Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
I take a big breath in, then let it out. ‘Okay,’ I say to Frank. ‘Telling you to F off might have been a tad extreme.’
He cocks his head. ‘Er… you think?’
‘I was upset.’
‘No. You were mean .’
I plonk a hand on my hip. ‘I will not own mean. I will – if I’m being pressed – admit that you were right; Aiden didn’t cause Harriet to get sick. Harriet’s hot temper, that she clearly must get from her paternal grandmother, caused her to make a poor judgement. So I was wrong in saying what I said, and when I’m wrong I admit I’m wrong.’ I mutter under my breath, ‘Unlike some people.’
He just stares at me, his eyes combing over my face, my collarbones, my decolletage, and I think I see his mouth twitch like it wants to smile. ‘Have you eaten?’ he asks.
I tell him, yes, no, maybe. I have no idea what time it even is. I tell him what I really feel I could use is a drink. More than anything in the world. A drink, and to breathe.
‘Are you furious at me for dragging us across the world for a wedding that was never going to happen?’ I ask.
We have wandered in the direction of Fira and found a little place to have a drink. Raki and honey, warmed. The most perfect marriage in the world. It’s still cold but the wind has died back.
‘Furious is a little strong. I just view it as one of your quirks.’
‘So I’m not perfect then?’ I tease. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘You’re a person with a lot of heart and a lot of passion, that’s what you are,’ he says, almost too seriously.
I let that settle for a moment or two.
‘So do you think Harriet’s going to forgive him?’ he asks.
‘Don’t know,’ I say.
‘Do you hope?’
‘Do you?’
He seems to ponder. ‘I guess the fact that this has brought Aiden so much pain tells me that it can also bring him so much happiness. And that’s the way it goes, I suppose… Love.’ He looks at me meaningfully. ‘Pain and great fulfilment. One, you can only hope for; the other keeps it all real.’
We talk about the pair of them for a bit. Share stories about their triumphs, their foibles, their childhoods, how they started to navigate being adults. ‘I can’t believe we worked so hard to split them up,’ I say. ‘They do seem like they’re meant for each other.’
‘Look at it this way. If they stay together, it’ll be us they have to thank.’
I frown. ‘How do you make that out?’
‘If they’d never come to Greece to get away from their cynical old parents, their feelings for one another wouldn’t have been tested.’ He observes me with a rather wistful expression on his face. ‘Out of great suffering comes great certainty.’
Not sure that particular adage applies to me.
‘I hope she forgives him,’ I say. ‘If someone has been a special part of your life, occupied a place in your heart, well, life’s too short not to try to put it behind you and move on.’
He raises a wry eyebrow. ‘Wise words,’ he says – as though it’s the least wise thing he’s ever heard.
Later, when we get back to the hotel, he asks if I want to go in the hot tub again. The memory of our last time in that thing is still all too searing. But he puts it out there like a peace-offering, so I tell him I’m going to my room to make a quick call to check on Harriet first, that I’ll see him back downstairs in ten minutes.
He has already climbed into the water when I arrive. I slip my dressing gown off and quickly climb in beside him in my black bra and pants set, the closest thing I’ve got to a bikini. The water is divine. I tilt my head back, shut my eyes and try to let it soothe me.
When I look at him, his eyes are trailing a path of longing down my throat.
‘Why does life have to be so complicated?’ I say, apropos of only my thoughts. My shoulder is pressed up against his shoulder again.
‘It doesn’t,’ he says. ‘That’s the thing.’
I tell him about my phone call with Rupert, that he still claims he didn’t cheat, not sure why I’m bringing this up now.
After a beat, he says a sarcastic, ‘Awesome.’
‘Just updating you,’ I say.
I think he’s not going to add anything, but then he says, ‘You’re going back to him. It’s obvious. I get it.’ His flesh no longer presses against mine. His tone says he doesn’t get it at all.
‘He wants me back.’ I’m almost trying to be deliberately exasperating and I don’t know why I’m doing it, why I’m playing this game.
His eyes drill into mine. ‘Who wouldn’t want you back? And why does it have to be all about what he wants?’
‘Why do you dislike him so much?’
‘Why don’t you?’
My turn to be silent now.
‘You suspect he cheated with your best friend years ago. You’ve pretty much got it in writing that he cheated with someone now.’
‘What’s your point?’ I say it almost languidly, almost like this is conversational sport. I just like batting this back and forth with him.
‘My point is, how many times does he have to appear to have cheated before you believe he did? Does all this not tell you something worth listening to?’
‘Maybe I’m just bad minded.’
‘That’s right. Maybe the problem is you.’
We let that sit. The weight is back in our silence again. Hot tubs are not exactly the place where we bring our best selves.
I stare at the reflection of the moon on the water. ‘I’ve always had trust issues,’ I say. ‘Even when I was a kid. I used to fear dying. Not the actual death part. But the point where I’d be lowered into the ground. I was, like, what if they close that lid and start throwing that soil on top, and I’m not actually dead?’
I realise I’m trying hard to make him smile, but he’s not going for it.
‘So you’re afraid of living and you’re afraid of dying. So where does this leave you?’
I play that back, and frown. Am I afraid of living? I hate that I’m wondering if there’s a grain of truth in that.
‘Because of your cheating father, and your loser first boyfriend – and now your shitbag husband – you no longer trust men, but what’s worse is you don’t even trust yourself. That little voice has told you for a very long time that you’re not happy, but you’ve convinced yourself that, so long as you’re not actively un happy, you’ve probably got all you should expect.’
I’m amazed he always remembers everything I tell him. When it’s put like that, it does make me sound lame. I think of Nat when she was leaving the sham of her marriage. How she said, ‘There’s never a good time to tell someone it’s over. You’ve got to just do it; do the hard thing.’
‘So what about you and your trust issues?’ I say, before my frustration with myself makes me slide into a downer. ‘How about we turn the surgical spotlight on you? I mean, are you going to continue to not let anyone get close in case she lets you down just by being human? Are you going to keep using having to parent Aiden as an excuse? I mean, he’s not a child now. You can’t fuck him up. And, you know what? You should be proud of the fact that you never did.’ I am almost out of breath, but I have to say it. ‘When are you going to stop using everything that happened to you as a giant excuse for not fully living your life and for squandering your talent?’
I try not to focus on how he looks at me like I just shot some kind of arrow a millimetre from his heart. Or how I started this whole conversation almost for sport, and now we might be going to war again.
‘This isn’t about me,’ he says. ‘We weren’t talking about me.’ And then, after a barbed beat, he adds, ‘And why would you care anyway? I’m just the guy you had sex with to get back at your husband. Remember?’
He says it so accusingly that I almost rear up from the water. ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘You really don’t let anything go, don’t you?’
‘Deny it then.’ He turns to face me, and I’m surprised to see the longing blazing in his eyes again – and anger, raw anger. ‘You can’t deny it, Moira, because you know it’s true.’
I open my mouth to say: But back then in my apartment, I knew nothing about you. How could it have possibly been more than what it was when you were a virtual stranger to me? But he’s on a roll.
‘Moira, who doesn’t do casual sex, had no problem doing it a few weeks ago. No problem there, boy!’ He seems to check himself, then adds a quieter, almost empty, ‘What happened in your apartment was Moira having no problem with casual sex at all.’
I’ve got a head rush. My head is literally swimming, a thousand protestations lining up to get out. Instead of attacking me over no-strings sex, shouldn’t he just be grateful he got it? Isn’t sex without attachment and commitment most men’s dream? I go to say all this, but then we hear, ‘Hi, Dad.’
No sooner does Aiden appear, than Frank hoists himself out of the water in one swift movement like an Olympic hot-tub leaver. Aiden seems oblivious and perches on a sun lounger. ‘The good news is she doesn’t want to kill me any more.’
‘And the bad?’ Frank’s voice is torqued with suppressed emotion. He pulls on his dressing gown, while I sink lower under the water in my underwear, until I’m basically just a floating head.
‘Don’t know if it’s bad, actually.’ He throws back his head and yawns. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do about… well, about anything at the moment.’ He directs the explanation to me. ‘Harriet seems really confused about what she wants.’
Frank says a quiet, ‘Seems to run in the family.’
‘She’s super tired right now,’ Aiden continues. ‘Hopefully she’ll feel better in the morning.’
Frank asks him if he’s eaten. Aiden says he had something hours ago at the hospital. Frank says, ‘You must be starving, then. We should get you a proper meal.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t say no.’ He shoots my floating head a look. ‘Do you want to come, Moira?’
‘You guys go,’ I say.
Neither of them makes a move which makes it impossible for me to make one either. Then fortunately Aiden says, ‘Dad, can I use your bathroom first?’ Frank fishes in his pocket, gives him the key.
When he disappears inside, I wait for Frank to look at me, say something, anything to give me a chance to redeem the moment, but there is nothing except pivotal silence.
Finally, I say, ‘Can you hand me my dressing gown, please?’
He holds it out to me, deliberately staring off in the opposite direction. I scramble out, take it from him. My undies have glued themselves to every crack and crevice of my anatomy. As if he is unable to resist looking, he turns. His eyes map every contour and elevation of my body until my legs are almost quaking. And then he looks away again, rather deliberately, like a snub.
‘Can we talk?’ I plead, strapping the belt tightly around me. My voice is soaking with emotion.
‘Don’t think there’s anything more to say.’
‘There might be, if you’d ever let me get a word in.’
He stands there rigidly, refusing to look at me.
‘Well…’ I go on anyway. ‘You’ve sold yourself quite a little narrative about me, haven’t you?’ Ridiculously, I could almost burst into tears.
‘Unlike you,’ he flashes me a hostile glance, ‘I sell myself only what’s true.’
‘Ready!’ Aiden comes back right as I’m trying to thrust my feet into oversized towelling hotel slippers. I can’t see them for my blurred vision. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Moira?’ Aiden asks.
Frank says, ‘She doesn’t. Moira’s going to her room.’