The Editor's Wife (20 page)

Put like that it sounded as though if I and not Nigel had asked first, her decision would have gone the other way.

‘I thought you were all right with it. I thought you liked your independence.'

‘Yes I did. Up to a point. But it'll be nice to be a proper couple.'

For a moment I felt a twinge of, not jealousy, exactly, since I didn't want Zoe to move in with me, but rivalry, that this shadowy Nigel had outperformed me without
even knowing of my existence. A grey vista of celibacy stretched before me, and I allowed a little of my dismay at Zoe's defection to show on my face.

‘Oh don't look all tragic,' she said, with her old impatience. ‘You can't pretend you're heartbroken. It's not me you want.'

‘But I'll miss seeing you.'

‘Well.'

‘And there's absolutely no chance of a last, quick . . .?'

‘No.' We gave each other rueful smiles. Outside the cab driver leant on the horn. She sped upstairs and came down a moment later with a bag of clothes and tapes that she'd left behind her on previous visits.

‘Do you want your casserole dish?' I asked. ‘Gerald's just washing it up.'

She shook her head. ‘No. You keep it.' She opened the door and made grovelling gestures to the cab driver. ‘Keep any other stuff you find. I don't need it,' and she tripped lightly down the steps to the rainy street with a last wave.

‘Everyone loved the beef, by the way,' I called after her, as she was swallowed up by the cab and borne away.

Upstairs I found Gerald had finished the washing up and bedded down for the night in a polar-survival sleeping bag with integral hood. He lay on the floor, taking up most of the space between my desk and the wardrobe, like a large green grub. It was the first time we had slept in the same room for at least fifteen years,
and as I twitched the curtains shut against the black night sky I half expected to see the hungry jaws of that wicked old moon, from which Gerald had once been my only protector.

GERALD LEFT EARLY
the next morning, taking his belongings with him and giving no hint as to his destination.

‘Right, I'll be on my way,' he said briskly, in the manner of someone setting off on the next leg of a well-planned journey. I wondered if he already had a new victim in mind. ‘Thanks for the . . . floor.'

‘Oh, no problem. Let us know when you find somewhere,' I said, watching his struggle to shrug his rucksack straps over the shoulders of his still-wet parka.

‘Can I borrow this?' he asked, picking up a copy of
Loot
. ‘Might be something in the Lettings section.'

‘Of course. You can always come back here tonight if you're stuck,' I added, pierced by guilt.

‘I'll be OK. You've got my work number if you need
me.' I'd momentarily forgotten that Gerald had a job, the role of vagrant suited him so well.

I managed to hold out for two full days before going to call on Diana. The fact that she had asked, and was expecting me, somehow made it easier to be patient, and if it hadn't been for the vacuum created by Zoe's departure, and the fact that with my novel finished I had nothing to do, I might have been more patient still.

The delay was exciting for its own sake: I didn't think of it as strategic. Even at this stage, as I walked up Aysgarth Terrace carrying a large bouquet of flowers, I still thought of our friendship as harmless, made special by mutual attraction, but made safe by our separate, solid loyalties to Owen. To cross a line would be unthinkable; so I didn't think.

It was just after breakfast and she was working at the table by the window, correcting proofs, as I approached the house. At the clang of the gate she looked up, and it seemed to take her a moment or two to realise that it was me behind the flowers and not a delivery boy, and she shook her head – the hypocrite – as if to say, ‘Not you again!'

By the time she'd opened the front door she had whipped off her glasses: there were shiny pinch marks on her nose. Her hair was down – unbrushed and rumpled. It made her look different, younger, but I could tell she felt caught out.

‘Hello,' I said.

‘Hello.'

There was a moment of awkwardness as the memory of our last exchange on the stairs hovered between us, but it was diffused by the flowers, too vast a presence to pass unremarked.

‘These will take some explaining,' she murmured, standing aside to let me in. ‘But thanks.'

‘You could say they were an apology for the ordeal of Saturday night,' I suggested, it not having occurred to me that excessive floral tributes might cause raised eyebrows indoors. ‘Or wait until I've gone and bin them.'

She smiled at this, as if she had already thought of it. ‘Saturday wasn't an ordeal. Why do you say that?'

‘It was for me. The food. And that mad Polish lady. Then Gerald. And then to top it all off, after you left, Zoe came back and dumped me.'

‘Oh no.' Diana laid a sympathetic hand on my arm. I could feel its warmth through my sleeve. ‘I'm sorry to hear that. Why?'

‘She's moved in with Nigel.'

‘No! I can't believe it. I thought she looked really devoted to you. Well, so much for womanly intuition.'

‘Mmm.' I wasn't going to tell her what Zoe had picked up by way of womanly intuition.

‘Didn't you put up any sort of fight?'

‘You mean beat up Nigel?'

‘No, nothing that physical. I mean a bit of counter-persuasion.'

‘No. It's probably for the best anyway. We weren't right for each other.'

This answer seemed to satisfy her. ‘I'd like to know what this Nigel's got that you haven't.'

‘Wealth and talent probably,' I replied, to let her know that I remembered all our conversations, word for word. We had moved into the kitchen by now and Diana was hunting for a vase big enough to take the bouquet in one piece. Having failed in this quest she propped it in the sink, and ran the water for a few seconds before turning to face me.

‘I'm glad you came,' she said, not meeting my eye.

‘I'm glad you're glad.' In the silence came the drip drip of water in the sink, impatient as a tapping foot. I could feel storm clouds of tension gathering. Before they could break over our heads Diana spoke. ‘I must go and brush my hair. Then I'll make us some coffee.'

‘I can't stay,' I said dismissively. I don't know what prompted this piece of cruelty; desperation I suppose.

‘You can't go already.' Diana's look of dismay made my heart heave and all the self-control, on which I'd congratulated myself so smugly, fell away. I crossed the room in two strides and pulled her against me. She didn't put up any resistance, in fact she swayed towards me and our mouths collided much less gently than I'd intended. There would never be anything to equal that moment of revelation. The kiss went on and on. It was easier to keep going than to face the next decision, but at last we had to pull apart. ‘Shall I stop?' I asked her. ‘I won't stop unless you tell me to.' She shook her head, so I took her hand and led her towards the stairs.

To say we got carried away is true and not true. We could have changed our minds. There were chances. We had to climb over that bloody rocking horse, for a start. That could have been an opportunity for second thoughts, but we kept going. Up the stairs, past their bedroom, past the twins' room – did I imagine her falter slightly – into the spare room, the bed piled with clean laundry, which had to be swept out of the way. It wasn't just the momentum of passion that kept us going, it was fear. Fear that if we paused for a second one of us would lose courage. The horror of pulling back from the brink, apologetic, shamefaced, would have been worse than a thousand betrayals. And then the layers and layers of clothes she had on, which had to be unbuttoned and dragged up or dragged down. Beneath my thumbs were seven different shoulder straps. Even at that extremity of desire the odd number troubled me.

Afterwards we stayed holding each other for what seemed like a long time. Diana was the first to speak.

‘I didn't plan this,' she said quietly.

‘I know.' A planner wouldn't have worn so many fiddly layers. ‘I didn't either. But I did think about it. Most of the time, actually.'

She sat up and started to rearrange her dishevelled clothing, fastening her bra behind her back with practised hands, while her tights still hung from one foot like a half-shed skin. Funny how much shyer we were about putting our clothes back on than taking them off.

‘I love you,' I said. ‘By the way.'

‘You don't have to say that,' she replied, smoothing down her camisole and fastening her shirt buttons.

‘It's true though. Shall I tell you when I realised?'

‘When?'

I pulled her back down beside me. ‘That evening at the Powys Society. You came in late and sat next to me. You were wearing a yellow dress. When you came back to my room for coffee your heels made a lovely clicking sound on the stairs. That was when.'

‘That's ridiculous,' she said. ‘You can't fall in love with the sound of someone's shoes.'

‘No, you're right. It must have been earlier. In the kitchen, that first night we met, when you humiliated me. I think it was then.'

‘But we'd only just met. We'd hardly spoken!'

‘Ah but there was a connection. The lemon meringue pie conspiracy. You felt it too. Admit it.'

‘I admit it brought you to my attention,' she conceded. ‘But it was only much later, when I'd got to know you . . .' She laughed at herself. ‘All lovers must have had this conversation at some point:
When did you first know you loved me
. . .'

‘I suppose so. Carry on, it's nice.' Somehow the thought that there was nothing original in our situation, that we were part of the great fellowship of lovers past and present, was oddly reassuring.

‘There was one time when you said I was beautiful. You sounded as though you meant it.'

‘I did! You are.'

‘I thought, perhaps I'm just flattered, bored, all the conventional things. But then the other night when you said you'd had lunch with Leila, I just felt sick. I couldn't concentrate on anything else. That's when I knew for sure: when I started feeling ill.'

‘But I told you we just had lunch.'

‘I know, I know. There's nothing rational about it. I never felt jealous of Zoe, even though she was your girlfriend. Even once I'd met her and seen that she was young and pretty.'

‘It was never a big romance, me and Zoe. We were just mates, with a bit of sex thrown in. Anyway, she knew how I felt about you; that's partly why she left.'

‘Did she?'

‘She said it was obvious.'

‘It wasn't obvious to me.'

‘If I hadn't come today would you have called on me?'

‘No. Never.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I'd have assumed you didn't want to see me, and I could never push myself on someone who didn't want me.'

‘Diana, I will always want you.'

‘We'll see.'

We had been lovers for less than half an hour, and she was already looking ahead to our separation.

I walked the four miles home in a trance and toppled onto my bed like a felled tree. I lay there for
hours, re-experiencing Diana in every detail, and wondering how I would function until I saw her again. We had made no arrangements, and no promises, beyond the fact of our love, which was perfect and absolute, and at the same time entirely unreal. Neither of us had made the faintest allusion to those mountainous obstacles to any sort of continuation: Owen. The Children. I had given no thought to the practicalities of ‘afterwards'. I hadn't seen making love to Diana as a stage in a process. It was simply something that urgently had to be done at that moment. Something to be chased into the past. This much was clear:

We were madly in love.

Her marriage was sacred.

I couldn't do without her.

She would never leave her children.

I loved Owen like a brother – better than my brother.

I had to have sex with her again.

These incompatibles floated around my consciousness, unresolved, until I was roused by a knock at the door. Diana. I leapt up, but it was only the teenage son of the West Indians downstairs. I'd never actually seen him face to face, though I'd heard his music.

‘Phone,' he said curtly.

I took the stairs in flying strides; he had left the receiver swinging on its leash like a hanged man. Somehow in fumbling it to my ear I managed to clout myself on the forehead. It was surprisingly painful.

‘Hello?'

‘Christopher? It's Owen.'

My heart plunged. This was it. She'd told him. I was instantly drenched in icy sweat. I could feel it creeping up through my scalp. ‘Owen.'

‘It's brilliant.'

‘What?'

‘I finished the book this afternoon. It's brilliant. Such a great ending. I didn't think you'd pull it off but you have.'

‘Oh . . .' In my state of brainsickness I'd forgotten ever having written a book.

‘Hello? Are you there?'

‘Yes . . . yes . . . sorry.'
He didn't know
.

‘I just love what you've done with Gareth. I laughed and laughed over that bit in the police station.' He continued to flay me with compliments, citing particular episodes and phrases that had impressed him, but I didn't take any of them in over the noise of blood roaring in my ears. It seemed inconceivable that he couldn't hear the crashing of my heart from the other end of the phone. ‘. . . so I thought I'd show it to Isobel, if that's OK with you,' he finished.

‘Who's Isobel?' I managed.

‘The sales director. I think you met her.'

My memory was shot to pieces. ‘Maybe. You do whatever you think.'