The Bed I Made (38 page)

Afterwards we lay on our sides, faces inches apart. His hand rested on my hip. The warm smell of his skin was in my nostrils. Even now, neither of us had really spoken, as if we were worried that we would burst the bubble which for the moment held us safely inside. As he’d come, he had given a sharp cry, pleasure definitely but also pain.

‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘Yes. Are you?’ I moved over and touched my lips against his.

‘Yes,’ he said but in the light that fell into the room from the landing I saw that his eyes were shining. ‘It’s been quite a long time.’ He put his hand on my arm, feeling the goose-bumps that were starting to come up. ‘Let’s get in,’ he said. ‘You’re cold.’

We got into the bed and lay facing each other again, our heads on the pillows.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what this is, whether you even want anything at all or . . .’

‘I like you, too.’

He pulled me towards him, turning on to his back so that I fitted into the crook of his arm, my cheek on his shoulder. ‘I’ve been incredibly lonely,’ he said, addressing the ceiling. ‘Not alone but lonely. The time I’ve spent with you – I haven’t felt like that.’

I let my hand rest on his stomach, feeling the pulse under his skin. His body was so different to Richard’s. There was something solid about him. Richard’s muscle came from the gym but Pete’s came from rowing and sailing the boat, lugging outboards around. I had always loved Richard’s body but now its definition struck me as self-regarding and vain. Pete’s physique wasn’t honed in the same way but it was naturally fit, honest somehow and strong.

All of a sudden it was as if a window had come open and a cold wind ran over my bare skin. I’d done it – it was irrevocable.
If you were ever involved with anyone else, I’d kill you
.

After a while, he reached over me to turn on the bedside lamp. We were in a small room with cream walls, the ceiling sloping to meet a wooden sash window. The striped blue curtains were open and though lying down I couldn’t see anything except the navy darkness beyond the glass, I could hear the sea.

‘It’ll sound ridiculous,’ he said, ‘but I can’t believe this is really happening.’

‘It is – I’ve pinched myself.’

He laughed and turned over on to his side. He gently stroked my breast, his fingers tracing my nipple. ‘Your breasts are lovely,’ he said, lowering his mouth. Sensation flooded me, driving Richard out.

The second time was slower but just as intense. My body rose from the mattress to meet his; I wanted to fill myself up with him. I took deep breaths of the scent of his skin, let my hands run over him, learning the shape of his shoulders and the banks of muscle in his back. I forgot not only Richard but myself: my mind emptied.

It was later when I was back in the crook of his arm and he had brought one of the knots in my hair into better light to untangle it that my stomach gave a loud growl.

‘Hungry?’

‘Yes, a bit,’ I said, embarrassed.

‘Haven’t you had dinner?’

The memory of the day, so thoroughly banished, returned. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I was on the mainland. I went over to look at some cottages but I ended going up to London instead, to see my friend.’ I pressed my face against his chest, avoiding his eye.

‘It’s April, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’re going.’

After another rumble from my stomach, Pete threw back the covers and got out. I watched as he put his jeans and T-shirt back on, admiring his long lines, the way the dark hair on his body tapered below his navel. ‘Come downstairs,’ he said, so I hopped out of bed and got dressed again. There was a mirror on the wall and when he’d gone, I went to look in it. My cheeks were flushed and my hair was a nest but I didn’t care.

It struck me that the room was quite bare for one used regularly and when I went out on to the landing to go down, I saw I was right. Through the door opposite, left slightly ajar, I saw another bedroom, a pair of Pete’s paint-covered jeans hanging over a wrought-iron bedstead. We’d been in a guest room.

Downstairs I followed the noises to the back of the house and found myself in a huge kitchen. In the area near the door were large modern units, wood topped with steel, a range and a huge fridge from which Pete was taking a bottle of wine. Behind him, the grill was on and there were already slices of bread cut from a loaf on the board. ‘I haven’t got much, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘I need to go shopping. But I can do you some cheese on toast.’ He unpeeled the foil from the wine and took a corkscrew from the row of utensils on hooks on the wall.

I wanted to stay close to him but with our clothes a degree of formality had returned so I sipped my wine and watched him moving round, grating cheese, arranging the bread on the grill pan, bare feet big on the wooden floor.

Beyond the units there was a wooden table and beyond that again a wicker sofa facing a long window. I went over to look out. There was scarcely a rim of garden round the back; the house, I saw, was perched right on the edge so that the view was all sea, the Solent stretching darkly to the mainland and the irregular lights along the shore there.

I was self-conscious about eating in front of him but at the same time I was so hungry it was an effort not to wolf down everything on the plate in seconds flat. He was sitting sideways to face me, his arm over the back of the sofa, one of his legs folded under.

‘What size are your feet?’ I said, looking at them.

‘Thirteen,’ he admitted. ‘Huge.’

It was a strange thing; I’d thought that I would find it uncomfortable to be in the house he’d shared with Alice but I didn’t feel her presence, even on a practical level. Apart, perhaps, from the wrought-iron bedstead, the style of the house wasn’t especially feminine which surprised me, given her apparent liking for fashion. It wasn’t sparse but there were no extra cushions on the sofa and no vases or photographs or ornaments on the shelves on the far wall, just books and a small wooden boat that looked from a distance like a scale model of
Beatrice
. Had he put away the things that reminded him of her or had there even ever been any?

There was silence for a moment and into it came the muffled sound of the bell at St James’s striking midnight. I remembered how it had sounded only yesterday for Alice’s memorial and was suddenly horrified at myself. How could I have thought to come here? I was a monster. My cheeks flamed.

Pete was watching me. ‘Did you hear about Alice?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ I looked down, feeling more blood rush to my face. ‘Chris told me.’

‘All of it?’

‘I . . . I don’t know.’

‘Did he tell you that she’d been seeing someone else?’

‘Yes.’

‘The man she was seeing,’ he said, looking away and out of the window, ‘was her old boyfriend. David – he’s a banker. They went out for years, from when she was at university till she was twenty-seven. He was the great love of her life apparently.’ He snorted. ‘So much so that he dumped her when her dad was dying.

‘She came back here to look after her dad at the end. She was incredibly sad then but I thought it was just about that. We’d always been friends and so we saw each other a bit and I did my best to be a support – talking, you know. I’d always liked her – more than just as a friend – but other than a bit of a drunken kiss, nothing had happened between us before she’d gone away to university. Then suddenly, after Brian died, she started coming round more and more and we – started seeing each other. We were married within a year and I was so happy about it all that I didn’t think to question it. I had this occasional nagging doubt that I loved her more than she loved me but I thought that would come, as she got better, the grief lessened.’

I reached out and put my hand on his foot. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said.

‘I want to.’ He took a great swig of wine and emptied his glass. ‘Alice didn’t love me.’

‘Pete, that can’t . . .’

‘I’m not saying that she didn’t like me or we didn’t get on but she didn’t love me – not in the right way. In the end I had to acknowledge it. There were always areas of her life that she kept closed off. At first I tried to get her to open up but she resisted. She had dresses that she kept in suit bags but never wore. A couple of months after we got married, I came home once and she was just sitting there clutching one of them, crying, as if it was dead or something. He’d bought it for her. I tried buying her things, thinking that she just missed that part of her life – living in London, getting dressed up – but I’d missed the point.’ He stopped talking. The bottle was on the floor and he picked it up and refilled our glasses.

‘Apparently he found her again on the internet, if you can believe it. She was using her maiden name in chat-rooms. She used to go over there to meet him.’ He looked at me, oddly defensive suddenly. ‘I suspected it; I did. She was happier, much happier – initially I thought that it was this new psychologist she claimed to be seeing but she was too happy for that. But you know, the truth is – and this is why I’ve felt so guilty – I’d run out of energy. I’d tried so hard but nothing had been enough, and it’s hard to carry on loving someone when they don’t love you back.’

I’d left my hand on his foot, and now I pressed down slightly, unsure what I could say that would help.

‘She thought that it was all going to work out, she was making plans to leave me, but he dropped her again. That’s why she did it in the end – went out in the boat. It nearly finished her the first time – she just couldn’t handle it again.

‘The reason I’m telling you this – it all reflects badly on me, I know that; I’m hardly painting myself as the irresistible love-object, am I? – it’s because I want you to have the truth. I know I’m sounding heavy and I’m jumping the gun but I want you to know that if you want . . . What I mean is, this – you and me – it’s not about Alice.’

I stayed the night. We finished the wine, then went upstairs and got back into bed. We didn’t have sex again but he lay behind me, his body following the shape of mine, his arm around my waist. His breath was warm on my shoulder as we murmured to each other and I listened to the sea lapping at the wall of the garden, feet below. We fell asleep with the light on and when I woke briefly and reached over to turn it off, I felt his arm tighten round me. I lay down again, feeling his chest hair tickle my back. Even when things had been at their best with Richard, I had struggled to sleep in his arms but with Pete, it felt different.

I slept dreamlessly until the first light of the morning began to reach in through the curtains. Then I came awake with a start. Richard’s words were in my ears again as clearly as if he’d been leaning over the bed to whisper them.
I’d kill you
.

Chapter Thirty-three

I did sleep again but only fitfully, and after I’d heard St James’s strike seven, I knew it was pointless to keep trying. I turned over carefully so as not to wake Pete. He was lying on his side, facing me. He’d worked his way over to the other side of the bed during the night but his arm was stretched towards me, its open palm up. His face was open, too, unguarded: his gentle mouth, the large eyelids with their fringe of dark lashes, the cheek with its coat of stubble. I wanted to wake him up so that he would put his arms around me but I wanted him to sleep on, too, so that I didn’t have to stop looking at him.

Last night as his breathing had slowed and I felt myself beginning to fall asleep, I’d realised something. In the past his openness about his feelings and how Alice had treated him would have sent me running. However much I’d liked him, that level of honesty – intimacy – would have horrified me and immediately triggered a sabotage campaign, with me finding reasons why I couldn’t get involved, imagining faults, starting arguments, eventually conjuring up a feeling not unlike pity for the poor man who’d made the mistake of wanting me. I didn’t feel it now: I had no urge to flee.

Should I tell him about Richard, the real reason I’d come here? I wanted to, when he’d been so honest with me. But telling him would mean confessing that I’d taken Richard back when I’d known he was married. Alice had been an adulterer but I had, too. I heard him sigh as he buried his head further into the pillow. I had to try not to think about Richard here, not to let his poison seep in. Maybe it would all collapse, anyway; maybe there was just too much weighing on us. I would take that risk, though. I would take the pain later if it meant I could have this now, even for a while.

I’d kill you
. My stomach turned over, and the previous day came back to me in a great swell. Had Helen heard my message? I had to get through to her. She had been seeing him, I was certain about that, but in what way? Her resistance would have made it all the more exciting for him to seduce her. Perhaps, though, that wasn’t it; perhaps he was getting closer to her, winning her confidence so that she would tell him where I was. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t betray my trust, not on that. I was certain.

Eventually, Pete opened his eyes. He smiled when he saw me, a slow smile that started with surprise and ended with a grin. He shifted across the bed and put his arms round me. I felt a surge of emotion, happiness but also something painfully like nostalgia, an awareness that we didn’t have long. After a few minutes, his hand slipped from my waist to my hip and the feeling changed, becoming a mix of desire and intense longing.