The House Swap(16)

My eyes meet his, and I see the unspoken question in them – the one he can’t seem to stop asking, even after all this time. A great sense of weariness sweeps over me, sucking my energy with it. Maybe it’s unreasonable, but I can’t help feeling exasperated. Angry, even. It’s as if it has been accepted that, at any given moment, every few minutes we spend apart, I might well be filling the time fucking someone else. In the early days, I would try and fight this with denial. It’s over. It’s over. I said it again and again, and it sounded more unconvincing every time, although it couldn’t have been more true. At times, I had wanted to explain – to say the words that would make him believe me – but whenever I opened my mouth to try, I thought of how his face would change, the way he would look at me and realize what I was. And those words wouldn’t come.

Now, I face him head on and speak clearly and quietly. ‘There is nothing to worry about,’ I say. ‘I bumped into this woman. We went for a coffee. That is it.’ I let the space collect around my words, careful not to overjustify.

Francis nods, his face hardening with the effort it costs him to believe me. ‘I know,’ he says.

‘Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.’ It comes out without my wanting it to – a petty, ill-judged thought pushed into reality by that small, defiant part of me that can’t seem to stop fighting. As soon as I hear the unpleasant ring to my voice, I want to take it back.

‘Caroline, why are you being like this?’ he asks, his expression wounded and uncomprehending. ‘I didn’t accuse you of anything. I was just worried. I’ve come here to have a good time with you. To have fun. Is that too much to ask?’

‘Of course not,’ I say, trying to soften my tone.

We are standing very close together in the hallway, our faces almost touching. I put my arms around his neck and dip my face into the hollow, breathing in, talking myself down. It’s understandable that he is still suspicious, and that it can make him anxious and needy. Even if what I did was explainable, it wasn’t excusable. I can’t expect its impact to disappear overnight.

‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry,’ and he draws back a little and smiles with the familiar mouth that I have kissed for fifteen years. It isn’t easy, now, to remember the sullen lines in which it is still sometimes set. That mouth belongs to someone else.

‘I’m sorry, too,’ I murmur, trying to fight the irrational, unreasonable burning in my chest. Sometimes, the better he is, the more enraged I feel.

We stay there in each other’s arms for another full minute, loosely clasped, feeling the rhythm of our breathing. His heartbeat against mine is quick and strong. The closeness slowly does its work and calms me. I lean my head on to his shoulder, staring emptily at the wall opposite me.

There’s a little alcove that dips just past the front door. It looks designed for a coat rack that isn’t there. Now there is just a small, framed picture, hanging in the middle of the whitewashed wall. A stylized photograph of a park, a river curling diagonally along the edge of the frame and the edge of an ornamental garden beyond. I stare at it for what feels like hours before I realize what I am looking at, and when I do the shock grips me. It’s Hyde Park, the bank of the Serpentine where it runs close to Kensington Gardens, the stretch I once visited with you. It’s impossible not to imagine us there, lying next to that riverbank in the photograph. I can feel the grass brushing my bare arms. The heat of the sun beating down on my closed eyelids, and the knowledge of your shadow above, altering the quality of the light.

My stomach lurches with nausea, and I’m thinking of the flowers in the bathroom, and of the music that Francis was playing yesterday when I came back here. For months, I have sidestepped these kinds of reminders, these unassuming little tripwires that would have meaning only for me and you. Now they are crowding me so much I can hardly think. I don’t understand how they fit together, and why they’re coming at me now, in this unfamiliar place. This house was meant to be an escape – a step out of my life. But this feels less like a step out than a step back in, into a place I don’t want to remember.

I don’t want to be here. The thought hits without warning, irrational but strong.

‘Caro?’ Francis is pulling back from my arms, alert to some change in my breathing. ‘Are you all right?’

I stare at him, and I can’t work out if his expression is knowing or na?ve. At the corner of my vision, the picture hangs. I can’t understand how I haven’t noticed it before. ‘Yes,’ I say slowly, fighting past the tightness in my throat. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’



Home


Francis, March 2013


EVERY DAY STARTS the same way. Being wrenched from what passes for sleep and glancing at the glowing orange numbers on the bedside clock, registering that they read 04.00. Give or take a few minutes either way. The air thick with other people’s sleep and the echoes of my own troubled dreams.

There is a pounding in my head, spreading down to my chest. At first, it’s wordless; a gut instinct, animal and fierce. Then it thins and clarifies. It’s the same thing every time. A creeping, nebulous sense that something terrible is about to happen – or maybe that it has already happened and I just don’t know it. Every morning I wake up braced against this blow. It hasn’t fallen yet. But it’s just a matter of time. I lie there in the dark for a couple of minutes, collecting these thoughts and trying to press them down, but they spring up eagerly again and again, as if suspended on tightly coiled wires.