KATE: Saturday morning,
twenty days after the split
‘Did you have a good time with Dad?’
Amy shrugs, her mouth full of Cheerios.
‘It was OK, I suppose,’ she says.
‘Please tell me we don’t have to do that every Friday night,’ Ben says, glaring at her over his steaming tea. ‘I missed a really good night out.’
‘Just till things get sorted,’ Kate says. ‘I promise.’
The kids both tell her they will be out this evening. To make up for missing out the night before. Amy is on a sleepover with her best friend and Ben is going to a party. ‘We’re all crashing at Jake’s afterwards,’ he tells her. ‘Safer than coming home alone,’ he adds, when she tries to protest.
So now she has the house to herself for a whole night.
After the kids have gone back upstairs, Kate puts on the radio while she cleans up the kitchen.
She feels embarrassed now that she fell apart in counselling the evening before last. She was with Mel last night, and her friend is so much better. Back to her old self. She wishes she hadn’t let Jack drive her home, or put his arms around her. She does not want to give him false hope. There is something strange about the way he is handling everything. He is too calm. Something bothers her about him, but she cannot work out what it is. And she regrets telling him about Tom. She was at such a low point. That’s why she admitted there had been someone else interested, and why she lied about it being over.
It is not over.
Kate decides she will invite Tom over later. It is too good a chance to pass up. Tom lives in a two-bedroomed flat that he shares with a couple who rarely go out. Kate never quite relaxes when she goes round there. This is a chance for them to be on their own for once.
Also, though she does not like to admit it, she will be glad not to be alone in the house. Since Jack left, everything has felt strange. The noises at night. The sense of things being disturbed. Food going missing. Someone in her bed. It must be Amy or Ben, of course, although they deny it. But still, it makes her feel on edge.
After Amy and Ben go out, she spends a long time getting ready. A half-an-hour soak in the bath. Home-waxing her legs with those strips that make her yelp with pain. Plucking her eyebrows.
She dresses with care. A pale blue silk top with tight denim jeans and high-heeled shoes. Best underwear. She twists her hair back and secures it with a clip. Jack always used to like her to leave it long and loose. Tom is different.
When Tom arrives, he can tell how nervous she is. As soon as the front door closes behind him, he takes her in his arms and kisses her deeply in the hallway.
‘Better now?’ he asks, when they pull apart.
She nods.
He has brought a bottle of champagne and they go into the kitchen to fetch glasses. She is making a beef stew with a red wine sauce. When she gets up to stir it, he pulls her down on to his lap and they kiss again. By the time they finish their second glasses of champagne, they have lost all interest in food. Instead, they go upstairs to the bedroom.
For the next hour or so, Kate is lost in what she and Tom are doing. It is only when she gets up, naked, to go to the bathroom that she gets that strange, prickling feeling again. As if the house itself is angry with her.
After a while, they are hungry and they go downstairs to eat. Kate realizes how much she loves having Tom there in her kitchen. He is so full of compliments. About her. About her cooking. Her home.
‘You are an amazing woman,’ he tells her. After all those years with Jack pointing out her faults, she feels a warm glow of pride.
They go into the living room and cuddle up together on the sofa. Tom tells her he is DJ’ing tomorrow lunchtime in a chill-out bar in town. He does it for fun, he says. He asks her if she will come along, and she is tempted but says she had better not. She is taking Amy and Ben to her parents’ house in Cornwall on Monday and needs to get things ready.
Tom does not stay the night. Just in case the kids come back early. But it is nearly 3 a.m. by the time he tears himself away. Yet still he cannot bring himself to leave.
‘I need to tell you something,’ he says, standing on the doorstep. ‘I think I am falling in love with you.’
Kate’s heart expands in her chest until she feels it might burst.
‘Me, too,’ she says.
Afterwards, she lies in her bed, reliving the evening, remembering the things they said and did. How it all felt.
She knows she needs to sleep, but the anxiety is back, prickling at her skin like an ice-cold needle. She thinks she can hear the squirrels scratching above Amy’s room. Even when she does finally drop off, her sleep is disturbed.
She dreams she hears a man crying as if his heart would break.