Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (28 page)

“Get out,” I said quietly and simply.

Mal closed his eyes in regret, shook his head and grimaced. “Nove, I didn’t—”

“I mean it, get out,” I said, talking over him. I was trembling, but my words came out firm and sure. “Get out and don’t
ever
come back here without your wife.”

Mal stood. I noticed he was shaking as he rolled down his shirtsleeves and buttoned up the cuffs. He reached down and picked up his discarded jacket, slipped it on. His lips were curled into his mouth as he chewed on them. I led the way out of my living room to the front door, my fingers bunched deep into the palms of my hands to hide how much I was shaking. I reached for the doorknob, and then realized that I couldn’t let this pass. I had been turning myself inside out to distance myself from him and he had …

I rounded on him. He took a step back as he saw the look on my face. “You never … You
never
wanted me. You’ve made it so clear over the years that you never wanted me, that you’ve never thought of me in that way, even though you knew how I felt. How could you be so cruel and say that to me now? Because I’m growing this for you? You think it’s all right to say something like that to me? And what am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do when you and Stephanie are playing happy families? How am I supposed to feel?

“Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? How I have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t my baby?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand why you said that, Mal, why you would think saying something so cruel would be OK, but I can’t see you again without Stephanie, to make sure you can’t say anything like that to me ever again.”

I looked him over, trying to forget all the reasons why I loved him.

He stayed silent.

“Don’t come back without Stephanie, OK?”

Reluctantly, his lips mashed together, his gaze fixed somewhere to the side of me, he nodded. That day at the coach station the morning after he had rejected me and I had asked him without asking him to give me space, to let me get over him in peace, suddenly unfurled itself in my mind. Vivid and clear. His reluctance then as he agreed. My relief that he was going to let me go, set me free.

I opened the door wider and walked away, not wanting to watch him leave.

In front of the sofa, I stood still as I stepped back in time and the pain from before resurfaced.

The sheer magnitude of it had engulfed me the moment I
had locked the door of my room in halls. I had paced the floor with my coat still on, wringing my hands, feeling it all build up until I had to run to the sink and physically purge what I could by throwing up. In front of my bed, my knees buckled, and I had buried my face in the scratchy waffle blanket, dug my hands into it and begun to cry. I cried from humiliation. From knowing I’d never know love like that again. From wondering what would become of me if the one person on earth who was meant to love me didn’t, couldn’t.

In the present, I paced in front of the sofa, wringing my hands, feeling it all again. I didn’t think it could hurt like before, but his throwaway line, something said as though it was nothing important, brought it all back, brought it all home. How could someone who cared even a little for me say something like that when I was already fragile? It didn’t take a genius to see I was fragile, so why couldn’t he?

I heard the click of the front door, and my stomach dipped. I did not want to see him again. With or without Stephanie, I did not want to see him again. Like any friend, he did my head in sometimes, and he knew it, but now he had changed focus, now he was trying to do my heart in again. And I did not want to see him.

“What makes you think I never wanted you?” He made me jump twice: once because he was still here, then again because he sounded so angry.

I stopped my pacing and looked up at him. He
was
angry: it crisscrossed his features and burned in his eyes.

“What makes you think I never wanted you?” he repeated.

“You told me.”

“
I
told you?” Mal was genuinely confused. His eyes seemed to search through time, his memories, for when he uttered those words. “When did I tell you that?”

I blinked at him. Had I imagined it? Anyone seeing his confusion would think I had. “I came to visit you in my first year at Oxford, remember? We went out, and I tried to tell you how I felt, that I loved you, and you stopped me by saying you could never be interested in a woman who was your friend. Friends shouldn’t be anything else, you said. You shouldn’t think about sex and certainly not talk about love in any other terms. Remember?

“This was three weeks after you’d been up to visit me on your own for the first time and we almost … You touched me like that for the first time and then you changed your mind and couldn’t go through with it. Then you said that thing about not being interested in a woman who was your friend. So, yes, it was you,
you
made me think you never wanted me.”

“That was years ago,” he said. “I was eighteen, for God’s sake. I’d just started having sex. I was surrounded by girls who noticed me for the first time in my life, I was experimenting, I didn’t want to be experimenting with you when there was so much at risk.” He flopped his hands up and down. “But it was crazy because all I
did
was want you.

“Every time I went near a girl I would wonder afterwards if it would be better with you. It started to drive me out of my mind, because immediately after sex I’d start thinking about you even though you were only a friend. I couldn’t understand what was going on when I’d never thought of you in that way. And that weekend … I wanted to, God did I want to. I came to visit you without Cordy for that reason. When I saw you naked in the bathroom, something clicked in me and suddenly you were a girl, a woman to me. I understood why I’d been so confused. That’s when my obsession kicked in properly. I even called a couple of people I slept with Nova. So I came up to get it over with. To see if you were interested and to basically, well, I wanted you.

“But I had to stop because I knew it couldn’t be a one-night thing with you. If we did that, then we’d be together forever and I wasn’t ready for that. And I couldn’t let you tell me you loved me. I couldn’t lie to you and say I didn’t feel it back, but then I couldn’t say it back. Not right then. But none of that meant I’d never want you. Who knows what they want at eighteen? Who makes a forever decision at eighteen and sticks to it for the rest of their lives?”

“OK, Mal, that was all when we were eighteen. But what about since then? You’ve never once shown me that you’ve felt anything like that for me, that you want me. In, what, ten, eleven years, nothing. Not one sign that you were interested. You never even went out with anyone
like
me. Not once. Every single one of them was thinner or larger, shorter or taller, prettier or more unattractive, but no one was like me. I had to put up with them—and let’s not forget that all of them without fail hated me—even though they were reminders as to why you didn’t love me.

“And then you go and marry someone who couldn’t be anything less like me if she tried. We are such polar opposites it’s like you sought her out to spite me and to prove that you could never stand to be with anyone like me. So don’t rewrite history when it’s been clear from your actions what you truly felt.”

“Maria had your smile but not your eyes. Angeli had your eyes but not your nose. Julie had your turn of phrase but not your wit. Claire had your ambition but not your charm. Alice sort of had your scent but not your laugh. Jane had your hands but not your arms. Do you want me to go on? Because I can list every woman I went out with for how she was and wasn’t like you.

“And, yes, I married Steph because she’s nothing like you. It
was an end to my torture. Finally.
Finally
, I had someone who didn’t remind me of you for all the ways she wasn’t you. I could start from scratch with her. I could learn what love was about without it all coming back to you.”

I said nothing because I was astounded and doubtful in equal measures. It sounded plausible, but then implausible. We spoke almost every day, so how could he have not let something slip in all that time if it was true? And why didn’t I sense it? Because I didn’t bother to try to read Mal anymore? He had been such a fixture in my life I always assumed I knew what he felt, so maybe I didn’t bother to do what I did with other people and try to experience him on every level.

“I came back early from traveling because it had started again. That obsession I had with you—I was meeting women, and wondering if it would be better with you. And I missed you. It drove me crazy but I knew it was because I was ready now. So I came back, ready to settle down. To get married, have children with you.

“I … I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this after all this time. I had a ring made, platinum, inlaid with diamonds and rose quartz. Someone told me that rose quartz was the stone of love and romance, and I knew you were into all that, so I had a ring made with it. That’s why I asked you to meet me at the airport. I was going to get down on one knee right there in the Arrivals area to ask you to marry me. When I saw you, I knew without a doubt it was what I wanted. I had the ring in my hand, my heart was in my throat, but I was ready. I was going to do it. And then, there he was—your boyfriend.”

I was suddenly back there in the airport: the sound of the Arrivals area, the heat, the excitement of people being reunited. I remembered the way he had held me so close, his lips lingering
on my neck, the way he stared at me after he had kissed me on the mouth, the shock and horror that passed his face when he saw Keith. It was all clear: I understood it now. I’d always thought there was a vital piece missing from the jigsaw that was that memory; now I understood.

“Do you remember what I asked you when Keith went to pay for the parking ticket?” Mal asked.

We were back in the car park, standing beside Keith’s old black Audi. Mal, more muscular than when he left, gray from the jetlag, unshaven and disheveled; me, unable to contain my excitement because he was home.

“Do you remember what I asked you?” Mal repeated.

I nodded. I remembered. Of course I remembered.

Mal came closer, cupped his hand on my face, tipped my head up to look into his eyes. “Do you remember what I asked you?” he asked for the third time.

“ ‘Is he what you really want?’ ” I said.

“And do you remember what you said to me?”

I nodded.

“What did you say?”

I didn’t want to repeat it. I didn’t want to repeat the words that ruined it.

“What did you say?” he insisted.

I took a deep breath. “ ‘I’d marry him tomorrow if he asked me,’ ” I whispered. I hadn’t meant it. Keith and I were back together and we were back in the first throes of giddy, giggly lust. If he had asked me, I would have dumped him. But I said it because I wanted Mal to accept Keith. I wanted him to be happy, and thinking I was happy would do that.

“I was stupid to think that you’d be waiting for me to get my act together. But when you said that, I knew it was over. You didn’t want me anymore.”

“I didn’t mean it. I thought you didn’t like Keith. I thought if you thought me and him were serious, then you would be happy for me. I thoug—” We messed up. We messed everything up. “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I breathed.

The pressure of his hand on my face increased, and I moved my hands to his face as he lowered his head until we were a fraction away from each other. If one of us moved, even a little, our lips would meet. We’d kiss. It wouldn’t be a quick hello or goodbye, it wouldn’t be him larking about in front of our family, it would be a proper, love-filled kiss. I’d never wanted anyone to cover my lips with theirs as much as I wanted him to at that moment. I’d never wanted anyone to not kiss me as much as I didn’t want him to at that moment.

His eyes slipped shut as he rested his forehead on mine.

Nothing could happen. Nothing could ever happen. We’d made our choices and nothing could happen.

“God, Nova,
God
,” he whispered as I closed my eyes.

We stood, unable to let each other go, unable to come together, prisoners of our own dishonesty.

W
here’ve you been?
”
I asked Mal in a whisper.

I’d heard the front door open and close a few minutes before and had expected him to come up to bed, given the hour. But I’d waited and waited and nothing, no foot on the stairs, not even the sudden blast of sound as he switched on the TV and then sat down to watch the soccer highlights that I’d taped earlier (a sure sign that he was drunk). But nothing. For a few terrified seconds I wondered if it was a burglar, but then dismissed this because I’d definitely heard a key being used. I found him in the dark kitchen, leaning over the counter, staring down at the circular wooden chopping block as though it was giving him an important lecture on the theory of evolution.

“At Nova’s,” he replied, just as quietly.

“All this time?” I asked. “Shouldn’t she have gone to bed hours ago?”

He turned his head to me then, confused, baffled. “Why? What time is it?”

“Three o’clock.”

He frowned. “In the morning?”

I nodded, worried. He seemed genuinely surprised. He seemed to have not only lost track of time, but everything: who he was, where he was, what he was.

“I didn’t realize,” he said, turning back to the chopping board, “it was so late.”

I watched my husband, with his head bowed, like a man bent in prayer, and searched in the gloom for what was different about him. He was still wearing the suit he was wearing this morning. His shirt was tucked neatly into his trousers, he hadn’t worn a tie so his top button was open, his hair was all in place. But something was different. Something had changed. He reeked. That was what had changed, his smell. He reeked of her. Of Nova. Not of sex, not of anything physical, but he was drenched in her; I could almost see her flowing over him, like a slow-moving, powerful waterfall, dousing every part of him in
her.
Nova had been the one who was always going on about auras and energy fields and us giving off vibes and how simply being around someone could significantly alter your aura and therefore your mood. Which was why you had such strong physical reactions—good and bad—to certain people. Which was why you seemed to glow when you first fell in love. She had been trying to teach me how to read people, to see beyond their words, to look at them without your eyes, to tune in to how they made you feel when they did the things they did. I’d always had severe problems with it, because, basically, it was a load of nonsense—not that I’d ever tell her that.