I knew I only had thirty minutes to do all the checking, so that meant I couldn’t rush it, I had to do it properly first time. No mistakes. Everything six times, get the pattern right.
It was all right.
I made it up the stairs half an hour after I’d sent him the text. I hadn’t even managed to take my coat off.
When he opened the door and saw me, he frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said, following him in. His hallway was bright.
“You look really pale.”
“Oh. I fainted in the library.”
We were in the kitchen. He’d taken my coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the door, over his brown jacket. He looked more dressed up today, I guess he hadn’t had time to get changed out of his work clothes: dark gray pants and a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “You fainted? How come?” He pulled out one of the kitchen chairs for me to sit on.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t eat enough today, or I’m just tired, or something.”
“You’re staying for supper, then,” he said.
“No—I mean—I wasn’t hinting or anything—”
“You’re staying for supper.”
He was stirring soup on the stove that smelled homemade. While he did that he made tea, even though I really wanted to make it myself, just to be sure it was right. He was busy stirring mugs and adding milk and chatting away about how mad his week had been. And something about how he’d found a really good store four streets away that sold spices that he hadn’t seen anywhere else.
I got my mug of tea and, like last time, it wasn’t too bad at all. Certainly drinkable.
He got some bread rolls out of a paper bag and put them in the oven to warm through. I watched the way he moved in his kitchen, feeling drowsy. It hadn’t escaped my attention that he hadn’t mentioned OCD once.
“Thanks again for all that stuff you left for me. It was really interesting.”
He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. For a moment it seemed as if he’d had a weight lifted off him.
“That’s good to hear. Have you thought any more about getting some help?”
“I’ve thought about it. It’s hard, though, you know?”
He put a tub of sunflower spread on the table, side plates, knives, spoons. “I know.”
“I don’t do these things for fun, for no reason. Checking, I mean. It helps me to feel safe. If I didn’t check, how would I know I was safe?”
“It would be better, though, wouldn’t it, if you could just check once and be sure you’re safe?”
“Of course.”
“You know yourself that there’s no logical reason why you need to check things more than once. You complete these safety behaviors because of the way you feel, not because something has physically changed to make things unsafe.”
“I somehow doubt therapy is going to fix that.”
“It’s got to be worth a try, though? Hasn’t it?”
He brought over two steaming bowls of soup and put them on the table. Then the bread rolls, quickly, from the oven, juggling them from one hand to the other.
He sat opposite me and looked me in the eye.
“Thank you, for this. It’s very kind.”
“It’s just chicken soup. But you’re welcome.”
He was still holding that eye contact with me, expectantly, as though he was waiting for me to say something or do something that would move things forward somehow. I wondered if he did this at work, stared at his patients until they said something to break the silence. I didn’t want to say anything, though. I just wanted to look, to have a reason to look, to keep looking.
In the end it was him that gave up first. He looked down and started on his soup, his cheeks flushed. I chalked it up as a small victory to me. I could outstare anyone, any time, anywhere. A little trick I learned in the hospital.
The soup was good, incredible in fact. I felt warm from the inside, and the more I ate, the more I was aware of how hungry I had been. “When’s the last time you ate?” he asked, when I used the last of my bread to collect the final bit of soup from the bottom of the bowl.
“I can’t remember. I doubt it was that long ago.”
“Do you want me to make some more?”
“No, really, it’s fine. Thank you.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
The sudden change of subject caught me off guard. “Come with me? Where to?”
“To see your GP. Not in with you of course, but I’ll come with you to the doctor’s office. Would that help? Bit of moral support?”
“No, thanks,” I said, not looking at him.
“It’s not a problem. I should be able to get some time off.”
“I don’t even have a GP, Stuart. I’ve never bothered registering with one since I moved down here.”
I stood, the chair scraping noisily on the tiled floor.
“Thanks for the soup. I’ve got to go. You know how it is, I’ve got important things I need to be getting on with.” I pulled my coat off the hook and headed down the corridor toward the front door, feeling a little bit like the walls were getting narrower the farther I went.
“Wait a sec. Cathy, wait.”
I thought he was going to go on about it some more, doctors, therapy, talking about it, getting better, all of that shit, but instead he just gave me a shopping bag with something heavy inside it. “What is it?”
“More soup. Two portions, frozen. Just keep eating, okay?”
“Thanks.”
I practically ran down the stairs and back into my flat. I stood for a moment on the other side of the door, breathing fast. The bag in my hand was heavy. I took it through to the kitchen and put the two solid blocks of soup into the freezer. There wasn’t much in the fridge, I noticed. He was right, I should really start paying more attention to eating. After all, I didn’t want to faint again—it might happen at work.
I checked the flat, but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept thinking about Stuart. I’d been very rude, walking out on him like that. It wasn’t something I could really help. I can’t take pressure.
I don’t trust doctors anymore, not after what happened in the hospital. If I start giving in to them, if I start looking for help, it might just happen all over again, just when I’ve started to make progress, just when I’ve got a job and a flat and a life, of a sort. Stuart sees me as I am now: someone who spends so much time fiddling with the front door that she forgets to eat, someone who faints in the library, someone who can’t take any sort of confrontation or advice.
He didn’t see me as I was then. He doesn’t know how far I’ve come with this already.
On Sunday morning we went for a walk on the beach at Morecambe. It was bitterly cold, the wind blowing the sand up into our faces, stinging and making my eyes water. My hair blew around in crazy shapes.
I faced into the wind and forced it back behind my head, twisting it around and tying it in a knot. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it would do for now.
He took hold of my hand again, “Beautiful.” He had to shout above the noise of the wind. We walked down to where the waves were crashing against the sand, our feet leaving wet trails. I picked up a shell, translucent and glistening with saltwater. My hair was working its way loose again. The clouds overhead were racing across the sky, getting darker, threatening rain. I unwound my thin cotton scarf from around my neck and disentangled it from my coat, the wind whipping it away as I tried to stretch it out. I wound it around my hair, trying to tie it, all the while the wind fighting me for it, laughing at my efforts.
“Lee,” I shouted. He was throwing pebbles into the surf.
He heard me and came back to where I stood, but didn’t wait for me to speak. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, his mouth warm and salty-tasting. I gave up on my hair and it flew around us, just at the same moment as my scarf, which I’d even forgotten I was holding, took flight and soared into the air like a skinny bird.
Lee let go of me and chased after it while I stood laughing, the sound snatched from my lips before I could even hear it. The scarf fell and rose and twisted in different directions, the fronds at either end flapping crazily.
It landed in the wet and foamy sand, as I knew it would, and he brought it back to me, draped over one finger, cold and forlorn and dripping.
We gave up on the wind and walked hand in hand back toward the town. The smells of the seaside were too tempting and we went into a chip shop, the quiet when the door shut behind us almost deafening. We bought some chips to share and sat with flushed cheeks at the Formica table by the window, watching through the condensation as people walked along the front at odd angles, coats and pants whipped by the wind.
“I wish every day could be like today,” I said.
Lee was watching me thoughtfully the way he often did. “You should give up work,” he said.
“What?”
He shrugged. “Give up work. Then, whenever I’ve got a day off, we can spend it together doing things like this.”
I laughed. “What am I supposed to live on?”
“I’ve got plenty. We could get a place together.”
I thought he was joking at first, but he wasn’t. “I love my job,” I said.
That made him laugh. “You’re always complaining about it,” he said.
“Still, I wouldn’t give it up. Thanks, though. It’s tempting.”
Outside, a police car crawled past. It came to a stop outside the store next door, but nobody got out. “Wonder what they’re doing,” I said.
He caught my eye then, bright blue eyes.
“What?” I said, smiling.
“I need to tell you something.” He took another chip and munched on it, his eyes still on me.
“Go on,” I said, thinking it didn’t sound good.
“It’s just between you and me. All right?”
“Yes, of course.”
I didn’t know what I thought it was. I just knew it was going to be something else that was going to change everything. The moment had that feel about it, that before-and-after feel, as though this was going to be the end of one time and the beginning of another.
My hair hung around my face and shoulders, sticky with the salt wind, full of bits of sand, blown into a thick brittle cloud like dark brown cotton candy. He reached out and tried to put his hand through it, but couldn’t. It made him laugh. He looked out to the street again, at the police car parked outside and at the rain that had started lashing the window. Then he looked back to me and took my hand in his.
“It’s just that I love you,” he said. “That’s all.”
My heart soared, of course it did, and from then on every time I looked at him and remembered him saying it my heart jumped and everything in me wanted to smile and yell about it.
But there was something else. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been about to tell me something else, something completely different, something bad; and at the last moment he’d changed his mind.
I was getting ready for bed and I made the mistake of checking, just once more. It was almost like a guilty pleasure, something I was going to permit myself to do, to help me feel totally safe before I went to sleep. But doing it on an empty stomach, having had little sleep for the past few nights, wasn’t a good idea. I got stuck again. Each time I checked, I did it wrong somehow, lost count, didn’t do things in exactly the right order, didn’t have my hand on the door for long enough, it just didn’t feel right.
Hour after hour, I started again and again and again . . . I had a shower at about one in the morning to try to wake myself up a bit, shivering when I got out. I put on sneakers and a T-shirt and started again at the flat door.
Still no good. I ended up sitting by the door, my head on my knees, sobbing and shaking, making such a racket that I didn’t hear him coming up the stairs. He knocked on the door and made me jump out of my skin.
“Cathy? It’s me. Are you okay?”
I couldn’t reply, I just gasped and sobbed. He was just on the other side of the door.
“What’s happened?” he said, louder this time. “Cathy? Can you let me in?”
After a moment I just said, “I’m okay, go away. Please—just go away.”
I waited for the sound of footsteps going upstairs, but they didn’t come. And a few moments later, the sound of him sitting down on the landing outside my door. I cried harder, although not so much with fear as fury, fury at him taking control of my panic, blocking the door, interrupting whatever I could have conceivably done to protect myself. Ironically enough, though, I wasn’t trapped anymore. It’s the same when Mrs. Mackenzie interrupts the checking downstairs.
I crawled away from the door and sat on the carpet looking at it, thinking of him sitting outside. What on earth must he think of me?
I cleared my throat and spoke as clearly and firmly as I could. “I’m all right now.”
I heard shuffling as he got to his feet. “Are you?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
He coughed. “Do you want anything? Shall I make you a cup of tea, or something like that?”
“No. I’m all right.” It felt like madness, talking to my door.
“Okay.”
There was a pause, as though he was uncertain whether to believe me, then finally the sound of footsteps on the stairs up to the top floor.
I had contemplated taking Monday off, or even phoning in sick and spending the day in bed with Lee.
If he’d stayed in bed it would have been too tempting to get back under the covers, but he got up when I went to have a shower, and by the time I came downstairs in my work clothes he had made me tea, and a sandwich to take to work with me.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.
He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. “You should think about what I said,” he whispered at last. “If you weren’t working we could go back to bed.”
“You’re such a tease.”
It was wet and windy and still almost dark outside, and the temptation to go back inside and spend another day with him was almost unbearable. I’d left a door key on the dining room table so that he could lock up if he wanted to go out. It seemed like a completely natural thing to do; I already knew I wasn’t going to ask for it back tonight. We’d spent two whole days in each other’s company, two blissful days and three nights of complete happiness. Not a moment of discomfort or awkwardness or bickering. Not a moment had gone by when I hadn’t been glad he was there.
I’d been at work all of ten minutes when my phone rang: it was Sylvia. She had a few more weeks at her old job before moving to London.
“Hiya,” I said. “How was the Red Divine?”
“Divine, darling,” she said. “No, seriously, it’s ace. You missed a good night.”
“What’s it like, then?”
“Oh, it’s just lovely. Lots of red leather sofas and chrome and glass—and the bathrooms! My God, you’d have loved it, they had flowers in there and proper hand towels and bottles of moisturizer. And that barman, you remember the one who used to work in the Pitcher and Piano, the one you fancied—what was his name? Jeff? Julian?”
“Jamie.”
“Well, he was in there behind the bar, too. The bar staff are all wearing red horns. And right over the bar is the old stained-glass window with lights behind, so you’re drinking your demon sauces underneath the gaze of the saints. Fantastic.”
“Wow. You going again next weekend?”
“Maybe. Probably. Anyway, darling, I wasn’t calling to tell you about
that
,” she said, before pausing for effect.
“What, something more exciting than the opening night of the Red Divine?”
“
Much
more exciting. I’m having a dinner party, just for close friends. At Maggie’s house, not mine, of course, I’ve started packing up, it’s hideous, I can’t believe I’m surviving, but anyway—so can you come?”
“When?” I asked, not sure if she’d actually said.
“Next Thursday night. Can you come? Sevenish?”
“Sure I can come, wouldn’t miss it for the world. Do you want me to bring anything? Dessert? Salad?”
“New boyfriend,” she said coyly.
“Oh, I think he’s going to be working,” I said.
“Oh.”
“I’ll ask him, anyway, maybe he could get out of it.”
“Sean’s going to be there. And Lennon. And Charlie. And I was going to bring Stevie, just for a giggle.”
In other words, come with a guy or be the odd woman out.
“I’ll ask him, okay? If not, I’ll see you at the Spread Eagle for the party. There’s no way I’m missing that one.”
“Okay, darling, let me know by Wednesday night so I know how much stuff to buy? And in the meantime, be good. And if you can’t be good, be bad.”
“I will. See you then.”
“Ciao, baby.”
Was it too early to ask Lee to a dinner with all my friends? He was going to be scrutinized at Sylvia’s party anyway; surely it would be just bringing that forward? And parties at Maggie’s house were always good. She was a fantastic cook, too, and the thought of missing out on one of Maggie’s dinners just because my partner was too busy at work to accompany me was a truly dreadful thought.
I plowed on with work, getting ready for a meeting at ten. Lots of meeting notes to prepare, still thinking about the last dinner party at Maggie’s, a girls-only one, eating crème brûlée and drinking too much brandy.
After the meeting, I had a missed call from Lee, so I called him back.
“Hi, gorgeous,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you up to?”
“I’ve just done the dishes. And now I’m going to go out and go shopping so I can make you something nice for dinner. Is there anything you need?”
“I don’t think so. Lee, are you working next Thursday night?”
“Why?”
“We’ve been invited to a dinner party at Maggie’s.”
There was a pause. “Do you want me to go?”
Of course, I thought, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked. “Yes,” I said.
“I was supposed to go somewhere, but I should be able to put it off. I’ll make a few phone calls and let you know. How does that sound?”
“Brilliant.”
“Okay, then. What time will you be home?”
“I’m not sure. Half-sixish?”
“I’ll have dinner ready.”
“That sounds wonderful. Thank you.”
“I’ll see you later.”