‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a personal trainer.’
‘Hence the running.’
‘Hence the running.’
‘What’s he like? In three words, if it makes you uncomfortable.’
I thought about it. ‘Positive. Loyal. Obsessed with body fat ratios.’
‘That’s seven words.’
‘Then you got four for free. So what was she like?’
‘Who?’
‘Alicia?’ I looked at him like he had looked at me, directly. He took a deep breath and gazed upwards to a large plane tree. His hair fell down into his eyes and I fought the urge to push it to one side for him.
‘Gorgeous. Sexy. High maintenance. Surprisingly insecure.’
‘What does she have to be insecure about?’ The words left my mouth before I could help myself.
He looked almost amused. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘Girls like Lissa trade on their looks for so long they don’t think they have anything else. Actually, I’m being unfair. She’s good with stuff. Things – clothes, interiors. She can make things look beautiful.’
I fought the urge to say anyone could make things look beautiful if they had a wallet as deep as a diamond mine.
‘She could move a few things around in a room, and it would look completely different. I never could work out how she did it.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘She did this annexe, when I first moved in.’
I found myself reviewing the perfectly designed living room. I realized my admiration of it was suddenly slightly less uncomplicated than it had been.
‘How long were you with her?’
‘Eight, nine months.’
‘Not that long.’
‘Long for me.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘Dinner party. A really awful dinner party. You?’
‘Hairdresser’s. I was one. He was my client.’
‘Hah. You were his something extra for the weekend.’
I must have looked blank because he shook his head and said softly, ‘Never mind.’
Inside, we could hear the dull drone of the vacuum cleaner. There were four women in the cleaning company, all wearing matching housecoats. I had wondered what they would find to do for two hours in the little annexe.
‘Do you miss her?’
I could hear them talking amongst themselves. Someone had opened a window, and occasional bursts of laughter filtered out into the thin air.
Will seemed to be watching something in the far-off distance. ‘I used to.’ He turned to me, his voice matter-of-fact. ‘But I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided that she and Rupert are a good match.’
I nodded. ‘They’ll have a ridiculous wedding, pop out an ankle biter or two, as you put it, buy a place in the country, and he’ll be shagging his secretary within five years,’ I said.
‘You’re probably right.’
I was warming to my theme now. ‘And she will be a little bit cross with him all the time without really knowing why and bitch about him at really awful dinner parties to the embarrassment of their friends, and he won’t want to leave because he’ll be scared of all the alimony.’
Will turned to look at me.
‘And they will have sex once every six weeks and he will adore his children while doing bugger all to actually help look after them. And she will have perfect hair but get this kind of pinched face –’ I narrowed my mouth ‘– through never saying what she actually means, and start an insane Pilates habit or maybe buy a dog or a horse and develop a crush on her riding instructor. And he will take up jogging when he hits forty, and maybe buy a Harley-Davidson, which she will despise, and every day he will go to work and look at all the young men in his office and listen in bars to who they pulled at the weekend or where they went on a jolly and feel like somehow – and he will never be quite sure how – he got suckered.’
I turned.
Will was staring at me.
‘Sorry,’ I said, after a moment. ‘I don’t really know where that came from.’
‘I’m starting to feel just the tiniest bit sorry for Running Man.’
‘Oh, it’s not him,’ I said. ‘It’s working at a cafe for years. You see and hear everything. Patterns, in people’s behaviour. You’d be amazed at what goes on.’
‘Is that why you’ve never got married?’
I blinked. ‘I suppose so.’
I didn’t want to say I had never actually been asked.
It may sound as though we didn’t do much. But, in truth, the days with Will were subtly different – depending on his mood and, more importantly, how much pain he was in. Some days I would arrive and I could see from the set of his jaw that he didn’t want to talk to me – or to anyone – and, noting this, I would busy myself around the annexe, trying to anticipate his needs so that I didn’t have to bother him by asking.
There were all sorts of things that caused him pain. There were the general aches that came with loss of muscle – there was so much less holding him up, despite Nathan’s best attempts at physio. There was stomach pain from digestive problems, shoulder pain, pain from bladder infections – an inevitability, apparently, despite everyone’s best efforts. He had a stomach ulcer from taking too many painkillers early on in his recovery, when he apparently popped them like Tic Tacs.
Occasionally, there were pressure sores, from being seated in the same position for too long. A couple of times Will was confined to bed, just to let them heal, but he hated being prone. He would lie there listening to the radio, his eyes glittering with barely suppressed rage. Will also got headaches – a side effect, I thought, of his anger and frustration. He had so much mental energy, and nothing to take it out on. It had to build up somewhere.
But the most debilitating was a burning sensation in his hands and feet; relentless, pulsing, it would leave him unable to focus on anything else. I would prepare a bowl of cold water and soak them, or wrap cold flannels around them, hoping to ease his discomfort. A stringy muscle would flicker in his jaw and occasionally he would just seem to disappear, as if the only way he could cope with the sensation was to absent himself from his own body. I had become surprisingly used to the physical requirements of Will’s life. It seemed unfair that despite the fact he could not use them, or feel them, his extremities should cause him so much discomfort.
Despite all this, Will did not complain. This was why it had taken me weeks to notice he suffered at all. Now, I could decipher the strained look around his eyes, the silences, the way he seemed to retreat inside his own skin. He would ask, simply, ‘Could you get the cold water, Louisa?’ or ‘I think it might be time for some painkillers.’ Sometimes he was in so much pain that his face actually leached colour, turning to pale putty. Those were the worst days.