She planted another kiss on her cat’s pretty head before letting her go, watching as Pickle slipped quietly into the shadows. Enya really did hope she’d steer clear of Maeve’s house, unable to cope with another turd on the patio incident, fearing becoming another topic of discussion among the neighbours who used to be her friends.
She checked the doors and windows, clicked off the lamp and made her way up the creaking stairs. Her bones ached and she decided to take a hot, deep bath before bed. Their third bedroom had been indulgently converted into their en-suite bathroom, a fact that estate agents and their neighbours thought was crazy, as a three-bedroomed property was worth significantly more than a two. She and Jonathan had tried to explain that they had to live in the house and having a lovely bathroom as their en suite brought them more pleasure than if they hadn’t made the conversion, safe in the knowledge that when they died, it would be worth more money on the open market. It was an odd concept to them, prioritising a future cash value over their everyday lives.
With a candle lit, and a liberal slosh of her favoured amber-scented bath oil in the water, she let her clothes fall in a soft nest by the bathroom door and climbed in. Eyes closed, she lay back and let the warmth calm her soul and soothe her body. It was here that she hovered for some minutes, entirely lost to the peace of it, able to switch off the tick-tick-tick of worry over her son’smuddled love life, her guilt over her flirtation with Dominic, and the fracture in her and Jenny’s friendship. A welcome hiatus from the shittiest of days.
Her phone, languishing on the sink, buzzed. It was odd to receive a call at this time of night and as ever she hoped there was no emergency, prayed her parents were okay, Angela too. Aiden was now struck from this mental worry list as he slumbered in his room at the end of the hallway, and she assumed that any potential threat or injury would be quickly heralded by a yell.
Stretching her arm, she managed to reach the phone. Without her glasses on, it was hard to make out the number.
‘Hello?’ she said as she lay back beneath the water.
‘Enya, Enya, hi. It’s Dominic.’
She felt her body shudder at the sound of his voice, sending goose bumps across her skin. It was an instant and automatic response to the sound of him. Guilt lined her throat as she managed to get the word out. ‘Hello.’
Instantly, she placed one arm across her chest, hiding herself as if he might be able to see down the line, mortified by the thought alone. She wondered why he was calling.
‘Hope it’s not too late?’
Yes, because it’s the hour of the call that’s the issue here...
‘No, no, I was just, just cooking.’ She squirmed. It was the first thing that popped out of her mouth.
‘Oh right, what are you cooking?’
‘Spaghetti.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head.
‘Nothing like a bit of late-night spaghetti I always say, what sauce?’
‘It’s erm,’ she looked around the bathroom, hoping for inspiration, ‘it’s erm,’ she stared at the fancy glass bottle of bath oil, ‘olive oil with garlic and lemon.’ Her face twisted in cringing agony.
‘Sounds delicious!’
‘What can I do for you, Dominic?’ Her tone now a little officious, urging him, the man married to Trish, to get to the reason for the contact. Her toes were curled with the stress of it all.
‘Right, yes.’ He paused. ‘I thought I’d call because, well, how to put it,’ he gave a nervous laugh, ‘I wanted to. And I feel there are things left to say.’
‘I thought we had agreed that it wasn’t wise to call me. Not a good idea for us to speak like this.’ Her voice was steady.
‘I don’t recall that.’ He sounded sure. ‘I know you said that it had been lovely to talk to me, and nice to meet me, and then there was a brief discussion about life in general – what we want, what we deserve and what we settle for, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, in that case, maybe I should have been more direct. What I meant to say was that I cannot become involved with you in any way because you’re married. And that was before I knew you were married to Trish and that our children were getting married. Is that any clearer?’
She gave a long sigh, knowing the right thing to do would be to put the phone down. End the call and brave the inevitable awkwardness that would envelop them in the coming months when forced to face each other, and the memory of him speaking to her while she lay nudie-dudie in a deep bath rattled around in her head. Yet she didn’t end the call because it was contact, it was someone, reaching out to her in this, the loneliest of hours at the end of the longest day. And it was him. She slipped deeper into the water. Hiding as best she could.
There was a second or two of silence; she heard him swallow, could hear him breathing. When he eventually spoke, his voice sounded pained and thoughtful, mirroring her own emotions that her rather abrupt words had failed to erase.
‘It’s hard for me to, to,’ he paused, ‘difficult for me to accept that we are—’
‘There is no “we”, Dominic!’ It felt important to interject.
‘And you’re okay with that?’
She sat up in the water. ‘It’s not a matter of being okay with it. It’s a case of accepting the facts and the many obstacles and barriers that are piled up, too high for us to overcome, to even get started. Because we haven’t started. We are nothing. We don’t know each other, strangers! A two-minute exchange in a car park that has been blown out of proportion for whatever reason. An attraction, yes, I’ll admit, but no more, the kind of attraction that is always on a timer. No more.’
‘I don’t think you believe that any more than I do.’
‘I don’t, I don’t know what else to say. A married man is a non-starter for me, that’s... that’s it!’
