by Cathy Bussey
It’s all lies, she thought. I threw you away for something that never actually happened, and all this time my parents have been living a lie too. Everything I thought I knew is wrong, and the only thing that makes sense in all of this is you.
It’s always you.
Rik tightened his arms around her and she could feel that his heartbeat had quickened too. He felt very alive and full of a primal, dominant energy and Faith felt her body begin to change and adjust in response, softening and readying itself to just draw him into her. Her hands grasped his back, and she thought, he’s what I need. I want that gravelly floor digging into my back and his body on mine and his voice in my ears. I want him over and over again until we’re both spent and sore and bordering on numb, then I want to just lie back and watch the sky and let it all float away. That’s how I need to let it all go, with him, always with him, because he’s the one I do all this crazy messy uncomfortable soul-sapping life-affirming stuff with, because I love him. I’ve always loved him. It’s always been him.
‘Rikki,’ she said into his chest.
Don’t say it, some forgotten prudent part of herself warned instantly. He wants to, I can feel that he wants to because his heart is going like an express train and he’s breathing a bit too fast, but he’s with Lucinda and you’re a mess and he’s with Lucinda.
‘What is it?’ he asked, his heart still hammering away against her face.
Oh, he wants to, she thought again, I can read him like a book when we’re this close. I still know every single way his body changes when he wants to give himself to me, subtle changes that might be imperceptible to anybody else but I know. If I just said it he would throw me down right here and neither of us would be able to take it back.
It can’t be like this, she acknowledged. It just can’t. I hate Lucinda but I won’t become that woman in the hotel, I won’t take another woman’s man even if he should be mine, even if right now he’s telling me with every part of him that he’s always been mine.
Rik and I make each other stronger, not weaker. I won’t let him do to Lucinda what I thought he did to me. That’s one little twist I absolutely could not stand. She growled into his chest again, pouring out some of her frustration, then she shifted her head and pulled back. ‘I need to breathe.’
He released her reluctantly.
Does he even know, she wondered? Am I here with actual Rik or sixteen-year-old Rik or even fourteen-year-old Rik or some weird combination of all of them? Does his head know what his body just told me?
‘I can clear this,’ he said, gesturing at the remains of her carnage, ‘if you want to do some laps. Bit of mindless round-and-round.’
It’s not mindless round-and-round I need, she thought, and almost giggled. Between me and Lucinda practically throwing ourselves at him he’s going to start feeling like some kind of stud for hire. He’s basically turning into Tackle.
She shook her head. ‘No. Not today. I think I’m done here. I need to go back to the house, see GT. He’ll be worried about me.’ The dog could probably sense her distress even from this distance.
Back at the house Faith was knocked flying by a demented GT, who worried around her all afternoon, growling warningly at everybody to stay away from his mistress. She took him for a quick walk and almost immediately felt unbearably lonely, so she went back to the house and then just as quickly felt desperate for space.
She wandered back and forth, from the house to the pool to the greenhouse to the copse and back to the house again, but no matter where she went, she wanted to be somewhere else. Minel and Paul tried to carry on as normal, and Rik kept checking in but otherwise left her to it, but she could tell that she was affecting all of them and began to think maybe she shouldn’t have come here after all. It’ll pass, she soothed herself, once or twice reaching up to absently tug one of her own curls the way she’d soothed Rik after his fall. It will pass.
If she could just cry, she might feel better. Clouds were gathering overhead and the air felt impossibly close and stuffy, even the sky needs to let it all out, Faith thought, but right now it’s as stifled as I am. She couldn’t even get close, she just felt numb and dazed in between flashes of anger and confusion and wild irritation. She snapped at GT too sharply when he brought her a length of old rope, wagging his tail in the hope of a game of tug of war, and he cowed and she felt dreadful and wondered if his literal hangdog expression might spark something, but then he mounted her leg enthusiastically and she got annoyed with him all over again.
‘What do you think, Faith?’ Paul asked as she drifted vaguely back into the kitchen, the ever-present GT at her heels, to make her hundredth cup of tea.
‘About what?’
‘Breast or bottle?’ Minel said. Faith stared at her blankly. ‘The baby,’ Minel prompted. ‘We’re just thinking about how we might feed him or her.’
‘I don’t know,’ Faith said, turning to the kettle. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Breast is best,’ Rik, who was sitting at the table doing something on his laptop, said in his doctorly tone.
‘But if we bottle-feed,’ Paul said, ‘then I can be involved too.’
‘But what about bonding?’ Minel fretted. ‘I could express, I suppose, but I don’t know if I want to sit around milking myself like a dairy cow.’
‘You’ll probably appreciate it if I can get up and help out at four in the morning,’ Paul pointed out.
‘What are you doing?’ Faith asked Rik.
‘Just catching up on some work. I seem to have fallen behind a bit. A lot.’ He frowned.
Too much sexy time with Lucinda, Faith thought.
She didn’t feel like being inside, not that she was really doing too well outside, either. The closeness in the air was practically squeezing her from all directions, but hopefully the storm would break soon and she could stand out in it, letting the huge droplets of rain soak her skin, watching lightning illuminate the enormous sky and screaming wildly at the thunder like some godawful crone. She could shake her fist and pledge vengeance on anybody who had wronged her. Could she send a bolt of lightning Lucinda’s way?
‘Are you hungry?’ Minel asked. ‘I can make you something.’
Faith shook her head. She wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, she didn’t even want the tea but it had given her something to do. She stalked back out of the kitchen and then paused, and stuck her head back in. ‘Sorry I’m being a basket case,’ she said, addressing Minel but then looking at Paul and Rik so they knew she was talking to them too. ‘Just got to put up with me for a bit, I’m afraid.’
‘As long as you need,’ Minel said immediately.
The afternoon dragged on interminably and Faith waited and waited and wondered what she was waiting for. Bed time, she supposed, but she knew all that would happen was that she would lie awake staring up at the ceiling and her thoughts would continue to plague her.
Why didn’t her mother want her father? Why did they continue with their charade of a marriage and not just part ways? What kept them together? What had driven them apart? How did she fit into all this? She wasn’t naïve enough to still think it must be her fault, but nonetheless she was, to quote Rik, a part of the equation and what was her role in it all?
What was her destiny, would she too find herself one day either in a soulless marriage or forced to look elsewhere for something or somebody to make her feel alive?
And then there were the other questions. What was she going to do about work? About finding somewhere to live? About Rik?
Help me, she pleaded silently, looking up at the still-darkening sky. Tell me, show me, something, anything. What is it I need to do?
The sky, entirely unmoved, carried on with its business.
‘You’re no help at all,’ she said out loud, and then thought she actually probably was going mad.
The storm wasn’t going to break, she finally realised, and neither was whatever was inside of her.
Chapter 21
For the next week Faith didn
’t know if she was in an actual timewarp or just suspended animation. With Minel so tired from the pregnancy hormones that she and Paul retired to bed not long after dinner every night, Faith was virtually alone with Rik and they were practically inseparable.
Paul seemed happy for him to come and help her whenever she needed it, turfing and digging and planting. She told Rik something had happened with her parents but she wasn’t ready to talk about it, and he didn’t press her. Nor did they, by entirely unspoken mutual agreement, mention Lucinda. Instead they talked in more depth about the passage of the last nine years, which Faith found uncomfortable as he seemed to have made a great deal more of them than she had.
‘I know you don’t want to tell me what’s going on,’ he said to her one afternoon. ‘But if this is anything like what happened with your parents last time I really wish I’d been able to be there for you.’
‘It was pretty awful,’ she said. ‘Very lonely, with Minel gone and Sara busy and you and I not talking any more. Although in a way that made it easier,’ she said, ‘because my mum was so humiliated and she was adamant she didn’t want anybody to know. At least with nobody to talk to there was no chance I would let her down too.’
‘You must have been really worried about her,’ Rik said.
Faith nodded. ‘I felt I had to make it up to her, give her the companionship and support my dad should have offered. She didn’t really have friends, just people she badgered into doing charity work for the church. She’s very proud,’ she said reflectively. ‘She wouldn’t even talk to my aunt about it, she didn’t want anybody to know how cut up she was. All she really had was me.’ Faith sighed heavily. ‘When I thought you had cheated on me, I could at least identify in a very tiny way with what she was going through. It was the first real connection I’d ever felt with her. We were in it together, two wronged women — or so I thought. And seeing how insistent she was about holding her head up high in public, not letting anybody know how she was really feeling, I guess I admired that, in a weird kind of way.’
She looked at him, shamefaced. ‘I wanted to be like that. I didn’t want you — didn’t want anybody — to know how much what I thought you’d done to me had hurt me. I didn’t want to talk about it because that would make it more real.’
She shifted absently, feeling the newly-laid acid-green turf giving beneath her feet.
‘And I didn’t want to get back in touch with you, or come back here,’ she said. ‘I guess I was still trying to block it all out, pretend none of it ever happened.’
He touched her shoulder gently. ‘I know how that feels,’ he said. ‘I don’t come back much either. Everything just reminded me of you. But I think,’ Rik said slowly, ‘it might not be like that now.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, it’s better now we’re friends again. And I do want to be friends,’ she went on, only half lying, because any Rik was better than no Rik.
‘So do I,’ he said.
At least we’re moving forwards, she thought hopefully, even if it’s not in the way I want. I suppose I’ll really know we’re friends when he finally starts discussing Lucinda with me, not that I’ll want to hear it, but I can’t just keep pretending she doesn’t exist forever. And as their conversations moved from the past to the future, talking about what they might do after the summer was over and real life began again, it was getting harder to ignore the new elephant in the room.
We’ve replaced not mentioning our relationship, Faith thought, with not mentioning his.
In the evenings he stayed in the house with her instead of disappearing over to the cottage. Under the quiet cloak of the setting sun outside, and with Paul and Minel upstairs, all she wanted was to pull him down onto the sofa and wrap herself around him. She tried to read or watch TV, but she found she couldn’t concentrate and she fidgeted and shuffled next to Rik on the sofa, GT strategically positioned between them by her in case her hands went wandering without her noticing.
‘Do you know what I wish I hadn’t done?’ she said as she put down The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, because not even its sublime watercolours and verse could draw her in. ‘I threw out all those drawings you did of Hollyhocks, and all the notes I made. Every single one. They reminded me of you too much too, but I wish I’d kept them. It was like my own country diary or nature journal.’
‘Start them again,’ Rik said instantly. ‘Take pictures of whatever you want on your phone and I’ll draw them for you.’
‘They won’t be the same,’ she said.
‘They’ll be much better,’ Rik said. ‘Without all those warped perspectives and errors.’
‘I liked all the errors,’ she protested. ‘And those plants and flowers have matured, or died, or variegated.’ What she had wanted was the historical record, so she could pore through them and note how everything had changed. ‘We’d have to start all over again from scratch and I’ve forgotten how it all looked before. I don’t have anything to remind me.’
‘But in however many years time,’ Rik countered, ‘you’ll have the new set to remind you, won’t you? It’s all still going to change. You can’t stop it.’
‘Aren’t you too busy with work?’
He shook his head. ‘Never too busy for you, and you seem like you need something to occupy yourself.’
They worked all week, with GT snoozing contentedly between them among her piles of reference books, until she reluctantly took herself off to bed where she had lucid, troubling dreams until she woke at 3am, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to rise so she could go out and start working again.
But as the week went on and she slept worse than ever, she became more tired and emotional and increasingly close to the edge. On Thursday night she thought about turning in early, but reasoned she would only wake up earlier still, and those lonely hours in the morning while everybody else was asleep were the darkest for her. She didn’t have the energy to carry on with the notes and had to force herself to keep her eyes open through some superhero movie only to find herself bawling her eyes out for no reason whatsoever.
Rik turned the TV off and put his arm around her. ‘What’s Captain America done to warrant this?’
Faith didn’t know herself and she shook her head weakly, pulling a blissfully unaware GT onto her lap. She watched her tears fall into the puppy’s sandy coat, but he slept on and it made her cry harder than ever.
Rik stroked her hair but didn’t say any more, and she cried hopelessly until she felt she had no more tears left. Then, feeling herself calming down a bit, she waited until her shoulders had stopped shaking with silent sobs and gave him a watery smile. ‘Sorry.’
He carried on stroking her hair and she closed her eyes. GT shifted in her lap, but didn’t wake.
‘What was that all about?’ Rik asked eventually.
‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly.
‘Fair enough.’ He took his hand off her hair and she missed it immediately. ‘Think it helped?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said again. ‘Hope so. I guess I’ll know at 3am.’
‘What happens at 3am?’
‘I wake up,’ she sighed. ‘Every night, without fail. 3am on the dot. I’ve been doing it on and off for years.’
‘You need some fun,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come out tomorrow night? Jason and a few of us are going for some drinks, his last days of freedom and all that.’
‘Won’t it be appallingly blokey?’
Rik laughed. ‘I’m pretty sure girls are allowed too.’
‘Isn’t —’ Time for the elephant to make an appearance at last. ‘Isn’t Lucinda coming?’
‘What difference does that make?’
Shit, Faith thought. I sound like I’m treating it as a date.
‘No difference,’ she said quickly. ‘Just thought you might like some time to catch up.’
‘Hmm,’ Rik said. ‘Anyway, no. She’s not coming. Doesn’t want to drag herself all the way down here just to watch me get hammered and complain vici
ously about my hangover the next day.’
More fool her, Faith thought. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll come.’
The Blacksmiths was heaving. Rowdy mobs spilled out into the garden and lounged over the benches, which were crammed to bursting with empty and half-empty pint and shot glasses, cracked mobile phones and overflowing ashtrays.
Jason and his friends were at a far table, and as they approached Faith recognised Simon from the day she’d gone mountain biking with Rik. He got to his feet as soon as he saw her. ‘I was hoping to run into you again.’ He leaned in and Faith proffered her cheek, but instead he went straight for her lips and she stumbled against him awkwardly, caught off guard.
‘Have I made you weak at the knees already?’ he asked slyly as Faith righted herself.
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she chided.
Rik muttered something about drinks and slid off, scowling.
Her tears the previous night must have released something, because Faith couldn’t remember having so much fun. As Rik had promised, she wasn’t the only girl, a charming redhead and her blonde-haired friend joined them. They were both younger than her and full of life, talking enthusiastically about their burgeoning careers and plans for the rest of the summer, and Faith felt imbibed with the joy and promise of being young and carefree and having her whole life in front of her. Which I do, she reminded herself. I’m twenty-six, not seventy-six.
Simon kept bringing her drinks and trying to barge his way into the conversation. ‘He likes you,’ the redhead noted, nudging Faith.
‘He liked me a few months back,’ the blonde said knowingly. They all giggled.
Rik had noticed Simon’s advances too and was glowering at Faith from across the table. What’s his problem? she wondered. I thought he was over all that scowling and hostility. He couldn’t possibly be annoyed at her for talking to Simon. Not after that appalling clinch with Lucinda in the kitchen. If anybody was entitled to feel annoyed around here it was her, given that she was still hopelessly in love with him and had spent all week practically immersed in him and he wasn’t really showing any signs of being affected in the same way.