Page 31 of The Lie
Romy shook her head. ‘Not a peep – which is hardly a surprise. The snag is, your dad’s damaged brain just won’t seem to accept that she’s gone – despite all the evidence.’
The previous night was a case in point. It was about one in the morning when she was dragged from a deep sleep to the sound of Michael’s bell. But when she asked him what he needed, he’d responded, ‘Nothing. I’m fine. I just wanted to find out if you’ve heard from Anezka. I keep leaving her messages but she doesn’t get back to me.’
Romy had let out a long sigh. ‘It’s one in the morning and you want to talk about Anezka?’
Michael’s face had fallen. She thought he seemed slightly disoriented. ‘Oh … I’m sorry … I didn’t realize it was so late.’ His mouth twisted with anxiety. ‘It’s just I really need to talk to her. Did she ring you, Romy? You can tell me.’
‘No, Michael, she didn’t. Now go to sleep and we can discuss it in the morning.’
He’d nodded, but she could see he was still upset, so she sat down in the orange chair. ‘Go to sleep,’ she said, more gently this time, stroking his hand. He’d closed his eyes and was asleep within minutes, as usual, leaving Romy wondering what had gone on between him and Anezka to make him so desperate to speak to her.
She sat on in the darkness, wide awake now. Michael was muttering in his sleep, his head tossing from side to side as if he were trying desperately to shake something off.
‘No … no, no, no … don’t look at me like that … I didn’t …’ He threw his arm out violently, hitting the wall behind his head.
Romy laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Michael, it’s OK,’ she soothed. For a second he opened his eyes, then lapsed into sleep again.Was that about Anezka? Or was it about something that happened much further back in his memory bank?She’d shivered, the words of the letter once more in the forefront of her brain, and had taken herself off to bed.
None of which she would explain to her son. ‘Listen,’ she said now, ‘couldyoutalk to Anezka?’
‘Me?’ Leo looked instantly nervous. ‘What would I say?’
She gave him one of her patient looks, which she knew had irritated both her boys in the past. ‘Just meet for a coffee and explain that she needs to come round and tell your father face to face that it’s over. I know she’s made it clear enough to the rest of us, but she never answers his calls and the message just hasn’t got through.’
Romy stood outside the Sussex cottage, breathing the clear sea air with relief. The house looked so welcoming – almost as if it were actually smiling at her – sitting in the neat row with its white walls and ash-blue window frames. She pushed aside a maverick tendril of the pale pink climber next to the front door and reminded herself she must cut it back later.
Her anticipation had been mounting over the past week, as she counted down the days before she was homeagain, before she could sleep in her own bed and not have to listen out for that damn bell, or hold her breath as she emptied the urine bottle or watch the man who had once been the centre of her life struggle in vain for his dignity.
She opened all the windows and doors, turned on the hot water and made herself a cup of tea. She would need to buy food, but that could wait. Now, she took her tea outside into the sunshine and sat at the new garden table – which looked almost too new, the wood glowing orange in the May sunshine – and let the heat of the sun warm through her.
Later, Finch brought round some lunch from the deli – sliced ham, big round beef tomatoes, potato salad dressed with olive oil, spring onions and lemon, and a triangle of Brie so ripe it looked as if it might wander off of its own accord, just how Romy liked it. They sat in her garden with a bottle of chilled Picpoul, talking with their usual ease, each enjoying digging out nuggets from the other’s life. Romy found her head spinning pleasantly from the wine, the sunshine and Finch’s diverting company.
It was such a contrast to the rest of the week that, as she closed her eyes for a moment, it seemed almost unreal that she was there. The invisible pall of London’s pollution, the suffocating flat, the constant background noise, she had barely noticed it when she lived there. But now, sitting in blissful quiet, surrounded by blooms and birdsong, the cool wind off the sea, she appreciated what she’d been missing – appreciated what she had now.
But despite her unwillingness to talk about Michael, she found she could not so easily banish him from herthoughts even as she and Finch were chatting. The previous night he had rung the bell, as usual, at about one thirty. Since the night when she’d been so disturbed by his anxiety about Anezka and that strange dream, she’d been wary of sitting with him too long. She’d taken to going straight back to bed as soon as she’d sorted out what was bothering him. But last night he’d begged her to stay for a bit and she couldn’t refuse.
‘What is it, Michael?’
He was smiling, seemed almost playful as he began to ramble on in his halting speech. ‘I’ve been lying here remembering. That night at the Metropole … we were only kids … well, barely more than kids.’
The warehouse-like bulk of the Stockton pub rose instantly to her mind. In those days there were pubs you went to and others you didn’t, depending on alliances that were innate and almost tribal. The Metropole was her stamping ground. And his.
‘You bought me and my friends vodkas and lime and they cost a fortune. I’ll never forget.’
He grinned. ‘I must have been trying to impress you, but you weren’t impressed at all. You called me a pillock because I didn’t know who Steely Dan was.’
She couldn’t help smiling back. ‘I wouldn’t have dared. You were older than me and scarily cool back then.’
Michael chuckled quietly. ‘God, you were magnificent, Romy. Tall and wild, those eyes of yours on fire. You weren’t even remotely scared of me.’
He was right. She’d seen him as a challenge. Her friends all thought he was up himself – arrogant and superior – and she tended to agree. But she’d noticed somethingsofter in those dark eyes – and, anyway, she fancied the pants off him, with his lean frame and intense stare, black hair brushing the collar of his denim jacket. ‘You made me weak at the knees.’ She laughed.
They both fell silent. Romy was remembering the sweeping rush of exhilaration as they’d walked away from the pub and their friends, hand in hand in the summer night, down the high street and over the bridge. She had literally felt she could fly. And fly she did, later, when Michael made love to her – quickly, urgently – in the back of his brother’s worn-out Vauxhall, parked in a lane on the outskirts of the village.
When her thoughts returned to the bedroom, and Michael lying in the bed beside her, he was speaking again, his voice cracked and dull. ‘I’m such an old crock, Romy. Who will want me now?’ And Romy hadn’t known how to reply.
Now, she realized Finch was talking. ‘You’re miles away,’ he said, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight. ‘What were you thinking?’
Romy gazed at him with a feeling almost of dread, because on Friday night she’d sensed the ties that bound her and Michael struggling to reassert themselves, felt the powerful pull of their history together.It was probably the least contentious, most intimate exchange we’d had in years, she thought. But she didn’t want to be intimate with her husband. She didn’t want to feel anything for him, except sympathy.
