He’s taken off my clothes and put a glass of water on the bedside table and tucked me up. He’s told me he’ll take care of Betina when she wakes up, and I need to rest. I’m in shock, he’s said. That’s why I broke down like that. That’s why I am saying things that aren’t true. You’re in shock, he repeats, so you are misremembering things and amplifying untruths. He says I am breaking myself up because the shock of seeing Serena and the shock of knowing Logan might die is too much for me.
He sits in the hollow the crescent my body makes now that I am curled up, and he strokes my cheek, telling me to go to sleep. Telling me that things will be better after a sleep.
Nothing’s going to change if I go to sleep now, I want to reply. Nothing’s going to be different. I’m still going to wake up and feel like I do.
‘Please can you get in with me?’ I ask him.
He hasn’t been in this bed in months. Well over six months. Once upon a time, if he came over to see Betina and we stayed up late talking afterwards, he’d just fall asleep in it with me. No big deal. But recently, he has been sleeping on the sofa. Neither of us suggested it, it just felt like the right thing to do.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ he asks.
‘You really know how to make a girl feel wanted,’ I say weakly, a reminder of what I said to him ten years ago just before he confessed to me about how we really met, how he engineered those meetings and had planned on using me.
Without another word, he strips off his T-shirt, he unbuttons his jeans and takes them off, he pulls down his tight, white underpants, and pushes off his socks. I shift along the bed to let him in, noting that he’s hard before his body has touched the mattress. He still wants me. Still desires me, which is good to know right now.
Within seconds of the duvet covering us both up, we’re kissing. We’ve kissed these last six months. We’ve kissed quite a few times, probably once or twice a week, but not like this. Not without clothes, not with our hands running over each other’s body, not with our bare skin pressed close, not with our breath panting out desire.
Alain breaks away for a moment. ‘Do you have a rubber johnny?’ he asks. Since I asked him that ten years ago, he always calls them that because not enough people use that name for them any more, apparently.
I shake my head against the pillow as I gaze up at him. He’s amazing looking. Really. In a decade he’s aged into his looks. More happy wrinkles around his eyes, a few strands of grey in his black hair, his lips as full and kissable as they ever were. I still sometimes wonder why he chose me, why he’s stuck with me. Even when we haven’t been together, haven’t kissed, he’s been clear about caring for me, loving me. Betina aside, he still adores me.
‘Are you back on the Pill?’
I shake my head again.
‘You could get pregnant,’ he states, like I don’t know that.
‘I don’t care,’ I confess. ‘I just want to be with you.’ I just want to forget about everything by being with you.
Alain looks at me like I am a puzzle, a quandary to solve. He gazes at me as though he knows what I’m doing, and he’s not sure if he should go along with it. He stares at me as though he wants to do this but he’s not sure how either of us will cope with the potential consequences.
‘I’ll pull out,’ he finally says. ‘I’ll pull out.’
I arch my body towards him, telling him what I want, begging him to become a part of me. Please, my body whispers to his. Please. Now. Please.
That’s it, I say in my head as he enters me. Yes, that’s it. That’s what I need. That’s what will make all the confusion, all the thoughts, all the Marcus disappear.
I pull Alain closer, bring him deeper, move him harder. I want him to fill me, to complete me. When he’s with me like this, there’s no room for anything else. No space for betrayal, or regrets or inadequacy. There is nothing but the pureness of a man moving inside me, looking down at me with love, and my body being slowly but decisively brought to the very edge of desire, of pleasure, of ecstasy and then being tipped over in the blissful abyss of orgasm . . .
Alain is kissing my cheeks, my neck, my forehead. He’s running his fingers through my hair. He’s acting like he won’t get the chance to do this again so is indulging himself in me as much as he possibly can.
Sex had been good. Special. He’d been about to pull out, like he promised, but I’d asked him not to. I’d wanted him to stay with me, be with me all the way. And I felt better. Much better than I had when I was sitting at the kitchen table.
Through the fuzz, the calm and hush of afterwards, I’ve got to tell my parents, flitters across my mind. I’ve got to go and tell my parents about Logan and about Serena and about everything.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Alain says.
‘Pardon?’ Has he read my mind?
‘You were all calm and blissed-out and then suddenly your face has changed and you’re clearly worrying about going to tell your parents about Logan, so I’ll come with you.’
‘Who’s going to look after Betina?’ I ask.
‘I’m sure Carolyn won’t mind if we drop her off at Prince’s Crescent for a few hours.’
‘OK, I’ll text her.’ I go to reach for my phone and Alain gently pushes me back against the bed.
‘Not right now. Right now, I need you to please get some sleep. The next few days are going to be hectic. You need to rest.’
He’s right. After today, I’m going to stay at the hospital as much as I can so I can be there when Logan wakes up. So for now, I’d better get some rest.
Alain is taken aback when I don’t argue, but instead cuddle up to him and close my eyes. Logan’s going to need me to be strong for him so I need to sleep.
It starts just as I’m drifting off, as my last hold on wakefulness slips away. Do you think I like doing these things, Poppy? Marcus says in my head. Do you think I like having to teach you these lessons? I can’t fight it. I can’t get rid of it. All I can do is allow myself to fall asleep with the sound of Marcus’s voice swirling through my mind.
serena
Now
The shed, my shed, is a mishmash of things I can’t do in the house.
It started when I wanted to revamp our bedroom but didn’t want to buy more ‘stuff’. Evan, who had known me since I was eighteen, who had been married to me for twenty-five years, did his usual thing of listening to me talk about it for a while with interest and then tuned out. I’d never been very creative, artistic or good with my hands in that way. But I’d seen enough TV makeover shows to think I could try my hand at painting the drawers in our bedroom an interesting, vibrant colour.
After a fashion (tears, recriminations, arguments, frustrations and upsets – all from me to me) I managed to create something that was ‘different’ to what had been there before. ‘It’s really good,’ Evan said in the neutral tone of a man who knew his future sex life could be in the balance. It wasn’t too bad. The paint wasn’t blobby and uneven in that many places; the dust from where I’d sanded it down hadn’t stuck in rash-like little clumps too often; the new handles weren’t too small for the size of the drawer. Buoyed by this success, I decided to turn my hand to ‘upcycling’ more things around the house.