The Girl Before(16)

Come to bed, Em, Simon says when they’ve gone.

In a minute, I say. I’m too tired to move.

You smell gorgeous, gorgeous, he says, nuzzling my neck. Let’s go to bed.

Si, I say hesitantly.

What? he says.

I don’t think I want to have sex tonight, I say. Sorry.

We haven’t since the breakin. We haven’t really talked about it. It’s just one of those things.

You said everything would be different here, he says softly.

It will, I say. Just not yet.

Of course, he says. There’s no hurry, Em. No hurry at all.

Later, as we lie beside each other in the darkness, he says quietly, Remember how we christened Belfort Gardens?

It had been a silly challenge we’d set ourselves: to make love in every room before we’d been there a week.

He doesn’t say anything else. The silence lengthens, and eventually I fall asleep.





NOW: JANE

I invite some friends to lunch, a little housewarming gathering. Mia and Richard bring their children, Freddie and Martha, and Beth and Pete bring Sam. I’ve known Mia since Cambridge—my oldest and closest friend. Certainly I know things her own husband doesn’t, such as that in Ibiza shortly before their wedding she slept with another man and almost called it off, or that she contemplated having an abortion when she fell pregnant with Martha because her postpartum depression with Freddie had been so bad.

Much as I love these people, I shouldn’t have invited them together. I only did it because of the novelty of having enough space, but the fact is, however tactful my friends try to be, sooner or later they start talking to one another about their children. Richard and Pete patrol after their toddlers as if jerked after them by invisible reins, fearful of the stone floor, those lethal stairs, the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that a running child might not even see, while the girls pour huge glasses of white wine and complain quietly but with a kind of battle-weary pride about how boring their lives have become: “God, last week I fell asleep watching the six o’clock news!” “That’s nothing—I’d crashed by CBeebies!” Martha regurgitates her lunch over the stone table, while Sam manages to smear the plate-glass windows with fingers previously dipped in chocolate mousse. I find myself thinking there are advantages to not having a child. A part of me just wants them all to go so I can tidy up.



And then there’s a funny little moment with Mia. She’s helping me get the salad ready when she calls out, “J, where do you keep the African spoons?”

“Oh—I donated them to the charity shop.”

She gives me a strange look. “I gave you those.”

“Yes, I know.” Mia went to do voluntary work in an African orphanage once, and she brought me back two hand-carved salad spoons, made by the kids. “I decided they didn’t quite make the cut. Sorry. D’you mind?”

“I suppose not,” she says with a slightly put-out expression on her face. Clearly, she does mind. But pretty soon lunch is ready and she forgets about it.

“So J, how’s your social life?” Beth asks, filling her second glass of wine.

“The usual drought,” I say. For years this has been my allotted role within the group: to provide them with vicarious stories of sexual disasters that make them feel they haven’t completely left all that behind, while simultaneously reassuring them that they’re much better off as they are.

“What about your architect?” Mia says. “Anything come of him?”

“Ooh, I didn’t know about the architect,” Beth says. “Tell.”

“She fancies the man who built this house. Don’t you, J?”

Pete has taken Sam outside. The child is squatting next to the patch of grass, scattering it with tiny fistfuls of gravel. I wonder if it would be spinsterish to ask him to stop. “I haven’t done anything about it, though,” I say.

“Well, don’t hang around,” Beth says. “Grab him before it’s too late.” She stops, horrified at herself. “Shit, I didn’t mean—”

Grief and anguish rip at my heart, but I say calmly, “It’s okay, I know what you meant. Anyway, my biological clock seems to have set itself to snooze for the time being.”

“Sorry anyway. That was unbelievably tactless of me.”

“I wondered if that was him outside,” Mia says. “Your architect, I mean.”

I frown. “What are you talking about?”

“When I got Martha’s penguin from the car just now, there was a man with flowers coming to your front door.”



“What sort of flowers?” I say.

“Lilies. Jane?”

I’m already hurrying to the door. The flower mystery has been nagging at me ever since I found that strange note. As I pull the door open, the bouquet has already been laid on the step and he’s almost back at the road. “Wait!” I call after him. “Wait a moment, will you?”

He turns. He’s about my age, maybe a couple of years older, his dark hair prematurely flecked with gray. His face looks drawn and his gaze is strangely intense. “Yes?”

“Who are you?” I gesture at the bouquet. “Why do you keep bringing me flowers? My name isn’t Emma.”

“The flowers aren’t for you, obviously,” he says disgustedly. “I only keep replacing them because you keep taking them. That’s why I left a note—so you’d finally get it into your thick skull that they’re not there to brighten up your designer kitchen.” He stops. “It’s her birthday tomorrow. That is, it would have been.”