Joanne Harris - Blackberry Wine

‘I see you didn’t wear the Armani,’ she said.

The euphoria was finally gone, leaving only a kind of dim hangover in its wake, but Jay was surprised to find his resolve unchanged. Touching the duffel bag seemed to help somehow, and he did so, as if to test its reality. Under the canvas the bottles clinked quietly together.

‘I’ve bought a house,’ said Jay, holding out the crumpled brochure. ‘Look. It’s Joe’s château, Kerry. I bought it this morning. I recognized it.’ Beneath that flat green stare he felt absurdly childish. Why had he expected her to understand? He barely understood his impulse himself. ‘It’s called Château Foudouin,’ he said. She looked at him.

‘You bought a house.’

He nodded.

‘Just like that, you bought it?’ she asked in disbelief. ‘You bought it today?’

He nodded again. There were so many things he wanted to say. It was destiny, he would have told her, it was the magic he had searched for twenty years to recapture. He wanted to explain about the brochure and the square of sunlight and how the picture had leaped out at him from the page. He wanted to explain about the sudden certainty of it, the feeling that it was the house which chose him, and not the other way around.

‘You can’t have bought a house.’ Kerry was still struggling with the idea. ‘God, Jay, you dither for hours over buying a shirt.’

‘This was different. It was like…’ He struggled to articulate what it had been like. It was an uncanny sensation, that overriding feeling of must-have. He hadn’t felt this way since his teens. The knowledge that life could not be complete without this one infinitely desirable, magical, totemic object – a pair of X-ray spectacles, a set of Hell’s Angels transfers, a cinema ticket, the latest band’s latest single – the certainty that possession of it would change everything, its presence in the pocket to be checked, tested, retested. It wasn’t an adult feeling. It was more primitive, more visceral than that. With a jolt of surprise, he realized he had not really wanted anything for twenty years.

‘It was like… being back at Pog Hill again,’ he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand. ‘It was as if the last twenty years hadn’t happened.’

Kerry looked blank.

‘I can’t believe you impulse-bought a house,’ she said. ‘A car, yes. A motorbike, OK. It’s the kind of thing you would do, come to think of it. Big toys to play with. But a house ?’ She shook her head, mystified. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Live in it,’ said Jay simply. ‘Work in it.’

‘But it’s in France somewhere.’ Irritation sharpened her voice. ‘Jay, I can’t afford to spend weeks in France. I’m due to start the new series next month. I’ve got too many commitments. I mean, is it even close to an airport?’ She broke off, her eyes moving again to the duffel bag, taking in, as if for the first time, the suitcase, the travelling clothes. There was a crease between her arched brows.

‘Look, Kerry-’

Kerry lifted a hand imperiously.

‘Go home,’ she said. ‘We can’t discuss this here. Go home, Jay, relax, and we’ll talk it all through when I get back. OK?’ She sounded cautious now, as if she were addressing an excitable maniac.

Jay shook his head. ‘I’m not going back,’ he said. ‘I need to get away for a while. I wanted to say goodbye.’

Even now Kerry showed no surprise. Irritation, yes. Almost anger. But she remained untroubled, secure in her convictions.

‘You’re pissed again, Jay,’ she said. ‘You haven’t thought any of this through. You come to me with this crazy idea about a second home, and when I’m not instantly taken by it-’

‘It isn’t going to be a second home.’

The tone of his voice surprised both of them. For a moment he sounded almost harsh.

‘And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ Her voice was low and dangerous.

‘It means you’re not listening to me. I don’t think you’ve ever actually listened to me.’ He paused. ‘You’re always telling me to grow up, to think for myself, to let go. But you’re happy to keep me a permanent lodger in your house, to keep me dependent on you for everything. I don’t have anything of my own. Contacts, friends – they’re all yours, not mine. You even choose my clothes. I’ve got money, Kerry, I’ve got my books, I’m not exactly starving in a garret any more.’

Kerry sounded amused, almost indulgent.

‘So this is what it’s all about? A little declaration of independence?’ She fluttered a kiss against his cheek. ‘O?. I understand you don’t want to go to the party, and I’m sorry I didn’t realize that this morning, OK?’ She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled. The patented Kerry O’Neill smile.

‘Please. Listen. Just this once.’

Was this what Joe had felt, he wondered. So much easier to leave without a word, to escape the recriminations, the tears, the disbelief. To escape the guilt. But somehow he just couldn’t do that to Kerry. She didn’t love him any more, he knew that. If she ever had. All the same, he couldn’t do it. Perhaps because he knew how it felt.

‘Try to understand. This place -’ His gesture included the club, the neon-lit street, the low sky, the whole of London, heaving, dark and menacing below it. ‘I don’t belong here any more. I can’t think straight when I’m here. I spend all my time waiting for something to happen, some kind of sign-’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, grow up!’ She was suddenly furious, her voice rising like an angry bird’s. ‘Is this your excuse? Some kind of idiotic angst? If you spent less time mooning on about that old bastard Joe Cox and looked around you for a change, if only you took charge instead of talking about signs and omens-’

‘But I am,’ he interrupted her. ‘I am taking charge. I’m doing what you’ve always told me to do.’

‘Not by running away to France!’ The note in her voice was almost panic now. ‘Not just like that! You owe me. You wouldn’t have lasted two minutes without me. I’ve introduced you to people, used my contacts for you. You were nothing but a one-book wonder, a has-been, a fucking fake-’

Jay looked at her dispassionately for a moment. Strange, he thought remotely, how quickly gamine could shift to plain meanness. Her red mouth was thin, vicious. Her eyes were crescents. Anger, familiar and liberating, wrapped around him like a cloak, and he laughed.

‘Can the bullshit,’ he told her. ‘It always was a mutual convenience. You liked to drop my name at parties, didn’t you? I was an accessory. It did you good to be seen with me. It’s just like people who read poetry on the tube. People saw you with me and assumed you were a real intellectual, instead of a media wannabe without a single original thought in her head.’

She stared at him, astonished and enraged. Her eyes were wide.

‘What?’

‘Goodbye.’ He turned to go.

‘Jay!’ She snatched at him as he turned, slapping smartly against the duffel bag with the flat of her hand. Inside, the bottles whispered and snickered.

‘How dare you turn your back on me?’ she hissed. ‘You were happy enough to use my contacts when it suited you. How dare you turn round and tell me you’re leaving, without even giving me a proper explanation? If it’s personal space you want, then say that. Go to your French château, if that’s what you want, go wallow in atmosphere, if that’s going to help.’

She looked at him suddenly. ‘Is that it? Is it another book?’ She sounded hungry now, her anger sharpening into excitement. ‘If that’s what it is you have to tell me, Jay. You owe me that. After all this time…’