Stuart Harrison - Aphrodite’s Smile

In the morning we drove down to the cottage, and later we went to the restaurant I had booked for dinner. I didn’t give her the ring I’d bought or ask her to marry me. Earlier I’d pretended to fall as I was climbing over a fence, and when we went to bed I used the excuse of a pulled muscle to avoid having sex. I couldn’t hide the fact that something was wrong however, I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eye any more.

When we were packing to leave on Sunday afternoon she saw the ring when the box fell out of my bag. When she picked it up she looked at me questioningly then opened it. She stared at it for what seemed like a long time and then she gave it back to me and sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Did you buy that for me?’ she asked quietly. I didn’t answer. ‘The other night at home you saw me didn’t you? You saw me flush my pill down the sink. I thought you had. I caught a glimpse of something moving in the mirror. Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I’m not sure. I needed to think about it I suppose.’

She nodded to herself and looked at her feet before she met my eye again. ‘And now that you’ve thought about it?’

‘Why did you do it?’

She smiled sadly. ‘I shouldn’t have, I know. But every time we talked about it you kept putting it off.’

‘So you decided to make the decision by yourself.’

‘It was wrong. But I thought … no I think … that you’ll never agree to have children. I think you’re afraid to. You think your children might hate you the way you hate your father.’

‘Christ.’ I shook my head at her amateur psychology. ‘That’s bullshit. The truth couldn’t be more different. I want kids. It’s true I don’t want to fuck things up for them, but that’s why I’ve put it off. I just wanted to be sure.’ I gestured angrily toward the ring. ‘And I was sure. Why else do you think I got you that?’

Alicia looked at me. Her eyes were shining. ‘Nothing’s changed then,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I love you. I always have. You must love me if you bought that.’

But I didn’t know any more. She was wrong to think nothing had changed and she knew it.

The following morning in London Alicia told me that she was going to stay with a friend for a while.

‘I think it would be for the best.’ She wrote me a number and left it by the phone. ‘I’m sorry for what I did. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.’

That night when I came home to an empty house I wanted to phone her, but I told myself I needed time to think about it all, to decide how I felt. I missed her. I felt as if I was rattling around in my big house that suddenly felt empty. But as the days passed it began to get easier.

A week later Irene phoned to say that she was taking my father home from hospital. I was surprised. He’d barely been in there for two weeks.

‘The doctors have advised against it,’ she said, ‘but he will not listen.’

I had the feeling there was something she wasn’t telling me. I sensed her indecision. When I asked her what was wrong she said it was nothing, but she asked me again when I was going over.

‘A few weeks,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

After I’d hung up I picked up the number Alicia had left me. I stared at it for a long time, and then I crumpled it up and threw it in the bin.

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