She stood aside and I walked past her, up the stairs. My rich clothes whispered against my skin, under Jake’s coat. Everything looked the same in the flat, of course it did. My jackets and scarves still hung on the hooks in the hall. A photograph of Jake and me, arm in arm and grinning widely, still stood on the mantelpiece. My red moccasin slippers lay on the living-room floor, near the sofa where we’d sat on Sunday. The daffodils I had bought at the end of last week still stood in the vase, though a little droopy. There was a cup on the table half full of tea,and I was sure it was the same cup I’d been drinking from two days ago. I felt bewildered and sat down heavily on the sofa. Pauline stayed standing, looking down at me. She hadn’t said a word.
‘Pauline,’ I croaked. ‘I know that what I’ve done is awful, but I had to.’
‘Do you want me to forgive you, then?’ she asked. Her voice was withering.
‘No.’ That was a lie, of course I did. ‘No, but you are my closest friend. I thought, well, I’m not cold or heartless. There’s nothing I can say in my defence, except that I just fell in love. Surely you can understand that.’
I saw her wince. Of course she could understand that. Eighteen months ago she’d been left, too, because he had just fallen in love. She sat down at the other end of the sofa, as far away from me as possible.
‘The thing is this, Alice,’ she began, and I was struck by how we were even talking to each other differently now, more formally and pedantically. ‘If I allowed myself to, of course I could understand. After all, you weren’t married, you didn’t have children. But I don’t want to understand, you see. Not at the moment. He’s my big brother and he’s been badly hurt.’ Her voice wavered and, for a few seconds, she sounded like the Pauline I knew. ‘Honestly, Alice, if you could see him now, if you could see how
I nodded and stood up too. I did see, of course I did. ‘I’ll get some clothes, then.’
She nodded and went into the kitchen. I could hear her filling the kettle.
In the bedroom, everything was as it always had been. I took my suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and placed it open on the floor. By my side of the neatly-made double bed was the book I had been in the middle of reading about the history of clocks. By Jake’s side, was the climbing book. I took them both and put them in the case. I opened the cupboard doors and started to slip clothes off hangers. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t fold them properly. I didn’t take many, anyway: I couldn’t imagine wearing clothes I had worn before; I couldn’t believe that they would still fit me.
I stared into the wardrobe, where my things hung among Jake’s: my dresses next to his only good suit, my skirts and tops among his work shirts that were ironed and neatly buttoned on to their hangers. A couple of his shirts had frayed cuffs. Tears pricked my eyes and I blinked them away furiously. What was I going to need? I tried to picture my new life with Adam and found that I couldn’t. I could only imagine bed with him. I packed a couple of jerseys, some jeans and T-shirts, two workaday suits, and all my underwear. I took my favourite sleeveless dress and two pairs of shoes and abandoned all the rest – there was so much of it, all those shopping sprees with Pauline, all those greedy, delighted purchases.
I shovelled all my creams, lotions and makeup into the case but hesitated over my jewellery. Jake had given me quite a lot of it: several pairs of earrings, a lovely pendant, a wide copper bracelet. I didn’t know if it would be more hurtful to take them or not. I pictured him, this evening, coming into the room and finding out what I had removed, and what I had left behind, and trying to read my feelings from such insubstantial clues. I took the earrings my grandmother had left me when she died, and the things I had had before Jake. Then I changed my mind, and took everything out of the little drawer and chucked it in the case.
There was a pile of washing in the corner, and I fished out a couple of things from it. I drew the line at leaving my dirty underwear lying around. I remembered my briefcase, under the chair by the window, and my address book and diary. I remembered my passport, birth certificate, driving licence, insurance policies and savings book, which were in a folder along with all of Jake’s personal documents. I decided against taking the picture on the wall above the bed, although my father had given it to me years before I had started going out with Jake. I wasn’t going to take any of the books or the music. And I wasn’t going to argue over the car, for which I had put down the deposit six months previously, while Jake still paid the standing orders.
Pauline was sitting on the sofa in the living room, drinking a cup of tea. She watched as I picked up three letters from the table that were addressed to me and slipped them into my briefcase. I’d done. I had one suitcase full of clothes, and a plastic bag full of bits and pieces.
‘Is that all? You’re travelling light, aren’t you?’
I shrugged hopelessly. ‘I know I’ll have to sort it properly soon. Not yet.’
‘So it’s not just a fling?’
I looked at her. Brown eyes like Jake’s. ‘No, it’s not.’
‘And Jake shouldn’t go on hoping you’ll come back to him. Waiting in every day in case you turn up?’
‘No.’
I needed to get out of there so that I could howl. I went to the door, picking up a scarf from the hook as I did so. It was cold and dark outside.
‘Pauline, can you tell Jake that I’ll do this…’ I made a wide, vague gesture round the room, at all our shared things ‘… however he wants.’
She looked at me but didn’t reply.
‘Goodbye, then,’ I said.
We stared at each other. I saw that she, too, wanted me to go so she could cry.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I must look dreadful.’
‘No.’ He wiped my eyes and my snotty nose with a corner of his shirt.
‘I’m sorry. It’s so painful.’
‘The best things are born out of pain. Of course it is painful.’
At any other time, I would have hooted at that. I don’t believe pain is necessary or ennobling. But I was too far gone. Another sob rose in my chest. ‘And I’m so scared, Adam.’ He didn’t say anything. ‘I’ve given up everything for you. Oh, God.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you have.’
We walked to a simple restaurant round the corner. I had to lean against him, as if I would fall over if I was unsupported. We sat in a dark corner and drank a glass of champagne each, which went straight to my head. He put his hand on my thigh under the table and I stared at the menu, trying to focus. We ate salmon fillets with wild mushrooms and green salad, and had a bottle of cold greeny-white wine. I didn’t know if I was elated or in despair. Everything seemed too much. Every look he gave me was like a touch, every sip of wine rushed round my blood. My hands shook when I tried to cut up the food. When he touched me under the table I felt as if my body would crumble into soft fragments.
‘Has it ever been like this for you?’ I asked, and he shook his head.
I asked him who there was before me and he stared at me for a moment. ‘It’s hard to talk about.’ I waited. If I had left my whole world for him, he was going to have to tell me at least about his previous girlfriend. ‘She died,’ he said then.
‘Oh.’ I was shocked and also dismayed. How could I compete with a dead woman?
‘Up on the mountain,’ he continued, staring into his glass.
‘You mean, on that mountain?’
‘Chungawat. Yes.’
He drank some more wine and signalled to the waiter. ‘Can we have two whiskies, please?’
They arrived and we downed them. I took his hand across the table. ‘Did you love her?’
‘Not like this,’ he said. I put his hand against my face. How was it possible to be so jealous of someone who had died before he ever set eyes on me?
‘Have there been a lot of other women?’
‘When I’m with you, I know there’s been no one,’ he replied, which meant, of course, that there had been lots.
‘Why me?’
Adam looked lost in thought. ‘How could it not be you?’ he asked at last.
