The House Swap(63)

A tiny premonitory trickle of instinct is travelling over me, making me shiver. Quickly, I load the Facebook app on my phone, then click through to my profile. At first, I can barely make out the picture. It’s a jumble of lines and shapes, blotches of darkness and colour. I enlarge it, peer closer. And then I see. It’s a car, mangled and misshapen, thrown at the roadside like a crumpled toy. The windows are shattered, shards of glass littering the lay-by, and through the dark hole of the front windscreen, the seats are darkly streaked with blood.

This time, the shiver that racks me is powerful and intense, sending the breath hissing through my parted lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Francis, weaving his way towards the table, carrying a tray heaped with burgers and fries. I should put the phone down, but my hand is clasped rigidly around it, unable to let go. Because I can’t hide from it any more. It’s staring me in the face and, as I stare back, I realize that, on some level, I’ve always been aware of it – that it isn’t surprise but guilt that’s paralysing me. I may not know exactly who has done this yet, who is in my home. But I know why she’s there.



Home


Caroline, July 2013


EDDIE AND I have a good run on the train, and my mother meets us at the station, waving gaily through the window as she steers into the car park. Eddie spots her instantly, jumping up and down on the spot with frenzied impatience.

‘Nanny! Nanny!’ he squawks, pulling at my sleeve, beaming up at me. As soon as the car glides to a halt in front of us, he runs forward and tugs at the door, squeaking his hello and launching himself into the back seat.

‘Well, bye, then,’ I say, with mock-outrage, leaning in to strap him into the car seat.

My mother laughs, glancing back at Eddie. ‘Sure you won’t come back with us for a bit?’ she asks.

‘No, I’d better get on.’ My mind skates uncomfortably around the lies I have told. Even to me, this disguise feels thin and unthought through. There’s nothing to stop Francis calling my parents’ house and asking to speak to me, and if he does there would be no innocent explanation I could give. All the same, I don’t really think it will happen and, even if it does, I’m not so sure that it would be a bad thing. More and more in recent weeks I’ve felt the threat of an oncoming explosion building inside me, tensing and tightening. Sooner or later, something has to give.

‘Suit yourself,’ my mother says cheerfully, leaning back in her seat and revving up the engine again. ‘Say bye bye, Eddie,’ she calls, as they pull away.

Eddie looks through the glass, smiling faintly at me, his eyes clear and untroubled. ‘Bye …’ I hear him saying faintly, blowing a kiss.

For an instant, I don’t want him to go, and I almost run after the car and flag it down. I could go back with them, spend the weekend with my son and my parents with a clear conscience. It would be simple. Soothing. But while I’m standing there they have turned out of sight, and I’m left clutching an overnight bag that is stuffed with expensive new underwear and pretty bikinis and clothes I’ve modelled in badly lit changing-room mirrors, imagining how Carl will look at me when he sees me in them, how they’ll soon be invisibly imprinted with his hands. And before I know it the weight in my heart drops away and I want to be with him so much that everything else fades into nothing at all.

I take the train up to King’s Cross and hurry out on to the main road, looking for the car he’s told me he’ll be hiring. His friend’s birthday party is in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles from the hotel we’ll be staying in. I scan the street anxiously, not seeing him. I wonder if he’s changed his mind. Going away together, even for such a short time, feels out of step with the way we’ve conducted things so far: snatched evenings in his flat, the odd hour crammed in around the rest of my life. But then I hear the sound of a car pulling up behind me and when I turn around he’s there, smiling through the open window and patting the seat next to him. ‘Hop in,’ he says.

My heart lifts and I scurry round to the passenger seat, sliding in and kissing him. He’s had his hair cut since we were last together and I run my fingertips over the newly shorn nape of his neck, feeling the way it scratches softly against my skin.

‘Like it?’ he asks, swinging the car out into the road.

‘Very much.’

He’s steering one-handed, his left hand straying across into my lap, running lightly up my thigh and smoothing the thin fabric of my skirt. In the rear-view mirror, his gaze slides to meet mine.

‘Good,’ he says mildly, and I feel the muscles of my stomach contract with desire, a quick, visceral shudder. I stretch my hands out in my lap, gripping my knees with my fingernails, grounding myself. When I glance to the side, he’s watching me again, his eyes flicking between me and the road. ‘You’ve taken your rings off,’ he says. ‘Mean business, do you?’

‘I thought we might use the swimming pool,’ I say; it’s a half-truth. I remember sitting on the train, easing the rings round and round my knuckle. The tightness of them, the angry redness of my skin when I finally managed to pull them away. They’re zipped up in my wallet now, safe and out of sight. I’m not sure what prompted me to remove them, when I never have before. But now, when I look at the bareness of my left hand, there’s a sudden, defiant surge of freedom and elation.