Kathleen Tessaro - The Debutante

‘But she married you. So it worked.’

‘Yes, it worked. I got the girl.’

‘But you sold the shop anyway.’

‘Turns out you need quite a lot of ambition to run your own business. After my wife’s death, I let it go.’ His eyes met hers. ‘She was killed in a car accident, two years ago.’

He said it simply; quickly. She wondered if he’d practised how to get it over with the least amount of emotion possible.

‘I’m so sorry.’

Cool air rushed around them.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

They ate in silence.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ Jack put his fork down. ‘That’s what everyone says – “I’m so sorry.” And I say “Thank you”, like I was buying a pint of milk in a shop. It’s somehow…wrong, inadequate, that it should be reduced to that. And in the end, the whole thing gets reduced down to a single sentence. “That was the year my wife died.”’

She nodded. ‘The whole thing’s an absolute cunt.’

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Yes, well…that’s one way of putting it.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘It makes a change from people apologising.’

‘When my father died, I dreaded speaking to anyone I hadn’t seen in a while; going through the whole dance of clichés. It made me angry. At them, which of course was stupid.’

‘Were you close?’

‘He wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy. But I don’t think it makes a difference. Mostly what I missed was the idea that one day it might be different. When he died the relationship became written in stone. It was too late to change it, even if I wanted to. Or could. And I was left, wandering around saying “Thank you” to a bunch of people who didn’t really want to talk about it and had no idea of what to say anyway.’

‘Yes,’ Jack conceded, taking another drink of wine, ‘it is a cunt.’

They watched a flock of house martins swoop in and out of the high hedges on the south side of the garden.

‘And what about you?’ He leaned back. ‘Married? Divorced? Widowed?’

She looked up sharply.

‘Or shall we leave all that?’

She stared at him a long time. ‘I’m…I was involved with someone.’

‘You have a boyfriend?’

‘It wasn’t quite so clearly defined.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You seem a little vague, Miss Albion.’

‘That’s my intention, Mr Coates.’

‘Do you instinctively balk at being defined, or simply in matters of the heart?’

‘Who said this was a matter of the heart?’

‘Well,’he laughed, ‘isn’t it?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She ran her fingers lightly along the rim of her glass. ‘There are so many more territories in the heart than one expects.’

‘Like what?’

‘Possession, power.’ She spoke slowly, softly, lifting her eyes to meet his. ‘It’s confusing sometimes, isn’t it?’

He felt his pulse quickening, the surface of his skin alive with increased sensitivity. ‘In what way?’

‘To tell which is which. They are intimacies, not so polite as love, but compelling just the same. Not everyone longs for tenderness.’

‘And you?’

‘I long for all sorts of things. Some of which I understand and some which I don’t.’

‘Are you saying you don’t know your own mind?’

‘Do you?’

‘I like to think I do.’

‘You’re deceived.’

‘And you’re presumptuous.’

‘What does the mind have to do with it anyway?’

‘I’m not referring to intellect but to intention,’ he clarified, aware that he was overcompensating with a certain loftiness of tone. She was clever and provocative. But it was the speed of her that was most thrilling.

Her lips widened in a slow, teasing smile. ‘And are all your intentions transparent and worthy?’

‘Isn’t that possible?’

‘Possible, perhaps. But not natural.’

‘And why not?’ He shifted, recrossing his legs. ‘Why can’t you be aware of your actions before you take them? Set your own course for your heart rather than blundering in blindly?’

‘My, you really are a rare breed!’

The wind tossed the thick boughs above them, elongated black shapes stretching towards them across the lawn.

‘That’s not fair. You make me sound like a prude!’

‘Well, let’s see. A man whose motivations and desires are completely known to him at all times and absolutely under his control, who never stumbles into the murkier depths of human relations, whose affections only follow his pre-sanctioned plans…No, you’re not a prude. You’re a statue. Something Olympian. Definitely marble.’

‘And what about you?’ he countered. ‘A woman who doesn’t know her own mind, can’t even tell if she’s having a relationship or not, but is only certain it doesn’t involve love. What does that make you?’

In the dimming light, a shadow fell across her, bathing her in darkness. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it makes me.’

The air felt suddenly cooler.

He tried to think of a way to backtrack without losing face. ‘Cate…’

But before he could, she pushed her chair back and stood up.

‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long day. Do you mind if I…?’

‘Yes, go on.’ He said it a bit too quickly; his mind racing to figure out exactly how he’d offended her; certain that he was likely to do it again if he pursued the matter.

‘I’ll look after this.’

‘Thank you.’

She crossed the lawn, retreating from him, into the house, through the open French windows where the wind gathered and released the gauzy white sheers with invisible fingers.

The old house changed with the encroaching darkness. Rooms that were open and inviting in the daylight took on an unfamiliar coldness; shadows loomed and uneven floorboards sent her stumbling along the hallway. Although they were too far away from the shoreline, she thought she could hear the sea; surf crashing into cliffs.

Suddenly, her body felt leaden with exhaustion; her mind numb. The stairs groaned as she climbed up to her room. Without turning on the lights, she slumped on the edge of the bed. The last pink embers of sunset faded into the west. A minute later they were gone.

She picked up her mobile phone, lying on the bedside table. Two more missed calls. She was unable not to check it. Unable to return the calls yet unable to delete his number; unable to move forward in any way, trapped in an invisible cage of contradiction and obsession. She switched it off, tossing it across the room where it landed in a corner. Far away enough so that she couldn’t reach across and grab it in the night; close enough to be retrievable. Self-loathing swelled and saturated, bleeding silently through her, like ink across a clean sheet of paper.

She could see Jack’s blue eyes, narrowed, triumphant; hear the superiority of his voice.

What did that make her?

She knew all too well what that made her.

It still thrilled her. That was the most disgusting part. She dreaded the missed calls yet feared the day when there were no calls at all. Her motives were clouded, filthy. Nothing about her was clear or good or pure any more.

‘We’re bound, you and I.’ The memory of his voice, low, just above a whisper, his breath hot against her cheek played again and again in her mind. Without thinking she rubbed her forearm; she could still feel the pressure of his fingers, digging into her flesh when she tried to move away.

Twilight reigned. A pale sliver of moon began to rise.

It was an unknown house; veiled yet alive in the darkness. It sighed and trembled. Things shifted, shapes, half seen, darted across the floor.

And without even bothering to wash her face, brush her teeth or take her clothes off, Cate curled up on the bed and closed her eyes.