31
Jack woke the next morning with the sun flooding in, hot and painfully bright on his face. He was baffled to find himself fully clothed in jeans and a faded black T-shirt, deck shoes – no socks – lying on top of the duvet on his rumpled bed. Then he remembered.
For a while he lay on his back and tried to piece together the previous evening. He remembered the rose garden, the ashes, remembered laughing with Stella and the unexpected exuberance between them as they spoke about their son. Then afterwards, driving home, feeling slightly mad, as if his edges were crumbling, his whole body becoming lighter and less substantial. Then changing out of his blue suit. The rest of the evening was a blur. How much did we drink?
He knew they had talked and talked initially – a torrent of words from both of them, like a river in spate. All about Jonny.
What would he look like?
Who would he love?
What sort of work would he do?
Would he be a good cook, clothes-conscious, witty, sporty, a linguist like his father?
Would he be healthy, good at maths, a swimmer, musical?
What sort of a brother would he be to Eve?
Who would Jonny be, if he had lived?
But Jack remembered a moment, long into the evening, when both had suddenly stopped talking and just gazed at each other. The look that passed between them was like nothing he remembered from the past with Stella. This was as if a bird had been fluttering and flapping around, the noise of its wings agitating the air, then suddenly come to rest and been completely still. Jack had been spellbound, transfixed. He hadn’t planned to kiss her, but he seemed caught up in the madness of the day, exhilarated, as if kissing her were the natural conclusion to the journey they’d both taken in finally laying to rest their beloved son.
Now he recalled the familiarity of her body, the smell of her skin, the passion with which she’d responded to his kisses. Even after so long, that had not changed. Stella had always had such a unique, uninhibited sexuality; Jack had never met a woman like her. There was no technique or self-consciousness on her part, nor any pressure on him to perform in a certain way. With Lisa it was all about technique – ‘I like this’, ‘I don’t like that’, ‘Put your hand there’, ‘Faster’, ‘Slower’, ‘Not so hard’, ‘Roll over’ – it sometimes seemed to Jack as if he were taking part in a strenuous exercise class he never quite got the hang of, constantly trying to keep up. With Stella he could really lose himself in the lovemaking. And last night, he would have willingly lost himself all over again if Stella hadn’t come to her senses and called time.
As the sun beamed ever hotter on his closed eyes, he began to focus on the implications of what he and Stella had done. He told himself it was only a few kisses, but that didn’t mitigate the shameful act of betrayal one jot. It wasn’t Jack who had called a halt to things.
There were two texts and one voicemail from Lisa when he finally made it downstairs and checked his phone. His stomach lurched, partly from the wine, mostly from guilt. He didn’t know what to say to her. Not that he would even dream of telling her something that would hurt her so much.
‘I’m hoping to get the ten twenty-five tomorrow. Arriving eleven twenty-one. See you at the station,’ said the voicemail.
He gazed blankly at his phone. Christ. He’d forgotten she was coming down this morning. Forgotten everything – almost his own name – he was so thrown by the events of the previous day. As he held the mobile, it buzzed into life: Lisa.
‘Hi,’ he gulped, trying to sound normal.
‘At last! Thought you’d died. I tried you hundreds of times last night.’ Lisa’s voice was low, strangely neutral.
‘Where are you?’
‘On the train,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll meet you. Eleven twenty-one.’
‘See you later,’ she said, and was gone.
Jack sighed and wandered over to the coffee machine, selecting one of the strongest pods in the earthenware bowl. He needed all the help he could get. It was an hour till her train got in, and the station was a twenty-five-minute drive – plenty of time for a couple of caffeine hits to steady his nerves.
He sat for a while at the table by the window, doing absolutely nothing except sipping his second cup and listening to his tinnitus. He’d had it for a while now – maybe three years or so – but it had ratcheted up in recent months, so he’d gone to see his GP. The doctor, who practically looked younger than Arthur, had given his ears a cursory inspection, then actually Googled ‘tinnitus’! Looked it up on the Internet, right in front of him!
‘I’ve done that already,’ he said, to which she nodded vaguely, her eyes still on the screen.
‘I could arrange counselling,’ she said after a while.
‘ “Counselling”? Is that it?’ Jack had wanted to laugh. He hadn’t had counselling for the worst thing that had ever happened to him in his whole life; he couldn’t imagine having it for buzzing in his ears. Although he sometimes got panicky, knowing he’d have this noise in his head for the rest of his life – and petrified it would get worse and that he’d go insane.
His phone rang for the second time. Stella. He swallowed hard.
‘Hi there.’
‘Hello.’ Her voice was also muted. ‘Listen, I’ve got the car …’
‘The car?’ Realization hit him. ‘Oh God, the car.’ He looked at the wall clock. Bloody hell! He’d completely forgotten that Stella had taken his car.
‘I’m supposed to be picking Lisa up in thirty-five minutes,’ he said, hearing the panic in his voice.
‘Oh.’
‘Can you bring it over, like now?’ His tone was almost peremptory in his distress. ‘I can drop you back on the way to the station.’
‘Not immediately, no,’ Stella said, sounding mildly offended. ‘Eve’s having a shower and I’m keeping an eye on Arthur. I could come in about fifteen.’
He did the calculations. That was too late. ‘Umm, OK. I’ll have to tell Lisa to take a taxi. Say the car won’t start or something.’
‘Right.’ There was silence. ‘Jack …’
He took a deep breath. ‘God, Stella, I don’t know what to say.’
He heard her give a short laugh. ‘Me neither.’
‘I can’t process it.’
‘Better not to,’ she said. ‘Just pretend it never happened.’
Another silence, only the sound of her breathing.
‘It didn’t happen and it can never happen again,’ she said, suddenly fierce. ‘We were just insane last night.’
Insane, perhaps, he thought, but it was still lovely.
‘Jack?’
‘Yeah.’
Silence.
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
Shower, Jack thought, in fresh panic, as soon as he’d finished texting his wife the lie about the car not starting.
I’m too old for this, he thought, as he hurried upstairs as fast as his thumping head and creaking knees would allow, feeling a guilty need to wash any lingering trace of Stella from his body.
Stella arrived while he was pulling on his clothes, his T-shirt sticking to his wet back. He hurried downstairs, barefoot, and let her in. She avoided his eye as she squeezed past him into the small hall. He thought she looked exhausted and distant. He wanted to embrace her, hold her close against his body one more time, check whether what he’d felt last night was real and not just a response to too much red wine and heightened emotion. But her arms were crossed firmly over her chest and she stood well apart from him, gazing out at the garden as she waited for him to find his shoes and his house keys.
‘What have we done?’ Stella asked quietly as he drove too fast through the narrow lanes towards Eve’s house.
‘We were drunk, Stella, overwrought.’
She sighed. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jack.’
They were silent until they arrived at Eve’s. Stella immediately undid her seat belt and got out.
‘Stella …’
But she didn’t reply as she slammed the door and turned towards the house. Jack had no option but to reverse into the lane and hurry back to the cottage before his poor unsuspecting wife arrived.