I sank back in bed. Of course. Reuben and I had booked tickets to the UK back in January, when we were still playing that lonely game of husband and wife. I came home every year for the anniversary of the accident, and he had often come with me – although it had been a few years since he’d made it. ‘This year, I will,’ he’d promised. ‘I know how much you miss your sister. I’ll be there for you this year, Sarah.’ And so the tickets had been booked.
Then, later, he had asked me for a divorce. ‘I’ve changed my London flight to a different date,’ he’d said, a few days later. He was watching me, face smudged with guilt and sadness. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to come with you.’
And I’d said, ‘Sure, that’s a good idea; thanks for thinking of it.’ I didn’t really consider when he might have decided to go instead. In all honesty, I had thought about very little around that time; I had mostly been stretching cautious limbs, flexing tiny new muscles. Experimenting curiously at Life Without Reuben. The ease, the fluidity, the sense of future and space in this brave new world had felt oddly shameful. Where was the mourning ?
‘He booked a ticket for Kaia,’ Jenni said. She wasn’t enjoying this exchange. ‘I’m sorry. He said he’d emailed you.’
‘He probably did. I just haven’t got to it yet.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Well, that’ll be cosy. Me, Reuben, Reuben’s new girlfriend.’
Jenni laughed bleakly.
‘Sorry,’ I said, after a pause. ‘I wasn’t snapping at you; I’m just shocked. And it’s my own fault anyway. I should have stayed on top of my emails.’
I heard her smile. Little offended Jenni. ‘You’re doing great, honey. Apart from the being-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing. That could do with some work.’
I closed my eyes. ‘Oh God, and I haven’t even asked you how the IVF cycle’s going. Where are you at? How long until they harvest your eggs?’
Jenni paused. ‘Oh, they did that. I went in last week and they harvested the hell out of me. I sent you a message? On WhatsApp? They implanted three embryos, because it’s my last chance. I’ll find out next week.’
She took a breath as if to say something else, but then stopped. In the silence swung a thousand-ton weight of desperation.
‘Jenni,’ I said softly. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you were still on the ovary stimulation bit. I . . . God, I’m sorry. It excuses nothing, but I am not myself at the moment.’
‘I know,’ she said brightly. ‘Don’t feel bad. You’ve been there for me, every cycle. You’re allowed to make one mistake!’
But her voice was too cheerful, and I knew I’d let her down. In the sooty darkness of Zoe’s spare room, I felt my face flush livid with self-loathing.
Jenni replied to something Javier shouted, then said she would have to go soon. ‘Listen, Sarah, here’s my suggestion,’ she said. ‘I think you should start over with Eddie. Like you’ve just met. Why don’t you send him a letter? Tell him all about yourself, as if you were on a first date? All the things you never had a chance to tell him. Like . . . does he know about the accident? Your sister?’
‘Jenni, let’s talk about you. There’s been far too much chat about me and my pathetic life.’
‘Oh, honey! I’m taking good care of myself. I’m visualizing and chanting and doing fertility dances and eating all sorts of gross, healthy stuff. That’s all I can do. But there’s plenty you can do.’ She paused. ‘Sarah, I will never forget the day you told me about the accident. It was the most awful thing I ever heard, and it made me love you, Sarah. Really, really love you. I think you should tell Eddie.’
‘I can’t send him a sob story to make him change his mind!’
‘That’s not what I’m saying. I just think . . .’ She sighed. ‘I just think you should let him get to know you properly . All the parts of you, even the ones you don’t like people seeing. Let him know what an extraordinary woman you are.’
I paused, the phone hot against my cheek. ‘But, Jenni, I was lucky you reacted the way you did. Not everyone would.’
‘I don’t agree.’
I pulled myself up on my pillows. ‘So . . . he cuts me out for nearly a month and suddenly I start writing to him about my childhood? He’d think I was crazy! Certifiable!’
Jenni chuckled. ‘He would not. Like I said, he’d fall in love with you. Just like I did.’
I slumped back down again. ‘Oh, Jenni, who are we trying to kid? I have got to let go of him.’
She burst out laughing.
‘Why are you laughing? ’
‘Because you have no intention of letting go of him!’
‘I do!’
‘You do not!’ She laughed again. ‘If you wanted to let go of Eddie, if you really wanted to let go, Sarah Mackey, the last person on earth you would have called for advice would have been me.’
Chapter Sixteen
DAY FIVE: A Beech Tree, a Wellington Boot
Eddie was on the phone to Derek again. I didn’t yet know who Derek was, but I imagined he was something to do with Eddie’s work: Eddie sounded more formal talking to him than he had when a friend called yesterday. Their conversation this afternoon was brief, mostly Eddie saying, ‘Right,’ or ‘OK,’ or ‘Sounds like a good idea.’ After a few minutes he was done. He went inside to replace the phone.
I was sitting on the bench outside his barn, reading an old copy of Our Man in Havana from his shelf. It turned out that I still loved reading. I loved that a novelist on the payroll of MI6 had dreamed up a hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman, drafted into the Secret Intelligence Service so that he might better fund the extravagant lifestyle of his beautiful daughter. I loved that I could read about this man for hours and never once pause to overthink my own life. I loved that, with a book in my hand and no urgent need to be anywhere, or to be doing anything, I felt like a Sarah I’d entirely forgotten.
The hot weather had not yet broken, but it would soon – the air still and curdled, hovering like a bird of prey before attack. My clothes hung motionless on the washing line above a thick cluster of rosebay willowherb, which didn’t move an inch. I yawned, wondered if I should go and check everything was OK at Mum and Dad’s.
I knew I wouldn’t. The second night Eddie and I had gone to bed together, it had become quite clear that we would stay here, in this suspended world, until either my parents came back from Leicester or Eddie went on holiday. I didn’t want to be apart from him even for the hour it would take to walk home and back. The universe I knew had stopped, for now, and I had no desire to bring it back.
From the edge of Eddie’s lawn, the squirrel, Steve, was watching me. ‘Hi, you criminal,’ Eddie said as he came back out. He looked at the squirrel, mimed shooting a gun. Steve didn’t move a muscle.
Eddie sat next to me. ‘I like you in my clothes,’ he smiled, pinging the elastic of his boxer shorts against my side. I was wearing them with a T-shirt of his, worn thin at the shoulders. It smelled of him. I yawned again and reached over to ping his own boxer shorts. I had stubbly legs. Nothing mattered. I was stupid with happiness.
‘Shall we go for a walk?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’
We stayed on the bench for a while, kissing, pinging elastic, laughing about nothing.
It was a little after two by the time we set off. I was back in my own clothes, which smelled of Eddie’s washing powder and sunshine.
After a few metres following the river, Eddie left the path and started striding up the hill, into the heart of the wood. Our feet sank deep in the untouched mush of the forest floor. ‘There’s a thing I wanted to show you up here,’ Eddie said. ‘A bit of a silly thing, but I like to come and check it’s still there from time to time. ’
I smiled. ‘It can be our noteworthy activity for the day.’
We hadn’t completed many noteworthy activities since this affair had begun. We had slept a lot, made love a lot, eaten a lot, talked for hours. Not talked for hours. Read books, spotted birds, made up an extended narrative about a dog who’d nosed around Eddie’s clearing while we’d eaten Spanish tortilla on the bench one day.