Chapter 28 #2
‘Maybe,’ I say, beginning to feel uncomfortable, aware that Alistair doesn’t sense the crevice I feel opening between us.
‘All my life I’ve wanted to find you. I even relocated the family to Edinburgh, in the hope of finding you,’ he says, looking at me more intensely now, and all the empathy I had for Alistair drains from me.
The intensity of his gaze, which thirty years ago was full of passion, now burns in obsession.
‘Can’t we give it a go? Erase the last thirty years.
Pretend you sent me your address after all and pick up where we left off.
Surely you can see fate brought us to Sacré Coeur earlier, that we’re destined to be together. ’
I look away, and we arrive at the exit to the cemetery. ‘You know, I promised Carly I’d be back by midnight,’ I fib, a lie Alistair seems to buy.
‘Let’s meet again in the morning, at the hotel, after Chris Rose’s talk.’
‘Yes,’ I say, another fib.
‘I’ll see you to a cab—’
‘No, I’d like to walk.’
‘If you’re certain . . .’
I hurry off, avoiding an embrace, my feet gaining speed as I trip down the pavements, back towards the Moulin Rouge, past strip bars and sex shops and all the squalor I hadn’t noticed before.
Just get back to the hotel, I think, feeling suddenly panicked, as if something or someone is sitting on my chest. I’m mortified that my own daughter could see something I could not.
Uncertain which direction to go, I instinctively turn left and then right, hurrying along narrow streets packed with galleries and cafés and tourists strolling hand in hand, even so late in the day.
Finding myself at a junction, I turn left into a lane that leads to a set of stone stairs and I hurry up them, turning and turning again until I arrive in a cobbled square. In one corner, opposite a large brick church, is a small garden, wrapped in wrought-iron railings.
Through the gates of the garden, I catch sight of a small crowd gathered round an illuminated wall. Intrigued, and needing to compose myself, I join them.
In front of me is a large piece of artwork, similar to a chalkboard but on closer inspection made out of hundreds of inky blue tiles. On each tile are the words, I Love You, written in a different language of the world.
Drained, I sit on one of the little green benches that surround it, and drink in the peace.
After a while, I reach for my phone, instinctively wanting to call Robin, but to say what?
That partly due to your reticence, I’ve just met the man I fell head over heels for before I met you.
That he wasn’t the bright, passionate man I’d remembered, but bordered on being obsessive and bitter.
That when it became clear he was still interested in me, I didn’t tell him that I’m happily married.
Why was that? Why did I make up a story instead?
Unable to make the call, I tuck my phone away, staring at the I Love You wall, and find my thoughts drawn to the phrase, ‘happily married’.
Up until last week I thought I was ‘happily married’, but how can one person in a marriage be happy when they know the other is not? How can one person’s perceived happiness be so rapidly called into question by another’s perceived unhappiness? What is this thing we call happiness?
Sitting quietly, pondering my thoughts, Robin’s proposal tumbles into my mind. He’d asked me four months after we met, my period a month late, a pregnancy test in hand.
‘Marry me,’ he’d said, dropping to one knee, as I sat mutely on the side of my bed, trying to process the result of the test.
‘I was going to ask you anyway,’ he confessed, when I failed to answer straightaway.
‘But where would we live?’ I asked.
‘Here, in Edinburgh. I’ll move up. I can help run the book side of the gallery.’
‘You can’t give up your career for me,’ I said, even though I loved the idea of him being in Edinburgh, filling the space my mother left when she died a month before we met.
‘Watch me,’ he answered. ‘You can write books; I can sell books. Between us we can look after the baby. Maybe in years to come, we can travel, see a bit of the world.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, convinced that he was only asking because of the pregnancy. I wondered if we should wait until after the birth.
‘I’ve never been surer about anything,’ he said. ‘I knew, when you drove me back to the hotel the night we met, that I wanted to marry you. I’ve wanted to ask several times over the last few months but thought you’d think it too soon.’
‘Then, yes,’ I said, trembling slightly, and he’d wrapped himself around me and breathed all his peaceful energy into me, reaffirming the sense of home I felt in him, and always have felt, since the day we first met. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you more,’ he said.
I sit watching the people milling round the wall and think, not for the first time, how much Robin has sacrificed for me over the years: his career in publishing with all its contacts and good and steady salary, his flat in London, his family and friends.
Rarely has he grumbled, adamant that raising Carly while developing the bookshop with all its history and prestige, and supporting my writing career, has been a good life, far better than the punishing regime of being director of a mainstream publishing imprint.
It’s only in the last decade, since Carly left university and the book trade has suffered a seismic shift, that Robin has begun to feel despondent, that resentment has crept in, his health beginning to suffer.
But when did resentment tip into entrapment?
What happened to cause the provider of my strength and peace, my sense of home, to decide that love and life was nothing other than a trap?