Seven Days of Us(73)

It was so good to read your blogs (thanks for sticking up for me!) and get your e-mails. So it sounds like it’s been an eventful quarantine . . . How are the Birch family dealing with your man Jesse showing up? So sorry to hear about your mother, that has to be hard. Guess you just have to keep trying to talk to her.

I’ve not told my family about us either, but I might have to . . . They’ll realize by this stupid grin I can’t keep off my face. Counting the hours till your quarantine is up, and I can see you again.

I have to go, my nurse is hovering—we’ve to do a lumbar puncture. I think she has a crush on me, as a minor celebrity. FYI she’s at least sixty.

Missing you, stóirín.


Happy Days Haag-negative kisses,

XXXXXXX

Olivia kept reading and rereading. She wished she could bottle this feeling—a delicious Venn diagram of joy and relief. Coming after the chat with Andrew, it was like the day had turned around. She would e-mail Sean first thing tomorrow, she decided, curling up under the heavy blankets. A barn owl screeched outside. For now, she wanted to savor not waiting for a response.





? 8 ?


   December 29, 2016


   Quarantine: Day Seven





Andrew


THE SMOKING ROOM, WEYFIELD HALL, 4:16 A.M.

? ? ?

Andrew couldn’t get comfortable. The sofa appeared to have potholes. He ripped off his airline eye mask, pressing his face into an itchy embroidered cushion instead. The fight still seemed utterly implausible. It was so unlike Emma—the accusations, the histrionics, the bottle smashing. It had been a 1980 Margaux, too. And all because of his sheer idiocy, in assuming he could keep Leila’s letter from her. What had he been thinking?

Mentally, he retraced his steps. The morning of the bonfire he had buried the letter in a box of newspapers, ready to throw on the flames. But he had sensed Olivia watching him and stalled—the box still at his feet. And then Jesse had arrived. And with every passing hour, Leila’s words had needled more fiercely. If, some day, he contacts you, please tell him that not a day passed when I didn’t think of him. My dying wish is that he has been happy. How could he burn those words—the only words Jesse might ever have from his mother? It felt too final. And so he’d retrieved the letter from its newsprint coffin and hidden it in his briefcase again last night. He still couldn’t think how Emma had found it. He’d gone to the absurd lengths of flushing a lavatory on his way down from the attic last night to excuse his creeping around. As far as he knew, he’d only encountered George torturing a spider. Not that it really mattered. She knew now.

A stab of remorse, as he relived the row in the cellar, bled into dozens of tributaries. The way he’d taken Emma for granted, exploiting her good nature and capacity to keep cogs turning. The way he’d allowed their love to drift from the notes in the attic to their rubbing along today—shrouded in forced jollity. He thought of what Emma had said about how he never talked to Olivia, knowing it was true. What stopped him from telling his daughter that her work was remarkable? He’d had the chance earlier. Dawn leaked through the curtains, and he flopped onto his back to start dissecting his own life. Why had he given up on any drive to do good when he’d resigned from The Times? What had happened to his ambition, his grit? He thought of all the poor restaurant owners whose businesses he’d wrecked for a snigger in his column. That snide voice wasn’t really him. Or at least, it hadn’t been. It was a pose he’d learned to put on for the job, just as he used to pull on his flak jacket and go in search of the truth. Each regret seemed to summon another, as if he’d turned over a log in his mind and revealed a writhing mass of wood lice.

Except, hadn’t there been something strangely invigorating about the clash with Emma? It was years since they’d voiced raw feelings, uncensored. Even their exchange by the chaise longue, after Jesse’s arrival, had been restrained—as if they’d both looked over a cliff and decided to teeter on the edge. There was relief in seeing Emma lose it just now, dropping the head prefect act. She used to get angry, sometimes, when they were young. He’d found it sort of sexy at the time. But when Olivia arrived, she took to damming any conflict with a hissed: “Not in front of the baby.” And then, at some point, they’d given up on fighting along with everything else. Part of him longed to crawl into bed beside Emma now, as if her body might soothe his fevered thoughts. It used to, years ago, when he was woken by dreams of bombs and bullets and bodies in dusty roads. But he knew she wouldn’t want that.





Phoebe


THE DRIVE, WEYFIELD HALL, 9:00 A.M.

? ? ?

Phoebe stood on one leg in the drive, hoping to catch some signal. The cold wormed into her ears and stiffened her fingers. Still, it was better than being indoors. She couldn’t face her family, or—worse—Jesse, and she couldn’t bear the bungalow, where George’s aftershave haunted every breath. She thought she could actually feel a pain in her heart, like a shard of glass, somewhere behind her left breast. She’d lain in bed for hours this morning, trying to absorb what had happened, raking over the past weeks. What had made George change his mind? She’d tried so hard to be the perfect girlfriend. Her bikini line had remained pristine for months, while she waited for him to propose. All that smarting agony, and this was what she got in return. She kicked out at some dry leaves in rage, forgetting too late not to swing her sore foot and yelping with pain. Was it all the drama this week at Weyfield that had freaked him out? She shut down the voice that told her George should be able to deal with illness, secrets, arguments. Approaching the road, she caught a bar of signal. She stared at it, willing it to grow, to bring a message from him. But when a lone text came it was Lara, asking What are you and G doing for New Year’s? and Phoebe realized, with a bump, that she was no longer part of “you and G.” She was just Phoebe, with nothing to show for herself but an embarrassing job. “You and George” had been part of who she was for so long now. Being half of a couple was the only thing that made her a grown-up. A gray Audi, like his, swept past and she contemplated another bout of sobs. She was already sick of crying, of the puffy feeling in her face, the stinging eyes, the aching throat—and it had only been a day. She still hadn’t contacted him, on her mother’s advice. She didn’t know what she’d say anyway. It was hard to disentangle her pride from her heart, to know which had taken the more crushing blow. She still felt sick when she thought of trying to tell everyone that the wedding was off. But the same voice at the back of her mind kept asking: “Are you surprised, really?” She thought of the way she’d struggled to picture their wedding, their children, George as an old man. Perhaps she’d never truly believed it was going to happen. And then she thought of the thing Jesse had said, which she knew, deep down, made too much sense not to be true. The way George was so disgusted by gay men, but always pointed them out in public. Calling everything gay all the time. How he’d never been that fussed about sex. The hot humiliation of it crawled over her skin. She would ask him outright. She might not be able to see his face, but she’d be able to tell by his voice. She deserved to know. He owed her that much.