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But she was the one
Who stopped all his fun
And now she’d be better off dead.
‘Just how promiscuous were you?’ The question is out before she is able to stop herself, and as she could have anticipated if she’d had the presence of mind to keep quiet, Peter looks at her aghast.
‘What? Where did that come from?’
‘I’m sorry. Sorry. I’m just … It was nerves. I’m just, like, really creeped out, that’s all.’
He winces. She has said ‘like’ – his pet hate – and he won’t like the term ‘creeped out’ either.
‘Samantha.’ He has used her full name, never a good sign. ‘I told you the first time we met that I’ve been with other women. I know we don’t think about our age difference much, but it really is an inevitable aspect of me being a little older, you know that. We talked about this.’
‘Sorry.’ She nods, a little ashamed. They did talk about it, back when he asked her to move in. She’d been concerned about this very thing. He told her how unhappy he’d been, how he’d searched and not found for years. Until her.
‘I’ve never asked anyone to move in with me,’ he said. ‘And I’ve certainly never asked a woman to marry me. Only you. Only you, Sam. You are my one, you know that.’
She promised him it was enough, that she would never use his past against him. Which is what she’s just done.
She apologises again.
‘The point here,’ he says, ‘is that this isn’t about me. And it’s not about you either. You’re reading it through your own subjective lens.’
She takes the poem from him and reads it again. There are no names. And she’s not easily led. And Peter has a past, yes, but he’s hardly a gigolo.
‘The thing is,’ Peter says, ‘it’s actually pretty generic, isn’t it? There are no names, it’s a standard set-up and pay-off, just that the pay-off is a bit … misjudged.’
‘Misjudged? Is that, like, code for sinister?’
‘Don’t say like.’
‘Soz – sorry.’ She bites her lip. She’s almost eradicated any trace of youth-speak along withoh my God,but in her stress, it has popped out.
He scratches his head, blows air through pursed lips. ‘Let me think about it. I don’t think it’s anything to get hugely panicked about. It’s not malevolent. Just someone with a terrible sense of humour or maybe lacking in social skills. It could still be innocent, someone trying to be cheeky but getting the tone wrong. As I said, we’re not named.’
‘I suppose.’ She leans into him, presses her face to his chest.
He puts his arm around her and kisses her on the head. ‘Above all, don’t worry. Nothing bad can happen to you while you’re with me, OK? I’ll keep you safe.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, sliding her arms around his waist. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go to work.’
‘I’ll be back before you know it.’ He loosens her arms and stands up.
Panic fizzes in her guts. She really doesn’t want him to leave her here alone. But there’s nothing she can say. A student with a taste for sinister humour is not enough to make him miss his lecture. And he’s right, it’s not about them.
He pulls her up, into his arms, and kisses her on the mouth. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ His eyes are so deep and so brown.
‘You don’t think he or she knows where we live,’ she says, ‘do you?’
He frowns. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a stupid verse written by a stupid human being. Let’s not blow things out of proportion.’
She watches him pull out of the drive. Once he has gone, silence hisses through the house like gas. She stares out of the front window, over the hedge to the street. There is no one outside, no one watching the house – of course there isn’t, for God’s sake. And Peter won’t be gone that long. It isn’t even four o’clock, and he’ll be back around eight; it’s nothing, no time at all. To resent him going to work is beyond pathetic.
She goes upstairs to check on Emily, who is fast asleep, fists raised. This isn’t good; she should be awake now. Yet again, Peter has managed to disrupt the routine it has taken Samantha months to establish. In all likelihood, he has done it to please himself, and this annoys her even against the worry of the potentially malevolent poet. She shouldn’t complain, even in her mind. Her dad never lifted a finger inside the home; his domain was outdoors and that was that. Outdoors – pretty far out of doors, as it turned out.Stop it, Samantha. Stop.
With her and Peter, the boundaries are less defined, less easytodefine. The demands on his time are more ad hoc, and of course he has lived most of his life on his own and she gets that, she really does. Plus, he is around much more than other husbands, from what she can glean from the mums in the two baby groups she has joined. So what if he’s often home late and has to hide away in his study at weekends? The other women seem to spend a lot more time alone, long evenings waiting for their partners to return and hold the baby while they grab a shower or prepare a hasty meal. They see her as a girl, these women, she knows that. Last week, one of them asked in super-slow English if she was the au pair.
