that once or twice, for a giggle. It was a challenge to see who could get someone out to the playground first. But not tonight . . .
“Lee . . .” I touched his arm, tenderly, trying to bring him back, trying to calm him down, but he shrugged my hand away.
“Come on, I’m sorry. It wasn’t like that. Lee.” I tried again, and this time he shoved me, hard, with both hands. I fell backward onto the sofa, the breath knocked out of me.
He took a sharp breath in, turned his back on me. “I’d better go.”
I sat back on the sofa, stunned by the force of his fury and devastated by the prospect of losing him. “Yes, you better had.”
I spent the first hour after he’d left having a long hot shower, then walking from room to room, thinking over everything he’d said, how my behavior had been interpreted. I hadn’t fucked anyone else, I hadn’t even flirted with anyone else, and you couldn’t count Sylvia, who was just about my best friend in the world. He’d been out of order. But then I thought about how he hadn’t known anyone there except for me, how I’d abandoned him and spent the night flitting between people, laughing and joking, swishing my hair around and batting my eyelashes. And kissing Sylvia on the dance floor. Oh, God.
The second hour I spent sitting curled up on the sofa, hugging my knees and staring blankly at the television screen, taking nothing in, the effects of the alcohol now worn off to the extent that I felt sick to my stomach.
Just as I was contemplating going to bed, even though I knew I’d never be able to sleep, there was a quiet knock at the door. And then everything was all right again, because he was there, and the light from the hallway shone over his face, the tears, the hurt, the terrible, naked hurt in his eyes. He stumbled toward me, saying, “I’m sorry, Catherine, I’m sorry . . .”
I took him in my arms and pulled him inside, kissing him tenderly, kissing the tears from his eyes. He was freezing. He’d been walking for miles. I pulled his clothes off him and put him in the shower, and it was almost a repeat of that first night when he’d stumbled into my house with blood pouring from his eyebrow and three of his ribs broken.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, as I lay beside him in bed, using my body to try to get some warmth back into him.
“No, Lee, you were right—I was out of line. I’m sorry. I’ll never show you up like that again.”
And when he made love to me, it was very gentle.
Hours later, lying in the darkness of my bedroom, listening to his breathing, regular, deep. The question that had been swimming around in my mind, since the moment I first saw those eyes, finally found a whisper. “Who broke your heart, Lee? Who was it?”
His reply took so long I thought he was asleep . . . and then the word, whispered into the air like a charm, like an incantation: “Naomi.”
The next morning I had forgotten where the bruises on my arms had come from. But I never forgot the name, nor the way he said it, with such reverence: a breath, a sigh.
Tuesday 25 December 2007
When I got back upstairs I could hear voices before I even got into the flat. They’d left the door open, something that would normally send me into a tailspin, but after all this wasn’t my flat.
Stuart was standing in the kitchen. When I came up the hall toward him, having shut the door firmly behind me, he stopped talking, midsentence, and looked.
I rounded the corner and there, at last, was Alistair Hodge. “Ah, and you must be the glorious Cathy; I’ve been hearing all about you. How are you, my dear?”
“I’m very well, thank you. It’s nice to meet you.”
I shook his hand and accepted a glass of wine from him, immediately thinking that I would have to take things very easy.
“Come and sit with me, my dear, and let’s see if we can find some nice festive music to listen to.”
I cast a glance over my shoulder at Stuart as Alistair led me into the living area. He gave me a smile and a wink and went back to the meal.
Alistair was a well-built man, loosely put together, with prematurely graying hair rather like mine. He