The Judas Scar

by Amanda Jennings

  He laughed. ‘And by society you mean the masses? The herd?’

  ‘So damning of society? Let me guess, society exists merely as a concept and in the real world there are only individuals?’

  ‘Oscar Wilde,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed.’

  It was Harmony’s turn to laugh. ‘Christ, you can’t be impressed by an Oscar Wilde quote,’ she said with a derisive shake of her head. ‘They fall out of Christmas crackers with knock-knock jokes and plastic key rings.’

  He stared at her, narrowed eyes flicking back and forth over hers as if trying to read her thoughts, and she felt her cheeks flush again. She drank the warm, flat dregs of her champagne to fill the silence.

  ‘You said you’re not enjoying the party,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said I wasn’t in the mood.’ She paused and shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s just all a bit loud and crowded in there. I’m not great with parties at the best of times. But it’s my best friend’s fortieth, I’m sure I’ll get into it soon.’

  ‘It’s not a very good party. Too showy. No intimacy or subtlety. I’m not enjoying it either,’ he said, pausing for a beat. ‘At least, I wasn’t.’

  Harmony dropped her eyes. ‘As long as Emma has a good time, that’s all that matters.’

  He placed his glass on the console table and stared at her, silent for a moment or two, until she finally looked up at him. When she did he smiled. ‘Harmony, what would you say if I asked you to leave and have dinner with me?’

  Harmony laughed abruptly, taken aback by his question.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Right now, if I asked you to leave the party with me, would you come?’

  Her heart began to race as she realised he was being perfectly serious. ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She faltered. The hairs on her forearms stood proud. Her heart hammered. ‘I’m married. My husband’s here.’

  The stranger held her eyes for a moment or two and then gave a deferential nod. ‘He’s a lucky man.’

  As if on cue she heard Will’s laugh, unmistakeable in its generous fullness, one of those infectious laughs that set other laughs off like a line of falling dominoes. She turned to look over her shoulder and saw him standing with his back to her at the entrance to the living room. He was talking to a man she didn’t recognise. She was filled with a sense of relief as the tension between herself and the stranger disappeared like water through a cupped hand.

  ‘In fact, that’s him now,’ she said. ‘He’s probably come looking for me. I should join him before we sit for supper.’

  The stranger stared at her, and then gave a curt nod of his head.

  ‘You must. It was nice to meet you, Harmony.’

  She held out her hand again. ‘It was nice to meet you, too,’ she said. ‘Whatever your name is.’

  He took her hand and as he did he stroked his thumb against her, barely there, like a butterfly’s kiss. Her skin tingled. As she walked down the corridor away from him she felt his eyes burning into her back. She went straight up to Will and kissed him on the lips. The man he was with chuckled drunkenly.

  ‘What was that for?’ Will asked with amusement.

  ‘No reason.’ She glanced over her shoulder but the stranger had gone and she felt a sharp stab of disappointment.

  C H A P T E R T H R E E

  Though Harmony looked for him she didn’t see the man again that night. She had half-hoped she might find herself sitting next to him at supper. He was interesting and she’d enjoyed his company, and when she recalled him asking her to leave with him she got a rush of excitement. There was a self-assuredness, an inner purpose about him that was different to any other person she’d met, and it intrigued her. Instead she found herself between two men she’d met a couple of times, neither of whom she had much in common with, and she spent most of the meal sitting quietly, toying with her water glass and watching other people as they chatted and drank. Will spent no time at the table; instead he leapt about with his camera like a man possessed. Harmony felt a warm glow as she watched him. She liked to see him taking photographs, filled up with enthusiasm, lit from within.

  By two o’clock she was shattered. The number of guests had dwindled, but those who remained were opening more wine or tipping shots back or dancing in happy, sweaty groups, and all looked set to see in the dawn. She found Will chatting to a couple she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Do you mind if we go soon?’ she whispered, leaning close to him. ‘I’m tired and we’ve got to drive back to London.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, excusing himself from the couple who wandered off hand in hand towards the dance floor. ‘I’m ready to go too. Have you said goodbye to Emma and Ian?’

  ‘No, Em’s having far too much fun dancing. I had a quick look for Ian but can’t see him.’

  ‘He’s extremely drunk. Last time I saw him he was clutching a bottle of vodka and stumbling off into the undergrowth with only one shoe on.’

  ‘Let’s slip away. I’ll phone Emma in the morning.’

  There were a few people waiting in the hallway for taxis, putting coats on or standing patiently, eyes tired and heavy with drink. Harmony and Will walked out of the door and down the steps. She noticed the rose petals now crushed into the stone in dirty smears. Most of the flares that lined the driveway had burned down, the low blue flames of those that soldiered on licking sporadically at the darkness as they clung to life.

  Within moments of being in the car Will fell asleep. His head lolled forward, and every now and then he made soft snoring noises, like a snuffling pig. Despite the time and the soporific hum of the engine, she was wide awake, her mind buzzing, flitting between Will’s look of shock when she mentioned a baby and the man she’d met. There had been something about him, a powerful sexuality – not the bravado of a self-styled Casanova, but something rawer, more innate. As she drove along the M4, passing only the occasional car or lorry, once again she recalled him asking her to leave with him. She’d been with Will since she was twenty, and it was the first time since then she’d felt any type of sexual connection with another man. It was a breath of fresh air to have her mind occupied with such frivolity; there’d been too much sadness and soul-searching over the past few months. She put her hand instinctively against her stomach as a phantom ache took over, right in the centre of her, where her baby used to be, as if the scar left when it was torn out of her had opened up and bled again. She glanced at her husband, still asleep, head nodding with the motion of the car.

  ‘I wish you felt it,’ she said, her stomach clenching at the sound of her words against the quiet.

  ‘What?’ he said, his voice groggy.

  ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Just resting my eyes.’ He reached for her hand on the gear stick and stroked it. ‘What did you say?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘It’s about the baby, isn’t it?’ he said, with a slight drunken slur.

  ‘Yes, it’s about the baby. Our baby.’ As she spoke a lump of emotion caught in her throat. ‘We need to talk about it.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you want me to say.’ His feeble words hung in the air.

  Yes, said a voice in her head. I want you to say yes.Yes, you were devastated when we lost our child.Yes, you’d love me to be pregnant again.Yes, you want to be a father as much as I want to be a mother.

  But again she didn’t say anything.

  She turned off the Talgarth Road and into their street and parked in a space a little way up from their flat. She stilled the engine then swivelled in her seat to look at him.

  ‘I just …’ She faltered. ‘It’s what I said at the party. I want to try again.’

  They sat in the quiet for a minute or two. She willed him to speak but instead he got out of the car and closed his door.

  She stared ahead feeling empty, her hands clasped lightly in her lap. There was a group of girls walking down
the street. They were underdressed and swaying, passing a bottle of alcohol between them and smoking, the ends of their cigarettes glowing orange in the dark, as they stumbled, arms linked, in a drunken chain. Harmony rubbed her face hard and got out of the car.

  Will was sitting on the steps outside the main door of their building. His elbows rested on his knees. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as she approached. His eyes dropped to the ground and he scuffed the side of his shoe against the pavement. ‘I know we need to talk, but right now I’m tired and drunk and need our bed.’

  She walked past him and unlocked the door that opened on to the communal hallway. Three flats shared the building and as usual the man from Number Two had blocked their way with his bike. Harmony squeezed past it and descended the four stairs to their basement flat. She unlocked the door and went straight along the narrow corridor to the kitchen and filled two glasses with water. When Will came in she handed him one and then leant back against the kitchen worktop. He drank his and put the empty glass on the table.

  ‘Emma seemed to enjoy herself tonight,’ he said. She knew he was hoping this would be enough to distract her from what she wanted to say.

  Harmony tipped the rest of her water into the sink, rinsed her glass and upended it on the draining board. ‘She did. I’ll see you in bed.’

  Will came into the bedroom as she was climbing into bed. She waited for him to use the bathroom and as he was undressing she mustered the energy to try again.

  ‘Losing our child floored me,’ she said. ‘You don’t seem to feel the same and that makes me feel very alone.’

  He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Will?’ Harmony asked. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  He lifted the duvet and lay down. ‘I didn’t expect you to want to be pregnant again.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’ He hesitated.

  ‘Please, Will, talk to me.’

  ‘I know how upset you’ve been and I assumed you wouldn’t want to risk putting yourself through it again.’ He sighed then reached to turn his bedside light off and the room fell dark, a sliver of city light pushing through a gap in the curtains.

  In the silence that held them, Harmony’s thoughts drifted back to the day she’d discovered she was pregnant. A missed period. Then two weeks late. That blue line on the pregnancy test. A life inside her. She’d sat on the floor of their bathroom and hugged her knees tightly. As the minutes passed, euphoria and joy took over from shock, and she realised how deeply she must have buried her desire to have children, hidden it from herself, pretended it didn’t matter. She’d convinced herself the two of them were enough, that their evenings out, those long Sundays in bed with the papers or making lazy afternoon love, their impromptu trips to the pub, to the cinema, were enough. Then six weeks later she found herself on the same spot on the bathroom floor, the same position even, knees drawn in tight to her chest, white-knuckled hands clasping them to her as she lost her baby. Dark blood stained her underwear. Smeared her inner thighs. Disbelief and panic flooded her. Then piercing grief as she’d curled up on the floor begging her baby to stay with her, just as she’d done with her mother. She thought about her mum then, lying beside her, a skeleton in a pink cotton nightie, so brittle and feather-light Harmony worried she might crush her with the weight of her arm. Those rattling breaths that came from her struggling body as Harmony cried silent tears that soaked into the pillow.

  ‘Please, Mum,’ she’d whispered. ‘I love you. Don’t leave me.’

  Don’t leave me, baby. Please. Don’t leave me.

  But neither her mother nor her child had listened; both left.

  Harmony turned on her side and tucked the duvet around her. She had to think of some way to make him see how important this was for her.

  ‘Good night,’ she said into the darkness.

  But Will was already asleep.

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  ‘I can’t wait to see these photos, Will.’

  Will smiled and kissed Emma on both cheeks. ‘They’re good. There’s a gorgeous one of you – you look like a film star.’

  Emma beamed. ‘How exciting! But first,’ she said. ‘What can I get you to drink? Wine, beer?’

  ‘A beer would be great,’ said Will.

  ‘Could I have something soft?’ Harmony asked.

  ‘I’ve some elderflower,’ Emma said. ‘Ian’s mother made it. Though I hate to admit it, it’s delicious.’ She smiled conspiratorially.

  ‘Don’t ever tell her I said that.’

  As Emma went back into the kitchen, Will and Harmony walked through the living room and stepped out onto the terrace. The sun was high and bright, but not unbearably hot, and a light breeze carried the smell of freshly cut grass. There was a table laid with a pressed white tablecloth, a vase of yellow roses and a large white parasol shading half of it, as if a slice of Tuscany had been brought to North Oxfordshire. All trace of the party the week before had gone. The York paving, speckled with moss between the slabs, looked as if it had been vacuumed, and the lawn beyond rolled gently between extravagant flowerbeds in even emerald stripes that reached out like fingers to the strip of woodland that marked the garden’s boundary. The woods had been thinned so that individual trees stood like sentinels guarding the view of the undulating countryside beyond. There was a swing that hung from a beech tree, a wooden fort with a slide, and further into the trees was a platform high up in the branches with a zip wire that shot deeper into the wood below. Will heard his father’s ghost tut-tutting at these expensive, spoiling toys – No good done but to ruin a child, that muck! – and sat at the table facing away from the woods to silence his disapproval.

  He was glad to be out of London and in familiar company. The conversation he had to have with Harmony was hovering over them continuously like a low, black rain cloud. But how to tell her? Every time he tried to formulate the words he knotted up.

  Will lifted his laptop out of the bag and made space for it on the table. ‘I hope she likes them,’ he said to Harmony.

  ‘Of course she will. They’re great, and it was nice of you to spend the evening taking them.’ She tilted her face up towards the sun and closed her eyes in the warmth, like a cat.

  Emma came through the French windows and put a tray of drinks, a bowl of crisps and a small plate of swollen green olives on the table. She sat in the chair beside Will and slipped her sunglasses down from the top of her head to shield her eyes.

  ‘So, Em, who’s this nightmare colleague of Ian’s you’re making us eat with?’ Harmony asked.

  ‘God, don’t tell him I said that, whatever you do.’ Harmony laughed. ‘As if I would!’

  ‘It’s his lawyer – he worships the bloody man.’ Emma poured Harmony a glass of cordial from a jug filled with ice cubes and freshly cut mint. ‘He asked to meet you.’ Emma grinned at Harmony and lifted her eyebrows.

  ‘He did what? Who is he?’

  ‘You met him at the party. Good looking. Dark hair.’

  ‘And he asked to meet us?’

  ‘Not us, you.’

  ‘Sounds like I should be jealous,’ Will said, and sipped his beer.

  ‘Did he say why he wanted to meet me?’

  Will saw her sit forward, her interest piqued, brow furrowed. Emma shook her head. ‘I asked Ian but he was typically useless and said something along the lines of him having met one or two interesting people at the party and described you. Ian knew he meant you when he said your husband had mad white-blond hair. Ian said we were having lunch with you and Will and invited him.’ She reached for an olive.

  ‘That’s hardly asking to meet me.’

  ‘He could have said no to the invite.’ Emma gestured towards the laptop. ‘Come on, Will. Show me these photos before they get here and I have to start dashing in and out of the kitchen like a lunatic.’

  Just then there was screaming as the children ran across the lawn towards the fort. Josh had clearly stolen something from his sister and was holding whatever it
was above his head as she ran after him shrieking at him to give it back.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Josh!’ Emma called. ‘We’ve guests. At least try and pretend you’re not a total bloody monster.’

  They both ignored her and disappeared into the woods.

  ‘It’s a shame they aren’t eating with us,’ said Harmony, staring after them.

  Will’s stomach turned over as he caught the desolate look in her eye.

  ‘I had to feed them before you got here. If they don’t eat before midday they’ll eat each other,’ Emma said. ‘They’re basically gremlins. Don’t worry, though, they’ll be like wasps on jam when I bring pudding out.’ She smiled. ‘They’re Pavlova addicts. Literally.’ She reached for her glass of wine then leant forward to peer at the laptop.

  ‘These are amazing, Will,’ Emma said a few moments later as she looked through the photographs.. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed a few moments later. ‘I look fab in this one!’ She grinned and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You’re such a great photographer. A miracle worker!’

  ‘I’ve told him that time and time again,’ Harmony said, without moving her face away from the sun. ‘He needs to make time for it. I can’t remember the last time you used your studio.’

  ‘And that’s a great one of you, Harmony.’

  Will looked at the photo. He didn’t agree with Emma; his wife didn’t look great. Her silk dress skimmed her body in all the right places, but she looked thin, her collarbone was pronounced and her cheeks too gaunt. She’d lost far too much weight since the miscarriage.

  Emma turned the laptop back and continued to scroll through the pictures. ‘There,’ she said, tapping the screen with her fingernail.

  ‘That’s Ian’s lawyer.’

  Will looked at the screen. The photo showed two people, a couple – Anne and Cliff – whom Will had met a couple of times before. In the background, cast in shadows to the left of the picture, was a figure Will hadn’t noticed until then. It was difficult to make him out properly, but he seemed familiar. Will had certainly met him, but for the life of him couldn’t work out when or where. There was an intensity about him that cut through the blurry darkness and locked on to Will. Now Emma had pointed him out it was hard to look anywhere else; his presence held the photo like a curse.