Our Kind of Cruelty(46)

She sipped from her drink, leaving an almost invisible layer of lip salve on the rim. I had to stop myself from reaching over and licking the mark. ‘Of course I loved you, you don’t have to ask that.’

‘But love doesn’t stop. You must love me still.’

She kept her eyes down. ‘But love changes, doesn’t it?’

‘I still crave you,’ I tried, because I didn’t know what she meant. Love never changes.

‘Don’t,’ she said, but the word sounded stretched, desperate even. Her chest was moving up and down, up and down.

‘We could try the Kitten Club again. Angus won’t go with you, but I would.’

‘For God’s sake, Mike,’ she said, but her breathing had quickened.

‘What we had doesn’t just vanish. I know you remember what it felt like to be in bed with me.’

‘Stop.’ I knew I had gone too far. The eagle swung annoyed round her neck.

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘You need to stop this, Mike. For both of us.’

‘Do you ever Crave with Angus?’ I asked, a mist rising through me.

‘For God’s sake. Don’t be ridiculous.’ She stood up but I grabbed at her wrist and she sat down again.

‘Sorry, sorry. I just want you to be happy.’

‘I am happy.’

‘No, I mean properly happy, with me. Not this pretend happy with Angus.’

‘Why do you think it’s pretend?’ she asked and I saw a real question in her eyes.

‘Because you’re not the sort of person to fall in love so quickly, or have that big stupid wedding.’

She drew a pattern in the table with some of the spilt vodka. ‘Maybe you don’t know the person I am. Maybe I didn’t know the person I was until I met Angus. Maybe you don’t know yourself yet.’ I didn’t like those words and they shot through me in a way which made me want to look down and see if I was bleeding. ‘I’m not your mother, Mike. I didn’t abandon you. What we shared was amazing and special, but it’s over now. You have to move on.’

My hand was tight around my glass and I felt my eyes sting with tears. ‘Don’t say that.’

She swallowed hard and the eagle bounced. ‘Look, Angus is going away for a few days, but when he gets back you should come over and we could talk to you together. Maybe then you’ll understand this isn’t some fake marriage.’

‘No thanks.’ I couldn’t think of anything worse than talking to the monkey man Angus.

She sighed and stood up, but more slowly this time. ‘I’m going now.’

I let her walk away while I sat and looked into the vibrating liquid in my glass. I’ve always hated vodka and how it can sneak up on you. How it looks like water but is really very potent. I gulped at it and it shot through my system, waking and charging it.

It was clear that V had constructed an impressive fantasy around Angus to shield her from the pain I had caused her with Carly. She seemed to have even herself fooled and that thought scared me because how do you show someone that what they believe to be true is really not the truth?

I had finished my vodka so I took V’s and downed it. And she must have left part of herself in the glass because as I drank it was like she was opening my eyes and my ears. I realised that I’d been an idiot. Angus is going away for a few days, V had said. And if that wasn’t an invitation to be there when he wasn’t I didn’t know what was.



The next day was Saturday and Elaine rang first thing to say she was coming into London and could she take me up on my offer and pop in for a cup of tea. It was slightly annoying because I had been considering visiting V that day, but Sunday was probably better anyway, so I said yes.

She arrived just after lunch, carrying no visible reason for a trip to London. She walked all round the house, exclaiming at every room. I realised that she was the first person, apart from myself and the builders and decorators, who had ever been upstairs since I’d moved in. It made me wish that I’d made an excuse and pretended to be busy, because surely V should be the first person to see her new home, not her sort of soon-to-be mother-in-law. But Elaine lingered in every room, running her hands over the furniture and opening cupboard doors, turning on light switches, and even once bizarrely running the taps. If she could have waited just a few more weeks, I thought, V and I could have shown her round together, which would have been a far more pleasant experience.

Predictably she wasn’t so keen on the garden, which was still a mess. I could see how much better it was going to look, but Elaine is one of those people who can’t bear to change things for the sake of it, or throw things away. There were always cellophane-wrapped plates in the fridge at her house, unfranked stamps steamed off envelopes in drawers and so-called scrap paper which had to be written or drawn on both sides before she’d buy any more. The motto Waste Not, Want Not was pinned by the clock in the kitchen, which was, I realised, nothing more than an early version of Kaitlyn’s wild horses, a thought both pleasing and disconcerting at the same time.

We sat at the kitchen table to drink our tea, Elaine saying she didn’t want to risk spilling anything in the drawing room. I had bought some fancy cupcakes from the deli and she picked at one, but didn’t seem to enjoy it.

‘So, you’ve really set yourself up here,’ Elaine said, looking round the kitchen.