Because you think too much, I told myself wearily as I pulled up outside my house a few minutes later. I sat there a moment. Jennie would agree. Jennie, who’d be disappointed in me, I thought guiltily, glancing at her front door. For not jumping at it, not giving him a chance.
‘Just give him a chance!’ I could hear her squeal, almost through the party wall. ‘You don’t have to marry him!’
I knew myself too well, though; knew I found someone else’s ardour very attractive, even if it wasn’t mine. Knew I found vulnerability and little admissions like that hard to resist. So, to that end, self-protection worked best for me. In order to prevent myself falling for a charm offensive, I just wouldn’t expose myself to it. Simple.
I was about to get out of the car, when I sank back in my seat. Stared ahead through the windscreen into the night. Self-protection. Was that the same as not wanting to see the truth? Not wanting to know the truth? Had there been moments in my married life when I’d been deliberately blind? It was a question I’d asked myself a lot lately. And the answer was always no. I’d never had an inkling about her. There were definitely occasions when, even in the privacy of my own head, I’d been dishonest about certain things – about loving Phil in the early days, for instance – but this was not one of them. She’d come as a bolt from the blue. Yet she’d played such a huge part in my life. Had been there for four years. I narrowed my eyes into the night.
Suddenly, on an impulse, I put the key in the ignition and started the car again. Without giving myself time to think, I drove back up the lane. It was early. Ten past eleven. And I’d told Felicity, who was babysitting, twelve. I had time. And no children to inconvenience me, either. I’d attempted this the other day, but Clemmie had complained, wanting to know why we were sitting in the road outside someone’s house, Mummy, and Archie had started grizzling, so with a pounding heart I’d driven away. The heart was still pounding, I decided, and I knew I should probably turn around now, in that lay-by, go home, but I found myself driving through the next village. Then up the hill. I sped along the common, wide and spreading but eventually narrowing almost to a verge, where the houses set behind it were closer to the road. One of which was hers.
I’d found it the other day, a tiny flint cottage, seemingly in the grounds of a bigger one: Meadow Bank Cottage and Meadow Bank House. It did appear to have its own little walled garden, though, so it could be separate. Anyway, I wasn’t interested in the set-up, more in the woman inside. Why? Why was I sitting here in the middle of the night, post-date, engine purring, heart racing, crouched at the wheel like some private detective? Because presumably she’d sat outside mine, I reasoned. And I felt that to know her was to understand her a bit better. But Phil was dead now. Surely I should move on? Not before something was silenced, I reasoned. Something inside me wanted to lie down and be quiet, and in some warped way I felt that once that had happened I could go on dates and not have a sinking feeling in the pit of my tummy, not feel detached. I wanted to be able to bang my palm on my forehead and say: ah, I
Stupid, I thought later when I’d sat across the road and watched the dark little house for ten minutes, eyes wide like a rabbit’s. What are you doing, Poppy? Go home and leave the past behind. She’s nothing to you now; get going. Still I sat. It helped, somehow, that the cottage looked empty and forlorn. Perhaps she was sitting inside in the dark feeling sad, as I did sometimes? Unable to light the fire, turn on the lights. More probable, of course, was that she was out. I smiled wryly to myself in the dark. Look at you, Poppy. Look at what you’ve become. A stalker. And not even stalking a man.
Giving myself a little inward shake I turned the key in the ignition, and reversed with a flourish into a driveway. Then just as I was about to turn left into the road, a black Mini Cooper swung past me into the little gravel drive opposite. It disappeared around the back of the flint cottage. It all happened terribly quickly, but not so fast that I didn’t make out the blonde driver and the briefest glimpse of a male passenger beside her. I sat, frozen. Turned off the engine and slid right down in my seat, pulling my scarf up over my face. A few seconds later, the downstairs front room of the cottage sprang into light. Emma came towards me across the room, laughing, head thrown back. She was wearing a tight pink cardigan with lots of silver chains around her neck, white jeans which showed off her figure, and her face was alight, blonde hair flopping over one eye. She reached for the curtain cord with one hand and flicked her fringe back in a practised fashion with the other, before turning, no doubt to the man who’d followed her into the room, as the curtains swished shut.
I sat there as if I’d been shot. Barely breathing. I tried to marshal my thoughts which were spinning like a kaleidoscope. So Emma had a man. And she definitely had him, there was no doubt about that: no mistaking the body language, the tight clothes, the flirtatious laugh. And she was looking good too, which surprised me. She’d scrubbed up. Moved on. Stepped right over Phil, over his grave. For this was not a girl to let the grass grow under her feet, particularly the grass on a mound. Why was I surprised? Because I’d thought true love would last a bit longer? Because Phil was barely cold? But perhaps it hadn’t been true love for her. Perhaps she hadn’t been besotted with him. But if not, what had been the point? Just sex, I supposed. An affair. For four years. I took a deep breath. Exhaled shakily. You really do
