Woman Last Seen(30)

“I love you,” he says, over and over again.

I say it less, but I mean it more because I am risking more. More than he knows, more than he can ever imagine. More than anyone could.

We power through a fast-track course on getting to know one another. Every time I am with him it feels like we’re on a particularly successful first date. Each revelation, each discovery, is a delight.

“If you could hop on a plane right now, where would you go?”

“New Orleans. The hospitality, the music, the food. I’ll take you one day. You?”

“Bora Bora, French Polynesia. I’ve never been. I’ve just seen pictures. It looks like paradise.”

“I’ll take you there too,” he says joyfully. I consider my inheritance. The obscene amount of money my father has left me. At least an obscene amount as far as I am concerned. It crosses my mind that I can take Daan to New Orleans or to French Polynesia. I can fly us both there, first class. There would still be plenty left. I could buy property, invest, start up a business. There are a number of things I could do with the money. That’s the point of money—it affords opportunities. I haven’t told anyone about it yet. Not even Daan. It’s only just cleared, and it’s sat—currently untouched—in a bank account that I opened specially to receive it. I don’t understand the inheritance. The money my father has left me means for the first time in my life I don’t have to work. Not if I don’t want to. The idea is anathema to me. When my father left, my mother struggled financially. We lived a life expecting to drown and then he left me enough money to sail off into the sunset. Was it a gift, a way of begging for forgiveness, a way of making up to me at the very end? Or was it a final divisive act? Deliberately calculated to cause destruction and aggro? That thought is so painful whenever I have it, I feel a stabbing sensation in my stomach. I’m training myself not to think that way. Put that idea out of my head. Sometimes not thinking about something is the only way forward. The only way to survive. But the inheritance has caused a schism. It has guaranteed none of my brothers want to continue any sort of relationship with me—they are all hurt and furious. They think I must have schemed and plotted to secure such a chunk. I did not. It makes me wonder, did my father ever like them after all? Did he like any of us?

“What’s the best meal you’ve ever had?” Daan asks.

“In Portugal, on holiday. We had the most implausibly good, deliciously tender, fresh-from-the-ocean octopus. It was sautéed and served in a huge cast-iron skillet bubbling with olive oil, garlic and spicy sliced purple onions.”

“We?”

“I was with my dad and stepmother. You?”

“Melt-in-your-mouth steak, eaten outside, cooked on the fire at our safari lodge in South Africa after a game drive.”

“Our?”

“My girlfriend at the time.” Not one that earned a name in his potted history. He pulls me close, wraps his arms around me, kisses me. Stopping my mouth so I can’t ask any more about the “girlfriend at the time.” I am 100 percent aware of this technique; I let it slide. I concentrate on the pressure of his lips, enjoying it gain in force and intent. The getting-to-know-you chats are constantly interrupted by sex. Our bodies are also getting to know each other. We’re aerobic, synchronized and insatiable. When we break apart sweating and temporarily satisfied, I ask, “Did you have a nickname as a child?”

And so it goes on.

Tell me something I wouldn’t guess about you.

Who do you talk to the most?

What are you most afraid of?

What do you think your most attractive quality is?

And your least?

I answer as honestly as possible, I think he does too. We are fascinated and fascinating. We charm and excite one another. I look my very best when I am with him. Partially because I try to, partially because I’m in love and don’t have to try. Daan has an air about him that is vaguely old-fashioned, almost otherworldly. He is extremely polite. He opens doors and insists, “After you”—not just to buildings but cars too. He uses phrases like “You are the bees’ knees” or “Best not to over-egg the pudding.” He then smiles at me, waiting for me to acknowledge his expert control of the English language. He likes talking about the weather—“It’s a pea-souper”—and he refers to his umbrella as a “brolly.” Despite his youth and foreignness, he seems to enjoy presenting himself as some sort of English gent from a time not absolutely attributable, but most probably past. Am I part of that? Does he see me as a damsel who needs to be rescued? Does he see refinement and otherness where really there is simply caution?

My continual insistence that I can’t move in with him yet seems to entice Daan. He says he doesn’t see the need for delay. He doesn’t want a long engagement. His parents give him the deeds to the luxurious apartment by way of an engagement present. “We can redecorate, make it ours,” he says, excitedly. He hates uncertainty and limbo, which he insists engagement is.

I can’t find a decent and robust counterargument to Daan’s insistence that engagements constitute “limbo,” so three months later I walk into the Chelsea register office and marry him. However, despite the efficiency of the getting-to-know-you sessions, I’m not sure how well I do know him. I sometimes think I know what he is feeling, other times I know I don’t. But then again, how well does Daan know me?