by Camilla Way
Desire winds itself around her as they kiss and when he lifts his head and looks at her, a question in his eyes, she nods, once, and lets him lead her to his bed. Although she’d told herself this wouldn’t happen, she had known from the moment he opened the door that it would, that she would not be able to help it. Not just because her fear of Jack has made her feel more alone than she has for a long time but because some previously frozen part of her responds to the indefinable pull of him, this quiet, serious man, this stranger, so that she hardly knows herself.
Rain batters against the bus’s window and Cleo sits on the top deck, phone in hand, trying to decide what to write. Eventually she opens a new message and types, Hey Daniel, haven’t heard from u for a while. Hope ur OK. She hesitates before adding an X, then a heart, and presses Send. She stares down at her mobile for a while, before sighing and throwing it back into her school bag. She hasn’t heard from him for three days.
When, a few minutes later, she hears her phone ping from somewhere in the depths of her bag, her heart leaps with fresh hope as she reaches for it, only to sink again when she sees it’s a text from her dad. He’s sent her a picture of Max, wearing a yellow Babygro that has a hood with eyes and an orange beak. Underneath it is written Our little duckling. She smiles. He is the cutest baby she’s ever seen, her baby brother. She thinks about texting, Would it be OK if I came to see you soon, but remembering her last visit she puts her phone back in her bag, the text going unanswered.
Her mum had once said that her dad had been too young when she’d got pregnant, that at twenty-four he hadn’t been ready for fatherhood. A mutual shyness has always existed between them. It had been something of a relief when Sonia – friendly, talkative – had come on the scene; her cheerful presence a natural buffer to their awkwardness. She thinks of Christmas approaching. Last year he’d bought her an enormous pink unicorn, the sort a five-year-old might dream of. When she was ten he’d sent her a bottle of Coco Channel. She’d overheard her mother complaining to Samar – ‘How old does he think she is, exactly? Thirty-two?’ – but she had loved it. It had pride of place on her chest of drawers, she couldn’t stop opening it to smell it, admiring its lovely box, so sophisticated and glamorous. Even the unicorn gets to occupy the pillow next to her own.
Her stop approaches and as she rises to get off she becomes aware of a teenage lad staring at her, his gaze hot against her skin. When they get off the bus he is ahead of her, but he turns to look at her again, and suddenly she is conscious of her body within its uniform, her breasts, her legs, in a way she has only begun to be conscious of them. She has noticed boys, sometimes men, have the same glint in their eyes when they look at her lately. Is that how Daniel would look at her too, if they met? She is both excited and repelled by the idea. She checks her phone, but there is no reply.
Vivienne and Alek lie entwined, the sheet draped across them, their skin only now beginning to cool. Her ear pressed against his chest, she listens to his heart beating. ‘We didn’t eat,’ she says at last, then smiles. ‘You went to so much trouble.’
He strokes her arm. ‘I can bring the food to us. We’ll have a picnic, here in bed.’
He gets up, and pads naked from the room and she takes in the muscular dips and hollows of his back, the curves of his buttocks, savouring the taste of him on her lips, the touch of his hands upon her body.
He returns a few minutes later with a tray laden with dishes which he sets out between them on the sheets. ‘Some Albanian food,’ he says, laying the plates before her one by one. ‘This is burek … and suxhuk, and tave kosi …’
She looks at the offerings of sausage, filo parcels, olives, and cheese, and smiles. ‘God, this feels so decadent, eating in bed while the rest of the world works.’
He smiles and, picking up a tomato, begins to slice it in two, the tip of his knife puckering the taut skin before piercing the flesh, juice dripping over his fingers and onto the plate.
They eat in silence for a while, then, ‘What was it like, growing up in Albania?’ she asks.
And Alek tells her about his parents’ farm, an idyllic rural childhood spent climbing trees and swimming in lakes with friends. ‘Were you born here in London?’ he asks.
‘No, Essex. My mum and I moved here when I was eight, after my sister died.’
He considers this, brow furrowed. ‘She was young when she died? A child?’
Viv nods. ‘She was murdered when she was sixteen.’
His eyes widen. ‘My God. Vivienne, I am so sorry.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Who …?’
She pushes her plate away and lies down. ‘Her boyfriend. She was due to give birth to their son a few days later.’
‘Vivienne,’ he says sorrowfully, ‘that is so terrible.’
‘I like the way you say my name.’ She traces the curve of his ribcage with her finger, feeling the softness of his dark skin. He is the most beautiful man she has ever seen, she thinks, and when a small, spiteful voice says, So what the fuck is he doing with you? she ignores it.
He moves the plates from the bed and lies down next to her. And as he strokes her hair, she tells him about Ruby, about how the police had found her in her mother’s wardrobe, saying only Jack’s name, that her evidence had put him in prison. ‘I remember very little about it. I have nightmares, bad ones, all the time. I think about it far too much. Sometimes I feel like I’ll be stuck there forever, the day it all happened.’ She gives a small embarrassed laugh. ‘Sorry, this probably isn’t the sexiest pillow talk you’ve ever heard.’
But he doesn’t smile. His gaze rests on her thoughtfully as he says, ‘Perhaps the only way of getting over it is by confronting what happened.’
‘Maybe.’ She shrugs. ‘But, I mean, I start to panic whenever I think about it, so … I guess I try not to think about it at all.’
‘And so the nightmares continue,’ he says.
‘Yeah.’ She wishes they could change the subject and wonders how to lighten the mood.
‘A friend of mine, an ex-colleague, is a therapist, a trauma specialist,’ Alek says. ‘Maybe she could help you.’
‘Right,’ she says unenthusiastically. ‘You think?’
He nods. ‘She practises something called EMDR therapy. I believe it’s very effective in helping people overcome their experiences.’
‘Hmm.’ She sighs, ‘Look, Alek, I appreciate you trying to help, I really do, but to be honest I don’t want to confront what happened, I want to forget it, I want to leave it all in the past, that’s the whole point.’
‘But you’re not leaving it in the past. Not if you’re dreaming about it every night.’ He glances at her and, seeing her expression, smiles. ‘Sorry, I’m a doctor, I don’t believe that anyone should suffer if there’s a way to fix the problem.’
She turns so that she’s lying on her back. ‘I’ve never been one for therapy, the idea makes me uncomfortable, it always has, I don’t know why.’
He nods and bends his head to kiss her and the moment passes. After a while she props herself up on her arm and says, ‘And how about you?’
‘How about me?’
‘Escaping the war … I mean … Christ, I can’t even imagine.’
For a long time she thinks he’s not going to answer, and then he says quietly, ‘I was one of the lucky ones. We came here and were granted refugee status. At the time the British Medical Association ran an initiative that enabled refugee doctors to work for the NHS. But you are right, it wasn’t easy.’ He lies back, staring at the ceiling. ‘War changes you. It turns you into someone you never thought you’d become. Makes you do things you never thought you’d have to do …’
‘What sort of thing?’ she asks, struck by the heaviness of his tone. But instead of replying he reaches out and pulls her towards him, kisses her, and her question goes unanswered.
10
In the days that follow, Vivienne returns to those brief few hours with Alek again and again, turning them over in her mind like playing car
ds. His hands on her skin, the taste of his kiss. Suddenly, unbidden, his image will appear to her and she will feel again the slow creep of desire.
When they’d said goodbye they’d made vague plans to meet again, but the days pass one after another and she does not hear from him. She is glad in a way that he occupies her thoughts so fully, maddening though it is, because at least they are a distraction from the constant nagging fear of Jack, the nightmares that have returned to plague her dreams with fresh urgency.
Last night’s dream had been particularly bad. In this one she had opened the door to her sister’s bedroom to find a figure standing over Ruby’s body as usual. But this time the figure had half turned, and she’d been certain that she was about to see his face, but her terror had been so intense that she’d screamed herself awake before she did so. She’d lain awake for hours after that and in the morning had to drag herself from bed exhausted.
Over breakfast she finds herself thinking back to the conversation she’d had with Alek about his therapist friend who he said could help her. What had he said she practised? EMDR? She’d vaguely heard of it before. Perhaps Alek was right that it might put a stop to her nightmares – the broken sleep was beginning to drive her insane. Tiredly she looks it up on her phone and begins to read, discovering that EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, involving something called ‘bilateral stimulation’ that gradually helps the patient deal with past trauma.
She keeps scrolling, skim-reading an article about how the therapy changes neurological pathways, how it works by stimulating both hemispheres of the brain, before pausing when she gets to a passage about buried memories, a doctor talking about how the recalling of a ‘touchstone memory’ can lead to accessing other, previously suppressed ones, how one patient had even remembered murdering someone in their past. Viv puts her phone down with a shudder. It definitely doesn’t sound like something she wants to get involved in. In fact she’s pretty sure she’d rather just live with the nightmares.
The next day she’s in her café checking through some invoices when she looks up to see Alek walking through the door. He comes to where she’s standing behind the till, her hands resting on the counter, and briefly strokes one of her fingers with his own as he says her name. And it’s such a small, such an inconsequential thing, but that one light touch is charged with such electricity that she feels her blood crackle in response.
‘Hello,’ she says, smiling. ‘Coffee?’
He nods and goes to his usual table, pulling from his bag his notepad and pen as he takes his seat and it is as if nothing at all has changed between them, as though they are to each other as they’d always been, before the moment she’d walked through his door and into his bed. But as she goes about her work, clearing tables, chatting to customers, she feels his eyes upon her. Once, when she meets his gaze he lets his own slowly and deliberately traverse her body, and she shivers as though he were reaching out and touching her, and it’s almost more than she can bear not to chase her customers away, pull down the blinds and lock them both inside awhile.
He sits and writes for half an hour, and when a sudden influx of customers arrives he leaves, giving only a brief wave. A few minutes later, however, a text message arrives. When can I see you?
Whenever you want.
Tomorrow? My place?
She glances at Agnes, busy filling sugar bowls. Calling over to her she asks, ‘Can you work tomorrow?’
‘Yep, no probs.’
Vivienne thinks of how she’d felt when he had touched her hand earlier and types, What time?
And so it goes over the next two weeks. When Alek’s working late shifts and has his daytimes free, they meet at his flat, spending their time talking, making love, or eating the small Albanian delicacies he brings to his bed. He tells her about his boyhood in Pristina, holidays with his grandparents in their village, days spent fishing, or building dams, and she talks to him about Unity House and the women who lived there, or about her adventures with Samar. They are both careful to stick to happy memories, their separate sorrows left unspoken. She likes that when his steady gaze is upon her it feels as though he truly sees her; how when he asks her how she is it’s like he genuinely wants to know.
Only once does she tentatively question him about his daughter. ‘Does she reply to the letters you send?’ she asks, watching him with curiosity.
‘No. But I will never stop sending them. I don’t like emails, they are too easy to ignore – or she could change her address, block my name. I prefer her to have something physical, that she must hold in her hand, must tear up or throw in the bin if she wants. I send them to my sister, and she passes them on in person, every week, without fail, but I don’t know what Elira does with them, or what she says. I prefer not to ask.’
‘What happened between you?’ she asks. ‘Why won’t she speak to you?’
He gives a slight shrug. ‘She believes something about me that isn’t true.’
‘Really? What’s that?’
But he only shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I cannot change how she feels, not yet. All I can do is remind her of how much I love her.’
In the days when she doesn’t see him she goes about her life as usual, working, seeing friends, spending time with Cleo, though all the while she’s aware that she’s waiting for when she can see him next – the moment they can close the door of his flat behind them.
‘I’m not sure this is entirely normal,’ Samar tells her. ‘It all sounds rather obsessive to me.’
She laughs. ‘I don’t care, Sam. I can’t help it.’
‘Go easy, though, won’t you? I don’t want you to be hurt. Try not to let things get too intense.’
She shrugs. ‘It is intense, it’s incredible.’
But her mother, too, is dubious. ‘Things are moving fast,’ she comments disapprovingly, when Viv sits in her kitchen one afternoon.
‘Mum, I’m forty years old. I know what I’m doing.’
Stella looks pointedly at her. ‘Do you, darling?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’ She looks away, irritated. ‘Mum,’ she says, ‘you don’t have to worry about me, honestly.’
But before Stella can reply, Shaun walks in. He studiously ignores Viv, directing his greeting at her mother, who smiles affectionately back at him and doesn’t notice her daughter’s sudden tension. Instead, Stella turns back to Viv and, lowering her voice only a fraction, says, ‘What do you even know about this man? I mean, I’m sure the sex is wonderful, darling, but—’
‘Mum!’ Viv hisses. ‘For God’s sake!’ She widens her eyes and jerks her head in the direction of Shaun, who’s making himself a sandwich on the other side of the room.
‘Don’t be silly, Vivienne. He can’t hear, and why should he be interested in your love life anyway?’
‘Just … keep your voice down, would you? It’s nobody else’s business.’
Stella raises her eyes to the ceiling but waits until he leaves the room.
‘When’s he going, anyway?’ Viv asks irritably. ‘He’s been here for months.’
Stella shrugs. ‘I’ve let him stay a bit longer while he sorts something out. He’s had such a difficult life, and he’s so incredibly helpful around the house. Did I tell you what a wonderful baker he’s become? Apparently he could scarcely boil an egg before he came here and started helping me in the kitchen. He made some wonderful walnut bread the other day.’ She looks at her daughter crossly. ‘Why are you sneering? There’s more to that man than meets the eye.’ She gets up. ‘Anyway, darling it’s been lovely to see you, but I’m afraid I really need to get on. There are some bulbs I want to plant in the garden. You can see yourself out, can’t you?’
Once Stella has left through the garden door, Vivienne heads upstairs to the bathroom, creeping quietly along the landing so as not to alert Shaun to her presence. But as she passes his room, he suddenly appears. ‘Got yourself a new fuck buddy have you?’ he asks, leaning against the door frame and
staring at her insolently. ‘Put it about a bit, don’t you?’
She shoots him a look of disgust. ‘Leave me alone.’ She begins to move away but he crosses the landing in three quick strides and she shrinks from him as he looms so suddenly close. Before she can escape he pushes her roughly against the wall, trapping her between his arms and thrusting his face towards hers until it’s only centimetres away. ‘True though, ain’t it? Who’s the mug this time, then?’
‘Get your hands off me.’ Her words are hissed, furious, but though she struggles he holds her fast, and her heart begins to pound. Are they alone up here? Are the other guests all out?
He grins then, and very slowly, very deliberately reaches below her skirt, sliding his hand upwards until he gropes her buttocks. She gasps, struggling fiercely, but his grip is firm. A white-hot rage rises inside her until with one almighty jerk she manages to push him away then hits him hard across the face. ‘You fucking arsehole,’ she shouts, panting with fear and indignation.
He backs away, mock innocent, his left cheek red from where she struck him. ‘You didn’t seem to mind last time. Seemed to fucking love it, in fact.’
She looks at him with loathing. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you. Can’t you get that into your thick head? Last time was a mistake.’ She pulls out her phone. ‘I’m calling the police. You might have my mother fooled but you won’t fool them.’ She’s no sooner finished speaking than she hears her mother coming in from the garden. Not wanting to face her, she shoots one more disgusted look at Shaun then runs down the stairs and out of the house. For a long time she sits in her car, hot with fury and humiliation. She looks down at her phone, still clasped in her hand. She should carry out her threat, she knows, but that would mean telling Stella the whole story and she’s not sure she can face that. Shit, she thinks, thumping the steering wheel. Shit shit shit. Shaun will have to wait.
