After You Left(40)

‘I’m not prepared to settle for anything less than in love, Justin. I sold myself short in my other relationships. And I don’t know if that was because, at heart, I’m a bit like my mother – I tend to fall for unreliable men – or if I just have questionable self-esteem. But I’m determined not to do that again. I just don’t need to be with someone so badly that I’ll take whatever terms they offer me.’

I sense he’s listening to me with every fibre of his being. He watches me for a long time, processing my words, processing me – or so it feels. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but somewhere far inside of me I almost want to say, Don’t, anyway.

‘Alice.’ He’s so damned grave. ‘The one thing I can say is you deserve someone who is so completely sure that you’re the one thing in his life he could never stand to lose.’ He pauses. He’s going to say, But you’re right. I’m not him. Only instead he looks distantly across the room and his face floods with something more indelible than sadness; I can’t say what it is, but I almost can’t look. ‘You know, all my life I’ve wanted to be like my father. The kind of man he was. The kind of husband, dad . . . My father loved my mother so much. They seem to draw energy and purpose from one another, and the spark that existed between them, well, you couldn’t not see it. Even I saw it, and I was just a kid. And yet look how fast my mother remarried after he died, which made me wonder all over again . . . Had it all just been an illusion?’ He looks back at me. ‘Were they both acting a role, and doing it so damned convincingly because their values had made them believe they had to? Then I wondered, do you ever really know someone? Is there really only one person for us in this world? Or is that all a bit of a myth of evolution that we are sold to somehow make us commit, produce offspring and feel inadequate if we screw it all up? Could you probably love, and live with, anyone if you put your mind to it?’

‘What’s this got to do with us, Justin?’

He sighs, frustrated. He does this occasionally. As though the weight of his complicated thought process has to be lifted and repositioned once in a while just to make it bearable. ‘Alice, you’re a truly good person, and in many ways we have so much in common – our values, our outlook, the things we like to do . . . When I’m with you, I’m really not bothered about being around anybody else. I don’t really care where we go, or what we do, so long as we do it together.’ He comes and sits on the end of the bed, runs a hand over my cheek and twirls a strand of my hair around his index finger. ‘I feel so at peace with you that way. You make me extremely happy. I look forward to getting to see you every day, and I know that, more than anything, I want to make you happy and do what’s right by you.’ His hand slides to the back of my head, cupping it. I can feel the pleasant press of his warm fingers. ‘So yes, I believe I’m in love with you.’

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way he looks at me. It’s up there with the way he looked at me in that bar, that first day.

‘So, what about Lisa? Were you in love with her?’ When I see his face, I say, ‘It’s important for me to know. To have a picture.’

I can almost see his brain ticking through the right way to reply. ‘I’m sure I must have thought I was, yes,’ he says, after a short spell. ‘There was a lot to love about her. But when it came down to it, it didn’t go the distance.’

He has said a version of this before: about it not going the distance. But, undoubtedly, it had gone some distance. They had met at Oxford. She was reading Law, too. She even found a job up North to be with him. They had lived together for two years, so I assume he must have been considering marrying her because he’d once said he’d never live with someone if he had no intention of a future. Justin is modern in so many ways, yet very old-fashioned in others.

‘And Jemma?’

‘Jemima!’

I always deliberately misname her.

‘That was just a physical thing. It’s a shame there wasn’t more, but there wasn’t. Not on my part, anyway.’

A physical thing that had gone on a long time. And she was very beautiful – enormously tall, and slim and dark-haired – because we had bumped into her once in Eldon Square. But I don’t really care to think about that.

He looks at me forthrightly. ‘If we can forget about ex-girlfriends . . . I suppose I’m just saying I think there comes a time in life where if everything that you have with someone feels good, feels right, and they are good, good in their heart and soul, and you want the same things, then you have to go with it. You have to decide you’re going to make it work.’

‘So that’s what you’re doing with me? Making it work?’

Way too much honesty! Justin has never disappointed me before. But I am disappointed now.

‘Now you’re going to try to twist it.’

‘No.’

‘You are. You’re trying to hear what you want to have heard. To twist it. Because you’ve got issues with yourself. Maybe with what others have done to you, but you have to get over that.’ He seems genuinely frustrated by me. ‘What I’m saying – even though you’ve read it the wrong way – doesn’t diminish what this is, what we have. We’re not teenagers. I’m just trying to take a mature stance, that’s all.’