“Don’t I know it. Now,” she begins, another handbrake topic change as she pulls a bulky envelope from her bag, its contents jangling inside, as she hands it to me, “here are my spare keys. I’d like to trust you with them. Just in case I get locked out again, or, God forbid, lose my set. I thought it might be useful if we exchanged keys. Us both flying solo, so to speak. Marina and Chris, at Number Fifteen, had mine before; but I thoughtusexchanging might be more mutually beneficial,” she says, throwing me an inquiring glance.
I look down at the package already in my hands, my mind scrambling for a polite way to decline the questionable privilege being offered. What-ifs are careening through my mind: What if she gets robbed and blames me? What if I somehow manage to sleepwalk directly into her house? What if she’s absolutely insane and these aren’t her keys and she just wants mine so she can sneak in here and murder me?
But what slipped in past all the other noise in my head:Chris. The name of the man who made Marina cry.
Pam is staring at me as my thoughts flash back over what she’s just said.
“Sorry. You wantmeto giveyoua set ofmyhouse keys now, too?” I clarify.
“That’s the idea, dear,” Pam answers, then, after another silence: “Trust me, it only takes one locked-out experience to change your mind about spare-key swaps. And in case you’re worried, I’m not going to use them to snoop around your house. All due respect, I couldn’t care less. Have a think, put them in a sealed envelope if you want to, and drop them round. Only if it’s something you want to do.”
Chapter 16
The Woman—23 Months Ago
She likes the slow inexorabilityof their relationship; everything about it feels right, steady, grounded. It’s hardly too impulsive, by any stretch of the imagination.
So that when he finally says the words she has been waiting to hear, she’ll know in her heart it is real, and isn’t merely a passing moment, or sudden flare of emotion.
She has wanted to say it to him before now, but has been careful not to be the one to say it first, just in case.
This evening, he met her outside work, down the road, in fact, not wanting to ambush her while with her work friends. She appreciated the gesture.
She’s told her friends she is seeing someone, but only in passing, something in her wanting to keep him solely for herself, as if to prevent contamination.
She still hasn’t told her mother. There no longer seems a point. She can already imagine all the things her mother would say about the relationship anyway, all the subtle barbs, barbs she would deny were even barbs.
She knows her own mother does not see her as the shining trophy she wanted as a daughter.
Simon walked her to the Tube, and told her to trust him; he was taking her somewhere special. They changed lines twice, and for the first time since being a kid, she didn’t even look at the Tube map. She let him take control.
He gestured for them to get off at Hyde Park, where he led herdeep into an open grassy space. Night had fallen, the Victorian park lights glowing like props inMary Poppins. And there on the grass, in the middle of Hyde Park, he’d laid out a wool blanket and emptied his backpack: a picnic.
Looking at the little spread, she felt treasured. By the ceremony, by his effort.
Wrapped in his arms, she sipped Champagne and ate the strawberries and the chocolates he’d bought her in the cooling evening air, his body warm against hers. And that is when he said it.
“I need you to know that I love you.”
She wanted to say it straight back, her heart bursting, hot with it inside her. But instead, she held it a little longer and said with calm inevitability, “I feel the same way.”
She was glad it came out like that. He squeezed her tight, the tickle of his warm breath on her ear.
“I would do anything for you. Do you know that?” he told her. “To keep you close, keep you safe.”
She’d smiled. She didn’t know yet what that might mean. She turned to him, kissed his nose playfully.
“Have you ever said that before?” she asked.
She caught the flicker in his eyes and berated herself for the stupid question, her mother’s voice whispering through her thoughts.
But Simon smiled. “I said it once,” he answered, “but I was young, you know? We both were. I thought I knew what love was back then, but obviously I didn’t. This is it.”
The words burst open, warm and comforting in her chest.
After that night, he stayed over at hers almost every night. He had a house in North London, she knew, but she had yet to see it. Sometimes when her mother’s voice was particularly noisy in her head, she would almost convince herself that Simon already had a wife in that house, kids even, and that was why he never invited her back to his.
After all, he had everything—this handsome, successful, career-driven man, with a home and that easy approachable way he had about him—it would almost make sense that she would only be a sideline to his real life.
