“I couldn’t sit at home. I had to say something before you were gone again. I had to tell you.”
He stepped back, and she walked past him into the large double bedroom, its generous dimensions and decent position testament to his improved standing at the newspaper. He was glad that for once he had left it tidy, a laundered shirt hanging on the back of the chair, his good shoes against the wall. The window was open, allowing in the noise of the street outside, and he went over to close it. She put her bag on the chair, laid her coat over it.
“It’s a step up,” he said awkwardly. “The first time I came back I got a hostel in Bayswater Road. Do you want a drink?” He felt oddly self-conscious as she sat down on the side of the bed. “Shall I ring for something? Coffee, maybe?” he continued.
God, he wanted to touch her.
“I haven’t slept,” she said, rubbing her face ruefully. “I couldn’t think straight when I saw you. I’ve been trying to work it all out. Nothing makes any sense.”
“That afternoon, four years ago, were you in the car with Felipe?”
“Felipe?” She looked puzzled.
“My friend from Alberto’s. He died around the time I left, in a car crash. I looked up the cuttings this morning. There’s a reference to an unnamed woman passenger. It’s the only way I can explain it.”
“I don’t know. As I said yesterday, there are still bits I can’t remember. If I hadn’t found your letters, I might never have remembered you. I might never have known—”
“But who told you I was dead?”
“Laurence. Don’t look like that. He’s not cruel. I think he really believed you were.” She waited a moment. “He knew there was . . . someone, you see. He read your last letter. After the accident he must have put two and two—”
“My last letter?”
“The one asking me to meet you at the station. I was carrying it when the car crashed.”
“I don’t understand—that wasn’t my last letter—”
“Oh, let’s not,” she interrupted. “Please . . . It’s too—”
“Then what?” She was watching him intently. “Jennifer, I—”
She stood up and stepped so close to him that even in the dim light he could see every tiny freckle on her face, each eyelash tapering into a black point sharp enough to pierce a man’s heart. She was with him and yet removed, as if she was coming to some decision.
“Boot,” she said softly, “are you angry with me? Still?”
Boot.
He swallowed. “How could I be?”
She lifted her hands and traced the shape of his face, her fingertips so light they barely touched him. “Did we do this?”
He stared at her.
“Before?” She blinked. “I don’t remember. I only know your words.”
“Yes.” His voice broke. “Yes, we did this.” He felt her cool fingers on his skin and remembered her scent.
“Anthony,” she murmured, and there was sweetness in the way she said his name, an unbearable tenderness that spoke of all the love and loss he, too, had felt.
Her body rested against his, and he heard the sigh that traveled through her, then felt her breath on his lips. The air stilled around them. Her lips were on his, and something broke open in his chest. He heard himself gasp, and realized, with horror, that his eyes had filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, mortified. “I’m sorry. I don’t know . . . why . . .”
“I know,” she said. “I know.” She put her arms around his neck, kissing the tears that ran down his cheeks, murmuring to him. They clung together, elated, despairing, neither quite able to believe the turn of events. Time became a blur, the kisses more urgent, the tears drying. He pulled her sweater over her head, stood, almost helpless, as she undid the buttons of his shirt. And in a joyful wrench it was off him, his skin against hers, and they were on the bed, wrapped around each other, their bodies fierce, almost clumsy with urgency.
He kissed her, and knew he was trying to tell her the depth of how he felt. Even as he lost himself in her, felt her hair sweep across his face, his chest, her lips meet his skin, her fingers, he understood that there were people for whom one other was their missing part.
She was alive beneath him; she set him alight. He kissed the scar that ran up to her shoulder, ignored her flinching reluctance until she accepted what he was telling her: this silvered ridge was beautiful to him; it told him she had loved him. It told him she had wanted to come to him. He kissed it because there was no part of her that he didn’t want to make better, no part of her that he didn’t adore.
He watched desire grow in her as if it were a gift shared between them, the infinite variety of expressions that crossed her face, saw her unguarded, locked in some private struggle, and when she opened her eyes, he felt blessed.
When he came he wept again, because some part of him had always known, even though he had chosen not to believe it, that there must be something that could make you feel like this. And that to have it returned to him was more than he could have hoped for.
“I know you,” she murmured, her skin sticky against his, her tears wet on his neck. “I do know you.”
For a moment he couldn’t speak but stared up at the ceiling, feeling the air cool around them, her limbs pressed damply against his own. “Oh, Jenny,” he said. “Thank God.”
When her breathing had returned to normal, she raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him. Something in her had altered: her features had lifted, the strain had vanished from around her eyes. He enclosed her in his arms, pulling her to him so tightly that their bodies felt welded together. He felt himself hardening again, and she smiled.
“I want to say something,” he said, “but nothing seems . . . momentous enough.”
Her smile was glorious: satiated, loving, full of wry surprise. “I’ve never felt like that in my whole life,” she said.
They looked at each other.
“Have I?” she said.
He nodded. She gazed into the distance. “Then . . . thank you.”
He laughed, and she collapsed, giggling, onto his shoulder.
Four years had dissolved, become nothing. He saw, with a new clarity, the path of his life to come. He would stay in London. He would break things off with Eva, the girlfriend in New York. She was a sweet girl, breezy and cheerful, but he knew now that every woman he had dated over the past four years had been a pale imitation of the woman beside him. Jennifer would leave her husband. He would take care of her. They would not miss their chance a second time. He had a sudden vision of her with his son, the three of them on some family outing, and the future glowed with unforeseen promise.