that I won’t be able to cope with whatever it is that’s coming. Arrest, trial, I don’t know. I want to be able to withstand whatever he has to face up to, and I’m afraid of letting him down.’
The tears had started to gather again at the corners of her eyes. She dabbed at them with her wodge of tissues.
‘I am completely certain that you will be able to cope,’ Michael assured her. ‘I know you well enough for that.’
‘Do you think?’
‘I know.’
Hannah blew her nose. ‘I think I just needed a good cry.’ Then she laughed, with the corners of her mouth wobbling as if she were a film actress who had been told to go for a close-up. ‘That’s better. Stupid, isn’t it? If this isn’t letting him down, I wonder what is.’
‘Do you wish we hadn’t come?’
‘No,’ Hannah said, after she had thought. ‘I don’t wish that.’ She snuggled closer to him and he put his arm around her, settling his chin against her ruined hair.
‘What would you like to do this evening?’ Michael asked.
‘Nothing. Stay here like this and watch television. Have room service later, with those silver domes on a heated trolley disguised as a table.’
He picked up the television remote control and clicked it.
They lay back amidst the tangle of sheets and pillows and watched the end of Channel 4 News. Michael felt that the fragile shell of their intimacy had been tossed like a tiny boat through some storm and had pitched through it, waterlogged but still afloat, into a calmer sea.
It was this pleasure at the survival of some delicate organism that Michael took back with him to Grafton. Hannah had caught an early train, and Michael drove home alone. He realized that their brief, awkward time together had left him with a residue of happiness, and the happiness coloured the dull route and softened his apprehension at returning. He turned on the radio, and whistled as he drove. He felt a generalized affection and tolerance for all the world, and a new tenderness for his wife and children.
When he reached his house he first saw the front garden, the neat oval of raked gravel under the cherry tree and the peony bush heavy with red, taut buds, and then Marcelle’s car parked in front of the garage doors. He had expected that Marcelle would be at the school at this time of day, but there was still the ghost of a whistle in his head as he lifted his briefcase out of the car. He put his key in the front door and let himself in. The house was quiet but there was a comforting note that it took him a second to identify as the smell of cooking.
Michael walked through to the kitchen. Marcelle was there. She was standing at one of the worktops in a muddle of bowls and utensils. When she looked at him he saw that her face was like a cold blade.
‘How was the conference?’
He hesitated, apprehension prickling him. ‘Fine. Like the others. Interesting in parts. Why aren’t you at the school?’
‘Was your paper well received?’
‘Yes. Very well. Rather gratifying.’
Michael picked up the handful of letters waiting for him and flipped through them, seeing nothing. The tension in the air was like a smell, poisonous, the opposite of the wholesome scent of food.
‘What are you cooking?’ he asked.
When Marcelle didn’t answer he looked across at her. Her hands were jerking in a mound of flour. A little puff of it rose and drifted like incense.
‘I don’t know,’ Marcelle whispered. ‘Isn’t that funny? I’ve no idea what I’m doing.’
Her head fell forward, and the cords in her neck tightened as her mouth gaped and she began to cry. Appalled, Michael stared at her.
‘You haven’t been to the conference,’ Marcelle said.
Michael thought of the volleys of accusations and lies that would follow if he attempted a denial.
‘No,’ he agreed.
‘Where have you been?’
‘In London.’
‘Why did you lie to me?’ The knifelike accusation had gone from her face. It was contorted with pain instead. Michael hunched his shoulders to protect himself against it.
‘Because I didn’t want you to be hurt.’
‘Who were you with?’
‘Marcelle, do you have to know that? Does it make any difference?’ He took two steps across the immensity of space that separated them and tried to touch her arm.
Marcelle put her head on one side, as if giving the question due consideration.
‘I suppose not. Not to the fact that everything has ended.’ She lifted her hands and the flour puffed up again, as if it could whiten the blackness. ‘This is how marriages end, isn’t it? Ever since I met Caroline Keene on Wednesday and she told me how generous she and David thought you were to let him go in your place and present the paper, I’ve been thinking, so this is how it happens. Even to us. It just finishes.’
Michael tried to think back to a time when he and Marcelle had been happy in this house. He knew that there had been such a time, but he could not locate it now by a date, a particular year. Had it been when the children were smaller? Before they were born? It seemed that his feelings of tenderness as he drove down from London had been no more than post-coital sentimentality.
‘If you say so,’ he answered tonelessly.
‘I telephoned Wilton,’ Marcelle went on. ‘Cathy told me that Hannah was in London for a couple of days.’
Caroline Keene, Michael reflected. It must be a year since she and Marcelle had last met. Why should they encounter each other on this particular, critical day? Then he was surprised by his own resentment. It was, wasn’t it, inevitable that they should have done?
‘This isn’t anything to do with Hannah. It’s to do with you and me, first, Marcelle, do you understand that? Hannah is only what happened next.’
Marcelle was crying again. These were not pretty, photogenic tears that asked to be brushed away, like Hannah’s.
‘What do you want to do?’ Michael asked.
‘I want you to leave. You can’t come back here, strolling in with your bag and your fully-fucked smile expecting to be fed and fuelled and serviced ready for the next adventure. What happens is that you lose me and your children and your home. But you’re half-gone already. Why not the whole way?
‘You can find out how it is without us. See if you like it better out there. Perhaps Hannah will be able to do everything for you. If she can stir herself. If it doesn’t mean she might break a red bloody fingernail.’
‘You’re angry. Don’t be angry with Hannah. She has enough difficulties of her own, whatever you think of her at this minute.’
‘Yes. I’m angry.’
