“Jesus, Angus, you scared me!”
“Sorry, babe.”
“I thought you were on the way to Scotland?”
Angus hauls himself up, and stands opposite me. He is so tall—six foot three—he has to stoop slightly, or crack his dark handsome head on the rafters.
“Forgot my passport. You have to take them these days—even for domestic flights.” Angus is glancing beyond me, at the ripped-open carton of toys. Motes of dust hang in the air, between our two faces, caught by my torchlight. I want to shine the torch right into his eyes. Is he frowning? Smiling? Looming angrily? I cannot see. He is too tall, there is not enough light. But the mood is awkward. And strained.
He speaks. “What are you doing, Sarah?”
I turn my torch-beam, so it shines directly on the cardboard box. Crudely knifed open.
“What it looks like?”
“OK.”
His silhouette, with the downstairs light behind him, has an uncomfortable shape, as if he is tensed, or angry. Menacing. Why? I talk in a hurry.
“I’m sorting all this stuff. Gus, you know we have to do something, don’t we? About—about—” I swallow away the grief, and gaze into the shadows of his face. “We have to sort Lydia’s toys and clothes. I know you don’t want to, but we have to decide. Do they come with us, or do we do something else?”
“Get rid?”
“Yes… Maybe.”
“OK. OK. Ah. I don’t know.”
Silence. And the ceaseless rain.
We are stuck here. Stuck in this place, this groove, this attic. I want us to move on, but I need to know the truth about the box.
“Angus?”
“Look, I’ve got to go.” He is backing away, and heading for the ladder. “Let’s talk about it later, I can Skype you from Ornsay.”
“Angus!”
“Booked on the next flight, but I’ll miss that one too, if I’m not careful. Probably have to overnight in Inverness now.” His voice is disappearing as he clambers down the ladder. He is leaving—and his exit has a furtive, guilty quality.
“Wait!”
I almost trip over, in my haste to follow him. Slipping down the ladder. He is heading for the stairs.
“Angus, wait.”
He turns, checking his wristwatch as he does.
“Yeah?”
“Did you—” I don’t want to ask this; I have to ask this. “Gus. Did you open the box of Lydia’s toys?”
He pauses. Fatally.
“Sure,” he replies.
“Why, Angus? Why on earth did you do that?”
“Because Kirstie was bored with her toys.”
His face has an expression that is designed to appear relaxed. And I get the horrible sensation that he is lying. My husband is lying to me.
I’m lost; yet I have to say something.
“So, Angus, you went into the loft and got one out? One of Lydia’s toys? Just like that?”
He stares at me, unblinking. From three yards down the landing, with its bare pictureless walls and the big dustless squares, where we have already shifted furniture. My second-favorite bookcase, Angus’s precious chest of drawers, a legacy from his grandmother.
“Yes. So? Hm?? What’s the problem, Sarah? Did I cross into enemy territory?” His reassuring face is gone. He is definitely frowning. It is that dark, foreboding frown, which presages anger. I think of the way he hit his boss. I think of his father, who beat his mother—more than once. No. This is my husband. He would never lay a finger on me. But he is very obviously angry as he goes on: “Kirstie was bored and unhappy. Saying she missed Lydia. You were out, Sarah. Coffee with Imogen. Right? So I thought, why not get her some of Lydia’s toys. Mm? That will console her. And deal with her boredom. So that’s what I did. OK? Is that OK?”
His sarcasm is heavy. And bitter.
“But—”
“What would you have done? Said no? Told her to shut up and play with her own toys? Told her to forget that her sister existed?”
He turns and crosses the landing—and begins to descend the stairs. And now I’m the one that feels guilty. His explanation makes sense. Yes, that’s what I would do, in the same situation. I think.
“Angus—”
“Yes?” He pauses, five steps away.
“I’m sorry. Sorry for interrogating you. It was a bit of a shock, that’s all.”
“Tsch.” He looks upwards, and his smile returns. Or at least a trace of it. “Don’t worry about it, darling. I’ll see you in Ornsay, OK? You take the low road and I’ll take the high road.”
“And you’ll be in Scotland before me?”
“Aye!”
He is laughing now, in a mirthless way, and then he is saying goodbye, and then he is turning to leave: to get his passport and his bags, to go and fly up to Scotland.
I hear him in the kitchen. His white smile lingers in my mind.
The door slams, downstairs. Angus is gone. And quite suddenly: I miss him, physically.
I want him. Still. More. Maybe more than ever, as it has been too long.
I want to tempt him back inside, and unbutton his shirt, and I want us to have sex as if we haven’t had sex in many months. Even more, I want him to want to do that to me. I want him to march back into the house and I want him to strip away my clothes: just like we did, in the beginning, in our first years, when he would come home from work and—without a word passing between—we would start undressing in the hall and we would make love in the first place we found: on the kitchen table, on the bathroom floor, in the rainy garden, in a delirium of beautiful appetite.
Then we’d lie back and laugh at the sheen of happy sweat that we shared, at the blatant trail of clothes we’d left behind, like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale, leading from the front door to our lovemaking, and so we’d follow our clothes back, picking up knickers, then jeans, then my shirt, his shirt, then a jacket, my jumper. And then we’d eat cold pizza. Smiling. Guiltless. Jubilant.
We were happy, then. Happier than any other couple I’ve known. Sometimes I actively envy us, as we were. Like I am the jealous neighbor of my previous self. Those bloody Moorcrofts, with their perfect life, completed by the adorable twins, then the beautiful dog.
And yet, and yet—even as the jealousy surges, I know that this completion was something of an illusion. Because our life wasn’t always perfect. Not always. In those long dark months, immediately following the birth, we almost broke up.
Who was to blame? Maybe me; maybe Angus; maybe sex itself. Of course I was expecting our love-life to suffer, when the twins arrived—but I didn’t expect it to die entirely. Yet it did. After the birth Angus became a kind of sexual exile. He did not want to touch me, and when he did, it was as if my body was a new, difficult, less pleasant proposition, something to be handled with scientific care. Once, I caught sight of him in a mirror, looking at me: he was assessing my changed and maternal nakedness. My stretch marks, and my leaking nipples. A grimace flashed across his face.
For too long—almost a year—we went entirely without lovemaking. When the twins began sleeping through the night, and when I felt nearer to myself again, I tried to instigate it; yet he refused with weak excuses: too tired, too drunk, too much work. He was never home.
And so I found sex elsewhere, for a few brief evenings, stolen from my loneliness. Angus was immersed in a new project at Kimberley and Co, blatantly ignoring me, always working late. I was desperately isolated, still lost down the black hole of early motherhood, bored of microwaving milk bottles. Bored of dealing with two screaming tots, on my own. An old boyfriend called up, to congratulate the new mother. Eagerly I seized on this minor excitement, this thrill of the old. Oh, why not come round for a drink, come and see the twins? Come and see me?