The Last Day

by Claire Dyer

  ‘What do you think?’ he asks.

  She knows he wants her to like it, it would make everything so much easier if she did; it is their only option after all.

  ‘It’s sweet,’ she says, looking up at him.

  As he says, ‘Shall I show you our room?’ his phone buzzes.

  ‘I’ll leave it; whatever it is can wait.’

  ‘It might be about the sale of the house in Merlin Crescent,’ Honey says.

  ‘Mmmm, it may be, but I’m going to leave it anyway. This,’ he takes a step towards her and gently cups her face with the fingers of his right hand, ‘is more important. You are more important.’

  Honey feels as though she’s being watched, that Vitais watching her, that she’s doing something wrong. She feels like she did in the early days when she and Boyd were just beginning, when she wasn’t so sure of him, when she felt everything she did was brazen and dangerous. And now, it’s still like she’s the other woman and that they shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be touching her face in the kitchen of this house. He bends down and brushes his lips against hers. Instinctively her insides tighten and she leans in towards him; she can feel herself melding her body to his; she fits into it perfectly. It’s corny, but it’s true.

  ‘Come on,’ he says, turning her around so she’s facing the front of the house again. ‘Upstairs with you, wench!’

  Boyd’s voice is low and gravelly. She’s never been brave enough to question why she fell for him in the first place. She guesses some therapist or do-gooder would say that, because they’re both fatherless, she sees him as a father substitute and he sees himself as one too, and that with him at forty-six and her at twenty-seven, he’s far too old and wise for her and she’s far too young and inexperienced for him.

  Well, perhaps not too old or wise, otherwise they wouldn’t be here, with their possessions in the car, the flat they lived in up until this morning rented out to a stranger. Perhaps, if he was wiser, he would have power of attorney over his mother’s affairs and have persuaded her to make a will, his estate agency wouldn’t be in the parlous state it’s in right now and he wouldn’t be making this sacrifice for her and Trixie’s sakes.

  And, as for her? She may be young, but she’s not inexperienced. No, sir. There’s still a great deal about her that Boyd doesn’t know, that he mustn’t know.

  He’s following her; she can feel his breath on her neck. She wants him. Even here, even now, she wants his body on hers; his weight on her and in her. She wants to be on her back, lifting her hips to meet his.

  They go up the stairs. At the top, the landing splits and, to their right, leading to the back of the house, is a corridor at the end of which is the bathroom. A doorway along the corridor opens on to what will be their room; it had been the spare room when Boyd lived here before, or so he’d told her.

  She pauses in the doorway. Time is passing. He said Vita had agreed to wait for them to get settled in before she came back, but Honey hadn’t thought to ask him what time this may be. Somewhere in the house there must be clocks ticking. Seconds are pulsing through the phones in their pockets. Outside the sun is ever so slowly slipping down the afternoon sky.

  The room obviously faces west as it’s flooded with light. The bed’s covered with a white counterpane. There’s a mahogany wardrobe in the far corner and a dressing table under the window. Yet again, there is a fireplace. This time it’s been painted white. The grate is empty and everything in the room looks clean, clinical almost, like a stage that’s been set and is waiting for the actors to arrive with their messy dramas, their clothes strewn about, clusters of jewellery, a pile of books to read.

  ‘Will it be big enough?’ Honey asks. ‘For all our stuff, I mean. There’s no TV downstairs, not that I could see. Is there room in here for one do you think?’

  Boyd’s still standing behind her so she’s looking over her shoulder as she says this. He kisses her neck. Again, that thrill passes through her.

  ‘We’ll sort something out, I’m sure,’ he says. ‘Maybe I can persuade Vita to have one installed downstairs, you never know!’ He laughs a small laugh, then adds, ‘Come on, woman, let’s start bringing our stuff in. It’ll be best to do it before she gets back.’

  ‘OK,’ Honey says and they turn and go back out of the doorway. She’s following him this time; his body sways from side to side. He doesn’t pause at the top of the stairs to look into what used to be his and Vita’s room but she can’t stop herself from doing so. She glances in. Because it’s facing the front, away from the sun, the light is less savage inside it, is gentler almost. She sees a vast, unmade bed, full-length green curtains made out of some silky material, a pair of trainers on the floor, the laces of which are white and luminous. A red chiffon scarf on the bed looks like a wound. On the fireplace there’s a black and white photograph of a couple in a silver frame.

  Honey thinks of the bread and the salt. She has to stay positive. If she doesn’t, this isn’t going to work.

  Because the house is at the end of the row and because the road is a cul-de-sac, it’s quiet out the front. When she steps out of the front door, she can hear Boyd huffing and puffing as he starts lifting stuff from the car. She should be helping him but instead she’s watching him stack their belongings in neat piles.

  She’d always promised herself to journey light; this is the most she’s ever moved from one place to the next. And it’s not just clothes and things like that this time. Now she has photographs, books with her name in them, a job, a phone and charger. She has a debit card. And she has Boyd. She is moving with him too.

  She knows Boyd. She knows he’ll hope that as she’s not helping, she’ll be inside the house, breathing it in, making herself feel at home. But instead she’s watching him, transfixed, remembering.

  * * *

  It’s later and Vita still hasn’t arrived. Boyd and Honey have almost finished unpacking. A blackbird is shouting his evening news from the apple tree, the sun is getting larger and lower, the sky is striped with thin, silky clouds.

  Honey’s putting her and Boyd’s toothbrushes in a glass on the shelf above the basin in the bathroom when she hears it: the unmistakable whirr of a bicycle being wheeled down the path next to the house. A latch lifts. A gate opens and closes. Slowly she moves back into their bedroom but stops by the bed; she can’t look out of the window. She doesn’t want to see her yet. She’s not ready.

  Next there are footsteps up the garden path, Boyd’s wife is clearing her throat, then she coughs. Still Honey can’t look; she doesn’t move.

  Downstairs, the back door opens. Boyd’s voice is low and achingly familiar as he says, ‘Oh, hi Vita. You’re home.’

  Vita

  I’ve been rehearsing this moment all day. Well, if I’m honest, I’ve been rehearsing it for weeks, ever since Boyd asked if he could move back in. But why should I need to rehearse? It doesn’t matter whether he’s here or not.

  But, I’ve had a bad day. I’ve been waiting in the park since they arrived, am hot and tired and the job I’m on isn’t going well: bloody stupid dog, bloody stupid owner. And now, I’m walking in the back door of my house and Boyd is there, a massive presence again and there is something solid and permanent about him and he’s saying, ‘Oh, hi Vita. You’re home.’

  ‘So, you got a degree in the bleeding obvious or what?’ I say, hurling my bag on to the sofa at the back of the kitchen. I choose not to look at him but can sense his shoulders tense. After all, I know him. We may have been separated for six years but we’d been married, and happily married, for fifteen years before that. Well, we’d been happy for most of them. The last one had been a bit shit.

  There’s a noise from upstairs: a bump and a shuffle. I’d momentarily forgotten about that bloody girl. Honey. Again, what sort of damn stupid name is that?

  The noise is a timely reminder. Boyd must have heard it too.

  ‘Thanks for making us welcome,’ he says. ‘The bedroom looks comfy.’

  We’ve nev
er admitted it, not even subconsciously, but it was in that room that our marriage had, to all intents and purposes, ended. After he’d gone, I’d washed down the paintwork with bleach and repainted the walls. Now it’s bland and magnolia and the evening sun will be streaming through the window. I imagine Honey up there, her bare feet on the carpet.

  I snort, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear and, in one deft move, take off my glasses and start cleaning the lenses with the hem of my smock again.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say, still not looking at Boyd. ‘It’s not like I had a choice. Not really.’

  ‘I thought,’ he says, ‘I’d rustle us up some supper. For all of us. We can have it outside. It’s a lovely evening. What do you think?’

  I know he’s asking for more than my agreement to a cold meat and salad supper. He wants this to work. For the three of us to get on. And why shouldn’t we? I’ve spent six years convincing myself that us being friends is the ideal solution. The rest? Well, that’s been parked as just something that was so fucking sad, such a fucking waste.

  ‘Oh. OK,’ I say, putting my glasses back on.

  I’m known for them, my glasses, that is. They’re big and red and like something from the eighties, but they’re my trademark now. I’m wearing them in the headshots I’ve had done to publicise my stupid pet portrait business; I’m wearing them in the self-portrait on the homepage of my website; my logo is a pair of large red spectacles, the frames spelling out my name. ‘All very Dame Edna Everage,’ Boyd used to joke. Back in the day. Back then, before …

  ‘I’ll be down in a bit,’ I say now. ‘I’ll just pop upstairs first.’

  ‘Honey’s up there.’

  ‘I kind of guessed she would be.’

  I take a deep breath and tell myself everything’s fine. This is what I expected, what I agreed to. Yet, when I get to the top of the stairs I find I can’t look to the right, can’t propel my feet along the landing, can’t nonchalantly pop my head around the bedroom door and say, ‘Hi, settling in OK?’ like I’d rehearsed.

  Their stuff seems to fill the house; there are still some boxes in the lounge that Boyd hasn’t unpacked. I imagine them both as giants, ten feet tall, with voices that boom and echo. I imagine their toothbrushes in the bathroom leering at mine, leering and laughing.

  But it’s quiet up here, so quiet I think I can hear the girl breathing. I turn left into my room, saying, Fuck it, to myself.

  I thought I’d made my bed earlier but no, here it is resplendently unmade, a pair of trainers on the floor and a blood red scarf, the same shade as my glasses, snaking across the scrunched up duvet. The photograph of my parents stares at me from the mantelpiece.

  The scarf was a present from Colin. I move forward, pick it up and wind it through my fingers. Colin. Bugger, I’d forgotten all about Colin. I think back to when Boyd told me about Honey and asked if they could move in. The words ‘pot’, ‘kettle’ and ‘black’ had ricocheted around my head, but no way was I going to tell Boyd about Colin. Not then, and, it seems, not now either.

  But was I supposed to be seeing Colin tonight? I can’t remember. I track back through the day. We’d spoken this morning as I was getting on my bike and he was walking down his path to the road. He’d said, ‘Hope it goes OK,’ and I’d wondered at the time whether he meant the job I’m on – the bloody dog, his bloody owner – or whether he’d meant this evening and me getting home to find that Boyd and that girl had moved in.

  No. We weren’t due to see one another tonight. We’d agreed it would be best to do things slowly. Let me get used to having Boyd back in the house and at least to be able to string a coherent sentence together to Honey (yet again, what sort of name is that?) before introducing them to Colin. It should be OK to introduce my husband to my lover, shouldn’t it? After all isn’t that what Boyd is doing now, introducing his wife to his lover? But I don’t want to; I’m not ready to do it yet.

  I sit on the bed, the scarf still threaded through my fingers. I should open the window. Let in some air.

  It had been a Saturday morning in early May, a week after Boyd had asked his ‘favour’. We were naked, Colin kneeling behind me on the bed. We’d just made love and he was brushing my hair and asking, ‘Are you sure you’re going be all right? All the other stuff notwithstanding …’ (Colin uses words like ‘notwithstanding’ and it’s one of the reasons I like him so much), ‘… you’re kind of used to living on your own these days, aren’t you? Won’t it be crowded with the three of you in the house?’

  ‘What choice do I have?’

  Colin was still brushing my hair. I’ve always worn it in a long, thick plait down my back, it has hints of grey streaking it now but when I was younger it was glossy and a kind of bluey-black. Boyd used to call it my ‘raven-wing hair’ and Colin loves brushing it.

  ‘After all,’ I continued. ‘It’s still his house, or half of it is. We’ve never bothered to get all that bollocky stuff sorted, you know: a divorce, splitting the assets. The business was doing well enough then for him to buy his flat and let me stay here. There wasn’t any need to do anything more formal. We only had ourselves to worry about in those days.’

  ‘And now?’ Colin’s hands are smaller than Boyd’s. Everything about Colin is compact, tidy and unsurprising.

  Colin had moved in next door about a year after Boyd moved out. He’d hung two artificial lavender-coloured topiary balls outside his front door and, for a while, I’d presumed he was gay and so started an easy and uncomplicated friendship with him which, when I realised he wasn’t gay but very much heterosexual and unattached, had developed into an uncomplicated relationship where we had uncomplicated sex now and again and went to see plays and out for the odd meal, and where he bought me a red silk scarf for my forty-fifth birthday.

  ‘Well, I guess it is a little bit more complex now,’ I said, leaning up against him. He’d carefully put the brush on the bed and cupped my breasts in his small, neat hands. It was a gesture of comfort, nothing more. Colin isn’t the sort of lover who wants to make love more than once a session, he would consider it an extravagance. His small, neat fingers had made me come in a very satisfying way and he’d come too, quietly and efficiently and with the minimum of fuss.

  I often have to stop myself comparing Colin’s lovemaking to Boyd’s which, when we’d been younger and life had been easier, had been big and boisterous and unpredictable.

  ‘I mean,’ I continued, ‘now he’s got this massive tax bill to pay which, in true Boyd fashion, he hasn’t planned for properly and, instead of doing something sensible like making cutbacks – reducing Trixie’s hours again for starters and getting rid of that pop-princess Honey – he’d rather get the money together by renting out his flat and moving in here for the duration. He’s promised me it won’t be for long …’ I’d tailed off.

  Trixie had been nothing but kind to both me and Boyd when we’d been together and had been especially thoughtful after it all went wrong, bringing round casseroles and quietly ironing Boyd’s shirts when all I could do was lie in bed and stare at the wall.

  As I talked, I could taste the soup I’d cooked and the wine I’d drunk the evening Boyd called round. It felt strange telling Colin, as if I was translating something from a foreign language into English, into words that could be better understood.

  And, of course, Colin had been fine about Boyd and Honey moving in. He’s the most unthreatening, and unthreatened, person I know. He’s my polar opposite; I know I’ve always been prickly, difficult and intense. Maybe it’s the artist in me. That’s what Boyd used to say anyway.

  There’s another noise from the other bedroom: a kind of snuffle and a soft tread. I really should get cracking; I should brave the trip to the bathroom and wash my face, do my teeth. I still feel grubby from working in that bloody woman’s house with her bloody dog’s hairs everywhere. Anyone who knows me would think I like pets, seeing as I’m a pet portraitist but, truth be told, I prefer painting human faces and definitely prefer lar
ger animals, such as horses, to small, yappy dogs with bad breath.

  I unwind the scarf and stand up. It seems like hours have passed, but it’s probably only been a few minutes. I can still hear small, woodland-creature-like noises from along the landing. I really must go and say hello to the girl Boyd has brought here to live with us.

  I’m in the doorway to my room when Honey appears. Low sunlight is still pouring through the back of the house, through the bathroom window and dotting the walls and carpet with a kind of golden confetti. All I can see is her outline: small-shouldered, slim-hipped, the long legs I’d seen earlier. Already I feel a bubble of resentment; she’s so bloody young. And then Honey steps out of the light and we are face to face.

  In the gloom, I gasp. Or I think I do. I’m aware of some sort of sound coming out of my mouth. It seems stupid now that I didn’t insist on meeting her beforehand, maybe I was too afraid of what I’d see and that it would either make me change my mind, or make it impossible to change it.

  No, this way was, I’d thought, better. But, even the snatched view of her I’d had when they’d arrived hadn’t prepared me for this. Now, I can see what Boyd sees, has seen every day since he’s been involved with her: a huge pair of violet eyes, a perfect brow, a rosebud mouth, cheekbones you could cut paper on and hair so short you can see the shape of her head which is, of course, faultless. It is smooth and round and I have an irrepressible urge to lay my hands on it.

  ‘Hi,’ Honey says, shyly, dipping her head to one side so she looks like an inquisitive bird, one that’s half-ready to hop into my hand and half-ready to fly away.

  ‘Hello.’

  There is a pause.

  ‘Did you …’ I say.

  ‘Thank you …’ Honey says at the same time.

  We laugh, both of us, together.

  There is another pause.

  ‘Did you …’ I try again. ‘Did you find everything you need?’