‘Well, that was embarrassing,’ said Nick, as we got into bed. It was the first time he had spoken to me, other than in monosyllables, since we had left Min and Ray’s.
‘I’m sorry but Ray was out of order,’ I hissed, even though there was no one else in the house to hear me. ‘I don’t care if he’s tee-total. I don’t care if he biked from Land’s End to John O’Groats when he was Ethan’s age; you don’t let a teenager drive a death machine like that and then leave them in a strange pub and piss off home.’
‘Ethan rode pillion. It was the local pub and it was half past fucking nine, for God’s sake. I don’t think you realize how fucked-up your attitude looks to normal people.’
‘Well, it’s not half past nine now, is it? It’s way past closing time, so where’s my son?’
I snatched up my phone and checked again, but Ethan had not responded to my texts.
‘It’s probably a lock-in. In which case, good luck to him. He’s more in with the locals than we are after months of trying. I wonder why.’
‘Sorry…? Are you blaming me? You think I’m not making an effort? Because I’m totally making an effort. I’ve even said we’d go to the Gaineses’ Auction of Promises, which I can’t say I’m looking forward to. It’s not like they’re going to be our new best mates, is it?’
‘I don’t know, but Min and Ray might have been if you hadn’t just thrown their hospitality back in their faces. Honestly, Karen, you’re a fucking genius at pressing self-destruct, aren’t you? Some lovely, good-hearted people invite you round, introduce you to their really classy, really interesting friends, who could be very useful to your career…’
‘My career…’ I scoffed.
‘To your career,’ he repeated, ‘and what do you do? You flirt with Melissa’s husband…’
‘I flirt…? I flirt…?’
‘You blabber on about reproduction…’
‘They asked about my work!’
‘Knock back so much of Cath’s hooch you turn into a zombie…’
‘It wasn’t the alcohol, Nick, I barely had a glass. I was having a…’
‘Don’t say panic attack,’ he clenched his jaw fiercely. ‘They are not panic attacks, Karen. People who’ve been in war zones have panic attacks. They are a documented side-effect of medication which, by the way, you ought to be off by now.’
I took a breath and closed my eyes.
‘I didn’t know where to put myself,’ he muttered bitterly. ‘Have you any idea how much leather costs to clean?’
‘Oh, that fucking dress!’
But Nick had turned his back on me and his body, shrouded in duvet, looked hostile and unassailable as a long-barrow guarding its secrets.
I moved a bit nearer, but didn’t yet dare reach out. He was right, I had lost the plot; ranted embarrassingly; made fools of us both.
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured into the darkness, touching his back, tentatively. He didn’t even flinch, just lay inert – which was somehow more troubling still, so I snuggled up under the bedclothes and spooned him.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
Kiss, kiss, kiss.
His skin was warm, and smelled of sweat and spice. He was right about the self-destruct button. I did have a knack for pressing it. I was going to press it now. It was already too late to go back. To give him his due, he resisted for a while, and quite right too. I deserved to abase myself, after the way I had behaved. I deserved to be humiliated after the way I had humiliated him. And I felt better afterwards. I had let him do… what he needed to do, and I, well, enjoyed it is perhaps not the right term, but I had got where I needed to go. And the shame and compunction he seemed to feel afterwards, whilst unnecessary as far as I was concerned, at least seemed to restore our equilibrium. At any rate, the next morning he seemed in fine fettle; I could hear him in the bathroom, humming under his breath as his piss cascaded into the toilet, then clattering about in the kitchen before bringing this time, not just the usual tray of tea, but toast and jam and the best news I could have had, which I was nevertheless careful to receive with an air of casual indifference.
‘Ethan’s home, you’ll be pleased to hear.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Either that or a fucking yeti’s trodden muck through the house and left its trainers on the stairs…’
His tone was amused and indulgent.
‘What a bum,’ I said.
‘Do you think I should go round and apologise?’ I settled back down against the pillows and took a sip of tea.
‘To Ray and Min? Nah. You’d be making too much of it. It’d only be awkward.’
‘Did I come across really badly?’
‘Look, Karen, they’re not stupid. I think by now most people have caught on that you’re not…’
‘… The full shilling,’ I said, tilting my head and dropping my mouth open in a mad Quasimodo stare.
‘… That you’re in recovery,’ said Nick, reproachfully. ‘Except maybe the Gaineses. But they’re upper class so…’
I nudged him.
‘Naughty.’
‘So are you going to crack on with your pots today?’ he said, taking a bite of toast and showering the duvet with crumbs.
‘Crack on,’ I winced, ‘is that a sick joke?’
‘Oh. No, no it’s not.’
‘I suppose I could, couldn’t I? Only, I did say I’d get Ethan some jeans… No, bugger it, I’m going to work.’
‘You don’t seem very keen. Last night when you were talking to Melissa you were all “Lust for Life” about it. Like it had you in its grip. Or was that just for show?’
‘No it wasn’t,’ I said hotly, ‘I’m just a bit… nervous, I suppose. I’ve only just got my mojo back, so the thought of making something that ambitious is a bit daunting. I never really meant to tell anyone.’
‘Not even me?’ His tone was casual, but I could tell he was hurt.
‘Well, I would’ve, I just didn’t think you’d be interested.’
He turned towards me, and after licking the butter off his fingers, gathered my hands in his.
‘How could you think that?’ he said, looking at me reproachfully from beneath his beautiful eyebrows so that I could barely remember what it was I had thought. ‘Do you think I’d have built you a studio if I wasn’t interested? Do you think I’d have brought us down here? I did it for you. So that you could be you again; so you wouldn’t have to feel like everyone was… so that no one need know and you could make a fresh start. Nothing’s more important to me than your wellbeing, and just to know you’re working again… that you’ve got stuff you want to make…’ He pursed his lips and shook his head, apparently at a loss for words.
‘But do you like it?’ I said, squeezing his hands in return. ‘Our life here? Not working as much? The people? The quiet?’
‘God, yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s liberating. I feel so much more…’
Somewhere beside the bed, his phone beeped. He struggled to keep hold of my hands, to stay with his train of thought.
‘… So much more myself, so much more human,’ he finished, but already his left hand was fishing for the outside world.
He looked at the phone and sighed, putting it face down on the bed.
‘Don’t mind me,’ I said.
‘Nah,’ he shook his head, ‘it can wait…’
He lay beside me for a few seconds before emitting a basso profundo fart beneath the bedclothes.
‘I tell you what can’t though…’ He mugged at me and threw back the duvet.
‘Go on, get out!’ I laughed, wafting my hand. He probably thought I didn’t notice him take his phone off the bed as he left.
But I would not listen at the door of the bathroom on my way to the studio. I would not calculate at what point in the day I might sneak a look at his messages without his noticing, because I was no longer that person. I no longer needed to be. Did I pull on my clothes a little more quickly than I might otherwise have done, so as to be passing the bathroom door sooner rather than later? Did I slow down and cock my ear when I passed it? I honestly don’t think so. I was more preoccupied with getting to the studio. Of having left by the time he came back – impressing him not only with my work ethic, but also with my independence, my empowerment. I liked the idea that he would breeze back into the bedroom yacking away and stop in mid-sentence when he found me gone.
I knew even before I’d rolled back the studio door that I must have left the kiln on. The heat in the room was intense. I closed my eyes at my own stupidity. How often had I double-checked the timer, determined not to ruin this first batch of prototype pots? And still I’d messed up. That meant they had been firing for – I cast my mind back to when I had last been in here – three days, which was some kind of record – strange that the override hadn’t kicked in.
I didn’t notice the smell at first – I was too focused on the baked linseedy aroma of scorched pottery – but by the time I was halfway to the kiln there was no ignoring it. It was a rank stench, sweetish and rotten. I lurched for the windows, fumbling to open each one in turn, before sticking my head out and gulping fresh air. Turning back to the room the smell came at me again, humming, singing, so thick I could taste it. Only death could smell this bad. It must be a rodent, I told myself, nothing bigger could have got in. No need to freak out. Just be a grown-up – locate it, get rid of it. I peered beneath my workbench and thought perhaps I could see something in the shadows. Taking the raku tongs off their hook, I got down on all fours and was sweeping them back and forth with wilder and wilder strokes, when my back collided with my wheel and it was on top of me – its blue-black wing across my face, its claw snagging my T-shirt, its body flipping through one hundred and eighty degrees and tumbling tiny maggots into my lap. I flailed my arms to fend it off and it thudded to the floor, face down, leaving a squirm of putrid viscera across my thigh. I scrambled to my feet and ran on jelly legs, casting a dread glance over my shoulder in case the vile thing should have resurrected itself to give chase.
Nick put down his coffee cup and thrust back his chair.
‘Hey, hey, hey. What’s this?’
I buried my face in the rough towelling of his dressing gown and shook and cried.
‘What…? Tell me! Karen!’
I moaned and gestured feebly in the direction of the back door.
‘There’s a thing, a bird, a crow, in the studio. It’s disgusting. It went on me… look!’
I held my hands out to him, expecting the maggots and feathers and entrails to be there, still, like stigmata, but my hands only looked a little grubby.
Nick met my gaze with cartoon compassion.
‘Oh, sweetheart. Poor you. Don’t worry I’ll just throw on some jeans and then I’ll come and get rid of it for you. It’s more scared of you than you are of it, remember…’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ I shook my head, ‘it’s dead; at least I think it is. It must have been on my wheel… I bumped into it and it fell on me…’
‘A dead bird fell on you?’
Big eyes; sympathetic, pitying, amused.
‘Yes, it was horrible, Nick! One minute it wasn’t there and the next it was all over me, on my hands, on my clothes…’
My body convulsed again at the memory and Nick drew me close.
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’
‘Nick…’ I murmured, my voice muffled against his chest. He patted my back consolingly.
‘Nick!’ I pulled abruptly away, as the thought solidified in my head, ‘Someone did this. They must have. It couldn’t have got there by itself.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, ‘everything’s fine.’ He encircled me in his arms again, patting, patting.
‘It’s not fine,’ I mumbled into his chest, ‘the place was baking hot – my kiln was going full blast. My pots will be ruined. I set it to go off, Nick, I know I did.’
The patting stopped for a second and he drew a deep, martyred breath.
‘Of course,’ he said – pat, pat, pat – ‘of course you did.’
‘You don’t have to work you know, if you’re not ready.’
We were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. I was towing my Earl Grey teabag around my cup by its label.
‘I am ready.’
‘Just because I made you a studio, you don’t need to feel obliged.’
‘Nick, I really, really want to work.’
‘I don’t care if you never use it. We can convert it into a self-catering chalet. Rent it out through Airb—’
‘Do you think I’m making stuff up to avoid going in there? You do, don’t you? You think I’m that warped.’
He had been as good as his word. He had taken a bucket of hot water and a mop and gone striding down the garden in my Marigold gloves. If I thought that was bad, he’d said, rolling his eyes, I should have seen the state of Gabe’s guinea pig when they got back from a fortnight’s holiday and realized the neighbours had forgotten to feed it. I smiled wanly at Nick’s idea of consolation.
‘Hey, come on, it’s over now,’ he said, drawing me to him. ‘I know it gave you a fright, but these things happen.’
‘Do they?’ I said, doubtfully. ‘All by themselves…?’
‘Oh, come on. You seriously think somebody’s sneaked in and put a dead blackbird on your…’
‘It was a crow, not a blackbird, Nick. It was absolutely massi…’ my voice trailed off.
‘Karen, sweetheart…’ He’d adopted that tone now; the one he used to use on the ward when I’d get things back to front – gentle and patronising, with just a hint of impatience. ‘I know you’re upset, I appreciate it, I do, but you’re getting this – literally – all out of proportion. It was a blackbird. It hopped in when you weren’t looking and you shut the door on it without realising. No one is doing this. No one is out to get you.’ He clasped my shoulders, stooped and smiled in my face. ‘I’m afraid you’re just not that important.’