by Anna Hope
He looks down at his hands, then back up at her. ‘Sure.’ He leans to her, a clumsy kiss that lands on the side of her mouth. ‘I’d love that.’
Outside, it is cold. Inside, the room glows, golden. Time is somewhere else. She could live here, she thinks, and – in this moment – she could love this man.
Hannah
She is grateful to get home, back to the flat – grateful for these in-between days – between Christmas and New Year. The pendulum has stopped swinging, time has stalled and pooled, and she is here, held in the lees of the year. Still, she feels restless. There is something rising in her, some itch, some need.
She takes to buying wine. She drinks most evenings, one glass, then another. The sales are on and she goes back to the clothes shops in Covent Garden, where she buys the boots the colour of blood and the dress that is covered with creeping vines.
On New Year’s Eve, she dresses for herself in the dress and the red boots, and puts on music and dances, turning slow circles in the room. She drinks red wine, one glass and then another, and then her eye falls on to a pouch of tobacco Nathan left. One cigarette. What would be the harm? She slides out the papers – black liquorice papers – and rolls herself a cigarette. She lights it from the stove, then steps outside on to the terrace, where the air is crisp and a handful of stars are visible in the high black sky. She brings the cigarette to her lips, and immediately the taste of sugar paper makes her think of Lissa.
And then, suddenly, the knowledge arrives – hitting her body before her mind. It spikes her blood, makes her heart race, her palms damp.
Lissa.
Nathan and Lissa.
She holds on to the terrace rail, then she throws the cigarette into the park below. She goes back into the flat, picks up her phone and calls Nathan.
‘Lissa,’ she says when he picks up.
‘What?’
‘What happened?’ she says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘With you and Lissa?’
He hesitates a moment too long. She holds the phone away from her ear. Feels her stomach heave into her mouth. Hears his voice, speaking to the cold empty air.
Cate
At New Year she gets an invitation from Dea for dinner, and accepts, since Sam will be working.
We’re going up to the Senate building first if you’d like to come? Dea writes. There are five students still holding on inside. I think they’re freezing. There’s a vigil for them at sunset. Bring a candle and something for them to eat.
Cate brings some mince pies and wine, and takes Tom up the hill to the university, where Dea and Zoe and a small group of others are clustered round the Senate building, candles in their hands. They talk in low voices and pass food parcels in via the security guards. Afterwards they walk back down the hill to Dea and Zoe’s for food.
‘I downloaded the application form,’ Cate tells Dea, as she helps her tidy up after the meal.
‘Really?’ says Dea. ‘Glad to hear it. Are you going to fill it in?’
‘Yeah,’ says Cate. ‘I suppose I am.’
At nine o’clock she straps Tom into the car seat and drives him home. She knows Sam is due to finish work at eleven. She goes over to her computer, prints out the form, and begins to fill it in. The time goes quickly, but half past eleven comes and she is tired, and Sam is not home so she puts on the television and wraps herself in a blanket with a cup of tea.
She is dozing when her phone rings, and she jumps awake to see Hannah’s name on the screen.
‘Han?’ She snatches the phone to her ear. ‘Hey! Happy New Year!’
It is a while before she can make out any words, because at first there is only weeping, weeping that sounds as though it has been happening for a long while already – thick, clotted, exhausted sobs. ‘Hannah?’ she says softly, waiting for her friend to find her voice.
‘Lissa,’ says Hannah eventually.
‘What about her?’
‘Lissa and Nathan.’
‘What?’
‘Together.’
‘No,’ says Cate, sitting up on the sofa, wide awake now. ‘No, Han, that’s impossible.’
‘Don’t tell me what’s possible,’ hisses Hannah. ‘I know it’s true.’
On the television people are singing together, ‘Auld Lang Syne’. There are Scottish pipers in bearskins and serious faces. She mutes the sound. The room is dark, only the light of the screen. She is silent. A strange taste fills her mouth. ‘Hannah,’ she says. ‘Is there anything I can do? Do you want to come here? Can I come to you? Are you in the flat? I can drive – I’ll put Tom in the back and leave now.’
‘No. No.’
‘Is there anyone near by that can come and be with you?’
She almost says Lissa – Lissa who lives moments away – and stops herself in time.
‘No,’ says Hannah. ‘Are you there? Will you stay there? I might – I might call again.’
‘Of course, Han. I’m here.’
When the call is finished Cate stares, stunned, at the television screen, where people are holding hands and dancing. She is aware of several conflicting and equally powerful emotions – of shock and disbelief, and a strange sense of inevitability, the last of which makes no sense at all.
She is sitting in the same spot when Sam returns home two hours later. She has stayed awake, but Hannah has not called again. She watches him come in, take off his jacket and hang it on the peg with careful deliberation. He takes two beers out of the pockets of his coat. ‘I got these, they were giving them out at work – you want one?’
‘Sure.’
He opens them with his lighter and passes her one, coming to slump on the sofa beside her. He looks tired, she thinks, tired and drunk.
‘I just spoke to Hannah.’
‘Oh?’ His eyes are unfocused.
‘Nathan cheated on her.’
‘What?’ He looks at her, mouth agape, beer bottle halfway to his mouth. ‘Who with?’
‘Lissa.’
He sits forward. ‘You’re joking?’
‘No. At least, Hannah’s convinced of it.’
‘Fucking hell.’ He takes off his cap, runs his hands through his hair. For a moment he looks horrified, and then he starts to laugh. She stares at him, appalled, and then she starts laughing too. They put their hands over their mouths as though they might be overheard, as they shake and shake with strange twisted exhilaration, until, abruptly, they stop. Cate feels the guilt swilling around her body.
‘Shit,’ says Sam, shaking his head. ‘Poor Hannah. Shit,’ he says again.
Cate puts down her beer. ‘Sam,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Mark.’
‘Yeah, well. He probably deserved it. He’s always been like that. Even when he was at school.’
‘Will they forgive me?’
‘It’s not them you need to worry about,’ he says. ‘It’s me.’
She goes over to him. ‘Will you forgive me?’ she says.
‘That depends.’
She slides her hands into his palms. ‘Can I kiss you?’ she says.
He says nothing. She lifts her lips to his. He lets her, but does not respond. Then he turns his face away.
‘I need to tell you something,’ he says. ‘I asked you to marry me because I fell for you. And I thought you felt the same. I’m not here to be your consolation prize, Cate. I want to be chosen. Not settled for.’
And he slides himself out of her hands, stands, and leaves her where she sits on the floor.
Lissa
She lies in bed late on New Year’s morning. She wears only a T-shirt and knickers. He is coming to see her – there is no need to get dressed.
She jumps up at his knock, but as soon as she opens the door she sees that something is wrong.
‘She knows,’ he says.
She puts her hand to her mouth.
‘Come in.’ She sees his hesitation. ‘Come in,’ she insists, taking him
by the wrist.
He steps over the threshold into the kitchen, where he stands, his coat still on. She turns on the light, the ugly old electric ceiling light, and his face is pale beneath it. ‘I said nothing,’ she says.
‘No. I didn’t imagine you had.’
They fall silent, and the silence is painful and inert. She wants to fill it, with desire, with violence. She crosses towards him and takes his hand in hers. He looks down at her hand, then back up at her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘What for?’ She puts her hand over his eyes, tenderly, as though shielding them from the sun. She feels him close them – the eyelids flickering beneath her palm. She reaches behind her and turns off the light again. She moves her hand away gently, running her fingertips down his cheek, his neck. His eyes remain closed as she gets to her knees before him and begins to unbuckle his belt.
‘What are you doing?’ he says.
He is hard already when she takes him into her mouth, and she holds him there for a moment. She moves her mouth against him and he pulls her up to standing, then he turns her around and pulls down her knickers and pushes himself into her, roughly, and she gasps in pain. He pulls out of her. He cups himself, pulls up his jeans, turns away from her. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’
She turns around to him. He is still wearing his coat. It is a strange sight, him in his coat, cupping himself like that – she could almost laugh.
‘It’s OK,’ she says, pulling her knickers back up. But it is not OK. Not really. Not at all. ‘It’s OK,’ she says again.
He pulls up his jeans, buckles his belt. ‘I’m going away,’ he says. ‘I’m going to go away for a couple of weeks. I need some space.’
‘You need some space,’ she repeats. Her voice sounds strange. She wants to cry, but she knows she has no right. She can feel it coming towards her, like a wave, a wave that will flatten her. And how afterwards there will be nothing left, nothing left to say what this was, how this felt. How no one will be interested in her version of events.
‘I won’t contact you,’ she says.
He nods. ‘I think it would be best.’ He reaches out and his hand lands briefly, gently, on her cuff. He touches her as he might a child.
And she is furious now. And she sees that he wants it to be easy. He wants the water to cover this over, for the bubbles to rise to the surface and disappear, for the smooth surface to give no sign of what was underneath. ‘It wasn’t worth it,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘The sex.’
She sees the shock on his face. He steps back into the room. And his expression has changed. It is needy now. Now she has hurt his ego. He wants something from her – she sees that, despite it all, he wants her to tell him it was good. That he was good. How pathetic, his need. How desperate the pair of them are.
‘Lissa,’ he says, holding out his hands in supplication.
‘It wasn’t worth it,’ she says again. ‘None of it.’ And she gestures as she speaks, at herself, at him, at the sudden painful squalor of it all.
Hannah
She dreams of violence, of Lissa’s face lacerated with a thousand tiny cuts. Of holding Nathan’s severed head, his blood soaking her lap. Sometimes the violence is chasing her and she is running from it across a wide open space. It is gaining on her and there is nowhere to hide – a dark presence, its long fingertips touch her neck.
At night, sleepless, she travels over the roofs to Lissa’s house, to where she lies in her guilty bed. How does she sleep? Does she sleep?
Finally, she sleeps herself, and when she wakes, when the world assembles itself in the dawn light, she understands it is a new world – the old one blasted to shards – and that this new world is a place that operates by different physics, different laws. She imagines them together, her husband and her friend – their hands, their lips, their naked flesh, the parts where their flesh has met. The secret, beloved places on his body that she had come to think she owned. How did he touch her? Was it animal and nothing more? Or was it, is it, more?
She may not ever know. And this fact – the knowledge of his subjectivity, these experiences of his to which she will never have access – feels more violent, somehow, than the betrayal itself. What she feels when she thinks of this is beyond pain; it is close to delirium – colours seem brighter, sounds louder. Many, many times she lifts her phone, or goes to her computer – to curse him, to accuse her – but each time she turns away, puts down the phone; for what words could she find that would encompass this?
She avoids the park, no longer walks down the market. She walks to the bus stop and then back, that is all. She makes sure there is little chance of seeing Lissa in the street. Still, she thinks she sees her often – a tall fair frame ghosting at the edge of sight.
Winter turns, becomes spring. It stays cold. She has annual leave to spend. Two weeks of it. She has no real idea of where to go.
She clicks through pictures of cottages, of white-sand Scottish beaches, of lochs that look deep enough to drown a city in. Of places where she knows no one, and people are few. She is hungry for something that she cannot quite name – some elemental nourishment, something wild. She wants to taste salt water. Be scoured. Feel wind and weather on her skin.
One day, riding the Tube home from work, she sees a poster for Orkney. Sea and wide skies and wildlife. She goes home, and within minutes has booked planes, and a hotel and a car. She will go in March.
At night she dreams of running fast across open country. She wakes breathing quickly, the room altered, the silhouette of the tree’s branches thrown starkly on to the wall.
Epithalamium
2008
It is Saturday, which is market day. It is late spring, or early summer. It is May, and the dog roses are in bloom in the tangled garden at the front of the house.
They take turns in the shower, Lissa and Cate, then dress quietly in their rooms. It is cool and overcast, but the forecast for later in the day is good.
As Lissa dresses she thinks of Nathan. Her friend. She knew him first. And she has always suspected that all those years ago, when they met again after university, had she been more available, he might have wanted to be with her. Would he have been hers now? Somehow, today of all days, she wants him to notice her, notice her beauty. She would not admit it to herself, but she wants to outshine Hannah, she wants to be seen. So she cuts the tags off the silk dress from Liberty’s which she definitely cannot afford, and slips it on. She outlines her eyes in green kohl. She wears heels that make her over six feet tall.
Over in her morning flat, Hannah dresses. Her mother and father are with her. Nathan has spent the night away, at his brother’s house. Her mother knocks on the door to come in.
Oh, Hannah, she says, when she sees her daughter in her dress. Oh, Han.
They stand waiting in the largest of the municipal rooms in the registry office. It is, they all agree, for a couple like Hannah and Nathan, the best possible place to get married – its very utilitarian nature invests it with a sort of magic.
Nathan waits at the head of the room. Lissa watches him, his face, his blue suit, asking his brother for the third time to check his pocket for the rings, and as she watches he looks up, catches her eye and smiles.
The music starts, they stand, and Hannah appears on the arm of her father. She is wearing a simple green dress, her eyes shining, and at the sight of her, Lissa is chastened – how could she have thought she would ever outshine her? This woman that she loves. Here, in her green column of a dress, walking slowly towards Nathan, Hannah is mythic, archetypal. And Nathan here, standing at the front, has eyes for no one else, his face eager, lit, waiting for his bride.
As Hannah and her father pass her, Cate is thinking of her own father, and trying to remember when the last time was that she touched him – years ago now. And how she wants him here, in this moment, wants nothing more than for her own father to hold her like this – wants her own father to look at her like this, transfigure
d with pride and with love. Perhaps it is only for this that weddings are made.
And Cate thinks of Lucy, and where she is – and whether she ever thinks of her. And whether she is alive or dead, and whether she will ever love anyone like that again, and how time is passing and they are all getting older, and she is crying, standing here, thinking of Lucy and of Hannah and Nathan, of her mother and how she misses her, of her father and love and of time, and how it is all so beautiful and so impossible, really.
And Hannah looks at Nathan and thinks of how she loves him. And how she is happy. And when the serious-faced woman who is holding the ceremony turns to her and asks her if she will take this man – Yes, she says, yes. I will.
Afterwards, when the wine has been drunk and cake has been eaten and speeches have been made, Hannah finds her friends. She takes Lissa by the hand and threads through the crowd in the pub to find Cate, and takes Cate by the other hand, and leads them outside, into the May sunshine, through the gate, into the park, into London Fields. The cherry tree by the gate is heavy with blossom.
The forecast was right: it is a beautiful day. They walk out on to the grass, and as they walk, in this golden, tipsy light, the world feels full of love, of possibility. Hannah brings her friends towards her, presses her forehead against theirs. I love you, she says. And, their heads bent to hers, Cate and Lissa murmur their love back, for this is what marriage does – it flows out beyond the couple, engendering love, engendering life, making us believe, even for an afternoon, in a happy ending, or at least, at the very least, in the expectation that a story will continue as it should.
2011
Lissa
‘You can change behind the screen,’ says the teacher. ‘Or go to the toilets.’
He is young, younger than her anyway, short and wiry, dressed in a striped woollen jumper and jeans. Expensive-looking glasses. Mild grey eyes.
Lissa nods. She knows the drill. She doesn’t bother to tell him she has done this many, many times before. They don’t want to hear you speak.
