The Story of Us

by Dani Atkins

  ‘Oh screw it!’ I declared, jumping to my feet. I didn’t stop to consider my motives, afraid of what that kind of scrutiny might reveal, and went in search of my jacket and car keys.

  I scribbled a note for my parents. Caroline phoned. I’m going out. May be back late. Okay, so it wasn’t a lie, but it was certainly an interesting version of the truth. There was one lie I was definitely guilty of telling though, and that was when I’d said to Caroline that I didn’t need to talk about what had happened. Because I did, rather badly, as it turned out. But it had to be with someone impartial, someone sympathetic, someone who appreciated exactly what I was going through, because the same faith-shattering treachery had also happened to them.

  I had a perfectly rehearsed opening greeting when I pulled into Jack’s drive a short time later. ‘Hi, Jack, I hope you don’t mind me dropping in unannounced, but if you don’t have any plans for tonight, I’d like to buy you dinner, to thank you for everything you’ve done.’ I figured that sounded perfectly acceptable. Buying a meal for someone who’d saved your life was just a nice gesture.

  I arrived at Jack’s house just as he was returning from a run along the crescent-shaped cove which lay beneath his house. I saw him leave the beach and start heading up the flight of steep stone steps which led to his back garden. I started descending the uneven steps which were roughly carved out of the rock face. He smiled broadly, scarcely out of breath, as I approached. He was dressed in running clothes and a Harvard vest top, which advertised the fact that he’d once been a member of their running team. I was impressed, but not surprised.

  ‘Emma,’ he greeted, and there was genuine delight in his voice. I smiled a little shyly in return, forcing my eyes to his face and away from the sheen of perspiration which glistened on his muscular arms and body, making the vest cling against him. The man had been running, for God’s sake, he was entitled to be sweating. I felt a little uncomfortably warm myself as I tried to remember what I was doing there.

  Jack reached for a small towel which he’d left at the base of the steps, and passed it across his face and the back of his neck. One dark lock of hair was left out of place, and I was surprised at just how much I wanted to reach up and straighten it.

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have just come by announced,’ I said. ‘I’m interrupting your jog… run… whatever it is.’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘Not much of a runner?’

  ‘Not unless I’m being chased or am fleeing from a burning building.’

  He grinned, and I felt the tight knot of tension inside me begin to slowly unravel. I always forgot what easy company Jack was, how effortlessly the banter flowed. It continually took me by surprise how relaxed I felt with him.

  ‘Do you feel like taking a walk?’ he asked, inclining his head towards the empty beach behind us.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, ‘as long as you’re sure I’m not intruding.’

  ‘Of course not. I was hoping to see you again,’ he confided, falling into step beside me. ‘I’ve been worried about you since that episode at the bookshop.’

  I felt a warmth on my cheeks which could have been from the effort of matching my stride to Jack’s, or maybe from the realisation that I’d been in his thoughts. Was that a good or a bad thing?

  We walked in companionable silence along the deserted beach, following the trail of footprints he had left in the sand. There was something wonderfully peaceful and calming in the quiet isolation of our surroundings. Eventually we reached the far end of the cove and sat down by the boundary where the incoming waves changed the colour of the sand from gold to caramel. The breeze was a little stronger now, making my hair whip about my head like auburn streamers around a maypole. I kept trying, unsuccessfully, to tuck it behind my ears and once, on looking up, I saw Jack watching me with a curious look on his face. For no reason at all my pulse began to quicken, and my lips felt suddenly dry. Jack shifted slightly and turned to stare out to sea.

  ‘Rough week?’ he hazarded, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

  ‘I’ve known better,’ I replied.

  He turned to look at me. ‘Feel like talking about it?’

  I shook my head. ‘I thought I wanted to, or even needed to. But you know what, now that I’m here, I just want to leave it all behind, like a heavy bag I can pick up later. Right now I don’t even want to think about it, much less talk. It’s all too much: Amy first and now this with Richard.’

  He nodded, understanding me probably better than I did myself.

  ‘Caroline thinks I’m wrong, that I should talk. But then she’s always been that way, she’ll work a problem through from every angle until she finds a solution.’

  ‘It’s not a bad strategy. Have you done that with her?’

  I felt a little ashamed as I replied, ‘No. Not really. We’re not exactly on the best of terms at the moment. I kind of blamed her for not telling me she suspected what had been going on.’

  His brow furrowed at my words, and I could see my answer troubled him. ‘You’ve both been through something so terrible and tragic, something only the two of you can really understand. Maybe now’s not a great time to be shutting her out of your life. And, as far as not telling you, well, she probably thought she was protecting you.’

  ‘I know, you’re right. It’s just that everything feels so raw and exposed. I guess my emotions are still all over the place.’ I lowered my voice as though to keep the gulls circling overhead from hearing my guilty admission. ‘Most of the time I just feel so incredibly angry.’ I felt like I was confessing to a terrible crime. ‘I’m angry at Caroline for keeping her suspicions a secret; I’m angry at Richard for betraying me, and at Amy too for the same reason…’ The expression on Jack’s face was troubled as I continued, ‘… But mostly I’m angry – no, furious – with her for dying and leaving us.’

  ‘I really wish I didn’t have to go back to the States in just three weeks,’ he admitted. ‘I feel like I’m abandoning you just when things are getting tough.’ He moved closer to me and put his arm around my shoulder, seeming to understand that while I didn’t want to speak about it all, I did need some comfort.

  I had to purse my lips, so that ‘Don’t leave then’ didn’t accidentally escape from them, which was a ridiculous thought and would have been extremely embarrassing to have said out loud. Obviously he was going to leave; he’d told me on the night we met that his stay here was brief. He had a home and career in America; all he had to keep him in England was research material for his book.

  ‘It’s not your responsibility to look out for me,’ I reasoned, my independent streak – the one Richard had always found so challenging – forcing its way to the surface. It felt good to feel it again. It had been a while.

  Jack smiled, and I knew there had been no chauvinism in his comment. ‘Ah, but in some cultures you’re always going to be my responsibility. It comes with the territory, after having saved your life. Some philosophies believe that I am for ever duty bound to look out for you now.’

  ‘Been Googling, have you?’

  ‘Yep. You too?’

  ‘Yep.’

  There was a lot of information out there about the links between victim and rescuer: the bond, the closeness, the inexplicable commitment and obligation. Some of it explained the strange connection I had felt with Jack since the night we met, and some of it didn’t even scratch the surface.

  ‘I’m not sure talking is what I need, anyway,’ I continued, picking up the theme of our conversation. ‘Did you have anyone to talk to after you and Sheridan… you know…?’ I wondered for a moment if I’d overstepped the mark. I probably didn’t know him nearly well enough for such a personal question. I should try a lot harder to keep that in mind. I wasn’t sure if he was actually going to answer at all, and then a lopsided grin settled on his face.

  ‘Oh, I talked. We both did. Not to each other, mind: to two very expensive – and now extremely well-off – attorneys. You’re right, sometimes talking isn’t the answer.�
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  At least Richard and I didn’t have to worry about selling a property or dissolving any mutual assets. There was only one asset that we had jointly owned, and I’d sent it spiralling through the air to the bottom of a ravine.

  ‘You know, the strangest thing is that when I try to work out just how I feel about everything that’s happened with Richard, I feel more humiliated and angry than heartbroken.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I think I’m about seventy per cent angry and about twenty per cent heartbroken.’

  He paused for a second. ‘I know I deal more with words than numbers, but you do know that doesn’t add up, don’t you?’ I looked up at his gentle teasing observation. ‘What’s the last ten per cent then?’

  I spoke so softly, my answer was almost whipped from my lips by the bracing sea breeze. ‘Relieved,’ I said.

  As we walked back to his house, I finally remembered to ask Jack if he’d let me buy him dinner, but he turned my invitation around and asked me to stay and share a meal with him instead.

  ‘I’ve been cooking on that range of yours,’ he said, as he unlocked the back door and we entered the kitchen, where the air was heavy with the smell of spicy chilli. There was an enormous pot, more of a cauldron really, on the Aga’s simmering plate, a pot which held enough to feed at least a dozen passing Mexicans.

  ‘Are you sure you have enough?’ I laughed as I stepped out of my sand-caked shoes and padded over to the hob, where he was stirring the gently bubbling dish.

  ‘There is quite of a lot,’ he observed. ‘I hope you’re not going to tell me you’re the kind of girl who only eats lettuce leaves.’

  ‘Do I look like that’s all I eat?’ I said with a self-deprecating laugh, before I realised that sounded as though I was fishing for compliments. I could feel my face flush hotter than the fieriest of chillies as his eyes briefly swept my body. I suddenly wished I had worn something far less figure-hugging than the thin sweater which clearly outlined the fullness of my breasts, or the tight jeans which covered my hips and thighs like a second skin.

  ‘It all looks fine to me,’ Jack pronounced, and then turned suddenly away from me. ‘I need a quick shower after my run. Are you okay on your own down here for a few minutes?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll keep an eye on the chilli.’

  He wagged a finger warningly. ‘Do not touch my chilli,’ he cautioned. ‘It is a work of culinary genius, as well as being the only damn thing I know how to cook.’ He smiled then, in a way that made his eyes crinkle at the edges. ‘Sit down and relax. Make yourself at home. I won’t be long.’

  I couldn’t sit, and I couldn’t relax, and some of that was because I didn’t want to have to answer the insistent question that kept circling like a buzzard around my head: Why the hell are you here? The other reason was a little easier to comprehend, and had something to do with not allowing my thoughts to stray to images of Jack showering under hot jets of water just above me.

  I wandered from the kitchen into the hall, surprised at just how many rooms the rental property held. The first door I tried was a room which Jack was clearly using as his office. There was an open document on the computer screen which drew me like a magnet. Reluctantly I shut the door. I don’t think his invitation to ‘make myself at home’ had actually included reading extracts from the book he was working on.

  Across the hallway was a cosy lounge. But there was something within it that was so surprising to see that I actually gasped in astonishment. I walked towards it, and was still standing looking at it some ten minutes later, when Jack found me.

  I didn’t hear him approach and when he came and stood behind me, lightly placing his hands on my shoulders, I jumped about a foot in the air. It took a minute or two for my heart to regain its normal rhythm, although I suspect that could have been achieved a lot quicker if he’d removed his hands from my arms and hadn’t smelled so distractingly of soap, shampoo and aftershave. Every breath I took was filled with the smell of him.

  ‘I’m sorry, I startled you,’ he apologised. ‘You must have been miles away.’

  That was true enough. About six hundred or so, to be precise. I turned back to face the painting and Jack did likewise.

  ‘I always like looking at this one,’ he confided, his eyes sweeping over the image of the crumbling farmhouse beside a lake. In the foreground of the painting was a willow tree, whose shadows were skilfully recreated in the water’s rippling surface. ‘You can look at it a hundred times, and see something different on each occasion.’

  I nodded in agreement. Many of her pieces had exactly the same effect on me, and it was deeply satisfying to hear that he appreciated what he was looking at.

  ‘I wonder where it is.’

  ‘It’s a rural hamlet in the Dordogne,’ I said, my eyes still glued to it.

  He turned away from the wall and looked at me in amazement, then stepped closer to the hearth to examine the signature in the corner of the frame. ‘F. Marshall,’ he said, the respect in his voice clearly audible. ‘Your mother?’

  I nodded, suddenly too choked to speak. I hadn’t seen this painting in years. ‘We holidayed there, about ten years ago. We stayed in a gîte just down the lane from this place,’ I said, inclining my head towards the painting. ‘Mum was up at dawn every morning, waiting for just the right light to capture it the way she wanted to.’

  He studied the picture with what I felt was just the right amount of concentration. ‘She nailed it.’

  I smiled, at the very un-art critic summation. ‘She did that.’

  One of his arms was around my shoulders as we spoke, and it seemed perfectly natural to lean against him, but there was nothing I could detect in his hold except the comforting support of a friend.

  ‘Does she still paint?’

  I gave a sigh which was both sad and regretful. ‘All the time. But nothing like this, not any more.’ There was genuine sympathy in his eyes, and the hand cupping my shoulder squeezed gently. ‘We eventually ran out of wall space at home, so she started selling some pieces through a gallery in town. She did quite well, actually.’ I sighed again, and looked back at the painting. ‘I always liked this one though; I kind of wished she’d kept it.’

  The sun was starting its slow descent towards the horizon, and when we returned to the kitchen Jack threw open the glass doors to let in the refreshing sea breeze and lazy slanting chevrons of light. He turned down my offer of assistance as he pulled armfuls of salad vegetables from the fridge, reaching further into its confines to extract some beers and a bottle of wine. He smiled approvingly when I went for the beer.

  ‘Definitely my sort of a girl,’ he said, opening two bottles and passing me one. It was just a figure of speech, I knew that, but I raised the bottle to my lips to hide my smile.

  As he chopped and cleaned the salad ingredients, I cleared a space among the accumulation of papers piled on the table, to make room for our plates. A large envelope slipped from my fingertips, scattering its contents, and a collection of colour photographs fell like tarot cards across the wooden surface. I recognised the location instantly, it was the lake we had visited; the photographs were part of Jack’s research. I began shuffling them back together into a pile. Each picture was so similar it was hard to see what he’d been trying to capture with the images, and then my fingers stilled as they reached the final four photographs at the bottom of the pile, which had been hidden beneath the others. They were all of me. I opened my mouth to say something, to ask why he’d taken them, and then closed it again, confused.

  I learned more about Jack that evening from the things he didn’t say, rather than the things he did. He spoke of his father, who had passed away; their closeness and how much he missed him were obvious from his voice, which I found really moving. I’ve always felt you can tell a lot about a person by their relationship with their family, especially their parents; it was one of the things I’d always loved about Richard. I shook my head as though to get rid of an annoyingly persistent insect.
I had to learn to stop doing that, to stop relating everything back to him.

  Jack was good company; amusing and intelligent and also very skilful at diverting the conversation away from anything too personal. Of course, he had every right to guard his private life, I’m sure a lot of people in the public eye did the same, but it was still frustrating. By the end of the meal, I was full of chilli, buzzing slightly from two beers and had told him probably far more than I should have done about my relationship with Richard, and had gained practically nothing in return.

  When Jack went to the fridge and held up another beer with a questioning look, I shook my head. I was driving later and two was definitely my limit. He took one for himself, flipped the top and raised the bottle to his mouth. I found my eyes drawn to the long column of his throat as he swallowed deeply. I stared, strangely mesmerised by the muscles moving beneath the tanned skin. He caught me studying him, and I felt a hot flush creep into my cheeks.

  ‘What?’ he asked, slowly lowering the bottle from his lips and leaning back against the countertop.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Say something, my brain screamed at me. Anything. Don’t just sit there gaping.

  ‘I was just wondering…’ My voice trailed away. I had no idea where I was going, or how to finish my sentence.

  ‘What is it, Emma? If there’s something on your mind, just ask.’ I gulped noisily, as though I was the one who had just drained half a bottle of beer. Were all crime writers this direct and intuitive, or was it just a Jack thing?

  ‘Well… you’ve talked about your work and your life in America, but you’ve never mentioned if there was anyone special in it… anyone waiting for you back home?’