He wondered how Laura had made such a leap of thought, and then suddenly realised why he felt so comfortable in her company – she reminded him of Aunt Cora, a woman who had the most insightful and analytical approach to any problem. Nothing had fazed her. Laura seemed the same. He said, ‘Orla’s dependency on me was certainly part of the problem, but strange as it sounds, after what I’ve admitted, I did love her. I really did.’ As he said the words, a great well of emotion rose up within him and suddenly scared he might lose control of his emotions, like he had at Orla’s graveside, he looked away, over to the other side of the river where a great crested grebe was nosing in and out of the bank. When he trusted himself to be able to speak again, he turned back to face Laura. ‘You’re a very intriguing woman, aren’t you?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Am I?’
‘I think you know you are. It’s part of your charm. And funnily enough, you remind me of someone for whom I had the utmost respect.’
She smiled. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, in that case, thank you. But if I could be permitted to give you one small piece of advice, it’s this. We mostly choose what we want to remember, and sometimes it doesn’t always give the complete picture.’
‘Biased selective memory, you mean?’
‘We all do it, and maybe it might help you to be more at peace with yourself if you don’t dwell on those memories, perhaps even learn to distrust them. That way the confusion and pain might lessen for you.’
For some moments he contemplated whether there was any truth in what she said, then he abruptly drained the last of his beer. ‘I ought to be getting back, everybody will be wondering where I am.’
‘Have you been out for long?’
‘Long enough to raise some concern, I should think. I switched off my mobile, which again will only have added to the concern. I needed time to think.’
‘And have you been able to do that?’
‘It’s confirmed the sensation that’s been creeping up on me, that I’m at the wheel of a speeding car that has no brakes, and I’m heading downhill towards a cliff edge.’
‘You do realise you can stop the car whenever you want. You just switch off the engine.’
On his feet now, he said, ‘Is life always that simple to you?’
‘I’ve come to know that we’re more in charge than we give ourselves credit for; it’s just a matter of knowing exactly what it is we want. Do you want to be with Valentina more than anything else in the world? If so, run off with her and take the risk that you may or may not live happily ever after.’
‘And the alternative?’
‘Good heavens, Alastair, do I really need to spell it out for you?’
‘I’m interested to know what you think the alternative is.’
‘You confront what it is you’re really running away from.’
Chapter Fifty-Eight
‘Sorrel, we can’t go on like this.’
‘Like what?’ she asked, listlessly.
‘You’ve been avoiding me. We have to talk.’
‘You’re right, Simon,’ she said, ‘we do.’
She turned around from the open window to face her husband. For what felt like an eternity she had been rooted to the spot in their bedroom, just staring – unseeingly – down at the garden, her mind blank, her body as still as a statue. She felt dead inside, impervious to anything that might touch her.
‘Why have you been hiding from me?’ he asked, closing the door behind him.
‘We’ve been hiding from each other since forever.’
He shook his head, gave her one of his bewildered-out-of-his-depth looks. ‘Sorrel, I’m a simple straightforward man, don’t give me this cryptic crap.’
‘There’s nothing cryptic in what I’m saying, Simon, but you need to ask yourself whether you really want this conversation to go any further. Do you? Because once the genie is out of the bottle, there’ll be no going back, no pretending in the way we have for most of our marriage.’
‘Have you ever thought that that was half our problem, the pretence?’
Surprised at his question, at his apparent insight, Sorrel went over to the dressing table and moved her bottle of Chanel No.5 so that it lined up precisely with the rest of her cosmetics. Order. That’s what she had busied herself with all her life, keeping the external world in order, because her internal world was a mess. Bringing order to chaos, that was her speciality.
