Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

I stood by the kettle, which was now happily gouting steam into the air. ‘I wanted to check it against the missing persons,’ I said, and immediately regretted it.

Eddy laughed. ‘Bet they found that pretty funny.’

‘They did,’ I said coldly. Eddy’s laughter hitched, paused. ‘Personally, I don’t understand the cause for hilarity.’

‘Oh come off it, Margot.’

‘I just don’t. If this kind of thing was less amusing to them, perhaps they’d have found out what happened to Katie Browne.’

In the interests of prudence, Eddy didn’t reply. Privately, I knew that he too thought that Katie had fled her humdrum life for the bright lights of the M25.

‘You wouldn’t remember it being on the news anyway,’ he said after a few moments, trying to be diplomatic. ‘You would have been living in London then.’

But still, for a sudden freezing moment, I felt like I hated him. In the drawing darkness I had turned the letter over and over, long after I knew its cry by heart. I’d imagined being torn away from your friends and home, shoved into a dark little prison, raped, battered, murdered, your dismembered limbs cast into the dark depths of a swiftly moving river – first the splash, then the ripple, then nothing, ever again. Or perhaps, by the light of the moon, your murderer had stood over the pit containing your poor, pale remains, shovelling wet worm-infested earth over them. Months, maybe years, later, the bones might be found, to be held, worn and weathered, in plastic-gloved hands; to be pieced together like a jigsaw, with scientists breathing through masks as they wash the mud out of crevices in shins and skull, before wrapping them in rubber sheets and labelling them with numbers.

Heaven save us all from rape and murder and the anonymity of ignominious unmarked graves, which the weather beats uncaringly.

Though all of that was hardly Eddy’s fault.

I set the mug in front of him on the table with a wry smile of concession. I had a sudden memory of him pushing me up against this table. There had been no words, just fumbling and heavy breathing and damp hot skin and nothing else but us in the world. Afterwards we’d realized we’d left the blinds open. Anyone could have seen us, we giggled to one another, thrilled at our own reckless daring.

‘And you a convent girl,’ he had murmured into my hair. ‘You wicked minx.’

Of course, there’s a hedge and a low wall separating the house from the street, so no one could have seen us, unless they’d been lurking on our front lawn, actively looking through the windows. You’d be lucky to get a mobile signal in this part of the village, never mind an audience. But it had pleased us both to think of ourselves as flagrant strutting libertines. At least at the time.

‘One of your magpies was in the front yard when I got here,’ he grunted after a while. ‘It must have been waiting for you.’

I softened slightly, spared him a smile. ‘Yeah. It’s there a lot.’

Somehow we moved into the living room, which was not part of my plan – the living room, with its squashy, overstuffed sofa and multitudinous brightly coloured cushions, was a place where he had always made me feel happy, safe and comforted. Many were the times I had curled up against his chest here, as we watched absurd TV together. Remembering this made my throat swell unhappily and my heart ache with cold. It was no place for this new Eddy who was now comforting somebody else. But somehow, as he accepted the mug and moved off towards the hall as we had done so many times before, I couldn’t find a way to prevent it, as though habit were a riptide, pulling us both along, and to object now would seem ill-humoured, a little mean.

I was trying to be civilized, after all.

The couch sank to accept us. Eddy drank his coffee, made expert small talk that didn’t touch on the subject of his new inamorata , his job, or the mediation arrangements. It was as though nothing remotely strange or strained was happening. I could not have done better in his shoes. It was like a dance, and he led. I had no idea how to steer matters back on course, so decided to wait for an opening, my back against the armrest, between a rock and a hard place. Who knew when I would get him back here again, and in such a good mood?

I hugged my empty mug to my chest.

‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.

‘Who, me? No.’

‘We could call for a takeaway,’ he said, kicking off his shoes, and for an instant it was like it had always been, me sitting on the couch, watching him perform this ritual every time he came in from work. ‘The Mai Thai delivers on a Friday. Are you in the mood for steamed sea bass?’

And yet not how it had always been.

‘Won’t Arabella be missing you?’ I asked.

He shrugged, as if this was of no matter. ‘Well, as you say, we need to talk.’

I glanced at the antique wall clock, a wedding present from my friend Lily. It was nearly quarter to eight.

Lily had never liked him.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Good girl,’ he said complacently, flashing me that full-lipped grin, those brilliant teeth. ‘And I’ve got a bottle of Sancerre in my case to go with it.’

So sea bass with lemongrass and Sancerre followed, and Eddy and I did indeed manage to talk about the financial settlement, though I was left with the disquieting impression that he didn’t actually say all that much. Clearly the fair thing to do was for each of us to keep what we had owned before we met – me the house; he his po-faced ‘loft apartment’ in Hills Road, where he had held court in bachelor princedom before our marriage. Each to our own – our own cars, our own furniture. We could come to some arrangement about the things we had bought together – which over a little less than three years did not amount to very much.

He regarded me with those wide grey eyes, nodding, and I was encouraged by the lack of opposition (then again, why should he object?) but now that I thought about it, I could not recall any actual agreement.

‘So what do you think about that?’ I asked him. I felt flushed and oddly relaxed – we are going to get through this, I thought. We are going to negotiate this like grown-ups, and maybe, perhaps in time…

‘I think we need more wine.’

‘That’s a given,’ I said wryly. ‘But what do you think about the plan for mediation?’

He glanced into his glass, offered it a tiny smile and put it on the table.

‘I think, why are we talking about this now?’ he said, turning that smile on me. ‘I thought the rule was that after ten we didn’t discuss business.’

Lily’s wall clock said it was ten o’clock exactly.

‘That rule was for work, not business,’ I murmured, unaccountably blushing. ‘And it applied when we were still married.’ I drew back into my corner of the couch.

But he was leaning forward, his arm snaking up the sofa towards me.

‘Margot,’ he said, in that sultry golden voice of his, ‘we are still married.’

I opened my mouth to object, to draw away, but his lips were on mine, and he tasted so good, so sweet, and I’d been so lonely. I was opening up to him, letting his arms meet around my back, feeling his hard chest and tight belly against me, and I was shaking, I wanted him so badly, I…

I…

What the hell was I doing?

I pushed him away. ‘No.’

He rocked back, clearly surprised, as I ducked out from under him and rolled straight to my stockinged feet.

‘I think you need to leave.’ I folded my arms tightly across my chest.

‘Margot,’ he pushed his blond hair out of his eyes, as though stunned at my changeability. ‘What’s the matter?’