‘No!’ I cried, then said more quietly: ‘No, really, it’s all right.’
He took off his sunglasses. He looked exhausted. He said: ‘I saw you come up here. I was pretty sure it was you.’
‘It was.’
‘I just …’ he said, and then he swallowed and turned his head away.
I waited a moment, but Alexander didn’t collect his thoughts. He seemed to be lost somewhere.
‘Is that Jamie on the stage with the other children?’ I asked.
Alexander nodded and checked his watch. ‘He tagged on to the group. He’s fed up being with me all the time. He wanted to be with other kids. They’re doing a little play in fifteen minutes.’
‘Then we have fifteen minutes,’ I said.
I didn’t know what had come over me; that was not the kind of thing I ever said. I was the shy one, the quiet, introspective one, I never took the lead at anything, but the words came from nowhere into my mind and out of my mouth. Being with Alexander was imperative. Since the previous evening, since he had squeezed my shoulder, my mind had been full of him.
He licked his lips and I wondered if already I had gone too far, or if, maybe, he had not understood what I meant.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked and I stepped forward.
There was an irresistible pull between us like two magnets hefting together, defying gravity. You couldn’t see it, but it was real, it was there. We fell on to and into one another in the deep shade on the wooded hilltop. It was not something that could be refused or denied. It was inevitable.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS OVER in moments. He groaned and his breath burned hot beneath my ear and I was weak in his arms; I was spent. I felt as if I were bruised all over. I had never felt so healthy. I was giddy with my own daring. I felt brazen and desirable and strong and alive.
I felt so alive.
I breathed into his neck. I breathed him in. My back was pressed against the railings. I knew that when I looked over my shoulder in the bathroom mirror later, a narrow, horizontal bruise that stretched the width of my hips would exactly match the diameter of the metal fencing behind me. I slid my legs down his legs and found my balance. The dusty soil was warm and soft beneath my feet and the insides of my thighs were raw and slippery. I wiped between my legs with my dress and straightened it and he stepped back, away. Alexander took another step backwards, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He watched me.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
He picked up my sandals, dusted them off, passed them to me and held my elbow as I stood on one foot and then the other to put them on. Now I felt shy, a little embarrassed.
‘Let’s walk,’ he said.
We walked very slowly, very closely, with propriety, like a couple who have been together for decades. I could smell him in the heat that came up from his skin; a smell powerful with intimacy. To other people we must have looked like husband and wife, not people who hardly knew one another. I put my sunglasses on. I wanted to press up to him, fall into him, feel his hands over me like the sea.
We stopped at a viewpoint over the cliff, close to the tour party. The voice of the guide drifted over to us. He was explaining the disparity between the levels of the two seas that met below us. One was higher than the other. It made no sense, this tidal step in the water, and the ancient people explained it by telling a story of a giant clam which, twice a day, swallowed the water of one sea and then spat it out again. The Americans chuckled. I was interested in the story but I could not concentrate. I was prickly with Alexander. We gazed out at the horizon. I half-wished for the world to end there, right there, when we were still strangers and everything was perfect between us.
Alexander ran the back of his fingers down the curve of my neck. He was exploring me.
He said: ‘I’ve been thinking about what you told me.’
‘Mmm?’
‘About your man and your friend. What they did.’
‘I probably made it sound worse than it was,’ I said. I did not like to be reminded of Laurie, especially not then. ‘You don’t know the whole story.’
‘I know enough. Don’t go back to Manchester. When somebody lets you down like that …’ He sighed. ‘My wife, Genevieve, when I met her, she was in love with someone else. She told me; she was honest about it. I married her anyway. I thought I could make her change how she felt but I couldn’t.’
‘She loved you enough to have your child.’
He didn’t reply but gazed out into the distance.
‘There was never going to be a happy ending for Genevieve and me,’ he said. ‘I see that now. And she’s gone. It’s over.’ He rubbed his hand beneath his ribcage. ‘It was all a waste of time. It was all pointless.’
‘You’ve got Jamie.’
‘Yes. Yes, I have. He’s the only good thing to have come out of it.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound insincere or clichéd but it didn’t matter because Alexander had gone into his thoughts again.
‘What do you do, Sarah?’ he asked eventually. ‘For a job, I mean.’
‘I work for an engineering company. I’m a secretary.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s all right. Only, Rosita works there too. My friend. The one who …’
‘Oh. So you won’t want to go back there?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t really thought it through.’
Alexander nodded and was silent for a moment. Then he said: ‘I can’t do it all on my own, not work and still be there for Jamie. I need someone to help me.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘What I mean to say is …’ He paused a moment, then he said: ‘You could come and live with me.’
I laughed. Honestly, I thought he was joking. I laughed for a moment, then I stopped and I looked at Alexander. The fingers of his left hand were moving over the place beneath his right arm where he was scarred. He wasn’t joking. He was serious.
‘I thought it would be better without her, but since Genevieve’s been gone everything has been difficult,’ he said.
‘Is that why you came to Sicily? To get away?’
He sighed and a shadow passed across his face.
‘No.’
I waited. He did not elaborate. He seemed to lose himself and when he spoke again he had lost his train of thought or else he had chosen not to say any more about why he had brought Jamie to Sicily.
He said: ‘It’ll be the same when we go back unless …’
The fingers of his left hand made a claw and scratched at the wound beneath his shirt. I tried not to watch.
‘Unless you come,’ he said. ‘Then things will be different.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I know enough. I think you’re honest. I like you. I can’t afford to pay much but I can offer you a roof over your head and you can help look after Jamie and the house and …’ He stared away into the distance. ‘It could be a fresh start for you.’
I nodded.
‘School starts again in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be hard for me to get back from work in time to pick Jamie up. I have to know that somebody I trust will be there to meet him. If you were there … If you came …’
A tiny stain of blood seeped from the scar into the fabric of his shirt. It hypnotized me. I watched and it spread, making the shape of a crescent moon. His fingers finally relaxed.
He said: ‘What is there to lose, Sarah? If it doesn’t work out you can go back to Manchester. And you never know. We might be good for one another.’
I leaned forward and, even though I didn’t know him very well, I kissed his lips as gently as I could.
‘OK,’ I said.
Back home, my family and friends thought it was a terrible idea.
They said I was overreacting to the situation, that I shouldn’t risk myself on a stranger, that I would be vulnerable on my own, away from everyone I knew and e
verything I held dear. They said I wasn’t thinking straight – it was my hormones, they were still all over the place from the pregnancy; it was depression; it was grief. Even considering moving in with a man about whom I knew next to nothing was stupid and dangerous and so completely out of character that maybe I was having some kind of breakdown. What if Alexander was a conman, or worse? Even if he had not actively abused his wife, she had her reasons for leaving him – and to leave the child, too, he must have done something awful. He may be one of those Jekyll and Hyde characters, a charmer on the surface and an insecure and possessive control-freak on the inside. Those types always isolated their victims and then dominated them. If the abuse was not physical, it would be emotional and verbal.
It wasn’t only my family. I hadn’t been back to work since the baby, but my line manager, Shelley, came round and took me out for coffee. She told me that Rosita had handed in her notice so I could return to my post without having to see her. It was her decision to go. She was entirely aware of how badly she’d behaved and had done the noble thing by removing herself from the picture. Shelley reached across the café table and took my hand in hers.
‘Coming back to work might be the best thing. When you’re feeling a bit low, you’re better off being with people you know and trust,’ she said. ‘I know it’ll be difficult, hon, but I’ll be there to help you.’
I did not point out that the person I knew and trusted better than anyone else in the world was the one who had hurt me the worst.
I refused to see Laurie. I was afraid, if I saw him, my resolve might be softened. I deleted his emails and his texts but I did speak to him once, on the telephone. He was calm, gentle and perfectly frank. He said he would do whatever it took to repair the damage and to heal our relationship. He did not demean either of us with cheap excuses or apologies. His sincerity was clear and I understood that he was finding the situation at least as painful as I was, but I was strangely unaffected by his words. I felt neither sympathy nor regret. My mind was made up and my ticket was booked.
My mother begged me to reconsider. She insisted I see the doctor, who prescribed a slightly higher dosage of antidepressants despite my insistence that I was recovering – in fact, I had not taken a single pill since Sicily. Mum, or maybe Laurie, must also have mentioned to Dr Rooney that they were worried about my behaviour because he recommended I seek counselling. I listened politely, but saw no point going down that route. Surely it’s natural to be sad when your baby is stillborn? Wouldn’t there be something wrong with me if I hadn’t been a bit out of sorts? He said he’d contact the hospital and they’d get in touch with me directly to arrange an appointment, and I concurred, thinking that letters are easy to ignore.
My father said the whole idea of running off down south was bloody stupid and he’d give it a week, fortnight at best. May, the only person who knew the whole story, said it was sex that was pulling me towards Alexander and a maternal instinct with no outlet that attracted me to Jamie, and neither misdirected incentive was the basis for a successful fresh start. I listened to them and appreciated their concern, but would not be swayed. I apologized to my parents, wholeheartedly agreed with my sister but took no notice and, two weeks later, I moved out of May and Neil’s spare room and into my new life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALEXANDER AND JAMIE met me at Temple Meads station in Bristol. I’d spent the whole journey fearing that Alexander would not be there, that nothing that had happened between us was real. All the things the people who cared for me had said over the past weeks about me living in a dream world came back to worry and poke at me. I dreaded having to go creeping back into the arms of my family for another dose of kindness, recuperation and told-you-so’s.
But it was all right: as the train slowed at the station they were there underneath the electronic sign at the far end of the platform, exactly where Alexander had said they’d be. Alexander, newly bearded and with longer hair, stood taller and leaner than I remembered, and beside him was the small, serious, blue-eyed boy with the big ears. They cast long shadows across the grey platform in the early September sunlight. The train juddered to a full stop. Alexander and Jamie had come to bring me home. My heart was pounding. Knowing they could not see me, I watched for as long as I dared, then joined the queue to haul my bag from the rack by the door.
They came forward to meet me, Alexander first and Jamie hanging back. I tried to relax but it was awkward. Alexander leaned down – I thought he meant to kiss me and held up my face, but he only took the bag from me. People swarmed around us like ants around an obstacle. We stood there, quiet in our own space, and they went round us.
‘You look good,’ he said, after what felt like for ever.
I could not, in truth, say the same of him. He looked dishevelled, exhausted and drawn. He stroked his chin.
‘I like the beard,’ I said.
‘My grandpa says he looks like Jesus,’ said Jamie.
‘Oh yes?’
‘And Grandma says he looks a disgrace.’
‘Come on,’ said Alexander. ‘This way.’
We were at the end of the queue to go down the stairs that took us to the tunnel beneath the platforms. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I tried to make myself relax, but I couldn’t. We weren’t in Sicily any more, we were back in the real world.
Alexander’s dusty old Land Rover was in the car park at the front of the magnificent station façade. I opened the door and climbed up to the passenger seat. The footwell was littered with sandwich cartons, empty cans and parking tickets. I spotted the lid of a lipstick tube amongst the clutter. This small piece of silvery tat made me uneasy. I was sitting where Alexander’s wife used to sit. This was her place, at her husband’s side. She must have sat here thousands of times, next to Alexander. My face felt hot, as if I were doing something wrong.
I pulled the door to and wound down the window. Alexander helped Jamie into the back, clearing space amongst the tools and overalls, then climbed in beside me and started the engine. The vehicle juddered and shook. He fiddled with a knob just beneath the steering wheel until the rattling subsided.
‘OK?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Is it far?’
‘About an hour to Avalon.’
‘Avalon?’
‘That’s the name of the house. Here.’
He delved into the back well and passed me a plastic bottle that had once contained ginger beer but was now half full of tap water. It was warm, but still I drank. Alexander glanced at me, and then pulled the car out of its space, into the stream of taxis and buses queuing to leave the station.
I gazed out at Bristol as the Land Rover bounced through the city. I asked a few questions, but Alexander’s answers were monosyllabic; he seemed to be entirely lost in thought, so I gave up, and just watched.
We crossed the River Avon via an ugly road bridge at a spectacularly beautiful spot, and Jamie pointed to the suspension bridge to the right of us high above the wide, brown river that curled away between the sheer cliff-faces of the gorge, the forest to the left blooming with colour; a thousand different shades of green dropped into their mirror images in the water. I’d had no idea that Bristol was so breathtakingly dramatic, so lovely.
‘People jump off that bridge,’ Jamie said.
I glanced over my shoulder at him. He was playing with a toy action figure. He held it upside down by its feet and dropped it as a demonstration.
‘They used to,’ Alexander corrected. ‘They used to bungee. We saw it on telly, didn’t we?’
‘It’s a terribly long way up.’
‘Or down,’ said Alexander. He turned his head towards me, but I couldn’t see his eyes, only myself reflected in the windows of his sunglasses. ‘Are you afraid of heights?’ he asked.
I nodded. I couldn’t tell him that it was only since my pregnancy. Before that, hardly anything scared me. Since my baby was stillborn, I had realized how frightening and unpredictable life could be. I saw danger whe
re previously I had only seen possibility.
It wasn’t the pain of childbirth. I had expected that. When the persistent ache that had been squeezing me deep inside for a few days developed into a definite pain I was thrilled. I phoned Laurie to call him home from work and fortunately he was in the office and not out with clients. Then I ran upstairs to check I had everything in my hospital bag: newborn nappies, cotton mittens, vests, talcum powder, sleep-suits, toothbrush, toothpaste, flannel. It was an unnecessary exercise. I knew everything was where it should be. I’d been checking for days.
I put one hand in the small of my back – it was a pose I thought I should adopt – and with the other I stroked my hardening belly while I gazed out of the window in my best coat and shoes, waiting for Laurie to come home.
I had never been so excited in my entire life. I had never looked forward to anything as much as I looked forward to the coming few hours.
In the hospital delivery suite I threw myself into the rhythm of childbirth with enthusiasm. I had been warned how much labour hurts but nothing had prepared me for the physical violence of it or the way my body would take over. I was shocked but I knew it was what women had to endure if they were to be mothers. I was too busy breathing to listen when the medical staff explained they were changing the monitor strapped around me because it wasn’t picking up a heartbeat and they thought there might be a problem with the machine. A different midwife came in and then a doctor. The atmosphere in the room changed, but I ignored it. Laurie tried to talk to me, to prepare me, but I shook him away. I had a job to do. I carried on delivering. Laurie, the midwife, the doctors and the nurses were following the wrong script and I wouldn’t listen to them. I wouldn’t look at their faces, I wouldn’t believe what was happening because if I didn’t believe it then it couldn’t be true.
Bristol ended suddenly, just the other side of the river, and almost at once we were driving through countryside that was lush and green. Cattle grazed, heads down in fields; little villages went by. The hedgerows were drooping with the weight of an abundance of late summer flowers and leaves. Ahead I could see the looming silhouettes of the Mendip hills and they were glorious, purple in the light. We drove up a busy section of road and on past pubs and farm shops and fruit stalls. There were fewer and fewer villages, more farm tracks, the occasional all-night garage. As the sun began to set to our right, we turned off the main road and went uphill along a narrow, winding lane. Hills rose out of the gloaming green and shadowed landscape below us. Alexander pointed out Glastonbury Tor in the distance as a low Somerset mist settled over the valley. Scrubby blackberries weighed down the brambles that wove through the hedgerows, and the bracken was already dying. A huge flock of rooks, two hundred or more, cawed overhead, disturbing the calm of the wide, pale sky. For the first time that year I felt the promise of autumn in the air.
The Secrets Between Us Page 4
