Page 16

SIXTEEN FOUR YEARS EARLIER

The atmosphere is sour now in our sad little house in Reading.

My wife pretends that everything’s fine, but of course it isn’t.

Nothing will ever be the same following that visit from the police, and even though they have not found enough evidence to bring harassment charges against me, the backdraft of it lives on in this house, in the space between my wife and me.

Also, there’s something strange about the way her daughter, Emma, has been acting since the police visit.

She’s over more frequently, usually leaving just as I get home from work, or arriving just as I leave, almost as if she’s timing her visits specifically to avoid seeing me.

Sometimes I see the extra mug in the kitchen sink when I get back from work and I know that she’s been, but my wife doesn’t mention it to me.

I know what all the secrecy means. It means that my wife is discussing the next stage of her life with her daughter, planning her exit strategy, and that, I’m afraid, I cannot countenance, absolutely not. This marriage ends when I am ready for it to end, and not a moment sooner.

On Wednesday afternoon I had been going to tell my wife that I had to travel to Belfast on Friday, for the weekend.

I was going to tell her that there had been a bust-up between the general manager and the housekeeping manager of a boutique hotel there and that I was being called in to broker peace.

In reality, I had planned to take Martha to Cambridge for the weekend: punting, the Bridge of Sighs, the splendor and awe of it all.

But now I don’t feel safe leaving the house for a whole weekend; it will give my wife too much space to plan and plot, to change locks, call in the cavalry.

But I can’t not see Martha. I ache for her.

I can’t remember the last time I felt like this about a woman, and I wonder, maybe if I’d met Martha when I was younger, then none of the other bad stuff would have happened. All the bad marriages.

But maybe it’s not too late for my happy ending?

I walk to the end of the garden and call her.

“Martha,” I say. “It’s me. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to make this weekend after all. Something’s come up at work.”

“Oh,” she says, and I can hear the flutter of disappointment in her tone. “Oh, that’s a shame.”

“I know. I’m gutted. So gutted. I’ve been looking forward to it so much. I had so much planned. This amazing seafood restaurant.” He sighs. “But listen, what are you doing now?”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now, this very minute. I could be with you in…” I pull my phone briefly away from my ear to glance at the time “… two hours, three maybe. I could bring wine, food, whatever you want. I just need to see you so badly.”

“Um,” she says. “I mean. I was just about to start dinner for the boys. I haven’t washed my hair. I’m… I need to…”

“You don’t need to do anything. Please. Just let me come. I miss you.”

“Are you sure this isn’t a booty call?”

She laughs drily, but I don’t respond with humor. I respond with ardency.

“Martha. I want you to know… I need you to know… the way I feel about you, it’s so much more than the physical.

I mean, the physical is amazing, of course, it’s utterly amazing, but it’s you, Martha.

It’s you I crave. I don’t know how this has happened, and happened so quickly, but you are already so important to me. I’ve never felt like this before.”

My voice is soft and emotional and it’s not fake, it really isn’t. This is more than physical. And this woman is remarkable. She really is. I can feel my destiny is to be with her.

“Oh,” she replies simply, and I can hear that soft vulnerability in her voice, the softness that tells me she’s the right woman, “that’s… lovely.”

“So,” I say, “please. Can I come?”

She says yes, of course she says yes. And I go straight upstairs to throw some things into a small backpack, and I leave by the front door without saying goodbye to my wife.

Martha’s older son eyes me from the dining table, which sits in a nook at the far end of her living room.

I can’t remember his name—Travis, I think, or something American-sounding like that.

He’s a nice-enough-looking boy, clearly takes after his father as he looks nothing like Martha.

His parents split up eight years ago, so I assume he’s seen other men flit in and out of his mother’s life.

He doesn’t seem too disturbed by my presence here, even manages a small smile, which I appreciate greatly, especially coming from a thirteen-year-old boy.

Young men should never underestimate the power of a good smile.

He’s doing some kind of homework and if I were in a film about a guy coming to the home of his brand-new love interest and seeing her son hard at work on something, I would saunter over and say something like, “What’s that you’re doing there?

” and offer to help, but no, just no, that makes me shudder.

I know kids, and I particularly know kids of single mothers, and no, they do not want some fly-by-night random smarming all over them and offering to help with their homework.

So I merely eye him back casually, give him a nod, and return his small smile. That will do, that is plenty.

Martha beckons me through to the kitchen.

She designed this kitchen herself. It’s all moody blues and patinated brass, things hanging from racks, shabby bistro chairs, floppy-headed flowers in pale glass vases.

She seats me at the table, and I watch as she lifts champagne glasses from metal shelves and passes them to me.

I squeeze the cork from the bottle and study her face as I do so.

She’s just exquisite. Her curls are tied up this evening into a puff on top of her head, her huge blue eyes set off by the pale blue blouse she’s wearing with baggy jeans.

The cuffs of the blouse are elasticated and pushed up her forearms, revealing her narrow wrists, delicate hands, fingernails kept short and unpainted because of her job, but I’ve always liked plain fingernails on a woman.

“Champagne on a school night,” she says. “What a treat.”

“You know,” I say, pouring the champagne carefully into the two glasses, “I’ve never understood why people keep it for special occasions.

My mother had a bottle”—I’ve told this story so many times before, I can almost believe it’s true—“that she won in a raffle in 1987. It was still in the back of her fridge when she died in 2002. And my mother loved champagne. She just never felt it was the right moment to open it.”

“That’s very sad,” says Martha. “How old was she? When she died.”

“Sixty. No age. No age at all.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. What was it?”

“Cancer. Ovarian.” I wince as the words leave my mouth, as if the pain of the memory still lives inside me.

“What about your dad?”

“God knows. And I don’t care. He’s a horrible man.”

“Really?”

I nod sadly. “A sociopath. A narcissist. An abuser. I could blame him for everything if I chose, but I do not choose, because that would give him power, and he has no power. Not anymore.”

Martha looks alarmed, but also tantalized. I can tell she wants to ask me questions about my horrible father, but also that she’s not sure she should, that she doesn’t want to appear insensitive or ghoulish. “When did you last see him?” she asks instead.

“A while ago. Ten, maybe twelve years. Around the time that Ruth died. He turned up like a bad smell.”

Ruth. It’s a solid name. The sort of name you would associate with someone with integrity, heart, intelligence, beauty. It’s the sort of name that makes women feel the weight and impact of my loss.

I could describe Ruth in minute detail, from the top of her auburn head to the soles of her size-six feet.

I could even show you a photograph of her.

I have one just in case anyone asks, but it’s not of Ruth, because she is not real; there never was a Ruth.

I just need her to reassure women that there’s a reason I’ve never been married before, a reason why I’m single, that there’s not something horribly wrong with me.

Martha smiles sadly at the mention of Ruth’s name, as she always does.

The evening is soft and gentle. The champagne takes the edge off all the stress and angst I’ve been feeling about things at home.

Martha’s youngest walks in. He’s wearing pajamas and is slight and fey with a shock of blond curls, just like his mother’s.

He looks like the type of boy to be targeted by bullies at school.

He presses himself against his mother’s side and looks at me distrustfully.

“Go on,” says Martha, “go and brush your teeth. I’ll be up soon.”

The boy keeps his gaze on me and then sighs and tuts and leaves.

Martha looks up at me. She doesn’t apologize, and I’m glad. She should not apologize for her child. Instead, she smiles and says, “Shall we eat?”

I jump to my feet. “Let me,” I say. “You’ve been busy all day.”

As I find my way around Martha’s kitchen, assembling the ingredients I brought with me, to the background of a pleasant soundtrack that she’s found for us on Spotify, I think of my kitchen at home in Reading: the sharp, hard corners of it, the plainness, those shiny white cupboard doors, the mean window overlooking the immaculate oblong garden, the metal sink, the neat rows of matching brushes and scrubbers, the cold marble tiles underfoot.

I think of my wife, sitting on one of those plain wooden chairs at the plain oak table with the fabric runner down its center; all so simple, all so modern, all so soulless and cold.

I don’t want that kitchen anymore; I don’t want that life.

I want this kitchen, this woman, this life.

My phone buzzes mutely in my trouser pocket and I pull it out.

Where are you?

I turn my phone to flight mode and tuck it back in my pocket.