Chapter 22
Both Eyes Open
IVY
Brennan has been Isobel's driver for as long as I have known her.
He is a quiet, kind man in his sixties, with grey at his temples.
He straps Alex's car seat into place with the practiced efficiency of someone who has done it countless times before, holds the door for me and Ariana, and shuts us in.
The car smells clean, as if it has just been valeted.
The drive to the manor is forty minutes.
Ariana sits with her arms crossed and her face turned to the window.
I want to share our common frustration, I want us both to feel easier, but she doesn’t look at me, and I understand why.
Ariana has lived through things I can’t imagine and would not survive.
Of course she’s not talking. Of course she is somewhere inside herself that I’m not invited to.
I look out of the other window. The hedgerows go past, a red kite turns over a field, Alex sleeps with his small head tipped slightly to the right.
I could stare at his face all day, his long eyelashes dark against his pale skin.
It starts to rain again. I open my mouth twice to say something and close it again both times.
How is it possible, I think, for a life to change so quickly?
I longed for our home, to be barefoot and cozy in front of the fireplace.
The dogs snoring in their beds and Brumilde’s cooking making the whole house smell divine.
And now I am being driven home to a house that is not my own, beside a woman who feels adrift, in a car neither of us owns, while the men we love walk into a club in Soho on behalf of a stupid fucking debt.
Brennan doesn’t look at us in the rear-view mirror, because he has been a Ravenscroft driver long enough to know when not to.
I clench my jaw. I will never get used to this.
When we reach Ashworth Park, Ariana gives me a small sad half-wave at the foot of the stairs, the kind of wave you give a friend when you can’t face anything more elaborate, and then she goes up to her wing, while I take Alex up to ours.
The corridor is cool and smells of beeswax and cut roses.
I settle Alex in his cot in the small adjoining room and stand watching him.
He is sleeping with one fist tucked under his chin and the foreign dressing white against his precious skin.
I watch the rise and fall of his small chest. I want to weep, but I don’t.
I touch his cheek, briefly, pull the curtain to dim the room, and close the door behind me.
The sitting room next door has, of course, a small silver bowl of expensive chocolates wrapped in foil that costs more than the chocolate inside, and on the sideboard a bottle of red wine and two glasses, because Isobel has thought of everything, including the possibility that someone might want to drink alone in the afternoon.
I take the bowl, the bottle, and a glass through to the bedroom, and I get into bed.
I’ve been crying for about ten minutes when I think about Becks.
I take my phone out and start a message and then put it down again, because I know exactly what Becks will say.
Saint Ives, you knew exactly who you were marrying, and you married him with both eyes open, and what you are now doing is paying the freight on a decision you have already made.
Becks is right, and her correctness will not make me feel better.
I delete the message and unwrap a chocolate.
I plan to eat the whole bowl of them but the first is too sweet against my back teeth.
I pour wine, which is the dry kind that warms the chest, and I pick up the book on my bedside table—a novel I started last week—and I read the same paragraph three times without taking any of it in.
The sentences slide past my eyes without sticking.
I close the book with a sigh and set it on the duvet beside me, and decide to run a bath.
The bathroom in our wing is enormous, far too big for one person, with marble that holds the cold and a window that looks out over the south lawn.
I add some bath foam that smells of bergamot.
The steam comes up off the surface in slow lazy curls as I grasp my wineglass and climb into the steaming water.
I lie back, close my eyes, and try to breathe deeply to manage the anxiety I’ve been carrying since Elena sent us those cocktails in Spain.
I try not to worry about Alistair, which of course is the same as worrying about him.
I remember the way he flinched when I said Elena was supposed to be a conversation too.
It was unfair, and I saw the hurt in his eyes as it spilled out of my mouth.
Alistair’s built to protect his family, and that will never change.
I think about when I was in hospital, the way he held my hand, careful around the IV line.
I think about him at the office last night, his jacket around my shoulders and the city behind him and his voice saying whatever it takes, all of you, always.
And now he’s somewhere in Soho, walking into a club with my brother-in-law and their oldest friend, and the part of me that is furious with him is exactly the same part that is afraid of losing him, and I can’t pull them apart, no matter how hard I try.
I open my eyes and slug my wine. It’s too expensive to drink this fast, but I don’t care.
It’s loosening my muscles, unwinding me.
I was scared and numb, but now in the warm water my body turns back on.
Somewhere underneath all the anger and the fear and the exhaustion there is a small persistent ache that I have been ignoring all afternoon and that is now demanding to be heard.
I get out of the bath and dry myself slowly with a towel that is criminally luxurious, and I put on one of Alistair's shirts because none of my clothes feel right against my skin.
His shirt is huge and smells of him, and the cotton slides cool down my back and over my breasts.
My nipples tighten almost immediately. I turn the bedside lamp down low, pull back the duvet, and slide between sheets that are heavy linen and cool against my legs. I let my hand drift.