At the unfamiliar sensation of his lips and the taste of beer on his breath, Eve had felt a flutter of panic. What on earth was she doing? But there hadn’t been time for any other thought, because Ryan had been kissing her back and the sensation had been so intense, she had let out an audible moan and parted her lips. His hands had been under her shirt, moving over her skin, hers found their way to his belt buckle. Moments later, they were having sex in the shadows of the car park, leaning against her Volvo.
Afterwards, they’d stood there, gasping and laughing at the sheer unexpected frenzy. Eve had pulled up her jeans and tucked in her shirt. ‘I don’t … I’m not …’
‘It’s OK,’ he’d said, taking her hand, raising it to his mouth. ‘I’m not going to get weird on you. Just a little no-strings fun, right?’
‘Right.’ She’d nodded. She’d been going to say that she had never done that before – that she was happily married and didn’t know what had come over her. But perhaps it didn’t need to be said. She certainly didn’t want him to get weird on her. So that was good, at least.
She had skulked home that night, relieved to find Andrew fast asleep in bed. After a shower, and a long moment spent gazing at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, searching for traces of her betrayal, she had slipped silently between the sheets beside her snoring husband and lain for hours, unable to sleep, unable to believe what she had done. Her – Eve – shagging a virtual stranger in a car park? It was unfathomable.
The following morning she’d barely been able to look at Andrew – or the girls – not that any of them had noticed. The morning had passed in the usual manic routines of packed lunches, lost homework books and missing school shoes, and before she’d known it, they were all out the door and heading off to their standard days of work and school, as if nothing seismic had occurred at all. Thinking about it on her drive to work, she’d let the full weight of what she had done sink in. She had broken her marriage vows. She hadn’t even been drunk. She didn’t even have that excuse at her disposal. The memory of what she had done made her breath catch in the back of her throat and her heart beat a little faster, yet laced with the shame and regret was something else – something unexpected – the intoxicating thrill of having done something so wrong, so utterly un-Eve-like.
She was the girl who had studied Business Studies at university, choosing something practical and as far removed as possible from the unpredictable artistic chaos of her parents’ jobs. She was the woman who had settled down with the first man she had seriously dated, married him, borne two perfect children and moved into their carefully renovated semi-detached Victorian home. She was the woman who now shopped for plants at garden centres, followed a familiar weekly cycle of recipes, and managed a multi-columned family calendar filled with strictly kept appointments and events. She had worked so hard to construct a balanced life of order and harmony. This new development in her life was baffling.
‘What’s for tea?’ May asks from the back of the car, breaking through her reverie. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘It’s shepherd’s pie tonight.’
The girls groan in unison. ‘I hate shepherd’s pie,’ says Chloe.
‘Since when?’
‘Since always.’
‘That’s news to me. You ate it last time I made it.’
‘It’s disgusting.’
‘Well, you can have beans on toast then.’
There are further grumblings from the back seat, before the girls fall blessedly quiet again.
Ryan may have promised not to get weird, but he had begun to pursue her with fervour and every time she had tried to apply logic or common sense to the situation, every time she had tried to distance herself from his attentions, she found her body responding in a different way. He sent increasingly explicit texts. He wanted to fuck her. He wanted to taste her. He told her in intimate detail all the things he’d like to do to her and she would read his messages, a complex mix of desire and shame rushing through her, then delete them quickly before the incriminating evidence could be discovered. Her sex life with Andrew had always been good – until those baby years, of course – but Andrew had never said anything like that to her in their ten years of marriage. She couldn’t decide if she was excited or horrified. To be so desired was enlivening. Abandoning her responsibilities and principles was liberating. It was, she knew, as if she were hell-bent on wilful self-destruction.
It was a week later that she’d called in sick at work and driven to a small chain hotel off the M4, a location far enough away to feel safe from prying eyes and bland enough for neither of them to worry about the pressure of romantic expectation. Eve had arrived in the dreary restaurant attached to the hotel, wearing her sexiest underwear beneath her boring work clothes. She’d felt sick with nerves, and the most horribly alive she had in months. Even the sensation of the silk on her skin, knowing that she was wearing lacy black knickers and her best push-up bra for a man who thought she was gorgeous had been enough to leave her a little breathless. She’d barely eaten a morsel of the lunch they had ordered and when Ryan had suggested they take their drinks to the room down the corridor, she’d nodded in relief.
Perhaps the appeal was in submitting to him. To not being the woman she was expected to be every other moment of her life – controlled, respectable, tightly held. Perhaps it was a desperate attempt to feel youthful again. Or perhaps it was a desire to not feel like ‘this’ was it, for the rest of her life. Whatever it was, she wasn’t entirely sure, but Ryan’s interest had unlocked something inside of her. Lust. Desire. It was as if a sleeping part of her had woken with a roar.
Ryan had fallen on her as soon as they’d entered the room. Thrillingly, he’d taken charge, pushing her up against the wall as the door had closed behind them, tearing at her clothes, his mouth on her neck, his hands on her breasts. She’d been desperate to be touched, happy to submit to his physical desire. It was everything she’d been fantasising about, which had only made it all the more disappointing when, moments later, they’d found themselves lying side by side on the bed, contemplating Ryan’s inability to achieve an erection. ‘Don’t worry,’ she’d said. ‘It happens.’
Ryan had covered his eyes with his hands. ‘I … it … it’s not the first time. After the other night, I thought …’
Eve had reached for his hand. ‘It’s OK,’ she’d reassured him and he had curled in to her and rested his head on her chest in a strangely childlike way.
‘My ex-wife wasn’t as understanding. She ran off with my best mate. Took the dog. Said she needed more.’
As she’d listened to Ryan’s faltering apology, Eve had felt something give. It was not the fantasy she had imagined. Instead of the passionate sex she had been picturing, there she was lying in a bland roadside motel room comforting him, stroking his hair as he lay like a giant man-child on her chest. Oh God, perhaps that was it? Perhaps it was an older woman thing? A mummy complex? The thought had made her shudder.
She was starting to realise that the ‘fantasy Ryan’ she had been communicating with in her head was a step apart from the real, living, breathing man. Baggage. They all had it. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with someone else’s, not when all she thought she had signed up for was a quick, no-strings fling. An affair with a man like Ryan had nowhere to go and she, of course, had everything to lose. But what she didn’t know how to do now, was let him down without hurting his feelings. It was a minefield. Next week, she tells herself. As soon as the wedding is out the way, she will tell Ryan they are done.
Still wandering the complex maze of her thoughts, Eve pulls out onto a roundabout. From her right comes the violent screech of wheels, closely followed by the loud blast of a horn. Eve hits the brakes, her handbag flying from the passenger seat beside her, pens and mobile phone and purse spewing over the footwell as the girls in the back are thrown against the front seats. May lets out a high shriek. When Eve looks, she sees a white van has shuddered to a stop inches from their bumper, only narro
wly missing them. A surly driver leans out of his window and gesticulates. ‘Stupid fucking cow!’ he shouts. ‘Look where you’re going. You could’ve killed someone.’
Eve stares at him, horrified. Her heart jackhammers in her chest, her lungs seized. She can’t seem to draw a breath. In her mind, she has fast-forwarded to a different scene: the two vehicles colliding, her daughters in the back seat taking the full impact of the white van as it smashes into the side of the car.
Several pedestrians have stopped to stare. The van driver shakes his head and gesticulates again before pulling away from the roundabout with loud spin of his wheels.
‘Mummy!’ says Chloe from the back seat. ‘Mummy?’
‘Yes,’ says Eve, returning to the present. ‘Sorry, girls, are you OK?’
‘Yes. Are you?’
Eve nods, not trusting herself to speak.
‘That man said a rude word,’ says May primly.
‘Yes,’ says Eve again. ‘He was angry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
Another horn sounds behind them.
Eve takes a deep breath and puts the car into gear. She drives to a side street where she parks behind a silver Volvo and leans her head against the steering wheel. ‘Mummy?’ says Chloe again, more uncertainly. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘I just need a moment.’
The girls don’t say anything else, but she can feel their worried glances as she sits at the wheel and weeps silently, a cascade of warm tears sliding down her face and falling in her lap. After a little while May’s voice comes from the back seat. ‘What about Chloe’s piano lesson?’
Eve sighs. ‘Yes,’ she says. She lifts her head and wipes her eyes before turning the key in the ignition. ‘Sorry, girls.’ She checks her mirror and indicates before carefully rejoining the traffic. What is wrong with her? She needs to get a grip. That man was right. She is a stupid fucking cow, sitting there daydreaming about a sordid little affair. She could have killed someone. She could have killed them all.
14
Margot traverses the small stone bridge over the river, avoiding the shadows falling beneath its arches, before taking the path leading up the far side of the valley. She walks beside stubbled fields of shorn wheat and corn, dodging deep, muddy troughs where roaming cattle have churned the path. Here and there, rags of sheep’s wool flutter on the barbed-wire fences.
Making for the small stone cottage, Margot sees its stable-style door standing half open. She leans over the lower gate and spots Sibella seated at the kitchen table, its wooden surface barely visible beneath a mass of dried lavender and stalks of golden wheat. ‘Hello,’ she calls.
Sibella twists in her chair. ‘Hello,’ she says, seeming not in the least surprised to find Ted’s daughter standing at her door after all this time. ‘Come in,’ she beckons. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Margot leans over and unlatches the lower half of the door. ‘Yes please.’
Sibella stands and places a copper kettle on the range. ‘There’s a packet of ginger snaps in that jar over there. Your dad’s out in the garden somewhere, digging up vegetables.’
‘Problems writing a scene?’ Margot retrieves the biscuits and sits at the table.
Sibella smiles. ‘How did you guess? I’m sure he won’t be too long.’
‘It’s OK. I’m here to see you too. Eve sent me.’
‘You can report back that I’m hard at work. No shirking here.’
It’s Margot’s turn to smile. ‘I’m not a spy. I’m here to help.’
‘Did you fall in?’ asks Sibella, noticing Margot’s squelching trainers.
‘Something like that.’ It seems ridiculous now, her escapade to the other side of the riverbank.
‘You can borrow some slippers if you like?’ She indic ates a pair of embroidered shoes near the open hearth.
‘Thank you.’ Margot removes her wet shoes and socks before sliding her feet into the soft slippers.
Sibella fills a pot with tea leaves and boiled water, before returning to the table. Margot watches as Sibella’s long, pale fingers carefully sort through the cuttings. The light from the window falls onto her red hair, making it shine like copper. Margot is reminded how pretty she is – high cheekbones and smooth, pale skin that makes it hard to place her age, though Margot knows she is in her late forties. ‘What can I do?’
Sibella pushes a pile of lavender towards her. ‘We had a good crop this summer. Eve had the good idea of using some for Saturday’s flower arrangements. Tied up with some of this wheat, it will look lovely. There are roses too, but I won’t cut those until Friday. I’m stripping any damaged stems for the buds.’ She indicates the large earthenware bowl already a third filled with the grey-blue flowers. ‘I thought I’d make lavender sachets with the remainder.’
Margot nods and reaches for a handful of stems, beginning to sort the lavender into two piles, mirroring Sibella’s. As she works, her gaze occasionally drifts to take in surreptitious details of her surroundings. Dried herbs. Copper pots. A stack of well-thumbed recipe books teetering on a dresser. What looks like an old bird’s nest perched on the old, wrought-iron hearth. Earthenware dishes. A porcelain vase standing in the window – so fine it is almost translucent in the sunshine falling through the glass behind. Her father has lived here for the best part of nine years, and while his presence is detectable in the worn slippers by the back door and the folded newspaper on the arm of a chair, it still feels very much Sibella’s place.
‘It’s been a while since you were home,’ says Sibella carefully. ‘How does it feel?’
‘Fine.’ Margot doesn’t want to get drawn into anything heavy.
‘Lucy and Eve must be pleased?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your mum?’
Margot shrugs again. ‘I guess.’
Sibella waits a beat. ‘Is it still … tricky?’
Margot nods.
Sibella takes up another frond of lavender. ‘None of my business, I know.’
‘It’s not that.’ Margot thinks for a moment. ‘It’s strange. You go away and when you come back, nothing’s changed. Nothing in the slightest. We’re stuck in stalemate.’
‘Perhaps if you tried talking to her?’
Margot thinks back to their angry confrontation the night before. ‘What’s the point? It’s all water under the bridge.’
Sibella lifts her gaze to meet Margot’s. ‘Is it?’
Water under the bridge. Margot glances at her damp trainers standing by the back door and feels the blood rise to her face. She takes a deep breath, inhaling the heavy scent of lavender, and tries to scour the unwanted memories from her mind.
‘The past can have a funny way of haunting us if we don’t face it head on …’ says Sibella, gently. ‘Ghosts can linger.’
‘There’s nothing to face.’ Margot’s voice is flat and final. She reaches out and runs her hand through the bowl of lavender, the buds moving like grains of sand through her fingers.
Sibella pours two mugs of tea, pushing one towards Margot. ‘I’ve come to realise,’ she says after a while, ‘that the events that cause us the most difficulty can often, if we let them, become the experiences that make us stronger.’ The lavender rustles in her hands as she takes up another stem. ‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is that pain can alter us, and its in the facing of it – in the surviving of it – that we find ourselves changed … perhaps a little wiser, sometimes a little braver? Does that make sense?’
Margot nods, though she’s not sure she agrees. What if life weakens you? What if events do transform you – not for the better, but for the worse?
‘We all make mistakes, Margot.’
Margot swallows.
‘We’re all just doing our best.’ Sibella fixes her with a kind look. ‘Including, I’m sure, your mum.’
At the mention of her mother, Margot bristles. Talking this openly with her father’s girlfriend – no, his wife – feels like treading a tightrope. How many times has
she longed for a conversation like this with her own mother? Would it have made any difference if she had talked to someone – her mum; Sibella, even – all those years ago?
Could she tell this woman what she has never told anyone before? As she picks at a loose thread on her jeans, she wonders what Sibella’s reaction would be. For one wild moment, she imagines speaking out loud the words she has held so tightly and feels an instant, creeping shame. The thought of sharing the worst thing she has ever done makes her feel sick. Far better to bury it, to hide it somewhere deep.
She reaches for her tea and takes a sip, before returning the mug to the table with a sigh. There is no denying there is something soothing about sitting here at this kitchen table. Perhaps, she thinks, it’s the heavy scent of lavender hanging in the air, seducing her with its pungent aroma. She breathes it in again, then lets out a long exhalation and feels her shoulders sink a little.
‘Like I said,’ she says finally, yanking the thread loose from her jeans and rolling it into a tiny ball between her fingers, ‘it’s water under the bridge.’
There is a loud stamping of boots outside the back door. Ted enters the kitchen, pulling off muddy gardening gloves. He stops near the doorway, startled at the sight of Margot at the table. ‘Margot, darling, I didn’t know you were here.’
‘Surprise!’ she says with a half-hearted shrug, standing to greet him. He hugs her close and though still tall and solid, weathered from time spent out in the garden, she can’t help noticing how much greyer he is now, his face a little more lined.
‘There’s tea in the pot,’ says Sibella.
‘Thank you.’ He turns back to Margot. ‘We’re growing gigantic vegetables, positively gargantuan. Look at these.’ He goes to the door and retrieves a wooden trug filled with huge, soil-covered onions and parsnips. ‘I was coming in to get a bowl for the blackberries. The bushes are teeming with them. Put some boots on and you can give me a hand.’
The River Home : A Novel (2020) Page 11