Girl A(64)

‘I think that there’s something which I should probably tell you,’ I said.

‘This sounds like a good start to the weekend.’

‘I’m adopted.’

‘OK. By your parents in Sussex?’

‘Yep.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Older than you would expect. Fifteen.’

‘God, Lex. So – you know who your birth parents are?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and felt the shift in the comfort between us. Here we were, on the edge of it, together.

I told him only what he would have been able to read in a news report from the time. When I had finished, he was silent for a moment, and in my head I implored him to turn around, so that I could see his face. ‘God,’ he said. ‘Lex, I’m sorry.’ And, at ten a.m. and because he could never stand to be serious for very long: ‘You should have told me later in the day. When we’ll be closer to a drink.’

He turned to me and gathered me up towards him. ‘We can speak about this whenever you want to,’ he said. ‘But I don’t mind if you don’t.’

We staggered together for a time up the little path, until it became too narrow for two, and he was ahead of me again. That was JP: walking away from me, with his forward-lean and a light pack, towards the skyline. Following my months of indecision, he was able to discard my revelation back there on the path, a fruit skin, or else its core. By the summit, he was talking about lunch.

That night, after sex, we lay on top of the sheet in the inn, as far away from one another as we could be. Just our hands touching. Silence extended in every direction, so that the little human noises of our room – the toilet flush, or music from his phone – seemed loud, and embarrassing. I closed my eyes, and started awake with the sense of something missing. ‘Here,’ I said, and collected the bed covers from the floor. Beneath them, he turned to me.

‘I feel worse,’ he said, ‘about the things that I do to you. That we do together. After what you told me.’

‘Why? It’s what I want.’

‘Yes. But still.’

‘You know – for what it’s worth – they’re not connected. And even if they were—’

‘Yes?’

‘Would it matter?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

It was too dark to read him. I reached for his face and found hair, then the notch of an ear. He shifted closer.

‘When I’m away,’ he said, ‘and I need something to think about. You know? I think of you very early on. We were in my flat. You looked at me, and – you told me what you wanted. The way that you said it. It was more than I could have hoped for. And I was terrified, of course.’

‘Good,’ I said.

We were a few seconds from falling asleep.

‘There’s a lot that I’m ashamed of,’ I said. ‘But not this.’

I had assumed that JP was being disingenuous; that in time he would be curious, and begin to ask his questions. I was wrong. JP – who was so boundlessly fascinated by matters of morality, or of the law – had little interest in old suffering. His acceptance of my confession, without any disquiet or judgement, lulled me into a sense of absolute security; not just that he loved me, which he had already said, but that it was possible to overcome the past as comprehensively as Dr K had promised. I, too, could be happy.

We lived as I had only secretly hoped that I might live. During the week we worked, arriving home at ten, eleven, midnight, and talking together in bed, in the precious last minutes of that day, and sometimes over into the next one. A lost hour of sleep – the denser fogginess in the morning – seemed like a relatively small price to pay. At the weekend we saw friends, or travelled to Europe late on a Friday evening, landing weary and excited in Porto or Granada or Oslo. I bought postcards for Evie, and wrote them at my desk when I was back. Usually something dull or hideous, chosen to make her laugh. Highways of Norway, or a llama drinking port. Other times, my sentimentality won over. I picked a shot of the Alhambra at dusk, just as they lit the walls. Do you remember, I said, when we saw it in the atlas?

Foolish: to assume that we would live that way for ever. Two years in, JP’s mother visited us in London. His history on the doorstep, wearing coral lipstick and mid-heels. He booked dinner for the three of us at a sleek basement bar in Mayfair. There was a sake list, and small plates. I knew as soon as I met JP’s mother that it was a terrible choice. At the restaurant, she complained about the comfort of her chair and the complications of the menu and the lighting at the table. ‘It’s ever so difficult,’ she said to the waiter, ‘to see what I’d like to eat.’ The waiter returned with a small torch which could be clipped to the menu, and JP winced.

When the food arrived, she took fussy little spoonfuls from each dish and moved them around her plate. JP ate in silence, enjoying nothing. ‘This is great,’ I said, and went for seconds.

‘You’ve got a big appetite,’ JP’s mother said, and I shrugged.

His mother was staying at a bed and breakfast by Euston, and we hailed a taxi and stopped at the address. JP and I came out of the taxi to say goodbye. It had rained while we were eating. Puddles of light beneath the streetlamps. The building was a dirty cream, and flower baskets drooped on either side of the entrance. ‘It’s perfectly fine,’ JP’s mother said, ‘although the room’s a little warm.’