Jazz goes to sort out the bill, and as he walks away, Aruna tries to avoid watching him, and staring at his body too appreciatively. She is relieved that they are somewhere public, as she had been almost overwhelmed by the feeling of helpless desperation she had in her flat. (Home, she reminds herself. This isn’t the flat, like the one in Bethnal Green, east London. This is her home, never mind that she’d not lived there for two years, and hadn’t even bought the tea that was in the cupboards.) The wave of emotion and need had been so strong, a physical tugging inside her, that it had frightened her; she is frightened even now, when she realizes how easy it would have been to succumb to it, to sink drowning below the water, dragging Jazz with her, stealing the air from his lungs; Jazz still wanted to be with her, and all she had seen as she looked about the apartment was the kitchen table, the upstairs landing, the sofa, the armchair, the bath, the wall, the floor, and the bed, the bed, the bed. The bed he sat on while she chose her clothes, a bed they once shared.
She bites hard on her lip, pulls out the book that Jazz had given her, and starts flicking through the pages to keep her mind from it. Then her phone starts ringing, and she answers it gratefully for the distraction, before she realizes that she already knows who is calling her. ‘Aruna,’ says Patrick, ‘where the hell are you? It’s two in the bloody morning and you’re not home yet.’
‘I’ve left,’ Aruna says bravely. It occurs to her a moment later that it would have been a bit clearer to have said, ‘I’ve left you,’ and she doesn’t know why she didn’t.
‘I can see that,’ says Patrick crossly. ‘I can see that by the fact that you aren’t here. And when you ran off to see your friend, you left the place in a mess again. It was your turn with the dishwasher, remember, but your rancid porridge was still on the table when I got back; in another few hours it would have crawled off by itself. It’s not exactly what I need after pulling a double shift.’
‘You mean I’m not what you need after pulling a double shift,’ retorts Aruna. ‘So guess what, you don’t have to put up with me any more.’
‘Obviously I don’t have to,’ says Patrick, ‘but I do, don’t I? I guess I must like having you around.’ His voice has moved from belligerence to tenderness so fluidly that Aruna can’t tell where one ended and the other began. ‘So when are you coming home?’
‘I’m not,’ she says, shortly.
‘Of course you are; I can see that you’ve not taken anything with you to stay away,’ says Patrick sensibly. ‘Is this about the argument we had yesterday? About the baby?’
‘No,’ says Aruna. ‘I’m just not coming back.’
‘Look, I’m so tired of fighting too,’ he says. ‘We’ll just park it from now on. Let’s just agree not to talk about that for a while – it’s clearly freaking you out, and I don’t want you getting upset.’
‘Patrick,’ says Aruna, wondering if there is some weird echo on the line, which means he doesn’t actually hear a word that she is saying, ‘I said that I’ve left. And I’m not coming back. Not today. Not tomorrow. I’m staying where I am.’
Patrick sighs, and says nothing for a moment. Her words hang in the air between them, like grey clouds heavy with rain, but then he recovers himself and says magnanimously, ‘Look, that’s fine.’
‘Oh,’ says Aruna, suddenly stunned by this unflattering capitulation. ‘Oh, OK then,’ she stammers, ‘Thank you, I guess, for not making this too hard.’
‘No problem,’ says Patrick. ‘It’s absolutely fine. Stay with your friend for what’s left of the night. Stay tomorrow if you must. Share a few bottles of white, have some joints, do whatever it is you usually do with your mates to get away from me and get some space. Bitch about me until the cows come home. Just come back the day after, please, because I’ll be missing you.’
‘Patrick,’ starts Aruna, but he interrupts her.
‘It’s OK, really,’ he says. ‘Take care for now, I love you.’ He doesn’t wait for her to say it back, because he knows that she has never made a habit of it; he seems about to hang up when he suddenly says, ‘Oh, and the credit card company called about some flights to Singapore you booked. Just checking out the unusual activity on the account. We really need to talk about these sorts of things first; I know you like being impulsive, but they’ve cost the earth and I’ve got no idea when I can get away, so I hope they’re flexible.’ He clearly feels embarrassed for mentioning something as crude as money, as he says again, ‘Love you,’ and swiftly hangs up.
Jazz is back in his seat, ‘So, that was him.’
Aruna looks at her phone, sitting on the table between them, ‘Yes, that was Patrick.’
‘Patrick,’ snorts Jazz in disgust. ‘I preferred him when he didn’t have a name.’ He taps his hand on the table, ‘English, I suppose?’
‘British,’ corrects Aruna. ‘His dad’s from Wales.’ There is a stiff moment of silence, as Jazz isn’t sure where Wales is and doesn’t want to care enough to ask.
‘So what did he say?’ asks Jazz eventually.
‘Nothing much,’ says Aruna. ‘He doesn’t seem to think that I’ve left him, although I was very clear on that point.’ She suppresses an ironic laugh. ‘I suppose we were never very good at communicating.’
‘Clearly better than we were – you didn’t even take your phone when you left me,’ says Jazz. Aruna flushes because he is right.
‘It’s different,’ she says. ‘I had to get away from you, from us. I was so sick in myself that I just felt dirty, all the way through. But I’m not escaping Patrick, and there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a perfectly nice guy. He’s so nice that he married me and wants to have children with me, without knowing me at all, really. I’m not getting away from him, I’m just coming home.’
Jazz picks up her phone, and Aruna realizes with embarrassment that the display has switched over to the photo that Patrick had loaded on when he first gave it to her. A shot from their wedding day, his arm protectively around her, looking ridiculously happy and proud. Her mouth is wide open in laughter, but she can’t remember at what. Possibly at an inappropriate joke during the best man’s speech, possibly at the absurdity of being a bride in a strappy white dress, holding roses in one hand, and a picture-perfect groom in the other. ‘Big, isn’t he?’ says Jazz, looking closely at the picture. ‘Tall, I mean. He really does look like a perfectly nice guy,’ he adds, seemingly a little disappointed that he can’t find something to fault. ‘My turn, I suppose,’ and he hands Aruna his own phone, with a photo of himself in shorts and June in a bikini, grinning to camera, with arms draped around each other, on the same stretch of beach that she and Jazz used to go to.
‘Christ, she’s gorgeous,’ complains Aruna. ‘How old is she? Twelve?’
‘Twenty-one,’ says Jazz. ‘I said that you ought to appreciate me before I had my midlife crisis, and started dating women ten years younger than me.’
‘And look at her tits,’ continues Aruna, looking down at her own flat chest critically. ‘I never had tits like that, except when . . .’ She stops herself mentioning her second and third pregnancies, during which her chest had briefly inflated to hitherto unknown proportions, and just looks away, staring at the street outside the cafe.
Jazz realizes, and reaches across, taking her hands in unselfish sympathy. Glancing at him, she sees that he looks just as miserable as her at the memory. ‘Maybe you should have got knocked up by your gallant Englishman before you came home; then we could have been a family after all,’ he says quietly. Aruna is unsure whether he is so quiet because he is being serious, or because he is simply sad.
I’m so tired of fighting, Patrick said, I hate all our bickering, he said, and yet he never seemed tired enough, or to hate it enough, to stop. They fought over everything, it seemed, but honestly, what did they have to fight over, after all? Most of their fights involved no Big Important Questions; they were about nothing so much as the trivialities of everyday life that happened to all couples. Sometimes Aruna thought that their fighting, bickering, nagging, whining and arguing were all started deliberately by him, to fortify the reality of their relationship, as the fights were at least something that they shared. When it came down to it, they shared little else, as like most London couples they both worked a lot, and didn’t spend that much time together; they had separate friends, separate lives. She liked it that way; he, possibly, liked it slightly less. The only other thing they shared was the urgent physical attraction that had brought them together in the first place, and which continued to bring them together late at night or early in the morning, on the kitchen table, the upstairs landing, the sofa, and anywhere else that her needy and hungry flesh could collide with his.
‘Hey darling, you’re back. I’m just going out for lunch. I told you, already, didn’t I?’ said Patrick.
‘No, but it doesn’t matter,’ said Aruna.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing’s up. I thought you were heading out?’
‘Don’t you want me to go?’
‘Go, have a great time.’
‘That sounded sincere. Don’t you care where I’m going, or who I’m meeting?’
‘Not if you don’t care enough to tell me.’
‘I’m meeting a gorgeous nurse who’s just joined the hospital and who’s completely got the hots for me.’
‘And who wouldn’t?’ replied Aruna. ‘So go, have a great time. Use protection.’
‘Couldn’t you just attempt a little jealousy? Just fake it to be polite, on occasion?’
‘I might be a fake, sometimes, but you know I’m not a faker. And what would be the point?’ said Aruna. ‘If you were going to cheat, my being jealous is hardly likely to stop you. It might even encourage you.’
‘As though I’d have the energy to cheat. When you insist on shagging every day and twice at weekends.’
‘Besides, you’re never even slightly jealous of me. When was the last time you asked me where I was going for lunch?’
‘You seem to like being secretive and mysterious, so I try to let you. And I am jealous of you, I loathe it when you wear those leather trousers you’ve got, or short dresses in the summer.’
‘Not wanting people to check out my butt or legs isn’t the same as being jealous.’
‘And besides, I trust you.’
‘So, I trust you too.’
‘I’m not so sure you do, not in the ways that count,’ he argued.
‘And now you’re having a go at me for saying that I trust you. What’s wrong with this picture?’
‘Who was that suit you were talking to?’ said Patrick.
‘I don’t know, some guy,’ said Aruna.
‘What were you talking about?’ he persisted.
‘Miró. I said that the first work showed influences of Miró. The one with the woman, the bird, and the star – I said that those symbols were part of Miró’s artistic vocabulary. He disagreed. And then I said that he ought to go to the Miró Fundación in Barcelona. And he agreed. And then you called me over looking like a wet weekend. And I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t managed to score me a glass of Pimms.’
‘You hate suits, why were you talking to a suit?’
‘And I don’t hate suits per se. I hate suits on you,’ she said, before adding, ‘they don’t suit you.’
‘Ha-ha. I was wearing a suit the first night you slept with me.’
‘I only slept with you because I had to get you out of it, it looked so awful,’ she said. ‘I thought you never got jealous? So are you just annoyed, or something? Because I spoke to someone at a gallery for all of two minutes?’
‘No, I just don’t like the way you talk to strangers. You do it everywhere, at a gallery, at the bloody bus stop, at the supermarket.’
‘Why does that bother you?’
‘You talk to strangers like they’re important,’ he complained. ‘Maybe it reminds me that we were strangers when we met. You talk to strangers with more interest than you ever talk to me.’
‘I talk to you.’
‘You’ve never once ventured a single opinion about Miró to me. Ever. Or his artistic vocabulary. Or his Fundación in Barcelona. Go on, tell me about Miró.’
‘See?’
‘When you finish the loo roll, would it kill you to put a new one out?’ asked Patrick. ‘It’s hardly fun for me to have to hop halfway across the bathroom with my pants around my ankles.’
‘What a charming image. And you say we never talk.’
‘I mean really, would it kill you?’
‘What’s the big deal? You could have put one on before you sat down – that’s what I would have done,’ said Aruna.
‘Yeah, because you’d have known that you’d already used up the last one.’
‘If we left them all by the loo, like I said we should, it wouldn’t even be an issue.’
‘Well, I don’t want to look at a bathroom with a dozen loo rolls littering up the floor,’ muttered Patrick.
‘You always exaggerate, it would be more like a couple stacked up by the wall.’
‘We have cupboards you know, we’re not students or savages. And you could put your porridge oats in the kitchen cupboard too, I have to put the packet back in every morning.’
‘And I have to take it out again. Why can’t you just leave it on the counter? I use it every bloody day, and you’re always putting it away,’ said Aruna. ‘It’s really annoying.’
‘It’s called tidying up.’
‘So why don’t you tidy the rest of the crap that we don’t use every day, and leave me some space for my bloody oats, you selfish git? Look, an asparagus steamer? Why do we have an asparagus steamer on the worktop? When was the last time we ate asparagus, or steamed anything? And three glass jars of decorative pulses that we’re never going to eat? And I don’t even know what the fuck this thing is.’
‘It froths milk. Would you calm down? I can’t deal with this, Aruna. I’m just asking you to put your bloody porridge oats away. I do everything else around here.’
‘No one asks you to, you complete and utter freak. Why are you making such a big deal about this?’
‘Why are you?’
‘I’m going out, I need some cigarettes anyway.’
‘You walk out that door now, you can forget getting laid tonight,’ said Patrick.
‘I’ll have more fun getting laid on my own. Porridge and toilet roll, for fuck’s sake! Porridge and fucking toilet roll!’
‘That was amazing. I mean, you’re amazing,’ said Patrick.
‘Mmm, sweet of you to say. I aim to please,’ replied Aruna.
‘I doubt that, somehow. But you’re still amazing.’
‘You’ve mentioned that already, I think.’
‘So, what’s going on in there?’
‘What?’
‘I just asked you what you’re thinking.’
‘Are you kidding me?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing much,’ replied Aruna. ‘Why, what are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking that I’m very glad I married you, and that I love you very much.’
‘Crap, that’s a tough one to follow.’
‘You could just tell me that you love me, too.’
‘You know that’s not me. You’re the one who signs “Love Patrick” on notes to two-night stands or the postman or random people at work, and puts four kisses on every text message. I’m just not demonstrative that way.’
‘You were plenty demonstrative just now. You know your problem?’
‘I know several. Which did you have in mind?’
‘You’re emotionally unavailable. You act like you’re on the other side of the world when you’re here in my arms. You’re so aloof, it’s like you’re scared of what would happen if you ever trusted someone enough to let them in, in case they might not like the real you behind all the mystery and smoke and mirrors.’
‘Well, maybe I’m not emotionally unavailable. Maybe you’re the one that’s too needy.’
‘There’s nothing needy about expecting your wife to say she loves you. It’s the most normal thing in the world.’
‘But what if she doesn’t? Or can’t.’
‘Oh, that’s just great, Aruna. God, you’re a bitch, sometimes! You couldn’t even wait for the cuddle to finish without crapping on me from a great height. And the worst thing is that you don’t mean it, you just want to push me away.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Out. We’ve just shagged for an hour, God forbid we get intimate. God forbid we get close. Sometimes I haven’t got a clue who you are, really.’
And Aruna said helplessly to the door that Patrick slammed behind him, alone and full of knotted imperfections, in a lost voice that he would never hear, ‘Sometimes I haven’t got a clue who I am, either.’
‘I want to know what we are to each other, Jazz,’ says Aruna. ‘I need to know who I am. I need to know, and there’s only one person left to ask.’
‘I don’t want to talk to him,’ says Jazz. ‘He doesn’t deserve it.’
‘It’s not for him, Jazz. It’s for us, for you and me. I let my dad die without asking him the things that mattered; please don’t make the same mistake.’
Jazz taps his hands on the table, an annoying habit she remembers, something that showed he was thinking. ‘Do you fight with him?’ he asks suddenly.
‘What?’ says Aruna, surprised. ‘With Patrick? We bicker a lot. Yes, I suppose we do fight. I mean we did. Why?’
‘We hardly ever fought, did we? We just agreed with each other straight away the moment either of us said anything. Even when there were things to fight about, after college, we never fought.’
‘You’re right, we didn’t,’ says Aruna, wondering why the thought of this should sting. It feels like a reproach. She pauses, and asks, ‘Does this mean you’re going to fight me on this? About going to see your dad in KL?’
Jazz looks at her ruefully, and shakes his head, as though in disbelief. ‘Train, plane or car, Rooney?’ he says eventually.
‘I can smoke on the train, right?’ she asks.
He nods, and for some reason this slight gesture has a silver thread of laughter laced into it, as though they are both agreeing to something inappropriate and daring, like the time they spat off a bridge into traffic when they were twelve years old. ‘So train it is,’ he says.