The moment before I open my eyes the following morning, I have a tiny moment of panic. Not yet, I whisper in my head. I don’t want to go yet. I’m relieved when I have the courage to look and spot curtains that have seen better days rather than cream roman blinds, all folded in perfect lines. It’s not that I’ve changed my mind. Just that I’m tired of being weighed down by all sorts of unfinished business in both my lives. I want to make sure that everything is neat and tidy when I leave this one for good.
I stretch slowly and a smile creeps over my lips. My body feels good this morning. Relaxed. I smile harder as I remember why and turn to look at Dan.
‘Hello,’ he says then laughs when I almost jump a foot off the mattress. I didn’t realise he was awake too.
‘Don’t do that!’ I say, starting to laugh myself. ‘I almost had a stroke!’ I notice he’s propped up on one elbow but I don’t remember him moving. ‘What are you doing? You weren’t watching me sleep, were you? Because that’s creepy, you know.’
He grins at me. ‘Might have been. Just for a moment or too.’
‘Crazy stalker,’ I mutter, but he’s pulling me into his arms and his day-old stubble is grazing my cheek, and we go for a re-match of the night before. It’s even better this time. Although I’d wanted to last night, I’d still been nervous. I felt a little rusty, as if I’d forgotten how it could be between us. But this morning it’s easy. Right.
We’ve not long finished when Billy bursts into the room, informing us at the top of his voice that it’s been breakfast time for ages and mummy and daddy are being really lazy this morning. He’s full of the camp we built the day before so we end up making another one under the duvet, me and Dan taking it in turn to use our legs for tent poles, but after a while Billy decides it’s much more fun to tickle us and have the camp collapse on top of him.
‘We’d better feed him before all this laughter turns to tears,’ I tell Dan and make a move to throw the duvet off and get up.
‘You stay there,’ he tells me. ‘I’m thinking of going to church this morning, anyway, so I’ll give him breakfast and you can have a slow start.’
‘You’re going to church?’ I say. ‘I thought you’d … Well, you just haven’t been much lately.’ Not as far as I could tell from my family calendar, anyway.
‘Just feeling like I’ve got reasons to be thankful today.’ And then he’s gone, counting the stairs with Billy as they jump down each one on the way to the kitchen.
When he comes home we have roast chicken and then we take Billy to the play park. Dan and I take turns to push him on the big swings, and as we’re standing there, keeping our eyes on Billy’s retreating and advancing form, he says, ‘I’m going out on Tuesday. I’ll be in for dinner, but back about eleven.’
‘Oh,’ I say lightly. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Just meeting up with friends,’ he says.
I watch Billy swing back and forth for a moment. ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea,’ I say, glancing sideways to catch his reaction before it happens. ‘How about we see if Gwen next door can babysit and I’ll come with you. We haven’t been out together in the evening for ages.’
Dan’s face becomes suddenly expressionless. ‘It’s just the lads, mainly,’ he says. ‘We’ll probably talk about stuff you haven’t got the slightest interest in.’ Then he turns and smiles at me. ‘How about we do that next week? You know have one of those “date nights” people bang on about?’
I don’t know how to answer. Even though he’s talking about going out on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday, red flags are waving madly in my brain. At the same time the smile he’s giving me is so open, so hopeful, that I want to believe what he’s telling me. And he’s just been to church, right? Wouldn’t lightning fall down out of the sky and zap him if he was lying? Or, at the very least, wouldn’t he look even the tiniest bit uncomfortable about it?
I check his face for any signs of deceit and I can’t find any. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘That’s sounds lovely.’ Because, at the end of the day, I’ve decided to do things differently this time around, haven’t I? And maybe I need to start trusting where once I would have been accusing, and I don’t think Dan could have been quite so convincing last night and this morning, if he was sneaking around behind my back. At some point I have to start giving this man the benefit of the doubt.
I decide the best way to stop myself even thinking about where Dan may or may not be going tomorrow is to distract myself. I phone Becca after dinner, once Billy is down, and suggest a girls’ night in.
Becca is fine during the conversation until I mention doing something on Tuesday night and then she starts to get really weird. ‘Oh, I can’t,’ she says, all in a rush. ‘I’ve got to … I mean I’ve got this thing booked …’
‘Thing?’ I ask, trying to ignore the plummeting sensation in my stomach.
‘Yeah,’ Becca says, doing her best to sound airy but I can hear the tension in her tone, and then she brightens. ‘You know… Tuesday night is my belly-dancing night, isn’t it?’
‘I thought you stopped that ages ago, after you fell out with the teacher because she told you she didn’t ever think you’d master figure eights.’
There’s a moment of silence. ‘Yeah, well, I did … I mean what right did that woman have to tell me I was “too tight” in my hip joints? She was practically calling me frigid! And I’ve never had any complaints from the guys who …’
I listen to her drone on, aware that she’s very cleverly sidestepped my question, but when she pauses for breath I say, ‘And this new belly-dancing class is on a Tuesday night too, is it? Still in Sidcup? What a coincidence.’
Becca had started up again, even though I’d been talking, but now her narrative rolls to a stop, like a car that has just run out of petrol. ‘Yes,’ she says, but I can hear the upward lilt in her tone.
‘OK,’ I say, my words even and cool. Reasonable. ‘Maybe we can do it another night?’
Becca suggests Wednesday instead and then we say our goodbyes and then I press the button to end the call. The air is very still around me as I stare at my phone.
Dan is lying …
Becca is lying …
I try not to make the inevitable leap, but my mind goes there anyway, uninstructed and without my permission. The question is: are they both lying about the same thing?