Where Love Lies

by Julie Cohen

  Quinn is watching me closely. He puts the tea towel down.

  ‘I don’t—’ I begin.

  ‘Derek is here too, he wants to say something.’

  Before I can interrupt, Molly has passed the phone over to Derek. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ he says to me. ‘You’ve made me very happy, love.’

  My eyes sting with sudden tears. Quinn steps forward and puts one hand on my shoulder and holds the other out for the phone. I shake my head.

  ‘Derek, that’s – that’s really nice of you, thank you. But I didn’t think that the doctor would—I haven’t talked about it with Quinn yet.’

  ‘Talked about what yet?’ asks Quinn.

  ‘I understand,’ says Derek. ‘I just want you to know that I couldn’t imagine a better person to carry on the Wickham name than you. You’re a part of our family, and we’ll do anything we can to help.’

  ‘Baby-sitting!’ calls Molly from close by.

  ‘Okay. Thanks. Er … talk soon.’

  Quinn takes the phone from me and replaces it in its cradle. ‘What haven’t we talked about yet? What are my parents on about? It isn’t bad news, is it? Did the doctor find something wrong?’

  ‘No. No, nothing wrong.’

  ‘Why are you crying?’ With his thumb, he wipes away the tear on my cheek.

  ‘It’s not bad news. I was just … your father was being really kind.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About our trying for a baby.’

  Quinn’s face transforms into something beautiful. ‘Are you—you aren’t pregnant, are you?’

  ‘No, but I’m going to stop taking the pill. Dr Johnson was worried about it maybe causing headaches. But – but I wanted to stop anyway. You’re right. It’s a good idea.’

  ‘Oh, Felicity,’ he says, and he pulls me into his arms. He kisses the top of my head. ‘I am so, so happy, love.’

  I can feel his happiness pouring through his body into mine. He’s nearly trembling with it.

  ‘So am I,’ I say. Now that the decision has been made for me, I feel lighter. I hug him back. ‘I’m happy too.’

  Chapter Six

  I’M STANDING IN the bedroom ironing Quinn’s shirts. The unironed ones lie jumbled in a basket beside me, and the ironed ones hang cool and crisp in his wardrobe. Quinn doesn’t mind ironing his own shirts, but I like doing it. It’s relaxing: passing the hot iron over the cotton, smoothing out the wrinkles, pressing collars and cuffs flat and sleeves into perfect columns, tucking the point of the iron into gathers and around buttons. The room smells of warm fabric and Quinn underneath. Radio 4 plays in the kitchen, sending its murmur up the stairs to me, a counterpoint to the rain outside.

  I place the iron on the board and reach for a hanger. Molly insists on wooden hangers instead of metal or plastic ones; she gave us about a hundred of them when we moved in. I never knew there was a difference between hangers, but apparently there is. As there is a difference between types of detergents and oven cleaners, brands of flour and salt, shower scrubbers and thicknesses of towel. Domestic harmony involves a world of knowledge, and Molly carries it constantly in her head, along with the dates of birthdays, anniversaries and holidays major and minor. Sometimes I think about how tidy her brain must be, everything filed away and labelled, like the shelves of her pantry.

  Slipping the hanger into the sleeves of the shirt, I smell perfume.

  I turn around to check if anyone’s come into the bedroom, but there’s no one there. It’s the same perfume as before: strong, flowery, exotic, familiar. According to Dr Johnson, it hasn’t come from anyone; it’s come from my own head, a strange type of migraine.

  It doesn’t feel at all like the migraines I used to have when I was a teenager. I used to spend the whole day in a darkened room with a wet cloth on my forehead. I used to shrink from light and be unable to eat. My migraines have mutated from painful to fragrant. Lucky Felicity.

  I inhale. I can smell what’s really around me: cotton and hot metal, detergent and dust, faint remains of burnt toast. But the flowery scent floats over it all, stronger and more insistent. I hold my nose and I can still smell it, somehow. Sweet and velvety, warm and tropical, a hint of spice and honeysuckle. A round, ripe scent, full and soft and strong.

  And I know it. It makes me smile. Where do I know it from?

  Without anyone else to distract me, and without having to search for where it’s coming from, I can concentrate on it more. I close my eyes and I see flowers: white with a yellow heart, five perfect petals like a child’s drawing. There are clouds of them, with waxy green leaves, heaped up around a chair. The flower heads nod slightly in the breeze from an open window.

  Frangipani. The flowers are called frangipani.

  That summer, in London, there were armfuls of the blossoms coming into the house every day for weeks, endless perfume and beauty. Cut, they wilted in the heat and their limpid petals released still more scent every evening, crushed underfoot on the unfinished wooden floors, and in the morning came the fresh blooms. It was the summer of frangipani and …

  And then the feeling sweeps over me. The feeling that something wonderful is happening, that everything around me is beautiful and significant, that I am teetering on an even greater happiness. My pulse quickens and I am holding my breath. My fingers curl up into my palms. My skin tingles. I have found the centre of everything and everything is perfect. I hear my heartbeat racing in my ears and I want to sing, to laugh, to kiss.

  I’m in love.

  Chapter Seven

  THEN IT’S GONE. I stagger forwards and the side of my hand brushes the hot iron. ‘Ow!’ I yell, and jerk my hand away.

  The air doesn’t smell of flowers. My heart is still pounding, but the huge happiness that possessed me a moment ago has mostly drained away, leaving a lingering warmth. A memory of love rather than the love itself.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask aloud, cradling my hand.

  No one answers. I’m all alone, although while my eyes were closed I felt as if someone were close enough to touch me. What else could explain that anticipation, that desire?

  I look around. Nothing has changed. A jumble of shirts in a basket, the hot iron, wooden hangers. The shirt I was hanging up lies on the floor where I’ve dropped it. Outside, it’s raining. I sniff and sniff the air, but the magic has gone.

  My hand hurts. The room, so substantial before, feels unreal to me. Where did the flowers come from? And that feeling? And the memories?

  I stumble to the bathroom and hold my hand under cold running water. According to my watch, no more than a few minutes can have passed. But a few minutes of … what? Migraine? Recollection?

  I turn around and walk straight out of the cottage into the rain. In the middle of the garden, I turn my face up to the clouds so the water can wash my face, clear my head.

  What on earth just happened? And why was it different from the other times I’ve smelled phantom flowers?

  The rain flattens my hair, drips down inside the collar of my shirt.

  The difference is, of course, that this time I was alone. The first time I was on a street, and I thought it was about my mother. The last time I was with Quinn. I thought the smell was real. I thought the feelings that flooded through me were about him, because he’s my husband and he was standing next to me.

  I thought I was feeling a wave of love for my husband. Who I do love. Of course I love him.

  But now I’ve had the – whatever it is, the migraine, the memory – alone, without Quinn near me, I know that this feeling, this specific, particular feeling, isn’t about him. Why would I have an overwhelming attack of love while I’m standing in the bedroom, ironing shirts?

  It’s about someone else, a man in my memory who smelled of frangipani, who tucked a blossom behind my ear that summer. I know it like I know my own past, like I know the series of choices and actions that have brought me to live here, in this cottage, and to stand outside in the rain.

  It was Ewan. This smell,
this feeling, this memory: it’s Ewan. Not Quinn. Ewan, whom I knew ten years ago, one July and August. I haven’t spoken to him since; I’ve thought of him, but not often. But there’s only one man who smelled of frangipani, who stood for hours surrounded by it and then took me to bed. My feelings for him have been dulled. You can’t sustain intense love like that for ten years, not for someone you haven’t seen. Not for someone you can’t have.

  But I did feel like that about him, once. I recognize it, as I would recognize him if I saw him on the street. It’s not just any love I felt: it was love for him.

  The real question is why this memory has chosen to surface again now, and so powerfully.

  ‘Mum?’ I say aloud to the rain. Nothing answers. I open the gate and walk across the lane, out onto the common. The houses and cottages of Tillingford surround it like rocks holding down a handkerchief in the wind. The pub on one corner, the Wickham offices on the other. Derek and Molly’s house directly across. Stolid, certain, unmoving.

  Ewan McKillan. His blue eyes, the way his brown hair gleamed red in the sun, the faint freckles on his arms, his faded jeans with the hole in the knee. I can’t stop thinking of him now. He wore boots with scuffed toes and worn-down heels. His fingertips were callused, the nails of his right hand longer than on his left. Ewan smiling, Ewan tipping back a pint and swallowing, the line of his neck, the texture of his skin, how he frowned whenever he sang.

  I don’t know where he is now. I deleted his number and screwed up the piece of paper he gave me with his address written on it. For months after we split up, I thought I saw him on the street. I expected him to ring. But he never did – because I asked him not to, or maybe because he didn’t want to – and gradually he slipped out of my mind, out of my thoughts. Travel lightly, my girl.

  Past lovers are supposed to slip away, especially when you’re married. Maybe there’s an echo every now and then; sometimes when I hear a song on the radio I think of Ewan and how he would play it. But it’s supposed to be an echo. Ten years distant, overlaid by more recent feelings and events. If you meet a past lover on the street, you’re supposed to smile and spend a few minutes catching up, maybe go for a coffee, and then part again. That’s what I thought I would do if I ever met Ewan again. Maybe there would be a pang, a slight trace of the desire I used to feel, but it would be reduced. Nearly gone, only a pleasant memory.

  I wasn’t supposed to be alive with love for him – for him, Ewan – in my own bedroom that I share with my husband. It wasn’t supposed to be so near and close that I felt as if I’d gone back ten years in time.

  ‘Felicity?’

  The voice is right behind me. I whirl around. Suz puts her hand on my shoulder. She’s in a suit, holding a golf umbrella up over us.

  ‘Are you all right? I was looking out of the window and I saw you out here without a jacket or anything, just standing on the common.’

  ‘Oh, I – I was thinking.’

  She studies my face. ‘You look strange.’

  ‘Strange how?’ I ask, suddenly worried that my sister-in-law can see into my mind, see what I’ve been thinking about. But she grins.

  ‘You look like you’ve just smoked an enormous spliff, to tell you the truth. Totally blissed out.’

  I touch my lips with my fingertips and yes, I’m smiling. I try to relax my mouth muscles but it doesn’t seem to work. The feeling I had ten minutes ago is still inside me, still warming me. ‘I haven’t been smoking anything.’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell, if you were. I wouldn’t mind trying some of it myself, if it makes you feel as good as you look like you feel.’

  ‘It’s just … I like the rain.’

  ‘Oh! I’m so glad you got to her with that umbrella, Susan.’ Molly bustles up to us across the grass, scarf tied over her hair, wellies on her feet. ‘Here, Felicity, I’ve got an extra mac for you. You shouldn’t be out like this in this weather, you’ll catch your death.’

  She wraps the mac around my shoulders. Suz holds the umbrella above all of our heads. With the rain not falling on me, I can feel how wet I am. My hair streams down my back. My fringe is plastered to my forehead. ‘I’m fine,’ I tell Molly, beginning to shiver.

  ‘What happened to your hand? It’s bright red.’

  ‘Oh. I burned it on the iron. It doesn’t hurt.’

  Molly tuts and puts her arms around me. ‘Come along with me, we’ll get you into a hot bath and then some dry clothes. A nice cup of tea.’ She begins to draw me towards the Old Vicarage, but I stop.

  ‘I think I might have left the iron plugged in.’

  ‘Then we’ll go to the cottage.’ She pulls me the other way. Over Molly’s shoulder, I see Suz wink at me.

  ‘I’ll get back to work and leave you in Mum’s capable hands.’

  ‘I honestly only came out for a breath of fresh air,’ I say.

  ‘A nice cup of tea, and some salve for that burn. You’ll be good as new, you’ll see.’

  At Hope Cottage, she fusses. She makes me sit, wrapped in a blanket, on my sofa while she draws a bath for me and finds me dry clothes. While I’m in the bath she brings me a cup of tea, carefully averting her eyes from my body among the lavender-scented bubbles which she gave me for Christmas. She perches the cup on the edge of the bath. ‘You could get a lovely white bathroom suite for this,’ she says, backing out, ‘it would just brighten up the room. Now relax, warm up.’

  We haven’t redecorated the upstairs bathroom; the tub, sink and toilet are a violent salmon pink, to match the flowery wallpaper which is peeling in one corner. The tiles have contrasting flowers. We don’t use the pink bidet so I’ve put a spider plant in it. It seems to be doing quite well.

  I lie back in the hot water, my burned hand propped on the side of the bath so it doesn’t sting. I’d like to think more about this feeling about Ewan, and why it hijacked me. But I can hear Molly in the cottage, talking to herself busily. It sounds like she’s finishing ironing Quinn’s shirts, and then I can hear pots and pans going in the kitchen.

  I rest my head on the back of the tub, gazing up at the ceiling. Maybe it’s the presence of my mother-in-law, but the euphoria I felt on the common has drained out of me, leaving me feeling heavy and tired. Lavender has always reminded me of a jumper I found in a charity shop once. It was pale blue wool, lovely and light, but washing didn’t remove the smell, and whenever I wore it I smelled like an old lady. Now, because of the bubble bath, it reminds me of Molly. The gold-coloured wrapping paper she used at Christmas, sprigged with holly. Molly holly. All the gifts kept till after Christmas lunch, just as the Wickhams had always done it.

  A light knock on the door makes me start and open my eyes. The water is tepid and the bubbles have nearly all gone. The door opens and Quinn pokes his head in. ‘Hello, love. Did I wake you?’

  His hair is wet and when he comes into the bathroom, he smells of rain. He touches my shoulder with a cool hand. ‘Mum’s downstairs. She says you were traipsing around the common in the rain like a water nymph.’

  ‘She never used those words, did she?’

  He shakes his head. ‘She’s made us a stew.’ He puts down the toilet seat and sits on it, gazing at me. ‘Sorry about that. I know you’re a grown-up who should be able to walk in the rain if she wants to, but you know what Mum’s like.’

  ‘She’s only being kind. Besides, Suz was out like a shot with an umbrella.’

  ‘It’s a bit like a goldfish bowl, the common. Are you all right? You burned your hand?’ He picks it up gently, examines the bandage his mother put around it.

  ‘It’s fine. I’ll live.’ I yawn. ‘I’m worn out though.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mum you want an early night. I’m sure she’ll take the hint.’ He stands and picks up his toothbrush.

  ‘Quinn? Do you ever think about your ex-girlfriends?’

  He catches my eye in the mirror and gives me half a smile. ‘You mean, besides the ones I run into in the pub and on the street on a daily basis?’

  ‘Yo
u make it sound as if you dated most of the village.’

  ‘Only one or two. And no, I don’t think about any of them, or not in any way except as friends.’ He looks down, squeezes toothpaste. ‘Do you think about your exes?’

  ‘Oh, something today reminded me of someone I used to know a long time ago.’ He begins to brush his teeth, his back to me. He’s waiting for me to say more, and for a moment, looking at the back of his neck, how the hair curls there when it’s damp, I think I might tell him. Isn’t it weird, I’d say, that I felt ten years of distance vanish.

  Isn’t it strange that I could still feel anything about him.

  But this isn’t what you say to your husband, in your bathroom, as he brushes his teeth. You don’t admit these feelings about another man, not if you still have them, not even if, until today, you thought they had faded.

  ‘A long, long time ago, in a land far away,’ I tell him. ‘It’s not important. How was your day?’

  Quinn

  SOMETIMES WHEN HE came home from work, Felicity was trying to draw. Sometimes she was waiting for him, full of questions, wanting to share in his day. Sometimes she was in the middle of a spontaneous DIY project. He came home one evening last September to find she’d ripped up every single downstairs carpet and thrown it into the front garden. Which was fair enough – they were hideous patterned things from the 1960s, which was apparently the last time the Ogdens had bothered to decorate – but he’d been planning to get some professionals in.

  ‘Look!’ she’d told him, standing in the middle of the dining room, their furniture pushed to one side so she could get up the underlay. ‘These floorboards! Aren’t they gorgeous? I knew they would be. Look at this.’ She dropped to her knees and pointed.

  ‘I think that’s woodworm,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. But it’s beautiful, all the curved holes.’ She frowned. ‘We have to get rid of it though, I suppose, before we fall through.’