Page 35 of The Honeymoon Affair

‘Hey, hey, Ariel.’ He obviously hears it too. ‘You’ve had a bad few weeks. But you always come out on top.’

‘Do I?’

‘Of course you do. Remember that time Sven Bergensson insisted he had writer’s block and he couldn’t finish his book and you held his hand through the whole process and in the end he won a PEN America award? And it was a major bestseller. If it wasn’t for you, that would never have happened.’

‘I’m glad you think it was me, but it was Sven himself,’ I say as mildly as I can.

‘He hasn’t done that well since,’ observes Charles. ‘What’s he at these days?’

‘He’s writing,’ I reply. ‘Slowly.’

‘Even slower than me?’ He laughs, and I do too.

‘Here.’ He fills my half-empty glass, then frowns. ‘You forgot the peanuts.’

I usually bring peanuts on Fridays. Or Bombay mix. It’s become a tradition of ours and I’ve missed it while he’s been in the Caribbean. I’ve missed him.

I slide along the sofa and lean my head against his shoulder. He stiffens for a moment, then relaxes.

‘I think I’m fed up because of the weather,’ I murmur. ‘It’s been so bloody cold here. I’ve been thinking of you enjoying yourself beneath tropical skies, and I guess I’ve been jealous.’

‘I was working,’ he says.

‘Every day?’

‘I have a manuscript for you, so yes, every day.’

‘But there must have been some fun times too?’ I sit up straight again and take another sip from my wine glass. ‘You know, cocktails and canapés on the deck.’

‘I wasn’t on a boat.’

‘I seem to remember you were at a party when I called you last. And I’m betting there was a deck somewhere.’

‘There was,’ he concedes. ‘And beachfront dining. And calypso bands.’

‘How lovely.’

‘It was very therapeutic,’ he says. ‘It put me into a different space.’

‘A creative space, obviously.’

‘Eventually.’

‘Meet any interesting people?’

‘Some,’ he says. ‘But I was working.’

‘And listening to calypso bands . . .’

‘Not really my sort of music.’

‘True. Hey, Siri,’ I say. ‘Play jazz.’

The room is suddenly filled with the mellow sound of Chet Baker’s ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily’, which is one of our favourite songs. Any time I ask Siri to play jazz, that’s the first thing that comes up.

We sit in silence for a while and I feel myself begin to unwind for the first time in weeks. It shouldn’t be because Charles is beside me, but it is. There was a long time after our split when I wondered if we could even maintain our professional relationship. But after a tricky few months when we didn’t work together, we adapted. Even though I’m based at the bottom of the garden, we rarely see each other during the week, but since late last year I’ve come to the house with a bottle of wine and some nibbles most Fridays, and we talk about the stuff we used to talk about before. Charles outlines his creative thoughts and I give him encouragement and advice.

We’ve got to a good place in our relationship. When he ran into a block in putting his latest idea down on paper, it was me who suggested he should head off somewhere for a few weeks to write without interruption. I proposed a few weeks in the Mayo cottage, but apparently his sister Ellis had taken up temporary residence there, as she frequently does. I then suggested rural France as an ideal alternative, but Charles had already decided on the Caribbean. For a complete change of scenery, he said. Something to challenge his senses. And I told him about the hotel that Corinne Doherty had gone to years ago and from which she’d written her smash Jemima Jones hit, the one that had been made into a movie followed by an Apple TV series featuring the female detective. I pointed out that he already had the movie and the TV series, so he was way ahead of Corinne, but he was in the depths of anxiety at that point and didn’t really listen to me. However, it appears the blue seas and skies, and the white sands and calypso bands have worked their magic.

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