Desperate Housewives, I thought. I was in danger of becoming a cliché.
The next time he came, a week or so later, I was careful to make myself scarce, dropping a set of keys into his hand the minute he arrived and asking him to pop them back through the letterbox when he was through.
“Off to work, then?”
“Something like that.”
The one good thing that came from my distant divorce, as long as I avoided undue extravagance and was careful to tread within my means, there was no more need for nine to five, not regularly at least. The occasional bit of market research, filling in from time to time at the agency where I used to be employed, and that was enough.
So instead I loitered over a latte and Danish at the local coffee franchise; gave over some time to a manicure and polish change; finally took a stroll down by the river, just as far as where they’re starting to fill in one of the old gravel pits, turn it into a country park.
As I neared home I tried to ignore the soft flutterings in my stomach, the lingering hope that he would still be there. In his stead, he had left some catalogues showing various styles of kitchen cabinet, appropriate pages turned down.
I stowed them in the bottom of a drawer. Pushed Harry to the back of my mind. Even flirted momentarily, crazily, with the idea of getting back in touch with Victor. One stupid, desperate day I even got as far as the door of the club – part bar, part casino – where he used to spend much of his time.
“Victor? No, he’s still away, I think. Out of the country. But if you want to leave a name?”
I shook my head and turned away, legs unsteady as I walked back to my car. Nothing – no promise of pleasure, however strong, however intense – could make me want to go through all of that again. Better by far to stay home with a good book, something comforting on the TV, Valium and a large G & T. The fleeting fantasy of a working man’s hands.
Just a few mornings later, as I left the house, my breath caught in my throat; across the street, at the wheel of an almost brand new Merc, window wound down, cuff of his white shirt turned back just so, sat Victor. Victor Sedalis. Smiling.
I should have walked away as if he weren’t there; gone back inside and locked the door. Instead I continued to stand there like a fool.
“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” he said.
“No.”
“A couple of days ago. Wanting to welcome me back home.”
“I don’t think so.”
An eyebrow rose in that sceptical, amused expression I knew so well. “All right,” he said, “but you will.” He slid the car into gear. “Either that or I’ll come looking for you.”
I had to lean back against the door and grip my arms hard to stop myself from shaking. Right from the first, there had been something about him that had made me squirm, made me crawl; something that had made it impossible for me to say no. The loans asked for so casually and never returned; the three in the morning phone calls after the club was closed, when he would come to me with cigarette smoke in his hair, brandy on his breath and another woman’s perfume on his skin, and still I could never turn him away.
But then, without warning, he disappeared. Minorca, some said, Porta Ventura. Cyprus. Spain. Money he owed, gambling debts that had been gambled again and lost – something shady, dangerous, underhand. Of course, he had gone off before, weeks, months sometimes. But this seemed more definite, complete.
I floundered, came close to falling apart. It took an overdose and months of psychotherapy, but with help, I put myself back together, bit by bit.
It wasn’t going to happen again.
I called Harry and left a message on his machine: one or two things, I said, in need of your attention. The wardrobe, the chest of drawers.
When he arrived, I was busy in the kitchen; a wave and a few quick words and, tool bag over his shoulder, he was on his way up to the bedroom. When I followed, some little time later, my feet were quiet on the stairs.
He was standing at the open wardrobe, running his hand along the silk of a black slip dress I’d bought from Ghost, eyes closed.
I touched my fingers to his back and that was all it took.
There was a scar, embossed like a lightning flash, across his chest; another, puckered like a closing rose, high on his thigh.
“Harry?”
Sweaty, the surprise still lingering in his eyes, he touched my breast with the tip of each of his fingers, the ball of his thumb.
After he’d gone, I bathed, changed the linen on the bed, saw to my face and hair and wondered how I would spend the rest of the day till, as promised, he returned. A little light shopping, lunch, perhaps an afternoon movie, a quiet stroll.
He was there at the door at eight o’clock sharp, freshly shaved, a clean shirt. Before kissing me he hesitated, as if I might have changed my mind, filed it away under Big Mistake. And when I kissed him back I could feel something shift within him, a deliverance from some small fear or doubt.
We made love and then we talked – I talked, in the main, and he listened. Marie had been right. Though as this night gradually became a second and a third and he felt more at ease, at home, he let slip bits and pieces of his life. How his wife had told him she was leaving him in an email because she was too scared to tell him face to face. That had been when he was on his second tour of Northern Ireland, in Belfast. She was living in Guildford now, remarried; he saw the two boys quite often, though less often than he’d have liked. The eldest was away at university in Stirling, studying animal biology, the youngest was hoping to take up the law. Bright kids, he said, take after their mother. If either of them had gone into the army, she’d threatened to slit her wrists.
We started to fall into a routine: Fridays and Saturdays he would spend the evening, stay the night. If ever he came round mid-week, he would go home and sleep in his own bed so as to make an early start. The ring from his finger had disappeared to be replaced by a pale band of skin.
When finally I told him about Victor, the way he had made me feel, powerless, used, as if I had no will, no skin, there was something in his face I hadn’t seen before. Something that made his body tense and his hands tighten into fists.
“People like that,” he said, “they don’t deserve to live.”
Victor sent me texts, left messages on my phone, to none of which I replied. He didn’t like to be ignored. When finally he came round, it was not much after one in the morning, early for him. Possibly he’d been watching the house to see if Harry were there, I don’t know. I opened the door partway and held it fast.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “Lost your way?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“All right, you have. Now you can go.”
He was wearing a new suit, expensive, six or seven hundred at least; his face still tanned from his time abroad, eyes small and dark and rarely still. The same old smile slipped into place with practised ease.
“It’s been a long time,” he said.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Liar.” His tongue showed for an instant, lizard-like, between thin lips.
“Goodnight, Victor.”
I leaned against the door to push it closed and he pushed back. Whether he meant it to or not, the edge of it caught me hard in the face, just alongside the eye, and I stumbled to my knees.
“Careful,” Victor said, shutting the door behind him. “You could get hurt.”
He touched his finger to the well of blood and drew it down, slowly, across my cheek.
When he left, an hour later, all I could do was curl myself into a ball, cover my head and wish for sleep.
That was how Harry found me next morning, a surprise call on his way to work.
“This was Victor? He did this?”
Gingerly, I touched the side of my face. “It was an accident… sort of an accident. I don’t think it was meant.”