The Betrayals(105)

‘Not that difficult.’ Why should she tell him what it was like, to know she could never be herself, never undress – never even take off her gown, in case someone saw the bandages under her shirt? To push her voice deeper than was comfortable, to dread the days she menstruated, to have to sneak her bloodied rags into the servants’ waste-buckets and claim fever or diarrhoea when her cramps were so bad they blanked out everything else in her head? Once, when Léo saw a stray blot of blood on her floor, she had to nick her jaw deliberately with a razor to explain it; she still has the scar, under her ear. But worst of all was the constant fear that somehow she would give herself away: not because of biology but something else, some violation of their mysterious, untaught code. She cultivated arrogance, the most masculine mask she could think of, but at times it felt so flimsy she almost broke out in hysterical laughter, dreading the moment when someone would squint at her and say, ‘Hey, wait …’ He wouldn’t understand, not even if she tried to explain: two years of bleak, fragile, lonely happiness, until he got under her skin.

‘No,’ he says, ‘well, you got away with it, didn’t you? You must’ve thought we were all idiots. Especially me.’ He pauses. ‘Were you laughing up your sleeve at us, all that time? Sniggering. Poor pathetic Martin, can’t see what’s in front of him. Doesn’t even realise he’s being beaten by a girl.’

‘Is that why you care?’

He doesn’t seem to hear her. ‘I should’ve known – I should’ve … Emile always said you were using me. All that time. Lying about who you were. Was any of it true? Did you ever say anything you meant?’

‘Of course. Don’t be stupid.’

‘Letting us think you were someone you weren’t – inventing a whole life for yourself.’

‘That’s not the point,’ she says. ‘Why was it any of your business? Why does it matter? If I hadn’t lied, I wouldn’t have been able to—’

‘I thought you were dead!’ His voice cracks. He blinks, shocked, as if it was someone else who said it, not him; and then, with a strange slow exhalation, his knees fold and he subsides to the floor. He crouches there like an animal, his head bent. She stands still, frozen, uncomprehending; until he gives a sudden gasp, scrubbing at his face with his sleeve, and she realises he’s crying.

‘Aimé died,’ she says. It sounds hollow. ‘My brother died. I never lied about that.’

He says, forcing the words out, ‘I thought you were dead. I thought it was my fault. You let me think that …’

‘It was,’ she says. ‘It was your fault.’ It’s like finally being sick, after hours of rising nausea: a disgusting relief. She’d rather feel anger than shame.

He raises his head. His face is blotchy.

‘He sent a telegram,’ she says. ‘The night the marks were meant to go up. He asked me to come home. He said he didn’t feel safe on his own. So I packed. I was going to catch the sleeper. I would have been with him by the next morning. But—’ She turns away from him. He looks obscene, unmanned and raw-skinned. ‘You came to find me,’ she goes on, staring unseeing at the sunlit slope outside the window, the road down to the village. ‘You told me I’d won the Gold Medal. You made me promise to stay. So I stayed. And when I got home, it was too late.’

‘I didn’t know. How could I have known?’

‘You lied to me!’

‘No – I didn’t lie, I got it wrong, I truly thought—’

‘You lied to me. Don’t pretend it was a mistake – you submitted the wrong game, you made them fail me! And then you kissed me.’ She tries to control her voice, but it’s rising and rising. ‘What did you want? To humiliate me, every way you could?’

He’s on his feet. ‘It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t.’

She swings round to face him, drawing breath. He meets her eyes. With his shaggy, unoiled hair, and the weight he’s lost, he looks young again. His eyelashes are still wet.

And suddenly, when she most needs it, her anger is gone, sinking away to ash. ‘Yes,’ she says, and her throat aches. ‘Yes, I know.’ Confusion flickers across his face. She shuts her eyes. What if she admits to herself that he wasn’t the enemy? She’s been so angry with him, for so long: that he submitted the wrong game without asking her, that he told her she’d won when she hadn’t, that he kissed her. Even his diary didn’t absolve him, because he was only lying to himself. Self-indulgent, self-absorbed. Hadn’t he said he wanted to find a way to beat her? And he’d done it. Once and for all … He fooled himself, but he didn’t fool her. She’d seen through it. Labelling it ‘love’ – she shrinks from the memory of the kiss, of reading about the kiss later – ‘love’ just meant he hadn’t had to think about her; he could tell himself it wasn’t sabotage, it was a mistake. It was the best of excuses, an unassailable move.

And yet, what if …? The sight of his face has caught her off balance, as though all this time she’s been the na?ve one. She has blamed him for so long that now she’s lost. If it wasn’t his fault, then …? The question is an abyss at her feet: she’s tried so hard not to look at it directly. But now it’s there, undeniable, and she knows what the answer is. It wasn’t Léo’s fault, it was hers. Wholly hers. She’d read the telegram, and he hadn’t; she knew Aimé, and he didn’t. If it hadn’t been for her own sentiment and pride and (yes) desire …