‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘Do you want to be alone?’
‘No, I really don’t. I’d like you to stay.’
She left him in the kitchen, slinging things into the sink, and dragged herself up the stairs to bed. She was half asleep already as she undressed and crawled into bed. But she was still just awake later when Luca got in and wrapped his arms around her. She turned into his body and drifted off.
32
Claire felt lost in the days following the funeral. She was beginning to regret taking the week off work, but changing her mind would require a decision that she couldn’t summon the energy to make. She didn’t know what to do with herself, and couldn’t seem to rouse herself to do anything more energetic than lie in the garden, soaking up the sun, or slump on the sofa watching box sets ofFriends. She had seen them a million times before, but she found the familiarity comforting. She missed her mother dreadfully, longing to be able to talk to her again, or even watch TV together in companionable silence.
She felt adrift, the focus of her life snatched away. For so long everything had revolved around looking after her mother, worrying about her, organising her, spending time with her. Now she constantly felt as if she had forgotten to do something important, and her stomach would lurch with sickening dread of the consequences. Then she would realise once again that there was nothing to be done and no one to worry about – but there was no comfort in that.It left her on edge, unable to concentrate or settle to anything.
On top of that she was exhausted, suffering from the crash that often follows a long period of tension. It wasn’t just the stress of her mother’s death and its aftermath. It was the accumulation of years spent in a perpetual state of suspense. Her mother’s health had been so volatile that Claire had been constantly on tenterhooks for the next crisis – the breathless race to hospital, the hours spent in corridors and waiting rooms, anxiously awaiting test results or the outcome of an operation. She was physically and emotionally drained.
Everyone was telling her she should take a holiday, now that she had the chance. She hadn’t had a proper one in ages, since her mother had become too incapacitated to travel. Mark would be back from New York on Friday, and he had invited her to stay with him for the weekend, but she couldn’t face the upheaval of flights or the idea of having to be social and, besides, she wasn’t in the mood for somewhere as busy as London. But the idea of getting away was appealing, and as the week wore on, she increasingly felt the need for a change of scene. The good weather was making her long for the seaside. The heatwave was forecast to continue for the rest of July, and she knew the perfect place where she could go to relax, and spend a restorative couple of days just eating, sleeping and lazing in the sun.
‘How’d you like to come to the beach with me for the weekend?’ she asked Luca, the following evening. ‘Unless you have other plans, of course,’ she added, suddenly remembering that he might rather stay in Dublin with the chance of getting laid than go away with her for a weekend of celibacy by the sea.
‘No, I don’t have plans. I’m a bitbroke, though…’
‘It won’t cost anything. I have a place we can stay. Just don’t expect anything fancy.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Brittas Bay. Mum has a mobile home there – had,’ she amended. ‘It’s mine now, I guess.’
‘Cool. I’ll dig out my bucket and spade.’
A weekend away with Claire – Luca wasn’t sure what he’d let himself in for. He hadn’t even had time to assimilate his feelings yet. He’d only discovered he was in love with her when her mother had died, and then he had wanted to step up and be a friend to her. Now he felt completely at sea, clueless as to how to be with her, terrified of screwing up and losing her, and just as scared of keeping her in his life but only as a friend.
He thought how arrogant he’d been when she’d first come to him, warning her not to get attached. Jesus, he should be so lucky! He’d been so sure of himself, so certain that she was the only one in danger of getting emotionally involved. What he hadn’t considered was that he would also be experiencing a kind of intimacy he wasn’t used to.
Claire had got under his skin – like painting, he thought, as he picked up his brush and got back to work. That had crept up on him, too, when he wasn’t looking. It had started in rehab.
Art therapy had been part of the program, and he had resisted it at first, as he had resisted all help. He had refused to be moved, shoring up his defences against anything or, indeed, anyone that might touch him, determined to be cold, aloof and, above all, not to care. But he’d gone through the motions, as he had with the rest of the program, and art had got in somehow, breaking through his defences, seducing him until hefound himself pouring all the emotions he had kept buried for years into his paintings.
It had scared him at first when he’d seen all that stuff spilling out of him. He’d felt raw and exposed, as if he had no skin. Every shitty thing inside him was there for all to see, in thick, vivid colour – all his cringing fear, his anger, every rotten thing at the core of him made real, given substance; and beyond that, his vulnerability, loneliness and sadness. And yet he didn’t want to stop. It felt cathartic and healing, as if all the poison was being leached out of him and what was left was fresh, clean and healthy.
He could never regret rehab because it had given him one of the best things in his life. He would never regret knowing Claire either, even if they could only be friends. Maybe it was for the best that they couldn’t have sex any more. He wasn’t very good at forming lasting relationships with the women he slept with. They tended to end up pissed off with him.
Besides, who was to say this thing with Mark would last? Maybe if he stuck around long enough…
That night, Claire went online for the first time since her mother had died, catching up with NiceGirl’s Twitter and Facebook friends. When she logged on to Twitter, she found herself mentioned in a tweet from Mark’s friend Emma, aka @Locksie:
Locksie@PublisherMark So disappointed in you. I thought you were being true to @NiceGirl.
It was from last Friday, the day Mark had called saying they needed to talk, and she had been too busy arranging the funeral. She knew Emma was just joking – as far as shewas concerned, NiceGirl and Mark had nothing more than a light-hearted online flirtation. But what did it mean? Thursday had been Patrick’s birthday party. Had something happened with Sophie? She tried to follow the conversation back, but drew a blank. Some previous tweets appeared to have been deleted. Perplexed, she went into Mark’s feed and scrolled back to Friday, trying to piece together conversations. There had been lots of activity with his friends, and his responses mainly consisted of him telling them nothing had happened. There was a reply to an @Soph, who had to betheSophie, simply saying:
cease and desist
Frustratingly, @Soph’s account was locked, so Claire sent her a follow request.
She thought she would have to wait a day or two for her request to be accepted, if Sophie accepted it at all. So she got ready for bed and tried to forget about it for now. But just as she was about to go to bed, she got a notification that she was now following @Soph. She went straight back onto Twitter, into @Soph’s account and scrolled down to Friday’s tweets. She had been very active that morning, throwing out lots of veiled hints that something had happened the night before:
@SophThe sweetest hangover. :)
@SophDon’t worry re that last tweet, rehab fans. Was high on life last night. Strong stuff, but not on the prohibited list.
And finally:
