up to her.
Annie’s eyes were languorously heavy when she opened them again. She saw the gold-flecked irises of Steve’s eyes, very close, and she smiled slowly. Their bodies were still joined, sticky and sweet, and their arms wound round each other. The room was quiet, and the murmur of traffic from the streets below seemed far distant. She knew that they were happy, here and now in this narrow space and time. She closed her eyes again.
They slept for a little while, dreamlessly, and when Annie woke up the sun had gone and the room was almost dark. She raised herself on one elbow, soundlessly, because Steve was still sleeping. She saw from the clock beside the bed that it was five o’clock, and she must leave in half an hour’s time. She let herself lie down again beside him for a moment, listening to his even breathing.
Something in the shape of the room, or perhaps the quality of the light, made her think of the last time she had seen Matthew, lying in the upstairs room of the house overlooking the square.
Memories stirred inside her, reality quickening again, and she moved sharply, blocking them out. Steve stirred and opened his eyes.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.’
She kissed him. ‘I did too. I must go home soon.’
But he reached up and put his arms around her neck, drawing her down on top of him so that the firm foundation of her resolve cracked wide apart.
‘Not yet. I want to make love to you again.’
His hands touched her and she lay back, protesting and then acquiescent, and at last as her body took her over again she was as demanding as Steve himself. They were slower this time, more calculating because of what they had learned already, but the final shock that took hold of Annie went deeper and burned her more fiercely than anything she had ever known before.
When it was over, Steve rolled away from her and lay on his back, staring up at the shadows over the ceiling.
He reached his hand out to touch his fingers to hers as they lay side by side and the recollection flooded over them at once.
‘Remember.’
She felt the pain of her injuries again, and the momentous joy of having escaped. For a moment neither of them was able to move, as if the weight of the wreckage reared up above them all over again.
‘I remember.’
Annie turned her head towards him then, and saw that there were tears at the corner of his eyes.
‘What is it?’ she asked, bewildered.
‘Now that you’re here, Annie, don’t go away. Don’t go.’
She looked away. ‘I must go. You know that I have to go home to my kids.’
There was a second’s pause, and then Steve sat up abruptly, his back to her. When he looked round again, she didn’t know whether she had really seen his tears. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘No. No, there isn’t any need.’ He couldn’t drive her home, of course. ‘I’ll go back on the tube. I bought myself a return ticket.’
Annie pushed back the covers and sat up. She collected her scattered clothes from the bedroom floor and went into the bathroom. When she came out again Steve was dressed too, waiting for her. He kissed her, lightly, on both cheeks and asked her, ‘Will you come to see me again soon?’
‘As soon as I can,’ she promised him.
They rode down together in the mirrored lift and Annie thought that their reflected selves looked sad, and strange.
Out in the street Steve called a taxi and put Annie into it.
‘Safe home.’
She nodded, suddenly distraught at having to part from him. She didn’t speak and the cab door slammed between them. She looked backwards, with her hand lifted, until the taxi turned the corner. And all the way home she sat stiffly on the edge of her seat, looking out at the lurid glow of the city’s evening lights.
Martin was sitting in the kitchen, with the boys eating their supper. Their three faces turned to her as she came in, and Annie felt that her mouth was bruised and burning, and that her hair was wild even though she knew that she had smoothed it in Steve’s bathroom.
‘Where’s all your shopping?’ Martin asked. ‘Shall I carry it in for you?’
Annie stared at them with the blood thumping in her head.
‘I didn’t buy anything,’ she said. ‘Nothing at all.’
There was a long silence, and Benjy’s alarmed face turned from one of them to the other.
‘I see,’ Martin said, deadly quiet.
Annie knew that he did see. In truth he must have seen all along, while she had pretended to herself that he was blind.
She turned away from the three of them and ran up the stairs to her bedroom. She lay face down on the bed, stiff and cold and stony-eyed. She heard Martin putting the boys to bed, and then going downstairs again. She lay without moving for hours, hearing him moving about, and all the little sounds of ordinary life, but he never came up again. At last she fell into an exhausted sleep.
The dream of the bombing came again, redoubling its terror. In her dream Steve wasn’t there and when she woke up, bathed in cold sweat and with the taste of blood from her bitten lips in her mouth again, she was alone still. She stretched out her hand, timidly, and found that the wide bed was empty.
Annie swung her legs off the bed, with her blue corduroy dress caught up in creases around her. She felt her way through the dark house to the spare bedroom. She opened the door noiselessly and stood there, her fingers curled around the handle, listening to the sound of Martin’s separate breathing.
For a week, and then another week, Annie felt that she was being slowly drawn in half.
On the first morning after the day with Steve she came down to breakfast and found Martin already sitting at the breakfast table. His eyes were dark with shadows and the pain in his face made the guilt and regret twist inside her. Annie tried to say something, ‘Martin, listen to me, I don’t know …’ but he wouldn’t let her finish.
‘Not now,’ he said coldly.
He left his breakfast, picked up his briefcase and his coat, and walked out of the house without looking at her. Annie wanted to shout after him, or to put her head down on the table and cry until she couldn’t cry any more, but Thomas and Benjamin were standing in the doorway watching her.
‘Are you angry?’ Ben asked.
‘No, love.’ She tried to smile. ‘A little bit sad, today, that’s all.’
Their round faces reproached her.
After delivering them to school and to nursery, Annie came back and wandered in aimless circles through the house. She watched
