Before I Do(26)
A few days later, the man with the accent came to the house. Audrey recognized his voice straightaway. He was slightly older than Vivien, perhaps in his midfifties, with a broad frame and fine silver hair. He had thick pink lips that looked almost feminine, when everything else about him was staunchly masculine, with his bearlike gait and low growl of a voice.
“Audrey, this is a friend of mine, Benedict, he’s a highly acclaimed sculptor. Benedict, my daughter.”
Benedict reached out a hand and took Audrey’s fingers, lowering his lips to kiss the back of her hand.
“I see good looks run in the family.”
Audrey gave him a tight smile and quickly extracted her hand from his.
“Benedict is taking me to an exhibition. Would you like to come? Broaden your education?” Vivien asked. Audrey did not want to come. She needed to study, had a stack of statistics papers she needed to work her way through.
Vivien shouted good-bye to Brian, who was in the studio. Audrey noticed that when they were at the door, Benedict stroked his hand along the small of her mother’s back.
When Audrey reflected on her parents’ relationship, she could see that perhaps they had been too similar—they both had big egos, were jealous and fiery; they were north-seeking magnetic poles, too alike to connect. The dynamic with Jean-Luc had been similar. With Brian, Audrey felt her mother had found a perfect balance; he was her south-seeking magnet—calm and trusting, he softened her sharp edges. If balanced, temperate love could not last either, then what hope was there for anyone?
* * *
The next evening, as they ate one of Brian’s home-cooked toads-in-the-hole at the kitchen table, Vivien announced she intended to stay with her friend Sylvia in Margate that coming weekend. Audrey knew it was a lie before she’d even finished speaking.
“Will you send her my love?” said Brian. “I must buy her latest book; I did so enjoy her last one.”
Once Brian had retreated to the studio and Vivien had stacked the plates by the dishwasher, Audrey broached the topic.
“I know you aren’t seeing Sylvia this weekend.”
Vivien’s back tensed at the sink before she slowly spun around. “Hello, Little Miss Marple.”
“How can you do this to Brian?” Audrey whispered.
Vivien sighed, tilting her head to a sympathetic angle. “Brian and I are excellent companions; I love him more than anyone, bar you.” She paused, waiting for Audrey to meet her gaze. “But the lust part, you can’t keep that—no one can. I didn’t go looking for anything with Benedict, honestly I didn’t, but I don’t think I could have stopped it, it was beyond me.” She blushed, biting back a smile, then said in a whisper, “It keeps me young, Audrey, I feel like a girl again.” A silly grin lit up her face. “Do you remember when I played Blanche DuBois at the National, waking up to the reviews after press night, every one of them five stars? That is how he makes me feel, just being in his orbit. When you fall in love, you’ll understand.”
“Well, I don’t like being your secret keeper,” Audrey snapped.
“Then stop earwigging on things that don’t concern you. I’m just embracing life before I get too old for anyone to love me.” She pursed her lips. “He lives in New York; it can only be a short-lived thing.”
“I think you’re being selfish,” Audrey said, “and the people who really love you won’t stop just because you get old.”
Vivien blinked furiously before turning away from Audrey to hide her face. “You’re twenty-two, you have no idea.”
Was Vivien right? Was she being na?ve to think that when she met the right person, love could last a lifetime? Audrey had never been in love, not really. She’d had boyfriends she liked spending time with, but no one who made her grin the way Vivien had just now.
As she lay on her bed that night, she found herself taking the photo strip of the boy from Baker Street out of her wallet. She looked into his green eyes and imagined what he might be doing now. Then she wondered, not for the first time, who his “I will find you” message might have been for.
* * *
After their illicit weekend, Benedict went back to New York, and Audrey heard no more about him. She hoped that whatever it had been, that was the end of it. Three weeks later, she and Brian were in the kitchen, Brian emptying the dishwasher while she worked on a math problem at the kitchen table. She threw down her calculator in frustration. Maybe she’d been foolhardy to drop geography. Maybe a science subject was beyond her ability.
“This is impossible.”
Brian came to rest a hand on her shoulder. “It is a lot, trying to cram a two-year math syllabus into five months.”
“If I don’t take the exam now, I won’t be able to apply for a place in September. I’ll waste another year.”
“If it takes another year, it takes another year. The stars aren’t going anywhere,” Brian said, coming to sit down beside her. “You need a break. Come on, let’s order Thai takeaway from that place your mother likes and watch the new BBC crime drama, take one night off.”
Brian got up to wash his hands and asked Audrey to hand him the phone. As she picked up the handset from the counter, she noticed there wasn’t a tone and instinctively pressed it to her ear. That’s when she heard Vivien, talking in that sickening, simpering voice, then that unmistakable accent—Benedict. Audrey felt her hands tense around the phone.