Where Love Lies

by Julie Cohen

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Lately, Felicity just can’t shake a shadow of uncertainty. Her husband Quinn is the kindest person she knows and loves her peculiarities more than Felicity feels she deserves. But suddenly it’s as if she doesn’t quite belong.

  Then Felicity experiences something extraordinary: a scent of perfume in the air which evokes memories that have been settled within her for a long time, untouched and undisturbed. As it happens again and again, the memories of a man Felicity hasn’t seen for ten years also flutter to the surface. And so do the feelings of being deeply, exquisitely in love . . .

  Overwhelmed and bewildered by her emotions, Felicity tries to resist sinking blissfully into the past. But what if something truly isn’t as it should be? What if her mind has been playing tricks on her heart?

  Which would you trust?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Quinn

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Quinn

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Quinn

  Part Two

  Ewan

  Ewan

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Quinn

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Ewan

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Ewan

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Ewan

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Quinn

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Quinn

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Quinn

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Quinn

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Ewan

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Quinn

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Ewan

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Julie Cohen

  Extract from Falling

  Copyright

  Where Love Lies

  Julie Cohen

  To Ken

  Part One

  What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss – absolute bliss! – as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?

  ‘Bliss’, Katherine Mansfield

  Chapter One

  I KNOW EXACTLY where I’m going.

  I’ve only been to the restaurant once before, but as soon as I step off the train at Richmond everything looks completely familiar. I touch my Oyster card and turn left immediately outside the station. A young busker with wild dreadlocks plays ‘Walking on Sunshine’. He throws his whole body into it, strumming and twitching and singing to the darkening London evening, as if he can make it midsummer noon with the force of his will. I dig into my jacket pocket and drop a pound coin into his guitar case amongst the litter of money.

  I check my watch; I’m meeting Quinn in five minutes. I’m cutting it fine, but from what I remember, I have plenty of time to get there. I pass familiar shopfronts and turn right at the junction. The restaurant, Cerise, is round the next corner: it’s a brick building, painted yellow, with a sign made of curly wrought iron. It’s a treat for both of us after our separate days of meetings in London – Quinn’s idea because I’ve told him they serve the best crème brûlée I’ve had outside of Paris.

  I turn the corner and I don’t see the restaurant.

  I stand for a moment, peering up and down the street. Maybe they have repainted it. I look from building to building, but there’s no wrought-iron sign, no wide window with a view of the tables inside. Anxiety rises from my stomach into my throat.

  A little bit late isn’t a problem, said my editor Madelyne this afternoon, just a couple of hours ago, on the other side of London. But this is more than a little.

  I shake my head. Of course. The restaurant isn’t on this street, it’s further on. How silly of me. I stride to the end of the road and over the junction.

  Quinn is never late. Quinn is frequently early. He’d prefer to wait outside wherever he’s going, looking around him or reading a newspaper, than to be rushed or rude. You’d think he’d know me well enough by now to build in some leeway when he’s meeting me, but he never does. I tried suggesting this once, breezily, and he listened, as he always does when I try to explain something. ‘I’d still rather read the paper for a little while,’ he said, and that was it. I’ve learned that Quinn is Quinn, and he does not change.

  And even though he never acts impatient or annoyed, I try not to be late so often. I even bought a watch. I hate to think of him waiting, over and over.

  It’s warm and I’m still feeling anxious, so I take off my jacket and drape it over my arm. The restaurant should be right here, on the left. Except it’s not; it’s a Starbucks.

  I frown. I must have got turned around the wrong way, somehow. This Starbucks looks exactly the same as every other Starbucks in the world, and definitely not like a French restaurant. I probably went too far down this road. I turn around and start back the way I’ve come.

  My phone rings. It’s Quinn. ‘Hello hello,’ I say, as cheerfully as I think I should.

  ‘Hello, love. Where are you? Are you still on the train?’

  ‘No no, I’m in Richmond, I’m on my way. I took a wrong turn, I think, but I’ll be there in a tick.’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘See you in a minute, love.’

  He hangs up and I put my phone back in my handbag. He always says love, always, leaving in the morning or greeting me when I come in the room or ending a conversation on the phone. It punctuates beginnings and endings. It’s something his father does with his mother, and he’s slipped into the habit as if he were born to it.

  At the corner I catch a whiff of scent, something familiar, someone’s perfume.

  I stop walking. ‘Mum?’ I say.

  My mother isn’t here. Of course she isn’t here. But the scent is so strong, it’s as if she’s just walked past me.

  I glance around. Two teenage girls sharing earphones, a man walking a terrier, a young couple, her with a hijab and him with a pushchair. There’s a woman near the end of the street, walking away from me. She’s wearing a sleeveless top and rolled-up jeans, her shoulders tanned. Her hair is a long silver plait down her back. The scent of flowers trails behind her on the warm air.

  ‘Mum?’ I hurry after her. She turns the corner, and by the time I reach it, she’s gone.

  But I can still smell her perfume. It’s so familiar I can’t think of the name of it, and my mother never wore perfume anyway. This smell, though, is my mother: it tugs something deep inside me, makes my heart leap with hope and a kind of sweet agony. I run further along the street and think I see the woman ahead of me, crossing the bridge over the Thames.

  It can’t be my mother. It’s impossible. But I’m still thinking of e
verything I need to tell her: I’m married, I’ve bought a house, I’m sorry. So sorry for what I made you do.

  I collide with the plastic shopping bag held by a man coming the other way over the bridge, and it falls onto the pavement with a clang of tins. ‘Oi, watch it,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ I say, maybe to him, maybe to the woman ahead of me. I reach for his bag but he’s snatched it up again. He’s eyeing me up and down.

  ‘Don’t worry, beautiful, it’s my pleasure,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say again, and carry on over the bridge, quickly.

  ‘Smile,’ he yells after me. ‘It might never happen!’

  People are between us and she’s walking rapidly; my moment with the man with the shopping bag has put me even farther behind her. But the scent is as strong as ever, and as I get closer, dodging around pedestrians, my heart beats harder and harder. It’s impossible that when I catch up to this woman she will be my mother, Esther Bloom, and she will turn around and say, Darling. It’s impossible that she could take me into her arms and I could be forgiven. I know it’s impossible, and yet I can’t look away from her. It’s as if my body doesn’t know what my mind does. I can’t stop my feet from following her, faster now, running, my ballet flats pounding over the pavement, sweat dampening the cotton collar of my shirt. My jacket slips off my arm; I stuff it into my handbag, mindless of wrinkles, and hurry forward.

  The woman opens the door of a pizza takeaway. Panting, I clasp her by the shoulder.

  It isn’t my mother’s shoulder. It feels all wrong, and this woman is darker than my mother, with more grey in her hair, which is finer than my mother’s was – but my body has that irrational hope that when she turns around, her face will be Esther’s.

  ‘Mum?’ I gasp.

  It isn’t. It’s a stranger. She looks nothing like my mother at all.

  ‘My mistake,’ I say, backtracking. ‘So sorry, I thought you were someone else.’

  She shrugs and goes into the takeaway. The scent of flowers is gone, replaced by a whiff of baking dough and melting cheese.

  My mother didn’t even like pizza very much. I rub my forehead and look around. It’s starting to get dark; the streetlights have come on, and this street is entirely unfamiliar, even more unfamiliar because not ten minutes ago I thought I knew exactly where I was, exactly who I was following. It’s as if the street has changed around me. As if the world has changed around me.

  In my bag, my phone rings. I know without looking that it’s Quinn, wondering where I am. I don’t answer it; I’ll be with him in a minute. I hurry back across the bridge and along the road, which seems quite busy now; the cars have their lights turned on. I see a sign pointing to the station and I turn that way. This street looks strange too, but if it takes me back to the station that’s good because I can definitely find my way from there.

  Though I didn’t just now.

  How did I get so lost?

  I reach for my phone to answer Quinn’s call. Sometimes it’s better to admit defeat and get somewhere that little bit quicker, and Quinn loves giving directions anyway. And also it would be sort of nice to hear his voice, his habitual calm. Hello, love.

  Two things happen at once: my phone stops ringing, and I see the restaurant. It’s thirty metres away, on the other side of the road from where I’d expected it to be, and Quinn is outside it, his phone in his hand. He’s wearing the same grey suit he was wearing when he left this morning to get the train to London, though the tie’s been removed and he’s unbuttoned his collar. His dark hair, as usual, is sticking up in the front because he’s been running his fingers through it. The restaurant is painted yellow, with a wrought-iron sign outside. Light spills through the window. Everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be.

  He spots me and runs across the street, dodging a cab. I kiss him on his cheek, where there’s a couple of days’ growth of beard.

  ‘You had me worried, love,’ he says, kissing me back. ‘What happened?’

  I look at my husband: slender, pale, serious, with his grey eyes and his dedication to facts. The newspaper he’s been reading while he’s been waiting for me is tucked underneath his arm. He’s never been late in his life, and he’s certainly never followed a woman who doesn’t exist any more, except in his memory.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I just took a wrong turn.’

  Chapter Two

  ON THE TRAIN out of London, I lean against Quinn’s shoulder and half-doze, trying to recall the scent I followed in Richmond. It’s fading already in my memory. Something floral, definitely. Something exotic. Something I’ve smelled many times before, though I’m not sure where or why.

  It didn’t necessarily belong to the woman I followed; maybe someone else was wearing the perfume, which is why it seemed to vanish when I caught up with her. Maybe it was a flower growing in a window box, or in a garden. Maybe it was a perfume exuded out onto the street from a posh boutique, and happened to be similar to another perfume that I know.

  As we drive home to Tillingford from the station, I open the window so the fresh air will wake me up a bit. ‘So Madelyne is anxious for your new book?’ Quinn says, though we’ve discussed this already at dinner. Or at least we’ve discussed it as much as I want to.

  ‘She says she’s looking forward to it.’

  ‘So am I. Did you come up with any ideas together?’

  I sit up straighter. ‘Pull over,’ I say.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes! Pull over!’

  He pulls into a lay-by and I jump out of the car. ‘Come on!’ I say, and run to a stile between the hawthorn hedges.

  ‘What are you doing, Felicity?’ Quinn has turned off the engine, but left the car lights on. He stands with the door open, looking after me. The road is quiet, the night scented with growing things.

  ‘Turn off the lights and come and join me! We need to see.’

  ‘Are you—oh, all right.’ The car door shuts. I swing a leg over the stile and jump over. A nettle stings my bare ankle, but I keep on going, threading through a stand of trees. There’s just enough silver light up ahead for me to see. Behind me, I hear the rustle of Quinn’s footsteps. I wait for him to catch up, and when I feel him standing beside me I walk forward, through the last of the trees into a field.

  Without the trees in the way we can see the full moon. It’s silver and enormous, perfectly round, hanging in the sky.

  ‘Is this why you had me stop the car?’ Quinn asks.

  ‘Isn’t it worth it?’ I gaze up at the moon. He stands beside me and gazes up at it too. ‘I wish I knew what all of those shapes on it are called.’

  ‘Mare Tranquillitatis,’ he says. ‘Mare Serenitatis, Mare Imbrium.’ He points to different parts on the huge disc. ‘Sea of Tranquillity, Sea of Serenity, Sea of Showers.’

  ‘They’re beautiful names. How do you know them?’

  ‘Many, many misspent hours with a telescope and a book. There’s an Ocean of Storms, and a Lake of Clouds. All on a surface with no water at all.’

  ‘It was worth stopping the car, wasn’t it?’

  He takes my hand. His fingers are warm in the night, which has become cool. ‘Yes.’

  I look up at the moon some more.

  ‘I know whose field this is,’ Quinn says. ‘He’d be quite surprised to see me standing in it at this hour.’

  ‘Let’s sit in it, then.’ I sit down on the rough grass at the edge of the field. As I do so, there’s a crinkle from my handbag and I pull out a box of macaroons. I offer one to Quinn. ‘Macaroon? It’s only slightly crushed.’

  He begins to laugh. ‘You’re as daft as a brush,’ he says. ‘I do love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’ I lean my head against his shoulder and let my thoughts float away into the tranquil seas of the moon.

  ‘A little bit late isn’t a problem,’ my editor Madelyne had said, yesterday afternoon, ‘but this is more than a little. It’s been eighteen months, and we have schedules to think o
f. Don’t you have anything to show me yet?’

  We were in her office, in the corner, overlooking the park. Her assistant had made us tea in a proper teapot, on a proper tray. There was a little box of macaroons, which Madelyne insisted I take because she was on a diet. The whole office was so quiet, as if everyone was reading at the same time. Books lined every wall that wasn’t a window. Above the door I’d come in there was a framed original of the cover of my first picture book. I could feel Igor’s wide owl eyes staring at the back of my neck as I sat in the wooden chair.

  ‘I’ve been working on it,’ I said to her, lying. ‘But nothing seems to come out quite right.’

  We’d always met in restaurants before. Long, boozy lunches where we got the business bit out of the way at the beginning and spent the rest of the time trading gossip, tossing around ideas. Behind her desk, Madelyne seemed different. Her posture was straighter, her pulled-back hair more severe.

  ‘I’m sure it will all be fine,’ I added.

  ‘Even some sketches would be useful,’ she said. ‘A title, something we could bring to the Frankfurt Book Fair. We’ve already put back publication twice. I’m worried that we’ll lose the momentum on this series, with such a long gap.’

  ‘I understand. I completely agree.’

  ‘We all love Igor so much! And we miss him.’ She smiled then, for the first time, and put down her cup. ‘I know you’ve had a very eventful couple of years. So many ups and downs, with getting married, and your mother—’

  ‘Yes, but it’s fine. It’s fine. I’ll send you some sketches.’

  ‘I can help you with ideas, you know. That’s what I’m here for. You can pass me anything and we can bounce it around together.’

  But not if there aren’t any ideas at all. Not if the only thing I’ve ever been any good at has gone for ever. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you know that if you ever want to talk—’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I’m sorry the book is so late, Maddie. I’m always late for everything. I was even late to my own wedding.’

  And we both laughed, even though it was true.

  The next morning, I wake up after Quinn has gone off to work and I go straight into my studio, pulling on a dressing gown and pushing my hair into an elastic. I turn on the computer and the scanner, even though I don’t have anything to use them for yet, and I clear off a stack of books from my chair beside the window, pick up a sketch pad and a pencil and look out at the morning.