Page 10 of Pictures of Him

‘You liked it?’

‘I loved it. It reminded me of one of my favourite books as a child. You know those old-fashioned pen-and-ink drawings that make you feel as though you could disappear inside them? It was just like that.’

You nodded, pleased. You told me drawing and painting were the only things that mattered to you.

‘Why are you at university then, reading English?’

You laughed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe a last-ditch attempt to please my mother. Not that it’s working.’

You told me your father had died when you were a kid, and your voice as you said it was airy, practised. But I knew, even then, how this death had changed you.

‘Tell me your life story then,’ you said.

I rifled through my experiences for a while and could come up with nothing but contentment. When I pictured my home life, it was always Sunday,Desert Island Discson the radio, newspapers spread across the table, the smell of roasting chicken in the air. Conversation that usually focused on me, the full beam of my parents’ attention, the warmth and insularity afforded by being a team of three. I was their miracle child, born after nine years of trying, after countless doctors had given up, and they loved me with the zeal of those whose dream comes later.

‘I’m not sure my life has begun properly yet,’ I said, and your mouth curved upwards for the first time.

‘Perhaps it begins right here.’

Four months before: Catherine

We don’t talk until the children are asleep, tired out from pasta (Sam cooked after Julia had flounced off; I don’t know how he managed it), sea air and perhaps the surfeit of suppressed emotion that pollutes the atmosphere. My voice, hard as metal, razors into the silence.

‘You had an affair?’

‘No. God, no. Just once. It was stupid, I was drunk. I hate myself.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘The staff party, end of the Easter term.’

‘Just once? A one-night stand’ – I spit the words – ‘and she’s fallen madly in love with you? Bullshit. I don’t believe you.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m so—’

I hold out my hand to cut him off.

‘Where? Where did it happen?’

‘In the staff room.’

‘Where? On the sofa? On the floor?’

I’m frantic for details, I don’t know why. Sam turns away from me, shoulders curved with despair.

‘Answer me, Sam, I need to know.’

‘Against the wall,’ he says finally, his voice so quiet I can hardly hear him, and then that image, my husband, his lover, the woman who was in my house less than an hour ago, fills my brain and I sink to my knees, hands covering my face.

‘That’s so bad, Sam. You wanted her …’

Sam kneels down in front of me, takes each of my wrists and forces me to look up at him.

‘All I’ve ever wanted was you,’ he says, but I yank myself away.

Minutes pass; it feels like an hour. I am on the floor, curled into a ball, weeping hot tears into our brand-new carpet bought just three weeks ago from a showroom in Frome. And then I am hiding in our bathroom, behind a locked door, Sam the other side of it, his voice low so as not to wake the kids, but fierce, desperate.

‘Please come out. Please let me explain.’

---