by Anne Brooke
‘I don’t want to stay.’
Something in him seems to fold in on itself, and he waves one hand at me. ‘All right. Then go. If that’s what you want.’
Remembering Jade’s warning, I get up and stroll to the living room door, as if I have all the time in the universe and what I’m doing doesn’t matter. It does. It means passing where my ex-lover is sitting, as vibrant as a threat and as dangerous. The journey takes a lifetime, and when I’m level with him, he looks up.
‘You’ve forgotten your notes.’
His words are quiet, and when I brush my hair back from my forehead, my fingers come away bathed in sweat. ‘Yes.’
‘Shall I get them for you?’
‘No.’ A pause. He doesn’t fill it, almost as if he knows I have more to say. ‘You’re my client, and there are things we need to discuss.’
‘Yes.’
Another pause. I’m held motionless next to him and, this time, it is I who am waiting.
Then he says, ‘We’ll discuss them, Paul. I promise you. But first I’d like us to have a meal together. It’s something we’ve never done. Not really.’
Without replying, I retrace my steps and sit down. He takes a gulp of his wine as if he’s been crossing a bleak desert with no hope of water, although in fact he’s never moved.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
He cooks, something I never knew he could do. Sitting at the table, I watch him move ’round the vast, airy kitchen like a dancer, adding herbs and a sprinkling of salt to the heady mixture of chicken and ginger, bean sprouts and water chestnuts he’s stir-frying. Keeping a watching brief on the wok, he cuts bread he has warmed in the oven and slides butter onto a dish. When I ask if I can help, he shakes his head, and afterwards we’re silent. It feels as if I’m plunging into unknown brightness and if I dare once to open my eyes then the dazzle might blind me. I can’t catch in my thoughts the connection between the reason for coming here and what is happening now.
When the food is ready, Dominic takes the plates into the dining room, its décor cream and gold, wood and silk, and I follow with a fresh beer, the wine, and the bread. As we eat, we talk a little more. We talk of the things that are overwhelming but which tonight don’t matter: Iraq, terrorism, America. We also talk about things that are nearer to us but not too near: the way London is at the end of the tourist season; the latest crime novel I’m reading; the cities Dominic has visited.
And all the time I want to touch him, but I’m afraid.
Finally, he drinks the last of his wine, smiles, and lets the peace and warmth of the evening enfold us both.
‘Did you like supper?’ he says.
‘Yes. It was good, thank you.’
‘Are you still hungry?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to see around the house?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I say without thinking. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Come on then.’ He gets up, indicates the room we’re in and says, ‘This is the dining room, as you can tell. The living room and kitchen you’ve seen already, but downstairs there’s also a playroom, bathroom, and television room. Upstairs of course is breathtaking. It’s what made me decide to buy.’
I drift in his wake, not listening to his explanations of what I’m seeing and the changes he’s made, aware only of his voice and the way he somehow doesn’t sound like himself. He could be giving a lecture at one of his many conferences, addressing his executive board, rather than being here tonight, letting me see his home for the first time. It’s as if he’s been switched on by an unknown force and is talking and talking with nothing being said.
When we come to the bottom of the elegant stairway, I hesitate, but the soothing tone of his voice doesn’t miss a syllable. Five steps behind, I follow him up. On the landing he turns left and leads me to two bedrooms. The first belongs to Henry and is filled with all the evidence of boyhood: the skateboard from the photograph; a corner stacked with computer games; a tumble of dirty sweatshirts on the bed. Dominic picks them up with a sigh and drops them into the linen basket.
‘He’s never tidy,’ he shrugs. ‘No matter what we say.’
The second bedroom along is girlhood apricot but with not a hint of a frill, and I sense that everything here has its place and lives in harmony. There are shelves of books; a CD player; a pile of hard-cover notebooks, all in purple.
‘She writes,’ he says, unable to keep the pride from his voice. ‘All the time. Of course, we’re never allowed to see.’
When I look at him, his face is as mellow as I’ve ever known it, and I wonder, with all the arrogance of non-parental distance, whether Judith is his favourite. I can never ask him this. There are other thoughts, other memories also, that this room stirs in me, but I refuse to face them now.
He shuts Judith’s door with a gentle click and leads me further along to a vast expanse of bathroom, tiled in white with, here and there, a splash of green to refresh the eye. Another few moments to listen and admire, and we are out, heading to the end of the landing where a door with a brass handle beckons us.
‘The master bedroom,’ he says. ‘With the wonderful views. You—’
I stop dead, Jade’s words at last springing clear into my mind: ‘Whatever you do, don’t go into his damn bedroom.’
‘No,’ I say.
‘What’s wrong?’ When he turns to look at me, his face is shrouded in shadow, but I cannot explain myself.
Instead I shake my head and back away, ‘I don’t want to see it, that’s all. Don’t ask me.’
Two steps bring him into the light again, and I see his puzzlement, the mental shrug he uses to deal with something he hasn’t understood but which he counts as too trivial to question. ‘All right. There are other bedrooms, but I’m sorry you’ll miss the view.’
When I don’t reply, he glides past me, averting his gaze, and again, after a heartbeat or so, I follow him back beyond the stairs and into a smaller landing. There are three rooms here: the first is a study playing host to another computer, a laptop, and three shelves-full of what I recognise as Dominic’s collection of netsuke. I’ve read about this in interviews he’s given. I pick one up, an ivory carving of an old man, impossibly small, holding a twisted stick and an artist’s palate.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. ‘I’ve never seen one before, not to touch. This isn’t all of them, is it?’
‘No,’ Dominic smiles. ‘The rest are in storage. I rotate them when the mood takes me.’
‘Why?’
‘Lots of reasons: the move from summer to winter, and back again; the nature of the work I’m doing here and what I like to focus on when I’m doing it; the different shapes they make in the sunlight. It’s hard to explain, Paul.’
‘I think you explain very well, thanks. But I meant: Why do you collect them?’
He answers without hesitation. ‘The contrast of their intricacy with the broad sweep of the life I find I’m living. It’s the chance to contemplate something different and real.’
There is no answer to that, or none I can find. I replace the carving, which almost seems alive in my fingers, and we move on.
The second room is a guest bedroom, female and scented in lavender, and the third a smaller spare bedroom, or so he tells me, used only rarely. As I step over the threshold I wonder if tomorrow Jade will see through my half-promises and lies.
This last room is decorated in pale green wallpaper with a subtle darker green trim and the furnishings are simple: a single bed, pale wood dressing table, and a Victorian mirror. I move to the open window.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘I haven’t missed anything. There’s a view from here, too.’
It’s true. In the pale light of dusk, I can see the outline of a long garden and the smell of roses shimmers ’round my senses. When Dominic moves in behind me and touches me once on the arm, I realise I won’t be leaving here for a while.
There’s still some fight left in me, though, and I’m proud of the fact.
‘We haven’t discussed the papers I want to go through and the questions I need to ask,’ I say. ‘You promised me that.’
‘I know I did, but it doesn’t matter now. We can,’ he has the grace to pause, ‘look at those in the morning.’
I make a sound that’s half laughter, half groaning. ‘Is this why you invited me ’round? Really?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re someone who knows what he wants and gets it. How long have you been planning this?’
‘You won’t believe me, but I don’t always plan. Ever since I rang you and asked to meet up again that night, I’ve been hoping,’ he replies with simplicity. ‘The hour before we were due to see each other, I chewed my way through two packets of mints. I know you always hated how much I smoke, especially as you were trying so hard to give them up. Couldn’t you taste them when you kissed me?’
I don’t answer. I’m incapable of it. Instead, I reach for him and begin to twist free the buttons on his shirt. My hands are shaking, and I can’t remember what to do.
It doesn’t matter. Because a few seconds later, he’s eased me down onto the bed and is running his hand across my stomach. I realise why he’s doing it this way and know it will be good for the second or third time, but right now I can’t wait that long. I land a fierce kiss on his mouth, but he still doesn’t get it, instead pulling away and kissing me more gently in return. I wriggle out of my trousers, turn over, and push myself up on all fours. Grabbing his hand, I wrap it around my cock, already beginning to throb itself home. Finally I hear the sound of him spitting and feel his wet fingers in my arse.
Even then, there’s a moment’s hesitation.
‘Can I?’ he whispers. ‘Is it...?’
‘Okay? Yes.’
No more words then. He eases my buttocks apart, and I’m stretched wide as his cock enters my body, slowly, carefully, in a way that splits me with a delicious shock of memory. I can tell, even in the net of my own desire, how much he’s holding back.
‘Paul, Paul,’ he groans. ‘God.’
A couple of thrusts is all it takes for me and I’m gone, my spunk streaming out over the bed’s dark green silk sheets. Behind me, he lurches, cries out again and the two of us collapse in a tangle of sweat and flesh together. His wetness dribbles out between my thighs, and I feel the hammer of his heart against my back.
I close my eyes against what we’ve done and what it might mean for me and wrap myself up against his legs and chest. We lie there, not speaking, until the pace of his heart, and mine, has slowed. I think to myself, don’t ruin it, Paul, for God’s sake, don’t ruin it.
‘Sorry,’ he says at last. ‘I didn’t think to use a condom. But I don’t have anything, I swear it. I get my health regularly checked. I’m clean.’
Dominic’s love life apart from me isn’t something I want to talk about, but his openness deserves a response.
‘I don’t have anything either. You don’t have to worry.’ I pause and then move on a little further than planned. ‘I’m celibate.’
He nibbles the back of my neck, his teeth grazing my skin.
‘Really?’ he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. ‘It’s nice of you to say it, but you don’t have to. I don’t believe it for a moment of course, not of someone as sexy as you.’
I shuffle myself away from him, as much as I can in a single bed. ‘It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. It’s true. Or was until just now.’
‘Oh yes, right,’ he pulls me ’round until I’m facing him and can see every grey speckle in his blue-grey eyes. ‘This must be a new thing then. When we were together, you could never get enough. So tell me. Make it accurate as I know how good you are with dates, and make it the truth; when did you last have sex?’
Not even blinking, I hold his gaze. ‘Three years, four months, and four weeks ago. As it was one of the long months.’
For a moment I see him wondering whether to believe me or not, and I see him doing the sums. Then he gets it.
He swallows and looks away. ‘Well, I’ve broken your run now.’
When he makes as if to get up, I grab his arm and pull him back down next to me. ‘It’s okay. I know this isn’t going anywhere, it’s just for tonight. I’m not imagining a fantasy future for us, not like last time. I won’t try to mess up your life again, stalk you, whatever.’
‘I didn’t think you would. I know it was difficult for you before, for both of us.’
I’m not sure about this, as I’d thought that, for him, cutting me adrift had been easy, but I’m not going to argue the point. Not now when we’re both half-naked and on a comfortable bed in a house with no-one else inside it. I may have been a monk for a long time, but I’ve never been a saint.
In the morning, when I wake up, my skin is humming, and the air around me is heavy. I’m lying sprawled on my stomach, legs apart. It’s how I’ve spent most of the night, though not all. Dominic and I always liked to have a little variety, even against our natural preferences, and this time has been no different. Thinking of him makes me smile, and I wonder how I’ve managed without sex, without him, for so long.
‘Dominic?’
There’s no answer, but from downstairs I hear faint noises of someone moving about. Turning over and letting the sun drift over my body, I feel alive. I wish he was here, but he’s never liked just being still after love-making. He’d want to be up and on to the next thing, and I suppose in three years, four months, and twenty-nine days he hasn’t changed.
I wonder what the etiquette is of being seduced by a client and then having sex with them from dusk to dawn until both of you are electric with long-delayed satisfaction. How do you work yourselves back into some kind of business relationship then? I’m still wondering about it when the door opens and Dominic reappears.
He’s wearing a short navy-blue dressing gown and carrying a tray on which I can see a steaming cafetiere, cups, plates, milk, a basket of rolls, butter, and a pot of marmalade. I can’t help it, I laugh.
‘God, Nic, what’s this? Keeping the mistress sweet before packing her off in the morning?’
‘Something like that.’ With a brief smile, he turns his attention to breakfast, and I watch him, realising as I do that this is a side of the man I haven’t seen before, even last night at supper. It’s like witnessing a ritual, as if I’ve come upon him engaged in prayer. He arranges the rolls on the plates, allocating two to each, and then slices off a generous helping of butter from the dish, followed by a spoonful of marmalade. Both these he transfers to the side of the plates and leaves a knife with them. Next he frowns at the cafetiere and holds it up to the light before, seemingly satisfied, he plunges the filter down to the bottom of the glass jug and pours the coffee into the cups. To these he adds a dash of milk, a little more in mine. He’s remembered. Again.
Then he comes to sit next to me on the bed, and I can smell the smoke on him. Still not speaking, he hands me the coffee, and the rich dark scent of it kicks me into a new wakefulness. His grey gaze hooks onto mine, and then, still holding my eyes, he clicks my cup with his before taking a sip. For some reason, and in spite of the depths and heights of our recent physical intimacy, this feels like the closest we have ever been.
‘Good morning,’ he says.
I’m unable to reply as the strangeness of it all is too powerful for me to find any words, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Instead he puts down his cup on the bedside cabinet, removes mine from my grasp, and places it next to his. Then he pulls the duvet down a little and runs one careful finger across my right arm so he touches the scar.
‘What’s this?’ he asks. ‘It’s new, isn’t it? Since we were last together. Another accident?’
I tell him. He listens to the story without exclamation or question until I’m finished — something that nobody in my life up ’til now has ever done, not even Jade. When I’m through and all the words are silent, he bends down, takes hold of my arm, and brushes the long, twisted line with hi
s lips. He goes on doing this, taking his time until he has kissed the whole length of it. It feels like butterflies on my skin.
When he looks up at me, his eyes are dark, and I do not know what he might be thinking.
‘I swear, Paul,’ he says. ‘Whatever has happened before and whatever happens now, I swear if I had the gift of it, I would kill whoever did this to you.’
There’s nothing I can think of to say. So instead of talking, I reach for his hand where it still rests on my arm, bring it to my mouth, and kiss the inside of his palm. Just once, just enough.
Then we eat.
Later in the shower together, we wash each other clean. There’s no laughter or talking, and no more sex of any sort, although once or twice we kiss. Gently, as if taking care not to cause pain, though I can’t see why either of us would imagine there might be any.
It’s only when I’m getting out of my car at home that I see he’s placed my file of papers in the back and realise neither of us has mentioned the case.
I’ll do it later. There’ll be plenty of time. I might even ring him this evening, see if there’s any chance of a rerun of last night. No, I’d better not. The family will be back by then, and he hadn’t said anything about wanting to see me again. Not for sex anyway. Those days are over. I can’t afford to live in my dreams. Maybe last night was just a proper goodbye, something we never had before. Whatever, it’ll become clear soon enough, and, until it does, I can’t go chasing him like a bee after honey. Those days are gone, too; I’m older now. And obsessive about too many other things to be able to add Dominic to the list again. Besides, he’ll have to talk to me about the case at some point, so it isn’t as if I won’t be seeing him in the future.
At home, sunlight catches the motes of dust floating in air and I make a mental note to do some cleaning. It’s already 9.16am. Jade will be wondering where I am. She’ll be in the office dealing with the post, checking the ansaphone, and, with a bit of luck, finishing keying in some of my outstanding reports. And she might even have some good news about the Bluesky connection. I change my shirt and grab a pair of sneakers. I know, as I knew last night when Dominic opened the spare room door, that I’ll have to try to find some kind of reason as to why I’m humming and can’t keep the smile from my face. I promised her I wouldn’t go near his bedroom, but it was his bed she meant, and she’ll know just by looking at me that I’ve had sex at last. Good sex, too. She’ll assume Dominic, she’ll assume right and I’ll be left with an angry assistant. Twelfth rule of PI work: Whatever you do, don’t upset the staff or you’ll never get your typing done.
