'No, it wasn't.'
'So what was it like?'
'You said to me that you felt ugly. You'd been talking about
Terry. So I took you by the hand.' He took me by the hand and led me across the room to where there was a full-length mirror hanging on the wall. He placed me in front of it so that I was looking at myself, ragged, blotchy, pale, straggly, worn-out Abigail. He stood behind me and we caught each other's gaze in the mirror. 'I brought you over here and I made you look at yourself. I said that you were beautiful.'
'I look like something you found on a skip.'
'Shut up, Abbie. I'm talking. You were beautiful then and you're beautiful now. I told you that you were lovely and then I couldn't stop myself. I kissed you like this, on your soft neck. Yes, you leant your head just like that.'
'What then?' I said. I felt faint.
'I kissed you like this and rubbed my hands over you, your face and neck. Then I carried on like this.'
He was kissing my neck and at the same time he undid the buttons on the front of my shirt until it opened.
'That right?' I murmured, not very coherently.
He reached under my shirt and unfastened my bra at the back and pulled it up at the front and then his hands were on my breasts. His soft lips were still on my neck, not so much kissing my skin as stroking it.
'Like this,' he said.
I was going to say something but I couldn't speak. His right hand stroked my stomach gently, moving downwards. He deftly snapped open the button at the top of my trousers and opened the zip. He knelt down behind me, kissing his way down my spine as he did so. He put his hands inside the waistband and pulled my trousers and knickers down around my ankles. He stood up again. He was behind me, his arms around me.
'Look at that,' he said, and I looked at my body and in the mirror I looked at him, looking at my body and I looked at my body with his gaze. And I looked into the mirror and thought of my naked body in that mirror, when was it? Two weeks ago?
When I spoke to him my voice was drowsy with arousal. 'I look undignified,' I said.
'You look wonderful.'
'And I can't run away.'
'You can't run away.'
'What did I do after that?'
And then he showed me. I had to hobble, ridiculously, towards his bedroom and I fell over on the bed. I kicked off my shoes and shook off my clothes. They were virtually off anyway. Then he took off his own clothes, taking his time. He reached over to a drawer and took out a condom, opening the packet with his teeth. I helped him put it on. 'I know about this,' I said. 'I found the morning-after pill among my stuff.'
'Oh, God,' he said. 'I'm sorry. We didn't have time.'
'I'm sure I was to blame as well.'
'Yeah,' he said, gasping now. 'You were.'
We looked at each other. He put up one hand and touched my face, my neck, my breasts. 'I thought I'd never touch you again,' he said.
'Was it like this?'
'Yes.'
'This?'
'Yes. Don't stop.'
We didn't stop. We looked at each other the whole time, sometimes smiling at each other. When he came, he cried out like a man in pain. I gathered him to me and held him close. I kissed his damp hair.
'It can't have been better than that,' I said.
He put his lips against the pulse in my throat and then he groaned something into my neck.
'What was that?'
'I said, not an hour's gone by without me missing you.'
'Perhaps I've been missing you, too, but I didn't know it.'
'How did you know?'
'The bonsai tree.' I drew back and glared at him. 'So why the fuck didn't you tell me?'
'I'm sorry, I didn't know what to do. I wanted you to feel something, not be told you had felt it. If that makes sense.'
'I don't know. There's a bit of me waiting to be furious with you. Really furious. That's not a joke. I've been searching and searching for bits of the me that I lost, blundering around like a terrified blind woman, and you knew that, and you could have helped me all along. But you didn't. You chose not to. You knew things about me that I didn't know about me. You still do. You can remember fucking me and I've got no memory at all. You know the other me, the me I keep hidden, and I don't know the other you, do I? What other things do you know about me? How will I know that you've told me everything? I won't. You've got bits of my life. That's not right. Is it?'
'No.'
'Is that all you've got to say?'
'I'm sorry. I didn't know what to do,' he said helplessly. 'I wanted to tell you but what would I have said?'
'The truth,' I said. 'That would have been a good place to start.'
'I'm sorry,' he said again.
I stroked his chest softly. Before I had been grabbed and shut up in a cellar, I had been happy. Everyone had said so. I'd been happy because I'd left a man who beat me up, left a job I disliked, and met Ben. Since coming out of hospital, I had been haunted by the fact that the days I had lost were ones full of lovely memories. I had lost the bits I wanted to keep; I had kept the bits I wanted to let go. Thoughts flitted through my head, or fragments of thoughts. Something about saying yes to life, something about not spending the rest of my life being scared.
Later, we had a bath together. Then he went downstairs and made us both sandwiches, which he brought up on a tray, with a bottle of red wine. I sat against the pillows.
'You're always making me meals,' I said.
'We had oysters before.'
'Did we? I love oysters.'
'I know. That's why we had them. We'll have them again.'
I picked up his hand and kissed it, then bit into the sandwich. 'So it was a Wednesday evening, right?'
'Monday.'
'Monday! You're sure? Straight after we first met?'
'Sure.'
I frowned.
'But you didn't wear a condom?'
'I did.'
'I don't get it. You said earlier .. .'
'You came back.'
'On Wednesday?'
'Yes.'
'You should have fucking well told me that.'
'I know.'
'And you didn't
'No.'
'Why?'
'You came on an impulse. With the tree. We'd arranged to meet the next evening Thursday because I had several people round on the Wednesday. Clients. They were there already and you knocked on the door and handed me the tree. I kissed you.'
'Yes?'
'And then I kissed you some more.'
