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Something about the intensity of the look on his face made her think it wasn’t easy for him. It was probably an apology for yesterday. Part of her wanted him to say he hadn’t wanted to give her the wrong impression and please could they concentrate on being nothing more than parents of two best friends, which would be easy and safe, and the right thing to do. Another part felt a bubble of sadness rising in her throat that they could never be anything more.
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ she said.
‘I want to. Please, hear me out. Stella and I,’ he continued slowly, ‘Stella and I … well, when she was diagnosed, Stella and I had already started talking about divorce. We had reached the end of our road. There wasn’t an affair or anything dramatic, no-one else to blame. We’d just become different people from who we were when we got married.’ He sighed and paused for a moment. ‘I was finding it increasingly hard to be around other people all the time, and she found it increasingly hard to be away from them. She was never happier than when she was at a party, and I was never more miserable. We couldn’t go on like that. Our lives were too different. We wanted such different things.’
‘I know. That’s how it was for James and me, too.’ Amy nodded, feeling as if the wooden floorboards underneath her feet were suddenly frail and shaking. It had all changed for her and James after Harry was born. Amy wanted nothing more than to settle down together as a family, but James hadn’t wanted things to change. He still wanted to go to the social events which came with his work, when she wanted to stay at home with Harry. The gulf of age and class which had always been implicit between them became too wide to bridge, and it was at one of those social events that James had met Laurie, who was on the same side of that gulf as he was. They had both known when it was over.
‘Then Stella fell ill,’ he continued. ‘You can’t divorce someone when they’ve only got months to live, can you? I couldn’t desert her. I couldn’t do that to her, or her family or most of all to Oliver. Of course, I cared for her, but I wasn’t in love with her when she died. For Oliver’s sake, mostly, I pretend, but I don’t want to pretend to you.’
‘Me?’ she echoed, foolishly, as the reality of what he was saying started to make sense.
‘I think you know why,’ he said softly, and everything changed as she let go and the waters of confusion began to swirl around her. All the things she’d been telling herself were forbidden were suddenly swept away, and she found herself floating on a lake of possibilities, arms outstretched as the current began to drag her towards deep, dark water, at once both enticing and terrifying.
‘I … think I do,’ was all she said, her voice shaking.
He stood in the middle of the room, where the old-fashioned brass bed had once stood. In the dim light that filtered through the ivy which grew over the window like a curtain, he ran his hand through his hair, in a gesture she’d already begun to recognise as one he used when he was stressed.
‘I want you to understand. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. That it wouldn’t be disloyal to Stella if …’
‘If we …’ she echoed. The waters were rising; she was struggling to hold her head out of the current.
‘Oliver doesn’t know about Stella and me. I’ll have to find out a way to explain it to him eventually, but I don’t know how to tell him. I’m not sure if he’s old enough to understand.’
‘I can see that,’ she said.
‘It would be hard for him, but I wanted you to know the truth.’
‘I’m glad. I mean I’m not glad you and Stella … that it had gone wrong … but I’m glad you told me.’
‘I wanted you to know because I … Amy … I can’t stop thinking about —’
‘I know,’ she said, as he bent down almost hesitantly towards her and touched his lips to hers. It was the gentlest of kisses, the most tentative, and yet in an instant the water closed over her head and she was sinking. Her kiss became neither gentle nor tentative, a wave of emotions engulfed her and she kissed him as if he alone could save her from the flood of her own emotions. Tears welled up in her eyes.
‘Amy! Don’t cry, please don’t cry. I’m so sorry, I must have misread how you felt.’ He tried to step away from her, but she held on to him.
‘No! Don’t say that! I wanted you to! I don’t want to stop, I’m not crying because I’m sad, it’s because … It’s been so long, Matt, since I’ve felt like this. You —’
‘I know everything’s difficult and there are the boys to think of … Oh God, Amy …’
Everything was different now, everything had changed. He moved in to kiss her again, more deliberately now, wrapping his hands in her hair, drawing her close as if he would never let her go, and she pressed her body against his. She hadn’t realised how much she needed contact like this; to feel like an adult with a woman’s needs and desires. She hadn’t known how much she’d missed it until Matt kissed her, and she melted into the moment.
With a crash, the bedroom door was flung open, and Oliver stood there, a look of utter horror on his face.
They froze, all passion quenched in an instant, until Oliver’s yell of anger broke the silence. ‘Dad! What are you doing?’
They sprang apart. Amy smoothed her hair down, no longer feeling like a desirable woman but the naughty child caught out by the head teacher. She was wordless with shame. Neither of them had heard the footsteps on the stairs, and now Oliver stood before them, hair and T-shirt dripping with water from the stone trough, eyes blazing with unhappiness.
‘You can’t dooo that!’ he wailed.
It was hard to tell whether the drops of water coursing down his cheeks were from the spring or from his eyes, but this time, perhaps, Oliver was genuinely crying, tears of real hurt and pain.
‘I’m sorry Olly,’ Matt’s voice sounded constricted in his chest. ‘Olly, I’m so sorry …’
‘No, you’re not. I hate you. I hate you, and I hate her most.’ He advanced towards Amy, who stepped back. ‘You get away from my daddy! You get away. We don’t want you. We don’t like you. You get awaaaay!’ And his hysterical sobbing increased as he turned and ran out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out of the cottage. There was no questioning the reality of this tantrum.
‘I’m so sorry, Amy,’ said Matt, his voice loaded with worry. ‘I must go after him. We’ll talk later!’ He was half-way down the stairs by the time he had finished speaking, taking the steps two-at-a-time.
‘Of course, of course. Go!’ She leaned back against the wall as the front door banged shut, trying to get her breath back, reeling from one extreme of emotion to the other. Now here came Harry, charging up the stairs. What could she say to him?
