The Guilty Couple(46)
I met Dominic at the private showing of a play written by a friend of Lee’s. I didn’t know the playwright very well but he’d come round to our flat for a party once. Dominic sidled up to me during the interval and said, ‘I’m guessing you’re not one of the actors.’ When I asked why he said, ‘You shudder each time you take a sip of that godawful wine.’
He wasn’t my normal type – he was too well dressed and far too posh – but he was handsome, funny and charming and we both liked the same sort of plays and films and admired the same artists so I chatted to him for a bit. Then I made my excuses and sloped off to find Lee.
The next day I received a text from Dominic saying he’d really enjoyed meeting me and would I like to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake the next week? It turned out he’d tracked down my number via a mutual contact, which I found singularly creepy and a little bit flattering. Lee thought Dominic was hot and somehow I let him talk me into going out on a date.
I don’t know if it was the sinewy muscularity of the male dancers’ bodies, the swell of emotion I felt as Prince Siegfried and Odette jumped into the lake, or the woody scent of Dominic’s aftershave as I sobbed into his shoulder. Maybe it was a combination of all three, but when he leaned in for a kiss at the end of the evening I kissed him back. We went on another date – a tour of Highgate Cemetery. I laughed out loud when Dominic told me where we were going but, secretly, I was delighted. I thought I was the only weirdo who found cemeteries fascinating but it turned out Dom did too. On a visit to Paris he’d swerved the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and the typical tourist hangouts and had visited Père Lachaise, Montmartre and the Catacombs instead. To him romance lay, not in the present, but the past. Whether it was the music he listened to (Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole), the black and white films he loved (Laura, Vertigo, Criss Cross) or the books he loved (Jeeves and Wooster, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Brighton Rock) he surrounded himself with echoes of times long gone. And I understood that kind of escapism, I felt it every time I looked at a painting from another era, swept with each brushstroke into another time, another world.
After our fourth or fifth date I no longer heard Dominic’s plummy tones or commented on what he wore; those were superficial adornments and I knew the man beneath the tweed jackets and the well-spoken voice. Six months after our first date we moved in together. I could have moved into Dominic’s one-bedroom flat in South London but we both felt we wanted somewhere new, somewhere where the only memories that existed were ours. One year after that we were married, a spontaneous decision that took us up to Gretna Green. When Grace was born some years later we both fell in love with her. Our life was complete, a little family of three.
My relationship with Dominic’s parents swung from cordial to fractious. They were pleasant initially, prickly after our elopement and then coldly indifferent. Esther, Dominic’s mother, made her opinions known after I gave birth to Grace. She didn’t criticise me directly – she’s too manipulative for that – but her ‘advice’ reached me via Dom who parroted the ‘correct way’ I should mother my daughter as I struggled with night feeds, sleep deprivation, colic and my eventual return to work.
George has always been harder to read. He largely keeps his own counsel but his sharp, analytical mind enabled him to make millions on the stock market in the mid to late eighties. He was always pleasant to me but I never had any idea what was going on behind those cool grey eyes. And now I’ll be spending the next hour in his home because Esther has decided that public places are no longer suitable for my supervised visits with Grace.
My phone bleeps as I raise a finger to the doorbell and I dig around for it in my handbag. Has Jack finally replied? It’s been nearly four days since I suggested we meet and I’m getting worried that something’s happened to him. But there’s no email notification on the screen. It’s a number I haven’t got stored in my phone.
Hello my love, the text message begins. You’re out! Let’s celebrate! It’s Lee btw. I got your new number from Ayesha. I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch in forever but I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Are you free tomorrow? A new gallery has opened in Shoreditch that I want to check out. Drinks on me afterwards. Xx
The sight of Lee’s name makes my heart jolt. Of all the friends I’ve had and loved he was the biggest constant in my life. Until he wasn’t. He all but abandoned me after I was sent to Bronzefield and I haven’t heard from him for years. I tuck my phone back into my bag and ring the doorbell. I’ll think about whether or not to meet Lee later, what matters most right now is seeing Grace. It’s been two weeks since we met at London Zoo.
The door opens revealing George in beige chinos and a dark green jumper with a white shirt collar poking over the top.
‘Good afternoon, Olivia.’ He gives me a curt nod then opens the door wider. ‘Grace is in the garden room. She’s, er … she’s not in the best of moods.’
‘Okay, thank you.’ I follow him into the house, closing the door behind me, and make my way down the hall. There are five ground-floor reception rooms – a kitchen with an attached laundry room, a study, a dining room, the family room at the front of the house and the ‘garden room’, with French doors that open onto the patio and manicured lawn, at the back.
‘Cup of tea?’ George asks, pausing at the entrance to the kitchen. His phone rings before I can answer and he turns away, abandoning me in the hall.