He hesitated. “With that in mind, there’s a party on Saturday night.”
“There is?”
“Phil, windsurfer bloke and his girlfriend.”
“Whose name is? And she does what?”
“I don’t know. I do know it’s building up to be a great night.”
She said wistfully, “I could do with a great night.”
“Then you’ll come?”
“Why not?”
Henry grinned.
The night slipped in around them, the café lit only by the candle flame and the distant glow from the kitchen. Cecily, tired of listening to the same tracks on endless repeat, went to change the CD. Thought of something and walked back to the archway. “Coffee upstairs?” she suggested.
Henry sat in the middle of the sofa on which he sometimes slept. She put his coffee mug on the table and handed him an envelope. “Look what I found.”
He opened the flap, pulled out a handful of photographs of them all, photos of beach parties, of nights at Patrick’s, posed shots of them laughing and clowning in the square, unexpected unframed shots of elbows and blurred features. “When were these taken?”
She had knelt beside him on the floor and was looking through them with him. “I’d guess about seven, eight years ago.”
“God,” he said. “I was thin.”
“I was young.”
“We were all young. And it isn’t so long ago.”
“Scary, huh?”
He went through them again, more slowly this time. “We have history, the five of us.”
“We do.”
“And you know, you haven’t changed. You’ve always been gorgeous.”
She understood that he was trying to say it in a throwaway fashion, as a less self-conscious man might have done. But there was nothing throwaway about Henry, and his attempt made the comment more touching still. “Oh Henry. Thank you.” She rubbed his thigh briefly, a casual, friendly gesture, as no doubt she had rubbed it a hundred times before. But this time he turned his face towards her upturned one, and kissed her.
Just as she was thinking, I don’t know if I want this to happen, she realised that his kiss was in fact unexpectedly agreeable, and that it was happening because she was returning it, reaching up to him, unwinding herself from the floor to slide into his lap. He murmured, “Are you sure?” and she unbuttoned his shirt. A little while later she rose from his knees and led him towards her bed under the eaves.
It was comfortable, having sex with Henry. He was strong and warm and she felt protected, which wasn’t something that had ever occurred to her before when pinioned beneath a man with her legs splayed and his body heaving against her. He was more considerate than skilled but actually a pleasant surprise. She could do this again, she told herself in the affectionate if not orgasmic afterglow. He would take care of her. She kissed his shoulder. “You’re a lovely man.”
He smiled. “You are gorgeous. I meant it.”
“I know.” She sat up. “Back in a minute.”
He rolled onto his side to watch her bum as she walked to the bathroom. The bedside drawer from which she had earlier plucked the condom was still wide open and he leaned over to push it closed, was at the wrong angle and had to half rise from the mattress, gaining a view of the drawer’s contents. He glimpsed a couple of books, her passport, a vibrator, a jar of face or hand cream, a receipt and a small ring of transparent plastic. He frowned, dimly under-standing what this last object was and picked it up. It was soft and would have fitted over one of his fingers. Inside it a narrow slip of paper read ‘Male infant of Cecily Ward’.
“So tell me,” Cecily’s voice preceded her out of the bathroom, “about this party.”
He dropped the identity bracelet back into the drawer and pushed it shut.
“Um … it’s … ”
She walked back to the bed, wondering was it the sight of her upright and naked body provoking his confusion. “Where do they live?”
He replied, after a moment, “Overlooking the cove.”
“Oh.” She tried to formulate a reasonable response but he beat her to it.
“We don’t have to go. We could go out for dinner instead”
“Now that,” she climbed back beneath the quilt, “sounds like a plan.”
“We don’t even have to stay around here. The new Thai place in Penzance is supposed to be good.” He was watching her closely and she smiled. He said after a moment, “Did you know that tonight was going happen?”
“Oh yes. I’ve known it for weeks. Haven’t you?”
He said slowly, “I wouldn’t have dared to hope for it. You were always … ” He paused, and she knew he was trying not to say the name they’d both been successfully avoiding all evening “ … an enigma.”
She laughed, surprised; it was not how she’d thought he was going to end that sentence, not a word she’d thought was in his vocabulary. “Sounds almost glamorous.”
“But you are glamorous.”
“Hardly. I’m the harassed and knackered lush you’ve known the last ten years. Tonight doesn’t change that.”
He wound a tendril of her hair around his finger. “It changes everything.”
A warm summer evening, the sea beneath the rose and orange glow of the setting sun as still as Alex had ever seen it. On the far horizon the outline of a ship was just visible against the deepening sky. Marianne, who had been walking a little way ahead collecting shells and pebbles, her long white skirt trailing in the sand, stopped and followed his gaze. “Where will that be going?”
“I don’t know. The Scilly Isles, perhaps? France?” Despite living on the coast for the last five years his interest in ships was limited to whether they formed a detail in or the focus of a scene he was painting; he had no knowledge of their destination or provenance in real life.
She said, “We should take a trip, when the season’s over. This year, before Jemima starts school and we can only go anywhere exactly when we need to be at home.”
“We should,” he agreed. She reached for his hand, curling her finger around his thumb. It was their wedding anniversary; Eve was babysitting and they had wandered through the sunlit evening to eat a leisurely meal at a new restaurant in town, were ambling home now along the beach. Just as if, he thought, they were any other couple. For months Marianne had been rational, almost serene. He tried to appreciate it but he honestly didn’t know that these sustained periods of peace weren’t more painful than the storms, taunting him as they did with the reappearance of the girl he’d had fallen in love with, the marriage they should have had. He clasped her hand more firmly in his own.
“We should do more of this too,” she said presently.
“Walking on the beach?” He smiled. “Literally or figuratively?”
“Both. You come with Jem though, don’t you.” She was quiet for a moment. “She’s yours, isn’t she, Jem? Completely. She looks like you, she already thinks like you. I want someone who’s mine.”
“I’m yours.”
“I mean, a baby. I would love to have another baby.”
“Oh Marianne.” Here it was, the conversation he had been expecting and dreading. If he’d had any kind, reasonable arguments rehearsed they deserted him now. “We can’t. ”
“We could.”
“No.”
She swallowed. “Who are you thinking of, when you make that decision for us?”
“I’m thinking of you. And of Jem.”
“Not of yourself, then?”
He took a breath. “Yes all right. I’m thinking of me too. Life’s enough of a struggle already, isn’t it? Most of the time?”
“Jem’d love a brother or sister.”
“Not if it cost her you.”
“I’ve been so well.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t want to take that risk.” He looked at her, saw her tears. “Come here.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders, drew her close.
“I hate this,” she said. “It’s so unfa
ir. Because of who I am I can’t have a normal marriage, or another child.”
“It isn’t because of who you are. Or if it is, it’s only one small part of who you are.”
“Is it?” She wiped her eyes. “It seems it’s more and more of who I am, and there’s less and less of me.”
He could say nothing. It was such a painfully accurate summary of what was happening he couldn’t immediately think how to contradict her. He kissed her. “You’re still you. I still love you.”
“You must.” She looked at him. “You must, to still be here.”
“Shh.” He held her. “Anyway, tell me who you think has a ‘normal’ marriage? We’ve made our own normality, the same as everyone.”
“No Alex. Not the same as everyone.” But she squeezed his hand, and after a while they spoke of other things, of the season ahead, a September holiday. Planning the future was always so much more comforting than dissecting the present.
Back at home, edging their way round the charity shops boxes blocking the hall, they found Eve watching a television chat show, Jemima fast asleep in her bed. He drove Eve the short distance to her parents’ house, listened to her talk about a man she’d just met and how he fitted, absolutely, into the spaces around her social life and her work. She was twenty-one, bright and already brittle with certainty. Alex felt the ten years between them to be a generation. He remembered being twenty-one, filled with belief in himself and in the opportunities the world was just waiting to offer him. He held onto the knowledge that it had offered him the triumph of growing success in a career which could have and so often yielded nothing, a daughter for whom he would lay down his life. He had become very good at, indeed to rely upon, counting blessings.
When he returned Marianne was sitting in bed, writing her diary. He smiled. “Has it been a day worth recording?”
“It has.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. About … ”
She shook her head. “You’re right. I don’t want you to be, and everything in me is railing against it, but you are.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “there’s no pleasure in being right.”
She put her diary aside, leaned forward to kiss him. “I don’t know where I would be without you.”
Chapter Thirteen
So I have two lives now.
Three lives.
I have the Life Before, and the Life After, and I’ve just begun to get my head around that. I know my Life Before has gone, and I will never have any of it back, and the grief and the guilt are overwhelming. Will always be overwhelming. Life After is like floundering through shark infested waters punctuated by moments of being washed up on small islands of safety, where it is warm and the sun shines, but the water and the sharks are waiting.
The third life?
The third life happens when I sleep.
We have good days now, me and Gil. We don’t argue too often. He’s calm and attentive. Most of the time. We live in hotels, we move slowly, inexorably, on. We don’t talk, very much, about anything because there is nothing to say. Nothing from Before. We’ve put it all in a box and closed the lid and locked the box away. It’s with us, all the time, but we can’t think about it. It’s a survival strategy and that’s what we’re doing; learning to survive.
At night for me it’s a different story.
I am afraid to sleep.
The beach at night is lit by the moon, by streetlamps along the prom, by the yellow windows of the hotels and the distant crackling glow of fire. The laughter and voices from the party carry in the air as the surf washes around my feet. I inhale, deep. It’s always felt cleansing, the beach at night, its peace restorative. It’s why I come down here. What I was doing here the night I first saw Gil. I watch as the tide pulls the sand from beneath my toes, dragging lines beneath the frothing waters.
And then it hits me. She hits me. Her claw twists my hair as her body slams me to the ground, sand and saltwater and seaweed in my mouth and my eyes. Blows to my back and my stomach have me screaming, curling up in pain. She spits in my face, in my ear, and I scream again in rage. I kick out but she’s everywhere, stronger than I am, an unnatural force, wrenching my arms from my sockets as she hauls me deeper into the water, kicking me until I collapse face down, her weight on my shoulders and the back of my neck until the sea is in my throat and my nose and I can’t move, can’t breathe.
I wake on a shuddering cry. The hotel room asserts itself around me while I gulp and choke as if I have indeed been drowning. The dreams are so vivid the transitional phase between them and reality is too blurred for comfort.
“Ssh. It’s okay.” Gil, beside me.
“It’s every night,” I whimper.
“I know.”
“It’s real. It feels real.”
“But it’s not.”
Slowly, I calm. He fetches me a glass of water. “We need to get you some sleeping pills.”
“Will they help?” I can’t imagine any drug powerful enough to quell my nightmares. I can’t believe it could be that easy.
“I don’t know. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” He touches my cheek. “Jesus. You’re burning up.”
We stand on the balcony, where the night air drifts cool around me. The town is subdued below us, only an occasional car passes, a soft quick patter of footsteps. I can smell the sea. “What’s French for ‘sleeping pills’?”
He smiles. “I don’t know.”
“What about sedatives? Tranquilisers? What if I have to live doped to the eyeballs?”
“Ssh.” He strokes my hair. “We’ll find a way. I don’t want you ill with not sleeping.”
I say nothing. I can’t begin to answer his concern because I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve a minute of his sympathy or compassion. It’s more than I can bear.
“I thought of somewhere we could go.” My voice sounds shaky even to my own ears.
“Oh yes?”
“That sculptor you really like. The Italian guy?”
“Livio De Marchi.”
“Where is he based?”
“Venice, I think.” He frowns. “We could go to Venice?”
“We can go anywhere.”
He smiles faintly. “We can.”
So I have three lives now.
Four lives.
I have the Life Before, and the Life After. I know my Life Before has gone, and I will never have any of it back, and the grief and the guilt are overwhelming. Life After divides itself in two - the Waking Life, through which I steer us with desperation and common sense and the occasional moment of relief, and the Sleeping Life, which is full of violence and terror and from which no one can save me.
The fourth life?
The fourth life lies ahead.
Chapter Fourteen
Cecily heard the raised voices from the kitchen, the aggrieved male rumble and the familiar piercing response. She strode through the café packed with holiday makers and out into the sunshine to find Justine, tiny and explosive as a Roman candle, arguing with a large muscle-bound biker demanding the cheese baguette he had ordered and not the garlic mushrooms Justine had delivered to him. “I’m terribly sorry,” Cecily said to the biker. “As you can see, we’re extremely busy but nevertheless that’s no excuse – ”
“But he ordered the fucking mushrooms!”
“Justine.” Cecily kept a vice-like grip on her composure. “Please go inside.”
“Oh for God’s sake!”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated as Justine flounced back into the café. “I will fetch your order. Which is now on the house.”
“Thanks pet,” said the biker with a thick Geordie accent and surprising goodwill. “I’m allergic to mushrooms, like.”
She returned to her kitchen, where Justine was wielding a breadknife and a fresh baguette. “Thanks for that,” Cecily said.
“Sorry,” Justine muttered. “Being a bit crap today.”
“Yes. You are.”
“Are you gonna sack
me?”
“I should.” She was tempted. Justine had arrived an hour and a half late this morning and knocked three plated meals onto the floor before her confrontation with man mountain.
“He was dead rude before you turned up. You think the customer’s always right.”
“I don’t, actually. I think the customer always pays me. Take him his lunch, smile, apologise, and get on with your job. All right?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Cecily judiciously removed herself from Justine’s company to tend the till. The day had begun with more covers than she could comfortably handle and had not quietened for a minute since. Customers filled the dining room and spilled out into her al fresco brink of the square, wanted breakfast, brunch, mid-morning tea, coffee, cakes, lunch, ice-cream, afternoon tea, cream teas, everything hotter, colder, vegetarian, gluten-free. They brought children who would not sit down, elderly relatives with wheelchairs and zimmer frames, dogs on long and winding leashes. They left their tables littered and their tips negligible. Cecily cooked and wiped and pacified and longed – longed – for Gil to saunter in, to release her tension with a grin and a kiss, to clear and serve with his customary speed and charm the customers and Justine into submission. To do, in fact, what he had been doing every summer for the last nine years.
But Gil had been conspicuous by his absence for more than a fortnight now. She missed him more than she would admit out loud to anyone and blamed herself, in part. She blamed him too. She was afraid the silence between them might freeze into permanence but at the same time that was ridiculous. Unthinkable. This was Gil, for God’s sake. Gil, who …
Her eyes filled with unexpected tears.
She clenched her jaw and concentrated on the bill in front of her, clocking Justine sidling past with a cheese baguette and extra chips as a penance. Cecily considered the likelihood of finding someone to take Justine’s place at a day’s notice. Considered the wisdom of doubling her staff instead.
Later, having subsided into a frazzled heap in a corner of Patrick’s, she drank enough Southern Comfort to take the edges off and detailed her day to Henry. He said, “You should have rung me.”