Exquisite

by Sarah Stovell

  ‘So what do you think?’ I asked

  Anna put the sheets of paper down on the table in the bar and swigged her lager. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Quite clearly, this woman loves you, adores you, wants you not to waste your life in a crap bedsit in Brighton. It also seems very possible that she fancies you – there is definitely something sexy about all this. But I don’t know. It’s difficult to be sure, but if you were asking me to place a bet, I’d put my 50p on you being right. But it’s easy enough to say all this in emails. Whether she’ll be quite as forward in real life, I’m not sure.’

  I panicked slightly when Anna used the word ‘fancies’. It was feeble in the face of my feelings for Bo. There ought to be a whole new language, I thought, for things that needed to stay pure and not be diluted by words. ‘Love’ didn’t go far enough, either. There wasn’t a word in the world that could express this.

  Anna passed the pages back to me. I folded them away and put them in my bag.

  ‘So what are you going to do about this?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘From what I can see, it’s all looking a bit too late for you to walk away unharmed.’

  A rock of dread settled in my stomach at the thought of that. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘You need to find out how she really feels and how seriously she’s taking it. If she feels the way you do, then there’s a lot at stake for her. Do you think she’d leave her husband and shack up in a lesbian relationship, and continue bringing up two kids?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe not.’

  Thoughts of Gus worried me. I’d seen his shape before: the moody broodiness of a man who wanted one woman completely to himself. My mother had married a man like him. His jealous intensity had been flattering at first – she saw it as a sign of the depth of his love – but, of course, in the end it turned miserable and violent. And there was something about Bo, I thought – something indefinable and vulnerable, despite all her success and outward calm; it was as though she might be crushed at any moment. I wondered if he’d done that to her, and what he might do if he found out about us. I shuddered at the idea of it.

  ‘I wouldn’t, if I were her,’ Anna said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Honestly? Because it’s a bloody stupid thing to do. For a forty-year-old woman to walk away from her tidy, bourgeois life with a husband and two children, and get it on with another woman, practically young enough to be her child, who has no security and no money to speak of, would be insane. Seriously, Alice. If she does it, you need to run a mile, because it means she’s not all there. She would be absolutely mad.’

  I bristled. ‘I suppose it depends.’

  ‘Don’t be a romantic idiot about this. She won’t do it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Anna shrugged. ‘You wanted to know what I thought and I’m telling you. I think she may well love you, but I also think there’s only one direction this can go, and that is straight to hell. You can see that, can’t you? If it’s not hell for you, it’ll be hell for her kids.’

  ‘Not necessarily. If we were careful enough.’

  ‘Kids whose parents separate get fucked up. I see it all the time. The kids I arrest have all come from broken homes. All of them. And that’s without their mother moving in with another woman.’

  Anna always did this. She could always cite some depressing statistic she’d learnt from twelve years in the police force. Criminals were no-hopers, she said. It started when their parents separated and went on from there. Hers had never been a soft approach, though. She blamed parents for everything. They should just face their responsibilities and stay together.

  I said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Would you wait until her kids are older?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied straight away; I didn’t even need to think about it.

  ‘Even if it’s fifteen years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow. You’ve got it bad. You need to be really, really careful, Alice.’

  I said no more. I couldn’t make anyone understand this. There was no point trying. I didn’t need to be careful. This love was huge and magnificent. It would go on and on, and it could never hurt, because it was wise and sublime. It healed and repaired, as if something holy and golden had fallen to earth and struck us down.

  I said goodbye to Anna and walked slowly back to my bedsit, her words ringing in my ears: ‘there’s only one direction this can go, and that is straight to hell.’

  But nothing had even been declared between us, not yet. Neither of us had come right out and said, ‘More than anything else, I want to lure you away from your conventional, cock-loving ways.’ We had, though, once entered into an email discussion about sex (God knows why) and I had reminisced to Bo about the time I’d shagged a bloke in Malawi after we spent the evening together on the lakeshore watching the moon rise out of the water. Bo’s reply had been, ‘I am still thinking about your last lovely email. Lovely, lovely email, darling. Just lovely. (I am purring here.)’ And I got the message.

  When I got home, there was a message from her on my iPad.

  From: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk

  Sent: 11 July 2015, 12:17

  To: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com

  Subject: Next week

  Gus is going away next Tuesday for three nights.

  Come and stay.

  Please. Love you, adore you.

  Bxxx

  8

  I boarded the train to Oxenholme at Euston. My backpack was light. I was only going for three days and had just one pair of jeans, two tops, some walking trousers, my iPad and a notebook. I hadn’t planned to take pyjamas but at the last minute threw them in, just in case I’d made a terrible mistake and Bo wasn’t asking me to stay for the reason I thought she was.

  I took the iPad and the notebook out of my rucksack and then shoved it on the rack above my head and took my seat. As soon as I’d set the iPad up on the tiny table that folded down from the seat in front of me a message appeared from Bo. ‘So looking forward to seeing you, my darling, darling, Alice. I adore you, Bxxxx’

  I replied with nothing but a row of kisses, and felt oddly nervous. Never once had either of us said that this was something other than the ordinary love between friends. But I knew. I knew how I felt about Bo, and Bo had made it plain enough how she felt about me. And now Bo’s husband was away, and Bo had invited me to stay, and I was definitely expecting more than a cup of tea, a cheese scone and fresh linen on the spare-room bed.

  But I dreaded the awkwardness. I dreaded the strange moments that would take us to the moment, where we would somehow seamlessly make the transition from friends to lovers.

  I would have to let Bo take the lead, I thought. Bo, after all, was the married one, the one with everything to lose. I had to let her change her mind if she wanted to.

  The thought of Bo changing her mind made my stomach sway. Anna was right. This had gone too far for anyone to come out of it unharmed. Bo, me, Gus, Lola, Maggie … I’d tried not to think about it before now, but if I took a moment to stand outside the situation and consider everybody involved, then I had to admit that the odds were stacked against me. My own heart was most at risk in all this.

  But no. Not really. Bo was Bo. She might change her mind, but she would never hurt me. That much I was sure of.

  I settled myself in my seat and started to write. I wanted to have at least another two thousand words to show her this evening.

  This time, Bo kissed me when she met me at the station. The warm smash of her mouth on my lips took me by surprise, so much so that it was over before I could even return it. But it didn’t end there. Boldly, as if she didn’t care who saw or what they might think, Bo twined her fingers through mine as we walked to the car, and then leaned forwards and kissed me again when we were inside. This time, I felt the warm slip of her tongue in my mouth, the soft smoothness of her face close to mi
ne, the sweet, sweet femaleness of her.

  It was all so easy, in the end.

  9

  After all those years, I felt her as a gift, a dropped jewel.

  I lay beside her on the rug, gazed at her in bewilderment and murmured, ‘There cannot be anyone on earth like you; no other mind more perfectly sculpted to mine.’

  ‘We are twin souls,’ she said. ‘Identical.’

  ‘No. Not identical. Opposite. Like life and death, light and dark – one cannot be known without the other.’

  We lay together in silence for hours.

  I held her against me; the warmth of her breath on my neck; the warmth of her body; her face staring down at me, holding my gaze until her eyes were a mirror and I saw my own in them.

  ‘My beloved,’ she whispered. ‘My beloved.’

  The dark moved slowly over us. We hid inside it, bright stars, our light collapsing.

  She rested her head on my shoulder and I read her to sleep, listening to the soft rise and fall of her breath beside me. I kissed her forehead, and did not move after that, or even stir as she slept on. I simply lay beside her and felt it a sacred and hallowed hour.

  She woke in silence and drew me into her gaze. No words passed between us. We had learnt not to speak of love, just let it be.

  10

  Of course, I’d heard the expression ‘walking on air’ before, but only now did I truly realise what it meant. I felt weightless, my whole body elevated, raised off the ground through joy. Bo loved me, wanted to be with me, was risking everything for me. It was breathtaking, wonderful and hard to believe.

  In the morning, we dropped the girls off at school then walked on through the woods to Loughrigg Tarn. The day was warm, the sunlight gold against the dark water. I took Bo’s hand in mine and thought, Do not mention the future.

  We walked in silence. It was blissful at first and I sighed, deeply happy. I looked at Bo. But she wouldn’t meet my eye, and the bliss was suddenly shot through with a bolt of tension.

  I said, ‘Are you alright?’

  She said nothing.

  Clouds gathered in front of the sun and I shivered. Still she wouldn’t look at me. I kept hold of her hand and felt myself clinging. I didn’t dare speak, for fear it would all be ruined.

  In the evening, Bo cooked dinner and, as we were eating, she said, ‘I can’t keep pretending Gus isn’t coming back.’

  I said, ‘Where do we go from here?’

  She shook her head and said, ‘I can’t make any promises.’

  I said, ‘Do you regret this?’

  She shrugged.

  I spent the night in the spare room, waiting for her to come to me.

  She didn’t, and I wept.

  She was better in the morning. She talked happily as we made the girls’ breakfast. I warmed porridge in the microwave, Bo put bread in the toaster and poured juice and coffee. The atmosphere was busy, and whenever she caught my eye, Bo smiled at me and I knew there was flirtation in that smile, and when she brushed against me as I passed, we were both jolted by a force of desire much stronger than we were.

  At night, our last night, everything was fine.

  Two am. We lay in bed, still not sleeping.

  Bo said, ‘I’ve written a poem.’

  I said, ‘Read it to me.’

  She did, and I listened. A sad poem, of course – about being trapped in paradise, and afraid.

  When she finished, I took her hand in mine and said, ‘It feels so sad to me – full of loneliness and fear and a longing to escape.’

  I wished I hadn’t spoken, because it was as though Bo’s body became hard and sharp. And then she laughed and said, ‘I am longing to escape. I am longing to escape from that ancient bloody cat downstairs. I spend my life sitting around, waiting for him to die so I can go on holiday again.’

  I said, ‘Is that all?’

  She retreated from the question, said nothing more.

  After a while, I said, ‘I feel as though you know everything there is to know about me, but whenever I try and find out about you, you ignore it.’

  This was true. I had tried a few times to talk to Bo about Gus and the way he treated her, or why she was always so dismissive of her mother, or thought the only way to live was shut off from everyone else. Always, she stepped around my questions, wouldn’t talk, moved the conversation onto something new.

  She said, ‘What do you do when you feel angry or upset like this?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re angry and upset. How are you going to deal with these feelings?’

  ‘I’m trying to talk to you about it. And I wouldn’t say I was angry and upset. Just … frustrated.’

  ‘But what do you usually do when you’re angry and upset like this?’

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘Sweetheart, you are. You have a lot to be angry about. You’re angry with your mother…’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You need to find ways to get rid of that anger; to heal; get yourself to a place of wellness. You won’t find it through alcohol or smoking or…’

  I remained silent, confused.

  Bo went on, ‘When you feel like this, the best thing you can do is walk. Get outside. Walk for miles through beautiful scenery. Feel your feet on the earth and yourself as part of the earth, and let the beauty of your surroundings enter your senses and heal you. Now, come on. Let’s sleep.’

  But I lay awake, a strange, cold sensation in my gut, as though I were a child who’d just been told off. I tried to brush the feeling away. Bo hadn’t told me off. She was being kind and wise and wonderful. I closed my eyes and felt Bo’s arms around me. Everything was fine.

  Morning rolled around. I woke up bereft. This was our last day. My train was leaving at three. I thought of the journey home, my empty flat, my empty life. All I wanted was to stay here with Bo and her girls. A family.

  The girls didn’t know, of course. Officially, I stayed in the spare room. It was where I stored my things, and I crept back there every morning before they woke up, like a teenager disobeying my parents’ wishes. Or, perhaps, a filthy homewrecker. I turned away from that image of myself.

  I could hear Bo and the girls in the kitchen, eating breakfast. I hung back – showered, dressed, packed my rucksack, busied myself with small tasks, quietly weeping at the thought of leaving and not knowing when I’d be back again.

  After a while, Lola and Maggie ran upstairs to get ready for school. They were shouting at each other about something – I couldn’t make out what and wasn’t especially interested. It seemed they were always arguing, always shouting about something. My own mother would have banged their heads together, but Bo muscled on, always guiding, always negotiating, always patient.

  I wiped my eyes and went downstairs. Bo was there, clearing the breakfast things. She looked up at me and smiled.

  ‘Morning, darling,’ she said, and there was a breeziness to her voice that offended me, because I wanted her to be sad. I wanted to know I wasn’t the only one upset about this day.

  But before I was able to say anything, Bo went on, ‘I need to work today, and I think you should get out for a walk. It will clear your head and help you keep strong and calm.’ She reached for a green book on the dresser and handed it to me: Walks around Grasmere.

  I stared at it, speechless, and felt the stinging threat of tears. We barely had six hours left to spend together, and Bo had decided to work them away. I had an odd feeling inside me – something like shame; as though I’d become an uninvited guest, was being cast out.

  I flicked through the pages of the book. ‘Which would you recommend?’ I asked, without enthusiasm.

  She said, ‘There’s a lovely one starting at Dove Cottage and following the coffin route to Rydal, then you just cross the road to the lake and walk the lakeshore back to the village. It’s only about six miles. You’ll be done by lunchtime.’

  I managed a laugh, ‘The coffin route. That sounds right up my street.’

&n
bsp; ‘It’s just the path they used to use, linking two villages if one didn’t have a church. They had to carry the dead between the parishes. It’s pretty steep.’ She smiled and added, ‘They knew how to suffer in those days.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’ve made you a lunch to take with you.’ She paused. ‘Please don’t look as though the world’s ending, darling. I just need the morning to work. Get yourself out. It will help you think and you’ll come up with new ideas. I promise.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. I took the lunchbox and a bottle of water from Bo. ‘Thanks.’ And because there was nothing else to do, I walked out of the door.

  What Bo had said was true. The walk was beautiful. The steep climb took me into the hills and gave a view over the lake, still and clear in the sunlight. But it didn’t free my mind to give me ideas. All I could do was worry. I didn’t want to be walking alone. I wanted Bo at my side.

  I trudged on. Perhaps I was too needy. That was probably it. Bo was a famous, successful author with all sorts of demands on her time and she’d sent me away because she wanted some space. I wished I’d sensed it earlier. I wished I’d had the idea to go away and leave her to work, instead of reaching the stage where she’d had to tactfully push me out the door with a lunch she’d made me. My cheeks flamed.

  At the end of the coffin route, the path rounded a bend that took me downhill to the road. I crossed it and went over a wooden bridge to the lakeshore. There were families there now, lying at the water’s edge, children paddling or swinging daringly on a rope that hung from the branch of a tree.

  I kept walking, on and on round the lake. No ideas came to me. I just felt chastised.

  I dragged out the time in Grasmere, feeling I ought to leave it as long as possible before going back. I wandered around the shops, looking at bags and books and other things I had no need of. Eventually, the clock rolled round to one-thirty and I began the trek back up the fell to Bo’s. There would only be time now to collect my things, say goodbye and head to the train station.