The House Swap(24)

The words are in soft focus, blurring in front of my eyes, and I can’t push it away any more – the knowledge of what they mean, that night when I last saw these letters arranged in this precise formation and everything changed. I’m reaching for my phone and typing, connecting to the internet. I open my email and I enter the address I was told to use if there was any problem. There is nothing in my head, no space for thought. I type in the only words I can bring to the front of my mind.

Are you there?

Then I hit send.



Home


Caroline, April 2013


THE MOOD IN the office on a Tuesday morning is always low-key; the weekend glow faded, and a long stretch ahead until the next one. People chain-drink cups of coffee, hunch themselves over laptops and telephones, mutter to each other unenthusiastically. From his manager’s office, Steven shouts out bons mots and questions at intervals through the open door, trying to inject some life into the atmosphere, but it’s a losing battle. If offices could talk, ours on a Tuesday morning would say that it didn’t want to be here.

It’s different for me. My weekends at home are more to be endured than celebrated these days; a grim cycle of hope, frustration, disappointment and despair. Coming to the office is an exhilarating relief. Although I try to contain myself, being here floods me with energy. It’s like being drunk, except that nothing is blurred or out of focus – if anything, the world around me is startlingly bright and clear. I can’t focus on my work for more than minutes at a time, yet I’m getting it done faster and more efficiently than I have in years. It’s a distraction, and the quicker I can clear the decks, the more time I will have to think about Carl.

The instant-messenger icon at the base of my screen is flashing. I open the window, glancing around first to make sure that no one is watching. Pretty slow day, eh. Still, only twenty minutes until …

Clock-watching? I write back. For an instant, I let my eyes slide across the room. He’s reclining in his chair, staring at his computer with an expression of studied boredom as he stretches out and lazily taps a few words. I glance at my screen. Too right, the message says, and don’t tell me you’re not. As I look up, he does the same, and our eyes meet for a couple of seconds. The electricity of it makes me shiver, and I can barely believe that everything around us is carrying on as normal, sullen and oblivious. Impatience rockets through me. I push my chair back and walk quickly over to his desk, clutching my notebook to my chest.

‘Do you mind if we go through those accounts now?’ I ask lightly. ‘I know we said midday, but I want to get to the post office at lunch and I’d be better off going earlier.’

He stares up at me, expressionless. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Just give me five minutes, yeah?’

I grit my teeth. ‘Of course,’ I say sweetly. I walk back to my desk and sit down, flipping open the notebook and bending my head over it with an air of studied concentration. Picking up a pencil, I colour in between the lines, shading a pattern. My fingers are slippery with sweat. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that the messenger icon is flashing again, but I ignore it, seemingly intent on my task. I know he’s watching and, sure enough, it’s barely two minutes before he gets up and comes over, albeit at a maddeningly slow pace.

‘You know what,’ he says, ‘I think I’m ready now.’ He’s holding his laptop under his arm, his other hand stuffed casually into his pocket. I stand up and walk beside him through the office, towards the turning that leads to the meeting room. It’s the closest we’ve been all morning. He’s wearing the aftershave I like best, and the scent of it collects in the air between us, making my head swim.

I follow him into the room and close the door, shutting the rest of the office out. He puts the laptop down on the desk, plugs it in carefully and brings the presentation we have planned to discuss up on the screen. Then he turns to me and grins.

‘Give me five minutes,’ I say. ‘You—’ but I don’t have time to say anything more because he’s crossing the room fast and pinning me back against the wall next to the door, thrusting his body up on to mine and knocking the breath from me as he kisses me. His hands are holding me tightly in place and I push back against them. ‘No,’ he says, under his breath, increasing the pressure. My stomach clenches with desire and my fingers tighten in his hair, and I’m completely lost in this, wanting him to wrench my clothes away from my body and throw me down on to the floor. He kisses me again, harder. Time shifts and changes. I have no idea how long we’ve been doing this. I don’t want it ever to stop.

At last, his body relaxes and I feel the tension inside me unwind. He holds me more gently, brushes the hair back behind my ears. His smile starts at the same time as my own, and before I know it we’re laughing quietly together, still loosely intertwined. We kiss for a few more minutes, slowly now, his lips barely grazing mine. ‘You know,’ he says after a while, ‘you’d think this would get old.’

I nod, because I’ve thought the same myself. It’s been almost eight weeks now – snatched half-hours in this room or on the occasional lunch break, rationed to avoid suspicion; the odd precious evening out. We spend our time sitting around staring at each other like teenagers, talking and joking and kissing. Nothing else. It’s a physical and mental boundary that I don’t dare to cross while we are spending eight hours a day in each other’s company.