Missing You

by Douglas, Louise

Fen covers the letter with the palm of her hand. ‘Mari.’

  ‘It’s a pretty name. Is it Gaelic?’

  ‘Irish. My mother is Irish. My father’s Scottish and my sister and brother and I were all born in England but we grew up in Wales.’

  ‘Must have made things tricky in the Six Nations.’

  Fen laughs politely and he laughs with her.

  They both stop laughing at the same time, and there’s an awkwardness.

  Fen gives an apologetic shrug. ‘I need to get Connor to bed,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, of course,’ says Sean. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  It’s not far from Bath to Swindon, but an accident has closed the eastbound carriageway of the motorway. Sean is listening to Nirvana, singing along, tapping out the rhythm on the steering wheel to put himself in a good mood, and when he turns on the radio to find out why the traffic up ahead has stopped, it is too late. He is trapped. Lorries dwarf his car on either side, their giant tyres and vertical walls of metal shimmering in the heat from their engines. Sean idles the motor and calls Belle’s mobile to explain why he will be late. She is already at Membury services. She is unsympathetic.

  ‘Why didn’t you leave earlier?’ she asks. ‘Why didn’t you come straight from work?’

  Sean feels a tingle between his shoulder blades. He wonders whether it is feasible that the source of his pain is Belle. Could he actually feel the loss of her as a physical pain? The car in front of him moves forward a few feet, and then stops again. No, he thinks, shifting in his seat. It’s just that I spend too long sitting in this bastard car.

  ‘I had to sort out the room, to make it nice for Amy,’ he explains. ‘That’s why I couldn’t leave earlier.’

  Belle sighs a long-suffering sigh. ‘Sean, you’ve had all week to do that. You didn’t have to leave it to the last minute.’

  Sean sighs back. He can do patronizing too; she doesn’t have a monopoly on that.

  ‘I can’t help the traffic jam,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘It’s just,’ she says, and he can hear the frustration in her voice, ‘it’s just you always do this. You’re always messing me around.’

  Sean holds his breath. He can’t deny this. There is always some kind of problem when it comes to him honouring the rendezvous arranged by Belle. He doesn’t do it deliberately, but some devil in him connives with the world to ensure something goes wrong every time he is on his way to collect Amy, or on his way to take her back to her mother. Belle, for whom life seems to run more smoothly, finds this intensely frustrating. These late changes in the arrangements set her weekends off to a bad start, but he invariably has a valid excuse so she can’t accuse him of direct sabotage. For Sean, it’s a Pyrrhic victory, for Belle’s anxiety infects Amy and this minor discord seeps into his weekend. It’s a victory, nonetheless.

  He plans a little speech in his head which goes along the lines of saying he may be late, but if he were still living in the family home, that wouldn’t be an issue, would it? And Belle, presumably, did not take into consideration the potential inconvenience to him, Sean, when she took up with the Other. He, actually, believe it or not, would rather be driving home, home, right now … home to his house, the house he and Belle chose together, the one they were going to stay in until Amy and their future children had flown the nest, the family home.

  But if he says any of this, the conversation will deteriorate into accusations and the reliving of past hurts and slights. And it would be petty and mean and pathetic. It would confirm that Belle had made the right decision in choosing the rational, reasonable Other over Neanderthal Sean. It would demean Sean in her eyes, and his.

  ‘Belle, I am sorry, ’ he says, making an effort to sound sincere. ‘I can see the traffic moving up ahead. Why don’t you get something to eat? I’ll pay.’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Are you doing something special this weekend?’ Sean asks. ‘Is that why you’re upset?’ Now he’s trying to sound empathetic. It works. He hears her gentle, relieved exhalation. The texture of their dialogue is smoothed. If only he’d worked out how to do this before … If only he’d known that was what he had to do … He makes a fist and salutes his new-found, new-man self. He will win Belle back. He is learning.

  ‘We’re going to St Ives,’ says Belle in a more subdued voice.

  ‘Cornwall? That’s a long way to go for a weekend.’

  ‘It’s our anniversary.’

  ‘Your anniversary?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says quietly.

  ‘Oh.’

  And Sean thinks back; he thinks back to this time last year and how he took a week off work so Belle could join her tutor group for a study week in Cornwall, and how, when she came back, she seemed to have grown in confidence and energy, and how she changed her hairstyle and laughed a lot and kept going off for walks, on her own, with her mobile phone in her pocket, and how her eyes were bright and her cheeks pink, and how she said she was as happy as she’d ever been … and how he’d thought she meant that, now she was being intellectually stimulated by her degree course in creative writing, she was happy with him.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he says.

  ‘I promised you no more lies,’ she says.

  ‘I know, but … I wasn’t expecting … a year, Belle? It’s been going on for a whole year?’

  ‘Sorry, ’ she whispers.

  A year. That’s twelve months’ worth of lies, fifty-two weeks of unfaithfulness, three hundred and sixty-five days of deception, who knows how many hours and minutes and seconds of pretending.

  ‘Christ,’ says Sean. ‘Shit!’

  His brain is trying to assimilate this seismic new information. It is fighting back a tidal wave of memories, small inconsistencies in Belle’s accounts of how she spent her days, sudden changes in her plans, how she would shower when she came back from her tutorials, the new clothes, the new perfume, the brittle laughter, the energetic, let’s-get-it-over-with-quickly sex.

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Sorry … The signal’s going,’ says Sean, and he puts the phone down so that she will not hear the effort he is making to stop himself fragmenting into a million little pieces of humiliation and hurt.

  nine

  ‘Gëzuar Krishtlindjet e Vitin e Ri,’ says Vincent.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. In … Albanian, I think.’

  Fen smiles and shakes her head.

  It’s been a mad busy morning. The Christmas rush always starts early in Bath, and this year is no exception. Literary aficionados come into the shop in search of special gifts for like-minded friends, others are looking for something a little out of the ordinary, and some, Fen thinks, are just looking to escape the crowds. The Gildas Bookshop is an oasis of quiet and calm. The city is already filled with piped carols; shop windows are overflowing with energy-saving fairy lights, their political correctness tempered by the red and gold of tasteful, Victoriana point-of-sale displays; tens of thousands of shoppers are trip-trapping through the streets, bumping each other’s legs with their smart carrier bags filled with delightful, shiny, well-packaged items; they are queuing to buy wraps of genuine roasted chestnuts and cardboard cups of mulled wine from entrepreneurial street vendors. At this time of year, Bath is a cathedral to Mammon, but the bookshop is devoid of glitter, twinkle and marked-up prices. The only concessions to the season are the foreign-language Christmas cards and a tiny, old, three-bar electric fire. The top bar doesn’t work, but still the fire warms the air in the shop until it is heavy and thick and anyone standing within about a metre of the appliance will scorch their legs. The heater makes the shop smell of burned dust. It’s not a pleasant smell and after a while Fen can taste the dust in her mouth and feel it in the moisture that coats the surface of her eyes.

  Fen has been making a display of the greeting cards. They are beautiful things, photograph
s of winter landscapes of the countries they represent, each captioned in the appropriate language.

  ‘Hah,’ says Vincent. ‘You’d have to go a long way to find another shop that stocks Christmas cards in, er –’ he turns over the card he is holding – ‘Lithuanian!’ Normally a man given to self-deprecation, today he is exceptionally pleased with himself.

  ‘What if the words are inappropriate?’ asks Fen. ‘What if they’re wrongly spelled? What if that doesn’t say, “Happy Christmas”, what if it actually says …’

  ‘That’s what the internet’s for,’ says Vincent happily. ‘When the shop’s quiet, Fen Weller, you can make yourself useful by Googling the phrases and seeing what comes up.’

  He wags an affectionate finger at Fen. ‘You never stop learning, dear girl, that’s the beauty of life.’

  The migraine that has been hovering just outside Fen’s field of vision all morning finally swoops in for the kill just before lunch. She sees a shimmering mirage before her, a pool of mercury that darts whichever way her eyes turn, and the familiar, spiteful vice has begun to tighten around her skull. She battles on, but Vincent, who is always attentive, notices that she is not right.

  ‘Sit down a while; you’ve gone very pale,’ he says, offering his chair, but Fen knows that if she gives in, the headache will win. ‘Your skin looks bleached. Would paracetamol help? Ibuprofen?’

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘thank you, but they won’t touch it. If I ignore it, it may go away.’

  Lina comes into the shop. ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she says to Vincent, going over to him for a hug and a kiss. ‘Hello, Fen. What have you done to your eyes?’

  ‘Nothing, I …’

  ‘She’s not feeling well,’ says Vincent. ‘Migraine, I suspect, although she hasn’t said as much.’

  ‘Oh, Fen, nobody likes a trooper,’ says Lina. ‘It shows the rest of us up.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ says Fen.

  ‘You blatantly aren’t.’

  ‘Is your car nearby, Lina?’ Vincent asks.

  ‘It’s in the Waitrose car park.’

  ‘Be a dear and fetch it,’ says Vincent. ‘Give Fen a lift home.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ says Fen.

  ‘You look like death warmed up; you’ll frighten off the customers,’ says Lina.

  Vincent, who would never be so discourteous as to comment on a woman’s appearance, unless it was to pay a compliment, does not contradict Lina. He pushes back the hair that has fallen from the top of his head over his eyes.

  ‘Have the afternoon off,’ he says. ‘Go and lie in a darkened room until Connor comes home. And if you’re no better in the morning, don’t come in.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Fen. ‘You are a lovely boss.’

  ‘I know, dear girl,’ says Vincent. ‘I know.’

  Lina drives like a man, fast and tight, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other flat on the gear stick. Fen braces herself as Lina braves the car round the bends and through the lights at the London Road junction, squeezing through impossibly small gaps as she races up Snow Hill.

  They reach Fairfield Park in record time and Lina drives down Crofters Road, skimming past the narrow, terraced houses trickling down the hill, but there are no spaces. She loops back up again along Claremont Road, and stops the Mazda in the middle of the road outside Lilyvale. A Range Rover pulls up behind.

  ‘You’ll be OK?’ she asks Fen.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Call me this evening,’ says Lina. ‘Let me know how you are.’

  Fen leans over and kisses Lina’s cheek. In the wing mirror, she sees the Range Rover driver make a frustrated gesture, both palms upturned.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she calls to Lina, ‘and thank you!’

  The fifteen minutes out of the shop, away from the heater, have made Fen feel a little better. Still, she thinks, she’ll do exactly as Vincent suggested. She’ll fill the kettle and put it on to boil while she changes into something less constricting than the demure navy-blue dress which Vincent says makes her look vaguely Jane Austen-y, a look which he believes appeals to the punters. Then she’ll fill a hot-water bottle, make a mug of ginger tea and get into bed; she’ll close her eyes and lie there until Connor is dropped off by the school transport. She’ll have at least three hours to herself, and by then the flashing lights will have gone from her eyes and the worst of the pain will have passed.

  The sky is hazy, silvery. There’s a strange light over the city and the buildings are highlighted; they stand out like two-dimensional cut-outs, as if they were a film set. Fen recognizes the light. It usually precedes thunder, and she thinks this is one of the reasons why she has a migraine. As soon as the storm comes, her head will clear.

  She goes tentatively down the steep, front garden steps, because she is still a little dizzy and the mirage has begun to zigzag giddily in front of her. She holds up her key to unlock the outer door, but as soon as her hand touches it, it swings open.

  Fen swallows. She remembers locking the door before she walked to work. It was only a few hours ago. She remembers rattling the handle to double-check. Or is it yesterday she’s remembering? Were the blood vessels in her brain already constricting this morning? Migraines do weird things to her mind. They make her forget. Maybe she forgot to lock the door. Or maybe Sean has come back early. Maybe he’s come to collect something.

  Still her heart begins to race.

  She pushes the outer door wide open, sweeps aside a flyer on the doormat with the toe of her shoe and opens the inner door with her Yale key.

  ‘Hello?’ she calls quietly. ‘Sean?’

  There is no answer. The doors to all three downstairs rooms open off the hall. They are all ajar. Fen can see into the kitchen, ahead of her. It is empty but there’s a Starbucks carton on the counter that wasn’t there before. Fen steps into the hall, and checks the living room and dining room. Both are empty. Both are as they were when she last saw them.

  Her heart is beating so strongly that Fen can clearly feel the muscle contracting and pulsing in her chest. Breathing is difficult; she has to remember to inhale but the air only seems to reach the top third of her lungs and she exhales shakily. She stands still, listening, and she hears movement upstairs, she hears water.

  At first she thinks that this is the sign she’s been waiting for – the sign that Tomas is back. The water is the clue, the running water. But much as she wants this to be the truth, there’s a more plausible explanation; she knows there is.

  The cold tap that feeds the bath is broken. Sometimes she twists the handle tight into its thread until she is certain the tap is turned off but minutes, or sometimes hours, later water splashes from the spout. Sean said there’s something wrong with the plumbing; air in the system, he said, and it needs bleeding. Sometimes, when one or the other of them flushes the lavatory, the whole house groans and rattles. When Fen suggested calling a plumber, Sean told her to save her money. He said he’d look at it. He is, she has noticed, inclined to volunteer for mending and maintenance jobs around the house, although he never seems to find time to actually carry them out.

  Fen holds her breath to slow her heart rate.

  Her head is throbbing.

  ‘Which is more likely?’ she asks herself firmly. ‘That the cold tap has turned itself on again, or that Tomas is upstairs running himself a bath?’

  Still she is careful. She pulls off her boots, takes hold of the banister and puts her bare left foot on the first stair.

  Fen creeps up the stairs, moving one foot after the other, cautiously unpeeling her sole from the carpet at every step to make herself as light and quiet as possible. She treads carefully, breathing in little shallow gasps, trying not to imagine how she will feel if she taps on the bathroom door and Tomas is there, in the bath. What will she say to him? What will she do?

  ‘Stop it!’ she says, out loud, but very quietly. ‘Stop.’

  At the top of the stairs, she pauses, rests a moment.

  Th
e bathroom door is open.

  It’s not the cold tap making the noise. It’s not the bath either.

  It’s the shower.

  Fen takes two more steps forward, and looks through the narrow gap between the door and the door frame. The earthy, damp warmth of the bathroom, mingled with the metallic smell of hot water and the hot-plastic smell of the shower curtain, seeps through the crack.

  There is no ghost in the bathroom.

  It is Sean, and he’s alive. He is very alive.

  He is standing beneath the shower.

  The shower curtain is drawn and water streams down it, steam billowing softly so his silhouette and his colours are blurred, like the countryside seen through a rain-soaked window.

  He is leaning forward. One arm is braced against the wall, slightly below the chrysanthemum-shaped shower head. The fingers of this hand are extended, spanned for balance, the palm supporting his weight. His head is inclined downward, so his face is hidden by the arm, and the water from the shower is firing onto the crown of his head, pelting down his back, which is slightly arched.

  Although his body is hazy through the curtain and the water, Fen can tell that he has a beautiful shape from the way his back slopes into his buttocks, the length of his thighs and the tapering of his lower legs to his ankles.

  One leg is bent gracefully at the knee, like a statue of an Athenian athlete about to run a marathon. The braced arm and the bent knee give Sean’s body a heroic pose. But it’s the movement of his other forearm that holds Fen’s eyes: the V shape of the elbow, smudged behind the curtain, and the rhythm of the wrist working that private, universal, unmistakable sexual rhythm.

  Fen is spellbound.

  Everything drains from her mind.

  She is aware of nothing but the man in the shower just a few feet away from her, the beauty of him, the movement beneath the raining water.

  She holds her breath and she watches.

  She watches as the steam plumes, as the water splashes into the bath and trickles down the curtain. She watches as the water streams out of the shower head and down Sean’s wet hair, down the incline of his neck to the shadow of his shoulder blade, down the dark hairs of his leg to the bend of the knee. She watches the tension of his back, the movement of his elbow, his arm, his far shoulder arching even further, so muscular, so intent and intense. She breathes in his beauty as she watches and after a moment, after forever, he groans loud enough for her to hear. Then his head relaxes, and the working arm falls to his side and she sees the tension leave him.