‘No,’ she’d replied. It’ll pass: the novelty, the tackiness of the hotel rooms and the synthetic sheets; the affair will be transitory and without substance.
‘Emily, I—’
‘Who is she?’ she asked. At that moment Sam walked in on his phone, oblivious to the conversation. They suffered through dinner, which felt stilted and awkward, and after, when the boys were in their rooms, she’d turned to him.
‘Okay, you win. Let it run its course.’ He simply nodded. She knows that to force his hand now will end badly for them all. She doesn’t want to insist that he ends the affair, doesn’t want to watch him pining for someone else. It’s not without its risks, though, the card she’s played. She’s gambling on him getting bored and on loyalty winning. It’s hard to quantify love. Georgia would have a field day if she found out.
Outside a horn toots. Adeline. Shit. Emily grabs her kitbag and wheels her bike outside, locking the door behind her.
‘Hey,’ Adeline climbs out of the car and opens the boot. ‘Just put it in here, if you remove the front wheel it should fit. How’ve you been? Feels like ages since I saw you.’
‘What, a whole three weeks?’ Emily laughs.
‘Everything okay at home?’ Adeline asks.
‘He’s fucking someone. He told me,’ Emily says. She looks sideways at Adeline, who is focused on the road.
‘No shit. That sucks. Can’t say I’m surprised though, you both seemed pretty uptight when I saw you at the club,’ Adeline says.
‘Were we?’ Emily asks. Adeline nods and shifts gears.
‘I sense these things,’ she says. Emily looks out of the window.
‘How do you feel about it?’ Adeline says, as an afterthought.
‘I suppose it was inevitable really,’ Emily replies. ‘What will be will be.’ She doesn’t want to talk about it, she’s realised. ‘How is your fuck buddy?’
‘That’s over. Turned out he was into some seriously kinky shit, even by my standards,’ Adeline says. Emily stops her imagination wandering.
She navigates bus lanes and cycle paths aggressively to get them to Crystal Palace where the ride starts.
‘Not scaring you, am I?’ Adeline asks, nodding at Emily’s hand on the grip rail. Emily removes it sheepishly and pushes it under her legs. ‘We’ll aim for the sixty-mile route. We can drop out sooner if you’re struggling but I’m sure it’ll be a breeze. Feeling confident?’
Emily nods. The truth is she’s not, she’s terrified, and as they park near the starting line she realises that cycling for fun is a world apart from this organised event. Hundreds of people in Lycra swarm the car park in various states of undress. People brazenly rub cream between their thighs and in the case of a woman nearby, on her nipples. She raises her eyebrows at Adeline, who looks like she could be in a photo shoot. Always at ease no matter what the situation. Emily envies her easy confidence.
‘Chafing,’ Adeline says.
‘I feel sick,’ Emily replies.
‘It’s good to push yourself out of your comfort zone,’ Adeline says. ‘Come on, you’ll be fine.’
The first twenty miles are glorious, the sun is out and the roads are quiet. They cycle alongside each other, chatting. At the first snack station they eat enough calories for a week. But at twenty-five miles Adeline speeds up and Emily’s energy is waning. She manages to keep her in sight and draws level at a crossroads.
‘I need to rest for a few minutes,’ she shouts to Adeline, but Adeline doesn’t hear her and pulls out. Emily follows suit but is forced to pause halfway across as a car speeds through, and she doesn’t get her clips out in time. She falls heavily on her right side, the bike trapped between her legs.
‘Are you okay?’ A man on a bike beside her dismounts and puts out a hand.
‘Thank you,’ she replies, mortified. There’s a graze along her thigh and a bruise inside her knee. She doesn’t see Adeline until the finish line, where she’s waiting by the side, cheering her on.
‘You did brilliantly,’ Adeline says, hugging her.
The changing room is split into mini cubicles designed for one, but Adeline follows her in.
‘We can chat this way,’ she says, peeling off her jacket. Emily hangs up her towel in silence and sits on the bench, reaching down to remove her shoes gingerly. ‘Are you okay?’ Adeline asks. ‘You’re very quiet. Didn’t you enjoy it?’
‘Well, I didn’t think I’d be doing it by myself,’ Emily says, abandoning any pretence at being adult. Adeline flinches slightly, then sits down beside her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I got carried away. I was making good time and thought I could beat my PB. I got distracted. It was selfish.’ She leans forward to remove her shoes. ‘Jesus, what happened to your leg?’
‘I fell,’ Emily says, tears springing to her eyes. What’s wrong with her today? Adeline bends down to get a closer look, resting her arm in Emily’s lap.
‘Does it hurt?’ she asks, touching the graze with her other hand. Her elbow is pushing into Emily’s groin, not unpleasantly, and Emily wonders if she should say something. ‘It’ll bruise badly,’ Adeline says. Emily shifts slightly back into the bench. The room feels too close, full of the smell of their sweat, and there’s a fuzzy feeling in her head, like the one she used to get as a child when she’d watch someone concentrating on something without them knowing. She’s holding her breath and is horrified to feel a familiar pulsing beneath Adeline’s elbow. Adeline doesn’t know, she can’t know what she’s doing, her movements are too small, too discreet to be intentional. But Emily does, and it feels wrong, but she’s caught up in it now and before she can break the moment, she’s come. It happened so fast. She stifles a gasp with her hand and Adeline kicks her shoes off and sits up, looking straight into Emily’s eyes. ‘Did I hurt you?’ she asks, and Emily shakes her head. Adeline puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘I am sorry about earlier – I’m a lousy friend. I’ll make it up to you.’ She finishes changing her clothes and waits for Emily by the door. ‘Do you think you’ll do it again? The sportive I mean,’ she adds, when she sees Emily’s face. Emily can’t look her in the eye and is quiet on the drive home.
‘Are you okay?’ Adeline asks her when she’s pulled into Emily’s drive.
‘I’m just tired,’ Emily replies, opening her door.
‘Emily if there’s something I—’
‘I’m fine Adeline, really. Just not used to cycling so far.’ Adeline puts a hand on Emily’s shoulder.
‘If there’s anything I can do.’
‘You’ve done more than enough already,’ Emily says, stepping out of the car. Instantly she feels lighter. She takes a deep breath. ‘Take care.’ She shuts the door. Adeline winds down the window.
‘See you soon for lunch, then?’
‘Sure,’ Emily calls back over her shoulder as she unlocks the front door.
The house is empty, the ghosts of its occupants in every room; an empty mug and cereal bowl in the lounge, an empty crisp packet on the counter. There was a time when walking into this house was a warm glass cocoon. Now more often than not it’s empty and all she can hear is her footsteps. She walks the kitchen floor to the fridge and pours herself a glass of wine. It must have been a mistake, what happened with Adeline. And anyway, she doesn’t like women now. Not like that. Not any more. The phone rings and she ignores it, refilling her glass, which she has half downed. The phone rings out and Emily paces. Why now? Perhaps it’s all a reaction to Ryan’s fling, her anxiety playing tricks on her body. Everything’s heightened, alert. The phone starts to ring again and Emily lifts the receiver from the stand, not recognising the number.
‘Hello?’ she answers.
‘Emily.’
‘Leo. You—’ How did he get this number?
‘I can’t do it; I can’t do the right thing.’
‘I heard you transferred onto another course?’
‘Yeah. It’s not the same,’ Leo says, his voice breaking.
‘It will ta
ke time.’
‘I don’t want time. It’s driving me crazy. Everything comes back to you. The corridor where we talked about Joyce and you telling me to see through the bleakness. The library where we sat. The car park, the place where I always watched you leaving.’ She sits on the bottom of the stairs with her feet tucked below her cradling the glass of wine, the phone curved against her neck.
‘Please, listen,’ Leo says.
‘How did you get my home phone number?’
‘It’s written on the handset. I saw it when I came round. Don’t you want to be wanted?’ he says. ‘I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.’ Emily rubs her hand across her forehead. ‘Look, I’ve got a proposal for you,’ Leo says. She should tell him to stop. She should put the phone down and block his number. She badly needs a shower. She moves the phone away from her face and places her finger above the red button. If only it were so easy to erase things. To forget.
‘Arthur Schopenhauer, have you heard of him?’ he asks. She puts the phone back to her ear.
‘The nineteenth-century philosopher, you mean?’
‘Yes. In The World as Will and Representation he argues that beneath the world of appearances lies the world of will, a fundamentally blind process of striving for survival and reproduction.’ He takes a deep breath.
‘You’re not exactly—’
‘Hear me out. The whole world is a manifestation of will, including the human body; genitals are objectified sexual impulse, the mouth is objectified hunger.’
‘It’s not doing it for me, Leo.’ She laughs and then regrets it. She doesn’t want him to think that she’s laughing at him or worse, not listening.
‘Schopenhauer believed that the most powerful manifestation of will is the impulse for sex.’ She’d forgotten he was studying philosophy too. ‘He said it’s the will-to-life of the yet unconceived offspring that draws man and woman together in a delusion of lust and love.’
‘That’s romantic. A delusion.’ She laughs again; she can’t help herself. ‘Are you reading this from a script?’
‘Harsh,’ he says, ‘Hear me out. BUT he claimed that with the task accomplished, their shared delusion would be broken, gone, kaput!’
Now she sees where he is going with this.
‘You’re not proposing we—’
‘I think it will cure me. You too.’
‘Leo, I told you, I’m not—’
‘What you say and what you show me are two different things, that’s part of the problem. I know you better than you think.’
She won’t deny the truth in this; she’s known it from the moment they met. When she’s next to him the urge to touch him is so strong that she has to hold her own hands. They never run out of things to say and he properly listens when she talks.
‘Look, it doesn’t hold true. If it did, why do so many people stay together?’ she says.
‘We try to override our instinctual desires with intellect. Marriage is just an institution established for the greater good – its foundations are biblical. But it’s outdated and restrictive; that’s why so many people are unhappy and can’t make it work. Please meet me. Just once. I think it will fix us.’ She’s never told him about her open marriage. It’s one of the rules. She, at least, respects them.
‘It’s not that simple,’ she says sadly, thinking of his allegations. To lend them substance would be disastrous.
‘You’re not my teacher any more,’ he says. ‘And I promise to withdraw my allegations if you just do this for me. If not for yourself.’ The inkling of something is starting in her head. What better way to prove that she’s into men? To blast any romantic notions of Adeline out of the water? She wouldn’t be breaking any rules and what has she got to lose? Ryan has drifted, the boys are almost gone. Her career is on the brink of being dismantled, her reputation damaged irreparably. She closes her eyes against images of Adeline in the changing room, the curve of her breasts. The longing she’d had to touch her and her fierce shame after. Why shouldn’t she have sex with a handsome young man if she has the opportunity? Isn’t this the very freedom that her marriage affords her? She imagines Ryan with his ongoing lover and a rod of rage runs through her. A few moments and it would be over, done, and perhaps then she wouldn’t be having an orgasm from the touch of someone’s elbow. Maybe there is some truth in Leo’s theory, after all. How would they know if they didn’t test it? But then she catches sight of herself in the hallway; a harrowed forty-three-year-old, skin starting to crumple around the edges. What is she thinking? He’s jeopardised her job and stalked her, pestering her relentlessly. He’s clearly unhinged; to take things further would be to play with fire.
‘No Leo, we can’t. Please don’t call me again.’ Replacing the phone on the handset she walks quickly upstairs and undresses and climbs into the shower. She runs the water so cold that her skin goes numb.
Rules of an open marriage #15:
Remain in control
Wales, early hours of Tuesday 19 July 2016
In the middle of the night Ryan wakes disorientated. Sitting up, he leans on one elbow and swallows hard. His throat is dry and sore. He reaches for his phone and it illuminates briefly before the battery dies and the room is again plunged into inky darkness. It’s 3 a.m. Everything hurts; his head, his knees. Even his penis is aching. He is bruised.
Slowly the buzzing in his head subsides and the sounds of the forest return. An owl calls. He rubs the tattoo on his arm. He gave up trying to see them long ago. That’s why Emily encouraged the tattoo. A reminder that not everything can be captured. Reaching into the pocket of his jeans beside the bed he fishes out two pills, cold and smooth. He lays them on his tongue. Reaching for the glass beside him his hand catches the edge of it, knocking it to the floor. Water trickles across the sloping floor and he hears it fall drop by drop onto the top step, then the next. The glass rocks on the floorboards. He swallows the pills dry and they scratch his throat.
Under his pillow is a torch and he reaches for it. Sliding his hand between the sheets and the pillowcase he waits for his fingers to touch its cold metal shell but they find only the rough cold stones of the wall behind his head. The moon glimmers through the open shutter. It’s too cold to sleep with it open but he’s glad now for the light that sketches the contents of the room: a chair, the glass on the floor beside him. Ada’s empty side of the bed. He listens for any sound of her downstairs, but there’s nothing. Surely she should have come back by now? It’s been hours since she stormed out.
They should have put a lamp up here, but in their impatience they forgot. He swings his good leg over the side of the mattress and then his bad one, ignoring the throbbing pain as he stands. Hobbling to the window, he looks out into the darkness. Perhaps she is fetching something from the caravan. She wouldn’t think twice about crossing the field at this time of night, path lit by torchlight.
Standing stiffly and propping one hand against the wall, he pees into an empty flower vase that he finds on a shelf. The hot stream splashes noisily against the glass and the smell of ammonia is reassuring. He’s functioning, at least.
Lowering himself back onto the mattress, he adds Ada’s pillow to his own and props himself up. His head is still pounding. Without meaning to, he falls asleep and when he wakes again she is still not there. He is reminded of the times as a child that he would wake in the night, banned by his father from leaving his room. The hours spent sitting motionless in bed propped on one elbow, muscles rigid with exhaustion and head riddled with fear, listening to his mother crying. He watches the open window. The sky above the tops of the trees brightens as the darkness dilutes. As the sun rises, the shadows in the room change and then comes the sharp, electric morning light that picks out each detail more sharply. He looks at the creases of the quilt upon his legs and the flat, smooth other side of the bed. He thinks then of Tom and his headache returns along with a dull ache at the back of his throat. He remembers snatches of last night and feels nauseous. He needs to charge h
is phone so he can call Emily. The charger is downstairs. Tom could be in trouble for all he knows; what is he doing here when his son could be dying? He wishes he’d gone home yesterday when he could, that this day had been started at home in London where he belongs. He wishes that yesterday had not happened, that the brutality of last night could be undone. That his time at the cottage was untainted. He’s angry with himself for falling for Ada’s tricks and her manipulation, but he can’t displace this blame. He put Ada above his son and he can’t undo it. Well, he can change it now, get in the car and drive away, be back by lunchtime. Leave Ada to her fun. She’s a grown-up. He sees the game that she is playing, forcing him to choose between herself and his son. Tom and Sam win, every time from here on in.
Going down the stairs is slow, each stair a potential liability. He plugs his phone in and puts the kettle on, rubbing crusted blood from his cuticles where her nails dug in. She was rougher than he realised. Too exhausted to shower before bed, it had taken all of his strength to make his way upstairs. He throws cold water on his face and catches sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. Just the faintest hint of a bruise across his left cheekbone. If he didn’t know where to look, he wouldn’t see it. His shoulder throbs when he peels off his top and he inspects his back, but there’s no visible damage. He should never have let it go as far as it did. He struggles to reconcile her in his head. He was drunk; she must have been too. If only he’d gone back to London.
He opens the door to the cottage and steps into a bank of mist that creeps in from the coast. It’s cool on his skin and a welcome relief after the temperatures of yesterday. Outside, the car is still there, so wherever she has gone, she’s on foot. Anyone else and Ryan would be worried to think of them out at night alone, but Ada belongs here, moving among the cool water and the brittle mountains without hesitation or doubt.
The Codes of Love Page 14
