of my mouth I felt a flood of relief.
“What?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said. I’m just not sure I believe it. Why?”
“I just feel—I just think I need a bit of space. I want to go out with my friends more. I want some time to myself. To think.”
I sat down then, perched on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together. I could feel the tension in the air rising like a tide.
“You get lots of time to yourself when I’m at work.”
“I know,” I said, “and I like it. I don’t like coming home and finding you’ve been in here while I’ve been out. I want you to give me my spare key back.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I just like my own space. I like to know where everything is.”
“What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?”
“You coming in here when I’m out. Leaving me messages. Leaving that picture of me under the duvet.”
“I thought you’d like that. Don’t you remember what happened when I took that picture? What we were doing? I remember it. I think about it all the time.”
“I remember you telling me you’d deleted it. You obviously didn’t.”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ve been scared, Lee. Since the burglary. I don’t like you coming in here when I’m not at home. It’s as though my house isn’t mine anymore.”
There was a pause. I could see him in my peripheral vision, standing to my left by the door. He hadn’t moved a muscle, he hadn’t taken his coat off. He was like a solid shadow, a black ghost, a nightmare.
“You want to go back to screwing anyone and everyone,” he said, his voice like ice. “You want to go back to that.”
“No,” I said. “I just want a bit of space, that’s all. I don’t want to see anyone apart from my friends. I just want to—think. To be sure that this is right.”
He took a step forward then, suddenly, and I think I must have flinched or something because when I looked up at him he’d frozen again. His face looked calm, impassive, but his eyes were raging. Without another word he took a step back again, out of the door. I heard the front door open and shut again with a soft click.
He was gone.
I sat motionless for a moment, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I thought he was going to come back. Maybe he was going to come back and hit me, or throw something at me, or yell and swear.
Eventually I got up, went upstairs and got changed out of that stupid black dress with its stupid sparkles that I’d already decided I was never going to wear again. It was going in the first bag I took to the thrift shop, no matter what it had cost me to buy. Along with the red one. I wanted to be rid of them both.
It was hours later, when I was lying in bed still wide awake wondering what on earth had just happened, how it had happened, that I realized that he hadn’t given me my key back.
Monday 14 January 2008
Caroline and I were on our way to Windsor for a meeting with the senior management team. She was supposed to be talking about budgets, and I was there to present the recruitment plans for the new warehouse that was opening in the new year. Caroline was driving and chattering on about work as we sped along the M4. I was exhausted, my throat sore.
Going out of the office is never a good thing for me. It upsets my routine. Already I was planning the checks for when I got home, telling myself that I would have to do it right, do it properly, so that I didn’t end up doing it all damn night again, making a racket that Stuart could hear through the floorboards.
“You look worn out, love,” she said then.
“Do I?”
“Late night, was it?”
“Not really. I think I’m getting a cold or something.”
I went back to gazing out of the window. If only I could sleep, just for a few minutes, I would feel better.
“How’s things going with that adorable man upstairs?”
“Oh. Well, he’s still talking to me after all, it seems. He took me out for the day.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It was nice.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“We’re just friends, Caroline,” I said.
“Bollocks you are,” she replied.
I laughed, in spite of myself. “He’s not up for anything else, I’m telling you.”
“I wish you’d stop