Never Alone (8 page)

It’s not that she doesn’t want to stay. She wants him, and perhaps it’s because the conversation about Will and their encounter in the garden, and his reaction to it – was he actually jealous, or did she imagine it? – was strangely arousing.

It’s not the way I want it to be
, she thinks. His hand is stroking the small of her back. She has never felt anything like it; she can feel it through her whole body, as if there is a collection of nerve-endings there that have never been discovered.

This time, he goes slow.

This time, as if he is aware that she is pretty much sober and therefore might need time to relax, he undresses her piece by piece, paying attention to each new section of her body as it’s revealed.

At any moment she could tell him to stop. She thinks this, all the time, wondering if she’s going to do it, or if she is actually going to go through with it.

It’s not the same as really wanting it but perhaps it’s just her mind that isn’t sure; her body is certainly responding and there is a tipping point, when his hands, warm and firm, circle her waist and pull her down the bed, closer to him, that she gives in.

He knows what he’s doing.

Sarah is ticklish, and often found Jim’s gentle touch more distracting than arousing. She likes to be held and touched firmly, and either he knows this – perhaps he even
remembers? – or maybe this is just the way he does it. It feels – she searches for the word, in her head – safe.

She likes that he uses a condom.

She likes how it feels when he fills her.

She likes the orgasm that takes her by surprise, and that he lets her pause for breath afterwards and then, without asking, carries on with the same pressure and pace to help her to a second climax, which is longer, more intense.

She likes that he knows when to stop.

She likes that, afterwards, when she is tired and sleepy, he tells her to lie on her front and massages her shoulders and her back, ending it with a long, slow, sensual stroke from her neck to her tailbone that goes on and on until she is almost asleep.

In fact, she must have fallen asleep for a moment, because she opens her eyes and she can tell from the feel of the mattress that he is gone. She lifts her head and she can hear him in the living room, talking to someone.

For a moment Sarah is disorientated, but then she realises he is on the phone. She pulls the covers over herself, turns on to her side, closes her eyes.

I’d like to, yes, definitely… perfect… You know me, I never forget things like that…

When he comes back to bed a few minutes later, she keeps her eyes closed for a moment before she moves and stretches sleepily. She doesn’t want him to think she has been eavesdropping.

He kisses her, strokes her cheek.

‘I should be getting back,’ she says.

‘You said that before,’ he laughs.

‘No, really. I don’t want to leave Will in the house on his own.’

Aiden pulls a face but doesn’t try to stop her as she gets up and finds her clothes. She thinks, perhaps, that she should
say something about what just happened but the words won’t come. What were you supposed to say? It’s been years since she did this ‘new relationship’ thing, if that’s what it is.

What she wants to say is ‘thank you’.

A few minutes later Sarah is crossing the yard and shivering, hoping that the dogs aren’t going to bark when she opens the door, and wake up Will. Tess raises her head and wags her tail sleepily when she comes in. Basil, snoring in his bed, doesn’t even stir.

The house is quiet.

She stands in the kitchen for a while, listening to the clock ticking, the wind outside. She turns off the lights and puts Will’s clothes into the dryer in the utility room. Then she heads upstairs, feeling her way in the dark, trying not to make the stairs creak too much, although chances are Will is so fast asleep nothing will wake him.

At the far end of the corridor, the door to the guest bedroom is closed, no light showing under the door.

Sarah uses the bathroom, washes her hands and cleans her teeth, then goes into her room and shuts the door before turning the bedside light on. The room she sleeps in isn’t the master bedroom. It feels too big, too empty these days. The only time she ever uses it is when there are visitors, when she has a houseful. This room is much smaller, too small for a double bed really, but just enough room to have a bedside table and the built-in wardrobe. Also it has a view over the back, the side of the hill rising away from the house, so, when she is in bed and the curtains are open, all she can see is the green of the grass and she feels safe, secure, held by the landscape. On the other side of the house, the master bedroom has a double aspect: the smaller window looking over the yard, then a big window showing the incredible view over the valley. It had been part of the reason why they had bought Four Winds Farm, that view.

She lies in her bed and thinks she can hear a guitar playing softly, somewhere, but then, when she sits up and turns in the darkness to look at the door – as if that will make the sound clearer – all is quiet. She must have imagined it.

It feels weird, knowing that Will is here and nobody else, no Louis, no Kitty. But Aiden is just across the yard; she is safe, safer than she usually is when she is on her own.

The digital clock on the bedside table tells her that it is half-past midnight.

Thinking through the events of the evening, it occurs to her quite suddenly that it’s very late to be making a phone call.

It takes her a long time to sleep. So many years, she thinks, wondering about Aiden; so many years with Jim, thinking she was happy when actually he was always second best. Did he know? Was that why he didn’t tell her that Aiden came back to England?

Of course it is. She never was very good at hiding her feelings. And now Jim is gone, and what is left is this unending
what if, what if
…

You lie awake for a long time. Some time after midnight it starts to rain, gets heavier, the wind racing up from the valley and blowing it against the bedroom window.

You should be feeling relaxed after that, shouldn’t you? But you’re not. Even while you were watching her, starfished on your bed and flushed, her breathing slowing, you were wondering if she ever came like that with Jim.

You can’t help it. Something in you can’t leave it alone, picking at the thought like a wound.

And the thought of Sarah alone in her house with a stranger, a lad, with whom she shared a drunken fuck many years ago, is unsettling. You wish she had stayed here, or better still asked you to go and stay with her in the house. You wish she felt comfortable enough with you to ask. But you’re not there yet.

It crosses your mind to get dressed, to let yourself in through the back door and check that they are both all right. That they are in separate rooms. That they are asleep.

You listen to the rain.

You feel the anger growing inside you, starting as an itch, spreading into a burn, directionless. You don’t even know why you’re angry. It’s him, the lad, turning up unannounced and landing on his feet; getting her to feed him and wash his grubby clothes and give him a warm bed to sleep in; that he also expects her to want to fuck him too. The arrogance of youth, you think. And then you remember that you
turned up here just last week and she offered you the same hospitality. And more.

The more you think about it, the more the parallels emerge. It was a long time ago, longer than the few years since she had her ‘special’ night with the lad, but you have been there too. You wanted, and got – how did you put it? – a rematch.

Is that why you’re so angry about it? Because she doesn’t see you as anything special?

But then, the whole thing has taken you by surprise, hasn’t it?

This isn’t what happens to you when you meet a woman. It’s a challenge, an intrigue. You don’t get involved. You don’t fall for them. You don’t think about them, once they’ve gone. Sometimes – let’s face it – you don’t even like them, particularly. You’re good at hiding that.

And, above all else, you don’t need them. You’ve made mistakes, haven’t you? And you’ve got away with it, so far, until this last time. Someone died, and you just walked away.

Outside, the rain has stopped. You sit up on the edge of the bed. Your phone buzzes with a text message. You ignore it.

You are not going to lose her. You cannot let that happen. Not this time.

When Sarah opens her eyes the next morning it is barely light. She can hear Basil’s tail thumping against the carpet; she can see a pair of brown eyes staring hopefully into hers, doggy breath wafting across the edge of the bed towards her. He rests his chin on the duvet and licks her hand.

She sits up and turns, looking towards the door, which was closed last night and now is wide open.

She dresses quickly because it is cold in her bedroom. She glances down the corridor to the door at the end, which is still firmly closed. She must have not shut her own door properly after all, she thinks. Or Basil has pushed it wide. She goes downstairs and uses the bathroom next to the utility room so as not to wake Will, then pulls her boots on and her coat, and takes the dogs out. They run off immediately, chasing rabbits and whatever else they can find, sniffing the perimeter of the garden and then out into the field. Heavy rain has fallen again overnight and the ground is boggy with it. The wind has dropped, but it is still blowing from the north and feels icy now. She had hoped to work on some new drawings this morning but it might even be too cold for the workshop.

By the time she gets back to the house her hands are stinging with the cold. In the porch she toes off her boots and hangs up her coat. The dogs follow her as she puts the kettle on to make tea. She wonders if she should cook up some bacon, or sausages, and make him a sandwich. That used to be the trick to get Louis out of bed.

In the end she makes a pot of tea, drinks a mug of it and goes to the utility room to get the clothes out of the dryer.

It’s empty.

She goes upstairs. The door at the end of the corridor is wide open now. The bed has been stripped, the sheets and duvet cover neatly folded at the end of the bed. On the bare mattress is a single sheet of paper.

It says, simply:

THANKS AGAIN SEE YOU SOON

And he has scrawled his mobile number beneath it. Sarah sits on the edge of the bed and stores Will’s number into her phone.

An hour later, Sarah is in the workshop, tidying up her desk before starting work on the next illustration for
The Candy Cotton Piglet at the Circus
. She has already done nine out of the standard twelve pages of the book, and she has made preliminary sketches for the whole thing. At this stage, the Candy Cotton Piglet usually throws some kind of wobbly and she ends up having to make dramatic changes.

It’s hard to keep motivated for this book. After all, no one is waiting for it. The last two books in the series, complete, illustrated and reworked, have not been published. Her agent has tried to place them with various publishers, but, despite the early successes, none of the books she has done since Jim’s death have sold. Sadly, the new drawings lack the vibrancy and spirit of the original books in the series, her editor said. Meanwhile, sales of the vibrant, spirited first books have dwindled to almost nothing. No new editions have been suggested following a large quantity of returns after the last one, and it looks likely that they will soon be out of print.

Perhaps you should try something new?
her agent ventured.
A new character – something a bit livelier?

She could do this. But for some reason the Candy Cotton Piglet won’t let her. She has tried to draw other creatures – a dog, and, for a while, a hare called Arabella – but each time she ends up coming back to the Piglet and drawing more adventures. She cannot finish anything, now, because if she does she will have to show someone and that will inevitably lead to more rejection. Nothing she does is any good.

And yet, she persists.

The workshop always takes a while to warm up, even though there is an oil-filled radiator in here which is kept on at all times, to prevent the pipes from freezing – not to mention her paints.

Unexpectedly, the sun is shining through the skylights, bright shafts slanting across to the workshop floor. In each of the two rectangles of glorious light, a dog lies sprawled. She stands and stretches. The workshop has a kitchen of sorts, a butler sink in which she cleans her brushes and a work surface that has a kettle and a coffee machine that she doesn’t use because it takes an age to build up enough pressure and then produces a single shot of muddy-looking coffee that is never quite hot enough. In the workshop, it’s usually tea. She flicks the switch on the kettle and walks the length of the workshop while she is waiting for it to boil.

Her mobile phone rings. Usually if she is working she switches it off, but as she hasn’t started yet it trills and starts skipping over the work surface. It’s Kitty.

‘Hello, beautiful girl! How are you doing?’

‘Hi, Mum! I’m all right, how are you?’

‘Fine, fine. What are you up to?’

‘I’m just walking up to the library, then I’m going to meet up with Oscar and Suze later. Nothing too exciting. What are you doing? Are you working?’

Sarah can hear the sounds of traffic, hopes that her daughter is paying attention when she crosses the road.

‘Haven’t started yet. So how’s Oscar?’

‘Oh, he’s lovely. I can’t wait for you to meet him, Mum.’

Sarah smiles.

‘So can I assume from that that Oscar is more than just a friend now?’

‘Well… yes, I guess he is.’

‘In that case I can’t wait to meet him either. When are you coming home?’

‘Next weekend, if that’s all right? That’s what I’m ringing about. Is it okay if I bring Oscar?’

Kitty has a boyfriend. Oscar isn’t her first, of course. She had a few boyfriends at school, only one of them lasting longer than a few months.

‘Of course,’ she says, after a beat. She thinks Kitty is going to ask if Oscar can sleep in her room. She has thought about this before; with Jim gone, she has tried to think ahead, tried to make these decisions in advance.

Jim would have argued that he did not care what Kitty did when she was away from home, but under his roof she should behave appropriately, and that meant separate bedrooms.

Sarah would have replied that they were both adults; Kitty was undoubtedly having sex, and to force them apart at home was to treat her like a child.

Jim would have countered that to agree without even having met this Oscar was a risk; what if he turned out to be a druggie? What if he was bossing her around, jealous, possessive? Would Sarah still be happy to have him sleeping with Kitty under those circumstances?

Sarah argues back that she trusts her daughter to make adult choices. That she needs to make her own mistakes, but that she is, has always been, a child who is wise beyond her years. She cannot see Kitty going out with someone who is
jealous and possessive. And if he turns out to be like that, well, then, they will deal with it.

Imaginary Jim falls silent.

When he does this, Sarah feels a little spark of triumph at having outsmarted him, out-argued him, until she remembers that he is dead and she is putting the words in his mouth. Of course she is going to win every argument. Poor Jim, poor dead Jim, does not stand a chance in these discussions any more.