One Step Too Far (22 page)

46

When I wake up there’s a duvet covering me and I’m lying stretched out on a sofa and I've no idea where I am. I tentatively recall the events of yesterday: the abortive lunch with Simon, my horrendous breakdown, the afternoon spent comatose in bed, the dreadful awards event, my crazy unhinged behaviour, the party at the private club... being mistaken for Caroline! Slowly the last part of the evening unfolds in my mind, and I finally remember the stranger I went home with. I look down at myself and I’m still in my green dress (a good sign), I’m still in his living room (another one), but he’s not here. I’m embarrassed that I must have passed out – how long have I been here? What time is it? The clock on the wall says 6.30. Is that morning or evening? Yes, it must be morning, Saturday morning. My mouth feels dry and my head feels nuclear, the pain is terrible. I sit up and clutch my head and try to work out the best way to get out of here. He seemed very kind, and doesn’t appear to have molested me, so maybe I ought to just go, but leave him a note, to thank him for his hospitality. Or perhaps I should poke my head around his bedroom door, just to say bye? What the hell is the etiquette? I know how I’ll look out on the street in my satin dress and smudgy makeup, I should call a cab – but I have no idea where I am, what address to say. I desperately need some water so I pull myself up and stagger across the room and into the hallway. The kitchen is opposite and it’s colossal and uber modern, with an island in the middle and four tall moulded white stools lined up neatly along it. I find a tumbler on the drainer and turn on the tap and it sets off a pump that groans through the flat. I panic, turn it off and gulp the water in one. I’m still wondering how to make my exit when I hear a noise and Robbie appears in the doorway, in a white T-shirt and boxers and he’s shaking the sleep off him.

“I’m sorry I’m still here,” I say.

“I’m not,” says Robbie. I look down, embarrassed. I’m aware of him in a way I’ve not been with anyone except Ben, and I feel treacherous, and the thought is ridiculous.

“Would you like some tea?”

“It’s so early, you should go back to bed,” I say.

“No, no, it’s fine,” he says, and he goes over to the kettle and as he passes me I feel a physical pull towards him, as if he’s a magnet, and the sensation skims all the way down the front of my body.

Robbie confuses me. He’s good-looking, caring, rich presumably, surely too good to be true. His kitchen is immaculate, it’s like it’s never been used. He makes two mugs of tea, and we go into the lounge and I sit awkwardly on one couch, with the duvet bundled next to me, and Robbie sits on the other. I stare into the brown froth that has formed round the edge of my mug where Robbie has stirred the milk in. I don’t know what to say or where to look and my head is still throbbing.

“Do you have any headache pills?” I ask, mainly to break the silence.

“Sure,” says Robbie, getting up, and as he passes by me I hold my breath again, he’s just so attractive. I press the pills he finds me out of their silver foil and gulp them down with my tea although he gave me a glass of water, and it’s hot still and burns the back of my throat.

“I’m not hungover as such,” I say. “I just had a bit of a fraught day yesterday, that’s all.”

“That’s OK,” says Robbie. He pauses. “Look, I’m tired and your head hurts, so I hope you don’t mind me asking... er, would you like to come and lie down, and we can just go back to sleep? It’ll be much more comfortable than in here.”

I don’t answer.

“Or there’s the spare room if you prefer,” he added.

I try to think. I know I should go home, but when I’m upright my head throbs so much I can’t face the cab ride. I want to go back to sleep. I think he’s to die for. Maybe I could take up his offer of the spare room, but something tells me that would be a waste, but of what I’m not sure.

“That sounds nice,” I say in the end, politely, like he’d asked me to tea. “Would you mind if I borrowed a T-shirt or something though? I’m desperate to get out of this dress.”

“Of course,” says Robbie, and as he gets up and leads me towards his bedroom I know emphatically that this moment is key, that I’m moving with this man I’ve just met into yet another new stage of my life on this earth.

47

Ben did his best to carry on with life after Emily left. He tried not to blame her, tried to understand why she’d done it, and in a way knowing that she’d planned it, had taken her passport and emptied her bank account, made him feel better somehow – at least he knew she was out there somewhere, not lying dead and unfound in some lonely wood or stinking ditch. Other times he felt unbelievably angry at her, at her cowardice for leaving him and Charlie, for them not facing things together. She’d got it all totally wrong – from the moment they’d met, they were meant to have been
forever
, for better or worse, that was what was supposed to have happened in their story – but it was like the planet had turned in on itself, had become a kind of sick anti-world where since
that
day everything had gone wrong and there’d been nothing Ben could do to put it right. He’d tried tracing her of course, but the police had done little more than be sympathetic, so he’d searched out every single one of Emily’s friends and no-one knew anything and he could tell they weren’t lying. In desperation he’d taken time off work, and had driven to Devon and West Wales and around the Peak District, going into hotels and pubs and tea-rooms they’d once visited, furtively pulling out a beautiful picture of her and then feeling like an idiot when they’d look at him as if he were mad and say things like, “Sorry sir, I can’t help you.” His in-laws were no use either – Frances had Caroline living back with her, having split with her latest boyfriend (who'd been unfaithful apparently) and she was worse-behaved than ever; and Frances seemed so lost in dealing with her youngest daughter and managing her own grief that she had nothing to offer Ben. Poor Andrew was a mess, he seemed to be fading, receding into himself, and Ben rarely saw him these days – he just took Charlie over every now and again but Andrew didn’t seem much interested in even him anymore.

Only work and Charlie kept Ben going, once it was clear Emily really wasn’t coming back. He arranged a rota of care and his parents stepped in and were brilliant, and although they never said it he could tell that they thought it was no wonder their daughter-in-law had run away, just look what kind of family she came from. They’d always loved Emily for herself, he knew that much, but they’d been disgusted by all the goings on at the wedding, and had never quite stopped worrying about the impact such a family might have had on the mother of their only grandchild. Ben would sit alone on quiet nights and wonder that himself too. Just why had Emily left? Was it
only
because of what had happened, or because deep down she was so damaged by her family after all? She’d always seemed so sane, so compassionate, so weirdly like him – and that was what had drawn him to her in the first place, from the time he first saw her standing there in the office car park, obviously terrified, kicking her feet into the tarmac while they worked out who was going in which car to the airport. As he’d said hello he’d experienced a thrill of recognition of something in her, and that for him had been that. She’d seen right through him on that first day of course, aware at once that he was smitten, but the fact that she then doubted it, couldn’t see how stunning she was, only made him love her more. At the time he’d thought he must have imagined it, but later in the afternoon, after he’d strapped on her parachute, she’d straightened up and looked at him, bewildered almost, and the look seemed to be one of realisation, and then it had turned to embarrassment, and she’d stumbled away from him as he’d carried on rigging up people willing himself to concentrate, he couldn’t be distracted doing up parachutes.

He’d kicked himself afterwards for not being more friendly on the way home, but he didn’t know how to manage his feelings, he’d never been lovestruck before – he hadn’t thought those kind of things really happened. It was only when they finally, fantastically, got together months later and she’d told him about herself, said she had an identical twin, and one that didn’t like her very much, that Ben was certain she needed him as much as he needed her. It was like in some ways he became the twin she’d never had – her soulmate, her best friend, the one who knew what she was thinking, the person to whom she could say the absolute truth of how she felt, no matter how weak or mad it may have sounded to someone else: he had always got her, understood what she meant. The fact that they were so madly attracted to one another had seemed almost a bonus, even though Emily used to tease him that she fancied him
despite
his profession and geeky pastimes, and he would tease her back that if ever she went off him there was always a replica of herself who he was sure would have him. And they would both laugh at their mischievousness, and the absolute sureness of their feelings for each other.

Ben often found himself thinking back over his and Emily’s lives together, when Charlie was asleep and he was sat alone on the sofa, the same one on which he and his wife had cuddled up in the showroom, Emily kicking her shoes off, curling like a cat, making sure it was comfortable enough to buy – it was too expensive to make a mistake, she’d said at the time. Recently Ben had hooked up the TV to his computer so that it played endless photos from their vast collection, and he’d sit there mesmerised by the random images – an arm’s length snap of their windswept faces on an unknown winter’s beach in Devon; Emily in front of the Doge’s Palace in St Mark’s Square, on their second wedding anniversary; Ben holding Charlie by a river near Buxton, in case he tried to jump in; Emily looking more stunning than he knew she could on their wedding day, the sea glinting approvingly behind her; Emily cradling their baby son in Frances’s tiny rose-filled back garden; the pair of them on honeymoon in Sorrento, holding hands in front of earthy pink and orange buildings that jumbled down to the water; Charlie and his best friend Daniel cuddling on this very couch; Emily laughing as she watered the flowers with Charlie by her side, soaked; Emily looking serene in front of a red-columned temple in Knossos, neither of them knowing she was pregnant; all of them tucked up together in bed on Christmas morning, Charlie sitting on Ben’s head. The images floated tantalisingly across the screen, giving Ben just enough time to place them, date them, before they drifted off again and a new one glided in. Ben would watch for hours, thinking
just one more and then I’ll move
, until his bones grew cold as the darkness settled, but he couldn’t pull himself away to even put the heating or the lights on, it was almost like she was talking to him from afar, saying
remember this time or that moment
and he found it strangely comforting. But there were other times when an image would appear that seemed so vivid, so taunting, that he still couldn’t believe that she’d abandoned him, on top of everything else, couldn’t believe that he didn’t know how or where she was, and he would capitulate to his grief and lie alone on the floor and sob and beat his fists, helpless in his grief, like a little child.

Ben coped better than anyone thought he would after the initial shock had faded, as the leaves fell and the year sighed its way out – but the thought of Christmas was excruciating, and so his parents had put their foot down and arranged a trip to a tiny hotel they knew in the Highlands, and the weather had been unseasonably lovely and they’d all got on with it, and even managed to enjoy it somehow. They’d set off from Manchester early in the morning, and within four and a half hours had found themselves driving along the banks of Loch Lomond, and when they stopped to give Charlie a break the air was so thin and pure it was like Ben was breathing properly again, taking the air into his lungs willingly for a change instead of through obligation to Charlie. It was a good call on his parents’ part – the hotel was warm and posh in an old-fashioned, shabby way, with no past history to sideswipe Ben, and the owners adored Charlie, he was just so cute, and they made a huge fuss of him, constantly giving him biscuits, and for a change no-one minded. Charlie seemed to almost have forgotten Emily up there – he loved running free alongside the loch and chasing the ducks – and his mischievousness, his unmitigated joy at the beauty of life kept them all going. The change of routine made even Christmas Day bearable, and Ben found himself almost relaxing, but he found he couldn’t quite shake off his need to be always looking over his shoulder, in case she was there, in case she’d suddenly appear out of the mist and crouch on those long lovely legs with outstretched arms, so Charlie could run to her, leap into her arms and show her that he loved her still, even though she had left him.

48

Robbie’s bedroom is painted slate grey, with bleached floors and furniture and crisp white bedding, and it’s stylish and androgynous, but stark, like the kitchen. I wonder whether he’s done it himself, or whether he has an interior designer, or worse a girlfriend, but I don’t like to ask, now’s really not the time. He gives me a T-shirt and it’s a fancy label, and it feels nice when I go to the bathroom and put it on. It’s short on me, my legs look longer than ever, and I pull it down at the front self-consciously as I walk back into the room. Robbie looks at me but says nothing, and when I get into the bed he puts his arms around me and holds me gently, unthreateningly, and my body feels just right, fusing with his, and the pain in my head starts to subside.

“It’s so refreshing,” he says quietly, “that you take me exactly as I am.”

“Of course,” I murmur, and I lie contentedly next to him and for the first time in a whole year I feel perfectly at peace, safe – loved even. It’s extraordinary, and I know it won’t last – he’s so much younger than me, could do so much better – but somehow we’ve found each other, and I’m certain that for whatever reason it’s what we both need right now. I’m so warm and comfortable I drift off to sleep and for a change my dreams are gentle, untroubled, and when I next open my eyes it’s much much later and Robbie is sitting next to me on the bed, dressed, and he’s made me another mug of perfectly-coloured tea.