“Not possible, Willa. And so to Lesson Two.” My father gave Jamie a slow, droll smile. “Pick an all-male club.”
Jamie laughed, not meeting my eye.
“And golf tomorrow, okay? I need you on top form. Bit of an early start.”
***
That turned out to be the pattern of every weekend. By November, things with Jamie felt strained, and a quiet distance hung between us like mist. Always so engaging and personable around my father, Jamie now seemed guarded around me, tight-lipped and reserved. Our sex life dried up. I forgave him. I forgave him everything. The cool way he spoke to me, his frequent trips away, the lack of physical touch. It was always going to be a little strange living with my parents, I told myself. We would just need to let things rumble along until we could move into the flat. Finally, December rolled in. We could be in by Christmas. Things would be different then, better, perhaps. In the meantime, we were very polite to each other: careful, solicitous, detached.
Mostly anyway. The night he broke my pitcher, the one that Chris had given me so long ago at his pottery, we openly fought. He didn’t even tell me, didn’t even say there’d been an accident. He just threw my beautiful sea-green jug away, leaving me to find it later, discarded in the bathroom bin.
It was late at night when I found it. I’d been reading, sitting up in bed, when Jamie, lying next to me, looked up from his phone. He gave me a quick glance, then scratched the back of his head.
“Okay, so my boss wants me in SA next week.”
“Why don’t we both go?” I said. It would be good for us to be away together. “I’ve got the time.”
He looked back at his phone. “It’s just work. You’ll be bored.”
“I won’t be bored,” I said. “How could I be bored? I’ll just stay on the reserve all day, watching the animals.”
Jamie paused. He didn’t look up. Then he said, “Actually, you can’t stay at the reserve.”
He wasn’t meeting my eye. Suspicion leaped through my brain like a feral cat, wild-eyed and tight-limbed.
“Why not? What’s going on?”
Jamie put down his phone. “Can you just not?”
“Not what?”
“Ask all these questions. It’s complicated, all right?”
“How?” I held his eyes. I crossed my arms and said nothing.
“Fine. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. But you won’t like it.”
I waited.
Eventually Jamie said, “Marc—the reserve’s manager—is Melissa’s brother. That’s how Melissa and I first met.”
I let the implications sink in. “So what?” I said. “Does that mean, when you’re in South Africa, you see Melissa?”
“It’s not my fault if she shows up.”
“But you told me you didn’t have any contact.”
“No. I didn’t. I never said that. You just assumed that was the case.”
“Of course I bloody well assumed that. She’s your sodding ex-wife.”
“I don’t believe this. You don’t actually trust me, do you?”
Astonished, I said, “Are you making this about me?”
“It’s pretty clear you don’t like that I was married before.”
“It is?”
“Or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
I threw myself on my side, turning my back to him.
“Sweetheart,” he said, the tone of his voice now cajoling. He kissed the back of my neck, between the blades of my shoulders. “Don’t get paranoid on me, okay? Seriously, the last thing I need is a relationship with another uncontrollable child.” He paused, then added, “Obviously I didn’t mean uncontrollable. I meant out of control.”
I lay in silence, furious, wounded.
“Come here,” he said. He reached out a hand and jabbed it into the flesh just above my hip, his fingers tickling hard.
“No.” I snatched up his hand and held it by the wrist, looking him in the eyes. “Do not tickle me. Just don’t. Not ever.”
“Jesus,” he said. “You can be so bloody uptight.”
Uptight?
“Screw you, Jamie,” I said. I leaped out of bed and stalked into the bathroom. That’s when I found it, my pitcher, in the bin, in pieces. I picked out two large shards and charged back into the bedroom, feeling rage and fury move through me so fast I thought I might stab him with them.
“Jamie,” I said, “what happened to my jug?”