Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [96]
Why did it have to be today?
She heard the cork pop in the kitchen, and the clink of glasses. He came back in, and handed her one.
‘Here’s to you.’ She raised hers to his.
‘Here’s to us.’ He drank half his glass in one thirsty gulp, then sat down, very close beside her, on the sofa. ‘I want to say something to you, Luce.’
Oh, God.
‘And I know I’m all over-excited, and I’ve not given you the chance to take this in, and you’re probably tired and everything but, please, just listen to me and let me say it to you.’
She smiled wanly at him.
‘I know these last few months have been incredibly difficult for you. I’m under no illusions that I’ve been anything other than utterly foul to live with. I’ve been moody and belligerent, and I haven’t been there for you, or for the kids, probably, if the truth be known. I know I’ve been a complete male stereotype, and I’ve hated myself for it. I’ve been no kind of proper husband… even…’ His voice faded away.
Lucy knew what he had been going to say. She could still feel Alec’s weight on her, and him inside her. She couldn’t bear it. She reached out and put her hand over his in his lap. ‘Sssh.’
‘I won’t sssh. I’m sorry. That’s all. I’m sorry. And I’m back now. I can be a proper husband again. Look after you. All of you.’ He was close to tears again, and his eyes implored her.
She held him close to her, and told him that it was okay, that everything was going to be all right. And she closed her eyes to shut out Alec, to push back the idea of him and of today. But he wouldn’t go away.
They had a takeaway curry. Lucy phoned the order through and Patrick went to get it. Lamb madras, chicken tikka masala, a naan and onion bhajis. The same curry they had had at least once a month for the last eight years.
While he was gone she scrubbed herself under a too-hot shower, but that didn’t work either. She could still smell Alec. And she couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt.
She didn’t know what to do now. That day, on the beach, they had told each other they didn’t have answers for all the questions. Today had surely supplied them.
Literature, pop records, films – they were all in a great hurry to sing to you or tell you about love affairs. All that getting carried away by passion, swept along on some nonexistent tide beyond your control. It was all bollocks, really. You were never out of control, not completely. You made the choices, you took the steps, you told the lies. You did it, and it was bullshit to let you blame something else, something ‘bigger’ than you. Lucy wouldn’t let herself off the hook like that. You might reach the point where you came over all animal, but it was the human being in you that let it get that far in the first place.
And why didn’t the books and the films tell you how it felt to sleep with your husband the same day you had let your new lover use your body for his own pleasure – to touch you in places and in ways that you had forgotten, or never known, then send it back, changed for ever, to the person who knew it best, and who had loved it longer and first?
Relief, and champagne, and a profound urge to penitence made Patrick reach for Lucy that night. Reach, for the first time in months, confident of what he was reaching for. He just didn’t know that it wasn’t there any more.
Lucy stopped his hand between her legs, and turned her back to him, pulling that hand over her shoulder in an embrace, so that they were lying like spoons. ‘Can we start slowly?’ she begged. ‘Maybe tomorrow. It’s just… well, it’s been a long time, and… we’ve got the whole week, haven’t we?’
Patrick lay there awake, wondering why, when it had finally felt as if everything was going to