Where Love Lies Page 10

  ‘I don’t think I heard anything,’ I said, basking in the fact that he’d given me a nickname.

  ‘You were watching me the whole time,’ he said. His voice was hoarse, nearly ruined. ‘I didn’t think you’d really come.’

  ‘Ewan!’ called one of the boys from the band. I thought it was the drummer. His accent was stronger than Ewan’s. ‘We need you over here, mate.’

  ‘Just a minute.’

  ‘This is important!’

  ‘So’s this.’ He turned to me. ‘Oh fuck. I don’t know how to say this.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Want another drink?’

  Mine was still half-full. I nodded. He took my hand and led me to the bar at the back of the room. I felt the calluses on his fingers against my skin. He ordered a pint and a half of beer and leaned against the bar. His thumb stroked the back of my hand.

  Neither of us said anything, but inside I was jumping around. There was something different about him. Something elemental and sexy. Something urgent.

  ‘Ewan!’ The drummer appeared over his left shoulder. ‘We need you over here. There’s A&R from White Angel, man. He wants to talk with us downstairs.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute. Promise.’ He never looked away from my face. Dimly, I heard the drummer make a noise of disgust and stalk away.

  ‘I need to go,’ he said, but he didn’t go.

  ‘That’ll be four pound fifty,’ said the barman who I’d neglected to flirt with. Ewan shook his head, as if waking up, and dug in his pocket for the money.

  ‘Listen,’ he said to me, pushing a litter of coins across the bar. ‘I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘You have to go to your band. I know. It’s okay.’

  ‘No, I mean – I’m not – there’s …’ He bit his lip. ‘Okay, the truth. The truth is, I wasn’t expecting to meet you. Not someone like you. I wanted you to come tonight, but I thought it would be better if you didn’t. I shouldn’t have invited you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t?’ I stepped back and tried to pull away my hand, but he held tight.

  ‘I’ve a girlfriend,’ he said quickly. ‘In Glasgow. I’m sorry, but I do.’

  It was like a concrete block on my chest, pressing out all the air. ‘Oh. I … I see.’

  ‘Ewan, for fuck’s sake!’ Bellowed across the club.

  ‘Like I said this afternoon, we came down here to get noticed by record companies. Like the one here tonight. Alana has a job so she stayed.’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s fine. Thanks for telling me.’ This time I did pull my hand away, to flee through the crowded club.

  Tears burned in my eyes. Stupid, stupid fool. I had only got two steps before I bumped into someone, and they said, ‘Watch where you’re going, mate.’

  I heard Ewan swear behind me and then his hands were on my shoulders, gripping me. ‘Stop.’

  ‘It’s okay, it’s just bad timing. I’ve got work to do anyway.’

  He turned me around. One of my tears had escaped and it rolled down my cheek.

  ‘Flick, I want—’ he began, but the drummer appeared again and grabbed Ewan’s arm.

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve got to get over here – now.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ewan again, and this time I broke free and ran downstairs and out of the building, onto the hot Camden street.

  Chapter Twelve

  TEN YEARS LATER, I pause in the doorway of the gallery café. Quinn is sitting at a table by the window. He has two pots of tea in front of him and he’s reading the New York Times, which he’s carried rolled up in his jacket pocket since this morning. His cheeks are rough with the stubble he cultivates to look older and there is a faint line between his eyebrows as he concentrates on his newspaper. He says he’ll need glasses before long.

  Quinn is grown up. We’re both grown up. Grown up isn’t meeting a man posing naked and immediately throwing all thoughts and plans to the four winds, forgetting everything in the hope of touching him again. Grown up isn’t sitting with your hands shaking because you’ve told someone you want to be extraordinary, whatever that means.

  Grown up is here and now, with my husband, both of us at thirty years of age, with me not able to tell him when I don’t want something that he does.

  I don’t know quite how this happened. I can remember every decision and every step, but not how it led to adulthood, to responsibility. To home ownership and a steady income and insurance payments and lunch every Sunday and a schedule to follow and the baby that may be growing inside my womb.

  To the loss of walking lightly. Or ever walking away.

  My husband looks up from his paper and when he sees me, the frown grows between his eyebrows. He jumps up and takes my elbow. ‘You’re not well,’ he says.

  ‘I’m all right.’ But I feel dizzy, as if I’ve landed in the wrong time.

  ‘You’re pale as a ghost.’ He helps me into a seat and pours me tea. ‘Oh dear, it’s gone cold. Hold on a tick, I’ll get some more.’

  ‘No, don’t bother, it’s fine.’

  ‘I’ll put some sugar in it. That’ll help.’

  ‘Sugar isn’t going to make any difference.’

  He’s tearing off the top of a packet of sugar, but he stops. ‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling sick? That could be a good sign, couldn’t it?’

  Only a man obsessed with having a family would be optimistic about his wife being unwell.

  ‘No, I’m not sick,’ I snap. ‘I’m exhausted from being dragged around New York to a schedule and then tour-guiding you around an exhibition of my dead mother’s work.’

  He puts down the sugar. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I shouldn’t lose my temper, but it’s a relief after pretending to be pleased all day. ‘I didn’t want to come to this, Quinn. I tore up the invitation.’

  ‘You said it was all right.’

  ‘I had to say it was all right! You’d made such a bloody great effort.’

  ‘I said, several times, that we didn’t have to come in if you didn’t want to.’

  ‘And how kind would that have been, to make you turn away when you’d spent so long planning it as a surprise?’

  ‘More kind,’ he says quietly, ‘than arguing with me about it in a café after it’s too late to change.’

  He’s right, and I should stop, say something nice. But after so much silence, I can’t stop the words. ‘My mother’s dead, Quinn. It hurts me to remember her, even if it’s to satisfy your curiosity.’

  ‘I’m not curious, not merely curious. I want to know you better.’

  ‘Well, now you know me better. I’m the type of person who gets upset thinking about the past and what I don’t have any more. Are you satisfied?’

  I’ve hurt him; it’s clear on his face. I bite my lip, too late.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he says. ‘You were fine a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Let’s just go,’ I say, exhausted, sick of myself. ‘Let’s just go back to the hotel.’

  I lie in the hotel bath, letting the hot water lap around me. The mirrors are fogged up and droplets of steam float in the air. The door is closed.

  I left Quinn lying on the bed, reading the New York Times again. Dinner tonight wasn’t anything near as joyful as our dinner last night. No surprises, no applause, no kisses. Barely any conversation, even though I said I was sorry, and afterwards we sat through the show side by side without touching.

  This is my fault. My husband has done absolutely everything he can to make me happy.

  We’ll fly home tomorrow and I’ll apologize again. I’ll tell him I’m tired. And this could all be down to hormones, after all, although when Quinn dared to suggest that before dinner, I nearly bit his head off. There’s nothing quite as infuriating as a man refusing to take your emotions seriously and putting them down to mysterious female chemicals, as if women were inherently irrational. As if the female mind were nothing more than a loosely connected bundle of electrical impulses, blown
willy-nilly by the slightest physical influence.

  Even so, I don’t deserve him and how kind he’s being to me.

  This bubble bath supplied with the room is supposed to be calming and soothing, according to the words on the little bottle. I reach for another one and pour it into the bath, turning on the hot tap with my foot. Bergamot and jasmine rise up along with the cloud of bubbles, along with something else. Something that’s stronger and that rapidly becomes more real.

  The scent of frangipani.

  I know it’s in my mind and when I close my eyes it gets stronger. My hands curl around the sides of the tub and I relax into what’s coming next.

  It was eight days before I saw him again. I didn’t go to the life-drawing class; in fact, I avoided that entire part of town. I stayed in my room with the Greek-blanket curtain, or sat in a park, drawing trees.

  And then one Thursday afternoon I walked into my mother’s studio and there was Ewan with his shirt off. Standing surrounded by vases holding white and yellow flowers with a heady perfume.

  ‘What?’ I said, before I could help myself, before I remembered that he’d said he’d got a modelling gig with some semi-famous artist, and realized he must have meant my mother.

  ‘Flick?’ said Ewan, at the same time that my mother, out of sight behind her giant canvas, said, ‘Now if you could manage not to move, that is entirely the point.’

  ‘Nothing.’ I tried to turn around and walk straight back out again, but Ewan came after me, touching my shoulder.

  ‘Flick, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I live here,’ I said, shrugging him off.

  ‘Darling, do you know my frangipani boy? Lissa sent him over and I’m trying him for this flower series.’ Mum put down her brush and peered around her canvas, intrigued.

  ‘He was the model in my life-drawing class,’ I told her. ‘Anyway, I’m just off out. See you later, Mum.’

  ‘Esther is your mother?’ Ewan asked.

  Mum had come all the way out from behind her canvas now. She glanced from him to me and back again. ‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s not at all.’

  ‘We should talk,’ said Ewan. I shook my head.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to wait until I’ve finished for the afternoon,’ said Mum. ‘Some of us have work to be getting on with.’

  I ran down the stairs and out into the afternoon. I got on a bus and rode it, staring out of the window. When I got home, Ewan was gone. The house still smelled of frangipani.

  Mum was in the kitchen she’d had installed, making a cup of tea. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she said, the minute I walked in. ‘I’ll send him away.’

  ‘No, don’t do that. It’s nothing, Mum.’

  ‘It’s not nothing.’ She came to me and stroked my hair. ‘It’s not nothing at all. I won’t finish the painting. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I don’t want you to send him away. It’s fine. He’s got a girlfriend, and that’s that. If you send him away, it’ll make me look even more of a fool.’

  She kissed the top of my head. ‘What a funny, precious girl you are. Just say the word, and I’ll send him packing.’

  Fresh flowers arrived every day. I hid in the kitchen or in my bedroom. Ewan arrived after the flowers, so when his knock came on the front door, the house was full of their scent. I couldn’t escape it any more than I could escape the sound of his footsteps as he went upstairs to my mother’s studio, or the awareness of him in the same house, breathing the same air. Once, I heard him laugh, and I had to go out for a long walk so I wouldn’t be tempted to run down the stairs and burst into my mother’s studio. Even then, I found myself walking in circles, turning down streets that led me back to the house, back to the front door, back to the scent of frangipani.

  Every day, I woke up thinking, I’ll go to Paris and see Lauren. But then the flowers came, and so did he, and I couldn’t leave, even though leaving would put all of this to an end.

  ‘Darling, let it go,’ said my mother on the evening of the sixth day. ‘Let him go. You’re obviously unhappy, and he’s developing a sort of tortured expression. It’s getting deeper by the hour.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, pouring us both another glass of wine.

  ‘It’s quite interesting for my painting, but it’s not good for you. I’m ringing him and telling him not to come tomorrow.’

  ‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You want him that badly that you’d rather this than nothing,’ said my mother. She sighed. ‘I recognize the feeling. It’s horribly romantic, but is it worth the agony?’

  ‘Don’t send Ewan away, Mum.’ Even saying his name was painful pleasure.

  ‘It’s silly, you know. If he wanted to be with her, he’d be with her, this girlfriend or whoever she is.’

  ‘I like him better for being loyal.’

  She clinked her glass with mine, then took a deep drink. ‘He’s quite an intense young man. He reminds me of your father.’

  Usually when my mother mentioned my father, I was all attention, hoping for more information about him other than that he lived in France, other than that he was an artist, that he was married to another woman, that he didn’t know I existed, that he was the love of my mother’s life. But I had more pressing concerns right now.

  ‘Do you think Ewan likes me?’

  She snorted. ‘Likes you? His posture’s terrible and he’s got a face like a wet Wednesday, but you could bottle what’s in his eyes and sell it to weary lovers.’

  ‘Mum, I think I’m in love with him.’ It felt like a momentous announcement.

  ‘Of course you’re in love with him. And he’s in love with you.’ She pulled me to her. ‘I’m sorry it has to be so hard.’

  I tucked my head under my mother’s chin. He was in love with me. The wonder and the happiness of it swept through me. Even if I could never touch him again, even if we never spoke, he was in love with me.

  On the seventh day, I went for a long walk in the sunshine. I swam through heat without noticing it. I saw the sunlight glimmering off the sides of buildings and I thought about one thing: He loves me.

  It fizzed through my veins like champagne. It stirred my skin into wakefulness and bounced off the pavements.

  He loves me. Even if I can’t have him, he loves me.

  I laughed to the sky.

  I closed the house door behind me and kicked off my shoes. My feet whispered on the wooden floor as I walked upstairs, into the scent of frangipani.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ewan’s voice above me. I stopped.

  He was two steps down, as I was two steps up. He was bare-chested, wearing jeans, barefoot as I was.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said.

  He wanted me. He loved me. There was no explanation and no letting it go. I could see it in every line of him, his dishevelled hair, the clench of his hand. The look in his eyes that could be bottled for weary lovers. I took a step up.

  ‘I was walking,’ I said, my voice unsteady. ‘It’s a nice afternoon.’ Our eyes met and held.

  ‘I’m not a very good person,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  One of us moved first, or maybe it was both of us at the same time. Me running up, him running down, taking the stairs by twos. He caught my face in his hands and I grabbed hold of his arms and for a moment, we just looked at each other, faces close. His heart pounded, his skin was hot. We stumbled and he caught us with one hand braced against the wall.

  We kissed, on the verge of falling, with no need to breathe.

  I open my eyes. My bath has gone cold and the feeling of being in love is gone, though the traces of it echo in my heart. I get out of the bath, shivering, and wrap myself in a towel. My fingers and toes look like prunes and my hair is a wet straggle.

  Cautiously, I open the door between the bathroom and the bedroom. Quinn is lying on the bed, fully dressed, his shoes off. The paper has fallen to one side and his eyes are closed. His
dark lashes make semicircles on his cheeks.

  Poor Quinn. I’m so sorry for making his last night here miserable. I pull the bedspread up over him and he makes a soft sighing noise before turning over onto his side in his sleep.

  I gaze down at him. Quinn is handsome. He’s good. He’s clever and polite and intelligent, careful and loving and tidy. Punctual and considerate, kind and generous, pleasure-giving in bed, a cuddler in the darkness. He pulls the curtains open every morning, hums when washing up, leaves food out for the neighbours’ cat.

  He’s my husband. He’s the man I’ve chosen. He loves me entirely and without reservation. I love him.

  Have I ever loved him like I loved Ewan?

  I kneel beside him on the king-sized bed. When he doesn’t wake I trace my fingers in the air over his features, knowing the shape of his nose, his cheeks, his closed eyelids, his lips. I remember his smile, the pain in his eyes this afternoon.

  I love him. But do I love him with my whole heart and body, with a hunger and a need that don’t leave room for anything else?

  A drop of water falls from my hair onto my husband’s cheek. Quinn stirs and opens his eyes.

  ‘Oh, you’re finished,’ he says, and he sits up, blinking and rubbing his eyes. He yawns and stands, gets his pyjamas out of the drawer and goes into the steam-filled bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

  In the morning, we’re kind to each other. He brings me a cup of tea in bed. In the newsagent at JFK I buy him the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly World News (headline: BAT BOY FOUND IN WHITE HOUSE CHIMNEY), and a snow globe with the Statue of Liberty in it. He shakes it and the snow swirls around the lonely woman inside.

  On the flight, he puts his arm around my shoulders and we watch a film together, pushing up the arm rest so we can both see the small seat-back screen. It’s easier than talking. His special celebration has been marred and we both know it was my fault.

  Of the two of us, only I know that I’ve discovered I don’t love Quinn as I should. As he deserves.

  The knowledge makes me more tender to him. I snuggle into his chest and I stroke the soft cotton of his shirt. I don’t want him hurt. I hate myself for being the one who has the power to do it.