I picture the lush seaside and Rupert Covington, his unruffled nature. How at peace I must have felt there, after being stuffed into this flat for so long. Why did I ever leave Newlyn three years ago to return here? This could not have been home.
But the moment I push open the narrow door to number eight, I am sucked into a swirling vortex of memories. Voices.Laughter and emotion. AJ spinning me about, his face alight with some news. Me, standing on the table to put candles on every ledge. AJ stomping about and railing about the pickpocket who’s filched his shabby watch. Me, parting the bright yellow curtains to watch for AJ on the street. The two of us, hip to hip as we wash dishes in the minuscule sink with the gramophone playing in the background.
I grab for details, but they whoosh through my grasp. Only flitting images and sensations remain. Most of all…I feel my husband. AJ is here, even when he’s not—his presence, his laughter, the life he brings to everything around him. And surprisingly,I am here. My voice, singing aloud as I take up space in this tiny flat. Sunshine and passion and beauty brim from every crude surface. I bend to smell tiny flowers and remember.
You are my honey, honeysuckle,
I am the bee,
I’d like to sip the honey sweet
From those red lips, you see
I love you dearly, dearly
And I want you to love me,
You are my honey, honeysuckle,
I am the bee.
Yes, I am here. I cannot recall every detail, but my influence is pervasive. Delicate yellow flowers on a vine framing the kitchen window, candles on every surface, the walls papered in lovely blue flowers, even a large milk bottle filled with water and oil, turned on its side to simulate the waves of Cornwall. Tucked in the alcove beyond the kitchen is a four-poster bed draped with a white-and-blue quilt with lace edging like the sea’s foam.
I close my eyes and hear us—laughing, chattering, disagreeing, living life within these cramped walls. I walk about, touching the pictures, the dried-up vines growing out of jars.
At the entrance I sense a small cyclone of tension—an argument we always had at the door. What is it? The memory tickles in a place I cannot reach.
I cross to the rickety table crammed against the papered wall and slide into the chair—then spring up and move to the other one. Yes, this one is mine, with the view out the kitchen window.
I mean to make you laugh harder than you’ve ever laughed before.It’s AJ, holding me around the waist, looking into my eyes.You are my forever.
I touch a heart-shaped rose quartz rock on the table, fingering the sparkling planes.This is just how solid, how unbreakable, my love for you is. It’ll always be there, within reach of your hand.I made a mess of things that day. I cannot remember every detail, but it lays like a mantle on my shoulders. After whatever I’d done, he sat at the table, me in his lap, and handed me this rock.You can cost me all the windows in the world, and it wouldn’t change a thing.I wrap my fingers around the rock as I did then, clinging to its solidness.
I see the man on the beach when I close my eyes, but it’s a mix of both of them, melded together in one body. Both images fight for attention, but eventually Rupert’s face melts away. He’s an intruder in this flat, and he doesn’t belong. Part of me aches for the simplicity of that day we spent together. AJ seems so volatile and mysterious and…risky.
Yet Rupert deceived me as well. Love is risky because it’s formed by two humans—two imperfect humans who will fail each other.
I water the flowers. They’ve been neglected, which means AJ has not been here in some time. He’s still out looking for me, and this is the last place he’d think to do that.
I take the rock to bed with me at night. As I lie beneath the covers, our struggles surface in a haze of repeated arguments, one most of all—the one that happened near the door.What do you want from me, Merryn? You’re always unhappy with me. What can I possibly do to please you?
Something had been off between us. I feel the jagged edge of it each time I embrace the flashbacks, but I cannot place the cause of it.
I fall asleep in the familiar shape of my own mattress, but something is terribly wrong. Something is missing. I’m not certain I’ll ever get it back.
Chapter 37
Thesqueakofthedoor wakes me. It’s early, the air is moist, and I sit up in the bed, clutching the quilt around me, and stare, half asleep, into the startled face of a man in a cheap derby hat. “Oh,” he says.
I scream, fully awake now. “What are you—” I scramble back, grabbing the first hard object I find—which turns out to be a book. I brandish it anyway, every muscle taut as I brace myself against the headboard and prepare to launch my weapon.
My panic fizzles into anger as I take in his countenance, the crooked angle of his hat, his hands held up in shocked surrender. And…I know this man. “You…you…” He was arguing with AJ at the pub in St. Ives. Before that, I’d seen him in the park in Cheltenham, where he’d stared me down as if he despised me.
Because he’d recognized me. He must have.
He’d been the one to tell AJ where to find me.
Nigel.
