Page 32 of The Start of the Story
‘You don’t want her here.’
I sighed. ‘I’m not keen on strangers pitching up out of nowhere and then staying, no.’
‘Was that aimed at me?’ Connor looked at me over his mug. ‘Because I can go, y’know, if it’s inconveniencing you.’
We both sounded odd, as though our words were covering something up, something that neither of us dared say.
‘Look, she can stay for tonight.’ I poured too much milk into my mug, debated remaking the tea and then decided that I didn’t want to be here for one minute longer than I had to. ‘But then the pair of you have got to find somewhere else to go. This place isn’t big enough for three.’
Connor took a deep breath. ‘You think I should go with her?’
He sounded so baffled and overwhelmed that I softened. ‘Isn’t that what you want? She came all this way to find you, she’s left her husband, presumably for you. You told me that you’d never felt for anyone what you felt for her. It’s got to be worth a shot, surely?’
He stood up and started pacing, sliding his socked feet up and down the tiles, with the toes elongating as he went. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. I thought she was the one, y’know? We had such a good time and she was a laugh and all, but now – now I just don’t know.’
I stood and watched him. He didn’t seem to need my input. ‘She lied, and I don’t know if I can look past that. She wasn’t who she said she was.’ He spun a tight circle and tea slopped from his mug. ‘What do I do? Rowan?’
‘Do you love her?’ I asked softly, and his head came up.
‘Love her? I thought I did. Losing her was the most painful experience of my life.’
I remembered Elliot. Then me, standing in the hospital with a concerned nurse at my elbow, knowing that he would never come home again, and the way that felt. I would have given anything for him to have leaped up, shouted, ‘Fooled you!’ and to have been back with me. ‘It’s not just losing the person, it’s losing the life you thought you were going to have,’ I said softly. ‘Isn’t it?’
Connor looked me in the face now. His eyes were very dark, brows pulled together by uncertainty. ‘We were going to get married. Buy a place in Clontarf, have a couple of kids, take them down to Granda’s old farm and teach them to surf off Lahinch.’ His voice was heavy with regret.
‘She’s got children already,’ I reminded him. ‘She’ll want to keep them with her, I should think.’
He shook his head. ‘I dunno,’ he said, still heavily. ‘I don’t really know what she thinks is going to happen. She… Saoirse, she’s not quite… I think she may have had some kind of breakdown.’
I thought of that wet shape in the doorway. The pale skin and those wide grey eyes. Nobody would turn up at a strange doorway like that unless they really, really wanted a reconciliation, would they? ‘Maybe she missed you,’ I said quietly.
It was disturbing seeing Connor so obviously upset and not knowing what to do. Up until now he’d been an irritating presence, occasionally good company; a dark streak of well-dressed professor-hood with an overhanging threat of spoiling my research and upsetting my folk tales. Suddenly he’d become an actual man, standing there in front of me with his mouth twisted and his eyes beginning to redden in the corners. He had emotions, he could be unsettled and confused and afraid;he wasn’t simply the person-shaped thing that ate my toast and sang, he’d becomereal, somehow.
‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘I thought I was over her. I thought it was all coming together here.’ Another shake of the head. ‘But now she’s arrived.’
‘Look.’ I put a hand on his arm. He was still staring into my face as though I had all the answers, as though I could tell him what to do. I remembered Elliot, walking out that morning, off to his wainscotting and a day of drawing plans, or so we’d thought. How much would I have given for him to come back? ‘Ask yourself this. If she died tomorrow, how sad would you be? How much would you miss her?’
There was a long moment, in which rain hissed against the window. Then Connor leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Brief and soft, a contact of stubble passing my lips and the touch of his mouth on my skin.
‘Thank you,’ he breathed. ‘Thank you, Rowan.’
Then he picked up his mug and went back into the living room to sit on the sofa with my spare duvet around his shoulders, while I scuttled up to my room to hide in the peace and quiet.
Next morning Saoirse was in my kitchen when I got up. There was no sign of Connor.
‘Thank you for letting me stay.’ She was sitting at the table, huddled over a cup of tea, wearing what was obviously Connor’s jumper. Her bare legs, very white and long, jutted at awkward angles, and she looked about seventeen.
‘That’s all right,’ I said, brazenly ignoring the fact that I hadn’t really let her stay, that had been Connor, and I’d busily avoided the whole thing. ‘It was a filthy night.’
We both looked out of the window at the newly calm day. The sun was breasting the rise and filling the little valley with palelight. ‘You’ve got a lovely cottage. I’d love to live somewhere like this.’
I didn’t know what to say to her. Saoirse had the wide eyes of a child, a small mouth and incredibly high cheekbones, and with her blonde hair loose around her shoulders she looked like a model after an all-night bender. I felt every strand of my uneven haircut; my indefinite-coloured eyes and just-about-there cheekbones sat sullenly in my face, retiring in the face of the competition.
‘How did you find him? Connor, I mean,’ I added, although who else I could have been talking about I didn’t know.
‘I went to the university and asked.’ Her accent was softer than Connor’s, with another influence. ‘One of his students told me he was here and gave me directions. I got a bus and then walked.’
Another silence.
