‘Great. We can travel back together.’
I was relieved to have someone to walk with to the bus stop. It turned out we lived just a few streets from each other, in identikit Victorian terrace house-shares. I laughed as Simone told me about her housemates and the tricks she played on them when they stole her food. ‘Every time I go to make a sandwich there’s hardly any bread left so I got one of those fake bread rolls from the joke shop. I wish I’d seen Carl’s face when he tried to bite into it.’ She didn’t sound annoyed, and her eyes twinkled as she said it. ‘I have a crush on him, so I forgive him. I suspect he knows and he takes advantage.’ She blew one of her blonde streaks away from her face. ‘If you ever fancy going for a drink, let me know. Shift work can be lonely.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, genuinely touched. On my last placement I’d had a horrible supervisor who enjoyed looking down her nose at me. Simone seemed respectful. Someone I could trust.
Some people enter your life and set you on a completely different trajectory. It turned out Simone Harvey was one of those people.
35
HENRY
July 2024 Bristol
The front door slams, echoing through the house and setting every nerve in Henry’s body on edge. She’s back. And who knows what mood she’ll be in? He stays seated at his desk in the study that smells of dust mites and old, yellowing books, mostly early editions of his favourite classics for which he’d scoured little independent bookshops, auctions and specialist dealers. People are always surprised when he tells them of his hobby. As though it’s an oxymoron that someone medical or scientific should be interested in fiction. Over the years he’s carted those books around with him from house to house and from town to town.
When they moved here he’d been drawn to this room. The house was smaller than the country pile they’d lived in before, but he knew why Marielle had wanted it so badly. It was Fate, she’d said. Yet this room with its built-in bookshelves had sold it for him. He’d be happy to spendall his time in this room, buried within its musty walls and escaping into the pages of his familiar stories.
He can hear Marielle’s heels clattering on the geometric black-and-burgundy tiles in the hallway. It sounds like she’s pacing. Up and down. Up and down. Never a good sign. It means she’ll be over-thinking, getting herself all riled up, and then she’ll start obsessing again. He should have known, when he first met her all those years ago, that she wasn’t the type to let anything go. He’d fallen in love with her tenacity after all. But now he’s approaching seventy, he’s exhausted.
Does he sometimes wish he’d never met her? Sometimes, if he’s honest. He hadn’t known then what kind of collision course they were heading for. But he can’t imagine living without her either. She came into his life, shook it up and made it a hell of a lot more interesting than it would have been. Of that he has no doubt. And he loved her, oh, how he’d loved her. He’d been so blinded by love those first few years that she could have told him anything and he’d have forgiven her.
‘Henry!’ Her voice cuts right through him. ‘Are you up in your study again?’ Where else would he be?
He braces himself as he hears her climbing the stairs. When she enters the room he spins in his chair to face her, setting his expression to neutral.
She’s framed in the doorway, looking immaculate as always in a vivid blue summer dress that brings out the violet in her grey-green eyes. Not a hair out of place, even in this heat. And despite everything, he feels a twinge of desire for her that hasn’t let up in the forty years they’vebeen together. If anything, he desires her more than ever. Is it even possible to love and hate someone at the same time? To desire someone and be repulsed by them?
‘What have you been doing?’ She raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. She’d plucked them too much back in the 1980s and now she has to draw them on every morning. Before he’s had the chance to reply, her gaze flickers to the mobile that sits beside his keyboard, then lands on him again, pinning him to the chair. Those eyes. Glistening and beautiful, perceptive and challenging. He opens his mouth to speak but she charges on. ‘The locksmith is downstairs.’
‘Already?’
‘Yes. I don’t understand why you called them, Henry. It’s totally unnecessary.’ Marielle folds her arms under her full breasts.
‘I just think it’s best. We don’t know who has a spare key.’
‘You’re being paranoid.’ She throws him a stern look.
He glances towards the window, which is open. From here he can see into Lena Fletcher’s garden. She’s out there now with her son, a lanky teenager with Bob Dylan hair. Henry always notices other men’s hair now he’s started to lose his own. Lena is attractive, petite, with dark eyes that seem too big for her face. He watches them for a minute: Lena watering her tubs and her son throwing a football. He’s talking, although Henry can’t hear what he’s saying, and every now and again Lena throws back her head and laughs, exposing her smooth, alabaster neck.
He turns back to Marielle, who is watching him intently. She sighs. ‘Well, come on, then. Get up. What are you doingjust sitting there anyway? We’ve got things to do. Plans to make.’
‘Marielle …’ he begins.
‘Not this again, Henry. I won’t have you bailing out on me. You promised me that we’re going to do this. What’s wrong with you? Are you getting weak in your old age? You don’t have the stomach for it any more?’
‘It’s not that, it’s just …’
‘Don’t you love me any more? Is that it? You used to do anything for me, Henry. Anything. And now you won’t do this one thing. This one thing for me. After everything I’ve been through. After everything that’s happened.’ Her voice is rising, her features twisted with pain and fury.
He continues to press his nails into the flesh of his palm. ‘Of course I love you. I’ll always love you.’
‘Then do this. For me. Like we planned. Like we’ve always planned.’ She stands in the middle of the room and starts pulling at her hair, her fiery red hair, just like her temper. It was the beautiful red hair that had first caught his eye across a crowded room all those years ago. ‘Don’t let me down, Henry.’ Her voice wobbles. He can’t bear to see her cry.
He gets up and goes to her, circling her waist. She lays her head against his chest. He can feel the tears seeping into his linen shirt.
‘I won’t. Of course I won’t,’ he says softly. ‘I’ll do anything for you, you know that. Anything.’
‘You and me against the world,’ she murmurs into his chest, her breath hot against his sternum.
