Precocious (13 page)

I push my face into Bella’s fur, murmuring in her ear, just in case she can understand. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I love you.’ She smells of grass, and warmth. She licks my ear, her snuffling breath covering my face.

‘Baby, baby,’ I coo, hugging her neck, tickling her tummy, stroking each paw carefully in turn. ‘Be good. Look after him.’

Is this my idea of fair?
I wonder. I get you, so I leave him the dog?

I want him to shout at me. Beg me to stay, maybe, even though we both know I won’t. He is breaking me up with silence.

As I wrench open the door to put the last box in the car, he appears at the bottom of the stairs. When he speaks, it is quiet but clear, and after so much silence hits me like a thunderclap.

‘Fiona,’ he says, ‘I’ll always be here.’

Even when your life is on the brink of change, when nothing feels normal anymore, you still have to go and do the things that normal people do. You have to go to work. You have to get in your car and make the familiar short drive, weaving in and out of lethargic traffic, in the knowledge that stuffed into the boot is a case, like a secret, and inside the case are the pieces of your world that you’re ready to transport to a new place, a new normal.

I’ll bring my stuff over tonight
. The message I sent you this morning, depressingly pedestrian. I wanted to add kisses or say ‘can’t wait!’ but it seemed wrong, somehow, like laughing at a funeral.

Great. I’ll cook Chinese
, you’d responded, and I’d wanted something else, expected more, but what?

Our office is open-plan and I’m glad of the noise and distraction, the presence of others that means I have to work, or at least appear to, stabbing at computer keys, eyes fixed on the screen, making calls, scribbling notes in my diary. Surrounded by the usual chatter and activity, I can move through a day that looks to outsiders like any other, instead of The Day I Leave My Husband.

It’s a standard office, white desks and black chairs, a study in monochrome uniformity and impersonality, but we have this embarrassing system whereby every time someone makes a sale, a bright yellow balloon is tied to their desk. I’m so industrious that by lunchtime there’s a bloom of them obliterating my view of the person opposite me.

Dan, the facilities guy who occasionally mans reception, approaches my desk, pushes the balloons to one side and peers at me. In his disinterested monotone he announces: ‘There’s a visitor for you.’

‘What?’

‘You’re not expecting anyone?’

‘I don’t think so.’ I flick through my diary, a superficial gesture since I know there’s nothing in it. ‘Who is it? A client?’ But clients rarely come to the office.

‘She didn’t say. Didn’t look like a client.’

I feel a rush of relief at the word ‘she’ – for a moment I’d thought it might be Dave, making some grand gesture to persuade me against what I’m going to do. A huge bouquet, sad eyes, and everyone here would coo and tilt their heads and think I was heartless if I didn’t fall into his arms.

‘Old or young?’

‘Young.’ Could be Laura, or Mari? But they’d call, wouldn’t they? I stand up, straightening my skirt and tucking my hair behind my ears, and head for the lift with an irritated sigh.

At the clicking of my heels across the marble floor of reception, the girl hunched on the visitors’ bench looks up.

The young woman is about twenty-three or twenty-four, judging by her complexion, the way she is dressed and a certain awkwardness in her movements as she stands up. But her eyes look older. Her eyes, which were fixed on the floor, now swivel towards me.

‘Can I help you?’ I start to walk towards her, hugging a notebook to my chest.

‘Are you,’ she looks back at the ground as though reading my name from it, ‘Fiona?’ She swallows. ‘Fiona Palmer?’

It’s a long time since anyone has used my maiden name, and perversely it brings an image of Dave swimming before my eyes. I can feel colour rising in my throat.

‘Why?’ I demand.
What is this?

‘
Are
you?’ There’s desperation in her eyes. Hands stuffed in her jeans pockets, legs twisted over one another, she kicks at her own heel. She’s thin and fragile and for a second I’m afraid she might knock herself over.

I nod slowly, then say, ‘Well, I used to be. Why?’ I look carefully at her eyes, pools of dirty grey water. ‘What do you want?’

‘You used to go to Our Lady of Compassion?’

‘Yes.’ I motion for her to step away from the reception area, into the quiet, narrow side corridor. I move to steer her by her skinny elbow but think better of it.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she whispers, ‘I need your help.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘Henry Morgan.’ She swallows and looks at me carefully. At the mention of your name, as always, my heart dances in my chest but there is something new there: fear. She starts to speak quickly, eyes searching my face. ‘Did he … were you taught by him? Have you seen him since?’

‘Look, I don’t know who you are, but—’

Before I can say anything else she thrusts a piece of paper into my hand and starts to walk away, slowly, backwards, as though from a predator. As I unfurl the note she says,

‘Alice.’

You’re in your conservatory, painting, when I arrive, letting myself in through the side gate. I stand in the garden for a moment, a small suitcase in my hand, watching you. You are stunning to me in your self-sufficiency. I’ve never seen anyone who looks so entirely comfortable in their own skin, or so pleased with their own company. Even my little bag feels superfluous to this scene, and I hold it behind me, willing it to shrink.

Classical music is streaming from a digital radio in the corner; I don’t recognise the piece, but you know it, because you are softly whistling along. There is so much you know that I don’t; I wish I could climb into your brain and plunder it, taking out all the pieces that are there that would make me richer, make me more like you.

A glass of white wine stands on the side table, droplets of condensation glinting in the late afternoon light. You are frowning with concentration, making broad, sweeping strokes with your brush; the easel looks like an extension of you, or a mirror, reflecting your brilliant white shirt, your wide-legged stance.

I tap on the glass and you look around and break into a smile. There is a spot of paint on your nose, and one on your sleeve. Your hair is too long, the ends curling over your collar.

‘Hello, hello,’ you beam, opening the conservatory doors to me, and then you are lifting me up, suitcase and all, and holding me so high that your face is pressed into my stomach. I feel like a doll; I feel light as air. I laugh and run my fingers through your hair, resolving to cut it, but first, imagining washing it, sitting in the bath with you, or standing in the shower, hands full of soap, bodies pressed together.

You put me down and kiss me, easing the suitcase from my hand. There is a rolling rhythm to our kisses that is missing from the staccato kisses I’ve become used to in marriage. Our kisses begin slowly, softly, then there is urgency, then one or both of us pulls away, then we start again, and there is a sense of moving higher each time. In our kisses I am always conscious of myself, and always trying to impress you.

It’s not that the rest of the world, of my life, matters less when I’m with you; it’s that it actually ceases to exist.

So when you whisk a blanket off the sofa and lay it on the conservatory floor; when you push up my shirt, dip your fingers in paint and trace them over my stomach, smearing me with your initials; when you hold my hands above my head and kiss my throat; surrounded by glass, and the illusion of open air, sunlight bathing our movements but with only the birds as witness, nothing exists anymore, not even myself. Only you.

My closed eyes, my lips, my body become a hymn:
only you
.

When I come to from a hazy sleep, wrapped in a blanket, stomach sticky with paint and sweat, the last of the sun is kissing the roses at the back and the front of the house is in gloom.

You are industrious in the kitchen, your hands deep in some blood-coloured marinade, pulling out strips of meat and dropping them with a flourish into the sizzling wok.

There’s an ice bucket; champagne; two chilled glasses.

‘For when you’ve unpacked,’ you grin.

‘Oh, and Fee?’ as I back silently out of the room. You hand me a flower, picked from the garden, its heavy head lolling on a delicate stalk. I cup it in my palm as one might a baby animal. Its petals are a perfect, blush-coloured pink. Woven around the stalk is a piece of Hessian string and carefully attached to it, a key. A front door key.

‘Welcome home, sunshine.’ You kiss me softly on the forehead and turn back to your cooking.

It’s harder unpacking a few things in someone else’s house, than moving your entire belongings to an empty place. You have to work out where things
fit
; what the rules are around here.

I start with the clothes, because I know this is where I will struggle to make things look right. Your wardrobe is so masculine, and ordered. There is no place for my scarves and belts and cardigans. Neatly pressed shirts hang in blocks of white, grey, Oxford blue. Then trousers: I run a finger along their perfect creases. A jacket; a raincoat. And at the back, under wrapping that crackles to my touch, a tuxedo.
When did you last wear that?
I wonder.
Who were you with?

I feel as though I am finding out secrets, and with this thought comes an itch, an urge, that I try to put to the back of my mind.

I have
never
pictured you ironing a shirt. The thought of it makes me laugh, but also feel sad. Your clothes, without you in them, look different. They could be anybody’s clothes. I think about the hours you must spend making everything so neat, only to then roll up your sleeves in that way you do, only to end up crumpled.

Our colours clash. I try hanging up a navy blue shirt dress, the smartest thing I own; it makes the whole wardrobe look untidy. Taking it out again I turn to the drawers, looking for the one I know you’ll have left empty for me. I know the drill; I have done this before, after all. First there is a drawer, and a shelf in the bathroom; in time, possessions merge, the lines of two people’s histories blur and they meld, like their things, into each other.

But each drawer in turn, from your balled-up socks to your folded T-shirts to your jeans laid out flat, one pair on top of another, one fold at the knee, right down to the predictable drawer left empty, each makes me realise how far away that day is.

I hurriedly roll up my clothes and squeeze them in, underwear, shirts, pyjamas, everything, and press down tightly so I can close the drawer. I stand back and look. It’s as though I was never there.

Now for the book shelves: some things we own are the same, and these are the things that make me smile. At first I leave my (invariably newer, less dog-eared) versions of books and CDs that you own too in the box, but then I take a couple out and put them on the shelf, just to see how they look.

The Beatles’
White Album
. Yours, and mine.

The Catcher in the Rye
. Yours, and mine.

They sit next to each other like long lost twins reunited. It’s satisfying, like finishing a jigsaw, or arranging flowers in a vase with perfect symmetry.

But these are just pieces, neat corners in a thousand-piece puzzle whose final image is a mystery. I’m surrounded by evidence of a life you had before I came, before you knew me.

I’m suddenly aware that I’m holding my breath, and I lie carefully down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.
Don’t
, I tell myself. But a familiar temptation is creeping up on me; I feel heat in the roots of my hair and behind my eyes. I hear your soft whistling from two rooms away, listen to the pottering sounds of the kitchen, and calculate how long it would take you to get from there to here.

Carefully, quietly, I begin.

I don’t know what makes me start. Insecurity? Curiosity? Habit? It’s a habit I’ve had in all my relationships since Peter, except Dave, and Mari tells me all people (or maybe only all women) do it, only some admit it to their friends and some don’t. We call it Investigating. I don’t even remember how it started back with Peter, only that it became as much a part of our relationship as sex, as arguments, as cooking and walking and drinking and laughing. It was a sickening thrill: all the more exciting when he was in the next room, or could come home any minute.

I am adept at investigating. I leave no traces; I am methodical, and memorise every item’s exact place and angle. The giveaway tilt of a photograph album; the dull green flashlight of a recently thumbed mobile phone; these clues can be enough to spark a question, and while usually easily discharged, questions are not to be desired by The Investigator.

It’s a crazy thing to do, of course: there is no right outcome. If you don’t find anything, there’s relief but it’s overwhelmed by guilt for snooping; if you do find something, there’s the brief victory of vindication followed immediately by the sinking stomach and the rising taste of bile you get when you’re about to be sick.

What am I searching for? With Peter, it was simple: evidence of his infidelities. I’m not sure now which came first: did I start my investigations after his first indiscretion or did I find out what he was up to as a result of one of these searches? It doesn’t matter, really; the spiral became addictive. In the part of the stomach where butterflies are felt, there was always something. It hurt, but it was a
feeling
. It was like a mental challenge, a game of attack and defence. I always felt like I was on the edge of a cliff, but God, it was exciting.

With you, it’s more complicated. I thumb pages of books; flit through photos, noting the location of ones I might revisit later when alone with more time. But I don’t know what exactly it is that I hope for and dread in equal measure; only that I’m looking for pieces of you. More bits of the puzzle.

A memory rises in me of seeing my mum without her make-up. Another, of Peter in the mornings, his hair soft before he put gel in it and went into the world. Dave, being himself, almost from the start. No investigation needed, with him; everything on show.