I Remember You (14 page)

That was how Adam had persuaded her the first time, all those years ago, in the meadows, after his mother had died. The first time—her first time. She had cried over him for six months, when she realized it
was
just a summer thing, a way to ease the pain he was feeling that could never really be eased. Of course she wanted him; she always wanted him, his intoxicating smile, his ready laughter, his low voice, his dark eyes, his kind heart—but he didn’t know her the way he thought he did, because he didn’t know just how much he’d hurt her, how he’d rejected her. Adam still thought she was his old, jolly friend, albeit with a nice new haircut, and how could he say that when she didn’t know who she was, what she was doing?

They were still walking, they were almost at the hotel. But then, as if confounding her fears, he stopped and said, ‘This doesn’t have to be a big deal, Tess. But you know I want you.’

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘So—let’s just have fun tonight. Don’t worry about it.’ He breathed out, slowly, watching her tensely, as though he was worried he’d gone too far, and she remembered how good it was to be with him, how much she did want him, how she’d hidden that away. Just for one night…just once more…

‘Yes,’ she said, almost urgently. He gripped her hand, and she broke free from his grasp, putting her hands on his face, and kissing him, enjoying him, remembering how good he felt. ‘OK, you’re right.’ She smiled. ‘We’re grown-ups now, after all, aren’t we?’

‘Damn right,’ Adam said, matching her smile, and they ran up the steps of Claridge’s, into the cool, elegant lobby, as the night porter smiled at them indulgently. He probably thinks we’ve been together for ages, Tess thought. Perhaps he’s wondering if tonight’s our anniversary.

Perhaps he’s not wondering anything at all.

‘We’ve booked a room,’ Adam told the concierge behind the desk. ‘Adam Smith, one night.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the concierge, tapping furiously. ‘Let me just see if there are any messages—’

Tess tensed for a moment; fear gripped her, she didn’t know why. Adam’s warm fingers squeezed hers as they held hands. The phone rang and the concierge, distracted, picked up the keys, and then picked up the phone. ‘Hold, please,’ he said brusquely. He leaned forward.

‘That’s all fine,’ he said, and Tess relaxed again. ‘Room three three eight. Thank you, sir.’ He went back to the call and they were alone again, the only other people in the lobby, and it was quiet, but a comforting, reassuring quiet. They smiled at each other like schoolchildren.

In the lift, they sat side by side on the tiny, elegant sofa, holding hands, almost formally, and then Adam leaned over once more and kissed her softly on the lips.

‘This is a wonderful night,’ he said. ‘Darling Tess.’

She smiled at him, her heart swelling with joy.

The doors opened; Adam looked up, and turned to the left. Down the corridor, their feet silent on the plush soft carpet, they walked, until they reached room 338. Tess was nervous suddenly; the perfection of it all, the suddenness too. But, as if he knew, Adam rubbed her back as he fumbled for the key, and the slight touch of his hand calmed her down and she felt a lifting of her mood, a clearing of the clouds. She was here, he was here, it was amazing. They laughed as he struggled with the lock.

‘We must look like crazy people, with just these little bags,’
Tess said. ‘Everyone else with Louis Vuitton cases for weeks and then us.’

‘There’s no one else to see us,’ said Adam. ‘It’s just you and me, remember?’

She smiled at him, her hair falling in her face, and he pushed it back and kissed her again as the key turned in the lock and they almost fell into the room.

‘Adam?’

In the darkness, a voice.

‘Adam, darling?’

There was a rustling sound, as they stood in the doorway, frozen, and then a bedside lamp came on, throwing a soft glow across the room, and revealed Francessa, on the bed in a fluffy towelling robe, her hair glowing in the gloom, her face flushed with sleep. She blinked at them.

‘Hi—Tess?’

‘Hi,’ said Tess, mechanically. ‘What are you—’

Adam’s voice cut across hers. ‘Francesca, what are you doing here?’

Francesca curled a strand of hair around her finger. She looked at Adam, and said slowly, ‘I made a massive mistake, darling.’ She rubbed her eyes and knelt up on the bed. ‘I’m sorry. I got the train up a couple of hours ago. I wanted to tell you, I’m sorry.’

‘Francesca—’

There was a catch in her voice. ‘Can you forgive me?’

Adam pulled away from the door towards Francesca. He stared at her; suddenly, Tess didn’t know what he was thinking. All she knew was, she had to get out of there. Waves of something—of shame, guilt, emotion, love, attraction—were washing over her, but for now there was nothing to be done.
Let’s just have fun tonight
. It was the same as always, nothing had changed. Her mind started clicking into gear, flipping over possibilities. She felt for her jacket. Was the key to Meena’s still in there? Yes, it was.

At least this time she’d got out before she’d gone in too deep. It would have been a disaster, sleeping with Adam. She cleared her throat.

‘Look—’ she began. ‘I’ll take off, then.’

‘No,’ said Adam, turning towards her. ‘T—’

Francesca watched them both, blinking, as if she were waking up little by little. Any moment now, and she would start to wonder…Tess shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘I’ll get a cab to Meena’s outside,’ she told Adam firmly.

‘But it’s miles away.’

‘It’s not,’ she said, trying to sound patronizingly sure of herself, when he was right, it was miles away, but she was glad it was miles away, the more distance the better. ‘I can’t stay here.’

‘Yes, you can,’ Adam said. Francesca cleared her throat.

‘Adam,’ Tess said, under her breath, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘What are we going to do, share a bed, the three of us? That’s just weird.’

Adam shook his head. ‘I’ll go to Meena’s. You stay here, with Francesca. I don’t want you—’ His hands dropped to his sides, helplessly. He had no claim over her, and he knew it.

‘You don’t know where it is,’ said Tess. ‘And she’s expecting me to be there, anyway.’ She looked up at him imploringly and then stepped a little further into the room. ‘Bye, Francesca!’ She waved. ‘Short but sweet. Speak to you tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ said Francesca, smiling at her excitedly. ‘I’m sorry about all—all this. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ve been waiting for you for ages! What on earth have the two of you been up to?’ She rolled her eyes behind Adam’s back, as if they were both complicit in Adam’s uselessness, and Tess could have hit her, then.

But it wasn’t Francesca’s fault, it wasn’t anyone’s. It was…just one of those things.

‘It’s just one of those things,’ she said to Adam, in the doorway again.

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I think you’re right. Look—’

‘See you when I get back,’ Tess told him. His eyes widened.

‘When you get back?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I’m going to Italy, remember? I’m away for a week.’ He looked at her—was it relief in his eyes, or something else? She winced at how much it hurt, and then patted the doorframe, unable to bring herself to touch him. ‘I’ll talk to you soon, yeah?’

‘Um—yeah,’ Adam said.

‘Adam—’ Francesca’s voice came from inside the room. ‘Aren’t you going to put her in a cab, for God’s sake? She can’t walk the streets on her own at this time of night.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Tess called out, at the same time as Adam said, ‘She says she’ll be fine.’

She turned and looked at him. Yep, she was right. He was the same old Adam.

‘Thanks,’ she said, unable to keep the anger out of her voice, and she walked towards the lift.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she heard him call softly to Francesca, and then he was running after her, down the corridor.

‘Leave me alone, Adam,’ she told him, opening the heavy door onto the staircase; she didn’t want to wait for the lift.

He followed her, as her feet tripped on the stairs. ‘Don’t go like this, T,’ he said. ‘This is all a big mistake, I’m sorry—’

She carried on running down the stairs. ‘Thanks. I know it is.’

‘Hey,’ he called down to her, increasing his steps as she was getting away from him. ‘This is hard for me as well, you know. I didn’t realize she’d be here…’

She stopped, on a landing, and looked at him. Both of them were breathing heavily. ‘Two girls in one hour is pretty good going, even for you,’ she said sarcastically, wishing she could bite her tongue. ‘And lucky for you, one of them’s waiting all ready for you, naked in a hotel room, and the other one’s off,
so you don’t have to do anything. It’s all done for you. Just like it always is.’

‘Don’t be a bitch, Tess,’ Adam said. Her eyes widened and he shook his head. ‘Sorry. I don’t mean it. Just stop living in the past.’ He amended himself. ‘Don’t—let’s not say anything we’ll regret.’

‘Don’t call me a bitch,’ she said, venom in her voice. ‘And don’t say I’m living in the past, Adam. Don’t. There are lots of things I could call you, and I don’t.’

‘OK, go on then,’ he said, clenching his teeth. ‘You’re always right, aren’t you? Always bloody right. Tell me.’

‘I’m not going to tell you,’ she said, turning and running down the stairs again, the endless square spiral—when would she reach the ground, when would she be out of here? They reached the lobby, and a slumbering night guard looked up and smiled as they stormed past him, through the revolving doors, out onto the pavement. Adam caught her by the shoulder, and she cried out in alarm and stumbled against the black railing. He grabbed her, stopped her from falling.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Tess, I didn’t mean—’

‘You never mean it, do you,’ Tess said, wrenching herself out of his grasp and facing him, her eyes blazing. ‘You didn’t mean to kiss me tonight. You didn’t mean to come off your bike. You didn’t mean to fuck up your A levels and never hold down a job for more than three months.’ She could hear herself, saying these hateful things, but she couldn’t stop. ‘You didn’t mean all sorts of things, but they happened anyway, and no, of
course
you’re not responsible, are you? It’s never your fault, is it?’

‘Go on,’ Adam said, and he jammed his hands into his pockets and moved slowly towards her. ‘Go on, say it.’

‘You didn’t mean to sleep with me the first time, but you did.’ Her voice grew softer; her throat hurt, she wasn’t going to cry. ‘You didn’t mean to get me pregnant, but you did. You didn’t mean to forget on the day I had the abortion, but you
fucking did, Adam,
you did
. And you didn’t mean to go off with Sally a week later on holiday but you did.’ Her voice was cracking. ‘Tell, me, Adam. What was the Dealbreaker with me, eh? What was wrong with me? When was the moment—the moment you looked down at me and thought, “Nah,gone off her now, doesn’t matter if I treat her like crap.”?’

She spat out the words, tears streaming down her face. They dropped on the pavement.

‘There wasn’t a Dealbreaker with you.’

‘Of course there fucking was,’ she said, laughing heavily. ‘There must—’ She wanted to say, there must have been some reason, some reason why you didn’t want to be with me, what was it?

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry about it all. About the abortion,’ he said, his kind eyes frowning, looking deep into hers. His arms dropped back down to his side. ‘I’m sorry I made you go through it alone, I’m really sorry that it happened at all.’

A car lumbered slowly past, breaking the still of the Mayfair night. She stepped away from him.

‘Tess—’ he called after her. ‘Please—please, listen. I’m sorry—’ But she ran to the corner of New Bond Street without another word, afraid of what more they might say to each other. And this time he didn’t follow her.

A cab swerved violently to the kerb. Tess climbed into it, gave the driver Meena’s address, and settled back into the comfortingly hard shell of the seat. She stared out of the window, into the London summer night. She thought it might have started raining, but it was her eyes, brimming and bleary with tears. It was almost exactly thirteen years since that summer, and though it seemed like a lifetime ago, and though Adam had clearly forgotten almost all about it, she had forgotten nothing. She remembered it all.

Thirteen Years Ago

Neither of them knew it was going to happen. She would look back and marvel that she could have woken that day with no idea of what lay ahead of her. That she could start the day as a—a child, really—and end it in Adam’s arms, his hands clumsily stroking her hair, the two of them clinging to each other, exhilarated, exhausted.

Her mother was cross with her that day; Tess had accidentally broken a cup, two plates, and a vase, by throwing a spoon at Stephanie over breakfast. It had hit the dresser that stood in the corner of the crowded kitchen. It was bad luck, it wasn’t her fault. Well, not all her fault; she wasn’t the one who’d started it, it was her sister who’d jabbed the fork into her leg. It wasn’t fair being the youngest, it was very unfair, in fact.

‘You’re nearly eighteen!’ her mother had said, her face contorted into an agony of suppressed anger. ‘I really, really do not understand what’s wrong with you!’

‘But she started it! And she’s older!’

Her mother was harassed almost to a point past sanity. ‘I don’t care. I do not care. You should be ashamed of yourself. That was Grandmother’s plate, she was given it for her
wedding. Broken into a hundred pieces. Are you happy now?’ Emily Tennant was shouting at her now, the pent-up anger of the humidity and stultifying heat releasing itself. Her face was red and shiny. A greasy tendril of hair flapped out from behind her ear.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she said, genuinely contrite in the face of her mother’s rage. ‘I didn’t mean to, and she was the one—’

She was going to say, ‘She was the one I was aiming for,’ but she halted, not convinced this would be the answer her mother was looking for.

‘I’ve got the Mynors coming round this evening, and the man coming about the curtains. Can’t you find something to do today? Because I really don’t think I can stand you and your sister going at it all day long.’