Tallulah opens her mouth to say something, but seeing Liam reappear clutching a pair of brown leather hiking boots, she closes it again. She feels tears pulsing through her sinuses. She wants to cry and she wants to be sick. They stand in silence until Liam has laced up his boots and is ready to leave. She watches him lean in to kiss Scarlett briefly on her cheek. Scarlett clears her throat and smiles tightly and says, ‘Thanks for coming. You’re a star.’
‘Bye, Tallulah,’ he says, ‘lovely to meet you.’
‘Yes,’ she says in a tight, high voice, ‘you too.’
And then he is gone and it is just her and Scarlett in the hallway. Scarlett comes towards her to touch her and Tallulah flinches.
Scarlett tuts. ‘I swear,’ she says, ‘it was nothing. It was just, you know, he’sLiam. Me and him. We’ve got a history. And wedrank far too much and it was just silly, you know, mucking about.’
Tallulah can’t think of any words. She stands with her arms folded and she glares at the floor.
‘I mean, come on, Tallulah. You aren’t really in a position to judge. You live with your fucking boyfriend. And don’t tell me you don’t have sex with him, because I know you do.’
Tallulah thinks of the snatched moments she offers up to Zach because she knows that if they can get it out of the way he won’t ask her at a moment that’s even worse. She’ll say, ‘Come on, Mum’s taking Noah to the pond, we’ve got five minutes. But be quick.’ And then he would be quick and she could buy herself another two weeks of him not pestering her, of not having to think about it. So yes, they have sex, but no, it is nothing compared to the Sunday mornings that she and Scarlett spend in Scarlett’s king-sized bed on her 800-thread-count cotton sheets. Nothing whatsoever.
‘That’s not the same,’ she says.
‘Of course it’s the same. It’s comfort. It’s habit. It’s a way to keep them on side. Because we need to keep them on side.’
‘Whoa.’
‘Whoa, what? Come on, Lules. You know it’s true. Your Zach, what is he for? What is it he gives to you which means that you won’t end your relationship with him, that you still sleep with him? There has to be something.’
‘There’s nothing,’ she says. ‘Zach doesn’t give me anything.’
‘So why do you want to stay with him?’
‘I don’t want to,’ Tallulah says. ‘I want to leave him. But we’ve been together since were children. He’s the only man I’veever …’ She stops briefly as tears come to her eyes. ‘I sleep with him because Ihaveto. For reasons you could never begin to imagine. But what about you? You didn’t have to do whatever you did last night with Liam. You’re not in a relationship with him. He knows you don’t love him, that it’s over. So why?’
Scarlett sighs and throws Tallulah an infuriatingly gentle look. ‘Just … because?’
‘Because?’
‘Look, I’m not really … I mean I can prioritise people but never entirelylimitthem.’
‘Limit them?’
‘Yes, so, like, you’re my priority. You are one hundred per cent the most important person in my life, like, ever, probably. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be other people in my life. Who aren’t as important as you. Who I don’tfeelabout the way I feel about you. But who are there, and who I am not going to get rid of.’
‘You mean, you don’t do monogamy?’
‘I guess, if you want to put it that way. But honestly. Please. Just forget about that.’ She gestures at the front door. ‘Let’s start over. Come on. There’re pecan Danishes in the kitchen. They’re from yesterday but they’re still really, really good. Please. I’ve missed you so much …’
The thought of sitting on the blue sofa in Scarlett’s huge glass kitchen and licking the icing off a pecan Danish under a furry blanket and then finding the angles of Scarlett’s body in her bedroom and sitting together with the dog afterwards discussing which bits of him they like the best feels like all she wants in the whole world. But that’s not what she came here to do. She’dcome to hand herself to Scarlett, all 100 per cent of herself. And now she knows that she will never have 100 per cent of Scarlett, that Scarlett will always have intimate gaps and spaces where other people fit in, and that is not what she wants for herself, or for Noah, or for her future. And she realises that she has never been more than an experience for Scarlett, just as Liam had been. An experiment. A thing to do to try and decide if she likes it or not, so that one day she can tell whoever she decides she wants to spend her life with that when she was young she tried out a posh farmer boy with a penchant for zip-neck jumpers, and then when she tired of that she tried out a village girl from a cul-de-sac who was training to be a social worker. And that after her there would be someone or something else.
So she looks at Scarlett with tear-filled eyes and says, ‘No. I’m going home. Forget it. Forget this. I’m worth more.’
She slams Scarlett’s door behind her and mounts her bike, cycles hard all the way home, her eyes blinded with tears, thinking of her last words to Scarlett and wondering if they were even true.
34
September 2018
Sophie meets Jacinta Croft in a small wine bar around the corner from Victoria Station at 6 p.m. She has messages from Shaun on her phone, asking where she is. She’s about to reply to them when she looks up and sees Jacinta approaching.
‘I can’t stay long,’ Jacinta says, detaching a huge leather bag from her shoulder and resting it on the table in front of her.
‘Me neither,’ says Sophie. ‘My train goes in thirty minutes.’