Love After Love

by Alex Hourston

  ‘New?’ he said, laughing and evasive. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I mean, this latest phase.’

  ‘Well, no. We hook up now and then. More so lately. It’s been going on for years. I imagined—’

  ‘You imagined what?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know, really,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘I kind of imagined you knew.’

  ‘How would I know if you haven’t told me?’ I said, feeling an inkling of failure. ‘Don’t you think we would have talked about it, David? If I had known.’

  ‘Yes, now that you mention it,’ he said. He gave a dry laugh. There is a crease of worry that drops down from one edge of David’s mouth. It isn’t always there but to pull it onto that careless face has always felt like a win. Proof of love.

  ‘So who else knows?’ I said.

  ‘Well, Mum,’ he replied, dropping his gaze.

  ‘She knew you were here?’ I said.

  ‘Oh no. I mean about the two of us.’ I tucked that slight away for later.

  ‘And she had nothing to say? I suppose it went on throughout Alice’s marriage, did it? You played your part in that collapse?’

  He made a long frustrated sound.

  ‘What do you care, Nancy? What has that possibly got to do with you?’

  Something beeped from another room and I laughed spitefully at the thought of his involvement with some sleek domestic apparatus.

  ‘Are you needed?’ I asked but he didn’t reply. Growing up, he had hated me like this, alert and sensitised and snarky.

  ‘So you’re living here, now?’ I said.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a plan. Look, sit with me. Please,’ he said.

  He took a low seat, faintly waffled like natural candle.

  ‘Me and Skyler were pretty much done and Alice had been wanting to give it a go for a while. I wasn’t sure, but at the party, when I saw my life in one room, it was obvious that she was the best thing in it.’

  He looked up to see how that declaration had landed, but I made no response.

  ‘I woke up the next morning feeling all kinds of shitty and just left. It’s grown from there,’ he said.

  ‘Off you went,’ I said. ‘On a whim.’

  ‘I took a chance, Nancy, if that’s what you mean. I saw something that I thought could make things better and I followed it.’

  The money had rubbed off on him in subtle ways. This backdrop amplified his glamour. He looked like some sort of creative or maybe a chef. I wondered if she’d sent him to her hairdresser and upgraded those jeans. His beauty made me angry. It struck me that perhaps he was just happy.

  ‘I called you the next morning,’ he said. ‘You didn’t answer.’

  ‘Well you could have tried again.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I was taking a break.’

  ‘From what?’ I said.

  ‘All of it,’ he replied. ‘Just for a bit.’

  ‘Including me?’

  ‘Yes, including you. You weigh heavy, Nancy. You ask a lot.’

  ‘I would have kept your secret,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have spoiled it for you.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied and felt a sharp clean hurt and the knowledge that he was right, I might well have ruined it, or at least had a go.

  A cat appeared, the same colour as the couch. A car pulled out of its spot outside and started away with a huge throbbing roar.

  ‘This place is a joke,’ I said.

  ‘Probably. I don’t care about this place.’

  There is a little cuff of hair that shows beneath his sleeves. His hands are rough and designed to build. His face is slick as Hollywood, that wave of liquorice hair.

  ‘I should probably be thanking you, Nancy,’ he said. ‘I’ve been wondering, why did you invite her anyway?’ His tone was light and curious.

  ‘What?’ I asked, to earn myself another second or two.

  ‘To the party?’ he said. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Why not? I invited everyone I could find,’ I replied, and once I might have believed that of myself but it was not true, I had done it out of spite, to shame him in her eyes, or show him what he had lost, how far in life he had fallen. But he knew all that, and for an instant, I thought that he would call me on it but instead he took my hand. I jumped at his touch.

  ‘Not OK?’ he asked, looking down at the knot of our fingers.

  ‘Yes. Fine.’ I had forgotten this about him, his sudden sweetnesses.

  ‘So what’s up with you then?’ he said. ‘Louisa phoned me very anxious. She says that something’s wrong.’

  I watched our matching hands.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he said.

  ‘Not really,’ I replied.

  ‘So there’s clearly someone else.’

  ‘Why would you say a thing like that?’ I cried, childish and hostile.

  ‘It’s obvious, Nancy. There’s something different about you. It’s been coming for a while.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said but that wasn’t right; I had felt it too.

  ‘You’re altered, somehow. The space you take up. There’s more of you now.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said again.

  ‘That’s pretty rare, at our age, you know. That kind of change,’ he said, and I saw an envy on his face, a look I didn’t know. ‘How does it feel?’

  ‘I can’t do it any more,’ I replied, in a shrunken voice.

  ‘That’s sad,’ he said.

  ‘Not for Stefan and the kids.’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘I thought my sister could do anything. Nancy the Brave, wasn’t it?’

  I tried to read his face for subtext but there was nothing but the old wry smile.

  ‘This isn’t the moment to lose your nerve,’ he said.

  ‘Just forget it,’ I said. ‘I want you to forget it, OK?’

  Before I cry, my face fills with blood, a sweep of heat and colour.

  ‘Come here,’ David said, but I couldn’t stand his pity, least of all from this new, privileged vantage.

  ‘I need you to observe my privacy,’ I said stiffly.

  ‘Oh right,’ he replied, and I laughed with him, a little, at that.

  ‘Come here. I love you. Always and forever or whatever that bollocks was.’

  There was a small stretch of comfort to be had in his arms.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he said. ‘Have you got the time? I need to pick up the kids. They’ve been at their father’s,’ he said, in flagrant challenge, in anticipation of my contempt, which I did not voice.

  ‘So it’s you and Alice now, is it?’

  ‘For the moment,’ he said. ‘She’s great, you know.’

  ‘She always was,’ I said.

  ‘I have to go in a minute. Will you walk with me?’

  I told him that I had to get home.

  ‘By the way,’ he said at the door, and his face showed a little tease. ‘That business with Matty Coombes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your email. That’s not quite how it went, my dear martyred sister. Think again,’ he said, and he winked, that wink that was his trademark, and it took me back again, to summertime and the pond.

  *

  Our mother had wrapped Matthias’s wound. I couldn’t stop looking at it, the way the blood filled the cloth.

  ‘I was looking for Dad’s medal,’ he began to say.

  I turned to David. A triangle of ribbon rose out of his shorts pocket, natty as a folded handkerchief. He covered it with his hand and I felt the danger of his situation.

  Matthias started back to the house, feeble in his pants. Mum ran ahead for towels. But David, when I looked back at him, showed no arrogance or dare. He was afraid.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ he said.

  ‘Shut up. Give it here,’ I replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just give it. Be quick.’

  ‘Are you going to te
ll on me?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid.’

  He extended his arm and I snatched the medal and flung it towards the pond in an extension of that movement. The throw was high and wild. It made a terrible plink as it hit the water and then the whole thing was gone in a sudden heavy drop.

  ‘Right,’ I said. I held my finger close to his face. I seem to remember a single tear. ‘Not a word. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Mum won’t mind.’

  ‘Yes she will. She’ll kill you. You mustn’t say a word.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll be OK?’ he asked.

  ‘I know he will. Now promise me, David. Don’t make a fuss. It’ll only make things worse.’

  It was the summer before the split, everything already badly wrong but me still believing I could fix it through sheer strength of will.

  He turned away and kicked a gnarl of root, launching a fan of earth into the air.

  ‘It’s not good to keep secrets,’ he said. ‘Mum says to always tell the truth.’

  ‘Not this time. Promise me, David,’ I said, following him round, finding his face again.

  ‘I promise,’ he said at last.

  ‘Good. And the very least you can do now, is say thank you.’

  ‘Thanks, sis,’ he said, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  29

  Home, when I got back, was the same as always, a muddle of love, resentment and dependency.

  ‘How is he, Mummy?’ Louisa asked, washed out from last night’s drama.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘better than fine,’ and thought of him debriefing Alice in the filtered atmosphere of that house, over a glass of something special.

  ‘He sends you all his love and he’ll be round to see us soon,’ I said. ‘Did anyone call, Stef, when I was out?’

  ‘No, Nancy,’ he replied. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘So everything’s back to normal,’ Frieda cried and threw her arms around her daddy. Just for a second, my cover slipped and I assumed my true form. I withered and shrank, my face matched my heart, but I’d forgotten Lou, who had slid up onto the counter and watched, her legs hugged to her chest, steady and appraising. The tenor of the room changed and for a moment I thought I was about to faint or suffer some other cognitive collapse.

  Then: ‘Look at that,’ Jake said, pointing. ‘The Ciao’s gone out,’ and it had; something must have fused, for every little bulb in all four letters had blown, leaving one side of the room in partial darkness.

  ‘I’ll sort it,’ Stef said. I unstuck rotting fruit from the bottom of the bowl and he took a pear and ate the unblemished side in quick precise bites, stripping it efficiently. He threw the core in a slow arc into the compost bucket, which woke the dog.

  ‘He shoots. He scores!’ Jake cried and high-fived his father. ‘Are there any more? Can I have a go?’

  Louisa took her chance and tried to slip by – she can be light and silent – but I caught the top of her arm, narrow enough that I could almost close my hand round it.

  ‘Lou,’ I said. ‘Can we talk?’

  She narrowed her eyes. Her hair was wisps around her old-fashioned aristocrat’s face. She is an anomaly, Lou; she bears no resemblance to anyone under this roof, her genetic story begins with my mother and flows backwards into that well-bred past.

  ‘Come into my bedroom,’ she said, which was a surprise. I followed her up the stairs, righting photos knocked wonky as I went. We both paused in the doorway. It struck me that I was her guest.

  ‘My friends usually sit on the beanbag,’ she said. ‘But I think you might be better off on the bed.’ She took her own place on the swivel chair by her desk. The room needed an update; piles of books she’d long outgrown all over the floor and old framed artwork on the walls.

  ‘Can you come a bit nearer, Lou,’ I said. ‘I feel like I’m being interviewed here.’

  She dug her heels into the carpet and pulled herself a leg’s length closer.

  ‘I want to talk to you about your call. To Uncle David,’ I said.

  She tugged her hoodie over her knees and bent her toes up into it. I saw a huge hole worn through her sock at the pad of her foot, evidence of another tiny failure. Her eyes on me were level.

  ‘Is there something—? I wondered if there was anything you’d like to talk to me about,’ I said.

  ‘Like what?’ she replied.

  ‘I don’t know, Lou. Whatever it was that made you phone David. He says that you’re worried about me, or something.’

  She swivelled lightly on her bottom, setting the seat of her chair moving left and right.

  ‘You don’t need to be, OK?’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘I thought you missed Uncle David,’ she said.

  ‘I did, sweet, but he’s back now. And it’s not your job to try and solve these adult problems.’

  ‘I thought that you could talk to him. You told me once that he was your best friend,’ Louisa said.

  ‘He was—he is—it was very thoughtful of you but—’

  ‘But you’re still not happy, are you?’ she said. She dipped her head, intent upon her movement, her hair hiding her face.

  ‘Louisa. I don’t know where you’ve got this idea from. It’s been a difficult time, that’s all. You don’t have to try and understand everything. Just let it be. It’s fine.’

  ‘I know a secret,’ she said, down towards her toes.

  ‘OK,’ I replied, carefully. ‘And what sort of secret is that?’

  ‘A big one,’ she replied.

  ‘And has someone asked you to keep this secret?’

  ‘No. I found it out. By accident,’ she said, looking up quickly.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it then?’

  ‘I thought you said I shouldn’t keep secrets,’ she said.

  ‘I did. I do. Is it making you feel bad?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied and a flat dread landed on me.

  ‘Then you must,’ I said. Lou is a worrier in the abstract, about things that could, would or might. When they do, she is dead calm.

  ‘But telling you might make things happen,’ she said. ‘Things that I don’t want.’

  Downstairs, the music of a reality TV show started. ‘We’re watching telly,’ Jake bellowed. ‘We’re not waiting. We’re going to start without you.’

  ‘Please look at me, Lou,’ I said, and I knew that this was wrong, that I should respect her boundaries, that she had established this distance to enable herself to speak, but I had to see her, to gain some clue as to what was coming, and when I saw the pinch of her frightened face, I sent out a shameful prayer, that of all the terrible things that she might go on to say, none of them would have anything to do with me.

  ‘It’s already happened, Lou, whatever it is. You can’t change that.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can say it out loud,’ she said thoughtfully, and I allowed myself to hide, for one last time, in the easy fiction that I had been careful, that I had left no traces, but this is Louisa and she is patient and focused and in love with the truth.

  ‘You can,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you now that you can.’

  ‘But if I don’t. If I never say a word, I think it might go away,’ she said, ‘and that would be good,’ and I saw that she was making me an offer, she was telling me she would save me, if I asked her to. My brave and resolute child.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that, Louisa. It will never go away. Now tell me,’ I said and came down off her bed. I took her hands in mine, knelt at her feet.

  ‘I know that you love somebody else,’ she said.

  Her look, just above me, was clear and frank and temporary. Its collapse began, and the impulse to stop it by whatever means, to deny it all straight away, surfaced briefly, but Louisa saw that and went on.

  ‘It’s that man from your work.’

  ‘Louisa. He and I are friends. I can see how you might—How perhaps—Look, hold on. You tell me what you’re worried about and I’
ll see if I can put your mind at rest.’

  She looked at me shrewdly and then accepted these terms with a nod. She sat a little straighter on her chair and I recognised that my youngest was now my opponent. I watched her wonder where to begin.

  ‘I see how you are together,’ she said, sullen suddenly. ‘I’m not some stupid baby any more.’

  ‘You’re not, Lou. Not at all. And yes, we are close, Adam and I. We’ve known each other a long time. I can see how it might look like something different.’

  ‘You’re weird around him,’ she said. ‘You don’t act normal.’

  ‘Well, it might just be that you’re not used to me having friends who are men,’ I said.

  ‘He uses your words.’

  ‘Well, the things I say don’t belong to me—’

  ‘Why did you get so cross about Frieda going over there, Mummy?’ she asked and I saw her confidence spike and I thought, is this all you’ve got? And a little spring of hope arose.

  ‘That’s more complicated,’ I said, hitting my stride. ‘It can be hard for a mother to see her child form a relationship with someone else. It’s silly and it’s selfish and I didn’t behave very well,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’ I wondered if that would be enough.

  ‘Then what about this?’ she said and pulled open her drawer. She reached in and when she withdrew her hand, whatever she held inside was hidden completely.

  ‘What is that?’ I said, watching the bones of her knuckles bulge white through her thin skin. The question grew huge and then she twisted her fist over quickly and opened her hand like an illusionist. Inside lay a bronze Zippo lighter.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ I said.

  ‘Adam’s house,’ she replied. ‘On the table, by the window, when we went over to look for Free.’

  ‘Well, you mustn’t take other people’s things,’ I said, ‘what on earth were you thinking?’ and I saw her blink, her shame at her own infinitesimal wrong.

  ‘It’s got this on,’ she said, holding the spine of the lighter towards me, ‘the flame, or whatever, just like your necklace,’ and I saw her eyes drop to my throat, where the matching image hung, the dream or wish, or whatever it was, and a million evasions began in my head, but I looked at her solemn little face and couldn’t lie any more.