you feel better. Briefly.
You have realised that you have no control over your feelings.
You have decided that, perhaps, if things progress you might have to start again: a new life, a new career, something legitimate. It’s time to put the past behind you and earn your money doing something that you can actually discuss in polite conversation, even if it’s not going to earn you nearly as much. You need help to do this. Sarah Carpenter can help you. She doesn’t know this yet.
You have realised that acting all the time is incredibly difficult, and downright exhausting.
You tell yourself that if you act it long enough, it will become a habit and then it will be easy. One day at a time. It’s the only way you can do this.
You put on a sweatshirt and head out into the darkness to see if the fresh air might help. It’s insanely dark here at night; the nearest street-lights are down in the valley, pinpricks of orange light. Up here there is nothing but the lights shining from Sarah’s upstairs windows.
You follow the path round to the garden, up a steep, grassy slope, hoping for some sort of a view of the valley; but when you reach the dry stone wall you nearly fall over it. Looking back, there is nothing but the darkness, the lights in the valley, and the black outline of the house, hunkering down into the hillside.
You are not going to fuck Sarah Carpenter again. It was a mistake; you lost control. That cannot happen. You need her as a friend. You can’t expect her to help you if you’re going to dick around with her feelings the way you did last time.
A light comes on in one of the windows and you watch as Sarah runs a bath. You stay still, watching, even as she undresses.
You watch her from the darkness of the garden under her window, and you realise that, if the opportunity does arise to fuck her again, you are probably not going to be able to stop yourself.
Part Two
Sarah
Sarah sees Aiden’s car parked outside the cottage when she takes the dogs out, first thing. The curtains are closed, the lights are off, but it’s still early, not quite seven. Al
l the way up the hill she thinks about whether to knock on the door later, about nine maybe, offer him a coffee. She’s got a dentist’s appointment at ten, which gives her the perfect excuse to make it quick. Just a little chat to smooth things over, yes?
Look, she can say, I’d had a bit to drink. Let’s pretend it never happened, shall we?
She practises saying it in her head, brightly, with a smile, because this is what she thinks he probably wants to hear. He regrets it, he must do, otherwise why would he leave her while she was asleep? Why would he not come round the following day, or call or text? It’s the sort of fucked-up way men behave, she thinks, or maybe not all men but certainly Aiden – that’s how he operates. Why on earth should she have thought he might have grown up a bit in the last twentysomething years?
Tess and Basil have disappeared over the top of the hill. When she gets there the sun bursts through the clouds, bathing the valley in a rich golden light that is so unexpected it takes her breath away. She can see everything, the whole world laid before her: tiny houses, fields, the snaking road with miniature vans and cars and Matchbox-sized lorries trundling away towards York.
I don’t need him, she thinks. I was doing fine before he got here.
But then, there is the not insignificant matter of the money that was deposited into her bank account the day he arrived: one thousand, six hundred pounds. Needless to say, it has fallen into the pit of her unauthorised overdraft, but it has at least filled it almost to the brim. Next month, she might be able to start paying back some of the money she owes on credit cards.
And it’s nice to feel that someone is there, just in case. She promised him that she wouldn’t ask him to fix the septic tank, but it’s not that she worries about. Sometimes it feels like a long way from the nearest human being, up here. If she screamed, nobody would hear.