The Judas Scar (17 page)

He nodded and touched her knee lightly. ‘Of course not. I’m not interested in talking about Will.’ He paused. ‘It’s you I’m interested in.’

‘Me?’

‘Do you ever get the feeling you’re supposed to be with someone? That it’s an imperative?’ He leant forward, his face only a few inches from hers. ‘Because that’s how I feel about you, Harmony. I want to be with you. I want to fuck you. Very much.’

Harmony reeled at his words. She drew back from him, unsure if he was joking, but the look on his face was deadly serious and any comfort she’d felt in his company evaporated. Her stomach lurched. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘You can’t say that. I’m married.’ She felt as if people were watching them and glanced at the woman who’d been staring at Luke, but she was now occupied with her iPhone, while the man she was with was still absorbed by his paper. Harmony reached down for her bag. ‘You told me you just wanted a drink.’ Her voice was shaky. She pulled her jacket tighter around her.

‘I wasn’t entirely truthful.’

‘I’m married, Luke.’

‘But not happily.’

‘I have to go.’ Harmony stood, angry at his presumption, angry that she couldn’t snap back and tell him how wildly happy she and Will were. ‘It was wrong of me to come.’

Luke grabbed hold of her above the elbow. Her heart pounded. ‘Let go of me.’

‘I know you feel it. You felt it that night at the party. I know it from the way you look at me, the way you act around me. I can read you like a book.’

Harmony didn’t know what to say. Her cheeks felt hot and her mouth dry. She was embarrassed, mortified she’d been that obvious, annoyed she hadn’t done more to hide her attraction, her fascination.

He brought his face close to hers, his mouth near her ear, his breath hot against the side of her face. ‘You’re inside my head.’

He eased his grip on her. She felt faint. Her head pounded with a mix of emotions, the nerves and vulnerability vying with excitement and a sudden feeling of empowerment. The bar, the other people enjoying themselves, the waiters shouting orders, the clatter of plates, all of it faded into the background. Heat pulsed through her. All she needed to do was move her face a fraction closer, lift her chin, and press her lips against his.

Will’s face flashed into her mind.

‘I have to go,’ she whispered.

‘Don’t go.’

She turned her face to look at him. His eyes locked on hers. She felt herself weaken for a fraction of a second. No! a voice in her head screamed. For God’s sake what are you doing? She closed her eyes and lifted her hand, placed it flat against Luke, briefly felt the hardness of his chest, the heat of him beneath his cotton shirt, then pushed him away from her.

‘I have to go,’ she repeated.

‘Because of Will?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Because of Will. I’m married to him. I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Desiring something shows you’re alive, Harmony. You don’t have to feel guilt. Without desire we might as well be dead. Desire is our fuel. To live without desiring, without wanting, is to deny your humanity, and God knows how fleeting life is. Never deny yourself pleasure. There’s so much shit in the world, these moments of pleasure are like gold dust.’

Harmony felt her chest tightening as if a vice was slowly squeezing the air from her lungs.

‘Look at them,’ he whispered. He turned her head gently in the direction of the couple at the table near them. She looked at them, the woman on her iPhone, the man with his newspaper. ‘They’re not old,’ Luke said. ‘They’re married, yet they’ve run out of things to say to each other. They are in this beautiful restaurant and she’s looking at other men, bored and disappointed, wondering why she’s there, while he reads
The Times
vacancy pages, idly flitting over everything. He’s wearing a grey suit, has grey skin, grey hair, sitting with a wife he’s not interested in, dreaming of a job he hasn’t the guts to go out and get. Is that what you want? To be too scared to make changes that would make you happier? I want you, Harmony. I want to fuck you, to taste you. I want to be with you in a way that other people can’t be with you.’

Harmony breathed heavily, intoxicated by his words, feeling herself weaken with every syllable. Will’s face came into her head again. She closed her thumb on her wedding ring, felt its hardness against her skin. ‘Christ, what am I doing?’ she whispered.

She grabbed her bag and ran through the restaurant away from him, pushing out through the door and onto the pavement. She walked quickly down towards the Cromwell Road, shaking her head, cursing herself for accepting his invitation, for putting herself in that position.

She heard footsteps behind her and looked over her shoulder to see him striding after her.

‘Don’t follow me,’ she said, picking up her pace. ‘You’ve got to leave me alone.’

He drew up beside her and took hold of her arm to turn her to face him. ‘Harmony—’

‘No, Luke. I’m married.’

Luke looked up at the sky. He seemed annoyed, frustrated even. When he fixed his eyes on her again, they narrowed. ‘But you want me.’ He stared at her. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘No, you’re not
right
. Who the hell do you think you are to draw all these conclusions?’ She was cross with herself. Cross for opening herself up to him, for indulging such juvenile feelings of lust and attraction, for falling for his playboy looks like a teenage girl. She’d met him three times and there she was, tempted to do something stupid, something that would seal the fate of a marriage that already hung in the balance.

She turned away from him and started to walk back down to the main road. When she reached it she looked left and right for a taxi. There were none and she swore. ‘I need a cab,’ she whispered. ‘For God’s sake, I need a cab.’

‘Don’t go.’

He was beside her. She turned and they faced each other. ‘I know you’re not telling me the truth,’ he said. ‘I know you feel it too.’ She noticed a fragility about him, an innocence even, that belied his boldness.

‘Luke,’ she said, hesitating. She threw her head back and sighed. ‘I feel it, okay? I feel it.’ She paused and shook her head. ‘But it can’t happen.’

He didn’t reply.

‘Do you understand? We can’t be anything more than friends.’ They stood on the street, people walking past them, unaware of them.

‘That’s not enough. I don’t want to be friends. Being your friend doesn’t interest me.’

Harmony didn’t know what to say. Like a chameleon he’d changed again. The vulnerability she’d noticed had vanished, replaced with a rawness, that pulsing sexuality that both scared and excited her. She’d only ever desired Will before now, her desire inextricably linked to love, to one man, a man she knew, who made her laugh and lifted her spirits, whose happy-go-lucky attitude brought her out of her diffident self. But this man standing in front of her looked at her in a way she didn’t think possible. His demeanour was calm and measured, but there was a searing passion in his restraint.

‘We have one life,’ he said. ‘Fate brought us together – fate and circumstance – and I’m not going to apologise for feeling this way. Tell me one more time to leave you alone and I will. We don’t know each other.You can walk away. We don’t need to see each other again. It’s easy.’

Everything inside her screamed at her to kiss him. She stepped backwards. ‘I can’t.’

She saw a taxi coming towards her with its light on and relief swept over her. ‘Taxi!’ she shouted and stepped off the edge of the pavement, into its path, desperately waving her hand in the air.

‘50 Greenslades Road, Wandsworth, please,’ she said to the cab driver through the window.

Luke was right behind her. ‘You’re making a mistake.’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’d be making a mistake if I stayed.’

She got into the taxi and closed the door without looking at him again, and as they pulled away she laid her head back on the seat. She thought of how close she’d come to kissing him, then thought of her husband. She had to sort this out; hiding at Sophie’s, nearly kissing Luke, avoiding the issues she had to face, wasn’t going to help.

She had to talk to Will.

She leant forward to tap on the glass screen between her and the driver. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I gave you the wrong address. Can we go to Baron’s Court instead?’

C H A P T E R    F O U R T E E N

In the wine shop, Will was trying to focus on the website of a little-known producer from the southern tip of Italy who had just won a prestigious award at a regional wine festival in Naples. He was keen to begin importing from some different vineyards as his stock was becoming predictable and this one looked promising. It was impossible to concentrate, though. His thoughts constantly drifted back to Harmony, as they had done ever since she walked away from him, her gait uncertain, her small suitcase bumping along behind her. He was desperate to speak to her but every time he telephoned she either left the call unanswered or spoke in flat, single-word utterances that left him bereft. At night it was worse, her side of the bed cold, the bedroom quiet without her restlessness, his stomach like a roiling sea. He’d walked each night, pacing the pavements, anxiety consuming him.

He forced himself back to the Castella de Valde webpage, trying to read words that blurred on the screen. The bell on the door jangled and he looked up.

‘Harmony!’ he exclaimed, jumping off his stool and coming out from behind the counter.

She stood in the doorway, the evening sun behind her casting her face in shadow. He combed his fingers through his hair, aware of his dishevelled appearance, cursing himself for grabbing yesterday’s shirt off the floor that morning.

‘Are you back? Are you coming home?’

She tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ear. ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing.’

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, as he approached her, carefully, as if she were a wild horse, likely to bolt.

She didn’t move. Her eyes flicked over his face, her hurt as raw as it had been when she walked away from him.

‘Shall we go home?’ he said. ‘We can’t talk here.’ She didn’t answer.

‘Harmony?’

‘No, I don’t want to be in the flat. Let’s walk. I’ll go back and change my shoes and put some jeans on. Meet me there in ten minutes.’

He watched her walk out of the shop. He stood for a moment, unsure whether she was back to tell him she was coming home or leaving for good. He would have sold his soul to turn back the clock to before the vasectomy, before the miscarriage and the pregnancy, back to when their lives weren’t on this emotional roller coaster.

He’d sent Frank home earlier that day. He was still devastated about his cat, and Will couldn’t cope with seeing him so fragile, so grief-stricken, not with the way he was feeling himself. Two of them moping about the place was too much. Will emptied the till, locked the money in the safe, switched the lights off, then turned the sign on the door from
Open
to
Closed
.

As he turned into their street he saw her coming out of the front door, wearing jeans and a sweater, her hair pulled free of its ponytail. He started to jog and reached her as she stepped onto the pavement. They stood in front of each other, apprehensive and uncomfortable.

‘Where do you want to walk?’ he asked.

‘Is doesn’t matter.’

‘Shall we go down to the river?’

They walked in strained silence for most of the way, passing groups of people enjoying the warm evening, standing outside pubs, spilling onto the pavement, laughing and joking, others rushing to get home or heading to the park for an evening kick-about.

Without warning she stopped in her tracks. ‘You know,’ she said, her voice tempered with anger. ‘I never once questioned you. I never once asked you to tell me why. I just accepted it because I loved you.’ She glanced over his shoulder and placed her hands on her hips, looked at him again. ‘You need to tell me why. You need to explain it to me. Right now.’

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and thought for a moment or two, trying to formulate his mush of reasons into a coherent answer. He knew there was nothing he could say that was going to help. The argument they were going to have was unavoidable. ‘I have no idea how to be a father.’

‘That’s not good enough! Nobody knows how to be a parent until they become one.’ She shook her head. ‘You can’t have that.’

‘It’s true. The thought of it scares the shit out of me. I learned nothing from my father. Nothing at all. How on earth can I think of becoming a father if I’ve nothing to fall back on?’

He saw his family then, the three of them standing in the car park outside the halls of residence, his mother fussing around him, reminding him to do his laundry, kissing him, trying not to cry, his father in the background, hands clasped behind his back, face devoid of emotion. For Will this was a new start. Moving out of home with no intention of moving back. His first step into adulthood. He’d looked at his father, given him a moment or two to step forward, but the man didn’t make any move towards him.

Be the bigger man, Will told himself. You must be the bigger man.

So Will walked up to him and offered his hand. His father took it and they shook briefly, both grasping the other too firmly. Will straightened his back and smiled awkwardly.

‘I guess I’ll see you at Christmas, then,’ he’d said, unsure what else to say.

‘I’m sure we’ll see you before then,’ his father had replied, his eyes stony. ‘You’re bound to cock it up. You always do.’

Will looked at his wife, her questioning eyes burning with livid incomprehension. ‘I’d get it wrong, Harmony. If I tried to be a father, I know I would. It’s not worth the risk. I’m not strong like you.’

‘I’m not strong.’ She started walking again, her eyes focused on where she was going, her mind working overtime. ‘I’m not strong at all.’

‘But you are,’ he said, catching up with her. ‘It was the first thing I noticed when we got talking the day we met. You’d seemed vulnerable and sweet when you were scrabbling around on the floor for your books and then we got talking and I was blown away by how determined you were. How independent, with all this fight inside you. You hadn’t had things easy, but you were gutsy and secure, and so optimistic.’