The Love of Her Life

by Harriet Evans

  Eventually she loosened herself from his grasp, and swivelled round to face him, to meet his eyes, his face, the face of the man she knew so well. He opened his mouth to say something, but Kate knew she had to speak first.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ she said, her hands on his chest, as he pulled her tightly towards him. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Eloquently put,’ he said, and kissed her on the mouth, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him right back.

  At four o’clock the next morning, in her tiny, rabbit-hutch of a room, he ran his hand over her stomach and pulled her towards him. Pushing her hair out of her eyes – for it had wrapped itself around her face, like candy-floss – he kissed her again and said,

  ‘Would it be alright with you if I didn’t go away on holiday?’

  The strange thing about Mac, Kate felt, was how none of it was really a surprise, a revelation. With Sean, she’d never really felt she’d known him, even through the mundanity of their shared lives, their long time together. Here, she just knew what was going to happen. She had known he wasn’t going on holiday anymore, known it from the moment they kissed. She ran her hand over his shoulder, down his arm, and took hold of his fingers.

  ‘Fine with me.’ She smiled at him in the darkness. He took a deep breath.

  ‘When do you have to go back to New York, Kate?’

  It was Thursday. Thursday, and she had to be back for work tomorrow. She had to leave later today.

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me.’ He clutched her hand.

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ she said quickly.

  There was silence. She could hear a siren outside in the street, rushing towards the hospital.

  ‘And what if you were to lie?’

  ‘Lie?’ she said, not understanding. She moved closer towards him; they were on their sides, facing each other.

  ‘Say …’ his voice was soft in her ear. ‘Say there was a problem with your visa and you had to stay here a bit longer.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ she said immediately.

  ‘Of course you couldn’t,’ he said, rushing to agree with her. His voice was light. ‘It’s just that I’ve been in love with you for five years, Kate. I was sort of hoping perhaps now … maybe … before you screw everything up again and fly back to New York to hang out with your mum and an assortment of embittered writers and crazy old couples in your apartment block …’ he was whispering in her ear now, so softly in the dead quiet of the bedroom, his lips tickling her skin, ‘Well. I was hoping we might have some more time together. For this.’

  ‘For this?’

  ‘This.’

  ‘What is this?’ she said, desperately wanting him to tell her the answer, but he cut her off as she finished the sentence.

  ‘We’ll worry about all that later. Let’s just say it’s imaginary, it’s an interlude. Who cares what happens afterwards?’

  But she knew he didn’t mean that.

  ‘Stay, Kate. I love you. Don’t go back. Stay for just one more week.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, ignoring the hammering in her chest. ‘I will.’

  ‘Do you want to?’

  Like someone had sucked all the air out of her lungs, Kate felt her chest, her heart, cave in, as if she were swooping down low over something, losing her senses. She blinked, trying to steady herself. She put her hand up to his cheek.

  ‘More than you could possibly imagine.’

  We’ll worry about all that later. I love you.

  More than you could possibly imagine.

  I’ve been in love with you for five years, Kate.

  Five years, Kate.

  Stay, Kate. I love you.

  Stay.

  OK. I will.

  Stay.

  When they weren’t in bed, they were walking through the park, and when they weren’t in the park, they were sitting in a cafe somewhere in between the park and her hotel, Bayswater, or Marylebone. In the dog days of July, no one bothered them. Apart from crowds thronging Westminster Abbey or Madame Tussauds or the Tower of London, the city was empty. They went to the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern early one morning, but it was crammed with people and they only wanted to be with each other, so they walked along the river instead, ducking behind into the old wharfs around Blackfriars Bridge, along by the Oxo Tower. They went to Borough Market and bought pies and cold lemonade and picnicked, on the benches outside Southwark Cathedral. They walked along Marylebone High Street, weaving in between pubs in tiny mews streets, they sat outside eating Lebanese food, hummus with diced lamb and pitta, they walked along Clerkenwell Road, stopping to drink cold glasses of rosé in elegant bars normally stuffed with workers – the city was theirs, no one troubled them, and they troubled no one.

  No one at all, except themselves. Zoe was away visiting Mac and Steve’s parents in Edinburgh, Francesca was on holiday with some friends in Italy – oh, the luck. She’d established via email that her father was in the recording studio, Dani and Lisa were with Lisa’s parents in Cornwall. It was her and Mac, that summer, and she didn’t know what was going to happen but for once, cautious, sensible shy Kate, Simply Didn’t Care. All she cared about was him.

  His laughing, kind eyes – how could she have thought they were cold?

  His easy, quietly authoritative manner: the hotel tried to overcharge her when she extended her stay, until Mac stepped in, his negotiation technique far superior to Kate’s (which was to be flustered and furious), and she ended up paying almost nothing for the tiny, happy little room that became their whole world.

  The way he laughed – properly laughed, with helpless gulps and shouts that consumed his whole frame, when she told him a story that amused him, about Betty’s new boyfriend, or about the old days, or something that had happened to her in New York.

  How in his sleep he sometimes sighed, so deeply, and seeing him in repose, strangely vulnerable, almost broke her heart. She wanted to look after him, to protect him, to make sure he wasn’t ever hurt again, especially by her.

  His hands on her body – she watched them moving over her, watched him, his face, and knew she would never be happy again unless he was by her side. And, as the days moved into a second week, and they stopped lotus-eating and realized they were going to have to make a plan of some sort, the dreams came back.

  She’d had them before, after Steve died, all the time, and only going to New York made them stop.

  She would dream she was back somewhere they’d been that day – in a tiny little Italian restaurant in Soho, eating sage and butter ravioli, kissing Mac in between bites and drinking red wine. And Charly would appear at the table next to her, and then Sean. Or they would walk past the window and stare in. They never said anything, just watched her, smiling, demonically. And she never knew when they were going to appear, sometimes the dream would last for ages, and only then, at the end of revisiting the lovely walk she’d had with Mac through Battersea Park, would Charly suddenly walk casually out from behind a tree, her long hair ruffled in the summer’s breeze, and Kate would awake, sweating, terrified. And another memory of a beautiful day with Mac would be ruined. She couldn’t sleep, and he didn’t notice, and he couldn’t help her, and she started to hate him for that.

  She ignored it for a few days, the voice in her head that dripped poison into her ear, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she admitted it.

  Admitted that if she really loved Mac, the only way not to hurt him, now, was to go.

  It grew hotter and hotter, as August drew near, and now they had spent nearly two weeks together, barely a moment apart, other than lavatory breaks. Or when Mac had to go back to his flat to pick up more clothes. Their tiny, bare hotel room and the London of tourists in the summer was their world, and though someone cleaned the room each day, clothes, shoes, possessions were flowing across it like water by nighttime, when they lay asleep, the covers thrown off, Mac’s arm draped over Kate.

  Yes, Kate would decide, as she lay by
his side, watching him during those stuffy, airless, dark nights. He does love me. She knew that.

  But Kate also knew that, while Mac thought he’d forgiven her, it was only a matter of time before he started to hate her for it, to blame her for the death of his beloved brother. For making her best friend, his sister-in-law, a widow – all these things. It would happen: it was a way off yet, but it would happen, and it would gradually poison everything – that’s why she’d left London in the first place. She had tried to separate herself from it all. She had put an ocean between herself and what had happened and now, it was starting to catch up with her.

  In the last few days of their time together, Kate slept less and less, and Mac’s arm across her body, over her shoulders, weighed down more and more, and the dreams became more and more regular, and the weather grew humid and frayed her nerves even further, and he was crowding in on her, more and more. She could sense him clinging on to her, even as she tried to push away, knew he was reaching out to her for reassurance because he felt her rejecting him. He would kiss her, draw her towards him, open her legs to let him inside her, and she let him, wanting him desperately, trying not to cry with love for him, even as she wished he’d just leave her alone, alone. Alone, a unit of one, so she wasn’t bothered by him and how he made her feel.

  So she had to leave.

  The question was how. And when. And one night, her thirteenth night back in London, it came to her, suddenly.

  ‘Ill? Your mother? How – what do you mean?’

  ‘She fainted today. She was in Saks. She banged her head, she’s unconscious.’ Kate stood on the other side of the bed, trying not to panic. ‘There’s a flight at seven. I’ve spoken to someone at Virgin, I’m on it.’

  Mac had gone back to his flat, to pick up more clothes, check his post, his messages, run some errands. He had left her there, in their cardboard world of the hotel, promising he’d be back by three, and he was, to find that everything had changed, to find Kate surrounded by clothes, her eyes red, curiously withdrawn from him.

  He ran his hands through his hair. ‘My god, Kate. That’s awful.’ He came round to her side of the bed as she stuffed her meagre, much-worn clothes into her bag; every one had a memory now.

  ‘What did Oscar say?’

  ‘He said to come home. He’ll meet me at JFK.’

  The black cotton broderie anglaise sundress; she had worn that when they hired a boat on the Serpentine, Mac rowing, Kate reading him Sherlock Holmes stories, and covertly giving him sips of illegal wine.

  She watched him hugging himself, his hands shoved under his armpits, his body language tight, panicked. ‘But what do they think … Do you want me to speak to him, to someone at the hospital, find out what’s going on?’

  ‘God, no. No, Mac, please. I just need to get home. They think she’s going to be OK, that it’s just concussion, but …’

  The polka-dot navy and white shirt she had worn the night it rained, five days ago; drenched, soaked to the soul, they had given up trying to stay dry and had run back to the hotel, his white t-shirt virtually transparent, her hair like rats’ tails, both laughing silently, almost hysterically.

  He was shaking his head, his eyes full of damned sympathy, concern, emotion for her. She hated it, hated him for feeling like that, herself for making him feel like that. He moved towards her, and put his arm around her.

  ‘Oh, Kate – darling …’

  That skirt, the one she had worn the first day she saw him; she bit her lip, bowing her head over the bed, as he released her and took her hands in his.

  ‘I wish you weren’t going. Shall I come with you?’

  For a second, Kate leant against him, allowing herself to indulge what it would feel like to say yes. To just breathe out, and give in. To say, yes, come back with me, actually, stay with me, let me stay with you. I love you, I want to be with you, to stay with you forever. Love me, let me love you.

  She rolled all these words around in her mouth, unspoken. But she had to go, and when he found out how she had lied he would start to hate her, and by the time she came back to London again, he would properly hate her, think she was a lunatic, and her work would be done.

  Two years of pushing everything down, deep deep down inside her, of guilt and mourning, not just for her friend’s death, but for the lives she’d left behind, were finally catching up with Kate, she knew it. And now it pleased her to be mad. That’s how miserable she was.

  ‘I’ll come with you to the airport,’ Mac was saying.

  Kate ran her hands through her hair. ‘No.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘No,’ she said. Her voice surprised her. She turned to him. ‘Please, Mac. Can you just take me to Paddington, put me on the Heathrow Express. I hate airports so much. I don’t want to say goodbye to you there. Please.’

  It was true, the only true thing she’d said since he’d got back, and he didn’t realize it. But he nodded, bewildered.

  ‘Of course.’

  She waited till she was on the train. He even got on with her, put her bags on the rack, having charmed the guard into letting him through the ticket barriers. She tried not to cry as he kissed her, told her he loved her.

  ‘I’ll be over as soon as I can,’ he said, kissing her hair, the way he had done the first time they’d kissed, outside St James’s. ‘I’ll call you. Call me when you get there, but I’ll call you.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said the kindly guard, who’d let him climb onto the train with her. ‘We’re about to leave. You’ll have to get off.’

  He stood up. She didn’t stand up. She just said,

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  ‘Bye,’ she said. ‘Mac –’ She held out her hand.

  ‘I’ve written you a letter. It’ll explain everything.’

  ‘This train is about to depart. Please stand clear of the closing doors.’

  ‘In the drawer by the bedside table. At the hotel. I’m sorry.’

  He looked even more bewildered, as the doors closed, and Kate sank back into her seat, not looking to see if he was watching, not knowing. She was shaking so hard she thought she was going to be sick, and the train pulled away, gliding seamlessly out of the station, and she didn’t look around once.

  Dear Mac

  Mum’s not ill, I made it up because I had to leave. I’m sorry.

  I can’t be with you, not in the way you want. It would have been nice, but it just can’t happen. After everything that’s happened but especially because of Steve. Can’t you see that?

  I expect you’ll hate me now, but don’t feel bad about it. After everything I’ve done to you it would be weird if you didn’t.

  You’ll never know what these last two weeks have meant to me. In another life I love you.

  Kate 367

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Kate woke after five, and lay in the darkness of her flat, staring at nothing.

  How long, she didn’t know, but after a while, she realized Mac was awake too. He was breathing heavily, half-asleep, but he wasn’t asleep. She knew it because she wasn’t either, and she remembered how well he used to sleep back then, last summer, while she lay awake, praying for the sunrise. She didn’t want to move, though, to move things on, she wanted to stay there, in his arms, feel his body next to hers, their legs entangled, caught between being asleep and awake, this state of security and the next state of uncertainty, for as long as possible, until dawn slid through the slatted blinds.

  She turned over, so her back pressed into his chest, and his arm slid around to hold her. Kate blinked in the darkness, her eyes aching already with fatigue. Why had she let it happen?

  Because it was always going to, a little voice inside her head told her. Because the two of you have unfinished business.

  She blinked again, staring at the crumpled edge of the duvet.

  Because you’re lonely.

  Because he understands.

/>   But he didn’t, that was the trouble. He pushed into her space, he brought back the past, he invaded her, he upset her, every single time. And she even more so with him. It was like an old scab, she had decided. They were bad for each other, yet they couldn’t stop picking at it, opening it, because of everything else it covered.

  Mac moved against her, drawing her closer into him, so there was nothing between them. She could feel him against her thighs, his muscles against her back. He sighed, she didn’t know whether it was conscious or not. He kissed her shoulder, gently, the back of her neck, and stroked her arm, and was still again. They were quiet, in the dark room, and Kate stared out again as a cold, heavy tear streaked onto her pillow. This, this tenderness was what got to her the most. This was why she’d left London. The agony of complication, of entanglement.

  And then Mac spoke.

  ‘You’re awake, aren’t you?’

  Kate cleared her throat. ‘Yes.’

  She rolled over and rubbed her eyes, in an effort to look more half-asleep than she actually was. In reality, her mind was whirring, flipping over possibilities and endings like a pinball machine, but she said, after a moment,

  ‘You OK?’ She leaned in and kissed him, somewhere on the chin. He didn’t react, or reply, in any way. ‘Hm,’ she said, and closed her eyes again, jokingly. ‘Hey. You OK?’

  He put his hand on her neck, and pulled her towards him. ‘Yeah. Just thinking.’ He kissed her back.

  ‘About what?’ Kate said. He was silent again. ‘What?’ She pushed him. ‘Hey. Don’t go silent on me. About what?’

  ‘Your flat,’ he said. ‘I finally get to see your flat.’