2018
Just as Zoe is finishing her coffee, she hears the crackle of dry grass underfoot and turns to see Carl ambling towards her, dressed in loose black yoga pants and his favourite Smiths T-shirt, the one with the album cover of The Queen is Dead on the front. She smiles and snaps her notebook shut.
‘Hello, beloved,’ he says. He stops behind her chair and slides his arms around her. On the inside of his right arm is a black ink tattoo of a lotus flower. Identical to the one on the inside of Zoe’s right arm. ‘You were up early.’ He stoops to kiss her neck. ‘I missed you.’
She caresses his cheek. ‘Didn’t sleep much.’
As she lay awake beneath the thin cotton sheet that covered them both, she could tell he was only pretending to sleep. Nerves oozed from him, mingling with hers, the overhead fan spreading their joint anxiety around the room with each creaky rotation.
‘Big day ahead,’ Carl says in his cultured, confident voice. He releases her and sits in the chair opposite. Wipes his forehead. His hair sticks up on end and his T-shirt clings to his chest. Even in this dishevelled state he is undeniably sexy. #silverfox
‘You’re all sweaty,’ she says. ‘Been dancing?’
‘Yup.’
Carl clings rigidly to a morning routine, but the content of it changes all the time. In the winter, he likes to plunge into the cold swimming pool. Some days he likes to meditate for an hour but just now he’s going through another obsessive phase of dancing in the morning. Playing tunes from his nineties clubbing glory days, over and over, on an old iPod. He does it to stay one step ahead of himself. To tame the twin beasts of anxiety and depression.
‘It feels like I need to be really grounded in my body just now,’ Carl says.
Zoe doesn’t feel at all grounded. The prospect of Sofia coming to Pure Heart has knocked her off balance, and part of her is enjoying the sensation.
The table tilts as Carl rests his elbows on it. ‘I had the weirdest dream.’ He describes how in the dream he returned to his childhood home only to find the ceilings leaking in every room and the floors melting beneath his feet. ‘Really strange.’
Zoe used to love the chats they had upon waking. Sleepy, intimate discussions about their dreams and what they might mean and whether they should work harder on healing their childhood wounds and releasing their inherited ancestral pain. These days, she often wakes with a fierce longing to be alone.
‘What you writing?’ he asks, nodding at her notebook.
‘Just doing my journal.’
‘Cool.’ Carl interlaces his fingers and cracks his knuckles. This was his warm-up gesture when he still wrote. When Zoe first met him, he was still Carl Fowles, critically acclaimed author with an award-winning debut novel to his name. His glory, like hers, was short-lived. A shared trauma they bonded over. One that binds them still.
‘Have you seen Quinn this morning?’ he says.
‘She’s in the polytunnel. With Mel.’
‘Ah yes. I saw Mel earlier with her little basket. Skipping along.’
Zoe smiles. ‘Mel doesn’t skip.’
‘All in red… well, burgundy. Skipping along like a slightly butch Little Red Riding Hood.’
‘That’s mean.’
‘Bet they’re having sex down there right now. Doing unspeakable things with Holly’s prize courgettes.’
‘Carl.’ Zoe shakes her head. ‘You’re dreadful.’
He sighs. ‘I know.’
‘Quinn is on one of her missions to help Mel. That’s all.’ Zoe has wondered if Mel’s devotion to Quinn is more than just spiritual, but even if it is, Quinn is celibate now. ‘She told me she didn’t want another lover after Blake.’
‘Mel would be a big improvement on that Aussie tosser,’ Carl says. ‘I hated that guy.’
‘We all did.’ Zoe tried to make allowances for Blake’s troubled past. At seven years old he was taken from his alcoholic single mother in Sydney and placed in a series of foster homes before running away to Melbourne when he was sixteen. Then came the drugs and the spells in psychiatric care. ‘Quinn loved him, though.’
‘Suppose someone had to.’
Zoe suspects Blake’s abrupt departure from Pure Heart hurt Quinn more deeply than she ever admitted.
A bird lands on Zoe’s notebook. Black back and tail. White chest and head. It pecks at the notebook’s yellow cover before flitting away.
‘A Cyprus wheatear,’ says Carl.
Zoe isn’t sure if his recent interest in birds signals a deeper connection to nature or the approach of old age.
Carl clears his throat. ‘It’ll all work out,’ he says. ‘If Quinn says Sofia’s visit is what we need then we should trust her.’
Zoe nods. ‘I guess so.’
‘I keep picturing Sofia as a kid. I can’t believe she’s twenty-two now.’
Zoe suspects he’s thinking about Pippa, his daughter, who turned twenty-two last month.
‘I suppose Sofia will want to talk about Eva?’ Carl says.
Zoe’s stomach twists into a knot. ‘We haven’t really talked about Eva for ten years.’
‘Well then.’ Carl cracks his knuckles again. ‘I guess it will be healing for all of us.’
‘Maybe.’
Carl scrapes back his chair, drops to his knees in front of her and rests his hands on her thighs. ‘Everything will be fine.’
She remembers how she trusted him when they first met. She liked his maturity and wisdom. She liked feeling protected. Since Charles’ death exposed the community’s financial vulnerability, she’s sensed a neediness in her husband. Sometimes, if he wakes to find her side of the bed empty, he gets anxious. As if she might have left him in the night. As if she might decide there are other lives she could be living and other men she could live them with.
He rests his head on her lap. His warm breath penetrates the flimsy fabric of her kimono. Hot pulses of arousal between her legs make her shift in her seat. His lips find her through the fabric, making her moan. When she tries to loosen the kimono’s belt, he looks up and smiles.
‘Breathe with me.’ He rests back on his heels and places a warm hand on her chest. Her hand mirrors his and they gaze into each other’s eyes. One of the many tantric rituals they use to deepen their intimacy. Carl has deep brown eyes, framed by long dark lashes.
‘The sexiest eyes in literature,’ she says, quoting an article once written about him in The Face magazine.
‘The cutest pixie in pop,’ he says, quoting Smash Hits.
Pixie. She was never sure if that was a compliment or not. She was never a conventional-looking pop star. Wide mouth and full lips. Dimpled cheeks. Hazel eyes that were, according to one tabloid newspaper, ‘disturbingly large.’
She tries to focus on Carl’s lauded eyes, but his noisy breathing distracts her. It jars with the gentle birdsong surrounding them.
‘It’s so beautiful to connect with you like this,’ he says.
She nods, suppressing a wave of frustration. She doesn’t want him to connect with her. She wants him to fuck her. Here and now, while whispering filthy words in her ear, the way he used to when they first got together. She tells herself not to be ungrateful. This man considers her body to be sacred. He worships her. He is her audience of one and she is the star performer.
There was a time, in the early days of the community, when they occasionally invited someone to join them in bed. Men and women. Carl said it felt right not to be selfish with their love and Zoe agreed. She knew he got off on watching her with someone else and it turned her on to please him that way.
As she remembers this, her hand moves from his chest to the waistband of his yoga pants. His eyes narrow. He takes her hand and lifts it to his lips.
‘Let’s revisit this later,’ he says. ‘When we’re both more present.’
She forces a smile. ‘Can’t wait.’
His knees creak as he gets to his feet. A noise that fills her with tenderness and irritation.
‘I’m off to shower,’ he says. ‘No doubt Quinn’s got some jobs lined up for me.’
‘No doubt.’
The sun is already gathering warmth, but, as Zoe watches Carl walk away, she shivers. Cold, unwelcome thoughts intrude. What if Quinn is wrong? What if they can’t find a way to save Pure Heart? Where would she and Carl end up? What would they do? She’d have to get an actual job. Something real and poorly paid and beneath her. Even if she qualified as a yoga teacher or a therapist of some kind, she’d have to compete with the thousands of others out there.
She pictures herself and Carl living in a poky flat in some nowhere town in the UK, Carl working way past pension age in some degrading job. Would he even qualify for a pension?
She picks up her pen, opens her notebook and adds a new line to her journal.
Please let us keep Pure Heart. Whatever it takes.