‘How was that?’ she asked.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Needed it.’
Seeing him post-workout made her think of him just after they’d had sex: his skin shining, muscles taut, the smell of his body in its purest form.
He sat on the bench next to her, but left a gap between them. She took her book and folded it shut, placing it on her lap in case he wanted to shuffle up, but he didn’t.
‘Mum said she came round,’ Jake said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Marisa said, her heart leaping. ‘I was going to tell you but—’
‘It’s OK, you don’t have to. Not your responsibility. Anyway,’ he said, rubbing the hair by his right temple in that way she loved, ‘I’m sorry if she was rude to you.’
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She lets the realisation sink in, that Jake must have spoken to his mother to know that Annabelle had visited. Would his mother have called him, Marisa thought, or would it have been the other way round? Or – even more worryingly – would they have met for lunch? What would they have said about her? She knew they would have discussed her and she can’t imagine Annabelle would have been warm or flattering. Would Jake have changed his mind?
A small panic began to rattle around in her chest like a loose marble. She looked at the back of the house, the window-frames painted white, the roof tiles ordered and straight. She could just about make out the edge of her desk in her study if she squinted. Marisa felt, with unexpected acuteness, the fragility of everything, the ease with which it could all be taken away from her. She told herself that she needed to redouble her efforts to do better. She could give Jake no reason to end their relationship. If it ended, she thought miserably, she would be undone.
‘Was she rude to you?’ Jake asked.
She tried to laugh.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I just … I know that she can be … intimidating.’
She wondered if this was some sort of trap. Was she meant to say Annabelle hadn’t been rude and lie in order not to criticise his mother? Some people were funny about their own families. They would carp and bitch about them to their heart’s content but if anyone else did so, they would claim instant offence. Or was she meant to acknowledge what had happened and show that she was on Jake’s side?
She settled for an indeterminate middle course.
‘Yes. I mean, no. It was fine. She is a very impressive woman.’
Jake laughed.
‘That she is.’ He put the nozzle of his water bottle between parted lips and tilted it upwards to drink. ‘Very diplomatic, Marisa.’
He looked at her tenderly.
‘Listen, she’s entitled to her views,’ Marisa said. ‘It’s just not necessarily how I would have chosen that meeting to go.’
‘I know. The thing is, she’s very particular about how things are done. She’s traditional and – don’t ever tell her I said this – a massive snob. She’s never going to understand how things are with us. And I don’t give a fuck whether she does or not. She – my parents – are irrelevant to this. To us, I should say.’
He wiped his eyes with the hem of his T-shirt.
‘This,’ he said, gesturing towards the house and Marisa, ‘is the family I’ve chosen.’
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘That means a lot.’
She felt so lucky then, so content to be with a man who understood the safety she wanted before she understood it herself. If Marisa could have stopped time right there, if she could have halted the ticking hands on the face of her watch, she would have done. They were perfectly happy on that bench, in the sunshine, sitting next to each other with an unread book on her lap and the faint smell of jasmine in the air.
Nothing stayed perfect forever, did it? It was a lesson she had been taught as a child and she had promised herself never to forget it, but then Jake came along, and, stupidly, she had let herself be carried away by unfounded faith that everything was going to keep on getting better. She had allowed herself to fall in love.
Looking back, Marisa would see this interaction on the garden bench as the last moment of bliss before everything changed. Before their little protected world slid on its axis and sent them spinning into blackness. She was foolish to have believed in their future. Because happiness was transient, and she would find this out when the lodger came.
5
It turns out Jake’s workhas been going less well than he’s been letting on. The deal that was threatening to fall through did eventually collapse, and these are the words he uses to explain it to her, as if the exchange of vast sums of money has acquired a physical dimension.
She can’t remember when the idea of a lodger was first mooted, but as the days go by, it shifts from a discussion of ifs to a confirmation of whens, and the concept roots itself firmly in his mind. Marisa was opposed to it at first. She hated the thought of a stranger in their home, filling up the fridge with food she didn’t recognise and watching television in the evenings when they would want their own space. But she didn’t feel she could say this to Jake, who had put down the deposit for the house with money she didn’t have and who continues to pay the lion’s share of the monthly rent. She knows he wants her to feel like an equal partner, but she doesn’t. She’s always aware of the precariousness of her situation, as if she is a Victorian governess forced to live off her wits, surviving on the charity of richer people. The study in which Marisa paints becomes, in these fevered imaginings, a sort of box-room that she has to fold herself into, taking up the least amount of space and creating the smallest amount of bother so that Jake will never have a reason to break up with her.
