The House Swap(83)

You shake your head. ‘Don’t,’ you say. ‘There’s no point. You can’t undo what happened. You’re right, you were stupid, and so was I, for not stopping you. I can’t make you feel better about it. But as for what came afterwards … if it helps, I still think you did the right thing by walking away. Even now. I’m not saying I never felt angry or resentful. But I never really doubted that it was better for me to take the blame than you.’ You speak with such conviction. I always envied you this – this inner knowledge you seemed to have that your own decisions were the right ones. You never seemed to suffer from the uncertainty that gnawed at me almost constantly, making me turn my own thoughts and motives inside out.

‘I’m glad you feel that way,’ I say slowly, not sure if I mean it or not. Part of me wants you to feel the same way I do. There’s no room in that serene complacency for doubts or longings. And yet I’m thinking of Amber, and the way she talked to me about you, before she knew who I was – the picture she painted of a man she couldn’t even quite reach, who had fenced himself off into his own distant space – and I wonder if the thoughts that come to you in solitude are quite the same colour and shape as the ones you are giving to me right now.

‘Are you happy?’ I ask. I know it’s out of the blue, but there’s no time to soften it or pretend that I don’t feel I have the right to ask.

You half frown and your shoulders twitch, a quick gesture of exasperation. You brush your hand through the air in front of us, and for a fraction of a second it grazes against my own hands where they rest on the table. You snatch it away again, as if I’ve scalded you. It sets off a shiver throughout the length of my body, and I’m thinking how strange it is that you used to lie next to me naked, hold me against you so close that your sweat soaked into my skin, and now you feel like you can’t allow any part of your body to touch any part of mine.

‘Sure,’ you say. ‘As happy as I’ll ever be.’

‘With her?’ I ask. ‘With Amber?’

The frown deepens. You don’t like me saying her name. For an instant, she’s a ghostly presence with us, slipping in beside you on the sofa, curling her slim body up into a question mark. Someone doesn’t belong in this picture. Her, or me.

‘Yes,’ you say. ‘We’re happy.’ You’re watching me carefully now, trying to measure my reaction, to determine what’s behind the question. In those few seconds of silence, something shifts. It’s as if the barrier has cracked open and, all at once, I can’t stop thinking about the way it used to be between us and I can see in your eyes that you’re thinking the same. ‘It’s different to how it was with you,’ you say quietly, your voice so low that I have to strain to hear. ‘More – real,’ you qualify. ‘Less …’ You stop. ‘I don’t know,’ you say. ‘Less something else.’

I nod, and I can’t find the word either, but there’s a tightness in my chest and I’m thinking about the sweetness of putting my arms around you and your lips coming down on to mine, and I know that, whatever this something else is, it’s something that won’t come again, not for you and not for me, either, no matter what else might be in its place.

‘So you and Francis worked things out,’ you say. It sounds like a non sequitur but we both know it’s not, and even now you can’t quite rid your voice of the edge of dryness and contempt that shouldn’t really be there any more.

‘We’re still doing that,’ I say carefully. I’m seized by the violent desire to make you believe that my marriage is happy. I want to tell you about all the ways Francis has changed, the efforts he’s made, the journeys we’ve been on. I want to prove that he’s worth it. But I’m not sure you’ll care. Why should you?

‘It isn’t easy,’ I say, and this is true, too. ‘There are good times and bad times.’ The days I wake up to find a stranger with my husband’s face prowling in the living room, gripped by anxieties and neuroses he can’t even bring himself to talk about. The strange, mercurial lift and swoop of his moods, impossible to predict or steer. The knowledge that every day is a new one, and that he still has no real idea how each one will go. I think of these things and there’s a strange throb of vertigo, making me grip the edge of the table and briefly close my eyes.

When I open them, you’re watching me again. ‘Well,’ you say, ‘you’re an adult, Caro. You make your own choices.’

I nod, not trusting myself to reply. There is no way of forming these thoughts into words and, in any case, they’re not yours to deal with, not any more.

You pass a hand slowly through your hair, scraping it back from your forehead. The lights above our head seem to dim further, and I’m conscious of the tiny distance between us, the ease with which I could reach out and take your face in my hands. ‘I did love you,’ you say at last. ‘I want you to know that.’

‘I know,’ I say quietly, and suddenly all the weeks and months I have spent turning over this question seem crazily wasted, because I’ve always known this, really, perhaps more clearly than you ever did yourself until this moment right here and now.

You’re getting to your feet and, with a sick lurch of realization, I understand that the conversation is over and you’re preparing to leave. My legs are shaking, but I force myself to stand beside you. You smile, and you’re reaching out, placing your hand on my shoulder and turning my body in towards yours, bringing me into a hug. My face is against your neck and I’m breathing in the smell of your aftershave, and the feel of your skin on mine is so familiar and strange that the tears are falling now because I know that this is the last goodbye.