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‘You read so much about eating disorders these days—’
‘She looks fine to me,’ he says testily. ‘She’s always been skinny, you know that. But if you’re worried, take her to see someone.’
‘I don’t want to put ideas in her head.’
He sighs. ‘Then don’t.’
He slumps back onto the sofa, staring moodily into his glass. I wait for him finally to tell me what’s troubling him, but he’s lost in his own dark thoughts. His phone buzzes a couple of times with incoming texts – Caz, presumably – but he ignores them.
‘Andrew,’ I begin tentatively. ‘Do you want—’
He looks up suddenly. ‘Let’s not do this,’ he says, and there’s a note of desperation in his voice. ‘Can we just spend a nice evening together, watch some crap TV, and not talk about anything?’
‘If that’s what you want. Would you like something to eat? I can throw something together—’
‘Not for me,’ he says. ‘Unless you’re hungry?’
‘I’m fine. I ate earlier with the kids.’
He doesn’t mention Caz, and I don’t ask. Despite my anxiety, I can’t help a quiet sense of pleasure that it’s me he’s turned to in his moment of crisis, not Caz. Shemay be his wife now, she may even love him, I suppose, but my bond with Andrew is deeper and older and more profound. Whatever’s happened, whatever he’s done, I’m in his corner, and he knows that, or he wouldn’t be here.
I’ve been such a bloody fool,Andrew said. For the first time, I dare to hope he meant:For leaving you.
He reaches for the remote, and turns on the television, settling on a chilly Scandinavian thriller I’ve seen before, and refills his glass a third time. I get another for myself, too. It’s lucky Andrew didn’t drive here; he’ll clearly be getting a taxi home.
Pressed together on the settee, I’m acutely conscious of the heat of his body against mine, the sweet, whisky-infused scent of his skin. The sofa is the same one we bought seventeen years ago, when I was pregnant with Bella, its chintz fabric now so faded and stained with spills and sunshine and felt-tip pen it’s almost impossible to discern the original pattern. I should’ve replaced it years ago, but it’s the sofa where I breastfed my babies, where one of them was quite possibly conceived, and I can’t bear to part with it. Its springs have long since given out, and were it not for the two sturdy Quality Street tins beneath either end, holding up the cushions, our bottoms would sag onto the floor. As it is, we roll to the centre together as if on a cheap mattress. Andrew puts his arm around me, holding the pair of us upright, just as he always did. It feels as if he never left.
‘Why are you so good to me?’ he murmurs suddenly,into my hair. ‘After everything I’ve done to you. I don’t deserve it.’
It’s a question I’ve asked myself at least a thousand times in the past four years.The heart wants what it wants.‘No, you don’t,’ I agree, trying to ignore the sudden pulse between my legs.
‘We had so much going for us, and we still managed to screw it up,’ he says, slurring slightly. ‘How did we end up here?’
‘Andrew—’
He silences me with a kiss.
For a split second, I’m too stunned to respond. But my body knows what I need better than I do, and the muscle memory of my heart is too ingrained for me to hesitate more than a moment. There are four years of pent-up yearning in the kiss I return, four years of waiting and wanting and pain and longing. Every neuron in my body comes alive, and I realise that I have been dormant, living in suspended animation, since the day he left.
Abruptly, Andrew breaks away. I brace myself for the garbled apology:too much Scotch, getting late, should never have.But he’s paused only to lever himself from the Venus flytrap of a sofa, and then he holds out a hand to me.
I take it.
I take it, and I let him lead me upstairs, even though I know what we’re about to do is wrong on so many levels. I take it because I’ve had a whole bottle of wine, because it’s late and he has come tome, because I’mtired of fighting how I feel, of pretending to myself that I’ve put the past behind me and moved on. I take his hand and follow him into our bedroom and let him undress me because I love him, and because in my head and my heart he is my husband, has always beenmyhusband, no matter who he’s married to.
We are strangers who know every inch of each other’s skin. It comes as easily to us as it always did, but now it’s enhanced by the thrill of discovering each other all over again. I’d forgotten how much I like sex, the extraordinary capability of my own body to give me pleasure.
Afterwards, we lie in each other’s arms, my head nestled against his chest. Andrew has fallen straight asleep, as always. I listen to his heartbeat, pressing my palm gently against his skin. For so long, I’ve fantasised about this moment. Now it’s here, I can’t quite take it in.
I extricate myself from his embrace without waking him, propping myself up on my elbow as I watch him sleep. I don’t know why he’s come back to me now, after all this time, but I’m not going to question it. This is what I’ve wanted since the day he left: for him to come to his senses, realise what a fool he’s been, and come back to me. He didn’t exactly say that in so many words, but then we didn’t waste much time talking. It’s obvious what he meant. He’s here. That’s all that matters.
So why this strange sense of …anticlimax?
It wasn’t the sex.Thatwas satisfying on both a physical and emotional level. And yet I feel oddly flat, the wayyou do on Boxing Day after all the anticipation and excitement of Christmas. Wonderful as it was, of course it couldn’t live up to the weight of four years of expectation. Nothing ever does.
I wish I could let him sleep, but I can’t risk Tolly bouncing in at five a.m. and finding his father in my bed. We need to break this carefully to the children, once we’ve worked out the logistics of Andrew moving back in. I know how close Bella’s got to Caz. I don’t want to alienate her any further. This is going to take a bit of finessing as far as she’s concerned.
I nudge Andrew, smiling as he opens his eyes. ‘I hate to wake you, but the kids can’t find you here.’
