In ey
The tub was high-sided beaten copper, as large and imposing as the Ark of the Covenant, and clearly built for two. With no other body present Marnie was obliged to brace herself with knees against the sides, like a sweep trying not to tumble down a chimney, struggling to keep her phone dry while she texted back and forth to Cleo.
How’s the hotel?
Ridiculous. Thank you.
When did you arrive?
Just now. Walked!
! With M?
Yes
Then, to change the subject, she typed –
It must be very expensive. What do I owe you?
Nothing. Monday out of season. Our treat.
Should she argue? She decided not, and typed –
Thank you
– and dropped the phone on to a towel. Sober now, here was that unease. She was pleased that she could put on a show but it was still a show and if, God forbid, she’d been handed the transcript of her account, the edit would require a mess of additions and deletions, corrections and clarifications. The facts were largely sound but nothing in her glib, flippant account had conveyed the pain of pretending her wedding had been the best day of her life, her marriage anything but a mistake. She had not lied except about the most important thing: how it had all felt.
And then there were the omissions. God knows, she didn’t care about how Neil came across and, if anything, she’d been too kind, omitting his spite, the cutting remarks, the endless undermining. But neither had she mentioned the love she’d once had for him or the sexual spark that had been real enough, intoxicating even. No mention either of the way this had soured, so that he seemed to dislike her precisely for the things he’d once desired, her hopes of a family stalling and fading, sex disappearing along with those hopes, her sexual confidence too. Six years now.
Running parallel to the reality of her marriage was a phantom version of her twenties in which she’d been more ambitious, studied, travelled, taken risks, said yes. When she thought of her younger self, which she did too often perhaps, she felt a small part compassion but a larger part anger, as if she were banging on a thick glass wall. And yet to talk honestly about those regrets and humiliations to someone she barely knew would be awful, excruciating, like crying in a supermarket. No one wanted to be confronted with that much honesty on an afternoon’s walk, but to turn it into tired anecdote was scarcely better.
And now she felt dishonest. Only one phrase was new. I would have liked to have loved someone. It felt conceited to declare that you had something to give and yet this was the truest thing she’d said, and also the most embarrassing. That would be her note in the margin of the transcript: ‘Too much?’ Now that she was sober, the remark made her gasp out loud. ‘Glah,’ she said, let go of the sides of the bath with her knees and slid below the water and, through the submarine depths, heard her phone vibrate again. A coda from Cleo –
Just make the most of it. Have fun! X
This seemed like an admonition. Home tomorrow, snap out of it. She rose from the water, clambered out of the high tub as if climbing a five-bar gate, dried herself and caught her reflection in the free-standing mirror, tensed some muscles and inspected herself, front and side and behind, pushing her shoulders back, pouting slightly. It was fanciful to think three days of exertion had made a difference and perhaps it was a trick of the soft evening light, but she didn’t mind the way she looked, steam-cleaned, rosy like an Impressionist postcard she’d once had, a woman drying herself after a bath. If she were able to replicate this exact lighting set-up, carry it around with her, she might be all right. Or perhaps she should knock on Michael’s door. Hey, check this out. Instead, she pulled on the dressing-gown, went to the window. Make the most of it, Cleo had said, so she looked at the lake very, very hard.
On the bed, she laid out the most glamorous of her three dresses, one arm kinked at the elbow, shoes on the floor, to gauge how she might look if surprised by a steam-roller on the way to a date. Not that this was a date. The bath had left her light-headed and she collapsed next to the empty dress and opened her laptop.
She had an hour to work but the font seemed to have changed to wingdings. Instead she looked online at the restaurant’s menu and decided what she’d order. Nice wine, pleasant conversation, potted shrimp, something with a jus. The four-poster took on the snug quality of a childhood den built beneath the dinner table. She set her phone alarm for twenty minutes, dropping it by her head. It slipped into a crevasse in the mountain range of pillows as she fell into a deep sleep that would last for nearly three hours.