The House Swap(65)

‘I wish you could come with me tomorrow,’ he says suddenly. It’s the first time he’s mentioned anything like this. Despite our deep connection, our lives are fundamentally divided. We’ve never met each other’s family or friends, never been able to announce our relationship publicly – never done any of the things that would make it real in the eyes of the world, or perhaps even to ourselves.

‘I wish I could, too,’ I say. There’s a lump in my throat. I know that if I suggested I could come after all, he’d laugh and dismiss it. As far as he’s concerned, I don’t exist for him anywhere but in the private spaces we’ve carved out for each other. He knows the score, and he’s made his peace with it. For the first time, I wonder what this really is to him, this no-man’s-land he’s created. I imagine him lying awake at night and thinking about what the hell he’s doing, how he’s just wasting time with me. I wonder if he wishes he’d never met me at all.

‘Hey,’ he says, smoothing the hair back behind my ears. ‘Don’t look so sad.’

‘I am sad.’ My voice is so quiet it would be easy to pretend I hadn’t spoken at all, but I force myself to speak louder, looking up straight into his eyes, only inches from my own. ‘I don’t want this to end.’

He sighs and continues stroking my hair, his hand moving rhythmically and tenderly across my skull. ‘Nor do I, Caro,’ he says, ‘but it has to happen soon. I know we’ve been talking about it for ages, but you know I’ve always wanted you, and I haven’t been able to resist this, but it doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t …’ He pauses, tries to sort his thoughts into words. ‘You must see I can’t be in a long-term relationship with someone who’s married.’

I feel the breath draw up through my body, and it’s the closest I’ve ever been to telling him. That I’m really not sure what Francis and I are still doing together – that the way we live now reminds me of two strangers skating around each other on thin black ice, unhappily circling the rink of our marriage. And that now I’m here with him I’m surer than ever that I’m in love with him, that I’m terrified I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life if I let him go. I don’t know why I can’t say it.

Tears are blurring my eyes and I see their echo rising in his own, and by the time he kisses me we’re both crying and I can feel the wetness on his skin.

‘Come on,’ he says after a while, wiping his hand across his eyes. ‘This is stupid. We’re not here for long, and we should enjoy it. Let’s go back in and get an early dinner. OK?’

‘OK.’ I dry my eyes with the back of my sleeve, blinking the last of my tears away. I know he’s right. Whatever the time is for this conversation, it isn’t now. As we stroll back over the lawn together, his hand in mine, I feel the happiness sweeping back, ironing over the last few minutes as if they were never there. I won’t think about them. Not now.

We eat our dinner in the near-deserted restaurant, laughing at the awkward plastic flowers poking out of the tabletop vase, taking our time poring over the laminated menus and in the end choosing almost at random. When the elderly waitress brings a bottle of wine, she smiles indulgently at our clasped hands, radiating bonhomie and approval. I could change her expression, I think, if I told her what was really happening here. As I taste the wine, cool and crisp, the idea of being some sort of scarlet woman suddenly seems funny. It isn’t who I am. It’s not how this feels.

‘It’s all right, this, isn’t it?’ Carl comments halfway through dinner, indicating his food with an air of mild revelation.

‘It’s actually really nice.’ I up the ante, widening my eyes in surprise. The food is pretty bog standard, if I stop to think about it, but in this moment everything feels amplified, ten times better than it really is. ‘Not as good as your cooking, of course.’ My sole experience of his cooking has been hastily cooked pasta one night in his flat when we were both too wired and strung out on sex to want to go out for dinner, but he nods as if accepting his due.

‘Yeah,’ he says, with no attempt at false modesty, ‘I’m pretty good at that. Pretty good at most things,’ he adds, smiling wickedly across the table.

Abruptly, we’re standing up and walking fast across the restaurant, pausing only to give our room number to the waitress and ask her to put the meal on the bill. My heart is beating fast and my legs are weak as I follow him down the corridor. He unlocks the door and I’m barely inside before he’s slammed it behind me and pressed me up against it, forcing my body back against the hard wood. He takes my hands and pins them above my head, keeping them there with his hand gripped around my wrists as he kisses me hard, his tongue in my mouth and his teeth biting at my lip, the smart of blood bursting in my mouth. ‘Tell me you want it,’ he says into my ear, and I hear myself saying things I thought I’d never say, the words tumbling out as I impatiently arch my hips up to his and he pushes down my skirt with his free hand, ripping it away.

He picks me up into his arms and, in another moment, we’re on the bed and I catch sight of us in the long mirror on the far wall, my hands tangled in his hair and his body on mine, the strong, lean muscles of his shoulders rolling as he eases out of his shirt. The curtains are still drawn and the lamplight casts our shadows on to the wall, moving together, and I can hear my breath coming fast and urgently as I wrap my legs around his and he pushes his way inside me. We move slowly at first, his hands unhurried and intense on my body. He says something I can’t catch. Harder, I say. Yes.