by Hilary Boyd
Jack was silent, his head bent, his index finger absentmindedly rubbing at a circular stain in the wood of the small kitchen table. He let out a long sigh and raised his gaze to hers.
‘Oh, Stella …’ he said, such a despairing expression in his eyes that she was shocked. She thought he might cry.
‘What is it, Jack?’
This brought a frown to his face, but he said nothing, just shrugged and turned away to look out at the September garden, where the leaves were just beginning to dry and fade, but had not yet taken on the gold, red and brown of autumn.
‘Jack?’
When he swung back, he seemed resolute, shoulders straightened, mouth set in a firm line. He pushed himself up from the table. ‘Right. What about lunch? Where do you fancy?’
But Stella was not letting him off the hook. ‘Tell me what’s upsetting you, first.’
He began to clear the coffee cups and put the milk carton back in the fridge.
When Jack finally spoke again, his back to her as he leaned his hands on the worktop, his voice was so quiet she barely heard him when he said, ‘I’m leaving Lisa.’
‘Leaving her?’ Stella exclaimed.
He stood up and turned back to her. ‘I haven’t told her yet. But it’s not working for either of us any more. She’s coming down this evening, but I won’t be able to tell her till after the baby’s party tomorrow. That wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Right …’ Stella didn’t know what to say. But his declaration made her uneasy, as if some floodgates had been opened and she was in the path of the rushing water.
Jack took a deep breath as he stared at her almost fiercely. ‘I love you,’ he said simply.
Stella froze.
‘It’s the truth, Stella.’ He blinked hard and she could feel his agitation. ‘I can’t pretend to poor Lisa any more. And yes, I know you and Iain are solid, I’m not asking you to respond. But it’s how I feel.’ His gaze was fixed on her, as if he were indeed asking her to respond. ‘That moment in the hospital room did it. When I held you in my arms, I felt such a rush of love for you. I know you’ll say it was just the drama of the hour, being Eve’s parents, etc. And that was probably part of it. But …’ He stopped and his expression took on a certain determination. ‘But we’ve had too many of these significant moments over the summer, Stella – moments when we connected. And each time we’ve found an excuse to dismiss them, write them off as not really about us. I realized in the hospital that they are about us.’ He paused again. ‘My marriage hasn’t been working for a while. But I feel I can’t, in all conscience, let things rumble on any longer. It’s destructive for both me and Lisa when I’m feeling this way about someone else.’
Stella was stunned. His words were from the heart, a bald statement of fact.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she mumbled, trying to stop her heart from bursting out of her chest, her brain from her head. It was too much to hear, too much to process.
Neither of them spoke, both trapped in their own thoughts.
‘I thought we’d decided,’ she said weakly.
‘Decided what?’ he asked.
She took a deep breath. ‘That it was too late, Jack. That you and I had missed the boat.’
He gave a short laugh, came back across the kitchen and sat down opposite her again, pulling her hands from where they rested on the table and crushing them enthusiastically in his own. His expression was intense as he met her eye.
‘I tried, honestly, I really did try. I told myself I was being a daft old bugger. I told myself I had a lovely wife – and I have. But telling myself has done no bloody good. So there you have it.’ He took a breath, then said again, ‘I love you, Stella Holt.’
He sounded half his age, an eager youth romancing his girl, and Stella couldn’t help but smile. But a voice in her head warned her: Do not get carried away by the force of Jack’s will. There was Iain to consider, her own security, the real possibility that this was nothing lasting or sustainable. She twisted herself free of his grasp.
‘Iain and I—’
Jack held up his hands. ‘I know. You love him. I understand. I don’t like it, but I do understand.’
Stella took a deep breath. ‘If you “know”, if you “understand”,’ she said quietly, ‘then why the hell are you telling me you love me, Jack? What did you need to do that for?’
But Jack wasn’t put out by her tone. He seemed to be considering his answer in the silence that followed, and Stella waited, becoming more wound up by the minute.
‘Just in case you feel the same way about me, I suppose. We’re too old to pretend, aren’t we?’
Stella’s annoyance drained away almost as quickly as it had come. Could she really blame him for what he felt? Didn’t she also feel something, but was too scared to admit it? But she couldn’t trust what he said, couldn’t trust what she felt.
‘You’re a selfish old sod,’ she said bluntly, as she got to her feet. Jack’s declaration had shaken her to the core. She moved past him as he also got up. I have to go. I have to get away from him. She felt overwhelmed by this man who had stolen back into her life and thrown everything she’d thought she could count on to the four winds.
‘Don’t go, Stella,’ Jack said quietly.
She turned to him. She could feel his breath on her face. Then her phone buzzed.
‘Where are you, Mum?’ Eve’s voice brought her back to earth.
Stella, wobbly from Jack’s proximity, attempted an even tone as she replied, ‘Still with your father. We’re just having a cup of tea at the cottage.’
‘Oh, OK, give him my love,’ her daughter said cheerfully. ‘Just wondered if you’d be able to stop by the supermarket on the way home and get some nappies. Eric got the next size up by mistake. I need size one.’
Stella told Eve she would. ‘I’m on my way.’
‘Better go,’ Stella said as soon as she’d clicked off. She wouldn’t look at Jack, who was leaning against the worktop, arms crossed. She began to search for her bag, eventually finding it on the floor in the narrow hall.
The emotion between them was like a flock of starlings – Stella had seen them at dusk on the coast – looping and dipping, whirling about the small kitchen. But neither acknowledged it.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Stella said.
Jack nodded, but did not reply.
52
The kitchen table was covered with a paper cloth dotted with pink roses, on which had been laid a fan of matching napkins and the bone-china tea-plates with a gold border inherited from Stella’s mother – Jack recognized them immediately. Stacked on a willow-pattern charger in the centre of the table were tiny triangles of cucumber sandwiches circling bite-sized, square tomato ones – the white bread cut super-thin, crusts off. A round wicker basket containing cheese scones in the shape of hearts – courtesy of Morag’s Scottish baking skills – sat beside a Pyrex dish of hot chipolata sausages and a ramekin of ketchup and mustard dip. Sticky flapjack fingers, thick-sliced ham piled on a wooden breadboard, a dish of butter and a pot of raspberry jam completed the appetizing display.
Jack’s mouth watered. But he was anxious, thoroughly on edge as he greeted the McArdles and brushed his lips across Mairi’s petal-soft forehead as she lay in Eve’s arms. Almost unable to look at her, he gave Stella a neutral air-kiss, then quickly moved on to shake Iain heartily by the hand and pick up his grandson for a hug. His declaration to Stella the day before was tormenting him, eating into his joy at celebrating his granddaughter’s birth. But even more so was the conversation he needed to have with his wife.
In the hot kitchen, he observed Lisa chatting to Kenny over by the glass doors. He watched Stella pouring water into the big brown teapot. He saw Morag straightening the row of knives next to the tea-plates. He monitored Iain and Stella’s interactions, trying to fathom how they felt about each other. All he really wanted to do was talk to Stella – but she was avoiding contact with him, directing all her smiles and chat at Lisa, refusing
even to meet his eye.
He found himself next to Iain at the tea table.
‘So, Stella tells me you’ll both soon be local,’ he said, attempting a casual grin.
Iain did not reply at once, only glanced at him – a look Jack did not understand. Not suspicious exactly, nor hostile in any way. Maybe ‘searching’ best described it, and Jack had the uncomfortable feeling the other man could see right into his soul.
‘Yeah, looking forward to it.’
Jack nodded. He thought Stella’s partner looked annoyingly fit – tanned and muscly, his dramatically white-blond shock of hair made him look almost heroic, in a Viking-marauder sort of way. Jack’s intense jealousy longed to label the man an idiot or a smug fuck. But he found he couldn’t. Iain seemed beyond reproach.
‘And Stella?’ Jack couldn’t help rising to the competitive urge this man unwittingly evoked. ‘She always used to say she loathed the country.’ He saw Stella raise her head at the sound of her name, and he gave her a small smile across the table. Mairi had begun to grizzle and Eve got up.
Iain laughed easily. ‘You could be right.’
‘But you two are getting a place together.’
‘That’s for her to decide,’ Iain replied, and there was that look again.
The man seemed to be talking in riddles. What is going on? Jack wondered, catching Stella’s gaze on him, which she quickly withdrew, turning to Eric beside her.
The tea party passed off smoothly enough.
It was only at the very tail end of the day, when Eve had taken the baby upstairs and the others were in the sitting room, that Jack managed to catch Stella alone in the kitchen.
She was putting the remaining flapjacks in a tin lined with greaseproof paper and wrapping the two leftover scones in foil.
‘Hi,’ he said when she didn’t look up or acknowledge his presence in any way.
He saw her take a deep breath and raise her head, her mouth set in a tight line. ‘What do you want, Jack?’
He was taken aback by her tone. It felt almost contemptuous. He didn’t answer, because he didn’t know exactly what he wanted now he had the chance to talk to her.
Stella straightened up and brushed a piece of fringe out of her eyes, put her hands on her hips, waited.
Jack quailed.
‘You and Iain … he seemed to imply …’
‘Not your business,’ she interrupted, her voice firm.
‘OK, well …’ he said.
Stella didn’t respond. She was at the sink, picking up the Pyrex dish in which the sausages had been cooked, drying it briskly with a red-and-white tea towel.
And that was that. No denouement. No resolution. No relief from the turmoil in Jack’s mind.
53
Stella went home with Iain on Sunday evening. Her excuse – to herself and to Eve – was that she felt there were too many people in the house. Eve was well supported at the moment; she was in the way. ‘I’ll come down again when Eric goes back to work,’ she told her daughter. But she would probably have stayed if it hadn’t been for Jack.
Iain had been quiet at the weekend. Stella found him drifting off into his meditation a couple of times, sitting cross-legged on the bed, eyes shut, his index finger and thumb of both hands joined and resting, palms up, on his knees, in what he explained was a mudra and something to do with the energy flow of the body. He did not seem upset or agitated, just quietly distant in a way she hadn’t seen before.
They stayed at Stella’s flat that night, where she cooked scrambled eggs on toast, and they sat for a while, talking about the party. But Iain seemed unengaged and it was making her anxious. Later, they made love, Stella wanting to prove to herself that she and Iain were solid, that Jack had not come between them. And Iain did respond, their lovemaking intensely pleasurable, a momentary release from her pent-up emotions. But now he was sitting beside her, his palm pressed lightly between her naked breasts. It rested there for a moment, his pale eyes never leaving her face.
‘Your heart chakra is blocked,’ Iain said. ‘It’s been like that for a while now.’
‘How do you know?’
He gave a small smile. ‘They taught me. It’s not difficult.’
She stared at him. He must feel my lying heart bursting out of my chest, she thought. ‘What does it mean, when it’s blocked?’ she asked, to fill the silence.
He shrugged. ‘Depends … Emotional conflict of some kind, closing your feelings down …’ He paused. ‘You’d know better than me.’
And there it was. Stella held her breath. Iain’s expression was hard to read, but there was no mistaking the hurt in his eyes. He was waiting for her to speak, but she did not know what to say.
‘I’ve seen it, Stell,’ he said, pre-empting her. ‘You and Jack.’ He removed his hand from her body, clasping both in his lap.
Stella sat up, the duvet crumpled between them. The dim light from the single bedside lamp cast both their faces in shadow. For a tiny second she thought of bluffing it out.
‘It’s pretty obvious,’ he went on, before she had time to speak.
Stella thought back. She had hardly seen Iain over the summer, and when she had, Jack was not always present. But how or where was not the issue here.
‘I didn’t mean it to happen,’ she said quietly, wincing at the clichéd phrase.
Iain swayed. He looked bruised, as if he’d just received a blow. ‘What did happen?’
Stella hesitated, still reluctant to give him a chapter and verse he did not need to hear. But then she remembered Iain’s words: ‘Don’t ever pretend,’ he’d said.
So she told him about Jonny’s memorial evening, about the drunken kisses, about how they had thought their feelings, both that night and since, were circumstantial, fleeting.
He stayed silent and allowed her to talk. The story came out in dribs and drabs as she fought to edit her feelings for Jack, fought to understand them as she explained to her lover the unwilling passion she’d developed for another man. And in the telling, Stella realized just how much she did love Jack. How, in fact, she had never really stopped loving him. It was as if a blindfold she’d been resolutely clamping over her eyes had suddenly been stripped away.
Iain uncrossed his legs and rose from the bed.
‘Iain?’ She felt sick and scared.
He turned to her as he picked up his T-shirt and stepped into his jeans. ‘I wish you’d told me earlier,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘I waited, because I didn’t know what it meant. I hoped …’
‘I didn’t know what it meant either, I swear,’ she said. ‘I thought it was just a reaction to facing up to Jonny’s death.’
He raised his eyebrows sardonically.
‘I don’t own you, Stella. You know that’s not my thing. We’ve never needed the sort of claustrophobic relationship that suits other people. But right now I feel cheated. As if I’ve wasted the last seven years of my life on someone who was never willing to love me in the first place.’ Before she had time to object, Iain went on, ‘I was happy to give you space, I could tell you weren’t comfortable with us living together. And that worked fine while I thought you were committed to me in every other way.’ He turned his face away. ‘But you never were, right? Because you never got over Jack.’
Stella found she couldn’t answer and saw a sad smile flit across Iain’s face as her cheeks flushed with shame.
‘I’m sorry, Iain,’ she muttered. ‘I wasn’t aware I still had feelings for him. Really, I wasn’t. Not till this summer. I always believed you and I could work.’
Silence. Just the two of them in the dim bedroom, on opposite sides of the bed, and now on opposite sides of the relationship they had peaceably shared for years. Stella closed her eyes tight, wanting to cry but fighting back the tears. She was the one at fault here, and crying might seem like a bid for sympathy she did not deserve.
When she opened them, Iain was gone.
54
‘Happy birthday, sweetheart,’ Jack said.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘Are you having a good day?’
He heard Eve laugh. ‘Umm … debatable. Mairi woke up at four thirty and then fussed and wouldn’t go back to sleep until six, and Arthur woke up at quarter past six. Eric’s had to go into work to see some Danish guy who’s only in the country for a day. So, yeah, not so bad.’
‘Sorry I’m not there to help out,’ he said.
‘Oh, it’s OK. I feel sort of on another planet at the moment. Normal rules don’t apply. I wouldn’t know what to do with a good night’s sleep even if someone dropped it in my lap.’
‘Poor you,’ Jack said. ‘So when are we going to celebrate your birthday?’
‘I think we’ll give it a miss this year. Especially now Mum’s in such a state.’ He heard her cough and clear her throat. ‘But feel free to buy me a fabulously expensive present, Dad,’ she added with a chuckle.
‘Your mum? Why?’
‘Didn’t she tell you?’ Eve asked. Maybe she assumed he and Stella rang each other regularly for cosy chats. And why wouldn’t they? Unless they were secretly in love, that is.
‘What?’ Jack almost fell off his chair when Eve explained. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t really know. Mum seems a bit vague and she was so upset that I didn’t want to press her,’ Eve said.
Jack could hear Arthur in the background, asking his mother if he could have another biscuit and Eve refusing.
‘What, so Iain was the one who broke it off?’
‘That’s not really clear. Maybe it was this whole thing about moving in together? Anyway, she’s coming down tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll find out more.’
‘I’m amazed,’ Jack said. Which was a gross understatement. He had talked himself into believing that Stella and Iain were totally committed to each other. She had certainly given him that impression.