Our Kind of Cruelty(17)

‘I’m so sorry, V,’ I said into the night, my face wet with my own tears and my whole chest as raw and ripped as if I had been mauled by a bear.



If I could have told V about Carly anywhere other than Steeple House I would have done, but she had been ill with flu and so was already there when I arrived home for Christmas.

I had booked a car to take me from the airport and I arrived in the early evening, on an unseasonably warm December night, pitted with fitful rain. Suzi and Colin were pleased to see me and led me in front of an unnecessarily warm fire, where they asked me lots of questions and accepted their gifts and looked at photos on my phone. V, they told me, was asleep and that was for the best as her temperature had only just come down and they’d had to call the doctor the night before. But before long she appeared in the doorway, her hair messy and her body wrapped in a large blanket. Suzi told her to come and sit by the fire, which she did.

We hadn’t seen each other for eleven weeks and all I wanted to do was take her in my arms, but it was impossible with her parents gazing down on us. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t leave us alone.

‘Has your headache gone?’ I asked and it sounded stilted.

‘Much better,’ she said. ‘Another good night’s sleep and I’ll be fine.’

‘I always forget how you young are in constant communication with each other,’ Suzi said. ‘In my day you had to write letters and everything took forever.’

‘I don’t know,’ V said. ‘A bit of mystery. That sounds quite romantic.’

‘Anyway, Mike. I’ve put you in the blue room.’ Suzi stood as she spoke and Colin followed her, as he always did. ‘Night, you two,’ she said as they left. ‘And don’t let Verity stay up too late, Mike. We don’t want her relapsing.’

V rolled her eyes at me. ‘It’s like I’m ten again.’

I smiled. ‘They just care.’

She sighed. ‘Sometimes you can care too much.’

I slid on to the floor and sat next to her, putting my arms around her shoulder. But she moved away. ‘Sorry, ow, I’m still quite achy.’ She looked fine though; there was even a bloom of pink on her cheeks.

The knowledge of what I had to tell V weighed heavily inside me. Because the sex I’d had with Carly had been unprotected I had already had all the necessary tests. The HIV test had already come back with an initial negative but, as I had suspected, the definitive results for that and all the other tests would take up to three months. I would have told V anyway because there has and will never be any point in us keeping secrets from each other, but there was no way I would have put her in any sort of physical danger.

‘What’s wrong?’ V asked.

‘Nothing. Just tired after the flight.’

‘No, there’s something else, I can tell.’

So I told her, as we sat by the fire. Probably I was wrong to do it there and then. Maybe her brain was still slightly addled from her fever. Almost definitely I said the wrong things, even though I had gone over and over my lines on the plane. I told her I’d made a terrible mistake, I would do anything not to have done it, it was only because I was so lonely and missed her so much, I wanted to come home, I would do anything to make it better; she, V, was the only person in the world I cared about, she was all I had, she was everything.

V sat very still while I spoke, her gaze focused on her hands, which were twined in her blanket. When she finally looked up her eyes were rimmed in red and her mouth was set into a small line.

‘Are you fucking joking?’ she said finally and I started to cry. ‘What sort of man are you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, which was true.

‘And how dare you say you did it because you were lonely,’ she spat. ‘As if it was all my fault. You talk like I made you go to America, like it was my idea. Don’t you think I missed you as well?’

‘I’m sorry.’ My tears were now so violent I could taste them.

‘I thought you were different.’

‘I am.’

She snorted.

‘Nothing like this will ever happen again, I promise.’

‘You’re so weak. Sometimes you remind me of a piece of modelling clay, like you could be anything. You disgust me.’

‘Please.’ I clamped my hands over my ears. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t!’ she shouted. ‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you fucked some secretary because you felt a bit lonely.’

‘Oh God, V,’ I sobbed, ‘please. It was nothing. This doesn’t have to change us.’

She laughed at that, but it was not a happy sound. ‘It changes everything. It completely alters my perception of who you are. I thought we understood each other, but evidently we don’t at all.’

‘But I do, I do understand you. I love you more than anything, anyone. I will never stop loving you.’

‘Just fuck off out of my sight.’

‘No, not until you tell me you love me too.’

‘I hate you.’

‘V, stop, I love you.’

‘I hate you.’

‘I crave you.’ She had stood up by then and I was down on my knees, my arms wrapped around her legs. ‘I fucking crave you, V,’ I shouted.