“It’s like foreplay, that,” Rosie had said once, about a guy she dated for a while. Someone she fancied but often said she “didn’t actually like,” which of course baffled Fox to the brink.
“You went to Pizza Express,” Fox had said. “How is Pizza Express foreplay?”
“When you fancy someone, Fox, I mean really fancy,” Rosie had explained, “then anything is foreplay. The way they lick their lips, drink their drink, the way they smile at you over their glass or the way your fingers brush theirs when you’re passing them something, God, it’s enough to kill you. The anticipation of it all.”
And I get it. Now, I get it. That’s how last night was between us—electricity every time his hand brushed my back, or took my hand, and every smile between us, secret. But I can hardly believe a smile like that on his face even exists, this morning. This Eliot in front of me on the other side of my door is pale. His eyes are narrow, his shoulders tense.
“Eliot,” I say. “It—what time is it?” I laugh, looking down at my makeup-stained pajamas. “God, what must I look like? Am I full-blown Ozzy Osbourne?”
He doesn’t move, and I feel my heart race with anxiety. “What? What is it, what’s happened?”
He presses his lips together and looks at me. “Emmie, can I come in?”
“Of course,” I say. “Of course, are you all right?”
He steps over into the dark, carpeted hallway of my room, but doesn’t go any further. I close the door softly behind him.
He looks up at me. “Did you go to the house, in Honfleur?”
“House? Which house?”
“The one my brother’s firm worked on.” I go to answer, then stop when he says, “For Ana.”
“Yes,” I say. “But I didn’t know it was hers. Not right away. Luke took me to see it. Wanted to show me his latest project and—” His face is completely unreadable. “I’m sorry, I had no idea it was hers. I wouldn’t just go snooping round other people’s properties.” I laugh nervously. Eliot doesn’t.
“So you did go there.”
“Yes, I just said we went there, a couple of weeks back, you know, the day of Rosie’s thing.” I’m starting to panic and I don’t know why. Eliot’s face. The muscle pulsing in his neck, his tight jaw. He’s angry. I know he is, and my bowels churn. “Lucas took me there, to show me the house, that’s all. And—”
“Did something happen?”
“What?” My heart thumps now, in my chest, in my throat, and I can’t breathe. Heat creeps up my body, to my neck, to my face.
“Did something happen?” Eliot asks again. “Between you both?”
I look at him, mouth open, no words obeying and coming forward, and he watches me. “Eliot, could you just… come inside, sit down, y-you’re just standing by the door—”
“It’s a simple question, Emmie. Is Ana telling me the truth when she says she saw you and Lucas kissing on the balcony.”
I stare at him, breath trapped in my throat, my heart hammering like a trapped butterfly in my chest. “Eliot…”
He looks at me intently now, eyes pleading for me to say no. And for me to tell the truth. After all these years, we don’t need another lie between us.
“A kiss,” I say in a tiny voice. “We argued. About you and that night and… we were both upset and he—he kissed me and I for one second forgot what I was doing, and where I was… but it was not what we wanted—at all. Eliot, please…”
He closes his eyes, his face tipped to the ceiling. His chest rises and falls. He doesn’t move.
“Eliot? Honestly, it was nothing.”
Eliot’s hand is on the door handle now, and he’s biting his lip, shaking his head.
“So, let me get this straight. You missed Rosie’s talk, her conference, you missed our day out together, so you could what, go to my ex-girlfriend’s house and… what? Be together where nobody would find you?”
“No,” I say desperately. “No, don’t be silly. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. We were mortified, disgusted, because it was such a stupid thing to do and… I went straight home and…”
“Ana was there. She pulled up, with her parents, and there you were, on the balcony. She said you were both all over each other. They could see you, from the bedroom.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, that is not the truth. It was a second and if she was telling the truth, she would tell you how much we were arguing, how angry, how upset I was…”
“But you were there. With him. And you did kiss.”
I say nothing, because I was. And I don’t know what to say. I am telling the truth. And perhaps I should have told him sooner, but what would it have done? It wasn’t even a real kiss. It was nothing. Nothing.
“I was going to turn down Canada for you. The work, for Mark. To help my friend.”
I stare at him, and he pulls open the door. “Eliot, please, don’t walk out.”
“I need some time,” he says. “This whole thing. You, Luke, this wedding, me, you… I need some time. You do too.”
And like that, Eliot walks away.
“Steve Fellows,” says the man on the doorstep, stretching out a chubby, clammy hand. “We spoke on the phone. About Miss Louise Dutch.”
Steve Fellows sits opposite me on the two-seater, and I sit in Louise’s armchair, running my fingers over the armrest cover, embroidered with flowers she did herself before her eyesight got worse. The solicitor fiddles with a thick envelope and I bend my head, to put my nose to the arm. I can smell her still. Patchouli. Everything patchouli; on her pillows, in her bath, and on her skin, and I never figured out if it was pure, or a perfume she probably handmade herself. She burned incense in the conservatory of the same smell too. God, I miss her more than ever right now. I miss her cool hand on mine, her telling me off, rolling her eyes at me for thinking too much, for being too “wet.” She’d know what to tell me. She’d know what to say to make things seem less hopeless.
“You are Ms. Emmeline Blue.”
I nod. “I am.”
“You have been Miss Dutch’s lodger for the last two and a half years.”
“Correct.”
“Miss Dutch and I met several weeks ago, when she understood her time was very limited.”
“She did?” I ask. “I mean. She knew?”
He swallows, adjusts the collar at his thick neck, red with what looks like a shaving rash. “She has always known, I am afraid.” He pauses. “We sent flowers. My partner and me.”
Three bouquets turned up at the house that morning of the funeral. One from the butchers in town. Another from the staff at a garden nursery. And another: purple gladioli with white daisies.
“Steve and Jude?” I say, and he nods, smiling. “They were beautiful. Thank you. Eliot—my friend. He took them to the woodland, to where she was laid to rest.” Saying his name makes my stomach ache with longing. I miss him so much, I could cry. Hot, heavy tears. Tears I have been crying every single day, hoping that’ll be the end of them, but it never seems to be. They are bottomless. It’s been four weeks since the wedding and nothing much of anything has happened. And I mean that. I have become stagnant and sad. Lost. Lucas and Marie had jetted off on their two-week honeymoon three weeks after the wedding; and from Eliot, I have heard nothing from him. But then, he’s about three thousand miles away. In Canada. I hadn’t realized, although I had an inkling, but then Lucas called me from his honeymoon suite in Guadeloupe.