“I just want to hold you, Jen. Just let me hold you for a moment.” She let him. It felt good.
Then, at last, they both wanted more. Wrapping themselves in towels, their hair dripping, they went back to the bed and lay down together.
Either the ambient noise in the chalet had stopped, or they just weren’t listening anymore. They didn’t make a sound, either. The sex was slow, and almost silent. When the headboard started banging against the wall, Stephen grabbed a pillow and shoved it roughly down between the wood
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and the plaster, silencing it, without ever breaking his rhythm. It had been a while, and they had both been turned on by the shower; it didn’t take long. Stephen came with his face pushed into the pillow next to hers, his fingernails digging into her buttocks.
Doors opened and closed as they lay recovering their breath. People yelled good-bye, shouted the name of a bar to anyone listening, and then it was quiet again. The room was dark, lit only by the bathroom, and Stephen went to sleep beside her, one hand still on her belly. She looked at his familiar face, then gently slid out from under his heavy arm and went to the bathroom. Her carefully applied mascara had run, and she wiped it away with a cotton ball and some remover. Her chest was flushed with sex, and she wrapped the dressing gown tightly around her before tiptoeing into the hall, ready with a quick excuse. She didn’t bump into anyone; it seemed like they were the last people left in the chalet. In the kitchen she found a half-drunk bottle of Cava, two Duralit water glasses, and a tube of Pringles. She gathered her booty and went back to their room. Stephen had shifted slightly. He woke up when he heard her close the door, and he rubbed his damp hair sheepishly.
She smiled and poured two glasses. The very reason for the seduc-tion—the need for serious conversation—had passed for the moment; she felt suffused with the same calm she had been seeking for Stephen.
She kissed him, briefly, on the lips, then they clinked glasses and drank.
Jennifer put her glass down and jumped onto the bed beside him.
“Are you hungry?” Stephen asked.
“Not really. Had an enormous piece of fruitcake before, with my tea.
You?”
“Nope.”
“What do you want to do, then?” She grinned.
“What are you smiling for?”
“Do you know what I want to do?”
“No. Tell me.”
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“I want to stay here, in this room, all night.”
“And do what, play Scrabble?”
“Play . . . but not Scrabble . . .” She leaned across him and grabbed her Cava. Filling her mouth, she kissed him again, opening her lips so that some of the fizz tingled against his. Stephen groaned.
“What’s brought this on?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Please,
she thought.
Please don’t analyze this. Please.
“Nope. Never. Just asking.”
“So can we?”
“Can we what?”
“Stay here and play . . .”
“Too bloody right we can.”
Stephen rolled on top of her and laughed.
“In fact, you ask any of the other blokes here what they’d think of that suggestion, and they’d all chew your arm off.”
“I hope you’re not steering the conversation around to swinging?!”
“Not with you, you vain mare. With their own wives. . . .”
“What would they do with the babies?” The second it was out of her mouth, Jennifer wished it unsaid. That was the high-octane subject.
Stephen let it go. His mind was on other things. “If these are the perks of being childless, I say bring it on.”
After the second time, it was Jennifer who fell asleep, sated and contented in a way she didn’t remember feeling for a while.
Her mind felt empty.
When she woke up, an hour or so later, Stephen was smiling at her, his fingers in her hair.
“I don’t know, you promise a guy a night of lust, and then you fall asleep on him.” But he was smiling.
She poked him gently in the stomach with her index finger. “Be careful what you wish for, stud.”
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Stephen clucked quietly and pulled her gently, so that her head was on his chest. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his heart beating.
“Why can’t it always be like this?” he asked, with a sigh that might have been happy or sad. He wasn’t talking about the sex.
“I don’t know.”
“I love you, Jen.”
She took a deep breath, feeling him holding his own breath, and his chest tighten beneath her face, and then told him the truth.
“And I love you.”
He paused long enough for her to know that he hadn’t necessarily expected her to respond that way.
“So why do we let all the other crap get in the way, then?” His voice was small. “Why are we making each other so unhappy?”
It was the first time he had said out loud that either one of them was unhappy. Jennifer stayed where she was—she didn’t want to see him.
“I think . . . I think we’ve let things get bigger and bigger and not sorted them out. We’ve been . . . I’ve been a coward.”
“Well, if you have, then so have I. It isn’t all your fault.”
“Can we talk . . . now?”
She thought of a song she’d once loved. Something about love having its own voice. About both of you needing to listen to it, to save it. Was he listening to it now? Maybe this was their time.
She sat up, pulling the dressing gown over her shoulders. Reaching for the bedside light, she turned it on, and they both squinted against the sudden brightness. Stephen looked right at her, and his eyes filled with tears that she hadn’t heard or felt coming.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry. If she ever had . . .
“You don’t want to have a baby with me, do you?”
Another first. That hadn’t been said out loud. She didn’t answer.
“I should have asked you, straight out, ages ago. I’ve been an idiot. I 298 e l i z a b e t h
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didn’t want to ask, because I was afraid of what the answer would be.
But you’d have to be an idiot not to realize what was going on, when you wouldn’t go for the tests last year. It wasn’t anything to do with the doctors or being afraid you might not be able to have kids, or anything else you told me, or I told myself. That was all a smokescreen. I’ve known for a while. You don’t want to have a baby with me.”
“Stephen.”
“Don’t you love me anymore?” One tear had rolled down his cheek.
Jennifer found it unbearably sad and shocking. “I know I’ve been a pig.
I know I have. I don’t know what came first. I’ve been a pig because I’ve been frightened. I know that sounds like the biggest excuse ever, and I know that doesn’t make it okay, but I think . . .” He struggled to put his feelings into words. “I think I’ve been afraid, for ages and ages, that you don’t really love me, and that you’ve been getting ready to leave me. For a while I wondered if there was someone else.” She shook her head at him, vigorously, no. “I almost wished there was—that would have been something I understood, a tangible problem, something I could try and fix. The baby thing is a red herring, really, isn’t it? I mean, whether we have a baby together or not isn’t the point. I mean, I want one. I always thought we’d have one . . . more, maybe. But it isn’t really . . . about that, is it?”
He was right. It wasn’t. She wasn’t Wendy. It wasn’t cut-and-dried for her.
“We don’t even know if I can.”
“That doesn’t matter. I don’t care. That’s not what matters to me.
What matters is whether you’re going to stay with me, Jen. Not whether we have a baby. You not trying to find out why we can’t . . . that’s what that means.”
She didn’t know he’d figured that out. She didn’t know he’d been thinking in shades like that. He had seemed so black and white, so cruelly simplistic. That’s why she hadn’t attempted this conversation before.
She’d expected an ultimatum, threats. She hadn’t expected that he
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would have thought this through, and be able to see what was going on in her head. She didn’t know he still knew her that well.
He was still speaking. “I don’t know what’s gone wrong, Jen. When we’re . . . like that . . . like we were just now, it seems like the unlike-liest thing in the world that we’re falling apart. Then, other times, I feel like we have no chance.”
“When do you feel that?” She didn’t know he did.
“I don’t know. Times like when your mum died last year. You shut me out. You made me feel like I’m not important, like I couldn’t help, and you didn’t want my help, anyway.”
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
“But you did. You did make me feel like that. You’re always so strong.”
“I’m not strong at all.”
“You are. You don’t see what I see.”
“I’m sorry, Stephen. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say that we are worth saving.” She thought of Wendy and her words of earlier. “That’s the only thing that matters now.”
The snow was falling thickly now—through the gap in the thin cotton curtains she could see it on the window ledge—almost an inch thick now. Jennifer watched it for a moment, swirling and dancing outside.
This was it. This was crunch time. Whatever she said now, however she answered his question, it had to be true. She had to mean it.
Her mind swam with a dozen images. Wendy, on the piste; Mum’s journals, and her letter; Kathleen, laughing about Brian in the garden; their wedding day; just now, in the mirror; his face, running with tears . . .
She turned back to look at him and felt her own tears starting now.
She was suddenly very tired. She was tired of this, of being unhappy. Of making herself unhappy. She didn’t even understand it. She’d maybe never be able to explain it to him, or to anyone else. Or to herself.
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“I want us to stay together, Stephen. That’s what I want. I want us to stay together and be happy and be good to each other. . . .”
And that was the truth.
“Do you think we can?”
He stroked her shoulder. “I think, if we want to, we can do anything.”
They woke up late the next morning, and only then when someone banged on their door, giving Stephen a five-minute warning for the shuttle bus.
“You lot go. I’ll see you later,” Stephen answered sleepily, one arm clamped around her waist under the duvet. “I’m skiing with Jen today.”
She groaned. But she was delighted.
The rest of the week was like a honeymoon. It seemed so straightforward. They’d both committed to this new start, during the conversation, and it seemed so easy now. To enjoy each other. To be together.
Jennifer knew this was a holiday. That they had to carry all this on when they got back home. That it wouldn’t really count until they did. But it was such a relief. They skied. They had long lunches, holding hands under the table. They took longer siestas, making love quietly in the chalet, while the young parents swapped envious glances. They both slept like babes, mountain air, physical exertion, and a profound sense of newness acting like a sleeping pill for them both. It was the best time she could remember them having together.
Mark
Amanda had called collect long distance, far too early. She and Ed were about to get on a flight, she said. Next stop Peru. She didn’t know what the Internet café situation would be like, or how often they’d be able to charge their mobile phones or get to a call box. They were going to do some trek thing. She wanted to let him know—let all of them know—
that they were fine. Well. Solvent. Safe. Happy. And at the end she’d told him she loved him. She hadn’t said that for a long, long time. He’d
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lain in bed, after she rang off, and imagined her—where she was, what she was doing. He wished he’d had the chance to meet Ed, but he instinctively trusted him. He still missed her, even though it had been years since she’d lived with him. He loved her, too.
Mark had been a smoker for years. Who hadn’t? Not a serious one, more the ubiquitous “social smoker.” He’d given it up when he’d met Barbara. She didn’t want him to smoke around the children, and he wanted to be around the children. Thing was, it had been much easier than he had thought. All except for the first cigarette of the day. The one that went with Radio 4, a cup of coffee, and the
Times.
He went cold turkey on every other fag of the day, and it was fine. It took six months to give up that one.
And now, most other times of the day—on the average, good day—
were okay. And this was the time he most missed Barbara. In the morning. His first Barbara of the day—the one who went with Radio 4, a cup of coffee, and the
Times.
The one who smelled of shampoo and tooth-paste and Fracas, and sat next to him at the breakfast bar, and listened when he talked about the day ahead.
Maybe he should take up smoking again.
Wandering aimlessly into the kitchen in search of one of his daughters, he picked up the local paper from the kitchen counter and saw the
“flats to let” section, dotted with red circles and question marks. He was reading a few, and being profoundly grateful he owned his own home, when Lisa came into the kitchen.
“What’s all this? Either things with Hannah are worse than I thought, or you’re making plans?”
Her face was full of mock reproach. “You and Hannah will be fine!
It’s me, preparing to fly the nest, again! I can’t stay here forever, can I?”
He supposed not.
“Can’t go back to where I was.”
“Are you sure about that?” He hadn’t heard from Andy since they’d been to the pub. Now it seemed apparent that Lisa hadn’t, either. He’d 302 e l i z a b e t h
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come home hopeful. And sheepish. Desperate to tell her that he’d seen Andy, that he believed he still loved her, that he hoped there was a way through the mess. Afraid that she’d go nuts if she knew he’d interfered.