Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-five
The dinner date is to take place on Friday evening. Every time Lila thinks about it she experiences a shiver of nervous anticipation. In the last two days, she has been to the local salon where she had everything waxed, and her nails manicured. Her hair has been blow-dried so that it falls in glossy brown waves, and she has treated herself to new underwear, having decided that almost everything in her drawer was either too old, or gaped in unhelpful places (thank you, divorce diet). She is wearing a black silk dress, high in the collar but with a small slit up the skirt, which always draws compliments, and which she hopes makes her look sophisticated yet casual in a Parisian sort of way. She reads affirmations on Instagram, reminding herself that she is strong, desirable, a survivor, that her experiences have shaped her into someone unstoppable. She spends only forty minutes or so feeling bad about the skin on her neck.
He has been specific about timings so she ensures that she is ready for seven. His address is not far away, and she will walk there as long as it isn’t raining. She is better moving if she is nervous.
She texts him at six forty-five.
Just heading off x
He responds immediately. Slight snafu at work. Could you come a bit later? Say 9-ish? Want to get Lennie to bed before you arrive.
She had been under the impression Lennie was staying at his mother’s.
I’m totally fine with Lennie. She knows me.
Yes, but she’ll get overexcited and then not want to go to bed. Better if she’s asleep x
It is written in the inarguable tone of a parent who knows their child best. Lila rereads the message twice, then sighs and heads downstairs, where Bill is in the middle of serving dinner. It’s just him, Gene, and the girls this evening and they are having spaghetti bolognese, which makes Lila a little wistful. She loves spaghetti bolognese and she has barely eaten today.
“You look pretty, sweetheart,” says Gene, who is taking his place at the table. “Going out?”
“Yes. Just drinks with a friend.”
“What friend?” says Violet.
Lila is about to tell her the truth, but something stops her. “Just someone from school,” she says.
“Girls’ night out, huh?” says Gene.
“I thought you might go out with Jensen again at some point,” says Bill, a little pointedly.
“Jensen and I are just friends,” she says firmly.
Celie snorts into her pasta.
“What?”
“Friends who like sleepovers ,” she mutters.
“Did you have a sleepover with Jensen?” says Violet, her eyes boggling. “Jensen the gardener Jensen?”
“It was ages ago and, yes, we had a…sleepover.”
“Was it a pajama party?”
“Something like that.”
Celie snorts again.
“Well, if you and your ‘friend’ are likely to be out late,” Bill says, with a raised eyebrow, “it would be good if you could let us know. Just so we don’t worry. Again.”
“I’ll text you,” Lila says.
“You wouldn’t let me do that,” says Celie.
“I’m twenty-six years older than you,” says Lila. “And I am ruler of this kingdom.”
“You want to eat first?” Gene gestures toward the bowl of pasta. “Bill’s made a banquet here.”
God, but it smells delicious.
“I think we have plans to eat. But thanks.”
She walks to the pub, because she cannot think what else to do with the hour and a half still to wait and she is too on edge to stay at home. She sits in the corner, at a small table, and nurses a Diet Coke while staring at nothing on her phone. Her pulse is a thin drumbeat of nervousness. When she finishes the Coke she orders a gin and tonic. She needs to settle her nerves a little. It’s just dinner , she keeps telling herself. You don’t need to get yourself in a panic about it.
While she is drinking the gin, a man approaches her, forty-something with a dark, tightly cut business suit. She glances up, and he is looking directly at her, his expression a faint question. Why is it impossible for a woman ever to sit and exist by herself? It’s the dress, she thinks. It looks like she’s trying to attract sexual attention.
“I’m very happy by myself, thanks,” she finds herself saying, as he comes to a halt in front of her, a little more snappily than she’d intended.
“Actually, I just wanted to ask if you were using that chair.”
She has another gin and tonic to dispel the vague humiliation of the chair incident, and the fact that the businessman and his friends are now gathered in a large, noisy group around the next table, making hers look solitary and ridiculous. And then at ten to nine, as the decibel level in the pub is getting higher, and the band comes on at the far end, lifting everyone’s voices a further notch, she gathers her bag and, a little unsteadily, heads for Gabriel’s house.
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He answers the door on the second ring, a little flustered. “Really sorry,” he says, holding up a finger. “I’m just on the phone. I’ll be two minutes.” He disappears back up the stairs at a jog and she is left standing in the hallway, unsure where he wants her to wait.
She stands frozen, hearing a door close upstairs. What would Mum do? she wonders. After a moment, fortified by Francesca’s imagined ease in such a situation, she sheds her coat, and walks through to the kitchen.
It is, almost comically, the kitchen of an architect: the back of the house is a glass cube, in the center of which sits an oval marble table that she has seen in various magazines, and whose designer’s name she cannot recall. She cannot see anything cooking yet, but thinks it’s possible that something’s in the fridge waiting until she arrived. She’s so hungry she thinks she might pass out.
She gazes around the room, which is immaculate, ordered, and tasteful, the walls the color of unpainted plaster, the kitchen units a bold cobalt blue. A huge modernist chandelier hangs in the center of the ceiling, and there is nothing on the pale granite work surfaces except an oversized ceramic jug, none of the clutter and detritus of normal kitchen life. The side of the upper kitchen unit, hidden from view as she walks in, is the only area where minimalism takes a back seat—full of Lennie’s drawings and various letters from school, as well as a cork notice board. She scans the photographs on it—not the messy, gurning ones she has at home but a few beautifully shot, atmospheric pictures of Lennie, and a few that show big groups of people, clearly on holiday somewhere hot and beautiful. There are no pictures of his late wife. A large abstract painting hangs on the wall, and the chairs are leather and chrome, vaguely Eastern European and brutalist. She feels suddenly glad that she wore the black silk dress: most of her wardrobe would have felt too chaotic for this room.
He walks in rubbing his face, as if he’s rubbing away the phone call, just as she’s thinking about stepping into the garden. “So sorry,” he says, greeting her with a kiss on the cheek. “Just a nightmare week at work. And Len gets upset if I’m back late so I knew she was going to take longer to go to bed. So sorry. Let me get you a drink.”
He opens a cupboard to reveal a hidden wine store, from which he pulls out a bottle of expensive-looking red. “Red okay?”
“Fine,” she says, without thinking. Even slightly disheveled, he’s gorgeous, his eyes an intense and vivid turquoise, his shirt soft gray with a tiny Japanese logo on the cuff. He carries a vague scent of aftershave, something aniseedy and expensive.
“Sit, please,” he says, gesturing toward the table. “You look very lovely. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to cook so I thought we could order in.”
She makes a swift calculation. At this time on a Friday night they will be lucky to get anything before a quarter to ten. But what can she do? She smiles, hoping he might put out some crisps, and he pours two glasses of wine before tapping into an app on his phone. “Done!” he says, and she takes a big swig of her wine, because she suddenly doesn’t know what to say.
“Beautiful kitchen,” she says, when she’s recovered.
He glances around, as if this might never have occurred to him. “Yes, it’s not bad, is it? It’s the one thing I had done before we moved in. I would have liked something more ambitious.” He takes a swig of his wine, closes his eyes for a moment, as if savoring it, then says: “But most of life is a compromise, isn’t it? So how are you? How’s the writing coming?”
“Okay,” she says. “It’s actually okay.”
“What are you writing about?”
“It’s…” she says, haltingly. “It’s a follow-up to another book I wrote about rebuilding a marriage gone stale.”
“Ah.” He looks awkward.
“Yup. I know.”
“Well, I think that’s very brave. It doesn’t surprise me at all—you are, of course, fearless. But I don’t think I could write about personal stuff.”
“Oh, you don’t include your real self,” she says quickly. “Not the important stuff. What I write is very much a curated version of my life. You have to—uh—ramp things up just to keep the publishers happy.”
“I’m sure. Not really my world. My dad had a book published once. But it was about Ancient Greek architecture. Quite different. Pretty dull, if I’m honest, though obviously the entire family had to buy a copy.”
“I make my children buy copies of mine with their pocket money.”
He laughs, and she starts to relax.
“Did you always want to write books?”
“I never intended to actually, unlike half the population. I wrote a jokey online article about my marriage while I was working in marketing and an agent approached me to expand it into a book. And then there was this bidding war and it went on to sell a few hundred thousand copies and sat in the Top Ten for a couple of months.” She tries to say this casually, as though she is not trying to impress him. As though she is clearly equal to his architectural prizes and designer chandelier.
“That’s incredibly impressive,” he says, obligingly. And she tries not to preen a little.
“So what’s the rest of your family like? Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Two brothers. We’re all horribly competitive.” He grins at her. “My elder brother is a lawyer and the younger one is a doctor. We’re basically a middle-class cliché of a family.”
“And some mother’s absolute dream.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. You?”
“Just me. One mother, two fathers. I think I’d love a couple of siblings to share that particular burden.”
“Well, it’s nice for your girls. To have their grandparents around, I mean.”
“Do you still see your wife’s parents?”
His face closes. “It’s tricky. They took Victoria’s side when we split, and relations are a little strained. They do see Lennie, though. She does a couple of weeks with them in the summer.”
“I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with that as well.”
“You’re very kind. It’s been…less than ideal.” He gets up and pours more wine, as if to change the conversation.
She would like to ask him more about this. She would like to ask him how Victoria died. Whether he has been out with anyone since. She wants to ask him approximately eight thousand other questions. But Lila has realized that she really is quite drunk. She gazes at her second glass, which seems, inexplicably, to be empty, and suspects Gabriel is some way behind her. She has to keep reminding herself to stop talking. She thinks she might be too emphatic when he says things. And sometimes she catches herself grinning goofily at him. She tells herself to relax. She is on a dinner date with Gabriel Mallory. Why shouldn’t she let go and enjoy herself a little?
She is not entirely sure what time the food comes. She is aware of him pulling out plates and cutlery and they sit at the marble table, which is uncomfortably cold against her bare arms. At some point he has put on some kind of Cuban folk music and dimmed the lights. They eat something with charred corn and meat skewers and she thinks she is so hungry by now that she could eat the cardboard containers it comes in. She listens to him talk, and the way the light bounces off his hair, and the soft, almost hesitant nature of his smile, and even though she has eaten and drunk, she cannot relax, because a question is thumping like a muffled drum beat at the back of her head. Her brain, though, skewed by the drink, keeps veering off in unexpected directions.
“Tulip!” she says abruptly.
He looks startled.
“Your table. It’s a Tulip table.”
“Yes,” he says, nodding. “Eero Saarinen. From a 1955 design.”
“I knew it!” She slaps the table slightly too enthusiastically and his hand shoots out to save one of the glasses.
Finally he clears away the food. He is like Bill , she thinks. He cannot leave stuff on the side . She may have said this aloud. She sits and watches, just holding the glass, letting the music and ambience wash over her. She feels, in this beautiful kitchen in her black silk dress, with this man, like a woman in a film. She feels like the best possible version of herself…
“So, shall we sit in the other room?” he says, when he has finished, offering her his hand. It is warm and strong and his fingers close around hers like they were meant to be there. “It’s a little more comfortable.”
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The living room is smaller than she expected: it contains a large curved sofa made of a dark turquoise tweed and an enormous television screen. There are no toys or clutter. Just a sideboard that appears to have no doors, a dome-shaped chair, and a long, low coffee-table made of some kind of concrete. Two swooping lights illuminate small spots around the room and a beautiful antique Persian rug covers a pale herringbone oak floor. A navy blanket that looks like cashmere is folded over one end of the sofa. The Cuban music has somehow manifested itself in this room too. She takes a seat on the sofa and he sits beside her.
“It doesn’t look like you even have a child,” she says, gazing around her. She makes sure she smiles admiringly when she says it, so that it doesn’t come across as a criticism.
“Ah. Yes. It’s my weak spot. I need to know there’s one space in the house that I can come to in the evenings and just relax. She has a playroom across the hall—if it makes you feel better, it looks like the aftermath of a particularly manic jumble sale in there.”
“I might have to look in later,” she says. “Just to make sure you’re not perfect.”
“Perfect,” he repeats, raising one eyebrow. He has turned his body toward hers, one knee crooked in the cushions, one arm along the back of the sofa. His hand is touching her shoulder.
“Well, in the domestic sphere anyway.”
“There’s only room for one person to be perfect around here,” he says softly. “And that role is clearly already taken.”
She blinks slowly at him.
“You’re just wonderful, Lila,” he says. He takes her hand in his, turns it over and runs his thumb over her palm in a way that causes her breath to stop in her chest. “I thought it the moment I saw you in the playground. You just cope with everything life throws at you with such grace and calm—you have this special air about you.”
“Special?”
He shrugs, as if it’s obvious. “You’re so caring and kind. And obviously very beautiful. And you’re always there to talk to, whenever I’m feeling low. I don’t deserve you, really. I mean I’m just—I don’t know—all over the place half the time. I hope you don’t mind me telling you this.”
“Not at all. But you’re being way too complimentary.”
He looks at her, his smile almost gone. His eyes are gazing into hers, brimming with seriousness. “I’m really not. It’s been a tough couple of years, and I told you that knowing I can check in with you, or see you—well, it’s really lightened something for me. I struggle to open up to people. But even if I don’t get to see you enough, I know you’re there. I can feel our connection. You make me think I can get through this. You…you’re something else.”
As she gazes at him, he gently takes the wine glass from her hand and places it on the coffee-table. He is still holding her hand, which he lifts to his lips and kisses. She feels the reverberations of that kiss at a cellular level, like an internal meteor shower in her body. And then he leans forward and, gazing intently into her eyes, waiting for just an exquisite fraction of a second before he finally does it, he kisses her.
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Afterward, she wishes she hadn’t drunk quite so much because things had taken on a dreamlike quality. She was aware of his kisses, their increasingly frantic nature, the distant snatches of the music, the feel of the tweed sofa under her bare skin. She remembers him unbuttoning her dress, telling her she was beautiful again and again as each inch of her was exposed, and then she remembers something more urgent and animal steadily taking over, their fingers clutching at each other, the kisses deep and punishing, the point at which his reason disappeared and instinct took over. He needed her. He had actually needed to be inside her. The strength of his desire was like being given something.
She is not sure how long they lie on the sofa afterward. She feels calm, satisfied, like a storm has passed over and now she can relax. Her arm is slung over his back, his skin faintly tacky with sweat, and he is still on top of her, his torso wedged between her legs, his soft hair draped on her collarbone. She feels his skin against hers, can smell a vague scent of something spicy and woody in his shampoo, like the kind of thing you would smell in an Hermès bottle. He is surprisingly slim, his muscles clearly defined under his skin. She wants never to move again. She could stay like this forever, with his hands on her, his weight pinning her. She thinks she will wind herself around him all night, so that every inch of her body is in contact with his. She is already anticipating doing this again—she is not sure she’ll be able to leave him alone.
Gabriel’s head shifts and he tilts his head to see her. “You okay?”
She smiles, a slow, easy smile. “I’m more than okay.”
“Sorry if that was…a bit rushed. I got overexcited.”
“Really. It was lovely.”
“You’re lovely.”
They lie there for a moment longer and then he starts to shift, taking his weight on his left elbow so that he is no longer on top of her. He seems faintly dazed and, without his glasses, somehow more vulnerable, his eyes having the slightly unfocused look of the habitual glasses-wearer.
“Are you warm enough?”
“If you stay on top of me, yes,” she says, grinning.
He looks at his watch. “Jesus. It’s a quarter to one.”
She’s about to say something about time flying but thinks it will be corny. So she just pulls at the wool blanket at the far end of the sofa to cover them up. “So,” she says, “we should probably get some sleep?”
His expression changes a little. He gazes off at the edge of the room, then turns to her, a little apologetically. “Actually, Lila, would you be okay if we didn’t sleep?”
“You want to do that again ?”
“What I mean is, I don’t think it would be good for Lennie to wake up to find you here. I mean we don’t know each other that well, and I don’t want her getting the wrong end of the stick. I just think at this stage it would be better…” His voice tails off.
“You—you want me to go home?” It takes her a moment to grasp that, yes, this is actually what he is saying.
“If you wouldn’t mind. Just for now. She’s been through such a lot and I don’t want her getting confused at this stage. It’s been a lot for her, you know?” He puts his hand on her shoulder. “I’m really sorry to ask.”
Lila lies there for a minute, then sits up and reaches for her dress. She realizes it’s inside out, and starts pulling at the fabric, trying to get it the right way round. “No, no,” she says. “It’s fine.”
“At any other time there’s nothing I’d like more than us to be together all night.”
“It’s fine. I get it.”
He waits while she pulls on her clothes, digging her knickers out of a gap in the sofa cushions, feeling suddenly self-conscious as she wriggles into her bra. It takes her a couple of attempts to get everything together, and she wishes he wasn’t standing there, watching.
He walks her to the front door. Perhaps he notices the expression on her face, because he pauses in the hallway and takes her in his arms. “You’re lovely,” he says. “So lovely. We’ll do this again.” He gently tilts her face to his and kisses her, his eyes soft and serious. “Hey,” he says, when he senses a faint reluctance in her response. “Hey.”
She doesn’t know how to feel. This is not how she expected the evening to end. He kisses her properly then, pulling her in to him, not letting her go until she softens and kisses him back.
“You’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” she says, and smiles reluctantly at him.
He helps her into her coat, then pulls the two sides of her collar together, gazing into her eyes. “Text me when you’re home. I want to know you’re safe.”
She has walked a few steps down the path when he says, in a loud whisper: “Hey, Lila?”
“Yes?”
“Probably best not to say anything at school just yet. You know what those people are like.”
She of all people knows what they’re like. “Just between me and you,” she says.
“Just me and you,” he says, blows her a kiss, and waits at the door as she walks back down the street.