by Rebecca Done
‘You were a gentleman!’ she laughed. ‘You were trying really hard to stop kissing me. It was me seducing you.’
‘That’s one thing I still don’t get with you,’ he said, looking at her like she was something particularly challenging to do with Pythagoras’s theorem.
‘What?’
‘That you seem to think I’m a nice guy, not a predatory monster.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Weird.’
‘Well, maybe that’s because I know the real you.’
Buddy Guy moved on to ‘Slippin’ In’, and Jess briefly shut her eyes. In later years, it had been one of her mother’s favourite songs for drinking to. ‘My mum loved this,’ she mumbled. It wasn’t exactly a fond memory, since her mother’s drinking sessions had mostly entailed her slumped helplessly somewhere while dribbling, muttering and occasionally wetting herself.
Jess took another long, cold slug of wine. It had flooded her bloodstream by now, lulling her into relaxation, and she allowed her eyes to explore the room again. Once more they were drawn to Will’s bookcase, and the collection of paperbacks in haphazard stacks on the lower shelves.
‘I never had you down as a bookworm.’
Will glanced over at the bookcase. ‘Well, I wasn’t before I went to prison. But the library sort of kept me sane.’ He grimaced gently. ‘Think they might be the wrong kind of books though. I’m probably more in need of a self-help manual than I am American Psycho or Top Ten Conspiracy Theories.’
Jess shook her head. ‘You seem okay to me.’
He met her eye and smiled. ‘You always were too generous, Jess.’
They fell quiet for a moment.
‘So, how are things with Zak?’ he asked her. The question seemed tentative and carefully phrased, a bit like asking someone with arthritis how the manual dexterity was going.
‘I’m not sure.’
He nodded, just waited.
‘We fought after you left last week.’ She looked down. ‘He’s a bit … protective.’
‘I noticed.’
‘It’s not his fault,’ she said quickly, her brows knitting together. ‘He had a bad experience with his ex-wife.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Will said then. ‘I’m fucking everything up for you.’
‘No, you’re not – it’s the opposite. I’m so happy you’re back.’ A small pause. ‘I just –’
‘Don’t,’ he said quickly, smiling at her with his eyes. ‘Don’t caveat it. I liked the first bit. Don’t say anything else.’
‘I’m worried,’ she confessed, thinking of Zak, Natalie, Charlotte.
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘It’s written all over your face.’
Her frown deepened slightly. ‘Zak … wants me to move to London with him.’
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. ‘And do you want to?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. I love it here. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’ve been times over the years when I’ve thought maybe it would be easier to move away, start again. But Norfolk’s my home. And, anyway, my business is here, all my clients …’ She sighed. ‘Zak won’t leave London though.’
‘How come?’ he asked, but slightly begrudgingly, as if he’d fully expected Zak to be pig-headed like that.
‘His work. He doesn’t think A & E in Norfolk would be quite the same as in London. He gets more stabbings and bullet wounds there.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Will said. ‘I’m sure there’s an untapped supply of perverse thrills to be had from mutilation-by-farm-machinery.’
She permitted herself a smile. ‘I suppose we’re at a sort of stalemate.’
He shot her a sympathetic look but said nothing.
‘So where’s Natalie this week?’ she asked him cautiously.
‘Oh, she’s in Birmingham. Something to do with financial services. She’s not supposed to be working at the moment, but she got offered stupid money to do it, so …’ He glanced at her. ‘Anyway. That’s where she is.’
As he trailed off, Jess felt as if they could have been sitting across the room from one another in his little flint cottage near Holt all over again, waiting to see how long they could hold out before the first kiss that would see the rest of the evening descend into sex and carpet burns on the living-room floor, sharing fags and a bottle of gin, laughing about Miss Laird or Laura Marks, naively making soppy little plans for their future.
She looked down into her glass and spoke almost without thinking. ‘I wonder what Miss Laird’s doing now.’
He paused for the briefest of moments before saying, ‘Not much, by all accounts.’
She waited for him to elaborate.
‘She’s dead.’
Jess blinked. ‘What?’
‘Four years ago, London. Car mounted a pavement on the Essex Road.’ Having imparted the facts, he lifted his glass back up to his lips, his face emotionless, and took another healthy gulp of wine as if he was quietly toasting Miss Laird’s demise.
‘Oh my God. Who told you?’
‘Google,’ he said. ‘I set alerts up on my phone. Twenty-four-seven rolling Sonia updates.’ He shook his head, like even to recall it still made him uncomfortable. ‘I found out she’d moved to London, so I guess I wanted to be the first to know if she started teaching at a nearby school or did anything notable within a fifteen-mile radius of Chiswick. I always felt as if we had unfinished business, me and her. That was partly why I changed my name.’
Jess tried to think of something positive to say. ‘At least …’ she began, then trailed off.
‘At least what?’
She hesitated. ‘No, I was about to say something awful.’
‘Jess, the woman was a complete cow while she was alive.’ Will knocked back another mouthful of wine. ‘She completely shafted us. I don’t see how death could have imbued her with any particular qualities of charm. Go on, I couldn’t care less what you say about her.’
She hesitated again, but only for a moment. ‘I was just going to say, at least now you don’t have to worry about her turning up. You know – unannounced.’
A long silence followed.
‘Yeah,’ he murmured eventually, fixing her with those green eyes of his. ‘Unscheduled reunions can be such a bitch.’ He stood up then and gestured to her glass, even though it wasn’t quite empty. ‘Top-up?’
‘Please.’ She downed the last inch of the wine in one and handed it to him. He disappeared into the kitchen.
Resting her head back against the sofa, Jess tried to steady her breathing. Perhaps she should leave now. It was starting to feel impossible to sit across the room from Will and not feel the old emotions come flooding back, not recall the times they’d shared all those years ago. Yet he was now a father and Natalie’s long-term partner, she reminded herself. He had steadied his life – and here she was, threatening to derail it.
Just as she was wondering if she had the strength of mind to tell him she was leaving, to get up and walk out of the front door, he returned with her topped-up wine glass and she knew straight away that she didn’t.
‘You’re not having another?’ she asked him as he passed her the glass.
‘Better not,’ he said, tipping his head gently up towards the ceiling. ‘With Charlotte.’
He joined her on the sofa then instead of returning to the armchair. Jess swallowed, said nothing.
‘Sonia used to write me letters when I was in prison. Well, it was more like hate mail, actually. She’d say there were people waiting for me to get out so they could finish me off.’ A flicker of bitterness ignited in his eyes as he spoke. ‘It wasn’t enough for her to have done what she did – she wasn’t going to be happy until someone had physically lynched me.’ He thought about it. ‘Or – you know – brought back the death penalty.’
He was so close now she could grasp the scent of him. He smelt of something delicious, familiar (was it by Hugo Boss?), but she took a couple of quick breaths and attempted to focus. ‘And were there? People waiting for you?’ she asked,
almost afraid of what he would say.
‘Actually, I don’t know. My cottage was long gone, so I went straight to my sister-in-law’s family’s farm when I got out. Stayed there for a year. Anybody who wanted to get to me would have had to wade through three fields’ worth of cow shit first, so I don’t think anyone bothered in the end.’
She laughed, and then caught herself. ‘Sorry. It’s not funny.’
He smiled. ‘No, please – please laugh. I never thought I’d get the chance to find any of this amusing.’
She smiled back at him. ‘Do you still see them?’
‘Katy and Richard?’ He shook his head. ‘Nope. And I have two nephews I’ve never even met.’ He shrugged, almost as if this was to be expected. ‘I think Katy and her parents started to look at me slightly differently after the boys were born. Because obviously I’m a dangerous sexual predator who will naturally be looking to abuse her sons at some point. So they’d rather have me out of their lives for good. It’s neater that way.’ He swallowed. ‘And I don’t just mean for them. I can’t take the risk of Natalie finding out, so … it’s better if we don’t see them. Or my parents. It’s not better for Charlotte, obviously, but –’ His voice cracked slightly.
Jess felt her heart swell with sorrow. ‘You don’t speak to your parents?’
He shook his head. ‘We stopped speaking before I even went to prison. Mum especially. She went through the whole thing – blaming herself, fighting with my dad, becoming a social pariah. They actually threw her out of crochet club. Turned all the lights off and shut the curtains until she went away.’
‘That’s awful,’ Jess said. ‘I’m sorry.’
He shook his head but said nothing further.
‘Why does Natalie think you don’t speak?’
‘Oh, you know – ancient family rift. I told her I caused it, which she can fully believe. She’s never met any of them.’ He let out a breath of contemplation. ‘So Natalie and Charlotte – they’re really all I’ve got now. If you don’t count Natalie’s friends, who I keep at arm’s length. I’m pretty sure they all think I’m a bit odd, as boyfriends go.’
Jess looked down into her lap. ‘That’s horrible What a mess.’
He reached out then and grabbed her hand. ‘Don’t, okay? It’s not your fault.’
She stared at him, feeling his fingers grip hers and touch the edge of the scar across her palm, sending her stomach into free fall.
He turned her hand over gently, laying it flat to expose the scar. She looked up, meeting his eye, and he shook his head. ‘I remember that day so clearly. You just opened your fist and all this blood came pissing out and I was trying to play it cool but I fucking hate blood, Jess …’ He smiled. ‘God, I was trying so hard not to let you see me panic.’
She laughed briefly. ‘Well, you did a good job. I’d never have guessed.’
‘That was mostly down to you, actually. You kept really calm.’
She swallowed. ‘I have something to confess.’
He was still holding her hand. ‘Go on.’
‘I did it myself.’
His smile faded and his fingers slackened slightly. Her gaze rested on his tattoo, the one on his left arm. It can’t be night for ever. She couldn’t meet his eye.
‘I cut myself, with my own scissors. I wasn’t trying to get the scissors from Beth. I did it to get your attention.’
‘Fuck,’ he breathed. ‘Why?’
‘I have no idea.’ She shook her head, incredulous as she was every day that she’d done it in the first place. ‘It was stupid. I guess I liked you and I wanted you to notice me. I remember having this thing about Laura Marks, thinking that you were going to fall in love with her.’ She shook her head again. ‘Stupid, obviously.’
‘But now you have this,’ he said sadly. He traced a finger across the jagged shape of bunched-up tissue.
She nodded. ‘It should probably be a reminder to myself not to do any more stupid stuff.’
They were now well beyond the moment when he should have dropped her hand, but they stayed sitting like that for a couple more minutes, feeling each other’s pulses thudding gently as he continued to explore her palm.
‘Jess,’ he said, pushing his index finger gently across the length of her scar, ‘if we’re doing confessions, I have one too.’
She felt her heartbeat quicken slightly. Is that what we’re doing? Then there’s something else you should know, Will. Something I never told you.
‘I came back to find you, after I got out,’ he said. ‘More than once.’
‘When?’ she asked him, feeling a strange churn of panic at having missed him, which was slightly irrational given that he was sitting next to her, holding her hand.
‘Not long after I was off licence. On your nineteenth birthday, actually. I’d read about what happened with your mum, so … I knew where to find you.’ He continued to trace her scar with his finger. ‘Anyway, I asked around, but someone said you’d gone to France.’
She stared at him. ‘Only for five weeks. I was doing a course. Pâtisserie,’ she blurted out, unable to bear the thought that while she’d been practising her piping, Will had been in Norfolk looking for her.
‘Well, I was happy for you, Jess. I took it as a sign that you were making something of your life, so I just went back to London. And soon after that I met Natalie. I wanted to try again – just to say sorry, to apologize for everything – but all this time had passed and I kept losing my nerve. Anyway, I finally mustered up the courage to come back on your birthday a few years later, but I bottled it on your doorstep. Same thing happened when I saw you in the pub on New Year’s Day three years ago.’ He let out a measured breath, his forehead creasing slightly. ‘And then on Christmas Eve the year before last, I finally did it – I knocked. Tried again the next morning too. But you weren’t there.’
‘I spent that Christmas at Debbie’s,’ she said, thinking out loud and experiencing a stronger-than-usual surge of resentment towards her sister. At the same time as Will had been standing on her doorstep, Jess had been curled up on Debbie’s sofa with Tabby and Cecilia, resolutely attempting to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas while Debbie screamed at Ian in the kitchen for failing to pick up the turkey or some other seasonal crime.
‘Then Natalie suggested moving here while we did up the house,’ Will continued. ‘But the idea of being in Norfolk full time with her and Charlotte – that was different to the occasional trip on my own. I was terrified. All I could think about when we got here was whether you’d call the police if you so much as caught a glimpse of me, and if I’d be arrested in front of Natalie and Charlotte for harassing you or God-knows-what-else.’
She shook her head. ‘I wanted to find you too. But I had no idea where you were. I actually wrote to your parents a few times, to see if they’d tell me.’
His fingers squeezed hers. ‘Seriously?’
‘I thought you might be staying with them. They never wrote back.’
‘They moved to Hampshire after my arrest. Couldn’t cope with all the scrutiny. I think finding a pack of photographers hiding out in Dad’s hydrangeas was the final straw. My mum’s sister lives in Winchester, so that’s where they ended up. They’re still there.’ He sighed stiffly and offered her a grim smile. ‘So you reached a dead end?’ he guessed.
‘Well, searching your name was the first thing I ever used the internet for. But I didn’t know you’d changed it. I just assumed you didn’t want to be found.’
He gripped her hand so hard then that she was overcome with the urge to kiss him out of sheer relief that he was finally by her side.
But with great effort she fought it, gently withdrawing herself from him and clearing her throat. ‘Can I use your toilet?’
He nodded. ‘Of course. There’s a cloakroom at the bottom of the stairs.’
She headed out of the room and into the hallway. Hesitating at the foot of the staircase, she glanced upwards.
She had only meant to be a minute. Sh
e had only meant to look. But, of course, as soon as she pushed open the door to Will and Natalie’s bedroom, the temptation to trespass became irresistible. She had been denied so many details of his life for so long that she was curious just to see how he spent the first and final minutes of every day (though admittedly the overwhelming scent from a bowl of bright purple potpourri on the windowsill made her think that staggering to and from the en suite with a damp flannel clamped across his face was a very definite possibility).
Lined with fitted wardrobes, drawers and a vanity unit in oak-effect MDF, the room was plain and functional, almost entirely lacking the efforts at personalization that had been made downstairs. In fact, the space felt so clinically sparse, it could easily have passed for the budget tariff option at a mid-end B & B, the sort that served only dusty cereal for breakfast and still went in for shower curtains. There was a plastic alarm clock and a copy of Generation X on one bedside table; on the other, a lipstick-stained glass and a bottle of hand sanitizer. The only other evidence of life, aside from the potpourri, Natalie’s straightening irons and a make-up bag, was propped up on a chair beneath the window – a single cushion screen-printed with Charlotte’s beaming face (thrown in, Jess supposed, if you’d purchased a big enough canvas).
She thought sadly back to Matthew’s old bedroom at his cottage – to the plump, dark bed linen that had always seemed so seductive, the dimmed lighting, the stereo rotating Morrissey, the Stone Roses, Nirvana. To their discarded clothes, the giant plastic replica whisky bottle that collected his spare coppers, the wobbly pile of travel guides to all the places he dreamed of visiting one day – Italy, Spain, Panama, Amsterdam.
But other than the single dog-eared paperback, there were no hints at all in this room as to who Will was when he was with Natalie. Jess began to feel a strange compulsion to open drawers and rifle through their things for clues like a contestant hunting cardboard points on a low-budget game show, so in an effort to resist, she sat down heavily on the edge of the bed instead.
