Page 31 of We Live Here Now

38

Emily

It’s a perfect weekend.

The weather has the edge of winter crispness to it but is dry and bright enough to fool you into thinking that spring might be on the way regardless of it being February, and it raises my spirits. We spend Saturday afternoon upstairs, and even with my fragile body we still manage a couple of bouts of sex, which we follow by watching a cheesy action movie on Freddie’s laptop and eating oven pizza in bed.

Nothing wakes either of us in the night, and when we do finally roll into each other’s arms at around eight on Sunday morning, I’m not sweating from overheating and Freddie’s feet aren’t like ice blocks.

“Good morning.” He kisses my nose.

“Good morning.”

“I’m starving.” He sits up and yawns. “And thank fuck, at last this house feels warmer.”

I have such an overwhelming rush of love for him and, more than that, affection. After a few years of marriage, love lingers on as a matter of habit, but the affection fades. The affection is the magic. That warmth and wanting to be near someone. To touch them. I sit up and snuggle into his back. “Warm croissants.”

“Your wish is my command. As long as you bought some.”

We cuddle a little longer before I shove him toward the bathroom, and then I lay back on the pillow happier than I’ve been since before my accident. Since a while before it, if I’m honest.

It’s not just the surprisingly good day yesterday but also a little hope inside me. A chance to put something right. We had sex threetimes over the course of the afternoon and evening, and not once did either of us even pause to reach for a condom. I touch the soft skin of my belly. Maybe a spark of life is already happening inside me. A baby to assuage the guilt of my infidelity and all that came after. The guilt of Freddie mourning a child that might not have even been his. I can pretend none of it happened. It had been a terrible mistake, I knew as soon as I was sober, even when I got the promotion, and I’d thought the pregnancy was my punishment. But karma got me. I got the job but never got to do it, and I nearly died. And I’d lost a baby I hadn’t even had time to realize I wanted. I know Freddie has lost one too, but he hadn’t known I was pregnant—when I woke up in the hospital I pretended I had been planning to tell him after the holiday—so it wasn’t the same. I had known there was a baby growing inside me for two weeks by the time we went, and I’d spent a lot of that time wishing it wasn’t. I have guilt over that as much as guilt over the stupid infidelity that led to it.

When Freddie heads down to the kitchen, I go to shower and pause to glance up to the third-floor landing. There are no sounds or creaks. All I can see up there are floorboards bright in sunlight. I need to pull myself together. Throw away those books downstairs. Ignore any strange noises. It’s all in my head. It has to be.

It’s me, not the house. I don’t like the idea that I could have pulled the study apart and then tidied it without remembering any of it, but maybe I did. No one else would have done it. And if there’s no such thing as ghosts, then there is only that Sherlock Holmes quote: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

I touch my stomach again and, once dressed, I go down the stairs more confidently than I have since we’ve been here. Even my leg isn’t hurting as much today.

We eat croissants warm from the Aga while sprawled across our sofa together, reading the newspapers on our iPads, and then we cook a roast chicken dinner, pour some lovely red wine as the afternoon darkens, and play cards in front of the fire as the night turns darker.

Freddie doesn’t look at his phone once all day. None of that tense, furrowed expression I’ve seen when I’ve interrupted him answering emails. With his phone ignored, he’s my Freddie again. Chill. Kind. Funny.

“It’s been a perfect weekend, hasn’t it?” I whisper when we’re finally in bed again, dozing off in the quiet calm of the still house, not even a raven’s caw to disturb the peace. “Just the two of us.”

His mouth twitches into a smile. “Perfect.” He’s bleary, already nearly asleep. “If only it could be the two of us all the time. Forever.”

We sleep entwined with each other and I relish the smell of his warm skin and even the staleness of him in the morning before he creeps out of bed early to leave for London, promising me with kisses that he’ll come straight home as fast as he can.

I hear the front door closing and the faint sound of his engine purring off down the drive, then lie in bed wary of creaking doors or falling books or awful smells creeping down from the third floor, but there’s nothing except for the clicking of the radiators as the heating comes on. I curl back up under the covers and stay cozy, one hand drifting to my stomach. I still want us to sell this place. I still want us to move back to London. But for now, even if just for a year, maybe we can find some happiness here.

39

Emily

Merrily Watkins, an earthy, rosy-cheeked, cheerful, solid woman in her early fifties, and her husband, Pete, a no-nonsense, quiet man, tanned and weathered from a life working in the fresh air, turn up midmorning on Monday in a battered old Land Rover with mud-splattered tires.

“There’s a lot of work to be done.” I’m stating the obvious as they’ve already trampled round the wet ground and measured up spaces and taken photos and so have seen it for themselves. The garden is massive and a mess.

“That’s how we like it. I love a project.” Merrily has her camera out, constantly snapping different areas. “And Pete’s happiest when he can get the digger out.” They both seem impervious to the cold. Pete’s only in a T-shirt and jeans despite the rapid drop in temperature this morning, and while Merrily has a jacket on over a jumper, I’m in three layers, wrapped up in my quilted Uniqlo coat and still shivering.

“Obviously we want to keep the orchard, and we want it to still look like a countryside garden,” I say. “But it would be great to do something with those outbuildings. A home office in one or a gym. A summer house maybe. And the paths need leveling. A patio and barbecue area would be wonderful. And a fence around the pond.” Even if we don’t stay here for very long, we’ve got the profit from the London flat and getting all this sorted will add value, I’m sure.

“It’s big enough that we can make four separate areas, each with its own style, don’t you think, Pete?”

Her husband nods, the quieter one in the couple.

“Not sure how much you want to spend though?” she continues.

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