A Ladder to the Sky(44)

‘They don’t go out of their way to make it sound appetizing, do they?’ I said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Could be worth a try.’

‘I think I’ll have the sea bream,’ I said.

‘Coward.’

A candle flickered on the table between us and, after we ordered our meals and the wine arrived, you unexpectedly mentioned that you loved me. I could see the flame reflecting in your iris and your eyes appeared so moist that, for a moment, I thought you were going to shed a tear. I’d only ever seen you cry once, after our fourth miscarriage, when we started to realize that things were never going to work out for us on that front.

Of course, you wanted children very badly. You were clear about that from the start and it was something that made you extremely attractive to me. I did too, although perhaps not with the same intensity of feeling. I suppose I’d always assumed that I’d have them one day and so it had been simply a question of when, not if. Only when I began to understand that it was unlikely to happen did I begin to feel cheated. The miscarriages became increasingly traumatic to me then, four lives mercilessly evicted without warning from what my gynaecologist referred to as my inhospitable womb.

‘Are you excited about the job?’ you asked me after our main courses had been brought, devoured and taken away again and we’d decided to order another bottle of wine.

‘I’m a little nervous,’ I admitted.

‘Of what?’

‘Of the students. That they might consider me a fraud.’

‘Why on earth would you think that?’

‘Because I’ve only published one novel.’

‘Which is one more than all of them combined.’

‘I know, but still. It’s important to me that they don’t feel they’ve wasted their time and money, that if they’d only come a year or two earlier they would have been taught by someone with more experience.’

‘I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have you. You’re famous, Edith, after all.’

‘I’m hardly famous,’ I said dismissively, although it was true, I was a little bit famous because my debut had been such an unexpected success, both critically and commercially. It had even been adapted for television. But I had never taught on a creative-writing course before, nor had I been a student on one, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. I’d only applied for the job because it had been three years since the publication of Fear and, even though I was making good progress on my second book, it wasn’t coming together quite as quickly as I’d hoped. I thought a stint in academia, where I would be involved in writing every day but not glued to my computer from morning till night, might help me. And you had been very positive about the idea, putting up no objections to our relocating from London for a year. We could sublet the flat, you said. With the rents in Norwich being cheaper, we might even make some money out of the deal.

‘They might be arrogant,’ I continued, returning to my concerns about the students. ‘Particularly the boys.’

‘Now you’re just being sexist.’

‘No, I’m being realistic. I’m only thirty-one. Chances are that some will be close in age to me. They might feel resentful.’

‘I think you’re worrying over nothing,’ you said, dismissing my anxieties with a wave of your hand. ‘You have to go in on day one with confidence, that’s all. Accept that you’ve achieved more than they have and that they’re there to learn from you. Ignore any condescension.’

‘Maybe you could take the class instead of me?’ I asked with a smile, knowing as the words emerged from my mouth that it had been the wrong thing to say, for you frowned as you took a long drink of your wine. When you returned the glass to the table, your lips held a faint purple stain that, for some reason, put me in mind of a priest I had known as a child whose lips always had the same tint. He used to come to my school to talk about the importance of keeping ourselves pure for our future husbands and had a particular obsession with a red-haired friend of mine who, he claimed, had the devil lurking inside her.

‘They wouldn’t want me,’ you said. ‘They want rising stars, not has-beens.’

‘They’d be lucky to have you,’ I said.

You threw me a look, one that said Please don’t patronize me, and I changed the subject immediately. Christmas was still three months away but we discussed where we might spend the day, with your family or mine, settling on yours. And then we talked about my sister, Rebecca, who had recently gone through a messy divorce. There were two children involved, my nephews Damien and Edward, and this only complicated matters as Rebecca was behaving appallingly towards their father, Robert, making it difficult for him to see the boys and then complaining that he didn’t spend enough time with them. I’d always liked my brother-in-law and wondered why it had taken him so long to leave my sister, who had spent a lifetime bullying people, including me, but I was obliged to take her side. I confided in you, however, that Robert had phoned me the previous evening and asked whether we might meet to talk.

‘To talk about what?’ you asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘He said that he’d prefer not to discuss it over the phone and asked whether he could call over to the flat next week. I told him that we weren’t there any more, that we’d be up here in Norwich for the next eight months, and he hummed and hawed a bit and said that he could always drive up if I had an afternoon free.’