The Sleeper (14 page)

‘No – you’ll be fine with the bossing around. You’ll be the queen before you know it.’

‘Does that mean I can instruct other people to reinvent electricity rather than attempting to do it myself? That’s good.’

I look around. The room is pretty, and I can see all sorts of traces of Iris’s and Laurie’s lives in here. I can deduce that one of them reads thrillers and the other reads literary fiction. They buy the
Guardian
, but mainly on Saturdays. Judging by the matching dark rings on the coffee table, they both drink red wine. There is a little, real Christmas tree by the window, decorated mainly with silver baubles, and with an angel perched precariously on the top that looks as if it were made by an artistic community in Guatemala, but there are no presents under it. There are only two Christmas cards on the mantelpiece, and I bet if I looked at them I would see they were from Iris and Laurie to each other.

‘This place is lovely,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t you get bored?’

‘No.’ She curls her feet up under herself. ‘I guess I’m boring. We’re both incredibly happy like this.’

I feel the familiar yearning, the one I am intently ignoring every moment of every day. I shut it away, again, and focus on the reason for my visit. I am not just obsessed with Guy: I am deeply uneasy in a way I cannot speak of without sounding mad. I almost want to confide in Iris.

‘You know what,’ I say, hesitantly. ‘This might sound weird, but can I have a little tour of your house?’

She looks at me. ‘Really? It’s not very interesting, but you can if you want. If you don’t mind it being boring and messy. Why? You cannot possibly have any sort of professional interest in this place.’

I sigh. ‘I can’t help myself. I like looking at buildings. I’m converting an old warehouse right now. Into flats and a wine bar. I love making a place like this look different in a way no one could possibly imagine.’

She stands up. ‘OK. Even though we rent it, tell me what you’d do if we owned it and had unlimited money. To make it into an amazing home.’

With our coffee mugs in hand, we walk around the house. There is, it turns out, very little to see. A door from the sitting room leads into a dining room with a heavy table and some books and paperwork piled on it.

‘I work here,’ Iris confirms. ‘This is the scene of the dreaded proofreading.’

‘It’s a nice room. You could do a lot with it. Great natural light.’

She stands at the window. ‘It is nice, isn’t it? Cold in winter, since the wood burner’s next door, but not as cold as it would be if this were a real winter.’

I walk to the window and stand next to her.

‘Yes, the drizzly winter of the south-west. Wouldn’t it be lovely if it was all blue skies and bright sun and snow out there? With icicles and cracked puddles. Like, I don’t know. The Himalayas, or something.’

We both contemplate the drizzly scene.

‘It’s twelve degrees all year round,’ she says. ‘Still. At least it’s green.’

I smile. ‘That’s something. Yes.’

Apart from a tiny bathroom, I have seen all the downstairs. Upstairs there is a bedroom that is clearly Iris and Laurie’s, with the duvet pulled back and men’s and women’s clothes scattered around. The second, smaller bedroom is where I want to be.

‘This one we just use as an office,’ she says, standing on the threshold. ‘All the paperwork’s in here.’

‘It looks very organised.’

There is a desk, the sort of thing you buy if you’re getting the cheapest thing from somewhere that is like, but not, Ikea, since there is no Ikea anywhere near Cornwall. It has piles of paperwork on it, but tidy piles. The walls are lined with bookshelves which carry so many books that they are piled on top of one another, a whole extra layer lying down on top of the standing ones. Then there are the filing cabinets.

‘Not really,’ she says. ‘All the bills and stuff get dumped in here.’

My phone is in my pocket. I feel terrible about doing this, but it is the only plan I have been able to think of. I walk over to the window and look out at the front of the house, the stony track, my car waiting damply in the distance.

‘This room could be good too. Is there an attic? You could get a skylight if not, really flood the place with light.’

There is a loud, old-fashioned ringing sound, as a phone somewhere in the house fills the place with a demand for attention. Iris looks confused.

‘That’s the landline,’ she says. ‘Weird. No one ever calls it. I suppose I’d better answer. It’s too annoying to have it ringing.’

She disappears, and the moment she is out of the room I open the filing cabinet. I feel horrible, but it is the only answer I can think of. One day I will explain, or put it back. She probably won’t even have noticed.

A minute later she is back in the room, shaking her head.

‘Everything OK?’ I ask, turning away from the window, walking right up to her.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think so, anyway. There was no one there. When I did 1471, there was no number.’

We walk across the little landing and back down the stairs.

‘That happens to us all the time. It’s spam calls. They just call every number there is.’

‘Really? OK. It hasn’t happened before. Anyway, who cares. Shall we have another coffee?’

‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘That would be wonderful.’

chapter eleven

January

Christmas, eventually, ends. Sam and I celebrate the new year by going for dinner and drinks in Falmouth, a watertight unit of two. We do not speak to anyone else, but meander home through the post-midnight crowds, cut off from all the revelry. On the first evening of the new year I embrace my husband and set off, heart treacherously light, pulse treacherously thumping, to catch the train. Guy is waiting for me in the lounge car. It is as if the break never happened.

The weeks pass like a blur. I am obsessed with Guy to the point of insanity. I have never known anything like it. All I want to do is to be with him, to touch him, to talk to him. Nothing else matters.

I know every inch of his body. He knows mine. I look around at strangers and colleagues and wonder if they have known this sexual obsession. Have other people’s marriages started off with these fireworks? Is this why Leon advised me, when I met Sam, not to marry him? Could he see what I couldn’t: that one day something like this would come along and snatch me up and carry me away?

I have been good for so long. Once upon a time I was bad, and now I am bad again; this time I am differently bad, and the stakes are lower. Perhaps that is how I manage to do it.

Even the guilt, the deception, the excitement on Sam’s face when I get home on the first Saturday morning, his sadness when I leave on Sunday night, cannot stop me. I know that what I am doing is wrong. I know that my marriage is over. I want to end it instantly. Something always stops me: sometimes it is the expectation that the spell will break and I will rush back to Sam and beg his forgiveness, wondering what on earth I was playing at. Other times I open my mouth to confess, then find that I cannot do it. I want Guy, just Guy, all the time.

I am lovely to Sam when I am home, as I was over Christmas. I’m nicer than I have ever been. I’m considerate and thoughtful, interested in everything he says, and I summon the energy to go for walks and sit in pubs. Occasionally I have sex with him, imagining that he is my lover. I hate myself for doing it, hate myself for not doing it.

I see shadows and phantoms everywhere. I feel someone watching me, know that I am in danger, though whether it is real danger or my mind distilling all its unease and making it external, I cannot tell. I try to convince myself that I am imagining the malignant presence following me around corners, lurking outside doors. I half hope someone is photographing Guy and me out in London, because that would force a change. But I catch a train out to Hendon and spend an afternoon making my final preparation; and after that I carry my escape kit around with me constantly. That makes me feel a little bit better. I cannot tell anyone what I have done, because no one who wasn’t genuinely terrified for their own safety would understand. I hope no one ever has to find out. I have always been ready to escape if need be; and this plan is my best one yet.

It is a slate-grey day, and I am standing in the rain on Waterloo Bridge. I have an umbrella, a huge one I found at work, that seemed to belong to no one. It is tartan-patterned and ridiculous, and I am constantly aware that I am potentially poking people in the eye with its spiky spokes, but it keeps me dry.

I spin around quickly, feeling eyes on me from the other side of the road, but there is no one there. This is my secret: I have not even mentioned it to Guy.

The rain is falling into the murky Thames, making concentric circles that touch each other and die. A tourist boat passes, almost empty, beneath me. The Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the South Bank: I can do serious sightseeing just by standing here and waiting.

I see him coming when he is still far away, a single figure among the post-work crowds. It is almost dark, the street lamps on, the buses and taxis creating little waves of spray as they lumber past. Yet I know him instantly, and I stand perfectly still, holding my umbrella high to minimise the inconvenience to others, and watch.

I love him, completely and passionately. This is the secret I cannot share with anyone, least of all with Guy himself. If I told him, he might be scared and stop seeing me, and that would end my world. I wish we had met at a different time, when we were both single. I wish his children were my children. I wish we had a life together, a mortgage, council tax to pay. I wish we could spend weekends reading the papers and hoovering the house, getting grumpy with each other. I could do all of that, because our relationship would be founded on absolute love and lust.

‘Wilberforce!’ He has taken to calling me by my surname, my old one. I like that. Nobody calls me Lara Wilberforce any more; and she is the person who can behave this badly. Lara Finch would never do these heinous things. Besides, as Guy said: ‘Wilberforce is a funny name. In a nice way. Wilber sounds a bit puny, and then the “force” jumps up and punches you in the face. It’s a name that gives you a false sense of security. Like a kitten that scratches your eyes out.’

‘Um, thanks,’ I said, and since that day I have been Wilberforce to him, and him only.

‘Guy.’ I can only call him Guy.

I hold the umbrella aside, causing a passer-by to swear in annoyance, and let him sweep me off my feet. He picks me right up, as he so often does. I try to do it to him sometimes, but he is so big and so muscular that I cannot.

‘Put me down!’

He puts me back on my feet and kisses me, full on the lips. We can do that, in central London in the rush hour.

‘What would you like to do tonight?’ he asks. Thursday nights have become our special night. We try to use them to sample the different things the capital can offer. I take his hand and we walk north, towards Aldwych.

‘I found something that might be good,’ I tell him, ‘or that might be weird. We could try it later. It’s in an old public loo. The gents’.’

‘It sounds ravishing.’ We walk to the Lyceum pub and step in, out of the rain, and find an upstairs table.

Much later, we are in the underground bar a few metres away. It is, indeed, in the old men’s loos: according to the menu, these ones were frequented by the likes of Wilde, Orton and Gielgud, thanks to their West End location. Now they have been transformed into a cocktail and burlesque venue, and happily none of it is quite as tacky as it sounds.

The barman, who is blond and undiscriminatingly cheerful, greets us as if we were old friends, and says, ‘Look, there’s a table! Grab it quick. Gold dust!’

We sit at a tiny table, picking at free popcorn and drinking our way through the cocktail menu. The other customers are a random but presentable selection of travellers, couples and a group of women on what eavesdropping reveals to be a post-divorce celebration. The woman in question keeps bursting into tears, and then snogging her friends.

‘Let’s have one with absinthe,’ I decide. ‘I’ve never tried absinthe. Have you?’

‘Not me. I skipped the wild youth. Hey, they have snuff, too. That sounds odd. Did you ever do anything like that? Not snuff, I mean. They’re obviously selling it as the closest they can get to cocaine.’

‘Oh God, no,’ I tell him. ‘I never did anything like that.’

‘Me neither. Not really. Absinthe martini?’

‘Just the one. Then we’ll go.’

‘Deal.’

A woman is setting up in the corner of the room, ready to sing. She is wearing a black corset and tiny skirt and has a huge mane of black hair and bright red lipstick, and she is laughing with the divorce party at the table closest to her.

‘I wish we didn’t have work tomorrow,’ I remark.

He leans forward. ‘Could we maybe find a way of staying up for a weekend one day? Have a proper Friday and Saturday night?’

We could do that. We could do it by leaving our spouses and making our London life legitimate. I cannot say it. You cannot ask someone to leave his children.

I take his hand across the table. It is warm and reassuring, as it always is. I belong with you, I think, suddenly. I love you. It takes all my willpower not to say it.

The woman starts singing ‘Sex on Fire’, in an almost unrecognisable acoustic version. It is oddly lovely. Guy mouths something at me. I think, for a second, that it was ‘I love you’. Then I wonder if it might have been ‘Where’s the loo?’ I laugh at myself, move our drinks out of the way and lean across the popcorn to kiss him.

Later we stroll down Fleet Street to the hotel, hand in hand. I am drunk but not outrageously so, and happier than I deserve to be. I have been behaving terribly for weeks now, and I am going to do the right thing. This is where it ends, for me. It is time for me to destroy Sam’s world.

I rarely leave the building at lunchtime, unless it’s for a meeting. Nobody does: the days of the professional lunch hour are gone, and I generally like that. Today, however, I stand up at half past twelve.

‘I’m going to have to pop out for a second,’ I say quietly to Jeremy. ‘Got a dentist thing. Is that OK?’