Jon McGregor - So Many Ways to Begin

I kept wanting to stop and take pictures, they told each other later. I wanted to write things down so I wouldn't forget them. I just wanted to stand still and watch and not have anyone say anything to me for a moment because I was worried it was all passing me by.

The photos they ended up with, mostly taken outside the registry office and stuck into a slim red album, didn't seem quite enough. He wanted more. He kept the cards people gave them, with their messages of love and good luck and best wishes, but they had nothing in them about the day itself, and he wanted more. I'll just have to keep telling you about it, she said, smiling, when he said these things to her, so you don't forget.

There was more dancing, and more speech-making. There was a table loaded with gifts, a cake, balloons being burst by excited children, singing. There was his mother crying again, there were people catching him for a quick hello and well done before someone else interrupted, there were people saying they knew it was early but they were sorry they had to be off, and then it seemed like no time at all before they were calling out their sudden goodbyes and running back through the rain to the car. And his family and his friends all crowded together in the entrance to wave and cheer them both on their way, and the children threw rice and confetti over the car, and the rice falling against the window sounded like yet more rain. Danny drove them the short distance to the flat, and as they got out of the car the rain seemed to fling itself down with one final flurry of temper, soaking them through in the brief time it took to run from the car, up the steps, and in through their new front door.

The flat seemed lighter and larger than he'd remembered. She whirled around in excitement, the lace-edged skirts of her white dress lifting and billowing out around her pale legs for a moment before she stopped and looked at him, proudly, and said what do you think?

He hardly recognised it. She'd obviously been busy during the few rushed weeks between coming down from Aberdeen and their wedding day. When the landlady had shown him around the flat he'd worried that it might be too cramped, or too gloomy, and he'd worried about what Eleanor might think. But she'd said it was fine when she'd first seen it, and then she'd banished him, insisting that she stayed there and he lived at his mother's until they were married, not letting him see what she was doing to the place.

She'd cleaned the windows and thrown away the filthy net curtains; she'd scrubbed and polished every possible inch of floor and wall and surface; she'd arranged the furniture so that there was room to move around. There were new sheets on the bed, and clean covers on the settee. There was a vase of flowers in the bedroom, and the lounge, and even the kitchen. There were large framed pictures of butterflies on the wall. It felt like a different flat entirely, and for the first time he understood what it was going to mean to share his life with somebody.

It's not bad, is it? he said. You've done a smashing job, he said, and there was something almost child-like about the look of proud pleasure which swept across her face. She turned and rushed suddenly around the room, closing the curtains, locking the door, taking out her earrings and putting them in a small bowl on the mantelpiece over the gas fire, turning back to him with a smile.

Hey, she said, hooking a finger into the waist of his trousers and pulling him towards her. Can you help me out of this dress now?

Their nakedness felt strange all over again. He felt inadequate, set against her. His body seemed shapeless, awkward, where hers was poised and flowing, delicate, ready to knock him into silence at the first sight of her. It didn't take long for them to grow more comfortable with each other — to insist on the abandonment of towels, sheets, needless underwear; to allow each other the long slow looks they needed to grow used to the bareness of their skin — but that first morning they dressed quickly, turning away from each other, barely speaking. They walked out into the cold-edged sunshine, their steps a little clumsy together, dazed by the rush of the day before, dazed by the rush of the weeks and months since they'd first made their plans. They went to a cafe for breakfast, walked through the Memorial Park, and, because they couldn't really think what else to do, went back to the flat again. She quickened her pace as they got closer, and broke into a run, taking the steps two at a time and racing him to the front door.

They only lived in the flat for six months; it was a time which would later come to seem unreal, a time which was almost entirely spent preparing for the future. They talked a lot, sitting in the darkened lounge with bottles of wine, or lying together in bed, or walking round and round the park; asking each other questions about their lives before they met, getting to know each other, telling secrets and sharing ambitions and making plans. They asked each other, more than once, if they thought they had done the right thing, and each time they said yes, of course, what else could they have done? It was a cold winter, and they spent a lot of time apart, working or looking for work, or visiting Julia, or looking for a new place to live. The one gas fire didn't work very well, and there was a crack halfway up the bath which meant it could only be filled about six inches deep. They were short of money. They had their first arguments. But it was their home, their first home together, and Eleanor wore the front-door key on a long loop of string around her neck as though it were a talisman, and always raced him home so she could be the one to unlock the door.

Once, he was reading a magazine in the lounge when he heard the bathroom door open. He looked up and saw her walk silently into the kitchen, pour herself a glass of water, drink it, and walk back past him to the bedroom. She didn't look at him. She seemed not to notice he was there. Her skin was flushed red from the hot bathwater, her hair brushed back away from her face and hanging in straight stretched lines to her shoulders, water beading down her back. She was naked, except for the long loop of string with the key dangling from it hanging between her breasts and swinging against her stomach as her wet feet padded across the bare linoleum floor.

It took him much longer than he'd expected to tell her what Julia had said, and the longer he didn't tell her, the more difficult it became. He didn't tell her when they spent that first night together in Aberdeen, or when he wrote, or when he went to see her again. He didn't tell her while they were talking and deciding if what they were planning to do was the right thing, while he was trying to persuade her that it was. He didn't take the opportunity when they made the long journey south together, her small suitcase on the seat beside them, her home country sliding away past the window. He kept it to himself until they were married, and he kept it to himself the six months they lived in the flat, and finally he spat it out in the middle of an argument they had soon after moving into their new house, when she said he knew nothing about her parents, that he didn't understand what she'd been through as a child, her voice loud and trembling, and he banged his hand against the table and said that at least she knew who her parents were.

She flinched violently at the sound of his hand on the table. She stared at him. What are you talking about? she said. His eyes were shut tightly, and his hand pressed flat against the table, the skin whitening under his fingernails. He didn't say anything.

David, what are you talking about? she said again, putting down her knife and fork, reaching her hand out across the table, leaning towards him.