After Ever After (47 page)

It was designed and built, Daniel told me proudly the first time I trembled on the threshold, by an architect in the 1930s, and its central sleek white tower rises a full four floors above the dense copse of mature trees that surrounds the house. As I approach it, the sound of traffic fades finally into nothing and I wonder how the architect would feel about the Virginia creeper that now covers a large part of that tower, spreading thickly over the window to what was once Fergus’s bedroom. I can just make out through the plant’s mysteriously rippling leaves that his curtains are closed. He must still be sleeping.

For a long time I stand in the porch looking at the deco sunburst cut into the door, waiting for inspiration to come, waiting to know what to say. But nothing comes, except that I realise that the flip-flop sandals Camille has picked for me are biting painfully into the spaces in between my toes. Daniel opens the door and looks at me, his face a picture of perfect neutrality.

‘Are you coming in?’ he says gently. I hesitate for a moment and step over the threshold. ‘He’s up there in his old room.’ Daniel nods at the gently spiralling staircase. ‘He’s been there since he came. Georgina’s seen him, but I haven’t. I went up there last night and stood outside his room, talked through the door, you know? But nothing. You’ve hurt him badly, Kitty.’ He considers me for a moment before saying finally. ‘I don’t think I was wrong about you, I still think you can make him happy, but please, be careful with him, okay?’

I nod anxiously and take the first step on the sweep of the spiral staircase that leads to Fergus until I’m standing outside his bedroom door.

I knock and wait. Nothing.

‘Um, Fergus, it’s me?’ I pause. ‘It’s Kitty. Can I come in?’ I say quietly, almost hoping not to wake him, desperately resisting the urge to run back down the stairs and out of this house, leaving the front door banging in my wake. When he doesn’t reply I try again a little louder.

‘It’s Kitty!’ I call. ‘Please let me come in?’ Nothing comes back at me but I hold my nerve. I’ve come this far, I can’t turn back now. Doris would say that I mustn’t keep my feelings a secret, that I must sing them out. How will Fergus ever know the truth if I don’t tell him. I open the door and look in.

He’s sleeping, wearing his huge 1980s headphones which are plugged into his old record player. I can faintly hear the tinny back-beat of whoever is on the turntable. His black hair is brushed back from his pale forehead, and even stubbled and unkempt as he is he looks about fourteen: sweetly vulnerable in a dangerous and unpredictable world. I go over to the record player and look at the LP crackling as it spins. The Stranglers. I lift the needle and return the arm to its rest, waiting for him to jerk awake or at least to show some sign of life. Instead he just lies there on his back, his arms flung over his head.

‘Fergus, baby,’ I whisper as I sit on the bed beside him. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry.’ I touch the tip of my forefinger to his forehead and trace a line down to the corner of his mouth, holding my breath as he smiles briefly in his sleep. Leaning closer just to be near him, I feel the heat radiate from his body and every moment that I move closer to him passes like a hundred years. I can feel my desire just to be with him vibrating, humming beneath my skin, and unable to resist any longer I kiss him, just touching my lips to his. I don’t expect this new alabaster effigy to respond, somehow, but when he does, his mouth parting just slightly under mine, I kiss him again, more deeply. This time a small moan escapes from the base of my throat as I feel his arms surrounding me, crushing me into him, pulling me close, kissing me back, hard.

He opens his startlingly blue eyes and looks at me. ‘Kitty,’ he says simply before rolling me on to my back and kissing me again, insistently, deeply, his hands already finding my bare skin as he rakes his short nails down my back, kissing and biting gently at my ribs as he pulls my top over my head, pulling the straps of my bra down, ripping the lace away to expose my breasts to his lips and hands. I pull him on to me, pushing myself against the strength of his body, daring to believe that this isn’t a dream. I begin to unbutton my trousers but he pushes my hands away and, taking control, pulls them and my knickers down in one rough movement, working at his own fly at the same time until at last we are both naked, limb to limb, crashing and crushing one another with the weight of emotion around us, and he slides into me, strong and hard. I hear my own gasp as I feel him connecting with me on every level of my being.

Finding his face, we look into each other’s eyes and I hold his gaze as each wave of sensation seems to weave us into an ever-closer embrace until I cry out, taken by surprise by my climax, clinging on to him. Moments later he follows me and crumples exhausted, breathless, in my arms. I feel the excruciatingly brittle edges of pure perfect happiness hard in my chest, and I allow myself to hope.

‘Fergus …’ I try to speak, try to begin, but he closes his fingers over my mouth, looking away from me before saying, ‘Shhhh, don’t say anything, please. Let’s just have this moment. Let’s just have this.’

It’s when he speaks that I realise nothing’s changed, that he hadn’t meant for that to be a reunion.

He meant it to be a goodbye.

For a long time, as we lie in detached silence, I watch the shadow of the creeper outlined against the illuminated orange of Fergus’s boyhood curtains, and I wait for him to break the quiet. We are still, side by side, no longer touching, a thin line of disconnection carefully laid between us. Finally he rolls on to his side and brings himself to look at me.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I’ve confused us both. I just, I’ve missed you and I wanted to be close to you again. It’s so strange, isn’t it? When you break up with your best friend, the one person you want to talk to about things isn’t there any more.’ He half smiles.

I sit up, drawing my knees up protectively over my breasts.

‘Fergus, don’t make us end like this. We don’t have to end,’ I appeal. ‘Please, I want you to listen to me,’ I say. ‘I’m going to tell you everything. Just listen, please, because if you’re going to let this … this
pointless mess
split us up, I want you to know exactly why.’

Fergus looks resigned and crosses his arms behind his head. ‘Go on,’ he says.

As I talk, I notice that his eyes stray purposefully from my face and fix instead on the blank, curtain-covered circle of window, its filtered light reflecting on the still, white planes of his face. Watching him as I tell him about that morning, I look for anything in his face that shows he’s still listening or understanding, but there is nothing there except an ever-increasing remoteness and a quiet, coldly burning detachment.

‘Are you listening to me?’ I break my narrative, unable to prevent myself sounding like an irritable wife interrupting the Sunday football.

Fergus’s bright blue eyes lock on to my face.

‘Sorry, did you want me to applaud you or something? Bravo.’

I had thought that the only way to make him understand was to tell the whole truth from the beginning, and that included my decision to go with Gareth that morning instead of getting on a train to London to see him. I’d only succeeded in hurting him all the more.

‘Look,’ I say, reaching for his hand. ‘I know this is hard, but I went with him because … because for every day since I met you someone in the world has known where I am. I’ve been a girlfriend and a wife and a mother. I have never been just me, not for months. It was a stupid, impulsive thing to do, but I wanted to feel free, just for a little while. It wasn’t him that I wanted; it was a little open space?’

He pulls his fingers abruptly out of mine and gestures for me to continue.

‘So we got up there and it was so beautiful and then I told him about Mum …’ I begin.

‘You told him about your mum?’ Fergus interrupts. ‘But you told me that you’ve only spoken about that to people who you trust, who you love. When you told me about that I really believed it meant something between us,’ he says angrily, suddenly sitting up, pulling his shirt on over his head and hunting around the floor for his boxers. Odd how even now, like this, we still feel fine to be naked in front of each other.

‘No, listen. He persuaded me to tell him. He told me that he’d understand. He told me things about himself that made me think he would, he’d …’ I see Fergus staring hard at a Smiths poster on his wall and I trail off realising how it must look to him. When we spent that night together talking about how my mum had been murdered, it was almost like I was giving him a gift, a gift of my trust and my faith in him and our future together. All he can see now is that I gave this to someone I hardly knew, someone who for reasons unknown made me feel free even as he entrapped me.

‘I don’t know why I told him – maybe because I thought he wouldn’t pity me. I was right about that, at least. But I do know why he wanted me to. He wanted me to be vulnerable, emotional. He wanted a reason, an excuse, to touch me, to initiate things.’

Fergus sits back on the edge of his single bed with his back to me. I hesitate, but I know I have to say it. ‘For a while, I thought that I wanted it too. But it wasn’t real. It was just a stupid fantasy, escapism. I never expected it to actually happen.’

I watch Fergus’s back but he doesn’t move. ‘And he did, he did kiss me and from the moment, the very
second
, it happened, I knew what he wanted and that and I didn’t want it, that I only wanted you and Ella and everything that we had together, so I …’

‘Fucked him.’ Fergus spits the word like an assault. The tension across his shoulders speaks volumes as I watch him slipping further and further away for me.

‘No. No.’ I reach out a hand to touch his shoulder, recoiling from him as he flinches. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I was in the middle of nowhere, I thought it would be best to sort of put him off, you know, say that I didn’t want things to go too fast. That we’d better be getting back. I told him I didn’t want it to happen any more, that I just wanted him to take me home. I said I didn’t want it, but he didn’t listen.’ For a moment I find myself caught in the heat and the wind of that moment and my heart panics, clenching tightly. ‘I thought I’d got out of it, I was laughing because the whole thing was so absurd. He even said he understood, that it wasn’t a problem. As he said that, it happened. It was like he was saying one thing and doing another.’

Fergus snorts in disbelief.

‘He raped me, Fergus,’ I say quietly. ‘It was quick and brutal, it was over even before I knew what it was, but it was rape. I didn’t want him, but what I wanted didn’t come into it.’ I wait for him to understand.

He stands up and goes to the window, pulling back the curtains and throwing it open, and for a moment the bright light dazzles us both.

‘Bullshit,’ he says, and at first I don’t hear him, or I don’t want to.

‘What?’ I say. ‘What do you mean? I said that he …’

‘Raped you. Right.’ Fergus looks at me at last, his eyes dark with fury, his face filled with disgust. ‘You go up there with him voluntarily. You just told me a second ago that you wanted to go with him instead of coming to see me. You said you wanted to be
free
! You get all cosy and emotional, you even give him the dead mother test!’ I stare at him in disbelief as he picks up one of my flip-flops and throws it on to the bed.

‘What do you mean? What test?’ I ask, astounded.

‘The murdered mum test. You only ever roll that one out when you’re planning to fuck, darling – I should know.’ He starts gathering up my clothes and throwing them at me. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t want to give yourself to a man who couldn’t play up to your perpetual victim complex would you? And then it went wrong, it wasn’t how you imagined it, maybe your poor desperate needy husband wasn’t as bad in the sack as you’d thought. Or maybe after trying you out he didn’t want you any more and you realised that you’d blown it with me and fucked up our family and now all you can come up with, all you can manage is that “he raped me”.’ He mimics a cruel falsetto. ‘Very fucking original, Kitty.’ He flings the last of my clothes at me. ‘Now get dressed and get out!’ He bangs open his door and I hear him running down the stairs.

There’s nothing in my mind now as I pull on my clothes and the one flip-flop he hurled at me – just pure rage. Anger at myself, hatred for Gareth, and rage at Fergus. Fury that this man I believed to be the perfect one could be so wrong, so flawed. Outrage that even now, even after each one of those words, I still love him. I almost tumble down the stairs after him, bouncing off the curved walls, and I race to catch him.

‘He held me down when I said no!’ I scream at him, dimly aware of Georgina and Daniel staring at me from the breakfast table. I hold my forearm across my neck. ‘He pressed his arm over my windpipe like this, so that I couldn’t move, I could hardly even breathe …’

Fergus pushes me hard and I almost lose my footing.

‘Get out!’ he screams at me, trying to turn away, but I run to him and drag him round to face me. ‘He forced me to have sex with him, Fergus, he raped me and I’m sorry, I’m really sorry I haven’t got any bruises to show you, or blood. I’m sorry that it’s easier for you to believe that I wanted it, but it’s the truth!’ I scream in his face, and for a second, just a hair’s breadth apart, we watch each other; our heaving breaths labouring under the weight of our lives.

‘You went there with him of your own accord,’ Fergus says deliberately.

‘But not to sleep with him, never to do that,’ I reply with steadfast determination.

‘Then why no police, why when I came home a couple of hours later weren’t you a trembling wreck. You were fine, Kitty. You were absolutely fine. Just a bit hungover, that was all, and a bit worried about our fight. At least that’s what I thought. You must have been shitting yourself that I’d find out …’ Fergus spits at me.

‘Fergus! Son, please.’

Fergus shakes off Daniel’s restraining arm.

‘You fucked me after him, and you hadn’t even deigned to take a bath. I’d better get tested, hadn’t I? God only knows what you might have given me.’