Jack reaches for the two glasses of water he brought upstairs with him as he does every night, passing one silently to me and placing the other on his bedside table.
When we got engaged I didn’t realise that some of the things I would love most about marriage could be this – the small thoughtful gestures, the mundane togetherness. Two glasses of water on two bedside tables, watching my husband undress for the thousandth time and waiting for that moment that signals the end to every day when his weight and his warmth fill the space beside me in our bed. But I can’t help the niggling part of me that wants something more too – that wants him to open up to me the way my friends do with such ease.
‘What do you think of Molly’s beach clean-up?’ I ask him. ‘She said they collected five bags of rubbish. It’s crazy how much stuff gets washed up.’
Jack nods as he slips in next to me. His body is cool and I nestle closer to him in an attempt to warm him. He slides an arm beneath my neck and I lie against him, hearing his heart beating through his chest.
‘Molly and Ella seem to be getting on well,’ I try again, attempting to edge us gently closer to what I really want to talk about. ‘She’s a sweet girl.’
I can feel Jack’s body tensing next to mine.
‘Yes,’ he replies quietly.
‘I spoke to Lorna today. She seems to really want to try and make things right with you.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit late for that?’ His voice catches me off balance with its coldness. But then he sighs again.
‘Sorry, darling. She spoke to me today too. Or at least she said she wanted to talk.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know if I can.’
His body feels so stiff next to me. Sometimes I feel as though his reluctance to talk isn’t so much a choice as a physical block. I’ve tried in the past to encourage him to try therapy but he has always told me he doesn’t think it would be worth it. I remember the way he described it once. ‘I just don’t think I’d have anything to say,’ he’d said. ‘Or at least I don’t think I’d be able to say it out loud. It’s like the words can’t make it past my throat.’
I want to help him find those words, to let him release whatever it is that lurks inside him. For himself but selfishly for me too. My sisters and their husbands talk about everything. Sometimes I envy that so much it hurts.
‘I did say I’d go to the house with her though, to start sorting through their things.’
I reach my hand out through the dark until I find his and grip it tightly.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘It’s OK, I can do it on my own.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ I repeat.
Silence, and then he squeezes my hand.
‘Thank you.’
The toilet flushes down the corridor and footsteps pad in the direction of the spare room. A click as the door down there closes.
‘It’s so strange having her in the house,’ Jack says.
‘You didn’t have to offer to have them stay here, you know, they would have been fine in the B&B. I can still phone up and sort a room out for them if you want, darling?’
I feel him shaking his head beside me.
‘No. She probably won’t come back again. If this is her last time on the island she should at least be here with us. Even if it’s hard.’
He pauses and I wonder whether to say something but to my surprise he continues.
‘I do want her here, Alice, even if I know I’m not doing a good job of showing it.’
His voice is strained and I reach up and stroke his forehead.
‘I know you do.’
