Come a Little Closer

by Karen Perry

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Her nerves are back again and she takes a sip of wine but it tastes sharp, too fruity and acidic.

  ‘What time are your parents expecting you?’ he asks lightly.

  ‘I said I’d get the evening bus.’

  ‘Ah.’

  She glances towards the window. From the way the light falls through the glass, she can tell it is almost evening now, although with her phone downstairs, she cannot be sure of the time. The day seems stretched and elongated, as if time is passing too slowly for her to measure it accurately.

  ‘Actually, I should really get going, if I’m to make my bus,’ she says, putting her glass on the coffee-table.

  ‘But aren’t you waiting for Jake to come for you?’ He’s looking at her now, but still with that unnerving calm.

  ‘Yes, he said he would. But perhaps I should start walking down to the station anyway,’ she says, wiping her hands on the fabric of her dress covering her thighs. ‘Just in case he’s delayed.’

  ‘Leah,’ Anton says then, and the smile he gives her doesn’t reach his eyes, ‘you’re lying.’

  The words land softly and coolly between them. A new fear uncurls inside her.

  ‘I’m not,’ she tells him, in a small voice, but he keeps giving her that pitying smile and shakes his head in gentle admonishment.

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  She watches as he reaches into his pocket and withdraws from it something tiny and blue. He leans forward and places it gently on the coffee-table in front of her. A SIM card from a mobile phone. She stares at it, her heart kicking out in fright.

  ‘You didn’t call your parents,’ he tells her, in that same calm voice. ‘You didn’t contact Jake. No one is expecting you. No one is coming for you.’

  Her mind is running furiously through different calculations. The door to the sitting room is right beside her – he closed it on his way in. If she’s quick, she can make it to the door and fling it open, but he has the advantage of remaining standing – he would easily catch her before she made it to the hall. Her best bet is to stay calm and alert, to reason with him – appeal to his compassion, his humanity.

  ‘You read the letters, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘I just wanted to take care of you, Leah. To look after you.’

  ‘I know. You’ve been so kind.’

  ‘And now you know my little secret,’ he tells her, his eyes widening a fraction. ‘My little misdemeanour. It turns out I was not the best husband in the world.’

  She moves her gaze, brings her focus to the glass on the table in front of her. The way he looms above her makes her feel intimidated, fearful.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says falteringly. ‘It’s in the past.’

  ‘But it changes things. You can hardly bring yourself to meet my gaze, can you?’

  She forces herself to look. The smile is gone from his face. A hard expression replaces it.

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone through my things. Not after everything I’ve done for you. The kindness I’ve shown. Don’t you see how this changes everything?’

  ‘Please, Anton,’ she says, her legs trembling as she slowly gets to her feet. ‘I’m sorry for looking. I didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘But the harm has been done.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone what I read. No one needs to know.’

  His face creases with confusion. ‘Who would you tell?’

  ‘No one,’ she says again, but just for an instant Mark comes into her head. She thinks of their conversations about Anton, his concern when asking her to look out for his father. Does he know? she wonders.

  His eyes flicker over her face, narrowing with suspicion. As if reading her thoughts, he says: ‘My son.’

  Alarmed now, she takes a step sideways. ‘I need to go,’ she says softly, nerves in her mouth.

  ‘We could have been so close, Leah. I would have given you everything.’

  The door is right there beside her, but she dare not turn away from him. A woman died in this house. Get rid of her, Hilary had said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she tells him, ‘I need to go now,’ her hand fluttering behind her back, in a panic as she feels for the cool brass of the doorknob in her hand, but he shakes his head sadly.

  ‘No, dear. You’ve got it all wrong.’ His voice is low, his stare cool and direct. ‘I’m the one who’s sorry. And you’re not going anywhere.’

  28

  Hilary

  ‘Where have you been?’ Greg asks, as soon as she steps into the hall.

  Hilary closes the door behind her, glances at him, and says: ‘I needed some air.’

  Her voice sounds strange to her, weirdly disembodied, not her own. She sees Greg’s gaze, the oddness in it, the wariness, and feels herself inwardly squirming away from his scrutiny.

  ‘Has something happened, Hilary? You look awful.’

  She feels awful, as if she’s been in a car crash, as if she’s just witnessed some horrendous event. As if she’s been stripped naked in public, all her hair shorn, like those French women after the Second World War, punished for sleeping with the enemy. Shocked and humiliated, right now she would like to die.

  ‘Too much sun,’ she says, in her new false voice, keeping her gaze averted from her husband as she moves towards the foot of the stairs. ‘I’ll just go and freshen up. I’ll be right as rain in a few minutes.’

  Her legs are trembling as she starts climbing up past him, and she’s sure he can see it in her – how stricken she is, her inner scaffolding poised to collapse.

  ‘The Boltons are here already,’ he hisses, as she passes. ‘Everyone’s arriving – you can’t just disappear.’

  Disappear. That’s exactly what she would like to do. Vanish in a puff of smoke.

  ‘Five minutes,’ she croaks, the strain about to break.

  She hurries up the last few steps, slams the bathroom door behind her, then leans against it, relieved to be alone at last, shut away from Greg’s scrutiny, his demands. But no sooner is she alone than it all comes crashing back at her.

  ‘It was a casual fuck! That’s all!’

  Anton’s words coming at her again with violence, bringing with them a wash of nausea and shame. She limps across to the toilet, flips open the lid and leans over the bowl, waiting for the retching to start, but nothing comes. Her insides are in turmoil, her thoughts tumbling over each other, like clothes in a washing-machine, the dizzying swirl of accusations and misunderstandings, his account against hers in violent opposition.

  A distraction, he’d said. Easy pickings, he’d called her. She slumps to the floor, thinking of the long ribbon of her correspondence stretching back over all those years, the charting of her eternal hope, her blind faithfulness, her unquestioning devotion. She had gone to him full of love and he had responded with bitterness and cruelty. She still recalls the way his lip curled in disgust as he pushed her away – abhorrence washed all over his face.

  From downstairs come sounds of the front door opening, voices in the hall, among them Greg’s raised in greeting. She listens to the flow of people passing through into the kitchen, more arriving, and somehow drags herself to her feet, her responsibilities tightening around her neck, like a noose.

  In the bathroom mirror, she stares aghast at her reflection. Her cheeks appear scalded, as if boiling water has been flung into her face. Her eyes have shrunk back into their sockets, the skin around them loose and bruised-looking. Quickly now, she applies make-up, dabs at her face with brushes, paints colour on to her chapped lips, draws a comb through her hair. She sprays her underarms with perfume – Chanel No 5 – then straightens her dress, gives herself a little shake.

  I can do this, she thinks, as she descends the stairs, her heart like lead in her chest. She has always prided herself on her ability to cope, but with each step she feels her confidence crumbling, the prospect of having to play the smiling hostess for hours to come making her weak
with exhaustion.

  The guests have congregated in the garden where Greg has erected the canopy. In the kitchen, she sees he has already put the food to warm in the oven, and she sets about laying out the salads, needing to focus on a task. Activity will pull her through. Straight away she is swept into the storm of talk, greeting friends, receiving kisses on the cheek, hearing her voice telling people how delighted they are about the book and how proud she is of Greg, repeating these things ad nauseam until the phrases feel worn thin.

  Keeping busy is the key to warding off the horrors of the afternoon. Movement keeps at bay the awful finality of the encounter, the searing pain of his rejection. For the last nineteen years, her focus has been singular, her life moving forward with one purpose, one future, and now that it’s been shattered she doesn’t quite know what to do. If she stops to think about it, though, there is every chance that she will come completely undone. So she doesn’t stop: she stays busy and maintains the veneer of easy sociability. Even when there’s a hush as Greg makes a little speech, thanking her for her unwavering support, still her resolve stays rigid. After the applause, she darts into the kitchen and gets the desserts going, pressing Martin Cooper into service, tasking him with refilling people’s glasses.

  It’s late in the afternoon when Maria Bolton comes up to her, putting her hand to the small of Hilary’s back and saying: ‘You’ve been running around like the Duracell bunny all afternoon, Hil. Come and have a glass of wine in the garden, take the weight off your feet for five minutes.’

  She allows Maria to drag her outside, the two of them sloshing Cabernet Sauvignon into large glasses and perching on the bench at the edge of the lawn. The sun is dropping down behind the hornbeams that line the perimeter wall, and Hilary feels an ache in her limbs, and a stiffness in her neck. She takes a deep slug of wine and closes her eyes for a moment.

  ‘You’re worn out, Hil,’ Maria comments kindly. She’s one of those warmly frank people, never afraid to speak her mind. ‘You look like you’re about to collapse.’

  ‘I feel it.’

  ‘I’ll bet you’ve been up since dawn, eh? Probably been preparing all week.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Well, I hope he appreciates it,’ Maria adds, nodding towards Greg, who is standing a little way off in conversation with Martin and one of the men from the tennis club. He’s probably within earshot of their conversation, but if he hears he gives no indication.

  ‘He does.’

  ‘A good turnout,’ Maria remarks, and Hilary agrees, drinking again from her glass. The wine is helping, but still she feels the shock sticking to her, like a shadow.

  For a moment, they comment on all the people who have come, and then Maria nudges her arm and says: ‘No sign of Anton, though.’

  Hilary puts down her glass and looks cautiously at her friend. Maria is smiling, her eyes alight with mischief. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I saw you today, leaving his house. I said to Will: “She’s gone in there to invite Anton to the party.” And Will said: “Christ, I hope not!”’ She laughs, and elbows Hilary again, dropping her voice to add: ‘Will can’t stand Anton. Never could.’

  ‘No. I suppose, after what happened …’ Her voice trails off. She’s on shaky ground here. Looking towards the men standing nearby, she imagines she sees a stiffening in Greg’s features, a thoughtful seriousness entering his pose. She wonders whether he’s heard what Maria said.

  ‘No, it wasn’t that,’ Maria continues. ‘Even before what happened to Charlotte, Will was dead set against him. It was because of what happened between Anton and me.’

  Hilary feels the words coming at her as a sort of physical shock. She blinks and stares at Maria, whose manner has grown conspiratorial, gossipy.

  ‘He rang me one morning – this is years ago, back when Jason and Sadie were still in kindergarten. Rang me up out of the blue and asked me if I’d meet him that day for lunch. Such an odd request. I mean, I knew him socially, of course – Jason and Mark were pals, in and out of each other’s houses – and I’d chatted to Anton at Christmas drinks or the tennis-club social, same as I chat to everyone. But, still, it was weird when he rang me. And he sounded so serious. “Is everything all right?” I asked him, thinking that something had happened to him, or to Charlotte, and he told me it was delicate and that he couldn’t discuss it over the phone. Well! I arranged to meet him, hurried down to the Royal Marine that lunchtime, expecting to find him all ashen-faced with news that Charlotte was leaving him, or he’d been given some horrible diagnosis, or that he’d gone bankrupt, something like that. But when I got there, he was all smiles, wine already ordered, not a care in the world. I’m there expecting to hear some sob story, and instead he starts spouting all this nonsense about Greek goddesses and mythological queens!’

  Hilary’s heart goes cold. The glass in her hand feels heavy. She looks at Maria, taking her in properly – the wide blue eyes, the ski-jump nose. She’s blonde and pretty in an obvious way. ‘Pert’ is the word that comes to Hilary – pert and chatty. She will not stop talking.

  ‘Eventually, I said to him: “Anton, what is this about?” And that was when he put his hand on mine and told me he was mad about me, that he had been for ages, and then he suggested we go somewhere private to explore things further – those were the words he used! Well! You can imagine how shocked I was, Hilary. Getting propositioned like that in broad daylight! When I told Will he hit the roof, of course. It was all I could do to stop him going around there and punching Anton in the face!’

  Maria gives her little tinkly laugh, and Hilary can see her delight in telling this story, unaware of the effect it’s having.

  ‘You know, at his trial it was all talk of Charlotte and what a flirt she was but, really, he was far worse. Charlotte was harmless. All that behaviour was just her way of looking for attention. But Anton? The way he went after women was single-minded and focused. Later I found out he’d tried it on with half the ladies in the tennis club. Kathy Fairfax had an affair with him, apparently. And rumour has it there were one or two ladies around Wyndham Park who succumbed to his charms.’ She shudders. ‘I’ll never forget his eyes that day of our lunch, the way they zeroed in on me when he laid out what he wanted. So serious and intent. No shame at all. Later, when I heard what he’d done to Charlotte, I wasn’t all that surprised. Something icy about that man. Something twisted. Did he ever try it on with you?’

  The question comes at Hilary suddenly and, flustered, she swallows her wine and quickly shakes her head, no. Tears jump into her eyes with this denial. For years she has disowned their love, and now here she is, denying it again, only this time the denial is real. He doesn’t love me, she thinks. He never did.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Maria asks, putting her hand out to grasp the crook of Hilary’s elbow. ‘My God, Hil, you’re crying. What is it? What’s the matter?’

  Hilary cannot speak. The grief she has been keeping at bay surges up inside her. She gets up from the bench, the grass a green blur through her tears as she staggers across the lawn, like some blind Minotaur. Behind her, she hears Maria saying loudly: ‘Poor thing – she must have worn herself out.’ And even though she knows she will feel embarrassed by her own behaviour, right now all she can feel is a great sense of loss rampaging through her. The life she has conceived, the future she had constructed so carefully over the years, has all been ripped asunder.

  In the kitchen, guests crowd around the island, clogging her route. She has to push through to the hall, her high-heeled sandals clattering up the stairs. She can feel them watching, senses the hush that falls as she passes, her distraught state observed. It’s unbearable the way they look at her, unbearable the way this hurt presses through her chest, harsh and unrelenting. She is a fool, a stupid, vacuous idiot, and when she reaches her bedroom and slams the door, she doesn’t throw herself on the bed and start bawling: instead she goes straight to the corner by the radiator and slides down so that she’s curled up
against the wall, shaking like a distressed animal, wanting so badly to hide herself away, such is the shame that slices through her.

  When she hears footsteps on the stairs, she knows it’s Greg and that he’s angry. His face, when it appears around the bedroom door, is flushed and bewildered.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ he asks, sounding angry rather than concerned, and she turns her face away and opens her mouth, crying into the wall.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Hilary. What is this? What’s the matter?’

  He’s come around the bed and is hunkering down on the floor beside her. She’s still crying soundlessly. He takes her hand – she can feel the panic in him, uncertain of what to do.

  ‘Did something happen?’

  She shakes her head, unable to speak. How to tell him that it’s over – her life as she’d seen it is over. And in such a way! Now that she’s broken down, it’s started to come at her: a cascade of memories, the letters she’d written, the past she had constructed, the future she had hoped for. She sees now, with horrifying clarity, how Anton is right: how the great love of her life was a fantasy, a cheap romance that she’d magnified to become a grand affair. She’d thought she was special to him, that she was the one. Christ, she thought he’d killed for her! When all the time she was just one of a string of women, a blip in his consciousness – a casual fuck, as he had called it. Her humiliation is devastating.

  ‘Is this about Anton?’ Greg asks, and her eyes slide to his.

  He lets go of her hand, confusion clearing, replaced by coldness.

  ‘You went over there, didn’t you? Maria said …’ He is shaking his head, his jaw clenching, anger quickening inside him, and then he leans forward so that his face is close to hers and hisses: ‘Why the fuck can’t you stay away from that man? I mean, today? You had to go and see him today? Even though we were having guests over to celebrate my book, Hilary. My book! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Does he always have to take precedence?’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry. I can’t help it.’