The Versions of Us (29 page)

Now, his glass empty, Jim gets up from the table, makes his way back down the High Street to their inn. The landlord looks up as he walks in, but Jim doesn’t meet his eye. Upstairs, he opens the door carefully, unsure whether Eva is awake – but she is still sleeping, her mouth open, her hair a dark fan against the pillow.

He undresses again, lays his clothes over the back of a chair, and climbs into bed. As he moulds his body to hers, she stirs, and he says, in a half-whisper, ‘Come away with me, Eva. Let’s start again.’

A few seconds of silence, during which he can feel his heart thudding in his chest. And then the silence stretches out, broken only by the soft sound of her breathing, and he realises that she hasn’t heard.

‘Another?’ he says.

Eva looks down at her empty glass. She should say no. She should say good night, walk the two flights of stairs to the safe, carpeted silence of her room. ‘Yes. Why not?’

So many reasons why not.
She watches Leo’s back as he walks over to the drinks cabinet, pours two generous measures of single malt. He is tall, well built, with a sportsman’s loose-limbed swagger. There is a disproportionate number of middle-aged women in his group, and she has seen them watching him. On the first day, she overheard two of them in the ladies’ loos, giggling like schoolgirls: ‘God, that Leo Tait’s even better-looking in the flesh.’ The other: ‘He’s married, though, isn’t he?’ The first, disdainful: ‘Since when did
that
stop any of them?’

Washing her hands in the basin – she’d waited a tactful few minutes before leaving her cubicle, to ensure the women had departed – Eva had wondered what the woman meant by
them
. Men? Husbands? Poets? She supposed the latter had a certain – well-founded – reputation for promiscuity (just think of Byron, for God’s sake, or Burns) but Eva dislikes the new fashion for defining all men as a distinct, and rather disappointing, species. She had stared at her reflection for a few seconds, wondering whether the thick line of kohl she’d applied to each eye before breakfast was a little
de trop
; thinking of Jim, at home with the children and Juliane; feeling the old, mostly forgotten fury at his betrayal. And then she had collected herself, gone off to find her own group, lost herself in the intricacies of line and paragraph – she was leading a week’s course on self-editing – and thought nothing more of Jim, Juliane or Leo Tait.

But that night, at dinner, she had found herself sitting next to Leo: meals were served at long benches, to encourage the mingling of the course leaders and their students, but the tutors still tended to huddle together at one end. This was where Eva was sitting – next to Joan Dawlins, a crime writer with whom she had once appeared on a television review show, and opposite the playwright David Sloane, a dark, lugubrious type who had said not a word to either of them – when Leo approached, carrying a glass of wine.

‘May I?’ he said, indicating the empty chair next to Eva. Joan had simpered, ‘Of
course
, Leo.’ Sloane still said nothing. But Leo did not sit; he hovered behind the chair, as if awaiting Eva’s permission. ‘Eva?’

She had looked up from her casserole, registering his presence for the first time. ‘The chair’s empty, isn’t it?’

As soon as she had spoken, she realised she had sounded rude. Unbecoming red patches had appeared at Joan’s throat. (Eva remembered them, suddenly, from the television programme: the make-up artist’s frantic dabbing of pan-stick under the bright studio lights.) Sloane was actually smiling – Eva would learn, by the end of the week, that he was the sort of man who thrived on others’ discomfort. And so she had turned to Leo, ready to apologise, but he didn’t look in the least perturbed.

‘I was
so
glad to see you were teaching this week too,’ he said sunnily, sitting down. ‘I really do love your books. I missed Tube stops reading
Pressed
. And the TV adaptation was great. They did a good job.’

Carefully, Eva laid her knife and fork across her empty plate. She couldn’t quite decide whether he was sincere: she has a hatred of false flattery – of which she has seen quite a lot, since her ‘success’. Indeed, she doesn’t really think of herself as ‘successful’ – she fears that if she did, she might never write another word again – but she enjoys the praise, the reviews, the interviews. Deep down, though, she is aware that none of that matters as much as the writing itself: as sitting down in the mornings at her word processor, Jennifer and Daniel at school, Juliane moving around in the kitchen downstairs, and allowing herself the luxury of time spent entirely alone. It is more than many women are permitted, after all.

‘Thank you.’

Eva must have sounded doubtful, because he turned to her – she noticed that his eyes were a shining, gunmetal grey, and that boyish dimples appeared when he smiled – and said, ‘You think I’m a fake. But I’m not, you know. It’s just my face. Nobody ever takes me seriously.’

‘I don’t believe that for a second.’

‘Well.’ Leo sipped his wine, still looking at her. ‘Perhaps you’ll be the exception, then.’

He was flirting with her, of course, quite shamelessly, and continued to do so for the rest of the week. Perhaps the women she’d overheard had judged him accurately: Leo certainly seemed to know what he was doing. He paid Eva just enough attention at mealtimes and during the evening gatherings to make her feel singled out, but not so much that anyone would notice. Eva observed his courtship – if she could give it that quaint term – with amusement. She did nothing to encourage him (he knew she was married, as was he; surely he was only playing), but neither did she tell him to stop. Later, she would see that she could easily have done so, had she really wanted to; which must have meant that what she really wanted was for the flirtation to continue.

And anyway, Eva has grown used, since her mother’s death, to this odd feeling of detachment, to the sense that nothing that is happening to her is fully real. It is as if she has been split into two, even three versions of herself – living, breathing simulacra – and lost sight of the original. She tried to express this to Penelope, and it just came out sounding like science fiction. She could feel her friend watching her cautiously, as if unsure how to respond. ‘Grief, darling,’ Penelope said eventually. ‘Grief does the strangest things. Don’t fight it. You just have to let it play out.’

Was it grief, then, that encouraged Eva to play this game with Leo Tait; to nod when he offered her, and only her, a drink; to enjoy the warmth of his leg pressing against hers, safely out of sight beneath the dinner table? Perhaps at first, but on the fourth night – the Tuesday – his hand had slipped down onto her knee, and Eva had felt a lightning jolt that made her catch her breath; yet she had not brushed his hand away. After that, the game intensified: on a group outing to Haworth – Lucas, the foundation’s director, was a Brontë obsessive – they had somehow found themselves alone for a moment in an upstairs passageway. Leo had caught her at the waist, said fiercely into her ear, ‘I have to kiss you, Eva. I
have
to.’ She had shaken her head, slipped away to rejoin the group. For the rest of the day, she had kept her distance, guilt already creeping over her, though she had done nothing, not even let him kiss her; but that night, in bed, she realised that her guilt was pre-emptive. She wanted Leo. Her decision was already made; and as she lay there sleepless in her room, she thought about Jim, and whether, with Greta, he had felt the same way.

And so, tonight: Friday. As is the foundation’s custom, the end of the course has been marked by a series of readings: two students from each course – novelists, playwrights, poets, crime writers – tactfully selected by their tutors; and then the tutors themselves. Leo was the last to read. Everyone was rather the worse for wear, and the women didn’t bother to hide their anticipation as he stood up, holding the latest slim volume of his poetry. ‘He can read to me anytime he likes,’ one woman, sitting just behind Eva, said in a stage whisper.

Eva was looking too, of course; admiring Leo’s fine, tuneful baritone as it rolled out across the room. She had never read his poetry (though she had not admitted as much to him), and was unprepared for its effect: for the words’ soft ebb and flow, their unexpected delicacy. She had imagined muscular rhythms, all ‘sod’ and ‘hoe’ – not this wavelike form, pushing and pulling, building to a crescendo that left the room silent for one beat, then two, before the clapping began.

Now, Leo is returning with the whiskies: their third, or their fourth? It is almost three a.m., and everyone else has gone to bed: even Lucas retired a few minutes ago, several sheets to the wind; they heard him stumble on the landing. Every moment Eva spends here, alone with Leo, is dangerous, but she makes no move to leave.

When he reaches their table, he doesn’t sit down. ‘Perhaps we could take these up to my room?’

They are silent on the stairs. His room is on the third floor, at the front of the house: the high bay windows, now framing the black night, overlook the car park, the road. Her own room is larger, with a view over the gardens, and the knowledge of this gives her a hot, shaming sense of pride.

Eva stands by the closed door, holding her whisky glass, as he moves around the room, closing the curtains, turning on the bedside lamp.
There is still time
, she thinks.
I could reach for the door-handle, go back out onto the landing.
But she does not: she lets Leo come over to her, take the glass from her hand, match the length of his body to her own.

‘Are you sure?’ he says, and she nods, draws his face to hers. And then she is lost to pure sensation, to the charting of this new, undiscovered stretch of skin, and there is no room for thought at all.

She wakes in his bed. It is early – she can hardly have slept – and the room is cast in a cool, purplish light. Leo is still sleeping, breathing softly through his half-open mouth. In repose, his face seems absurdly young, though he is a good few years older than she. Eva dresses quietly, careful not to wake him; she barely makes a sound as she closes the door, walks as quickly as she can to her own room. She sees no one, but realises that she would not care if she did: the shame that she has carried through the week has, curiously, evaporated.

In the shower, soaping the body he has touched, Eva feels a sudden rush of exhilaration. She will not see Leo again, except by chance, at parties, on other such courses: they made no promises they couldn’t keep. Tonight, she will be home with Jim and the children; she will step back into her other life, pick up its familiar refrain. What happened here, in Yorkshire, will be something she will keep for herself. Something to carry with her silently, like a pebble slipped into the pocket of an old coat: tucked away, and then mostly forgotten.

Christmas Eve: the sky is a pale, iced blue, the sea polished and still. In the harbour, a fine layer of frost is melting on the swept decks of the boats.

Holly wreaths hang in the front windows of the Old Neptune, and a sprig of mistletoe dangles from the front porch, brushing the heads of the fishermen as they duck in for a pint, leaving their wives to the plucked turkey and gift-wrap. Each time the heavy oak door is opened, a tinny blast of music rolls out across the quayside. ‘When a Child Is Born’; ‘Mull of Kintyre’; ‘Merry Christmas, Everybody.’

In their cottage on Fish Street – how they all laughed at the name, the first time they saw it – Helena, Jim and Dylan are making gingerbread. Helena tips the sugar into the bowl, stirs the mixture with a wooden spoon. Her face is flushed with the effort, and a lock of hair, loosened from her low ponytail, is damp against her cheek. Jim would like to lean across the countertop, brush her hair back behind her ear, and feel the warmth of her skin under his hand. But he does not.