The House Swap(7)

There are eggs and milk in the fridge, if nothing else, and a quick scout through the minimalist kitchen cupboards reveals a bag of flour, so I make a pancake batter and heat a frying pan on the hob. I’m keeping myself busy, but as I stir and pour I can’t help thinking about the flowers on the windowsill in the bathroom. Their image hangs there like an eye-mote, glimmering pinkly at the corners of my mind.

This sort of thing happened a lot, in the early days. I’d be caught out at almost every turn by a song playing in a shop or an idle turn of phrase from a stranger. Everything reminded me of you, because it was so easy to make the connections – you were at the very top level, all the time. In the same way, back when Francis and I first got engaged, I found myself noticing other newly engaged women everywhere I went. They were easy to spot, because they only wore one ring on that finger, and often it was slightly too big or too tight, so they would fiddle with it. It was like that, only it wasn’t a good feeling. It was like it in the worst possible way.

I thought I’d got past that. It was because it was unexpected, I suppose. As I prod at the edges of the batter in the frying pan, watching it bubble and harden, I’m thinking of that afternoon in the market, and the way you grabbed the roses from that stall, saying you wanted me to have them, even if I couldn’t keep them. The way the petals felt on my fingertips. Cool and soft. And the scent of them that lingered on my skin, long after I’d left them lying on the station platform and taken the train back home.

I’m still staring at the frying pan, turning the memory over in my head, when I become conscious of a creeping sensation across the back of my neck – a wordless warning. I glance around me, registering the bare, blameless surfaces, the evenly spaced spotlights. There’s nothing here to unsettle me, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being observed; the instinct urgent and strong, in the same way that the presence of a stranger in the house at night might be sensed, even through closed eyes.

Outside. I swing round to face the window, and it’s barely half a second – the smooth gliding of a shadow, something half seen and snatched away. It could be a trick of the light, but it’s enough. I peer out, looking for something, anything. The neat little square of lawn is empty, but I think I catch the faintest ruffle of the leaves at the far side, the kind of tremulous movement that could be the aftershock of someone pushing past and through.

‘I was going to do that!’ The sound of Francis’s voice makes me jolt. He’s suddenly behind me, putting his arms around my waist and briefly kissing the back of my neck. ‘I don’t want you to be slaving away over a hot stove all week.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry. I just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I thought I might as well.’

‘Something on your mind?’ His expression is anxious, solicitous. ‘You look a bit rattled.’

My eyes stray back to the kitchen window. The garden is empty and the leaves are still again. I shake my head. ‘No. It’s fine.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘If you’re sure. Well, shall we have these and then go into London in a bit, when we’re ready? I thought maybe we could go to a museum or something, have some lunch out, then, I don’t know, do something else. Is there anything you fancy doing?’

‘Not sure … I’ll have a think.’ Even a year on, it feels new to hear him making plans and suggestions. It has the curious effect on me of wanting to relinquish responsibility completely and be borne along on the tide of his enthusiasm. There is no need for me to steer and control our days now. I don’t want to decide what we do or where we do it.

We eat the pancakes at the wooden breakfast table, joking about how Eddie would commandeer them all if he were here. I miss the sound of his voice, and I think about calling Mum, checking that he is all right. I’ll do it this afternoon; he’ll be at school now, anyway, and I’m supposed to be relaxing and enjoying myself.

‘I miss him, too,’ Francis says, reading my silence. ‘He’ll be fine, though. He’ll probably want to go and live with your parents permanently by the time we get back.’

‘I know,’ I agree, and lean in towards him for a kiss. It lasts longer than I had intended, and I wonder if we should go back upstairs to bed. Tired by the journey and shaken by the sight of the flowers, I hadn’t felt like sex last night, but right now the idea feels interesting, tangible. I hesitate a little too long, and the moment passes. Francis collects up the plates and takes them over to the dishwasher, talking about an exhibition on light and sound he has heard about that he thinks I might like to visit. It does sound good, actually – the kind of thing I used to go to on my own in my early twenties, wearing my most carefully selected artistic clothes in an attempt to fit in. It also sounds like the kind of thing that Francis would see as entirely inane and pointless.

‘We could do something you want to do, too,’ I venture.

He laughs. ‘Whatever you want to do is fine with me,’ he says. ‘That’s what I want.’

I wait in case anything else is forthcoming, but he just stares at me expectantly. ‘OK, then,’ I say finally. ‘Great.’ For a moment, I experience a strange pulse of nausea – the sense of some veneer cracking. Who is this Mr Perfect busying himself with the cleaning and tidying up, chatting about taking me out to exhibitions? Not my husband, or not the one I thought I had.