She pulled the curtains open fully and they watched each other for a few moments. She saw his hand move over his crotch. ‘Lift up your top,’ he said. She shook her head at him. He glanced both ways down the road. ‘There’s no one here. Come on, Beth.’
She didn’t move. She was thinking what bra she had put on that morning. It was black. Didn’t someone say women only wear black underwear if they want it to be seen? She was sure that was rubbish, just another stupid male fantasy, but still her hand was gathering the bottom of her T-shirt and pulling it up to her neck. Below her breasts her stretch-marked belly hung over the waistband of her trousers, white and heavy like a carrier bag full of water. She pulled her T-shirt down quickly.
‘You’re gorgeous,’ he said. ‘Take your bra off and then do that again.’ He put his hands together in a praying motif and then returned the phone to his ear. ‘Please.’
She looked behind her at the bed, rumpled where she’d been sitting, at the chair that had its back turned to her in embarrassment. There was the pile of washing on the floor, there was the cabinet layered in dust, there were the photographs that hadn’t been changed in years. ‘Wait,’ she said.
She put her phone down on the windowsill and walked into the hallway. She reached behind her and unclipped her bra, pulling her arms out through the straps. When she returned she lifted her T-shirt up again, then leant forward and pressed herself against the window. He pretended to buckle on his legs. He put his hand to his mouth and shook his head slowly.
Beth pulled her top down and picked up her phone again.
‘Happy?’ she asked.
‘Semi. But who wants to settle for a semi?’ He chuckled. ‘Come outside and turn left. I’m in the silver Audi.’
She watched him saunter out of view. She was a little shocked at herself, not because of what she’d done, but because of how easily she’d done it, and how little she felt about it. She put her hand inside her trousers. She was dry. Maybe that’s how these things happen, she thought, in an abstract, impersonal way that feels like nothing at all. She put her bra back on and went downstairs. There was glass to clear up. There were stains to remove. She went into the kitchen and turned the kettle on automatically. The corner of the picture was hanging down again. Everything is coming unstuck. She pulled the painting off the wall and squashed it into a tight ball. As she crossed the living-room floor she saw the small splodges of blood leading up the stairs. They would stain if she didn’t clean them soon. She walked out of the front door and threw the screwed-up picture into the bin, then continued walking, to the end of the path, to the pavement, and then she turned left.
The driveways were all empty. The houses behind them were all dead things that knew and saw nothing. She wondered what she could use on the stains. I will walk right past him, she thought. You go so far playing these silly games, and then you go no further or too far. As she approached the silver Audi the passenger door swung open and she climbed in.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ he said. ‘Shall I drive somewhere?’
‘No. I’m not staying.’ His car was spotless. She ran a finger along the dashboard, felt the leather upholstery cool against her back. The engine was idling softly and the radio was on with the volume turned down irritatingly low. Why have it on at all then? She tried to make out the song. She realised sadly that she was still bored. Surely she should be excited, terrified, aroused. Anything other than this dulled detachment. Maybe it was because this, she, was someone else. She was still in the kitchen, scraping up glass, rummaging in cupboards. Now she was on the couch, scrolling vacantly through her phone. Where had Tim gone with Ruby? Had he told her? She was stupid thinking he’d meant her when he said they had a hot date.
She looked at the hand now holding hers, the thumb that was stroking her wrist. She could smell his cologne. He was wearing too much of it, it made her want to sneeze. If she let him hold her she’d take that smell back home with her. She became aware that she was being spoken to.
‘But it’s up to you,’ Kyle was saying. She looked at him, grinning and groomed to perfection. How long must it take him to look that way? A vague picture emerged of her waiting impatiently outside the bathroom door, of him finally emerging with his face caked in cream. She would learn to hate this man in a week.
‘What is?’ she asked.
The thumb froze on her skin and his perfectly plucked eyebrows knotted curiously. ‘Tomorrow? The hotel? You’ve not heard a word I’ve said, have you, Beth? Dazzled by my dashing good looks?’
‘Yes, that’s what it is.’
He smiled. She imagined a tooth glinting in the light. ‘I’m there until Sunday. I was saying you should come visit me. No pressure or expectations. We can just talk if you want.’
‘Is that all you want?’
‘You know what I want.’
A car turned into the road and began crawling slowly towards them. She watched it approaching. She began, quite calmly, to think of a rational explanation for being in this car with this man. As it drew level she and the driver made eye contact. The car inched past and continued slowly up the street. Kyle was watching her.
‘Anyone you know?’
‘Do you care?’ He made a face. ‘What hotel did you say it was?’
He told her again. She knew it. Ruby was going to a party tomorrow less than a mile away. Suddenly Kyle leant across and began kissing her. She sat there and allowed it to happen. He was surprisingly gentle, and she closed her eyes and concentrated on what he was doing. She heard another car pass. Or perhaps it was the same one returning. She realised that nothing in the world could explain this away, and that she didn’t care. She began to kiss him back. He murmured softly and his hand moved off her shoulder and beneath her T-shirt. She put her hand in his lap. Squashed beneath his trousers the blood was flowing hard. He began to move on the seat, lifting himself up against her. He was groaning. She withdrew her hand and pulled away from him.
‘Beth?’ he said. His eyes were glazed. His mouth hung open. She could see his trousers bulging. It annoyed her. No, it infuriated her, but she didn’t know why. She opened the car door. ‘Beth?’ he said again. ‘Beth, wait?’
‘No. I can’t. I have to clear up the blood.’ Those quizzical eyebrows again. She realised he thought it was some sort of metaphor. She didn’t care what he thought. ‘This has absolutely nothing to do with you, you know,’ she said, as she closed the door on him.
When she was back home she watched for his car to drive past, saw his face in profile as he stared straight ahead. She leant back heavily on the door. He wanted her. Everyone seemed to want something. But she wanted nothing. She wanted nothing that she had, nothing that she didn’t have. ‘I’m so bored,’ she said. She heard her voice wavering. ‘I’m just so bored. Everyone feels something but me.’ She put her hand back inside her trousers. As she suspected, still dry as a whistle. Suddenly she screamed. She took a shoe off and threw it across the room, sending a frame crashing to the floor. That deep well that she’d suppressed earlier, it erupted now. It gushed upwards and streamed out of her eyes.
When he and Ruby finally got home later that day Tim stood in the driveway contemplating the house. He found his eyes drawn to their window. It was full of sky, white clouds scudding along on the breeze beneath a flat grey background. He imagined Beth up there, watching him. All afternoon he’d been anxious to get home.
‘No, Ruby,’ he’d said, when she’d asked to go on the carousel.
‘Not now, Ruby,’ he’d said, when she wanted to ride the mini train.
But now he was here something held him back. Things would change when he went inside. Things had already changed, but it was possible to pretend otherwise until they were said aloud. Ruby ran past him and in the front door, leaving it open behind her. Eventually he followed. Inside, he stopped and scanned the room, unsure exactly what he was looking for. It looked the same. Nearly the same. The patches of blood had been wiped into faint pink smears, the glass had been cleared from the kitchen floor. But something had shifted. Something had happened here and changed the air.
He spotted a picture frame broken on the floor, a shoe, Beth’s shoe, beside it. That man earlier, outside their house, he’d been a surveyor, a realtor, an estimator. He’d sailed the seven seas and flown to the moon. He’d shown Tim the paperwork to prove it. He’d been lying – ‘Your home?’ he’d asked. ‘It’s nice. Cosy inside, I bet.’ He’d winked then, or maybe Tim had just imagined him winking – but it was only during the course of the afternoon that he’d begun to appreciate the full force of the lie. He stared at the shattered frame, imagined Beth’s back pressed against it, knocking it from its nail. He remembered the last time he’d kissed her, opening his eyes to see her staring at him in such a way that made him jump back. It wasn’t disgust, or revulsion, or even hatred – nothing as passionate as that. It was boredom. He realised that now.
‘Did you have fun?’ she asked. She was in front of him, holding a cup out. He looked at it, at her hand beneath it and his taking it from her. He felt her searching his face.
‘Daddy was grumpy,’ Ruby said. ‘He didn’t let me go on any of the rides.’
‘That’s not like Daddy. Tim?’
He glanced up, meaning to meet her eyes, to challenge her; he thought he’d know for certain then. But his gaze fell short, it stuck on a vague area of her cheek – was it flushed? – and as much as he willed it not to, he felt it weaken, falter, and then wilt completely and slide down her body like a wet rag. She only had one shoe on. All the withering things he’d planned to say swilled about in his head. ‘You’re only wearing one shoe,’ he said pathetically. He turned away from her and followed Ruby upstairs.
Couples fall silent not always because they stop communicating, rather, they learn to communicate in new, subtler ways. Ruby was asleep. Tim and Beth sat unspeaking on the couch passing the remote control back and forth with increasing contempt; a physical expression of the argument they were not yet having. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Beth fidgeting, folding her legs beneath her, stretching them out again, sitting up abruptly and looking around before shrinking back into the cushions. She was missing her phone. He knew that. Normally it was an extension of her hand, but tonight it was upstairs, turned off. Silenced.
‘So,’ she said.
