Page 13 of The Lie
Neither of them moved. ‘I’m sorry, Romy,’ Finch said. ‘I wanted this to be a perfect evening, and it seems to have gone a bit pear-shaped.’
Romy began to laugh when she saw his stricken expression. He didn’t immediately join in and she knew she should control herself, but it wasn’t easy in her tired, slightly tipsy state. ‘I’ve had a wonderful time! Eccentric, perhaps,’ she managed to say through her giggles. ‘But certainly not the stuff of disaster.’
He gave a rueful grin. ‘I’m normally good at logistics.’
‘You are good. You saved me from a life-threatening illness, remember? Made sure I was fed and watered, and now I have a cosy …’ she looked askance at the sad, chilly singles ‘… bed for the night.’ She got up. ‘What more could a girl want?’
Finch was really laughing now, as he stood. For a moment they hesitated, watching each other in silence. Then he gently pulled her to him and wrapped her in his arms. She sighed with pleasure, knowing she was trembling slightly as she looked up to meet his eye. Then Finch kissed her.
His kisses were soft at first, but as he felt her respond, they grew more intense, their bodies pressed together in the narrow gap between the beds.
After a while they pulled back, a question on each of their faces. Romy was buzzing, aroused. But Finch seemed to be holding back.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t rush,’ he said, his voice croaky with desire, at the same time holding his palm against her cheek. Her eyes met his and she took a steadying breath.
The desire she felt made Romy’s head spin. But now she couldn’t help projecting herself into the cold light of morning, waking in the club room scrunched, half dressed, beside Finch in the narrow single bed, make-up blotched on her face, mouth stale and no toothbrush, wondering what they’d done. That was the trouble with being older: you thought about these things.
She reached up and kissed him again. Not a come-on kiss, this time, but a holding one, which spoke of promise and looked forward to the next time they might be in each other’s arms.
10
November 2016
Nothing was ever the same in Romy’s marriage after the letter. It was as if a malign – and uninvited – guest permanently stalked the flat. Despite her outward support for Michael’s position – as in going along with his determination to do nothing – those words had created a seismic shift in their relationship. She was almost afraid to be with Michael, reluctant to look him in the eye for fear of what she might see. And as the months went on, the distance between them seemed to become solid and increasingly unbreachable.
Until that point, her faith in her husband had been absolute. She had taken him at face value, warts and all, accepting his addiction to work, how little he was around when the boys were growing up, the way he took her for granted as his wingman, without ever questioning her feelings about being subordinate to his stellar career, because she loved him, because it hadn’t always been like that between them … because, although she knew he wasn’t perfect, she had always believed in his integrity. And his intrinsic love for his family.
They had grown up in the same village in the north-east, known each other only by sight – Michael was olderby three years and considered inaccessibly cool by her and her friends. When their paths did eventually cross one hot, crazy June night in a Stockton pub, Romy sixteen and star-struck, there had been no turning back for either of them.
In those early days Michael’s drive and charisma had created an exciting life. He had seemed to need her by his side, his pride in his northern roots also tinged with self-consciousness among the mainly public-school crowd his pupillage for the Bar threw him together with.
Now, when Michael was at work and she was alone in the flat, Romy, in an attempt to block out those stark words on the cream writing-paper, would summon up happier times, remind herself that it hadn’t always been like this between them.
And as her birthday loomed – thirteen months after the letter’s arrival – she recalled a long-ago celebration with a smile: Michael standing by the door of their shabby bedsit near Russell Square, grinning and wheeling his arms impatiently as she put on her coat. ‘Hurry up, we’re going to be late.’ He had woken her before six that morning, handing her an envelope: two plane tickets to Paris concealed in a birthday card.
Neither had ever been to the city before. ‘We must have the full-on Paris experience,’ Michael had said excitedly. ‘Do everything: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre. Float down the Seine on abateau mouche.’ So they stayed in a chilly pension on the Left Bank, with brown tiles on the floor and no pillow, just a lumpy cylindrical bolster, which made them laugh till their sides ached. It was a raw, wet November, but Mona Lisa’s smile, endlesssteak-frites and a great deal of cheap red wine kept them warm. When they made love, the iron feet of the bed screeched on the hideous tiles and reduced them to more tears of laughter.
They had been such a team back then. ‘It’s us against the world, Romy,’ Michael would say, with a confident grin. She worked for a firm of architects in Islington – they called her a ‘secretary’ in those days – while Michael completed his pupillage in Gray’s Inn. Most weekends they would throw spaghetti suppers in their tiny flat, with raucous, drink-fuelled rows about anything and nothing. Michael’s increased pressure of work as he rose quickly through the system, and the birth of the boys, had begun to alter all that.
Romy’s birthday this year, however, would be more momentous by far than the Paris trip had been – but with none of the innocent enjoyment that had accompanied it. Because it was the day when she first began to think seriously that she might leave Michael, despite the trigger being almost ludicrously insignificant.
Her husband had appeared agitated that morning. ‘I’m really upset, Romy. I ordered your present weeks ago and the bloody thing hasn’t arrived,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
When she’d assured him it didn’t matter – which it didn’t – he went through a whole charade. ‘Were you in yesterday?’ he asked, and when Romy said she wasn’t, he went on, ‘Maybe Mrs Ratti took it in. I’d better run down and check.’ And he’d gone off to ask the Italian caretaker, who lived in the basement flat, if she’d seen the package. But when the present did arrive – anexpensive Mulberry handbag in soft cerise leather – Romy noticed the order date was the actual day of her birthday.
It was such a small thing – in the past it might have been something they could laugh about. But his lie felt much more sinister to Romy than just a silly fib about forgetting her present. When she confronted him at breakfast that weekend, he initially denied it.
‘Are you accusing me of lying?’ he’d said, slamming his coffee mug onto the table, surprisingly full of aggression.
She’d laughed, tried to make light of it. ‘Well, you did, Michael. I don’t give a toss that you forgot – you know me better than that. But there’s no need to lie.’
For a moment he had continued to eye her indignantly. Then his face had collapsed into a sheepish grin and he’d held up his hands. ‘It’s a fair cop, guv,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, Romy. I felt terrible when I realized I’d forgotten.’
But Romy had not been mollified. She’d totally believed the charade with the lost parcel.If he can lie so convincingly about something as trivial as my birthday present… she thought. Because the letter coloured almost every exchange she had with Michael these days, as if she were filtering all his utterances through the prism of the woman’s words.
Romy hated herself for it, but she found she couldn’t stop as the poison drip-dripped onto the fabric of their marriage, burning small holes at first, which soon joined up into huge jagged ones, until she felt there was nothing left but tatters. She had finally lost the strength to hold the fabric together.
And Michael obviously felt it. She’d sensed him pulling away from her over the previous thirteen months – spending ever more hours at work – at the same time as she had taken a step back from him. But distance only spawned more distance, with neither able to talk about it. The moment seemed to have passed when she might have spoken, Romy realized.
