Four months before Catherine
Years ago, fifteen of them to be precise, we lay in a bed just like this, bodies tangled, hearts racing.
You couldn’t get over the fact that you were my first lover; you were shocked and, I think, secretly pleased.
‘Why didn’t you sleep with Sam?
’ you asked.
Sam and I had been taking things slowly, friends first, a whole year of drinking coffee and talking late night after night and taking moonlit walks around town.
Then finally, for the first time, a few days before, we had kissed.
It was the slowest-developing relationship on the planet, and until that morning when you bowled into my medieval English tutorial with your hair standing on end, it had suited me perfectly.
‘We were taking our time getting to know each other. And then you came along and everything just exploded.’
‘Do you mind?’
Mind?
I was ecstatic, euphoric, obsessed, possessed.
All I wanted was to press my body against yours, to start again, to feel the hot burn of your fingers and mouth and tongue trailing across my flesh.
And now the clock winds forward and I am in your bed again, trapped in some bizarre reshaping of the past.
‘What now?’ you say, your first words in a while.
It is a question I cannot easily answer.
I want my now, this now, to be infinite, to stretch out in front of me; I want to be you and me, dark thoughts strung up out of reach, in a safety net above our heads.
There is so much I’m trying not to think of, not least my calculated betrayal of Sam, allowing myself to use the excuse of his deceit to have the one thing I’ve always wanted, even if it’s only for a few hours.
I know how much this would hurt Sam, far more than Julia could ever hurt me, and yet from the moment you first touched me – earlier than that, right back to my first sighting of you by the lake – I longed to have all the years of private fantasy turned into reality.
You and me in each other’s arms, flesh against flesh, once more.
‘Just this,’ I say, and you get it immediately.
‘This is perfect.’
Your mouth against my hair, the warmth of your palm resting on my thigh, your soapy, lemony smell still the same all these years later.
‘There is one problem, though. I’m going home today.
Back to Somerset. It’s my summer party at the weekend and I should really be around to oversee things.
But you could come with me.
Couldn’t you?’
The safety net bursts as I knew it would.
I sit up, swaddling myself in the duvet.
‘No. I couldn’t.’
My voice is harsher than I meant it to be, my response unguarded, instantaneous.
Can you see it, do you feel it, can you see what it is that I dread so much?
You’re watching me, head tilted a little to one side, and the look on your face is the same as before: resignation mixed with disappointment.
I’m not surprised after the way we just took each other apart; that wasn’t sex, that was longing, fifteen hard years of it, stored and then released in the most electrifying way.
And now this, back where we started in Hyde Park a few hours ago.
‘There’s the kids,’ I say, trying to explain.
‘I can’t just disappear.
’
‘But aren’t they in Cornwall with Sam?
Why would they even need to know?
I’m not talking about forever here, just for a day.
A few hours even. Wouldn’t you like to come?
Wouldn’t you like to see Shute again?
It’s hardly changed at all.
You could see Mary, she’s still there looking after me.
Remember Mary?’
Of course I remember her, of course I remember your beautiful house.
Never before or since have I stayed anywhere like it.
Oh, the glut of vicious memories: you, me, Jack and Alexa on that most perfect weekend.
Sam and the children are in Mevagissey, a kiss-me-quick harbour town that Joe and Daisy love.
Tiny, slanting cobbled streets, shops selling crab lines and boxes of fudge and hundreds of little china ornaments, which they find irresistible.
And of course it is true that with the three of them away, there is no reason why I couldn’t be in Somerset with you for a bit.
Except for the real reason, and I am trying my hardest to keep that where it belongs, locked down inside of me, compartmentalised again and again over the years until it lurks within a labyrinth of boxes, a shiny little bullet of shame.
But it surfaces right here in your beautiful London bedroom, in your hotel-like bed with its tower of pillows and cushions.
The early-afternoon light is slicing in through the windows – a normal world outside, shoppers and newspaper sellers and coffee drinkers – and I am no longer thinking of you and me but of Jack.
I’d known who he was almost from my first week at university; everyone did.
Jack had been gifted the kind of superior looks that made him stand out, easily the most handsome guy at Bristol.
At least half the girls were in love with him.
He dressed better than anyone else (or rather, exactly like you, a carbon copy in many ways), his hair was blonder, his eyes were more piercingly blue, he had that clean-cut all-American thing.
And he was so kind to me when I first got together with you – where Rachel was stand-offish and jealous at times, he always made a point of including me, making me feel welcome.
How many times did he interrupt a conversation to make sure I understood?
‘Hang on,’ he’d say, stopping Rachel or Alexa in their tracks.
‘Catherine doesn’t know who we’re talking about.
Back up a bit.’
Other times he’d make a great show of giving me the chair closest to the fire, the right amount of ice in my drink, the first helping of a shared takeaway.
He was overtly charming but not in a sickening way, and anyway, there was always the sharp undercut of his humour to balance things out.
It felt lucky being his friend, like you’d been chosen.
And yet the thought of seeing him again now, fifteen years later, fills me with a dread I cannot explain.
‘Look,’ you say, irritated though you are trying not to show it, ‘it was just a thought, forget I mentioned it.’
You throw back your side of the duvet and stand up.
Beautiful body, slim and tanned and toned; your muscle definition reminds me of a classical Greek statue, the kind I’ve shown Joe and Daisy, the pair of them sniggering, in the British Museum.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To make some coffee. Stay there, I’ll bring it back to bed.
’
It feels strangely intimate watching you dress in your discarded clothes, underwear, then jeans, then shirt, as though I haven’t earned the right, so I roll onto my side and look at the books on your bedside table instead.
The Long Firm by Jake Arnott.
I remember Sam reading it once when we were on holiday in France.
On top of the Arnott is a bright blue book called The Art of Mindfulness .
How surprising.
‘You meditate?’
You swivel around and see me examining your books.
‘Oh,’ the twist of a smile, ‘that one’s not mine.
’
As the door closes behind you, I am wondering who the mindfulness book belongs to, Rachel or someone else, and the sudden, sharp tug of jealousy makes me giddy.
I am in danger of the past catching up with me.
Rachel, Alexa, Harry and Jack, your unchanging circle of friends: the prospect of seeing them is impossible.
It cannot happen. It must not happen.
If I go off to Somerset with you – and how I yearn to be able to do that, even for a few hours – then sooner or later you’ll find out exactly what kind of person I am.