The Bed I Made

by Lucie Whitehouse

  ‘It’s no problem,’ said Chris, standing slowly and revealing the wine stains on the thighs of his trousers. ‘No, no – Kate, leave it. Sit down – I’ll do it.’

  Peter stood up, too. ‘I should go,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Chris; thanks for supper.’

  ‘Hang on – you’re not driving, I hope?’

  ‘No, I want to walk.’

  ‘Walk? At this time of night? You’re both going back to Yarmouth; why don’t you get a taxi together?’

  ‘No,’ he said loudly. ‘I mean, I want to walk. I’ll see you tomorrow at the yard.’ He nodded in my direction without looking at me, grabbed his jacket from the peg just inside the door and was gone.

  The front door slammed shut behind him and I sat back down. ‘That’s my fault,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be silly. He’s still very raw,’ he said. ‘I invited him because I thought the company would be good for him but I misjudged it – it’s too early. My mistake.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry about the tablecloth, and your trousers. Let me do the washing up.’ I stood up again and reached for his empty pudding dish.

  He put his hand on it, stopping me. ‘Put that down and I’ll ring you a taxi.’ He got up and went out to the phone in the hallway. There was the sound of touchtone buttons. Left alone for a moment, I saw my reflection and beyond the glass, nothing but the darkness. I could feel it as if it were a physical presence, pressing against the windows, waiting for me.

  The taxi that came was some sort of people carrier. Chris kissed my cheek and helped me in, stopping me from falling back when I tripped over the seatbelt. The driver was talkative on the way but required only minimal audience participation. He chattered on, delighted, it seemed, to have a new set of ears for his well-practised anecdotes, and I leaned my hot temple against the glass and watched the verge flashing past us. There was a strange buzzing in my ears, as if I were wearing ear-plugs, muffling out the world and hearing the working of my own brain instead. Everything felt distant, slightly too bright, liable to start spinning at any moment.

  It was some time before we reached Peter; he’d got much further than I’d expected and I soon saw why: he was striding out, each step covering a yard, his shoulders back, his arms stiff at his sides, hands in fists, walking into the night as if he were marching into battle. Perhaps, I thought, it was conscience trouble.

  Back at the house, I fell into a drunken, dreamless sleep. Waking parched at four, I went to the bathroom and drank three lots of water from the tooth mug before going back to bed. Later in the morning, long after it was light, I woke to find that quite apart from the remorse about the evening already side-swiping at me, a pall of melancholy had settled over everything like a fine coating of dust.

  In the second bout of sleep, I’d dreamed about Richard, a dream with no beginning and no real end. We’d been standing on opposite sides of a huge iron gate, not ornamental wrought-iron but the sort used to keep people in or out, heavy bars extending from floor to ceiling, banded across in several places. Richard had gripped the bars and I held them, too, but for some reason our hands wouldn’t touch. The yearning I felt was painful; I would have given anything in the world to have become smoke and passed through to his side. He spoke and though at first I couldn’t hear the words, their effect was immediate: the bars in the upper part of the gate softened enough for him to pass his face through to my side. Our hands, too, suddenly touched and we wove our fingers together, holding on so tightly that I was aware of all our bones. He rubbed his cheek against mine and the yearning intensified. The feel of his skin was gentle but erotic, too, sending a charge through me. Then even that barrier seemed to dissolve, so that where our skin touched, he became me, and me him and all I wanted was to lose myself in him like I used to. He was smiling and I felt a smile forming on my lips, too. He spoke again and this time I heard him. ‘While you still want me, I can find you,’ he said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On Monday it was my birthday. Cards from Dad and Matt had arrived on Saturday and I opened them now, deducing from the fact that the one from Matt didn’t have a Far Side cartoon on that Melissa had chosen it. Dad had sent me an iTunes voucher and I realised that it had been weeks since I’d listened to any music. I’d fallen out of the habit, having found it too painful after the break-up with Richard. Also I felt strangely vulnerable when I had earphones in and couldn’t hear what was going on around me. That bothered me now.

  Helen’s card was lying on the kitchen floor when I went downstairs to make a cup of coffee, blown away into the room by the draught under the door. ‘Present being held in London as bait,’ she had written inside.

  Upstairs again, I put the coffee on the table, got back into bed and pulled the blankets round me. Last year I had woken up with Richard. It had been a brighter day than today and the block of light from the narrow window had been falling across the bed when I’d opened my eyes to find him propped on his elbow, looking at me.

  I’d put my hand over my face. ‘Don’t scrutinise me. I look terrible.’

  ‘You look beautiful.’

  I kept my mouth closed while he kissed me. ‘Wait a moment.’

  I’d cleaned my teeth while I waited for the kettle to boil and then I’d taken our coffee through to the bedroom. Richard was sitting up, his back resting on the wall. I felt my usual pang of desire at the sight of his chest and shoulders, the five o’clock shadow. There was something so glamorous about him, even first thing; I often thought that it was as if he had dropped out of someone else’s life and into mine by mistake, expensive cargo destined for somewhere more exciting, lost by accident.

  I got back into bed next to him to open my birthday cards. Two pieces of thick paper had fluttered out from Helen’s on to the quilt. They were tickets for the opera, the new production of The Magic Flute that she knew I wanted to see. I hadn’t been able to get tickets: it had sold out almost immediately. She must have brought them then and tucked them away for me, waiting for today, not saying anything even when I’d told her how disappointed I was not to see it.

  ‘What is it?’ Richard had said. ‘Why are you upset?’

  ‘I’m not – it’s just Helen. She’s so kind.’

  He took the tickets from me. ‘I didn’t know you liked opera.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only been a couple of times. I loved it, though.’

  He dropped them on the quilt and threw back the covers. ‘I’m getting up.’

  ‘But it’s only seven,’ I said, smiling and moving my arms so that the sheet slipped a little. ‘And it’s my birthday.’

  ‘I haven’t got time.’ He left the room and moments later I heard the sound of taps running in the bathroom. Surprised, I got out of bed and took his shirt, my favourite pale blue one, from the chair where he’d left it the night before. Knowing he found it sexy when I wore his shirts, I put it on, leaving the top three buttons undone.

  The door was shut, which was unusual, but when I tried the handle it wasn’t locked. I went in and sat on the side of the bath, crossing my legs in what I hoped was a seductive manner just inside his line of vision. His eyes flicked quickly towards me and then back again. He was shaving and the basin was full of soapy water. I watched as he lifted his chin, stretching the skin taut underneath it and drawing the razor up the length of his throat, his eyes never leaving their image in the mirror. The edge of the blade flashed. I crossed my legs the other way but without response from either man or reflection. He swilled the razor in the water and knocked it against the side of the basin before drawing another line through the soap up the side of his neck.

  ‘Why are you angry with me?’

  He said nothing and swilled the razor again. A few seconds passed.

  ‘I said, why are you angry?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ He threw the razor into the sink, splashing scummy water.

  I stood up and left the room, closing the door behind me. In the sitting room, I opened my laptop and switched
it on. When it was ready, I started typing up some notes. From the bathroom came the sound of the shower and a few minutes later I heard Richard walk behind me back to the bedroom and then the rattle of hangers as he took a fresh shirt from amongst the ones he now kept in my wardrobe.

  I raised my head when I felt him coming across the carpet behind me again but I didn’t turn around. I remembered the morning when he’d lifted me from this chair and carried me next door and felt another wave of disappointment. I watched him now in the reflection in the window as he reached out his hand to touch my hair.

  ‘I’ll give you your present this evening,’ he said. ‘At dinner. I’ll come and pick you up at eight.’

  He took me to Pétrus. I’d heard about it, of course, but never thought I’d go there. The morning’s argument, if that was what it was, appeared to have been forgotten. The restaurant, decorated the colour of the claret after which it was named, was as intimate as a cocoon and Richard’s attention hardly seemed to stray from me for a second. I looked around, taking it all in but – perhaps because he was used to this sort of place – he seemed oblivious. He ate his sea bass without comment, while I had to restrain myself from exclaiming over almost every mouthful of my lamb.

  When our plates had been taken away, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out an envelope which he slid across the table towards me. ‘Happy birthday.’ His fingers touched mine as I tentatively reached to take it. For a reason I wasn’t sure of, my heart had started to beat faster.

  ‘Open it then.’

  I glanced up at him as I slid a knife under the flap. His eyes didn’t leave my face. Inside were two first-class Eurostar tickets to Paris.

  ‘I thought you could show me your language skills. Though I’m sure they speak English at the Ritz.’

  ‘The Ritz? Richard, you can’t – this is much too generous.’

  ‘Extravagant, you mean. You’ll live.’

  I looked at the tickets again. They were for early February, two weeks’ time.

  ‘What?’ he said, seeing my expression change.

  ‘Helen’s opera tickets are for the same day.’

  ‘She’ll have to swap them then.’

  ‘She won’t be able to. It’s sold out.’

  His face darkened. ‘So you’re choosing an evening with Helen over three nights in Paris with me?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘You know it’s not like that. Can’t we just move it back a day?’

  ‘No.’ He reached over, took the tickets from my hand and put them back in his pocket. ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is, making the time to see you?’ he said in a voice little louder than a whisper. ‘Do you think it’s easy, inventing excuses for being away so much? Do you think Sarah doesn’t comment on how often I’m in Spain? I’m doing my best – for precious little appreciation from you.’

  I felt guilty immediately. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘Clearly.’ He motioned to the waiter for the bill. We sat in silence and Richard handed over his credit card without even checking the amount.

  I looked out of the window as the taxi carried us the short distance back along the Cromwell Road to my flat. The neo-Gothic façade of the Natural History Museum loomed up massive and spotlit. I remembered Dad taking us there years ago. Matt and I had stood in front of the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus rex and imagined being eaten. ‘Like a snack,’ Matt had said, with reverence. That time seemed impossibly remote now, a different life. How could I have been that innocent little girl?

  I was dreading the argument that would erupt as soon as we were in private but when the taxi pulled up outside my building, Richard didn’t move.

  ‘Aren’t you coming up?’ I hesitated, my hand on the door.

  ‘I’m going home. I need to think. This isn’t right.’

  I got out and turned away quickly, before he could see the alarm on my face. The cab rounded the corner as I struggled to get the key into the door with shaking hands. Upstairs in the flat, I sat down on the sofa without turning the light on, letting my eyes adjust to the faint glow that reached into the room from the streetlamps and the flats opposite. The silence came round me, buzzing in my ears. I replayed the conversations in my head and with each repetition it seemed clearer and clearer that Richard didn’t think of our relationship as something that had to be continued, regardless of the difficulty. I hugged my coat around me. His intensity over the past few weeks had led me to believe that I was an essential part of his life now but suddenly that seemed a gross miscalculation. The thought made me nauseous.

  Two weeks later, I got on the Eurostar with a deep-seated feeling of guilt, as well as the knowledge that I had caused lasting damage to my friendship with Helen. I had hardly been able to bear telling her that I couldn’t go to the opera but I’d made myself ring her: it would have been too cowardly to email. She’d said it didn’t matter at all and almost masked the hurt in her voice, and that had made me feel worse.

  Richard was great company for those three days. He had been distant with me even after I told him I would go and I’d only seen him once in the fortnight since my birthday, but as soon as we were on the train his mood had lightened. My alarm at thinking he was reconsidering things between us had stayed with me and it was only when it lifted that I realised just how panicked I had been. Being with a happy Richard was like coming into the light again. He seemed especially expansive while we were away, laughing more than usual and being very affectionate. I’d chosen to put it down to his being free of the worry he had whenever we were out together in London that someone he knew would see us. Another voice, however, whispered to me that there was an element of triumph in his good mood, that he felt himself the victor in a popularity contest between him and Helen. I suppressed the voice, telling myself I was being ridiculous.

  Richard’s generosity during our holiday was extreme. It wasn’t only the ludicrously luxurious hotel and meals and taxis; I struggled even to buy any of the frequent coffees we stopped for while I showed him my old haunts. He wanted to see them all – where I’d studied, the house under whose roof my tiny chambre de bonne had nestled, even the restaurant where I’d worked, now long closed. He also took me shopping and not in the sort of high-street places to which I usually went. Clothes were difficult. Richard always dressed expensively – I had, when we started seeing each other, looked at the labels of his clothes when he’d been in the bathroom to confirm my suspicions – and so I’d had to raise my game. I had bought a couple of tops at the very furthest reaches of my price range and wore them again and again with different accessories but I still felt dowdy next to him. At Pétrus, he had fitted.

  In Paris, he took me to the Galeries Lafayette and made me try on clothes. I was torn: as soon as I put on the things he suggested, I looked infinitely cooler, a more suitable partner for him. And yet I resisted. It was one thing to be with him if not as a financial equal, then at least on my financial terms, but this shifted the balance of power between us in a way with which I didn’t feel comfortable at all. I loved the way I looked in the dresses and skirts and shoes, and he pressed me to allow him to buy them, but I refused everything except for one Costume National top. I couldn’t accept anything else; it made me feel not like a girlfriend any more but his mistress. It made me feel owned.

  My plan for my birthday this year was a trip into Newport. I was going to see a matinée at the cinema and then I would buy a new jumper at the big Marks & Spencer there: whether I was imagining it or not, the Island felt colder than London.

  It was good to get out of Yarmouth. I dreaded bumping into Peter in the street. All weekend, whenever I hadn’t deliberately been concentrating on something else, my thoughts had gone back to the evening at Chris’s. My memory now focused on a few key images, any of which made me close my eyes in embarrassment: I saw myself blithely mentioning the scows and Peter turning away; dominating the conversation and pressing Chris to open another bottle when
they’d obviously both had enough; the table covered in wine and broken glass. On Saturday afternoon I’d had to go and pick up the car, and I’d put a note through the door thanking him and apologising. Thank God, he hadn’t been in.

  If I was embarrassed by how I had seemed to Chris, my feeling about Peter was more complicated. I was ashamed of coming across like a drunken fool in front of him and pained to have reminded him about Alice, of course, but the memory of how he had jumped up from the table and marched off as if he couldn’t bear it a minute longer still rankled. Would it have hurt to have taken a taxi with me, rather than walk for miles in the dark? For all Sally and Chris’s belief in him, I was suspicious. There was something else going on, for sure. And something had made Alice do it.

  Dad called in the evening to wish me happy birthday. Helen was in Munich on a business trip so after he’d rung off, I went upstairs to email a thank you for her card; she’d get it on her BlackBerry. Even over Christmas, when we had spoken so much about him, I hadn’t told her about a suspicion that I’d developed only after the trip to Paris, on another occasion when Richard had seemed put out by our friendship. It occurred to me then that he had had the opportunity deliberately to book the Eurostar tickets for the same night as Helen’s opera ones. He’d seen hers in the morning and presented me with his own in the evening.

  I had never understood why he was so irritated by our closeness. Sometimes he appeared to take it as a personal affront. ‘Do you think it’s normal? You’re in your thirties, not junior school,’ he’d said.

  ‘We’ve been best friends since college.’

  ‘You’re far too reliant on each other. It’s not healthy. How can I ever hope to have a proper relationship with you when you’re always hanging round with her?’

  ‘How can I ever hope to have a proper relationship with you when you’re married?’ I’d snapped back at him, and he’d hung up on me.