Deep Water (29 page)

‘Hang on a moment.’

Andrea rose and stood undecided. She imagined the letter in pieces, swirling in the lavatory pan, as she pulled the chain. Instead, she thrust it into her tennis blouse.

In the sitting room, Leo stood holding the receiver with his palm clamped over it.

‘Tell dad when he can come back. Go on mum.
Please!
’

So Andrea told Peter that Friday would be good for her, and heard him catch his breath. In fact, he was silent for so long before agreeing to come home that she guessed he was crying with happiness. And he deserved to be happy, having been so generous to her. As for Mike – he might be shot escaping, or he might remain in the German forest for as many years as the war lasted. But by then Leo would be older, and would care less. So what would it matter if she made everyone happy now, even if later she had to disillusion one or more of them? The earliest months of his captivity would be the worst ones for Mike, and when he most needed her help.

Andrea thought of her first night with her lover, his flung-back hair, his deep-set eyes, his
slenderness
. How had she allowed her one great love to grow manageable? Maybe it would have happened anyway, even if Leo had never gone to sea. Romance always ended up as something else – becoming tragic, or mundane, or just stopping, and then being nothing at all. So she’d done better than that anyway.

‘What did dad say?’ cried Leo, the moment she had replaced the receiver on its cradle.

‘Not a lot. You know dad.’

‘He must have been happy.’

‘He was, darling. Very happy.’

Later, playing a Chopin
Nocturne,
while Leo sprawled on the sofa, she imagined her reply to Mike. ‘My lover – Nothing has ever made me happier than receiving your beautiful and moving letter …’ And would it just be generous of her? Not really. By writing, she could still
be
that wonderful woman she had been in the spring, though leading another life entirely, day by day.

She stopped playing, and acknowledged Leo’s brief but almost enthusiastic applause.