39
Pastries
Now
Ipull on my gloves as soon as I leave the hotel. Not the thin, disposable ones I used for botany but the heavy-duty ones I use to tackle the rose bush and brambles. I can’t stop collecting. I pull out a handful of nettles sprouting beside the drain outside his house, bundle the leaves into a plastic bag, shove it into my rucksack.
He opens the door. He’s unshaven. Violet shadows bloom under his eyes. He wears a crumpled T-shirt and checked pyjama bottoms. The only time I’ve ever seen him like this was at the end, when we’d fight and he’d get migraines. He wouldn’t go to the field on those days, he’d stay in bed with the shutters closed, the butterfly nets empty at the doorway.Lolly, he’d say,you’re driving me mad. I’d be good then, bring him fresh fruit smoothies, jugs of cold water. Now, I watch him shield his eyes against the sunlight, press his fingers to his temples, and think,You deserve this.
‘You came back.’ His voice is high and scratchy. For a second, I think he might cry. ‘I was worried, I didn’t think—’ He pressesthe back of his hand against his mouth. ‘I thought I might not see you again.’
It dawns on me how high the stakes are for him. Each admission and denial, every attack he launches is a risk – he could win me or push me away. If his gamble doesn’t pay off, what else is there for him? His mews house, however lovely, is nothing more than a prison. I am the only thing he has left. His rarest, most precious thing.
He rubs his eyes. ‘I used to pray, let me see her one last time, just once, I’ll make everything right. But I’ve had days with you now, such a gift of time, and still, I’m messing it up.’ He bangs his head lightly against the door. The gesture shocks me, I glimpse suddenly, what he might have been like in prison – quiet, destructive, haunted. Despite everything he said to me yesterday, all his lies and insinuations, I want to cup his stubbled face in my hands.
‘I’m sorry for what I said about Kit.’
I hold my hand out to stop him.
‘I want to say—’
‘—It doesn’t matter.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need to take you somewhere. Then you’ll realise once and for all.’
‘What?’
‘That you’re wrong.’ I slide my eyes away from his soft stare, the bed smell of his clothes. Adjust the rucksack that holds a hundred ways to hurt him. ‘Get dressed. I’ll wait for you here.’
He defeats me as soon as I see him. He is wearing a chocolate suede jacket. He left his door open while he went to get ready, that complete trust in my harmlessness; I stood in his doorway, leafing through Ziploc bags, choosing the next poison. I settled on the nettles I picked outside his house; I liked how fresh they were, each barb, a hypodermic needle. I dragged them across the collar of his navy blazer; I was sure he’d wear it again. But he isn’t. I clench my fists. A rucksack of poison for nothing.
He pushes on aviators as he steps out. He looks like an off-duty race-car driver. Two girls in their twenties turn to stare at him as we walk down Holland Park and I think,You know nothing about this man, how different he looked ten days ago in his prison jumpsuit, ten minutes ago in his checked pyjama bottoms, the formidable strength he has to pull himself together, and I’m frightened that I am what has sustained him for almost two decades, that the memory of us has protected him in prison when so many other inmates haven’t made it. How dangerous that is.
He stops outside a bakery that wasn’t there eighteen years ago, his eyes bright. ‘Do you remember?’ he says, gesturing at the croissants. Before I reply, he’s slipped in, he’s ordering. When he emerges, he holds out a pastry to me. Apricot. I blink at the glaze, the yolk of fruit, the thick band ofsucre perlé.
Early Saturday mornings, he’d nudge me sleepily into the car and drive to Falmouth. He’d park on the quay and head to the bakery for the only carbs of the week while I snoozed in the passenger seat, the sun warming my cheek. He bought four pastries the first time – butter, almond, apricot, a chocolate twist. ‘I didn’t know which one you’d like,’ he said, opening the box. He chose the apricot, took a bite before lifting my hair up and kissing meon the shoulder. Awake and wanting him, I took the pastry out of his hand and dropped it back in the box. ‘You haven’t chosen one yet,’ he whispered but, by then, there was no decision to be made, I’d already tasted the sweetness on his lips. ‘Apricot,’ I said, my fingers on the nape of his neck. ‘My favourite is apricot.’
The pastries, the kissing in the car, the sleepy silence of the quay. In the fairy tale my fourteen-year-old mind was spinning, I thought that was the alchemy of us, our collision created it. But now, when I look back on those Saturday mornings, I am struck not by the magic of my seduction but its practicality. He wanted me outside; it was boring to always be in the cottage. Out was exciting. But it had to be early when no would see.
‘You don’t like them anymore?’ he asks. He’s already bitten into his. His lips are studded with sugar.
I squeeze it between my fingers. The fruit bulges.
I don’t eat pastries now. I won’t even go into a bakery. ‘Too rich,’ I’d say to Kit and Millie, as if it is the plump glossiness that is intolerable, the richness of the butter, when it is the memory that is intolerable. The glaze on Daniel’s lips. Powdered sugar falling between my breasts.
I drop it in the nearest bin.
He looks from the bin to me. ‘I haven’t got this right, have I? I’ve thought about this for so long and I still can’t get it right.’ He lifts a smoothie from the bag, like the ones we used to make each other. ‘I’m guessing you don’t want this either?’
I shake my head. Take a hot swallow of my coffee. The liquid burns all the way down.
40
Names
Then