The Bed I Made (15 page)

Richard Brookwood.

My hand stopped on the mouse. I glanced away, then looked again, in case I’d imagined it. I highlighted it, ready to press delete, but I hesitated. I took my glass downstairs and refilled it, feeling my heartbeat in my ears. Back at the desk, I didn’t think any more; I clicked and opened it.

It was three words:
Happy Christmas, sweetheart
.

The floor seemed to shift under my chair, as though a small seismic shock had rippled beneath the house, and there was a sudden, sharp pain in my chest. I pressed my hands over it and breathed hard. After a minute or so, it moved and lodged itself under my sternum as a severe muscular ache. Christmas Day. It was so typical of him, so calculated. And those three words: did he remember saying them to me on the sofa a year ago, afterwards, when my hair was in his face and we were laughing? I banged my forehead down hard on the edge of the desk in anger at myself for opening it and the pain felt deserved and good.

I deleted the message, snapped the lid of the computer down and went out on to the landing. Instead of going downstairs, though, I went back to my bedroom. I opened the wardrobe door and slid my hand between the T-shirts piled on the shelf until my fingers touched what I was looking for. I held the box for a moment, hesitant, and then flicked up the little catch. I hadn’t worn it since October but the lions on the bangle gleamed up at me as if newly polished, their eyes as fierce and hungry as ever. I thrust the box to the back of the wardrobe again. I shouldn’t have looked at them – I should never have brought it here in the first place. The ache under my breastbone intensified.

From downstairs came a smell of burning. I ran down and opened the oven, unleashing a cloud of acrid smoke. The bacon which I had laid over the chicken was black; I picked it off and flung it into the sink. Underneath, the skin of the chicken itself was shiny and parched, but when I stuck a skewer into the join between the breast and thigh, the juice ran a cloudy pink. I covered it with foil and put it back in the oven. Then I sat down at the table and put my head in my hands. The reality of where I was, my utter isolation, struck me like a hand across my cheek. What was I doing here? Why had I let him win by terrifying me into cutting myself off from everyone? And why hadn’t I gone to the States with Dad and Jane? What was I proving by staying here on my own?

I was summoned from my self-pity by a knock on the door. I jerked up. The table was out of view from the door and I sat as if paralysed. Was the email just an opening move? Had he found me?

The knock came again but this time on the large window over the sink. I spun round but the face looking at me through the glass wasn’t Richard’s. It was Helen’s.

For a moment I looked at her in shock. Then I came to my senses and went to the door. She came in, closed it behind her and then, before we had spoken a word, she put her arms around me.

We salvaged what we could of the chicken and I peeled some more vegetables. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually here – in this kitchen,’ I said, turning from the chopping board to look at her again.

‘Well, believe it. It’s me.’ She was at the table, sitting sideways and watching me as I moved around. She’d had a Louise Brooks cut since I’d last seen her, and the cropped fringe and two shiny black wings of the bob framed her face dramatically, making her look pale and sophisticated. I wondered if she’d seen anyone on her way from the harbour – she must have done; how else would she have found the cottage hidden away here? – and if they’d done a double-take at this bit of 1920s Hollywood glamour beamed in from another world. Her scrutiny was making me self-conscious: I knew she was noting my grubby cords and the hole in the elbow of my jumper, the contrast between them and her tight black jeans, cream broderie anglaise jacket and huge red ceramic beads.

‘I feel bad,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at your parents’?’

‘They’ve got my sister and her husband. That’s enough for anyone. I could hardly leave you here on your own on Christmas Day, could I? The only reason I didn’t tell you I was coming was I knew you’d try and stop me.’ She picked up her large shoulder bag and rummaged in it for her cigarettes.

‘I can’t tell you how much . . .’

She held her hand up. ‘No, don’t say it again.’

By the time the vegetables were ready, the shadows were lengthening and the strip of sky visible from the kitchen window had changed from its earlier blue to a dull white, the sun smothered by cloud. Despite the fire in the sitting room, the house was cold and I put the boiler on so that the radiator would be warm while we ate. The draught from under the kitchen door was ghosting around my ankles.

Afterwards, Helen put her mince pies in the oven to heat up. ‘So,’ she said, sitting back down. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about now? Why the hell are you here?’

I looked at the table top and ran my thumb over the edge where the Formica veneer had chipped away. I’d known this was coming. I wanted to tell her, I really did, and surely now when, despite everything I had done, she had sacrificed her Christmas plans to come here and find me, I owed her the truth. But I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to admit that she had been right about him, though; I was far beyond that.

She was looking at me, waiting.

‘Because I’m an idiot,’ I said. ‘Richard was lying to me.’

She frowned. ‘About what? You knew for ages that he was married.’ Our eyes met and I looked quickly away again, remembering telling her and how that had played out between us.

‘The day I had the accident,’ I said, snapping off another chip of the veneer. ‘You know he was going to the States? He stayed with me the night before. In the morning I went out to get breakfast and he didn’t hear me when I got back – the door hadn’t closed properly behind me. He was on the phone.’

‘To who? His wife?’

‘His son.’ Blood flooded into my cheeks. ‘It was my one condition, after I found out he was married. He promised me he didn’t have children.’

‘He knew about your mother?’

‘Yes. I told him.’

‘He’s such a
shit
.’

‘It’s my own fault. Only an idiot would have believed him – an idiot who wanted to.’

‘Esther says he’s been to the flat.’

‘The night he got back from America. He’s left me alone since. He’s trying to punish me. He thinks that if he leaves me alone for long enough, I’ll get weak and go back to him. I got an email today, though – the first in weeks.’

‘Christmas Day,’ she nodded, rolling the biggest bead on her necklace between her fingers. ‘Predictable, if he was going to. You didn’t write back?’

I shook my head. ‘I won’t. I can’t.’

She stopped playing with the bead and looked at me. ‘You’re frightened of him, aren’t you?’

Again I broke the eye contact. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Has he ever hurt you – physically?’

‘No.’

‘You’d tell me?’

‘Of course.’ I stood up and went to take the mince pies out of the oven, glad of the opportunity to turn my face away. The pies had got properly hot and they burned my fingers as I lifted them from the baking tray. I breathed deeply and silently and then sat back down, sliding the plate on to the table between us. Helen was watching my face, trying to read it. ‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘until today, I was beginning to believe he really had decided just to let it go. Now I don’t think so.’

‘So what do you think he’s going to do?’

‘I don’t know. God, I used to be so dismissive of people who got into things like this. But I get it now – sometimes you know you’re being manipulated and you know you’ll probably end up heartbroken but you still think it’s worth it. I should have left it once I knew he was married, of course I should, but I let myself believe him because I wanted to. I didn’t want to go back to being on my own, working all the time, pretending I had a life, when I could have that, even for a few more months.’

‘You were in love with him.’

‘I thought he was in love with me. You know what really got to me the day I heard him? One of the first things he said was
I can explain
. It made me realise that we were the same as every other sordid affair the world over. It was just as clichéd and pathetic as that.’ The memories of that morning came rushing back. No: I would not think about them. ‘So,’ I said, ‘you see why I wasn’t concentrating on my bike.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this at the hospital?’

‘You never liked him. I didn’t want to admit you’d been right all along – I was ashamed. And I was angry with you for being right.’

‘You know I’m not into point-scoring.’

‘It wasn’t just that. While I thought you were wrong, I didn’t feel so bad about how things were between us – you and me . . .’

‘I hated fighting with you.’

‘It was my fault.’

‘It was his fault.’

‘No, I let him. I saw his jealousy of you as a sign that he loved me. I was flattered by it.’ I breathed out, embarrassed. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’

‘You don’t smoke.’ She looked aghast and I had to smile that she was horrified at that but completely calm about the fact that I’d been sleeping with someone else’s husband for a year and a half. She passed me the packet and I leant across the table for a light, holding my jumper back so that it didn’t catch on the tea-lights she’d found in one of the drawers. Their wax was all liquid now.

‘Just promise me you won’t write back,’ she said. ‘However bad you feel. Make a clean break. I want you to meet someone better, someone really good.’

‘I don’t deserve it.’

‘You shouldn’t say that.’

‘But it’s true, isn’t it? I know how selfish I am now – you can think you know yourself but you never really do till you’re tested. I knew about his wife, but I carried on anyway.’ I stood up and went over to the sink. I turned the taps on and scalding water rushed into the bowl, sending up thick billows of steam. In the time that we’d been talking, it had gone dark and the window reflected back only the image of the kitchen and Helen’s anxious face watching me. I avoided her eyes and started collecting the saucepans and plates, scraping them noisily into the bin. The first plates sent banks of water over the side of the bowl and they steamed gently on the draining rack as though exhaling delicate last breaths. Helen still hadn’t said anything but she stood up and took the tea towel that was tucked over the bar on the oven door. In the glass, our reflections mirrored us as we worked, side by side for the first time in months.

Chapter Twelve

Out on the beach at Compton the next day the wind made it hard to talk. We leant into it as we walked, letting the cold blast away our hangovers. Helen’s hair flew behind her like blackbird feathers, and her cheeks and ears were pink. I kept my lips pressed together to protect my teeth from the pain of contact with the air.

The tide was falling and we walked just below the high-water mark where the sea had left the sand firm. The beach here was russet, taking its colour from the cliffs on our right, and the retreating water had left the sand gently rippled, like its own echo. There was surprisingly little man-made debris along the tideline, hardly any of the usual beer cans, bottles and bits of plastic. Instead the wind had brought in a great harvest of seaweed, the waves tearing up the seabed and depositing quantities of black bubbled bladderwrack and the finer red weed whose name I didn’t know, as well as the thin stuff that looked like rubber bootlaces.

Helen said something but the wind whipped her voice away.

‘What?’ I shouted.

‘I said, it’s so fresh you can taste it.’ She picked up speed and ran ten or fifteen yards ahead before turning and flinging her arms wide. I smiled and followed, matching her footprints, inspired by her enthusiasm.

We walked to the end of the beach and then climbed the uneven steps back up the cliff to the car. I closed the door and the sound of the wind receded. In the passenger seat beside me Helen looked startlingly vivid, her eyes shiny. I pulled out of the car park and turned right, back on to the long straight piece I now knew was called the military road. I’d wanted to show her this part of the Island, the drive down to the lighthouse at St Catherine’s. It was the bleakest, loneliest part of the coast but even on the days when I’d felt empty on the inside, I’d recognised its powerful beauty. There were only a few isolated buildings out here, and just after Freshwater Bay the road ran so close to the edge that I feared a strong gust of wind would blow us over. The erosion at the back of the Island was dramatic. In hard winters or violent storms, the line of the cliffs could radically redraw itself, whole sections of chalk and clay tumbling into the sea. I could tell that Helen was surprised at the wildness, the occasional farms, the few sheep eking out a living on the wind-harassed grass, the patchwork of fields whose new crops didn’t yet cover the heavy winter earth. On our right the sea glittered, picking up the light like fish-scales. Seagulls rose suddenly from the cliffs, then wheeled away again on invisible currents. The sky was pallid now, the blue fading out in the early afternoon just as it had done the day before.

I’d woken before her and had lain in bed thinking about Richard. The night he’d told me he was married, the shock of it had been like a punch in the stomach. I’d felt sick, could barely take a breath. As soon as I’d been able to, I’d told him to go. He’d thrown his things into his overnight bag, every movement full of fury, and I’d watched as he’d picked up the oxblood wallet which I’d handled so carefully and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. The door of the flat had slammed behind him and I’d fallen back on to the bed and pulled myself into a ball. A minute or so later the front door of the building had slammed shut so hard that I could feel the reverberations of it through the floor. It would have woken everyone downstairs. My stomach was cramping over and over again and several times I’d thought that I would throw up. I’d been awake for the rest of the night in sheer disbelief, wondering how we could have gone so quickly from being close enough for me to tell him about my mother, to this. I even wondered whether I’d got it wrong, misheard somehow, but of course I hadn’t. I’d known how I felt about him – I hadn’t lied to myself about it – but the scale of my reaction still shocked me. I hadn’t realised it was possible to feel desolation like it.