He never said that, I reminded myself. He just said that he hadn’t brought the women back here.
But why not?
But most alarmingly of all, I discovered that I was jealous.
Instead of asking what I really wanted to ask, namely, about the other women, I enquired after his wife: ‘You didn’t live here with your wife?’
‘No, we spent all our time in our house in Kensington. She didn’t like it here, she said it was dismal and depressing. Cynthia was a city girl, through and through.’
‘I could never be depressed here,’ I sighed wistfully, ‘It’s so beautiful. So peaceful.’
As soon as it was out of my mouth, I cringed. Christ, it had really sounded like I was fishing for an invite to move in.
‘What were your parents like?’ I added quickly to gloss over my blunder.
‘My parents? They were old money.’
He fell silent, gazing into space with a faraway expression in his eyes. I didn’t know whether to press him further, and just when I had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to hear about his parents today, he began to speak:
‘Yes, they were old money, and they were everything that comes with that. They were cold people. I didn’t have a happy childhood – I barely knew them, really. I was at boarding school from the age of nine, and they passed away within months of each other when I was eighteen. Both had cancer.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. That’s so sad,’ I said, my heart going out to him. ‘I lost my dad when I was twelve. It hit me hard and my teens were difficult.’
I neglected to mention the part where I was institutionalised when I was sixteen for a suicide attempt. Not even James had known about that. No one knew, apart from my mother.
‘I’m truly sorry to hear that. Seems like we’ve got more in common than just spouses who have passed away.’
‘How did you and Cynthia meet?’
I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to know too much about his wife. “Full disclosure” in a relationship was all well and good, but too much honesty invariably came back to bite you in the backside. It only fuelled future jealousy, something I had learned the hard way when I had confessed to a drunken one-night stand before I had met James. James had brought it up now and again, and although he would never admit to it, I could tell that it had bothered him.
I was of the opinion that some things should never be shared, that it did more harm than good. Yet asking Aaron about his ex was akin to picking at a scab – it was satisfying at the time but would invariably leave a scar.
It suddenly hit me that I was thinking about Aaron in terms of a relationship, and that fact rocked me to the core.
Is this what this is? I wondered. A relationship?
‘Cynthia was the daughter of friends of the family. I’d known her all my life. Not very well, but she had always been there, on the outskirts of my life. It was generally accepted that we would end up marrying.’
His response was not what I had expected; his marriage sounded very much like one of convenience. Surely that couldn’t possibly be the case in this day and age?
‘Did you love her?’
I found myself pinned down by his devastating gaze, unable to tear my eyes away. My heart beat faster in my chest and the moisture was sucked from my mouth.
‘I was very young when I married, only twenty-two, one year younger than Cynthia. I hadn’t known much affection in my childhood, but I did love her, in the only way I knew how. And that affection grew over time.’
What kind of answer is that? I thought to myself.
‘I’m so sorry you lost her, Aaron,’ I said softly.
He sighed deeply, resting his forehead against the post. ‘We didn’t have the easiest of marriages. When we were younger we had… problems. But we worked through them. I guess we both mellowed with age. Cynthia always hated this house. She said it was haunted with memories of my past. She said the place was bad for me.’
‘Do you think that’s true?’
‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I think it brings out the real me.’
‘Then it’s the right place for you to be. The past is the past; it can’t hurt us.’
Was that even true? I wasn’t sure. I liked to think it was, but the dark thoughts always found a way to seep in through the cracks.
And there was never any stopping the nightmares.
‘How about you? How did you meet James?’
I closed my eyes for a second, the rush of memories assaulting me. ‘At a party, through mutual acquaintances.’
‘Was it love at first sight?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, sidestepping the direct question. ‘He was intelligent, kind and funny, and we hit it off straight away.’
Yes, I had loved James with all my heart and soul, but our relationship had been a slow burn. It had taken me a few months to see him as anything more than just a friend – at first I had found him too nice, too sweet.
What a fool I had been. What precious time I had wasted.
‘I understand,’ he said without a trace of smugness or malice. ‘Mostly, love grows from friendship; it was the same with me and Cynthia. The thunderbolt is rare. Rare, but not impossible.’
He stood up and I turned my back to him to gaze out of the window at the spectacular view of the Atlantic. Directly next to the window was a large Elder tree, some branches of which came almost halfway across the window. I glanced down at the thick trunk, marvelling at the structure of it. It was nature’s rendition of a perfect ladder and I could imagine the ease with which a person might climb it.
‘Joyce,’ he said from directly behind me, startling me, for I hadn’t heard him approach.
He laid his hand on my shoulder and I flinched as a high voltage of electricity swept through my body. When he gently turned me round to face him, I was trembling.
‘Joyce,’ he said again, more softly this time, cupping my face with his hands.
I could only stare helplessly and weakly up at him as he lowered his head to kiss me. When our lips touched my entire body crackled. My legs felt like rubber beneath me, and my heart banged hard and fast against my sternum. When his tongue pushed past the barrier of my lips, my head swam at the sensation and instinctively, my hands found their way to his broad shoulders and clung on tight.
Before I knew it he had swept me up into his arms, cradling me to his chest like a fainting heroine from an old, black and white movie. I clung to his shoulders, one hand entwined in the thick hair at the base of his neck, pulling his mouth down harder on mine.
I felt as if I were dreaming as he effortlessly carried me over to the bed like I weighed no more than a bag of feathers. Gently, he laid me down on the luxurious silk and satin as if I were the most precious object in the world, his lips not once breaking contact with mine. It was all so elegant, so romantic, and God, he was just so gorgeous it physically pained me. I had never felt so desired and desirable, so completely and utterly feminine. The man was a balm for my troubled soul.
He kissed me deeply, but tenderly. I could feel how every muscle in his body was tense with repressed desire, with his need for me. A strong thigh fell across mine, trapping me in place, but our torsos did not touch. His free hand gently massaged my upper arm as the kiss deepened, sinking me further into the blackhole of desire I was falling into.
I gasped into his mouth when his big hand gently cupped my breast through my sweater, igniting the flame of my desire further.
His lips moved away from mine to trail light kisses down my jawline to my neck. He nuzzled me there, where neck met shoulder and I gasped at the sheer eroticism of it.
‘Joyce,’ he whispered, his voice thick with desire. ‘God, you’re beautiful.’
I could only gasp in reply, my eyelids helplessly fluttering at the delicious onslaught to my neck. His other hand grew more insistent, exploring the contours of my breast; kneading, moulding, leaving me weak with need. One hand on his flexing shoulder, the other entwined in his hair,
I never wanted the delicious sensations to end. Without realising it, my non-trapped leg at some point had snaked around his hip, my inner thigh and shin rubbing against the hard contours of his manly body.
A distant, familiar voice broke through my fog of last, bringing me snapping back to my senses. I don’t think Aaron heard, but then, a mother’s senses are finely tuned to hear the distant cries of her offspring, no matter how faint.
‘Mummy? Mummy!’
What the hell am I doing?
I scrambled from underneath Aaron, bolting for the door.
‘Joyce?’ he called after my, his voice coated with lust and confusion. ‘What have I done?’
‘It’s Becky,’ I said without turning around.
I think it was guilt that made me overreact to the cries of my daughter. She was only waking up from her exceedingly brief nap, after all; it was hardly a crisis. But even so, I flew down the stairs, my heart slamming and my entire body still tingling with a potent mix of lust and guilt.
God, I thought, what was I thinking? I was a terrible mother.
‘It’s all right,’ I called out in a vaguely demented, singsong voice. ‘Mummy’s here.’
‘Mummy,’ Becky cried when I burst in the living-room, her little face wet with tears, further adding to my non-sensical drama.
I went to her and she clung to me. ‘It’s all right, baby,’ I said, stroking her hair.
I sat like that that next to her until her sobs had subsided and I too, had calmed down. When I looked up, Aaron was standing in the doorway leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. He was remarkably unruffled, making me feel even more of a dishevelled fool.
‘Are you ladies okay?’ he asked, the faintest trace of a smile tugging at his mouth.
I had difficulty meeting his eye. ‘We’re fine.’
‘That has to be the shortest nap in the history of naps,’ he said.
I felt my stupid face heating up, again, and buried the side of my cheek in Becky’s hair.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ he asked me.
‘That would be lovely,’ I mumbled.
‘You girls wait there, I’ll be back in a minute.’
Again, I marvelled at the slickness with which he always seemed to know what to do. It was as if he had sensed that me and Becky needed a few moments alone, and he had made himself scarce accordingly.
Yeah, he’s pretty much perfect.
Too perfect, came the unbidden thought, catching me by surprise.
Silently chastising myself for overthinking every last little thing, which was generally a major fault of mine, I concentrated on my daughter.
‘Did you have a nice sleep?’ I asked her, gently prising her off me.
She gazed up at me with her wet face and using the sleeve of my jumper I wiped her cheeks and eyes. I drew the line at asking her to blow into my sleeve, though – she would just have to sniff.
She nodded morosely, but at least she had stopped sobbing.
Oh God, Aaron’s going to think I’m such a fool, I thought despairingly.
Buster took that moment to amble into the room. His sudden appearance made me jump, and Becky flinched in my arms.
‘Buster!’ she then cried happily, her tears all but forgotten.
I watched him as sniffed at everything on his journey towards us, silently praying that he wouldn’t cock his leg against anything. He didn’t make a habit of weeing inside – apart from that one, excruciatingly humiliating time in Barclays Bank – but he was still just a dog, and as such, unpredictable.
Yeah, he’s definitely proved himself to be that, I thought sadly.
When he reached us, he lay his head in my lap and looked up at me with his big, molten brown eyes. Sometimes, he really did remind me of “Lady” from Lady and The Tramp, with his silky hair and dopey, doe-eyed expressions that never failed to tug at my heart strings. He was such a gentle dog.
Or at least, I had always thought that he was.
Becky patted him clumsily on his head and tugged at a silky ear.
‘Be gentle, sweetheart,’ I said, but Buster didn’t so much as flinch, just like he never did when it came to Becky.
Maybe Buster bit Aaron because he just didn’t like him. Maybe he sensed something bad about him, something rotten…
Good grief, I was really on a roll today, I thought. I closed my eyes for a second, washed away on a tide of conflicting emotions. Buster gave my hand a lick, and I opened my eyes, smiling sadly down at him.
‘Oh, Buster, what are we going to do with you?’
Although I knew the answer to that one. Cast him out of the family home. No second chances. No looking back.
He looks ill.
I frowned, peering at Buster more closely. He certainly wasn’t his usual, boisterous self. The outer edges of his brown eyes were ringed with red, and there was a glazed look to them. He was also panting. Yes, Buster was a typical, slobbery sort of dog, but he didn’t pant all the time.
I ruffled his neck in the way I knew he liked, suddenly noticing how dark the room had become, and when I glanced over at the nearest window, I saw that it was raining.
Aaron reappeared in the room, balancing a tray in one hand, and holding a flat, wide box in the other that looked suspiciously like a board game. Smiling, he strode over to us and placed everything on the smoky-glass coffee-table that was a foot away from where me, Becky and Buster sat.
‘Weather’s taken a turn for the worse,’ he said. ‘I was going to suggest we kick a ball around in the grounds, or something, but not when it’s this miserable. My poor old bones won’t take that, I’m afraid. So who fancies a game of Monopoly instead?’
I squirmed slightly on the sofa, all too vividly remembering how I had been on the verge of jumping his poor old bones all of ten minutes ago, and I blushed hot in a mix of longing and embarrassment.
‘You don’t have to keep us entertained,’ I said, regretting the fact that I hadn’t followed him in my own car and we were now reliant on him for a lift or at least a taxi ride home.
‘What else am I going to do this rainy afternoon? The entirety of my social circle is in London, and I happen to like Monopoly.’
No one likes bloody Monopoly, I thought. He’s just trying to be nice.
‘You really don’t have to do this.’
‘Please stay,’ he said, his grey eyes pleading with me as surely as Buster’s did when he wanted his dinner. ‘Please, Joyce, I want you to stay. It’s lovely having you all here, it breathes life into this old place. Unless you have somewhere to be, of course, I don’t want to keep you from anything.’
He seemed so genuine, so keen for us to stay that I couldn’t help but relent. ‘Okay, fine, but I warn you now, I’m always the first to go bankrupt.’
He beamed at me. ‘And I always make sure that everyone goes bankrupt.’
‘Sounds like this game might be a little predictable.’
‘I don’t think anything about you is predictable.’
His gaze was so intense that I had to look away. Thankfully, I was saved from answering because he bent over the coffee-table to retrieve one of the steaming cups of coffee and handing it to me.
‘White, one sugar, just as you like it,’ he said.
I accepted the cup with a thanks, not having the heart to tell him that I didn’t take sugar, that I only reached for a lump of it in the café and restaurant for want of something to give my hands to do because he made me so damn nervous. From the tray, he handed Becky her pink plastic beaker, refilled with juice. She took it and immediately started sucking before peering with some interest at the flat box on the glass surface.
‘What is it, Mummy?’
‘It is a cold-blooded, ruthless game enjoyed by capitalists, designed to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer.’
Becky just looked at me blankly and Aaron burst out laughing. ‘Grab the other end of the coffee table, will you, I want to drag it nearer the sofa.’
Placing my mug back on
the table next to his, I lifted an end of the table mere millimetres off the ground at the same time as he did, taking the utmost care not to spill the drinks as we moved the table the short distance over towards the sofa.
That done, Aaron sat down cross-legged on the floor on the other side of it and proceeded to set up the board game.
Becky watched him with rapt attention, any residue shyness quickly dissipating.
‘What do you want to be, Becky?’ he asked, showing her the choice of little silver pieces that were to be moved around the board.
‘That one,’ she said, gingerly picking out the Scotty dog from the palm of his hand.
Normally, I always picked the dog too, but there was no way I would’ve picked that today, anyway; it would’ve felt too much like bad karma.
‘Joyce?’ he asked.
I picked out the boot, and Aaron chose the top hat, which for some reason made me giggle.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows at me.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly. ‘Just, you know, you would pick that, because you’re posh.’
‘You’re so juvenile.’
I suppose I was just happy, perhaps borderline delirious. Being here in this beautiful house with Becky and Aaron just felt right. Outside, it had darkened considerably, and the rain lashing against the windows lent the vast room a cosy feel.
We played Monopoly for at least an hour, until Becky lost interest. I thought she had done remarkably well to remain invested in the game for so long, but then, the three of us had a good chemistry together and Aaron was never anything less than utterly engaging.
Just before five o’clock, Aaron gave us a lift home.
‘Don’t worry, we’re coming back tomorrow,’ I said to Becky as she clung onto Buster for dear life in the hallway.
‘Indeed,’ Aaron said. ‘Buster is having his very first lesson tomorrow and I need you here to help me.’
We managed to coerce Becky into the car without too much difficulty and only a few tears, leaving Buster behind in his new home.
The Silenced Wife Page 8