She smiles, closing the front door, and puts her face up to the unseasonal January warmth: sharp, blinding sun, the sky too bright to look at. The air is steely-fresh in her lungs and the river sparkles like diamonds. She wonders how he’ll surprise her for Valentine’s Day. Flowers? A table at a secluded restaurant? A trip to Paris? How quickly being alone vanishes, a country seen from your departing plane – small and far below. Even a short time makes it a distant place, as if the body is quick to relish the enveloping heat in the new territory – love – forgetting it is new. One week or one month is enough to make a return unthinkable.
She sinks down into the driver’s seat, flipping the visor against the unruly sun, rummages in her handbag for her sunglasses, then starts the car. Has Alan noticed the pounds she must have gained with all their Sunday fry-ups and Friday night curries? Has it put him off, the way contentment is causing her boundaries to blur? The more she expresses, it seems, the less he does, and sometimes she wishes they could return to the cinema steps, when she was demure and he was leaning in. He doesn’t like to text or email. Those hearty messages are all from her, sent in a rush of feeling which doesn’t need reciprocity, except that when she receives no reply she notices a darkening of her inner world. An image has stored itself in her mind: that skein of birds, landing and flying off on the bank opposite his barn, one touching down as another lifts up, as if they are set in opposition.
She slows at the traffic lights, marvels at the sun’s glare off bonnets and wing mirrors, and smiles again, remembering her Sunday: head in his lap; the crinkle of the newspaper; her sleepy satisfaction as she read her book, saying, ‘Here’s a good word – agog.’
‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘so is bosom,’ giving hers a squeeze, and then they were at it again.
They are two. It’ll come. He is private; he has an English reserve which anyone would find charming. He doesn’t like to text, is all.
A cloud passes overhead, its dark bulk ominous, and she lifts her sunglasses up onto her head. Still winter after all.
The lights change and she presses her foot down, the car slow to respond. He maintains his Law of Week Nights: a full eight hours, padded silk lavender eye mask on. No sleep-filled rocking, not on a Tuesday. He has got his shit in a pile, his ducks in a row. Prim Prenderghast for Prime Minister! He is real and they are together; and yes the birds do fly off, but they land also, and she just needs to give it time.
It was like she said to Bri when forced to help her move furniture around her mother’s soon-to-be-rented-out bungalow: ‘Loads of people like to take things slow, don’t they? It’s a normal part of—’
‘Over there, by the wall,’ Bryony had huffed, with insufficient interest, Manon felt.
‘It doesn’t mean he’s not into it. Hell, I’ve been in loads of situations where I’ve felt pressure and it makes you back off, you know? It’s just a human reaction.’ She was stumbling backwards, the soft pads of her fingers burning under the weight of Bryony’s mum’s Parker Knoll. ‘So the most important thing I can do—’
‘Coffee table now,’ said Bryony.
‘Is stay calm and not put any pressure on him. Y’know, slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.’
It is so nearly there, this almost-love, if she could only stop herself from being too much. Every part of her reaches for him, un-haveable Alan. And as she lands, he flies off.
In the wanting, in the yearning, which is so opposite to all the reluctant dates and ambivalent sex and the not-quite-liking anyone, she feels she has become more fully Manon; an ocean of Manon washing over him. Enough for both of them. She could live in the wanting. What could be more joyful than being certain of your feelings? An end to all those stop-start relationships. She feels sorry, now, for all those poor women out there compromising or fearful of commitment, wondering whether it would work out, or if there might be someone better. She’d been like that for seven long years with the boy from university, and when they’d split up she’d had no idea if it was the right thing, but anyway, all that’s behind her now.
All is perfection in the new Alan era, and everything – his big shoes, his flappy coat, his Fungus the Bogeyman head adorned with silk and lavender eye mask, his Weekday Rules – has a rightness to it. What a wonderful father he’ll make, train sets scattered across his beautiful barn. He is so funny. Sometimes, when he makes a joke, she laughs so hard she does a little wee, although she can’t think of a funny thing he’s said exactly, not a precise example.
She pulls up, nose of the car pushing at the underside of a bush, turns the key, and all is quiet like a heart stopping. She hauls her bag onto her knees as the car ticks and feels for her phone, the private one, just in case his love has emerged in text form, but the screen is unchanged. So she reaches out to him, as per, setting her fingers typing: