Chapter 14
14
It was surprising how much I could find to do upstairs. The shower needed a good clean and then I moved on to tidying my bedroom, putting away the heaped bedside reading onto the bookshelf, dusting the surfaces and rearranging the few ornaments across the beams. Then I plumped the pillows, shook out the duvet and refolded all the blankets, smoothed the sheet, picked up a few bits of fluff from the carpet, and sat on the end of the bed with my head in my hands.
Well, I should be happy, shouldn’t I? Connor’s lost love had come to find him. Done the decent thing, left her husband, and searched him out. Wasn’t that lovely?
But a darkness rumbled underneath my attempts to feel satisfied that he’d leave me alone in my cosy house now. He’d disappear into the dark night with his lover, move on to a fabulous life and stop pestering me. It was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Him gone?
A tiny, treacherous voice whispered into my ear, as though those fairies whose existence I fought to maintain despite everything were caught in my hair. You expected him to stay. Until spring at least, when the nights are lighter and you can lose yourself in working until bedtime; you thought you could keep him here to alleviate the boredom and the loneliness. Besides, you quite like him, don’t you? I mean, obviously, he’s a Class A git with his threats to move the stone but he’s easy on the eye and he cooks and he’s chatty. And he seems to like you, even when you are an equal git about the stone. He’s interested in it too, from the other side, and maybe you should try being less entrenched…
There were voices coming up the stairs. Oh God, they weren’t about to cement their relationship in my spare room, were they? I didn’t think I liked the idea of Connor being all… all… affectionate on the guest duvet.
He tapped at my door. ‘Rowan,’ he half whispered. ‘Is it all right if Saoirse has a shower? She’s soaked to the skin here and I don’t want her catching her death.’
I stifled a momentary urge to say that it would serve her right, walking all the way over here in a stupid coat, it would be a lesson to her, but I didn’t. Of course I didn’t, it would be cruel and my newly arisen possessiveness towards Connor was my own fault. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Make sure she’s got plenty of towels. And… here.’ I fumbled at the back of my bedroom door for a moment and clutched down the spare dressing gown. It had been Elliot’s, and I held it to me for a moment, but it no longer had the traces of him that I’d looked for so urgently before. ‘Tell her to put this on afterwards.’ I opened the door a crack and thrust it at him.
Connor caught at it and got my hand at the same time. We stood, him in the shadowed dimness of the landing, and me in the newly tidy bedroom with the bright lampshade swinging slightly in the draught. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly.
‘No problem.’ I disengaged myself and withdrew so fast that the draught caught the door and slammed it in his face.
I heard his bedroom door open and close then and, in a kind of silent horror that he might decide to get in the shower with her, I fled along the twilit landing and down the stairs, to stand in the living room. What did I do? Leave them alone to sort out their differences, possibly in my spare room, and loudly? Pretend not to be here listening to every word, gasp and sigh? No, the prospect was too dreadful to bear.
I’d go out, that was what I’d do. It was only – I glanced at the little clock, a wedding present from friends who’d bought it in an antiques shop and told us it would fit in right with our aesthetic, even though it was the wrong period and decorated all over with quite dreadful enamelled birds – half past seven. It might be as dark as midnight outside, but beyond this drenched valley with the hushed river, people would be going about normal life. Shopping and… well, yes, I could go shopping, couldn’t I?
I scuffled my way into coat and boots and ignored the fact that I was wearing the fleecy tracksuit that I lounged around at home in. My bag, phone and cards were hunched on a corner of the worktop as though trying to hide from the conflict, so I grabbed the lot and flung open the kitchen door and then stopped on the step when a flurry of rain blew in and rebounded off my booted toes. This was my house ! What was I doing, being driven out into the night by a soggy visitor? I should stay, call a taxi for the pair of them and send them off to a hotel with good wishes for the future and a sense of doom averted!
I rocked, hesitantly. Upstairs the boards creaked, and I heard Connor’s door open again. There was a moment of pause, and then steps set off towards the bathroom, making each board groan under their weight as they went. The thought of having to listen to groaning of a more personal nature sent me flying out into the night to take myself and my car far, far away from here and to somewhere where bright lights and crowds would help me forget whatever might be going on in my poor, beleaguered cottage.
I drove to Malton, where it was late night shopping night, and a Christmas market was spread surprisingly around the streets, lashed by the rain and blown half sideways. Awnings thrashed and sent sudden dumps of collected water flying onto heads, everyone was huddled into the shelter offered by the bigger buildings, and an inflatable Santa dashed to freedom along the main road, pursued by a crowd of happily anarchic children.
It helped. There were things to do, there was shopping to get. I could convince myself that this was a necessary errand rather than an avoidance tactic. I parked the car among the others that had braved the night, gathered my coat close about my neck and, shoved along by a following wind, went for a browse.
I bought a bright knitted beret for Chess’s Christmas present and realised that it finished off my Christmas shopping. My parents lived now in southern Spain, their card and presents had been despatched weeks ago to make the last posting day. The half-instinctive twitch towards ‘things Elliot might like’ had largely stopped now. This would be my fourth Christmas without him, and I’d managed to make myself a new routine, a day of TV and chocolate; building up the fire and sitting in front of the flames under a blanket with an M a dark streak of well-dressed professor-hood with an overhanging threat of spoiling my research and upsetting my folk tales. Suddenly he’d become an actual man, standing there in front of me with his mouth twisted and his eyes beginning to redden in the corners. He had emotions, he could be unsettled and confused and afraid; he wasn’t simply the person-shaped thing that ate my toast and sang, he’d become real , somehow.
‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘I thought I was over her. I thought it was all coming together here.’ Another shake of the head. ‘But now she’s arrived.’
‘Look.’ I put a hand on his arm. He was still staring into my face as though I had all the answers, as though I could tell him what to do. I remembered Elliot, walking out that morning, off to his wainscotting and a day of drawing plans, or so we’d thought. How much would I have given for him to come back? ‘Ask yourself this. If she died tomorrow, how sad would you be? How much would you miss her?’
There was a long moment, in which rain hissed against the window. Then Connor leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Brief and soft, a contact of stubble passing my lips and the touch of his mouth on my skin.
‘Thank you,’ he breathed. ‘Thank you, Rowan.’
Then he picked up his mug and went back into the living room to sit on the sofa with my spare duvet around his shoulders, while I scuttled up to my room to hide in the peace and quiet.
Next morning Saoirse was in my kitchen when I got up. There was no sign of Connor.
‘Thank you for letting me stay.’ She was sitting at the table, huddled over a cup of tea, wearing what was obviously Connor’s jumper. Her bare legs, very white and long, jutted at awkward angles, and she looked about seventeen.
‘That’s all right,’ I said, brazenly ignoring the fact that I hadn’t really let her stay, that had been Connor, and I’d busily avoided the whole thing. ‘It was a filthy night.’
We both looked out of the window at the newly calm day. The sun was breasting the rise and filling the little valley with pale light. ‘You’ve got a lovely cottage. I’d love to live somewhere like this.’
I didn’t know what to say to her. Saoirse had the wide eyes of a child, a small mouth and incredibly high cheekbones, and with her blonde hair loose around her shoulders she looked like a model after an all-night bender. I felt every strand of my uneven haircut; my indefinite-coloured eyes and just-about-there cheekbones sat sullenly in my face, retiring in the face of the competition.
‘How did you find him? Connor, I mean,’ I added, although who else I could have been talking about I didn’t know.
‘I went to the university and asked.’ Her accent was softer than Connor’s, with another influence. ‘One of his students told me he was here and gave me directions. I got a bus and then walked.’
Another silence.
‘You’ve left your marriage?’ I tried to make it sound soft, just a query, but it was clearly more questioning than she could take, and she burst into tears.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she sobbed. ‘Connor is so… he’s great and my husband, well, he goes to work and comes home, and I’ve got the wee ones all day on my own!’
I absolutely was not going to give her any advice or tell her that it sounded as though she’d had an affair with Connor because she was bored and lonely. It would have been cruel, anyway. And it wasn’t my business. None of this was anything to do with me. I was just the landlady.
But the memory of the graze of stubble, the sensation of lips against my skin made me shiver.
‘Where is Connor?’ I asked, and there must have been a trace of that remembrance in my voice, because Saoirse looked up sharply through her tears.
‘Outside, on his phone. He’s arranging us a lift back to York,’ she said. ‘One of his students, I think.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, I’d better get dressed and go to work. It’s been nice to meet you, Saoirse,’ I added politely, and she waved a hand as though this were her house and I were an interviewee, failing to get a job.
I went back upstairs. The door to the spare room was open and I peeped around it, to see that Connor’s belongings were all packed up in bags inside the door. The bed was stripped and the spare duvet he’d slept under last night was neatly folded and placed on the mattress.
Elliot’s dressing gown was hung up behind the door. I stared at it for a second. Had I really given it to Connor to put on his girlfriend? I must have been in a state of panic – that dressing gown had been my Elliot substitute for months. I’d slept with it wrapped around his pillow so I would wake to the smell of him beside me, and the warm touch of towelling when I leaned over. Anything was less painful than the bland cold of an empty bedside. And I’d handed it over, as though it meant nothing to me, simply so that Saoirse wouldn’t have to roam around the house wrapped in a skimpy towel. Had it really been for her comfort? Or because I’d feared what Connor might do?
I looked back at the bags, untidily packed and stacked around the bed. So, he was going, then. Fine. Good.
I dressed and went out, past Saoirse, who was still sitting at the table wearing his clothes. I didn’t bother to lock the back door; I didn’t even turn to look as I started the car and drove up the long hill away from the cottage. I didn’t even stop to ask myself why I was crying. I turned the radio on to drown everything out and put my foot down all the way to the office.