The Family Remains(28)
Michael sighed, picked up the wooden spoon, started to stir again. ‘And then the girl takes her suitcase and disappears for three days and doesn’t get in touch and leaves the brand-new husband thinking that maybe, just maybe, he is now single again. That it is over. And then the girl deigns to send a message and the brand-new husband is too scared to think what this might mean and so he goes to the grocery store and buys organic chicken breasts and the most expensive tomatoes he can find and busies himself with the distraction of chopping them all up and making them taste good and the girl arrives and tells the husband that actually, this is all, all of this sadness and fear and worry, it is all somehow, in fact, his fault.’
He stopped stirring again and stared hard into Rachel’s eyes. She had been mesmerised by the singsong intonation of his words but now they had sunk in and she shook her head slightly, as if trying to dislodge a blockage, a lump of something that would make sense of everything. She thought back to every moment of agony she had lived through since she left Michael’s flat on Sunday evening. She thought back to the space between them in the huge bed in the Seychelles. Her shrugged-off touch. The wall of ice that emanated from him, every single night. She shook her head again.
‘Well,’ she said eventually. ‘That is not how I remember it, Michael. It really is not how I remember it at all. I thought you hated me.’
‘And should I?’
‘What? Hate me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No! Of course you shouldn’t hate me. I haven’t done anything wrong!’
‘Yes, well, neither have I.’
‘No. And I never said you had. I just …’ She sighed. ‘What happens now?’
‘Now,’ he replied, pulling open a packet of fresh parsley, ‘we eat. We drink. And then …’
‘Yes? Then?’
‘Well, let’s just see, shall we? Let’s just see.’
The conversation was strained at first, but as the wine softened their moods, it became livelier, almost skittish in its attempts to steer clear of anything incendiary or controversial. They talked about their jobs; they talked about plans for the summer. Michael was going to get the house in Antibes repainted and deep cleaned, the pool emptied and refilled, so that they could spend the summer there. They discussed the possibility of buying new bedding and towels, so that Rachel could have a proper fresh start as the wife of the house. She resisted asking any questions about Lucy, about what sort of bedding she had left, what sort of towels, had she used the swimming pool, had she overseen her own renovation of Michael’s house? She kept her questions neutral. And then, after they’d eaten, the atmosphere ripened and deepened with the uneasy anticipation of what happened next.
‘Well, I guess …’ She looked at the time on her phone. ‘It’s nearly ten. We should …?’
‘Bed?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Great. Well then …’
Michael got to his feet and put his hand out for her, which she took, with an uncertain smile, and then followed him into the bedroom.
Here he gently removed her clothes and ran his fingers across her skin and did all the soft, gentle, Michael things that Rachel had started to take for granted and which now felt like abundant golden gifts. He removed her bra from behind and then turned her around and kissed her on her mouth, a deep, endless kiss that made her shudder from her scalp to her fingertips. They moved to the bed and Michael laid her down, then stood above her as he removed his own clothes, and Rachel watched, wide-eyed with want, with relief, with love. When Michael was naked, he straddled her and kissed her again and Rachel put her hands on to his hips and moved him closer, guiding him towards her, ready, so ready after all these days and days without. She pushed her groin towards his and then pulled away again at the sensation of nothing where there should be something, where there was always something.
For a few minutes this continued, but no matter what Rachel did it became apparent that Michael was not going to be able to do what she so badly wanted him to do. Michael growled with frustration and Rachel touched her hand to the side of his face and said, ‘It’s fine. It’s OK. Don’t worry about it.’ But as the words left her lips, she felt herself being forcibly, roughly shoved across the bed, hard enough to make her yell out, and Michael was off the bed and striding towards the bookshelves where he grabbed a handful of books and threw them across the room with a primal scream. Rachel instinctively brought herself into a foetal bunch, her arms wrapped around her knees, and then, as another handful of books arced across the room in her direction, she pulled the duvet up as high as she could get it.
‘Michael,’ she said, peering through a gap in her arms. ‘Fuck. Michael! Stop! I told you. It doesn’t matter.’
Michael spun round. His face was hot with violence. He looked at her and he said, ‘It does fucking matter, Rachel. It does matter. This is … this is you. This is all your fault.’
‘What?’
‘You. You and your fucking “tie me up” bullshit. You and your other guys. Guys who’ve done that to you. Every time I shut my eyes, there they are. Lined up. And I can’t, I cannot get them out of my head, Rachel. You put them there. Bunch of fucking creeps.’
‘But, Michael, no! There was no “line of guys”. It was just one or two boyfriends, that’s all. Just … nothing serious.’