Page 39

THIRTY-EIGHT FOUR YEARS EARLIER

Amanda and I are sharing a bed again. Thank God. My back could not have taken much longer on that sofa.

I’ve also been frequenting the café on the high street, the one with the macramé plant holders and the sour-faced girl called Kadija.

I go in there primarily for the cake but also to antagonize her.

She wears skintight jeans and has one of those backsides that all the young girls yearn for, but which I’m not a fan of.

Her hair is always tied back, pulled tight enough to ensure that everyone can see how good her skin is, how exquisite her bone structure.

She hates me, and I play on it because it gives me a huge rush of energy, makes me feel like my sex, my age, my height, are my superpowers.

All I have to do is sit there and watch her and she is filled with a rage so putrid and raw that I can feel it in the very air.

But it’s stoking my need for sex. It’s been over a week, and I wanted to save myself for Martha, but Amanda is here, literally sharing the same space as me, and she has that look in her eyes when I walk through her tiny flat in my boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

I know she has not had sex for years and I know that that’s because of me.

Because I “died” and left her with the imprint of the perfect husband, the perfect lover, and how the hell was anyone else ever going to step into those boots?

It didn’t take much, in the end. All I had to do was tell Amanda she looked good.

Tell her she looked better than most women her age.

Tell her how hard it’s been living with my lunatic ex all these years, how I could not bring myself to have sex with her and how hard it was not to just come back here to her.

And Amanda came to me, and shortly after that we were in bed and when I fucked her, I closed my eyes and pretended she was the girl from the coffee shop, and yes, it was a little, let’s say, energetic, and frankly, I have not enjoyed sex quite so much in a very long time.

“Darling.”

I’ve started calling Amanda darling again. It’s that muscle memory, like the twenty years in between never really happened.

“Yes?” She looks up from the kitchen sink, which she’s scouring with a battered-looking sponge.

“I’m afraid I’m going to need to ask for another tiny loan. They need me in for more treatment next week, and I’ll have to stay in a hotel. Three nights. Maybe more. And the train prices are extortionate. I’m so, so sorry to ask you, I really am.”

I didn’t ask her where the last loan came from. She had just given me the bundle of notes with a tight smile, and I could tell she felt conflicted about it but had made her decision and was going with it.

“Oh God, Damian, I can’t, I really can’t. I borrowed that last lot from Joel. I said it was to cover some unexpected bills. I can’t tell him that again. Not so soon. I mean—four hundred pounds, Damian. I can’t believe you’ve spent it already.”

“Amanda—my God, do you think I’ve just been off on jollies with it?

I wish I had! And I haven’t spent it all, I just don’t have enough left to cover the next lot of treatment expenses.

Especially three nights in a hotel. I mean, a couple of hundred would do.

Three, tops. And then I’ll pay you back, all of it. I promise.”

“But I don’t think you understand. I literally can’t. Joel had to really scrape together that four hundred pounds for me and I can’t ask Sam, he’s already in debt himself. I’ve pushed it as far as I can. I mean, surely there must be someone else you could ask? What about your mum?”

“My mum? Amanda—she’s eighty-one now. She’s senile. She’s in no position to be lending me money.”

“But you think your children are?”

I sigh. I’ve taken the wrong approach. “Sorry,” I say.

“You’re right. Of course you are. But the woman I’ve been living with, the stalker, the money she has kept back from me, it’s a lot.

I mean… over five hundred K. When I get that back from her, not only can I pay Joel back, but you and I, we could start afresh.

Sell this place, get something decent. I mean—well, bigger,” I elaborate, seeing the look on her face.

“We could slowly get our lives back together. Bring the boys into the picture. But we can’t do any of that if I’m sick.

And the only way I’m going to get better is to continue this treatment.

And if I miss one appointment, they’ll take me off the trial.

They have a waiting list a mile long for people wanting to be on it.

I have to be there. So is there anything, literally anything, you can think of, any way whatever of getting hold of this money? ”

I know what she needs to do, and she knows what she needs to do, but I know that it’s the last thing in the whole world she wants to do, that her stomach is probably churning with nausea just thinking about it.

I beam the correct answer into her skull with my eyes, which are filled with tears to convey my fear of her not asking this person for this money.

She closes her eyes for a beat or two, then opens them and sighs. “I could ask Bella.”

Bella is her sister. Bella is incredibly wealthy, and Amanda and Bella fell out horribly in their thirties and no doubt Amanda has taken not a penny off her sister over the past twenty years since I “died.” There was a horrible episode toward the end of our marriage when I persuaded Amanda to ask Bella for a loan for the business (I thought she should be expanding into homewares), which she did under much duress from me, and Bella loaned her ￡50,000, and sadly, I can’t quite remember now how the money disappeared.

But that was the nail in the coffin of their relationship, which had been fraught for a long time before I met either one of them, I hasten to add.

“You could,” I say now, softly. “I know it would be hard. I appreciate that. But Bella—I mean, it’s all a drop in the ocean to her. She wouldn’t even notice it.”

“But what would I tell her it was for?”

“God, I don’t know. Could you say you’re the one who is ill? Maybe? That you need a private doctor’s appointment?”

“But those sorts of lies, Damian, they blow up out of all proportion. She’d tell Dad, and Dad would get involved, and then there’d be endless questions and I would have to keep on lying and keep on lying and the whole thing would just…

” She explodes the fingers of both hands.

“And what about the boys? They’d find out too. ”

“Just swear her to secrecy. Tell her you don’t want anyone to know about it.

It’s the best solution. It really is. And you could ask for a bigger amount.

Enough to tide us both over while we’re waiting for my money to clear.

We could even…” I let a small smile form.

“We could go away for a few days. Just you and me. Celebrate the end of my treatment. What do you think? Will you do it, Amanda? Will you ask her?”

I see a hundred emotions play out over Amanda’s face as I wait for her to reply. “Oh God , Damian. God . I just… why was life so much simpler without you in it? Sadder. Emptier. Lonelier. But, fuck, so much easier. What is it about you? Why is there always, always something?”

Her voice is raw and desperate, but I can also see the shape of a reluctant smile on her lips, a smile of deep-seated affection that she is trying so hard to control, but she can’t because it’s there, etched on her heart, the way she feels about me, the way she’s always felt about me.

Nobody has ever loved me more than Amanda.

Especially not that bitch Tara, who, frankly, I cannot believe I wasted four years of my life on. What was I thinking?

Amanda sighs and pulls her blond hair away from her face, bunched inside her hands.

She makes a small animal noise and then says, “Urgh. Fine. I’ll ask her.

Just”—she turns away from me while she’s still talking and heads toward the sink, where she picks up the scouring sponge and holds it under the tap—“just leave it with me,” she says. “Leave it with me.”

The following day, I am back in the trendy coffee shop on the high street.

The girl is there, and as I walk in, I see a strange exchange of looks between her and a man behind the counter whom I assume to be the manager.

I head toward him and the girl disappears, leaving the man looking at me awkwardly.

“Good morning,” I say. I am about to order my usual, a white tea and a slice of that remarkable blueberry loaf, when the man clears his throat and says, “Sir, I need to have a word with you.”

I smile amiably and cock my head to one side as if to say, Er, OK .

“Maybe we could…” He gestures to the far end of the counter, away from the customers sitting at tables. I make another face to express my puzzlement but also my amenability, and I follow him.

“It’s about my colleague. The young woman who works here. She’s a very valued employee. She’s worked here for a very long time, and I would be lost without her.”

“Right,” I say. “Yes?”

The young man rearranges his face as he searches for the right words. “The thing is,” he continues, “she tells me that you make her feel… uncomfortable.”

I swallow back the rush of dark anger that floods my nervous system. “I’m sorry,” I say, sounding wryly amused. “What?”

“She says that you are always staring at her, that you walk too close to her. She said that you…” The man looks away and then back at me, trying and failing to fix me with a fearsome look.

“… smelled her hair.” He loses his bravado almost immediately.

“Or… the back of her neck. Or something, I don’t know.

But basically, I need to ask you not to come in here anymore. I’m really sorry.”

I look around to see if anyone has heard this preposterous commentary, but no one has noticed and the girl in question is studiously cleaning tables on the other side of the shop.

“Are you actually being serious?” I ask quietly.

He nods tensely. “Yup. I am. I’m sorry.”

I am not going to make a scene. I am not going to do anything, apart from get a slice of cake and get out of here.

My heart is full of rage, but I do not show it, not one iota.

“Well,” I say, “that is quite the strangest and weirdest thing I have ever heard. All I have ever been to that young lady is polite, and I have found her to be really quite sullen and—well, unpleasant. But if she has taken my attempts to get her to be friendly the wrong way, then of course I will take the hint and go.”

I see a muscle twitch in the man’s cheek, and he nods.

“Thank you,” he says. “I appreciate that. I do. And could I maybe get you something? On the house? By way of…” He shrugs.

But I know what he means. He means as an apology for being forced to take her side against mine, when I can tell he’s now on mine.

“Oh,” I say, smiling broadly. “Well, yes. A slice of that cake would be perfect, thank you.”

While he turns to find a bag to put the slice of cake in, I pick up the jar of tips on the counter and pour the coins into my hand. When he turns back, I smile widely and put a pound coin in the empty jar. “Thank you so much,” I say. “I wish you luck.”

I glance toward the problematic waitress, so he is in no doubt about my subtext, and then I leave.