doesn’t. It sounds like exactly what I’ve dreamt of hearing all my life. Someone who needs me, who’s desperate for me, so desperate that he can’t even bear me to be out of his sight.
‘I can’t,’ I say again, but the conviction has gone from my voice.
He leaps up and pulls on a robe; grabbing the phone from the bedside table, he strides back and brandishes it in front of me. ‘Of course you can,’ he says. ‘You can call them right now and tell them you’re not coming.’ Suddenly, he smiles wickedly, and the warmth of it soaks right through my skin to my bones. As I take the phone I’m laughing and shaking my head, because it’s all so ridiculous, because the truth of it is that I barely know him, because it would be crazy to throw the future I’ve planned for months away with one phone call, and because I know that this is it, suddenly there’s no other option – he’s the one and I’m going to do it.
The woman at the admissions office on the other end of the line is silent for a long while, and then asks to speak to my parents. My mouth opens and words fall out: I tell her she can’t, because they are both dead. I have not crafted my thoughts or moulded them into speech – they have just happened to me, used me as a vessel. As the woman flounders and gropes for a response, I press the button and cut her off. I’m laughing like a madwoman as I jump into Jonathan’s arms. He hugs me back, but I can feel the tension in his shoulders. Sure enough, after a few seconds he grips me by my arms and pushes me back slightly, frowning at me.
‘Was that true?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I say, even though an inner voice is telling me to stick to my story. To do otherwise looks crazy, unreliable, but I can’t help myself. Anyone else I can lie to, I think, but not you, not you.
He tips his head back sharply for an instant, as if to throw his thoughts together into a heap. ‘Why did you say it, then?’ he asks. I can’t know, at this point, that denying his parents’ existence would seem to him the worst kind of sacrilege.
I shrug, looking at him steadily, straight on. This is who I am, and if he can’t accept it then he is not who I think he is. ‘I had to say something,’ I say. ‘I’m doing this for you.’
For a split second, uncertainty pulses across his face and I feel something curl coldly between us; a sudden distance, a moment of clarity. We’re facing each other, both our bodies tensed. His face spells out his thoughts as plainly as if he has shouted them into the silent room. He’s wondering what the hell he is doing, if he is right to have pushed me to make that call, if it’s too late to backtrack. He’s wondering whether I am worth his time. Just as he begins to speak, his mobile rings, shrilling and flashing insistently from the bedroom cabinet. His head snaps instantly towards it, and he strides across the room to pick it up. Facing away from me, he murmurs a hello. I watch his back straighten; he moves towards the balcony, pushing the glass doors open and pulling them to again behind him. I’m left alone in the bedroom. I stare down at my hands; they are clenched and shaking, blurring in front of me. I feel as if I have narrowly avoided a disaster. In the past two days I have discovered something so strong and so powerful that it comes as a shock to find that it could also be so fragile. I can’t let him take this away from me, from us. I will have to fight for him.
Dimly, I become aware of his voice outside on the balcony, seeping in through the tiny gap where the door has not quite closed. He’s saying that there is nothing to worry about, that he has everything under control and that he will be back in the office on Monday. He sounds deferential, stumbling over his words in a way I have never heard before. After a minute’s taut silence, he says, ‘Yes – yes, she is.’ Another silence, and then a short, relieved laugh.
‘OK,’ he says, and as he does so he pushes the door open again and steps back inside the room. ‘I will. Lunchtime tomorrow at the club? Got it. I’ll see you then.’ He disconnects the call and tosses the phone on to the bed, breathing deeply. He glances at me and I am surprised and relieved to see a flirtatious spark in his eyes. ‘That was my father,’ he says. ‘Wondering why I’ve been playing hooky from the office. He’s a clever old devil, I’ll give him that – he worked out that you must be with me, and he’s intrigued. He wants to meet you—us—for lunch tomorrow with him and my mother. Fancy it?’
I blink, unsure of what has just happened. The thought of lunch with Jonathan’s parents both exhilarates and terrifies me. I stare at him, running the tip of my tongue nervously along my bottom lip. ‘Yes,’ I say, because there seems to be nothing else to say, nothing else that will keep us on this course.
He comes to sit beside me on the bed and puts his arm around me, and with that one gesture my doubts dissolve and I want to weep with relief. ‘I’m sorry this is all so fast,’ he whispers into my neck. ‘But I don’t want to lose you. I know that already.’ He kisses my collarbone, a soft, long kiss that makes me close my eyes. ‘You’d better go home later,’ he says. ‘Explain things to those parents of yours. Maybe leave out the part about them being dead.’ A low snort of amusement against my neck lets me know that he’s teasing me, repainting what initially seemed bizarre and disturbing in a kinder, more indulgent light.
‘We’re not close,’ I say. I’m trying to justify myself to him, but he doesn’t seem interested in hearing me. He’s running his hands slowly over me from top to toe, as if he has just noticed that I am naked. He mutters something that I can’t catch, and soon enough I don’t want to talk any more. He attacks my body with a passion that half frightens me, so roughly at times that I can feel the pain stabbing at me through the haze of pleasure, and more than once I almost scream at him to stop, but he seems to read my thoughts and softens his touch at the crucial moment every time. Soon enough I will reflect that things are much the same out of bed as they are in it. Some people have a knack for bringing you to the brink again and again, pushing you right to the limit of your endurance until you think you cannot take any more, but never quite tipping you over the edge and out of love.
Laura was in the garden when I returned from the shop, tying lengths of pale green and lilac crêpe paper in bows around the back of each chair in turn. I stood and watched her from the kitchen window. When she had tied each bow, she stepped back, shaded her eyes against the sun and tipped her head a little to one side, as if expecting the chair to speak to her. Several times she came forward again and readjusted the crêpe paper, fluffing it primly and precisely into place until she was satisfied. There must have been fifty or sixty chairs in total, huddled in groups around spindly metal tables dotted across the sweep of lawn. A pile of bunting was stacked up by one of the tables – multicoloured flags strung together on a pale yellow cord, stirring slightly with the summer wind. As I leaned out of the window, peering closer, I could see tiny sparkling dots nestling in the grass, winking and glimmering like jewels. Rose petals perhaps, or some kind of confetti. As I stared at them, Laura looked up and saw me, gave me a little wave. I came out into the garden to join her.
‘How was the shop?’ she asked when I was close enough to pick up the soft, low register of her voice.
Briefly, I considered telling her the truth. I told Catherine about Jonathan today. She treated me differently all afternoon, and before I left she asked me whether I wanted to talk any more about it. I said no, but now I’m not so sure. I think I might, and soon. ‘This all looks great,’ I said instead, gesticulating to take in the whole lawn. ‘Better hope it doesn’t rain overnight.’
‘Oh, it won’t rain.’ A hint of Laura’s old imperiousness surfaced. ‘I wanted to get everything ready today, so that I could concentrate on the food tomorrow. We’ve got almost sixty coming, you know.’
There was pride in her words. I stared out across
