The Girl Before(29)

The water stops. When he hasn’t reappeared after several minutes I sit up. There’s a rubbing sound coming from the direction of the bathroom.

I follow the noise around the partition. Edward, a white towel wrapped around his waist, is crouched in the shower, polishing the stone walls with a cloth.

“This is a hard-water area, Jane,” he says without looking up. “If you’re not careful you’ll get limescale building up on the stone. It’s already noticeable. Really, you should dry the shower off every time you use it.”

“Edward…”

“What?”

“Isn’t that a bit—well, obsessive?”

“No,” he says. “It’s whatever the opposite of lazy is.” He considers. “Meticulous, perhaps.”

“Isn’t life simply too short to dry showers after you use them?”

“Or perhaps,” he says reasonably, “life is simply too short to live it less perfectly than it could be lived.” He stands up. “You haven’t done an assessment yet, have you?”

“Assessment?”

“With Housekeeper. It’s currently set to monthly intervals, I think. I’ll adjust it so you do one tomorrow.” He pauses. “I’m sure you’re doing fine, Jane. But having the numbers will help you improve still further.”

—

Next morning I wake up happy and a little stiff. Edward’s already gone. I go downstairs to get a coffee before my shower and find a message from Housekeeper on my laptop screen.

Jane, please score the following statements on a scale of 1–5, where 1 is Strongly Agree and 5 is Strongly Disagree.



1. I sometimes make mistakes.

2. I am easily disappointed.

3. I become anxious over unimportant things.

There are dozens more. I leave them for later, make my coffee and take it upstairs. I step into the shower, waiting for the luxurious cascade of warmth. Nothing happens.

I wave my arm, the one with the digital bracelet on, but there’s still nothing. A power cut? I try to remember if there’s a fuse box in the cleaner’s cupboard. But it can’t be that: There was power downstairs, or Housekeeper wouldn’t have been working.

Then I realize what it must be. “Damn you, Edward,” I say aloud. “I wanted a bloody shower.”

Sure enough, when I go and look at Housekeeper more closely I see the words Some house facilities have been disabled until the assignment is completed.

At least it let me have coffee. I settle down to answer the questions.





THEN: EMMA

The sex is good.

Good, but not spectacular.

I get the feeling he’s holding back, trying to be a gentleman. When actually a gentleman is the last person I want to share my bed with. I want him to be the selfish alpha male he’s so clearly capable of being.

Still, there’s plenty to work with.

Afterward I sit at the stone table in a robe, watching him cook us a stir-fry. He puts on an apron before he starts, a strangely feminine gesture for such a masculine man. But once the ingredients are prepped and he gets going it’s all concentration and precision, fire and energy, tossing the ingredients up in the air and catching them again like a big sloppy pancake. Within minutes the meal is ready. I’m ravenous.

Have you always had relationships like this? I say as we eat.

Like what?

Whatever this is. Unencumbered. Semi-detached.

For a long while, yes. It’s not that I have anything against conventional relationships, you understand. It’s just that my lifestyle doesn’t really allow for them. So I made a conscious decision to adjust to shorter ones. I’ve found when you do that, the relationships can actually be better: more intense, a sprint instead of a marathon. You appreciate the other person more, knowing it’s not going to last.



How long do they usually last?

Until one of us decides to call it off, he says without smiling. This only works if both parties want the same thing. And don’t think that by unencumbered I mean without commitment or effort. It’s just a different sort of commitment, a different sort of effort. Some of the most perfect relationships I’ve had lasted no more than a week, some several years. The duration really doesn’t matter. Only the quality.

Tell me about one that lasted several years, I say.

I never talk about my previous lovers, he says firmly. Just as I’ll never talk to others about you. Anyway, it’s my turn now. How do you organize your spices?

My spices?

Yes. It’s been bothering me ever since I tried to find the cumin just now. They’re clearly not arranged alphabetically or by use-by date. Is it by flavor profile? By continent?

You’re joking, right?

He looks at me. You mean they’re random?

Completely random.

Wow, he says. I think he’s being ironic. But sometimes with Edward it’s hard to be sure.

When he leaves, he tells me it has been a wonderful evening.





5b) Now you have a choice between donating a small sum to a local museum that’s fundraising for an important artwork, or sending it to tackle hunger in Africa. Which do you choose?

? The museum

? Hunger





NOW: JANE

“I admire how the work unfolds rigorously, with a variety of different typologies,” a man wearing a corduroy jacket announces, waving his champagne flute at the glass-and-steel roof in big, sweeping gestures.