The Stopped Heart (32 page)

She ignored her. When Flo was building to a tantrum, it was sometimes the only way. Keep on going. Distract her. Keep up the momentum. Don't lose pace; don't get caught—

“I'm going to get the car now.” Pulling keys out of her bag. “You going to come or wait for me here with Ella?”

“I want KitKat!”

“I said are you coming or waiting?”

Flo began to cry.

“Right,” she said. And she turned and left them and went to get the car.

M
ARY LIFTS HER HEAD AND LOOKS AT HIM.

“This really has been the strangest afternoon.”

“Strange in a good or a bad way?”

“I don't know. I really don't know. It's like you said—I don't feel like myself at all.”

“Who do you feel like?”

“I don't know. I've no idea. Someone very odd. My old self perhaps.”

“I like your old self.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. She's lovely. She's so bright and awake and alive. Look, you haven't drunk your tea.”

“I know.” She looks at him. “I'm sorry. I actually don't think I can.”

Eddie sighs. Shakes his head.

“Mary,” he says.

“What?”

“I don't know. Just that. Just Mary.”

Neither of them speaks for a few moments. Mary thinks, vaguely to herself, that she should go. But the thought feels like no more than a bunch of words, not especially important or true, and she lets it float for a moment and then wobble, bend, and burst—

“What are you thinking about?” he says.

She smiles. “I was thinking about those bubbles. You know, that you get in a little bottle with a wand and you wave it around or you blow them.”

He laughs. “My God, that takes me back. I remember those. Do they still make those?”

“The girls loved them, especially Flo. She tried doing it with detergent once, but it didn't work as well.”

He nods. “It can't just be ordinary old soap, can it? They must put something else in.”

“Maybe.”

“Either that or it's just very cheap soap. And that's what makes the bubbles.”

“You think so?” Mary says.

He looks at her.

“I can't tell you how badly I want to kiss you,” he says.

T
HEY SIT TOGETHER ON THE VAST
L
-SHAPED SOFA.
D
EBORAH
'
S
sofa, with its acres of linen cushions, its neutral-colored throws. They haven't kissed, but he's insisted on opening a bottle of wine. She doesn't know what he wants. She doesn't really care. At least three feet of sofa separate them.

“Come here,” he says, patting the clean linen cushion next to him. “Come on, come and sit closer to me.”

Mary shakes her head. Trying not to think about what it might feel like to be closer to him. Her head on his shoulder. His hand inside her shirt.

She blinks.

“I have this stash of pills,” she tells him. “Stuff they gave me when it happened, to keep me calm, to calm me down. I've saved them up. I've got loads of them.”

She sees that his face changes.

“What are you saying?”

“I don't know.”

“You're saying you've thought about killing yourself?”

She glances down at her knees in their blue jeans, her feet on Deborah's startling cream rug.

“I probably wouldn't do it.”

“But you think about it.”

“Yes. Of course I do. Yes.”

He says nothing. At last he picks up the bottle and comes and sits beside her. Puts a hand on her knee.

“You shouldn't do that,” she says, and for a sudden strange moment they both look at his hand. He doesn't take it away. “And I don't know why I just told you that. About the pills.”

“You can tell me anything. You know you can.”

She looks at him.

“I'm dead inside, Eddie. My heart, it's empty. It's what I tried to tell you, before. I have nothing to give anyone.”

She sees him smiling. He takes his hand off her knee.

“Ah. Your great big empty heart. I have to say, I've never met a less empty person in my whole life.”

She picks up her wine, looks at it, puts it back down.

“Will you forget what I told you? Everything I've said today. Please forget it.”

He sighs.

“It will go no further. But can I just say I'd like you to throw those pills away?”

Mary looks at him. She picks up her glass, drinks from it.

“I like Deborah,” she says.

“I know. I know you do. She likes you too.”

She sighs. Looks again at her feet on the rug.

“He almost left me, you know, Graham did.”

Now Eddie stares at her. “Graham?”

“You're surprised?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Very surprised. Why on earth would he do that?”

“The same reason anyone would. He fell in love.”

“Love?”

“Well, supposedly, it was love. He had someone else anyway.”

He sits back on the sofa.

“You're telling me Graham had an affair?”

She bites her lip.

“I don't know if he'd call it that. This woman he met through work. A designer. Not even that young or anything. Older than me. A nice person, apparently. I'm sure she was. I never met her. But I knew people who knew her.”

Eddie is still staring at her.

“This was recently?”

“Yes. No. Well, two or three years ago is when it began. It only stopped when—well, it stopped after the girls—”

She hears him take a breath.

“I'm not sure he even slept with her. I don't know. But what does it matter? It was real.”

“Real?”

“He said he loved her. He did love her. What can I say? If you think you feel love for someone, then you do. You love them. He loved her.”

Eddie is staring at her.

“And he knows? He knew. That you knew?”

She takes a breath. “He came and told me. He was very confused. Confused and upset. And guilty. He didn't like lying. In fact, he hated it. He's honest in that way.”

“Honest? You call it honest?”

Mary shakes her head, hesitating a moment.

“Before it—before what happened—he was going to leave me. Or I was going to leave him. Whichever. We were talking about it seriously, about separating. It seemed like the only right thing—but we hadn't told the girls. That was the part I didn't think I was going to be able to bear. What to say to them. I mean, of course, Flo wouldn't really have understood, but Ella—”

Eddie puts out a hand, taking hers. She glances at him, allowing herself a breath.

“But then, well, I suppose what happened—it meant we never had to tell them. And then, somehow, time passed and—”

“And what?”

“Well, look at us.”

He looks at her.

“You stayed together? Some people would be driven apart.”

“I know.”

“But not you.”

“No. I'm sure it's all down to him. Anybody else—well, I can't imagine—but he is a good man. We need each other.”

“And love?”

“What?”

Mary looks at him.

“Do you love each other?”

She shakes her head.

“I don't think about love.”

“I don't believe you.”

“All right. We love each other. I love him, anyway.”

“And does he love you?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

She hesitates.

“I don't think it's about love. I'm not sure that love is always enough. I think that you perhaps also need imagination.”

“Imagination?”

“If you're both grieving, you do.”

Eddie is silent.

“I don't know what you mean,” he says.

She looks at him.

“You don't?” She shuts her eyes. “He loves me. I think he does. But sometimes I come into a room when he's not expecting me and he thinks I can't see him and I find him sitting there and he just looks so—completely alone. He looks—” She takes a breath. “He looks like someone serving a life sentence.”

Eddie says nothing. Both of them silent for a long moment. The little clock on the mantelpiece whirring the half hour. He pours her more wine.

“Don't,” she says. “I mustn't. I really should go.”

She feels him looking at her.

“I love you,” he says.

She lifts her head.

“What?”

“I love you, Mary. I wasn't going to say it. In fact, I promised myself that whatever happened today, I wouldn't say it. But there you are. I broke my promise. I'm sorry. I just love you.”

She feels herself tense.

“You can't.”

“But I do.”

“No—you mustn't say it.”

“Why mustn't I?” His voice—his face—suddenly elated. “I'm an adult. I'm not stupid. I know what love is. I knew it the first time I saw you. Ever since that time you both came to dinner.”

She looks at him.

“One meeting? It's not possible.”

He smiles.

“What, you don't believe in love at first sight?”

“No, I don't. Of course I don't.”

He shrugs.

“Well, whether you believe it or not. It won't change what I feel. I love you. Like you just said, if someone feels it—and I feel it. That's it. It's a fact. It's the truth.”

The truth? Mary looks at the fireplace, the huge stone fireplace. The rug. The firewood neatly piled, not a piece out of place. The interior-decorating magazines. The collection of carved figures, angry faces, weapons raised.

“I should go,” she says.

He reaches for her hand. Holds it in his.

“Do you remember that time? When we met? The first time you came here for dinner? You were very flustered.”

“Flustered?”

He laughs.

“You weren't in the greatest of moods. You surely remember that. You didn't want to be here at all, did you?”

“I don't remember,” she says, though she does.

“You looked gorgeous. You had on these red trousers. Silk, I think.”

“Velvet.”

“What?”

“They were velvet.”

“Well, they suited you. You looked amazing. You should wear them again.”

“I gave them to the charity shop,” she says, remembering with a sliver of relish the pretty things she chucked in a carrier bag and dumped there the next day.

“You didn't.”

“I did.”

He strokes her hand, holding it in both of his.

“Well, that was a mistake. A big mistake. I'll have to buy you some more.”

“Don't be silly.”

“It's not silly.”

“I don't want you to buy me anything.”

“I will. I want to—”

“Eddie,” she says. “I mean it. I have to go.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Not yet.”

“I must. I have to.”

“Please. I'm saying please. Mary, just look at me. I don't want you to.”

She turns to look at him. Thinking that he looks so young, suddenly, like a boy, that he could be about sixteen.

“We can't do this,” she says.

“I love you.”

“Please don't keep saying that.”

“Why?”

“It's not true and don't you see, it spoils our friendship? You've been so kind to me today, this afternoon. I've loved talking to you. I've loved everything about it. But I don't want to do this. What you're asking of me, Eddie, it's not fair—there's nowhere possible for this to go—”

“You could love me back.”

“I can't.”

“Don't? Or can't?”

She looks away. Bright early-evening sunshine slanting over the garden.

“Both. It's both.”

He shakes his head. She feels him smiling at her.

“All this time. I've been falling in love with you. You must know that, Mary. At least don't say it's a surprise.”

She looks at him.

“It is a surprise. I had no idea. I like you a lot. Of course I do. You're a good man.”

“I don't want to be a good man. I have no ambition whatsoever to be a good man.”

“You're my friend. I want to be your friend. I don't want to hurt you.”

“That old chestnut.”

“I mean it, Eddie.”

He blinks. “Well, you will. You will hurt me. If you don't at least respect me enough to believe in what I'm telling you. You will hurt me very much.”

She looks at him for a moment, unsure what to do or say. Then she hears it. Her phone. She gets up quickly and goes back into the kitchen, takes it from her bag, looks at it. She puts it back in the bag and picks up her cardigan, starting to pull it on.

“Graham's on his way home,” she says, walking back into the room. “He's bringing Ruby back with him.”

“He's not staying in London?”

“He's changed his mind. He says Veronica needs a break.”

Eddie looks at her and something in his face seems to change.

“I'm sorry. I'm forgetting all about what's going on. You have to go. Of course you do.”

He walks over to her and, very gently, starts to do up the buttons of her cardigan. She can't help it, she laughs.

“I don't need it done up.”

“You might get cold.”

“I'm not cold. It's still so warm out there.”

“All the same. Want to send you home in one piece.”

She bends her head to watch as he carries on doing it, his fingers stumbling as he struggles to push the buttons into the holes.

She lets him do a couple of them up and then she can't help it—something about the careful closeness of his fingers, all that newness and possibility and warmth—she reaches out and pulls his head to hers.

T
HE SUN IS LOW IN THE SKY BY THE TIME SHE GETS BACK HOME,
the light pink. Darkness still hours away.