The Wife Before Me(18)
He brakes so abruptly that she is jerked forward. The wheels skid on loose gravel and a cloud of dust rises. A car following behind narrowly avoids rear-ending them. The driver pulls out and passes them, horn blaring. Nicholas ignores him and steers the car towards the trees.
‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare remind me of all I’ve lost,’ he shouts.
The blow to her cheek is so sudden that, for an instant, Elena is unsure what has happened. The seat belt she had been about to fasten slips through her fingers and she wonders if she has slammed her face into the dashboard. It is the only explanation that makes sense… but she is still sitting upright, and Nicholas is shaking his hand, as if he wants to disown it. She touches her cheek. It’s throbbing, hot. Soon it will swell. She draws back when he reaches towards her. He looks shocked, appalled by his behaviour, but his apologies are meaningless to her. She turns from him and stares out the window. She needs ice on her face and a darkened room, alone. Nothing he says or does will change what has occurred between them. Unable to break her silence, he finally drives slowly and carefully from the car park.
* * *
She runs into the villa without speaking and locks the door of the bathroom. As she guessed, her cheek is red and swollen. She touches it tentatively, still unable to believe he has struck her. This is the first time she has ever been slapped. Isabelle, no matter how demanding Elena was as a child, never lifted a hand to her. She wasn’t bullied in school and her years with Zac, though marked by occasional ferocious arguments, were never touched by violence. Now, in a flash, everything has changed.
Nicholas knocks on the door and asks if she is okay. He sounds concerned but what does that imply? She doesn’t know if he is concerned that he has hurt her or that he has revealed a side of his character she never suspected. Has she been fooling herself, refusing to acknowledge that his encounter with tragedy has marked him in ways she will never understand? She slides to the floor and stares dully at the ceramic tiles. Zigzagging lines, a tide of blue waves, the design so often seen on Portuguese walls and pavements. Was she wrong to persuade him to come here? Why not a mountain or a city where there would be nothing to remind him of the ocean’s treachery? And that comment she flung at him, heedlessly taunting him. But to retaliate with such violence. How is that forgivable? Her heart pounds when he bangs on the door.
‘This is ridiculous, Elena,’ he shouts. ‘Open the door this instant and let me in.’ He is commanding, not contrite.
‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she shouts back, determined to match tone for tone. ‘Go away and leave me alone.’
‘I’m not moving from here until you come out.’ His voice hardens, becomes more determined. ‘We can’t discuss this through a closed door.’
‘There’s nothing to discuss.’
‘There’s everything to discuss.’ The banging intensifies. ‘Open the door, immediately.’
The bathroom is on the ground floor. She drops easily to the grass verge below and runs into the olive trees. Their bark reminds her of the veins on an old man’s hands. Beyond the trees she reaches a wall and can go no further.
He is tall and formidable as he comes towards her. She, too, is tall and she has never been conscious of his greater height until now. His skin is blotched. Has he been crying, also? She shrinks back when he hunkers down and brings his fingers to her cheek. But his touch is gentle, his voice muted when he talks about Amelia’s drowning.
She had gone to Galway on an overnight business trip and he had grown increasingly anxious as the evening passed without any contact from her. No answer from her phone, not even the answering service. Ringing hospitals, the police, friends – the night seemed endless as he waited for word from her. Then, the following morning, the knock on his door. Two detectives, their mouths moving, but he wasn’t hearing them, not really, because what they were saying was so implausible, so utterly unacceptable, that he wanted to silence them with a gun to their heads. Anything to stop them describing the car that had been found at low tide below Mason’s Pier.
The weeks that followed, the endless, hopeless searches. Shame fills Elena as he speaks. When he cups her face, she doesn’t pull away. She stops his apologies with her lips. She will be more careful in future. Never again will she allow her anger to trigger in him such horrifying recollections.
Grief can come upon him with the rush of a tidal wave, he says. Always unexpected, seemingly unstoppable, yet, no matter how brutally he is pulled down by the undertow, he can cope once Elena is by his side, supporting him.
The moon is waning against an indigo sky when they go indoors. They cling to each other in bed, frantic to recover the carefree happiness they had known before this afternoon. He enters her with a suddenness that takes her by surprise. It is over too quickly,
too soon for him to use the condom he had left on the bedside table. His lips are on her, his tongue, his fingers, and when Elena cries out, there is no distinction between pain or pleasure in the sound.
A tidal metaphor, she thinks, when his even breathing tells her he is sleeping. But an undertow does not pull us down. It drags us away from the shore, fights hard against muscle, heart and endurance, and when the fight is done, we sink.
Seven
Brookside sells quickly, as Nicholas had predicted. An excellent price, thanks to his negotiating skills. The money is invested in KHM Investments until Woodbine is sold and they can buy the house of their choice. Elena checks the online property sites and tries to endure the bouts of nausea that come upon her with such suddenness. Hyperemesis gravidarum, her gynaecologist – a woman and, therefore, able to invest some sympathy into her diagnosis – tells Elena on her first visit. And likely to last not just three months, she warns, but for her entire pregnancy.