and brandished a bottle aloft as she recrossed the room. She sloshed whiskey into the pair of mugs. Then she sat down at the kitchen table opposite Hilary.
The first sip made Hilary’s voice deeper, huskier. ‘Oh God, the lustre was off Mark completely. I so did not want to see him – like a kind of sudden revulsion. It blows my mind how fast everything came clear. I just wanted the plane to turn around and fly the other way. I got this terrible headache, and I kept thinking that if I ordered more champagne, I’d get rid of the headache and I could lie back and daydream about Paul. There were bubbles inside me, you know, this sensation of something fizzing, exhilarating – how I felt about Paul and that now he knew it. But I couldn’t let the bubbles rise.
‘It was weird when we landed. The wheels hit with that hard bounce, and it was like – the knock of reality. There was that smell you get of burning, the reek of the brakes in your nose, really hurting. Utter destruction. All those years with Mark, some kind of lie I’d told to both of us. I was stale and sweaty and gross, but I was glad about it, because it proved how hard I’d been working – an alibi. I was the sexless professional again, the same work jock I’d been when I left town. And I was thinking how free it felt, and how I should just do what I wanted to do, and how being alone was fine. Strong. Kind of thrilling, in fact.’
Gwen basked in it, Hilary alone.
‘I was completely businesslike with Mark. Starting with, From three thousand miles away, I realised I didn’t really want to be married … But I couldn’t quite look him in the eye. Somehow you think the person’s going to hit you or something. I mean, you feel you need to be ready to run. What is that? Some primitive thing. Your gut tells you that, basically, breaking up is a fight.’
‘But you did say he was angry?’
‘Not at first. I mean – well, I don’t remember his face. Or – I didn’t look at it. At first he just didn’t believe me. And then when he started to take it in, he thought it was just a re-entry thing. That I’d gone skittish or gotten self-conscious. He was saying things like, Do you want to maybe take a shower.’
‘You mean because you didn’t really kiss him when you first came in?’
Hilary went red. ‘Oh, but Christ, I couldn’t kiss him, Gwen!’ Then she laughed. ‘My clothes stank, though. God, you think that’s what he meant? And I was thinking how I must seem like – such a bitch. Cold – and – but it’s true. I was.’
‘And the champagne?’
‘That was so terrible. A bottle of Dom Pérignon. The whole fiancé thing. And you know that he’s not really like that, Gwen. He’s much more beer and Chinese noodles. There were roses, too, in this tippy glass vase on the coffee table. Those dark red kind, like rolled-up bundles of velvet, on long, long stems. They looked completely ghastly. They were studded with thorns. And they had no scent; those waxy petals, nothing at all on your nose when you try to smell them. I guess he even bought the vase. Things he’d never done, never thought of. The apartment was bare, as if he’d stuffed all the mess into closets or had cleaners come in. All so contrived. Then he opened the champagne while I was in the bathroom.’
Gwen grimaced. ‘So you had to drink it.’
‘Of course I had to. And it made me think how easy it could have been to slip back into my old life, if I had been polite at first, or pretended a little. If I had let it start to happen between us as if nothing had changed, then – I don’t know.’
‘Nah, come on. You’d just have gotten here tomorrow instead of today.’ Gwen wrapped her fingers around Hilary’s wrist, lifted it gently, dropped it on the scarred top of the oak table, lifted it and dropped it again, feeling the weight of Hilary’s arm where it swelled towards the elbow, studying the flicker of the tendons where they disappeared inside Hilary’s pushed-up sleeve. Then she let go, looked up at Hilary again. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘I was scared there was going to be a ring. I kept looking for one of those little boxes, a bulge in a pocket. And I saw myself trapped there with only him for company, starved of something else I wanted. I couldn’t breathe. I knew I couldn’t spend one night there, couldn’t sleep with him even to comfort him. And he was saying that I couldn’t expect him to swear off me all of a sudden like that, after he’d been waiting all summer and looking forward to seeing me. In a way, that was the worst. Basically, he was begging for sex. I think he even had his hands like this.’ She put her palms together as if she were praying. ‘He never asked anything about my summer, about what had happened, or what I felt. So how could sex fit? Where could it come from, in a situation like that?’
Gwen tapped the whiskey bottle, raising her eyebrows at Hilary, but Hilary shook her head.
‘We drank too much, Mark and I, last night. That was part of the problem – the crying and the screaming.’
‘But, hey, you got through a lot of misery in one awful night.’
‘I feel bad for him, Gwen. It was like I’d inflicted this terrible injury. That’s how I keep picturing it – an open wound, bleeding and twitching.’
‘Worse for Mark if you hadn’t found out in time, hon.’ Gwen was casual, like someone who’d seen it all before, lots of times. Then she stooped close across the table and spoke caressingly. ‘It’s bitter to betray someone – anyone – a lover, a friend. But don’t you think when it comes to love and marriage – the lifelong deal, I mean – for that, don’t you have to pay any price? You can’t fake that. And if you want to have children? You did the right thing.’
Hilary was white-faced, dipping her finger in the dregs of her whiskey.
Gwen insisted. ‘You have to leave this with ragged edges, Hil. If he blames you or thinks you’re a shit, then that’s what he needs to do to survive. You have to let him deal with this – without you. Because if you’re dumping Mark, you’re dumping him. The thing is broken. That’s life. It’s painful.’
‘Yeah. Painful.’ Hilary’s voice creaked. Guilt pooled in her eyes. And then she seemed to shoulder it, like a burden. ‘Listen. I know there were big things wrong with me and Mark. We were always part of some gang. Endless room-mates. Then with Eddie, a gang of three. We only ever existed as part of a clique. Never a couple. It was more like being under a spell. I was still in graduate school when the whole thing with Eddie started, and because of him, I never even finished my degree. Mark and I had been around each other for so long that it just seemed like time for something else to happen. The truth is, Paul saved me.’
She paused for a long time, leaned back in her chair. And then at last, she let it out: ‘But man, I could never have pictured Mark’s anger. His eyes turned red – flaming. In all our years together, I had never seen – this – creature in him who didn’t get what he expected. Who couldn’t make me do what he wanted. That was totally scary.’
‘Stay away from him for a while, don’t you think? Till he calms down?’
Hilary sat up. ‘God, I’m stealing you from your bed, and Will’ll be up early needing you.’
Gwen was easy with it. ‘It’s fine. Let’s do the tea, huh?’
Hilary didn’t fight her. ‘Camomile or peppermint or something?’
Gwen switched the kettle back on, took clean mugs from the cupboard, talked with her back to Hilary, flipping labels loose from tea bags, extending their little strings. ‘So what about all your stuff? How are you going to get
