This morning I hurt. In the bathroom mirror, I saw that there was a livid scratch running down my neck and my lips were puffy. Adam came in and stood behind me. Our eyes met in the mirror. He licked a finger, then ran it down the scratch. I pulled on my clothes and turned towards him.
‘Who was before me, Adam? No, don’t just shrug. I’m serious.’
He paused for a moment, as if weighing up possibilities.
‘Let’s make a deal,’ he said. It sounded horribly formal but, then, I suppose it had to be. Usually details of one’s past love life leak out in late-night confessions, post-coital exchanges, little snippets of information offered as signs of intimacy or trust. We had done none of that. Adam held out my jacket for me. ‘We’ll have a late breakfast down the road, then I’ve got to go and pick up some stuff. And then,’ he opened the door, ‘we’ll meet up back here and you can tell me who you’ve had, and I will tell you.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Everyone.’
‘… and before him, there was Rob. Rob was a graphic designer, he thought he was an artist. He was quite a lot older than me, and he had a daughter of ten by his first wife. He was rather a quiet man, but…’
‘What did you do?’
‘What?’
‘What did you do together?’
‘You know, films, pubs, walks –’
‘You know what I mean.’
I knew what he meant, of course I did. ‘God, Adam. Different things, you know. It was years ago. I can’t remember specifics.’ A lie, of course.
‘Were you in love with him?’
I thought wistfully of Rob’s nice face, some good times. I’d adored him, for a time at least. ‘No.’
‘Go on.’
This was unsettling. Adam was seated opposite me, the table between us. His hands were steepled together; his eyes were boring into me. Talking about sex was difficult enough for me anyway, let alone under this interrogation.
‘There was Laurence, but that didn’t last long,’ I mumbled. Laurence had been funny, hopeless.
‘Yes?’
‘And Joe, who I used to work with.’
‘You were in the same office as him?’
‘Sort of. And no, Adam, we didn’t do it behind the photocopier.’
I ploughed grimly on. I’d been expecting this to be an erotic mutual confession, ending in bed. It was turning out to be a cold, dry tale of the men who had been both irrelevant and important to me in a way I didn’t want to explain to Adam, here at this table. ‘Then before that, it was school and university, and, well, you know…’ I tailed off. The thought of going through the rather short list of boyfriends and drunken one-night stands defeated me. I took a deep breath. ‘Well, if this is what you want. Michael. Then Gareth. And then Simon, who I went out with for a year and a half, and a man called Christopher, once.’ He looked at me. ‘And a man whose name I never knew, at a party I didn’t want to go to. There.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So who did you have sex with first? How old were you?’
‘I was old compared to my friends. Michael, when I was seventeen.’
‘What was it like?’
Somehow the question seemed unembarrassing. Perhaps because it seemed so long ago, and the girl I had been was such a stranger to the woman I was now. It had been captivating. Strange. Fascinating.
‘Awful,’ I said. ‘Painful. Pleasureless.’
He leaned across the table but still didn’t touch me.
‘Have you always liked sex?’
‘Uh, not always.’
‘Have you ever pretended?’
‘Every woman has.’
‘With me?’
‘Never. God, no.’
‘Can we fuck now?’ He was still sitting quite apart from me, straight-backed on the uncomfortable kitchen chair.
I managed a laugh. ‘No way, Adam. It’s your turn.’
He sighed and sat back and held up his fingers, counting off affairs as if he were an accountant. ‘Before you, there was Lily, who I met last summer. Before her there was Françoise for a couple of years. Before her there was… er…’
‘Is it difficult to remember?’ I asked sarcastically, but with a tremor in my voice. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.
‘It’s not hard,’ he said. ‘Lisa. And before Lisa there was a girl called Penny.’ There was a pause. ‘Good climber.’
‘How long did Penny last?’ I had expected a catalogue of conquests, not this efficient list of serious relationships. I felt an acid rush of panic in my stomach.
‘Eighteen months, something like that.’
‘Oh.’ We sat in silence. ‘Were you faithful?’ I forced myself to ask. I really wanted to ask if they were all beautiful, all more beautiful than me.
He looked at me across the table. ‘It wasn’t like that. They weren’t that sort of exclusive thing.’
‘How many times were you unfaithful?’
‘I used to see other people.’
‘How many?’
He frowned.
‘Come on, Adam. Once, twice, twenty times, forty or fifty times?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Something like forty or fifty?’
‘Alice, come here.’
‘No! No – this is – I feel awful. I mean, why am I different?’ A thought struck me. ‘You haven’t…’
‘No!’ His voice was sharp. ‘Christ, Alice, can’t you see? Can’t you feel? There’s no one except you now.’
‘How do I know?’ I heard my voice wail. ‘I feel I arrived a bit late at the party.’ All those women crowding his life. I didn’t stand a chance.
He stood up and walked round the table. He pulled me to my feet and cupped my face in his hands. ‘You know, Alice, don’t you?’
I shook my head.
‘Alice, look at me.’ He forced my head up and looked deep, deep into me. ‘Alice, will you trust me? Will you do something for me?’
‘It depends,’ I said, sulkily, like a cross child.
‘Wait,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
It wasn’t a minute, but it was only a few minutes. I had hardly finished a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. He’s got a key, I said to myself, and didn’t respond, but he didn’t come in and rang again. So I sighed and went down. I opened the door and Adam wasn’t there. A toot made me jump. I looked round and saw that he was sitting in a car, something old and nondescript. I walked over and bent my face down to the driver’s window.
‘What do you think?’
‘Is it ours?’ I asked.
‘For the afternoon. Get in.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Trust me.’
‘It had better be good. Shouldn’t I lock the house?’
‘I’ll do that. I’ve got to get something.’
I seriously thought of not obeying but then walked round to the passenger side and got in. Meanwhile Adam ran in through the front door and returned a minute later.
‘What were you getting?’
‘My wallet,’ he said. ‘And this.’ He tossed the Polaroid camera on to the back seat.
Oh, God, I thought, but didn’t say anything.
I stayed awake long enough to see that we were leaving London on the MI but then, as I always do when being driven anywhere, I fell asleep. When I was jolted awake for a moment, I saw that we were off the motorway in scrubby, wild countryside.