by Hilary Boyd
As the evening wore on, everything seemed to fall away. Everything except Jack: his face across the table, his so-familiar blue eyes, his hands resting so close to hers. There was a strange moment of stillness, as if the world had stopped and left just the two of them alone.
Stella, flustered, got up, suddenly desperate for some water. It was while she was standing by the sink, filling a glass, that Jack came up behind her, took her shoulders in his hands and spun her gently round. Their eyes met. She didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. The feel of his mouth on hers, full and soft and tentative, seemed to her so completely right.
The kiss was followed by another, and another, as they stood in the middle of the kitchen pressed together, unwilling to tear themselves apart.
Then suddenly the fog cleared. ‘Jack!’ She held her hand over his mouth and pushed him away. He looked at her, blinked, his expression dazed, mirroring the shock that she herself was feeling. Neither spoke.
Stella glanced at her watch. ‘No … God, it’s already midnight. Eve will be worried sick.’
Jack rubbed his face with both hands, but didn’t move. ‘Umm … sorry … what just happened, Stella?’
‘Never mind that now,’ she said, sounding like a bossy headmistress as they stood, stunned, in the middle of the kitchen. ‘Will you drive me home?’
Jack shook his head. ‘There’s no way I can drive. I can barely see straight.’
‘I’ll take the car, then,’ she said, impatient at his slowness. ‘I’ll bring it back in the morning.’
This galvanized him. ‘No. You can’t drive either, Stella. You’re as drunk as I am.’
But the shock of Jack’s kisses had cleared Stella’s head. She felt completely sober as she grabbed his car keys from the key holder on the wall by the door, which mysteriously proclaimed in cursive yellow script: ‘Life is like a tin of sardines’.
‘Stella!’ She heard his voice ring out behind her as she banged the front door. But she didn’t stop, stumbling on the brick path in the moonlight as she ran for the car.
She had only a sketchy idea of the way back to Eve’s house – although she knew it was left along the lane – but she didn’t stop to set the satnav until she was a couple of minutes away, terrified that Jack would run out and stop her.
Eve cannot be alone all night, she told herself, ignoring the fact that she had already left her daughter by herself for six hours, and not checked her phone since before the rose garden. No time now, she said to herself as she negotiated the ten minutes to the oast house, praying Eve hadn’t had a crisis while she was gone.
She met no other cars – the locals were obviously all tucked up in bed, even on a Saturday night. In fact, there was no sign of life at all, except one skinny fox, eyes luminous in the car headlights for a split second before it slunk off into the hedgerow along the lane.
The house was in darkness, but the security light Eric had installed outside the front door clicked on as Stella parked Jack’s car on the grass verge and tiptoed up to the house, avoiding the gravel. In the overhead beam, she searched her bag for the front door key. She felt in the pouch on the outside, where she usually put it, then in the body of the bag, pulling out handfuls of tissues, a purse, pens, lip balm, a Lego brick, mints, receipts and … the photograph Jack had given her. She took a breath, felt again and patted her trouser pockets. The realization slowly dawned on her befuddled brain that she did not have the key. It hadn’t even crossed her mind when she was leaving with Jack. Now she pictured it, nestling smugly in the pottery key bowl on the side in Eve’s kitchen.
After a moment’s panic, Stella felt a shaft of hope, and crept round the house to the kitchen doors. Maybe Eve had left them open. But no, they too were firmly locked. Suddenly she felt nauseous, her head throbbing violently, and she sat down heavily in one of the garden chairs. The metal felt cold and damp through the linen of her trousers.
What the hell am I going to do? she asked herself. She refused to think about what had happened between her and Jack, although her brain was clearly trying hard to make sense of it. Her only priority right now was to get into the house and into bed. She would face the ugly truth in the morning.
Then she remembered. Getting up from the chair, she went back down the side of the house till she was outside the sitting room. She knew from weeks earlier that one of the sash windows had warped in the heat, and although it was closed at the bottom, there was a small gap at the top. The old brass Fitch Fastener that clamped the two windows locked wasn’t aligned and wouldn’t slide across.
She pushed up on the lower frame, trying to raise the window. But it wouldn’t budge and she couldn’t get much purchase on it – it was just too high off the ground. Desperate not to make too much noise – although in the quiet night she thought she sounded like a herd of buffalo – she hauled herself up, with difficulty, on to the broad sill, scraping her shin on the stone, and slid her fingers into the gap at the top, using all her strength to drag the upper pane down as far as she could. She was then able to lean in and pull on the bottom pane from the inside. She was sweating now, but the nausea had retreated in the face of her desperation. Finally the warped bottom window began to give, then suddenly it released with a screech. She lost her grip and fell backwards off the sill on to the grass, her head in the flowerbed, under the variegated leaves of the japonica.
It was there, minutes later, that Eve found her: smelling ignominiously of booze, nauseous, dishevelled, her scraped shin pouring blood. She was a proper sight as she lay helplessly in the beam from her daughter’s torch.
‘Mum, for God’s sake! What the hell are you doing down there?’ Eve’s voice was high with panic. ‘You fucking terrified me. I thought you were a burglar or a rapist or something.’
Stella tried to compose herself. Would her daughter realize, somehow, what had happened this evening? She was certain it must be writ large on her face, blindingly obvious from her rumpled hair and disordered appearance. She took Eve’s outstretched hand and dragged herself to her feet.
‘I’m so, so sorry, sweetheart. I forgot the key.’
Shaky on her feet, she followed Eve into the house. The kitchen light was on, and as Stella flopped on to a chair, Eve got a proper look at her. Stella saw her eyes widen.
‘Christ, Mum. You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’
Stella sighed and tried to pat her hair into place and straighten her shirt, without success.
‘Me and your dad got a bit drunk, I’m afraid. And I didn’t notice how late it was.’ She sounded shifty, even to herself, but the next thing she knew, Eve was bubbling with suppressed laughter, clamping her hand over her mouth as she tried not to make a noise and wake Arthur.
‘What are you like?’ she gasped. ‘You should see yourself. If I’d come home in that sort of state, you’d have grounded me for the rest of my life.’
After a moment of surprise – and relief – at her daughter’s reaction, Stella also began to laugh. And the two of them collapsed in silent giggles; the harder they tried not to make a noise, the more noise they couldn’t help making.
‘Oh God, oh God,’ Eve cried, ‘I’ve got a couple of crazies for parents.’
‘You should see the state your father’s in.’
‘Can’t be worse than you, Mum. Really, it can’t.’
‘It was that bloody windowsill.’
Eve put on a serious expression. ‘Yeah, of course it was. Nothing but trouble, windowsills – the dastardly way they jump up and hurl you into the shrubbery without warning. Should be banned.’
And they were both off again.
31
Jack woke the next morning with the sun flooding in, hot and painfully bright on his face. He was baffled to find himself fully clothed in jeans and a faded black T-shirt, deck shoes – no socks – lying on top of the duvet on his rumpled bed. Then he remembered.
For a while he lay on his back and tried to piece together the previous evening. He remembered th
e rose garden, the ashes, remembered laughing with Stella and the unexpected exuberance between them as they spoke about their son. Then afterwards, driving home, feeling slightly mad, as if his edges were crumbling, his whole body becoming lighter and less substantial. Then changing out of his blue suit. The rest of the evening was a blur. How much did we drink?
He knew they had talked and talked initially – a torrent of words from both of them, like a river in spate. All about Jonny.
What would he look like?
Who would he love?
What sort of work would he do?
Would he be a good cook, clothes-conscious, witty, sporty, a linguist like his father?
Would he be healthy, good at maths, a swimmer, musical?
What sort of a brother would he be to Eve?
What sort of a son?
Who would Jonny be, if he had lived?
But Jack remembered a moment, long into the evening, when both had suddenly stopped talking and just gazed at each other. The look that passed between them was like nothing he remembered from the past with Stella. This was as if a bird had been fluttering and flapping around, the noise of its wings agitating the air, then suddenly come to rest and been completely still. Jack had been spellbound, transfixed. He hadn’t planned to kiss her, but he seemed caught up in the madness of the day, exhilarated, as if kissing her were the natural conclusion to the journey they’d both taken in finally laying to rest their beloved son.
Now he recalled the familiarity of her body, the smell of her skin, the passion with which she’d responded to his kisses. Even after so long, that had not changed. Stella had always had such a unique, uninhibited sexuality; Jack had never met a woman like her. There was no technique or self-consciousness on her part, nor any pressure on him to perform in a certain way. With Lisa it was all about technique – ‘I like this’, ‘I don’t like that’, ‘Put your hand there’, ‘Faster’, ‘Slower’, ‘Not so hard’, ‘Roll over’ – it sometimes seemed to Jack as if he were taking part in a strenuous exercise class he never quite got the hang of, constantly trying to keep up. With Stella he could really lose himself in the lovemaking. And last night, he would have willingly lost himself all over again if Stella hadn’t come to her senses and called time.
As the sun beamed ever hotter on his closed eyes, he began to focus on the implications of what he and Stella had done. He told himself it was only a few kisses, but that didn’t mitigate the shameful act of betrayal one jot. It wasn’t Jack who had called a halt to things.
There were two texts and one voicemail from Lisa when he finally made it downstairs and checked his phone. His stomach lurched, partly from the wine, mostly from guilt. He didn’t know what to say to her. Not that he would even dream of telling her something that would hurt her so much.
‘I’m hoping to get the ten twenty-five tomorrow. Arriving eleven twenty-one. See you at the station,’ said the voicemail.
He gazed blankly at his phone. Christ. He’d forgotten she was coming down this morning. Forgotten everything – almost his own name – he was so thrown by the events of the previous day. As he held the mobile, it buzzed into life: Lisa.
‘Hi,’ he gulped, trying to sound normal.
‘At last! Thought you’d died. I tried you hundreds of times last night.’ Lisa’s voice was low, strangely neutral.
‘Where are you?’
‘On the train,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll meet you. Eleven twenty-one.’
‘See you later,’ she said, and was gone.
Jack sighed and wandered over to the coffee machine, selecting one of the strongest pods in the earthenware bowl. He needed all the help he could get. It was an hour till her train got in, and the station was a twenty-five-minute drive – plenty of time for a couple of caffeine hits to steady his nerves.
He sat for a while at the table by the window, doing absolutely nothing except sipping his second cup and listening to his tinnitus. He’d had it for a while now – maybe three years or so – but it had ratcheted up in recent months, so he’d gone to see his GP. The doctor, who practically looked younger than Arthur, had given his ears a cursory inspection, then actually Googled ‘tinnitus’! Looked it up on the Internet, right in front of him!
‘I’ve done that already,’ he said, to which she nodded vaguely, her eyes still on the screen.
‘I could arrange counselling,’ she said after a while.
‘ “Counselling”? Is that it?’ Jack had wanted to laugh. He hadn’t had counselling for the worst thing that had ever happened to him in his whole life; he couldn’t imagine having it for buzzing in his ears. Although he sometimes got panicky, knowing he’d have this noise in his head for the rest of his life – and petrified it would get worse and that he’d go insane.
His phone rang for the second time. Stella. He swallowed hard.
‘Hi there.’
‘Hello.’ Her voice was also muted. ‘Listen, I’ve got the car …’
‘The car?’ Realization hit him. ‘Oh God, the car.’ He looked at the wall clock. Bloody hell! He’d completely forgotten that Stella had taken his car.
‘I’m supposed to be picking Lisa up in thirty-five minutes,’ he said, hearing the panic in his voice.
‘Oh.’
‘Can you bring it over, like now?’ His tone was almost peremptory in his distress. ‘I can drop you back on the way to the station.’
‘Not immediately, no,’ Stella said, sounding mildly offended. ‘Eve’s having a shower and I’m keeping an eye on Arthur. I could come in about fifteen.’
He did the calculations. That was too late. ‘Umm, OK. I’ll have to tell Lisa to take a taxi. Say the car won’t start or something.’
‘Right.’ There was silence. ‘Jack …’
He took a deep breath. ‘God, Stella, I don’t know what to say.’
He heard her give a short laugh. ‘Me neither.’
‘I can’t process it.’
‘Better not to,’ she said. ‘Just pretend it never happened.’
Another silence, only the sound of her breathing.
‘It didn’t happen and it can never happen again,’ she said, suddenly fierce. ‘We were just insane last night.’
Insane, perhaps, he thought, but it was still lovely.
‘Jack?’
‘Yeah.’
Silence.
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
Shower, Jack thought, in fresh panic, as soon as he’d finished texting his wife the lie about the car not starting.
I’m too old for this, he thought, as he hurried upstairs as fast as his thumping head and creaking knees would allow, feeling a guilty need to wash any lingering trace of Stella from his body.
Stella arrived while he was pulling on his clothes, his T-shirt sticking to his wet back. He hurried downstairs, barefoot, and let her in. She avoided his eye as she squeezed past him into the small hall. He thought she looked exhausted and distant. He wanted to embrace her, hold her close against his body one more time, check whether what he’d felt last night was real and not just a response to too much red wine and heightened emotion. But her arms were crossed firmly over her chest and she stood well apart from him, gazing out at the garden as she waited for him to find his shoes and his house keys.
‘What have we done?’ Stella asked quietly as he drove too fast through the narrow lanes towards Eve’s house.
‘We were drunk, Stella, overwrought.’
She sighed. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jack.’
They were silent until they arrived at Eve’s. Stella immediately undid her seat belt and got out.
‘Stella …’
But she didn’t reply as she slammed the door and turned towards the house. Jack had no option but to reverse into the lane and hurry back to the cottage before his poor unsuspecting wife arrived.
32
Did that really happen? Stella asked herself as she stuffed a pile of washing she’d retrieved from the laundry basket into Eve’s mach
ine, desperate to find some practical task to take her mind off last night. She tipped Vanish Gold into the tray and spilled half the scoop on the floor.
‘Mum …’ Eve was calling.
‘Just putting a wash on,’ Stella shouted back. The two machines – washer and drier – were in the utility room, if that’s what the drafty, rickety lean-to extension stuck on the side of the house could be called. But it was a good place for processing the piles of laundry Arthur seemed to generate, single-handed.
She pressed the start button and rested her hand for a moment on the cool, white metal surface of the Bosch, closing her eyes. The effects of the alcohol were fading, but the impact of kissing Jack was in no way diminished.
Her behaviour, Stella could almost excuse. The build-up to Jonny’s memorial had been momentous, the event so cathartic it was as if a huge, crushing stone had been lifted from her soul. Last night, as they walked away from the glorious rose garden, she had experienced an exhilarating sense of freedom. She felt she might explode with the joyous madness sitting in the centre of her heart. Was it so surprising, therefore, that she had been reckless? She was hardly likely to creep home to bed in that frame of mind.
It was just a stupid moment, she told herself. Iain and Lisa need never know; no one will be hurt. She would live with the guilt. But she knew that wasn’t the whole story. For Stella, Jack’s kisses had made her feel like she was suddenly back where she belonged. Did he feel it too? she wondered as she went to find her daughter. The question, she knew, was academic. Both of them were committed to their partners. That wouldn’t change.
‘Eric’s coming back Saturday week. Not even two weeks to go!’ Eve’s face was shining with excitement when she got off the phone to her husband later that morning. ‘His plane gets in around four thirty. He says he should be home by eleven, latest.’ She sighed, hugged her arms round her body, did a little shimmy across the floor and twirled round. ‘Oh, Mum, I can’t wait to see him. I’ve missed him so much.’ She sat down hard on a kitchen chair and burst into tears.