The Bed I Made (26 page)

Back at the cottage I switched on my computer and emailed Matt; I hadn’t told him about the dinghy yet and he would remember rowing up the river years ago with Dad. The view of the harbour from the study window was the night-time one, just the lights along River Road and by the harbour office, and the smaller ones of the boats in the harbour itself; funny how being inside made the outside look so much darker.

I was just about to close the internet connection and turn the computer off when the message arrived, appearing in my inbox with a merry ping.

I haven’t given up on you and I’m not going to. It’s time to stop playing hard to get now, Katie.

You never believed I would sort things out with Sarah, did you? Well, I’ve done it. I’ve told her that I can’t wait any more, that I need a divorce now. She’s heartbroken but you forced my hand – you wanted me to leave her, didn’t you? So I’ve done it and I’m free to be with you – I’m all yours.

Come back to me. You’ve made your point. You’re the only woman I’ve ever felt like this about. We’re different – we’re two of a kind. Marry me.

I pulled away from the screen as if he had bodily appeared there, inches in front of me. The nausea I’d felt when Sarah rang swept through me again. I’d expected contact after her call but the days had passed and I’d begun to allow myself a small nugget of hope that she was wrong, that he’d given up and moved on, but now here he was, inevitable.
I haven’t given up on you and I’m not going to
.

Marry me
. I made myself look at the screen again. It was unbelievable – actually beyond my powers to grasp. How could he think – after everything that had happened? Didn’t he remember? Had he forgotten why I’d run away? Had he forgotten that he’d almost raped me?
Playing hard to get
: he thought this was a game.

I couldn’t look at it any more. I deleted the message, snapped the laptop closed and went downstairs. My heart was still hammering against my chest wall and taking deep breaths did nothing to slow it down. I poured a glass of wine and paced the sitting room while I gulped it.

It was minutes before my breath came more easily and I could impose some order on the riot of dread and fear that had broken out inside me. ‘They’re words,’ I told myself, ‘just words. He can’t hurt you now; he can’t hurt you.’

I poured another glass of wine and stopped pacing. Now I was angry with myself: I shouldn’t let him affect me like this; I should be stronger. Come on, I thought; are you going to let him do this to you? Turn you upside down with an email? He’s just a vicious bully who’s furious because he can’t reach you. This is a mind game and he’s playing it because it’s all he’s got. You can beat him.

I repeated the thought over and over, until the repetition began to make it real. Later on, though, lying in bed, the fear returned, not with the panic that made my pulse race but creeping and insidious. The worst thing was that I didn’t understand. How could he ever think I would go back? How could he lie so easily about what had happened with Sarah? It was the sheer incomprehensibility of him that was so frightening. Trying to understand him – what he might think or do – was impossible, like grappling with smoke.

When I went to open up the café in the morning, Mary was already there. ‘Been here since seven,’ she said, tucking her fringe back inside the front of the elasticated mop cap she wore when cooking. ‘I want to take Mum away for a bit of sun for a few days – her arthritis is terrible in all this cold and damp, poor thing – and I’m trying to get ahead of myself and get some stuff in the freezer. Make us a coffee?’

We leaned against the counter and drank our cappuccinos. ‘You’re getting good at these,’ she said. ‘Look at the foam on that – couldn’t do better myself.’

The café was hot from the oven, and the air was freighted with the buttery scent of the muffins that she’d just put in. Despite her cooking mission, she was relatively relaxed; it was good to stand and talk for a few minutes, to be asked my opinion on whether a lower-calorie chocolate cake featuring beetroot might be a bridge too far for the palettes of Yarmouth. In this environment of utter normality, even the idea of Richard was surreal. In company, clearing the tables and taking orders, I felt the power of his shadow diminish.

Mary stayed all day, stopping only for another coffee just before lunchtime. Every half an hour the aroma coming from the tiny kitchen was superseded, the muffins giving way to banana cake, then fruit cake and then on to the soups. The procession of new produce cooling then being clingfilmed, labelled and stowed in the freezer lent a momentum, as if we were making preparations for a siege.

At about half three, she ran out of eggs. ‘I’m just going to whizz up to the Co-op in Freshwater,’ she said, untying her apron and hanging it on the hook by the back door. ‘I’ve only got a couple more things to do but I want to get it all done today. Won’t be long.’

The elderly couple who’d been eking out a pot of tea for the past hour finally paid the bill and shuffled off. I propped the door open for a couple of minutes to let some fresh air in; the vat of soup simmering on the hob was fogging the place up. I got a tray to clear their table, put the things in the dishwasher, then went to the store cupboard to replace the bottles of organic lemonade that had sold over lunch.

As I came back in, my arms full, I saw a figure slip out of the front door. It was a furtive movement; I knew immediately that something was wrong. I glanced at the till – still closed, thank God – then put the bottles down and ran out on to the street. ‘Hey!’ I called after him.

He was moving down towards the Square with a walk that he could only have got from American cop shows, a ludicrous sort of pimp roll. Despite the bagginess of his jeans, he was visibly thin and his light brown hair was long on the collar. With a sinking feeling I realised I knew him.

‘Hey!’ I shouted again.

He turned slowly. Sally’s son Tom looked back at me, his face a picture of scorn. In his hand was a bottle of the lemonade.

‘Give me that. You haven’t paid for it.’

‘Oh, fuck off, you sad cow. No one gives a shit.’ Without taking his eyes off me, he cracked the bottle open, took a long swig, then turned and rolled off.

‘Everything all right?’ Mary asked when she bustled back in with bags of shopping ten minutes later.

I’d debated whether to tell her and had rung the missing lemonade through the till and paid for it myself in case I decided not to. I didn’t mind getting Tom into trouble but I thought Sally had enough on her plate already. It would ruin any chance of our becoming friends, too, if I told her. On the other hand, I thought Mary ought to know, if only so she could be on her guard against it happening again.

‘Let me guess who,’ she said, when I’d explained what had happened.

‘What?’

‘Tom Vaughn. Bound to be – it always is, anything that happens round here like that. Stealing, vandalism, any kind of trouble – he’s totally out of order. You saw his comment on Christianity at the church over Christmas? We all feel sorry for Sally – she does her best with him but he’s beyond her. He wasn’t ever a nice child but over the last couple of years he’s turned into a right little psycho. The only reason he’s been allowed to get away with as much as he has is that people like her.’

‘Should I tell her – about the lemonade?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I’ll have a word. Easier coming from me.’ She opened the fridge door and started unpacking the shopping. ‘Much more of it and someone will have to get the police involved, though.’

On the phone that evening I told Helen what had happened. I also told her about the email from Richard.

‘He’s written again? But it’s been weeks now.’

‘It’s probably nothing but, you know, it is slightly worrying,’ I said, feeling the gulf between the word and reality. ‘He’s split up with his wife. I think that’s what it’s about: she’s gone so he’s looking for the replacement. I’m the obvious choice.’

‘But he knows you won’t go back, doesn’t he?’

‘I don’t know.’ I took a deep breath. Before ringing her, I’d made up my mind to tell her everything; after all, I’d told Sally some of it and that hadn’t been too bad. But now I felt the difference again, the shame of admitting to someone I knew well, someone whose life wasn’t a mess, how I’d let it happen, how I’d been controlled by him to the point where I had risked my safety – my life. No, I thought; I had to tell her; I owed her the truth.

‘There’s something I haven’t told you about Richard,’ I said.

In the background, very close by, I heard another phone.

‘Oh shit, that’s my boss,’ she said.

‘Your boss? Helen, are you at work? It’s nearly nine o’clock.’

‘I know, I know. We’re just flat out at the moment. The TV networks are doing their new scheduling – it’s crazy. But it’s only for a couple of weeks. Look, I’ve got to answer this. But I’ll call you, OK? Speak soon.’

Later I stood at the sink to clean my teeth. In the small mirror above the basin I looked at my face, the same ordinary face that had looked back at me for years. It seemed incredible that this could be happening to me, that he’d picked me that night out of all the women in that packed bar. But I had been open to it, hadn’t I? Lonely and bored, I’d been open to the idea of excitement, a powerful connection. He’d seen that in me and used it.

I spat out the last mouthful of toothpaste and put my brush back into the glass. Before turning off the computer, I had made myself check my email. Sure enough, there had been a message:

I’m putting your lack of response down to the fact that you’re temporarily out of email contact.

_{*  *  *}

There was always a single day, I thought, when the outgoing season conceded to the one which would come next. There had been signs before that the winter wouldn’t last for ever but the following Saturday, while I waited for my toast to cook, I stood in front of the sliding doors in the sitting room and let the glass magnify the sun’s heat on to my face until it made my cheeks rosy. The sky was piebald, patched with clouds, but if I stared, the sun behind them was strong enough that I could see their shapes against the red of my eyelids when I blinked. I slid the door open and stepped out in the yard. It wasn’t warm but the cold was tempered, at least. I walked to the end of the yard and back, noticing new leaf buds on the clematis that came over the fence from my neighbour’s garden. In the terracotta pots that I’d always assumed were empty there were long slim shoots – daffodils.

After breakfast I spent an hour or so in the boat, poking round the few little creeks and lagoons which I hadn’t yet explored, drifting on shallows where the water scarcely seemed to move at all and watching a ragged heron standing storklike on the roots of a long-dead tree while he waited for a snack to swim into view. There was a group out from the sailing club near the bridge, ten or twelve little fibreglass boats that zipped here and there across the river like water spilled on a hotplate. Tucked under their tight sails, fat in padded life jackets, were boys and girls not even in their teens.

As I neared the pontoon on my way back in, I noticed a man standing on the quay wall by the harbour office. He was strikingly tall and there was something familiar about the set of his head and shoulders. Another few strokes closer confirmed that it was Peter, and he’d seen me. As I brought the dinghy alongside, he raised a hand and started down the jetty. I tied up and got ready to get out as his footsteps approached along the boards.

‘Pass me those,’ he said, as I made to slide the oars on to the pontoon. He took them and held them in the circle of one arm while he extended his other to help me.

‘Thanks.’ I sprung up next to him, leaving the dinghy rocking, and put my hand up to shade my eyes. His face was in shadow but the sun was streaming from behind him, outlining him and picking out chestnut tones in his dark hair. He was in the blue Musto jacket I’d seen before but a different – cleaner – pair of jeans.

‘Dry feet today,’ he said, smiling slightly.

‘Yes – progress.’

‘I was out sailing yesterday,’ he said. ‘First time this year.’

‘In Chris’s boat?’

‘Mine. I didn’t take it out of the water this winter.’

‘Is it here?’ I turned to look, expecting him to point it out.

‘No – in the river at Newtown.’

A few seconds passed. A motorboat – huge, white and ugly, engine growling – had just left its mooring and the dinghies bounced and jostled against each other as its wash peeled across the harbour and passed beneath them.

‘I was wondering yesterday,’ he said, ‘if you’d like to come with me next time? Maybe next weekend?’

Taken by surprise, I didn’t say anything.

‘Chris will take you out on
Sirene
when she’s back in, I’m sure, but in the meantime – if you want to and you don’t mind the cold? It’s pretty bracing.’