When You Are Mine(46)

‘Am I bisexual?’ Tempe shrugs. ‘Maybe people fall in love with the person, not the gender.’

‘Are you saying that you’ve slept with men and women?’ he asks.

‘Sometimes both at once.’

Henry is picking at the label of his beer bottle with his thumbnail, peeling it off in sticky clumps.

‘Do you feel threatened by that?’ asks Tempe.

‘No.’

‘It’s what men fantasise about, isn’t it? Two women at the same time?’

‘Some do, I guess.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to see Phil and me getting it on.’

‘No!’ he says, too abruptly. ‘She’d never—’

‘Are you sure? Maybe you’re afraid she might like it.’

Henry begins to stammer. ‘I think we should stop … I don’t think … it’s not something …’

Tempe laughs, rocking back in her chair. ‘I’m joking. The look on your face is priceless.’

Henry finally joins her, but not fully, not genuinely.

‘What are you two laughing about?’

‘Threesomes,’ says Tempe. ‘I was teasing Henry. He thought I was being serious.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he protests. ‘I knew it was a joke.’

We eat supper at the dining table, making small talk about politics and Brexit and how much people drink at weddings and whether we should order more champagne. Tempe leaves soon afterwards. I arrange the Uber on my account.

‘Has he sent any more messages?’ I ask.

‘I’m ignoring them.’

She wants to say goodbye to Henry, who is in the kitchen, drying dishes.

‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,’ she says. ‘But you look like a little boy when you blush.’

His face reddens.

‘There it is. So cute.’





24


‘She’s weird,’ says Henry as I slip into bed beside him. ‘That stuff she said about threesomes.’

He is propped on two pillows, flicking through my wedding magazines, but not paying any attention to the pages.

‘She says things to shock people, or to prompt a reaction,’ I say.

‘Don’t you find her creepy?’

‘Not at all. She’s a little socially awkward.’

‘I would have said uber-confident.’

‘I think she’s clever the way she puts people off their stride. She makes them think.’

‘About what?’

‘Everything.’

‘Well, I find it unnerving. The way she looks at you and hangs off your every word.’

‘Oh rubbish,’ I laugh.

‘And she’s always doing stuff for you,’ says Henry. ‘Picking up your dry cleaning and texting you reminders.’

‘She’s helping plan our wedding.’

‘OK, but it’s completely one-sided. She never wants anything in return.’

‘I found her the flat. I’m teaching her karate.’

Henry puts down the magazine and wraps his arms around me. ‘I just wonder how much we really know about her.’

I tell him about Tempe’s family – her two married sisters and the youngest, who died in the first wave of the pandemic. Her father is a soldier. Her mother is quite sick.

‘Little Women,’ says Henry.

‘What?’

‘You just described the plot of Little Women. The book. The movie. It’s almost the same story. The sisters, the father, the mother …’

‘That’s just a coincidence,’ I say, as I turn off the bedside light and lie awake, wondering if Tempe would lie to me.

An hour later, I’m still awake … still thinking. I slip out of bed and pad across the floor and down the stairs to the kitchen, where I begin searching drawers and cupboards, looking for the letter that Tempe told me to destroy. It was addressed to Margaret Brown and put in the wrong mailbox at the apartment she shared with Darren Goodall. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I don’t know why. When something is written on paper, it somehow has greater importance or permanence than an email or a text message. Destroying a letter is like ripping the pages from a book or defacing a photograph. It feels like vandalism.

I find the letter wedged inside the diary that my mother gives me every Christmas and never gets used apart from jotting down shopping lists or reminder notes. The envelope is postmarked from Belfast and was addressed and re-addressed at least twice before it reached Tempe.

I take a knife from the block, and make a neat slit along the top edge, aware that I’m breaking the law. Inside is a single handwritten page. The sender’s address is in the top left corner and the date is 12 October last year.

Dear Maggie,

I hope this letter reaches you, wherever you are. So many of my letters have bounced back to me that I’m never sure if I found you or not. Maybe this will arrive at the right address at the right time. So much depends upon timing, doesn’t it?

There are things I’ve been longing to tell you. But more than that, I’ve been praying that you might come home. I know you are disappointed in me. We both said things that were unkind and hurtful, and I wish I could take my words back, because I miss you so much.