Before Christmas, she got a couple of the local estate agents to do a market appraisal on the house. The letters they sent are sitting in her ignored pile of mail. The valuations suggest that the proceeds would be enough to cover the debt with some left over; maybe, if she’s lucky, to buy one of the modern two-bed flats they’re putting up in Thirsk. That’s if the house manages to sell. For now she has left it as a last resort.
The only hope for her is to write something brilliant, something that will sell worldwide, garner merchandising deals that will clear the debt and keep her going while she sorts her life out. It’s a hope that feels fainter every day, but it drives her back into the workshop and forces her to get her pens out. She has to keep going. There is no other option.
Next morning, Tuesday, Sarah has a meeting with the customer adviser at the bank. They have been asking her for a meeting and she has been putting it off for weeks, keeping them at bay by paying in small amounts when she can – money she gets from Sophie for baking cakes and keeping quiet about it; royalties.
She is there early, as if that might make it better. The woman who calls her in is possibly the same age as Kitty, maybe younger.
‘We really want to do everything we can to help,’ she says. ‘But the situation is getting more serious. We need to look at ways in which you can pay off at least some of the debt, because otherwise it’s just going to keep growing.’
Sarah’s smile is hurting her cheeks by the time she comes out of the bank. She has a bag full of leaflets about debt consolidation and a number for the Citizens Advice in Thirsk. The woman wanted her to sign up for something there and then, of course, but she thinks she has managed to put her off for a little while thanks to the news that Sarah now has a regular income from a tenant.
For a moment she stands on the pavement, taking deep lungfuls of air. Above the noise of the traffic she can hear music.
Will is standing in the doorway of the wholefood shop that closed down at Christmas, playing his guitar. He is singing too, but she cannot quite make out the song. His guitar case is at his feet, and as she crosses the road towards him she can see coins in it. A bit of silver, some coppers. A man passing him gives the guitar case a soft kick, making the coins jump, and offers some comment.
Will does not look at him.
She puts her hand into her pocket and finds the pound coin she uses for supermarket trolleys, puts it down into his case. He reaches the end of the song and strums a final chord.
‘Thought it was you,’ she says. ‘How are you?’
He is pale under his beard, and his eyes look tired, but he still manages a smile for her. Sarah wonders where he has been sleeping.
‘Not bad,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye the other day. Felt a bit awkward, like.’
‘That’s okay. Have you got time for a cuppa? I was just going to get one.’
She wasn’t, of course; she had been planning to head straight home again. But she can’t get over the thought that Will has been sleeping rough somewhere.
‘That’d be great, thanks.’
She waits while he packs his guitar away and they go into Della’s, a tea room that caters for the tourists for most of the year and is grateful for any winter custom. The tables are tiny, crammed in, and today there are only three other customers. Sarah asks him if he wants a cooked breakfast, and he says he has already eaten, which she assumes is not true. She goes to the counter and orders a pot of tea for two and teacakes, and then sits opposite Will in the window.
‘I really fancied a teacake,’ she says; ‘you’ll have one with me, won’t you? I’ll feel guilty eating on my own.’
‘Thanks, yeah,’ he says. ‘The smell’s made me hungry now we’re in here.’
He lifts his teacup with both hands. Sarah can’t be sure, but it looks as though his hands are shaking.
‘I spoke to Louis,’ he says, out of nowhere.
‘Oh?’
‘Aye, I rang him,’ Will says.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Yeah, yeah, he’s okay. Seems like he’s doing quite well for himself. He was telling me he’s got a new contract, some big hotel near Pickering.’
‘Who would have thought that salad leaves could turn out to be so profitable, eh?’
Will laughs, and it lights up his face. ‘I know! I think he’s growing other stuff now, too, not just the leaves.’
Her son, the horticulturist. Louis had dropped out of university after a year that had been ruined by Jim’s accident, six months of torture with Jim in hospital in a coma, then his death. Louis had come back to her angry and traumatised, monosyllabic. Eventually he had been offered the tenancy of a patch of land with some polytunnels already in place, and had started growing vegetables for something to do.
‘But he’s well?’ Did he ask after me? she wants to ask, as though he’s an ex or something.
‘Aye. Seems just the same. Quieter, I guess. Didn’t say that much.’
Sarah drinks her tea to give herself time to think.
‘I’d like to call him,’ she says, ‘but he doesn’t answer when I do ring. I tried going to his flat a few times but he was never there.’
Will lays a hand over hers, gives it a little squeeze. ‘He’ll come round. He just needs a bit of time.’
‘It’s been years!’
The teacakes arrive, which gives her a moment to compose herself.
‘So,’ she says, watching Will tucking into his. He looks hungry, and thin. ‘Where have you been staying?’
‘I found a B&B,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. It’s just for a few days.’
‘Have you spoken to Sophie?’
An odd little smile plays across his lips. ‘Maybe,’ he says, chewing.
‘Did you meet her husband at the pub? George, his name is,’ Sarah says. Why did she say that? It feels like a cruelty.
‘Yeah, I didn’t talk to him, though. He’s an MP or something? What’s he like?’
Sarah wants to say that he’s a pompous git who doesn’t always treat Sophie well, that he neglects her and cheats on her, but what she actually says is, ‘He’s okay. He’s a good cook.’
That makes Will laugh. He has finished his teacake, wipes his mouth on the napkin.
‘You want that other half? I can’t manage it,’ Sarah says, pushing her plate towards him.
‘Only if you’re sure,’ he says, but he’s already picked it up. ‘Thanks.’
She watches him eat, thinking of Louis. Wondering if Louis skips meals, if he’s warm enough in his flat.
‘I really like her,’ he says, and she hears it again. Something in his voice. ‘She’s…’
He hesitates, and Sarah wonders what it is he wants to say, waits. But he doesn’t finish.
‘She’s my best friend,’ Sarah says decisively. It sounds like a warning.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I care about her. And you, of course.’ He has finished the second teacake, and the teapot is empty.
Aiden opens the door of the cottage.
‘Well, this is an unexpected surprise. Come in.’
Now she’s here she feels silly. All the way home, thinking about the bank, and Will and Sophie, she has been holding on to the thought that she can go home and see Aiden. She needs him, she thinks. Needs the distraction.
They are standing in the hallway and she looks across to the open door of the bedroom.
‘I needed to see you,’ she says.
Aiden gives her a slow smile.
But he gets the message, quicker than some men would. Perhaps women come on to him all the time. She doesn’t need to spell it out, which is a relief, because what can she say? I need you to take my mind off things?
He walks towards her purposefully and eases her gently backwards until her back is against the wall. He’s close and yet still he’s looking right at her, right into her soul. She thinks he can see everything; can see right through her. Everything she is ashamed of, every last mistake. Every fantasy.
She waits for him to kiss her but he doesn’t move. He’s still watching.
Sarah thinks he wants her to say something, to ask for it maybe, to give him permission. She is trying to find the right words because his gaze is intense, curious, analytical. The frustration of it is clutching at her inside, and then, just a second before he kisses her, she sees what it really is.
He is keeping himself under control – right before he lets go.
In the bedroom he helps her undress, then strips off his clothes while she waits for him. The bed is cold and it takes her a moment to relax again. His hands are warm against her skin, and for now he is just holding her. His fingers on her shoulder, and then his lips following them, planting a kiss on her bare skin.
She feels him, hard, against her thigh. She grips him tightly, and he responds with a gasp against her mouth. He moves his fingers across her hip, across her belly, before sliding between her legs. He knows what he is doing, she thinks. There is something deft, expert, confident about the way he does it. She does not need to concentrate or fantasise in order to build her arousal. He is doing it all for her. She gives in, lets him, while he kisses her. For a moment she opens her eyes and is alarmed to see how he is focused on her face, watching her, gauging her reaction to what he’s doing. She closes her eyes again quickly.
‘Don’t think,’ he says. ‘Just relax. Let me do it.’
‘Oh…’
After a while he says, ‘I want to see you come.’
And then, almost unexpectedly, she does.
It feels like belonging. That she is able to visit him in this place that was hers and is now his, to walk in here and ask for this. He is familiar and yet different. Just as she was all those years ago, she is attracted to him in a way that is almost visceral. Being with him feels as if she has come full circle, come home.
‘Hey,’ he says, softly. ‘Where did you go, just then?’
He has stopped moving against her and his hand is on her face, stroking one finger down her cheek.
‘I was just thinking about… back then. You know.’
Something clouds his face. ‘I think about it all the time.’ His finger traces a line down her cheek, her hairline, down to where it meets her ear. ‘I got everything so wrong.’
‘No,’ she says softly. ‘You didn’t. You really didn’t – I did. And then you just disappeared…’
‘I hated myself for years because of that. I should have been here. If not before, then definitely when he had the accident. That must have been… I can’t even imagine.’
‘It was all a bit of a blur, to be honest,’ she says.
‘What happened? Can you talk about it?’
Sarah thinks: she has been asked this so many times that it has become an anecdote, and just for once she wants to remember it properly.
‘We were at a party, for New Year. I was supposed to be driving, but when it was time to go I wasn’t feeling well – I had a rotten cold – and he said he’d only had a couple, it would be fine. It was only a couple of miles. He was going too fast, and the road was icy; the car skidded and hit the wall at the bottom of the hill. He hit his head. That was all.’
‘You weren’t hurt?’
‘Just bruises.’
He strokes the side of her face, tenderly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I thought he’d be fine. I mean, he’d cut his head, I could see that, but you know, when there’s no broken bones, you sort of expect…’
‘He never came round?’
‘No. It took six months, lots of ups and downs, and then he got pneumonia.’
‘How did you manage? With the kids?’
‘Kitty was amazing, considering how young she was. She was just so sensible and brave. Louis – he took it really badly. I always felt that he blamed me, because I was supposed to be driving. And he was right – it was my fault. I shouldn’t have let Jim drive.’
‘Sarah, it was an accident.’
She smiles. ‘I know. It took a long time, but I’ve stopped hating myself. Not sure about Louis, though.’
‘I should have come back. Jim –’ he says, and then stops himself.
‘Jim what?’
‘He’d told me I should stay away. But, once he was gone, I should have come back.’
Sarah looks at him, her heart thumping. She knows this already. In fact, she knows all about it, because she found the evidence in Jim’s papers when she was clearing out his desk. But she wants to hear him say it. She wants to hear his side.
‘I know,’ she says.
‘He told you?’
What Jim had told her, of course, was something quite different. He ran, Jim said. He took off, the cowardly bastard. He couldn’t face the fact that he’d dumped you… and he should have treated you better than that, and now he’s just fucked off and left us both behind.
And the rest. The litany of Aiden’s failures. Bastard left us both behind. My best mate! I thought he was worth more than that.
All of it lies, of course. Aiden hadn’t run away from anything, had he? They hadn’t been in a relationship. He’d had no responsibility towards her whatsoever. Just because her feelings ran much deeper than his, why should she expect him to stay?
He is gazing at her now and she doesn’t want this moment to end, doesn’t want to spoil it, this intimacy, this connection. She’s waited so long for it, longed for it, to be honest about things now can’t possibly help. And yet – is it going to remain hanging between them forever?
‘He paid you,’ she says. ‘Didn’t he?’
And, from the look in his eyes, she instantly knows that it’s true.
‘Yes,’ he says.
He doesn’t apologise, and she doesn’t want him to. It doesn’t matter now, anyway, does it? At the time – finding the scrap of paper in Jim’s things when she had been clearing through it all – she hadn’t even been angry about it. Jim was lying unconscious in the hospital; it was just another layer of hurt and betrayal to add to all the other ones. Uncovering all the lies, bit by bit.
‘How did you find out?’ he asks.
‘I found the contract,’ she says. ‘Or whatever it was. Fairly sure it wouldn’t have been legally binding if you were to have challenged it in a court of law.’
She thinks he is going to laugh but he doesn’t. ‘I can’t believe he kept it,’ is all he says.
So the friendship that had been so strong in their years at university had fractured at the end of it; many friendships did. Aiden went off overseas, Jim got a job, Sarah got a job; life started to fall into place. When Aiden didn’t come back, Sarah didn’t think of it as anything personal. Not for years. Not until she found that stupid bit of paper.
Even the writing was wobbly, although, other than Aiden’s scrawled signature, it was still unmistakably Jim’s. The paper – the back of a flyer for a band performing in the Union Bar in June 1990 – was crinkled, stained with brown circles from the beer glasses.
I, Aiden Joseph Beck, do solemnly promise to fuck off somewhere and not come back ever and to leave Sarah and Jim in peace.
Signed: A. J. Beck
I, James Carpenter, hereby promise to give Aiden Beck the sum of two thousand pounds to fuck off somewhere and not come back.
Signed: Jim Carpenter
‘You know, if I’d thought for one minute that I could have given you a decent life, I would have told him what to do with his money.’
Sarah laughs. ‘No, you wouldn’t. You were desperate to go off and see the world. You didn’t want a relationship with me at all, Aiden, don’t pretend now that you did.’
‘Is that really what you thought?’
‘Of course. You were a complete hedonist. You didn’t want to commit to anything. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing; I used to envy you. How free you were.’
He is frowning and for a moment she wonders if she has got everything completely wrong, after all.
‘I wanted to ask you to come with me, but you’d already decided. I could see i
t. It wasn’t about the money, it was about not hurting you any more.’
‘If it wasn’t about the money, why did you take it?’
‘I spent some of it on the air fare to Thailand,’ he says. ‘Then I gave a chunk to an orphanage in Phang Nga.’
She almost doesn’t believe him, but it doesn’t even matter. It’s the sort of thing Aiden might do. And in a way she likes the fact that he has stayed away all this time, because her life was good and she hasn’t been unhappy through any of it, except for the last three and a half years. And even then, if he had come back after Jim’s accident, would she have been ready for all this? Probably not.
But perhaps she is ready now. Kitty and Louis don’t really need her any more. Nobody needs her. She is free to do whatever she chooses with her life, and at this moment, this precise moment, she is ready to start again, Aiden is here.
He is kissing her again and brave, grown-up Sarah wants him, badly – not just his fingers and his mouth, skilled as they are, but his hard body and his incredible, complicated mind; everything he has, everything he is. She reaches for one of the condoms he has helpfully left on the bedside table, pleased at her own boldness. When she is done, she straddles him and he smiles, watches her as she impales herself, slowly. She likes the way he looks at her.
She thinks she likes being watched.
I can tell she likes being watched.
She wants an audience, now she’s relaxed, now she has finally let go of all the body issues and whatever else it is – the history, the experiences with other people. She’s putting on a show for me and that’s enough to get me aroused enough to finish, so great and thank you Sarah Carpenter.
One of many I’ve been watching.
One of many I’m playing with.
Aiden
There is a moment when Sarah falls asleep in your arms. You watch her as she drifts off.
The first time you saw Sarah Lewis was when Jim Carpenter, who had the room next door to yours in the hall of residence and who from day one had been technically your best friend, demanded you go to the second floor of the main library to check her out.