Last night.
She turned and crawled up the bed until she was lying full length along him. She knew this man. She knew every inch of him. She couldn’t believe that they had not even properly met each other a week previously. He opened his eyes, sleepily, reached out and toyed lazily with a lock of her hair.
‘That’ll be the sheer power of my animal magnetism.’
‘Or the two joints and a bottle and a half of Merlot.’
He hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her into him. She closed her eyes briefly, breathing in the scent of his skin. He smelt pleasingly of sex. ‘Be nice,’ he growled softly. ‘I’m a bit broken today.’
‘I’ll run you a bath.’ She traced the mark on his head where it had hit the car door. They kissed, long and slow and sweet, and it raised a possibility.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Never felt better.’ He opened one eye.
‘No. About lunch.’
He looked briefly serious, and let his head fall back on the pillow. She regretted mentioning it. ‘No. But I guess I’ll feel better when it’s done.’
She sat in the loo, agonizing in private, then rang Marty at a quarter to nine and told him she had something to sort out and that she would now pick the children up between three and four. She didn’t ask. From now on, she had decided, she was just going to tell him how it was going to be. He put Tanzie on the phone and she said nothing about the evening but demanded to know how Norman had coped without her. The dog was stretched out in front of the fire, like a three-dimensional rug. She wasn’t entirely sure he’d moved in twelve hours, apart from to eat breakfast.
‘He survived. Just.’
‘Dad said he’s going to make bacon sandwiches. And then we might go to the park. Just him and me and Nicky. Linzie’s taking Suze to ballet. She has ballet lessons twice a week.’
‘That sounds great,’ Jess said. She wondered whether being able to sound cheerful about things that made her want to kick something was her superpower.
‘I’ll be back some time after three,’ she said to Marty, when he came back on the phone. ‘Please make sure Tanzie wears her coat.’
‘Jess,’ he said, as she was about to ring off.
‘What?’
‘They’re great. The pair of them. I just –’
Jess swallowed. ‘After three. I’ll ring if I’m going to be any later.’
She walked the dog, left him stretched out in the front room, and when she returned Ed was up and breakfasted. They drove the hour to his parents’ house in silence. He had shaved, and changed his T-shirt twice, even though they were both exactly the same. She sat beside him and said nothing, and felt, with the morning and the miles, the intimacy of the previous evening slowly seep away. Several times she opened her mouth to speak and then found she didn’t know what to say. She felt as if someone had peeled a layer of skin off her, leaving all her nerve endings exposed. Her laugh was too loud, her movements unnatural and self-conscious. She felt as if she had been asleep for a million years and someone had just blasted her awake.
What she really wanted to do was touch him, to wind her hand into his, to rest a hand on his thigh and yet she wasn’t sure whether, now they were out of the bedroom and in the unforgiving light of day, that was appropriate any more.
She wasn’t sure what he thought had just happened. And she was afraid to ask.
Jess lifted her bruised foot and placed the bag of frozen peas back onto it. Taking it off and putting it back on again.
‘You okay?’
‘Fine.’ She had mostly done it for something to do. She smiled fleetingly at him and he smiled back.
She thought about leaning across and kissing him. She thought about running her finger lightly along the back of his neck so that he would look over at her like he had the previous night, about undoing her seatbelt and edging across the front seat and forcing him to pull over, just so she could take his mind off things for another twenty minutes. And then she remembered Nathalie, who, three years previously, in an effort to be impulsive, had given Dean a surprise blow-job while he was driving the truck. He had yelled, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ and ploughed straight into the back of a Mini Metro, and before he’d had a chance to do himself up, Nathalie’s aunt Doreen had come running out of the supermarket to see what had happened. She had never looked at Nathalie in quite the same way again.
So maybe not. As they drove she kept stealing looks at him. She found she couldn’t see his hands without picturing them on her skin, that soft mop of hair travelling slowly down her bare stomach. She thought about the smell of him, the tough muscle and the smooth skin of him. Oh, God. She crossed her legs and stared out of the window.
But Ed’s mind was elsewhere. He had grown quieter, the muscle in his jaw tightening, his hands a fraction too fixed on the wheel.
She turned to the front, adjusted the frozen peas, and thought about trains. And lampposts. And Maths Olympiads.
I am the woman who doesn’t need a relationship, she told herself. I have simply confused myself by stirring up hormones, like a sort of needy soup.
I am the woman who does not get involved. And, frankly, there’s enough that’s complicated around here right now without this adding to it. It’s just a few days out of my life. Jess gazed out of the window and repeated the words silently until they ceased to have any meaning.
Ed’s parents lived in a grey stone Victorian house at the end of a terrace, the kind of street where neighbours try to outdo each other with the neatness of their window boxes, and the recycling bins are hidden when not in use. Ed pulled up, let the engine tick down, and gazed out of the window at his childhood home, the freshly painted gate, and the lawn that looked as if somebody had been over it with nail scissors. He didn’t move.
Almost without thinking, she reached out and touched his hand and he turned to her as if he’d forgotten she was there. ‘You sure you don’t mind coming in with me?’
‘Of course not,’ she stuttered.
‘I’m really grateful. I know you wanted to get the kids.’
She rested her hand on his briefly. ‘It’s fine. Let’s get it over with.’
They walked up the path, and Ed paused, as if checking what he was wearing, then knocked sharply on the front door. They glanced at each other, smiled awkwardly, and waited. And waited some more.
After about thirty seconds, he knocked again, louder this time. And then he crouched to peer through the letterbox.