The Family Remains(27)
Sure. I’ll be there at seven.
She didn’t mark the message with a kiss or a love-themed emoji. She hoped he would notice and feel appropriately concerned about her.
That night she packed a few things into her shoulder bag; she didn’t want to arrive with an overnight bag and give Michael the impression that she was prepared to move back in so easily after what he’d put her through.
She felt nervous as she put her key into the lock of his apartment at seven o’clock, so pulled it out again and knocked on the door instead. Her heart raced at the sound of his footsteps coming down the hallway. She had spent so many hours consumed with thoughts of Michael, picturing Michael in various states and various scenarios – with his ex-wife, with other women, on a flight back to the USA – that the idea of seeing him in real life, of him standing before her in human form, seemed almost impossible to assimilate. And yet the door opened and suddenly there he was; tanned, loose-limbed, jolly, in a pale blue shirt and navy suit trousers, bare feet, a glass of wine in his hand and a smile wreathing his handsome face.
‘Baby.’
Baby.
Just that. What? What did it mean? What did any of it mean? Did it mean he was sorry? Did it mean she should forgive him? Or that he had forgiven her? Who was right? Who was wrong?
Suddenly she was in his arms, a light embrace. Not the embrace she felt the need for, not the desperate embrace of newlyweds not long back from their honeymoon reunited after their first postnuptial row. But just a normal, perfectly average embrace between a husband and a wife.
Then just as quickly he was walking away from her and towards the kitchen where Rachel could smell good things cooking and he was saying something to her that sounded like ‘I have a really nice Sicilian white. Or a chilled vodka? But I’m all out of tonics, so it would have to be orange juice’ but she couldn’t be sure because she wasn’t really listening.
‘Rach?’
‘What? Oh, er, sorry. White. Please. Thank you.’
In the kitchen she took a stool and then the wine he offered her, and she stared and stared at him, this man she’d married two and half weeks ago on one of the most romantic and remarkable days of her life, this man who’d called her a fucking stranger on their honeymoon and then stopped touching her, this man who was acting as if they hadn’t just spent three days apart from each other with no communication. For minutes and minutes, Rachel felt a kind of numb muteness.
‘How’s your week been?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you know, it’s been … the worst week of my life.’
She watched his reaction. His wrist stopped turning the wooden spoon in the pot he was tending on the hob. He looked up at her and said, ‘Oh, baby. What’s been happening?’
And then the muteness passed, and rage arrived.
‘What’s been happening?’ she asked in a voice reeded with disbelief. ‘Are you serious?’
He narrowed his eyes at her and made a face of confusion.
‘Fucking hell, Michael. We got back from our fucking honeymoon on Saturday. I went home on Sunday and it is now Wednesday and this is the first time I’ve seen you or spoken to you. We didn’t have sex for the last ten days of our holiday, you said you thought you’d married a fucking stranger, and now you’re acting like none of that ever happened. You’re … you’re … offering me wine and … and stirring things. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand what’s happening?’
She paused and looked up at him. He put down the wooden spoon on a rest and used the heels of his hands to lean against the counter. She saw him sigh. ‘You’, he said, ‘have got this all the wrong way round.’
‘Excuse me?’
He sighed again. ‘Why do you think we didn’t have sex for the rest of the honeymoon?’
‘Because I had disgusted you with my distasteful suggestions.’
He threw her an infuriatingly patronising look and said, ‘That is not what happened.’
‘Then what? What happened?’
‘Well, you made a suggestion. I didn’t like the idea of the suggestion. You went cold on me. How do you think I’ve been feeling?’ He asked this last question in a neutral tone of voice, rhetorically, almost, as though he didn’t really expect her to think about how he’d been feeling.
Rachel opened her mouth to respond but then realised she didn’t know what to say. After a second, she said, ‘I did not go cold on you. You went cold on me.’
‘Well, that’s your interpretation of events. I just seem to recall seeing a lot of your back in bed at night.’
‘What! Michael, Jesus. NO. That is not how it was. You know that’s not how it was. You literally stopped touching me from the night I made the suggestion. I tried, every night I tried. I offered you neck rubs and cuddles and you kept saying you were too tired, too hot, too whatever.’
‘Well, like I say. That is your interpretation of events. I just recall a girl who was disappointed and pissed off because she wasn’t going to get to do the things she wanted to do, and a brand-new husband left feeling a little inadequate and scared that the girl would rather leave him and find someone who did want to do the things she wanted to do.’
Rachel gasped. ‘Wait. No. No, that’s absolutely not true. That’s not what happened. I could not have made it more clear that I still wanted to have sex with you. I could not have been more blatant. And the thing, the thing that I suggested was just fun, Michael. That’s all. That’s not who I am. That’s not what I am.’ She pressed her hand to her chest. ‘It was just meant to be fun. It was just …’