She drew back and looked at him, and he wiped away the residual tears from under her eyes with his thumbs.
‘What do you want to do?’ he said.
‘Do?’
‘Yeah. I mean now, and tomorrow, and the next day. What do you want to do?’
‘Right now, I just want to finish this red wine with you,’ she said.
‘Fair enough.’
‘Then I’ll leave the car where it is and get a taxi home.’
‘Right.’ This didn’t sound good.
‘Then I’ll meet you back here, in Rundle Street, tomorrow morning.’
‘OK.’ Better, much better, although he desperately wanted to take her back to his hotel room, undress her, and spend all night with her, above her, beside her, beneath her.
‘We need to talk,’ she said.
‘Sure thing. And after that is there any chance I could get my hands on you?’
She tipped back her head and laughed, and he stared at her lovely throat, thought how much he’d always loved to make her laugh, and how rare her laughter had been when he’d known her at sixteen. He said, ‘I keep thinking you’ll vanish, Alison. I mean now, right here, I’m worried you’ll just melt away like an apparition.’
‘I won’t,’ she said, immediately serious. She took his hand.
‘I looked for you, y’know,’ Dan said. ‘When you disappeared from Sheffield. I looked for you. I didn’t know where you lived – and that nearly killed me, the shame of not knowing – but anyway I knew it was Attercliffe and your house wasn’t that hard to find, once I started asking people about Alison Connor.’
She was very pale now, and silent, watching him, and he didn’t want to cause her pain, dragging up an unwelcome past, but God Almighty, he’d suffered as never before or since when she left him, and to this day he had no idea why she’d gone. ‘I found your mother,’ he said.
Ali withdrew her hand and felt a bloom of cold sweat beneath her shirt, and an old, familiar tightening in her throat and gut, a constriction that made her breathing shallow and difficult. She saw Catherine, mottled bare legs, short skirt, cleavage that guaranteed a few free drinks, and the old stale musk of fag smoke, spilled booze and urine. And she saw Daniel, that beautiful boy, trying to get some sense out of her, trying to piece together a story he’d never really understand.
‘She didn’t help,’ Dan said. ‘She couldn’t.’
Ali shook her head, only the slightest gesture really, barely discernible, but conveying undiluted misery. ‘Can we not do this?’ she said. ‘Not yet?’
He shrugged and stared into his glass. He felt strongly that the time, in fact, ought to be now; God knows, an explanation was long overdue. But he could see her distress – it was palpable, almost feral – and from what he remembered of Catherine Connor, he could understand she might be a mother to forget. Peter had been more approachable; there was humanity in his eyes. But also, he’d been cagey, on edge, always glancing sidelong at the door, at the window, at Catherine, as if there was nothing here he could trust. Still, though, he’d offered Daniel a glass of water, and sat him down before telling him Alison was gone for good.
‘I wrote to you,’ Ali said. He was startled, amazed.
‘Did you? When?’
‘I’d been away about three months. I was in Paris by then, and I wrote to you, three times, as soon as I had a permanent address. I thought you might turn up, or write back at least, but then I decided you probably hated me.’
‘Alison, oh my God, Alison, if I’d got a letter from you, nothing would’ve stopped me coming to you.’
‘They didn’t arrive, then?’
‘Christ knows. I would’ve been in Durham by then, trying to be a student.’ He thought about that abortive first term, the piercing sense of loss that he had carried there with him from Sheffield.
‘But my letters … did your mum ever forward your post to you at uni?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She did, occasionally. Official stuff so I could sign on, and the odd dirty postcard from Kev Carter.’
‘But nothing from me?’
They stared at each other.
‘I think she maybe didn’t trust me,’ Ali said.
‘Oh my God.’
‘I think she thought I was trouble.’ She remembered that July afternoon, Marion Lawrence shouting down the street after her, Is there something our Daniel needs to know?
‘She didn’t send me your letters.’ Dan’s mind raced, recalibrating the details of the past. The difference it would have made! The difference, to him, to Alison, to their place in the world. She’d been his technicolour dream, his yellow submarine, his be-all and end-all, and then, for a few years at least, all the colours had drained away and he’d been plunged into black and white. ‘I do remember her telling me I’d best forget you,’ he said. ‘After you went, and I couldn’t find you, she said you seemed very troubled and the best thing would be to forget I’d known you. I told her to fuck off, and she went off on one, cried and raged, really unlike her, but I’d never sworn at her before, had to say sorry about a thousand times. My dad hid in his pigeon loft for two days.’
Ali’s face softened. ‘Bill,’ she said. ‘I so loved Bill.’
‘He loved you too, he probably still does, although he barely speaks these days.’
‘Oh, Daniel, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world, but I had to get away, not from you, obviously not from you, but from everything else.’
‘You seemed to be happy enough the night before, at the High Green miners’ welfare.’
She was silent. Not a soul on earth knew what she’d endured on that dreadful Saturday, when Martin Baxter had turned up and altered the landscape entirely, so that the night before had seemed to belong to another time, another country, and she’d felt so stained, so ashamed – it had seemed, to her, for a long time afterwards, that all she was, was shame.
‘Sorry,’ Dan said. ‘I don’t mean to reproach you.’
‘No, it’s OK. There’s a story to tell, but I don’t have the words.’
And you a writer, he thought; he wondered how black her story could be, but he only smiled at her and said, ‘Another time then.’
‘Did your mum tell you I came to see you?’ Ali said suddenly. ‘The Saturday you were in Manchester?’
‘Nope, my dad did, said you’d turned up all upset then run off. He was agitated, really agitated.’
Ali said, ‘I know, I’m sorry, I just really needed to see you.’
‘But you knew I wouldn’t be there, didn’t you?’
She shook her head, trying to cast off the memory. ‘I forgot. But oh, look, there’s such a lot you don’t know, and I don’t blame your mum, she thought I had a screw loose.’
‘I sodding well blame her!’
She laughed. ‘Sodding. Great word. I haven’t heard that in decades.’
‘Everything changed after that,’ Dan said.
Ali nodded, and leaned in to kiss him softly. She was filled with remorse and sympathy and regret, but she allowed herself to marvel at this feeling of belonging. She knew exactly what she’d found in Dan Lawrence; she understood how very much it mattered.
She picked up her glass and took a drink, watching him watching her. ‘Y’know,’ she said. ‘Sending me a song, and that song in particular, all those weeks ago, was unalloyed genius on your part.’
He nodded his head slowly, in full agreement.
‘That’s why we’re here, tonight,’ she said.
He nodded again.
‘I stalked you, after you sent it,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘I know what you’ve done, who you’ve become, what you’ve written, where you live, who you’re with.’
‘Snap,’ he said.
‘Katelin, Alex and McCulloch,’ said Ali.
‘Michael, Thea and Stella.’
‘Our loved ones.’
‘Our other loved ones,’ Dan said.
&
nbsp; She reached out and ran the fingers of one hand slowly through his hair like a comb. She felt besieged by tenderness for him.
‘I only told you I loved you once,’ she said. ‘You were fast asleep, you didn’t hear.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Did I ever tell you I love you?’
She shook her head: no.
‘So, I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you. Always have, always will.’
They talked until all the lights went on, lights that could wake the dead, so that they realised it was just them and the barman, the one with the knowing look and the arch manner, who said, ‘Sleep tight,’ as they left, in a voice that suggested he knew there’d be no sleep at all for this pair. He was wrong, though, Ali was going home, and they walked together the short distance to the taxi rank in Pulteney Street, then waited for one to turn up, not touching, standing slightly apart, feeling oddly awkward together for the first time, as if the change in environment from the intimacy of a crowded pub to the midnight quiet of the street had somehow altered the rules of engagement. An old aboriginal man with dusty skin and pale, clouded eyes watched them mildly from his heap of blankets in a shop doorway and a police car split the warm night with its siren. When a cab drew up, she told the driver her address through the open window and then turned back to Dan.
‘Be at the Ex at midday, OK?’ she said. ‘Pack your stuff, bring it along, you’ll need it,’ and then she got into the car, and Dan closed the door, blew her a kiss and watched her go. He must have had about him an air of abandonment, because the old man in the shop doorway raised his bottle of grog unsteadily and offered Dan a consolatory drink.
‘Appreciate it, mate,’ Dan said, ‘but no, thanks.’ He lingered on, though, because he recognised brotherly solidarity when he saw it, and he didn’t want to seem ungracious. The old man stared greedily up into his eyes as if he was reading the small print of Dan’s soul. He revealed no insight though: showed neither approval nor disapproval, nor did he seem to draw any conclusion. He merely examined Dan intently for a while; then he suddenly lost interest, looked away, took a long, long draught of Bundy, and broke into an odd, disjointed song in a language completely new to Dan’s ears. It was so weird, Dan thought, it was all so fucking weird: the heat, still solid as a brick wall at half past midnight; the old man on his bed of blankets, those milky eyes, his oddly mystical presence. Surreal. But no more surreal, on balance, than kissing Alison Connor tonight for the first time in three decades.
It took him ten minutes to get his bearings and find his hotel, and, once there, he stripped off and lay on the bed, and prepared to not sleep – he was physically exhausted but completely alert thanks to the jet lag that had already claimed him in Hong Kong. He didn’t switch on his laptop, didn’t check his emails – because real life lurked there. Instead, he considered Alison, considered her fine features, the waves in her hair, the jeans she wore so well, and the white linen shirt, her slender hips, the curve of her waist, the dip at the small of her back. He considered, too, the unexpected delight of her response to his message. She’d come directly to him, when she could have panicked, or prevaricated, or cut and run. She’d just stepped into his arms in the spirit of a homecoming, naturally, without inhibition. She was his perfect ten, his Sheffield girl, and God knows how she’d ended up all the way across the globe, with an Australian accent and an Australian husband. Didn’t that guy know where she belonged? Dan, suffused with longing, rolled on to his stomach and groaned into the pillow. He wanted her now, needed her, craved her; but tomorrow would do, it would have to, and anyway, how fucking incredible that they had a tomorrow to share.
In the meantime, he decided he’d send her a song, and he reached for his phone. He’d send her John Martyn; he’d send ‘Go Down Easy’. It was the only thing he could do, under the circumstances. It was time.
Monday morning, and Ali was busy weaving a web of lies. Michael listened to her in silence as she laid out her plan for the coming week: to go back to Quorn, where the creative block that had descended these past weeks might lift. She must make progress with this new novel, and it wasn’t happening here, it just wasn’t. In Quorn, she might find a way to make the words flow again, roll the rock from the mouth of the cave, let the light in.
‘It’s the pressure of a sequel,’ she said. He was standing with his back to her, watching the birds at the water bath. ‘It’s the expectation, I think. I’ve never had this before. Before, nobody cared what I wrote or when it’d be finished. Now, it’s like, “Where’s the book? We needed it yesterday!”’
She heard her own voice, a study in guile. There was truth in what she said – she hadn’t written a word for weeks. The lie was in the untold. She watched her husband, who wouldn’t look round but remained stubbornly fascinated by the galahs battling it out for a turn at the stone trough. She wondered if this meant he knew already that she hadn’t been with Tahnee until after midnight last night, and this idea – plausible enough, given her own reckless behaviour in the pub – sent a wave of anxiety through her gut, which disappeared as swiftly as it had come when he turned around and said in a perfectly normal voice, ‘Are Sheila and Dora there at the moment?’
Now she was a little ashamed at the relief, which suddenly seemed to indicate a lack of character, an absence of resolve. ‘I haven’t called them,’ she said. ‘I will, soon, but Sheila always leaves a key under the Buddha, she told me it was there, if I ever dropped by and found them gone.’
‘Dropped by? Hardly likely, unless you’re en route to the desert.’ He was pouring coffee now, his second cup, which meant that soon he’d be gone.
‘Sorry it all got a bit angsty last night,’ she said. ‘Cass was pissed when she arrived. I could see it in her face, her eyes were too wide and wild.’
Michael said, ‘Cass is a liability the minute she steps through the door. But it was Stella who won the trophy for obnoxious behaviour last night.’
‘She’s going to stay with Thea in Melbourne tomorrow, she’ll be out of your orbit for a while.’ Oh, how very hard she was working to keep him sweet! She felt her guilt must surely show, like the scarlet letter, branding her a sinner, forever unworthy.
‘I know she is, but she’ll be out of sight, not out of mind, and she’s driving me crackers.’ He drained his coffee cup and put it in the sink, where he stared at it for a few seconds, just stared, as if the dregs at the bottom might hold some answers.
‘So,’ Ali said, a little uneasy, eager to be alone.
He turned around from the sink and said, ‘So?’
They stood either side of the pale oak surface of the kitchen island, and she moved round it now, to the same side as him, so that he could touch her if he wanted to, although he didn’t, and she didn’t touch him. ‘You don’t mind, then? If I take off?’
‘It’s up to you what you do,’ he said. He folded his arms and leaned away from her, against the sink. Dressed for work he looked polished and controlled, and it was so difficult to gauge his mood. ‘I’m not going to give you permission.’
‘I’m not asking for permission,’ Ali said. ‘I’m asking if you mind.’
‘OK,’ he said, and he sighed like a man whose patience was being sorely tried. ‘Well, cards on the table, I’d rather you didn’t go, but I suppose I don’t mind, if you feel you must.’ He looked at her, and there was a challenge in his expression; she saw it now for sure, and, seeing it, she realised it’d been there all along.
‘What’s going on, Ali?’ he said, and wham, there it was again, that cold liquid fear coursing through her gut, mouth instantly dry, proving her a lightweight once more, even now, at this early stage in the game, when so little actual wrong had been committed. Fight or flight, she thought; how basic we are, how very predictable. She swallowed, and chose to fight.
‘What kind of question is that?’ she said.
He launched into an attack, bombarding her with evidence. ‘You’re distant and distracted, you’re on your phone at odd times, lik
e last night, at the table – the moment I left for the kitchen, it was in your hands. You lock the bathroom door, you spend hours in your office with the door shut tight, you take off for runs rather than spend time with me, you don’t look at me as often as you used to, you don’t seem to hear me, and if you do hear me, you don’t seem interested. Plus, you hardly smile, unless the girls are with us. I feel – like, really feel – this distance between us, like we’re on opposite sides of a chasm, and it’s as if it happened overnight, but it gets wider and wider and I can’t halt it, because I don’t understand it.’
He ceased, and there was a silence. Ali recognised this description of herself at once, but she didn’t recognise Michael, the Michael who’d studied her so closely, noticed these differences in her that she couldn’t deny. He hadn’t ever seemed particularly observant before, had never remarked upon her habits or rituals, but now she realised this was because he’d had no cause to. She hadn’t known she’d been so careless, so imprudent in her manner towards him these past few months. She’d forgotten how very well he knew her, forgotten that as she’d allowed herself to slip away from him, towards Dan, he might be watching, and wondering, and worrying. Now, she placed a hand on his arm and caressed it, because the instinct to comfort and reassure ran deep, even as she prepared to betray him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry, Michael. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s writer’s blues. I know I’m retreating inside myself, but it’ll pass.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d say that, but I reckon it’s something else.’ His voice was neutral, but she could see from his expression the effort it cost him to remain steady in the face of this unnamed, intangible threat. ‘In all our years of marriage, I’ve never had cause to doubt our future, but these past few weeks …’ He tailed off, shaking his head in confusion, but he kept his eyes on her face; his penetrating eyes that suddenly seemed to be searching for more than was visible. ‘Something’s changed, Ali, and it’s not me.’
She steeled herself, chasing away her doubts, clinging on to her right – and it was her right, she felt this most passionately – to go her own way, for once: to explore life’s possibilities, to think only of herself. She couldn’t tell him the truth, though; she couldn’t explode the known universe. If this was cowardice, she was unrepentant now, because Dan Lawrence deserved consideration too, and an explanation, and through him, she thought, she might find the key to herself.
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