The Drowning Girl

We sit, and smile at one another, sharing a slight sense of triumph in achieving this, in coming here.

‘You look fantastic with your hair like that,’ he tells me.

I make a mental note to thank Karen.

It’s good to be here—not being a mother for once, just being me. I’m always so preoccupied with Sylvie, alert to every nuance of her mood—perhaps it isn’t good for us. The room smells of roasting meat and the perfume some woman is wearing, sultry like gardenia, and there are starched linen cloths on the tables, and ornate silver cutlery weighing heavy in your hand. The wine, a Bordeaux, is like velvet. I think of my usual evening routine—scrubbing down the kitchen, slobbing around in a baggy T-shirt, eating Sylvie’s leftovers. It’s somehow a surprise that this other world still exists—a world of glamour and very expensive claret, and feeling men’s gazes on you, warm as a breath on your skin. I feel a light expectant happiness. Maybe, as Karen said, it’s a new beginning, the opening of a door.

We order guinea fowl with polenta, and talk about ourselves—inconsequential things to start with, music we like, places we’ve been. Matt seems to have travelled everywhere: India, Peru: Namibia—where he hiked down the Fish River Canyon. I have to confess that I’ve only been to Paris, on a school trip. But maybe he enjoys this discrepancy, the way it makes him seem a man of the world.

I note the things I like about him, ticking off the boxes—his clean smell of cologne and ironed linen, the fringe that falls over his face. I briefly remember when Dominic first took me to the Alouette: how he held my gaze, and I knew he could see it all in my face, so nakedly, and I knew we were there already. I push the thought away. I tell myself it doesn’t have to be an instant thing.

Matt refills my glass. I feel drunk already, high on the shiny hopefulness of the evening. The guinea fowl is delicious, with a rich, dark, subtle gravy. We eat appreciatively. A little silence falls.

‘Your daughter,’ he says then, tentatively. ‘Is the guy—I mean, is he still on the scene?’

‘I had an affair with someone,’ I tell him. Trying to sound casual. ‘A much older man. He was married.’

‘And now?’ he says delicately.

‘He’s in the past,’ I tell him. Very deliberate, definite. Tonight I mean it, I’m certain. ‘I was terribly young when I met him.’

‘Yes,’ he says. Perhaps a little too readily for my liking, as though he can easily imagine me being terribly young. ‘And anyone since then?’

I don’t know if I should pretend. Is four years a very long time to go without a man? Will he think me strange?

‘No, nobody since,’ I tell him.

‘You must be very strong,’ he says. ‘Bringing up your daughter on your own.’

‘I don’t feel strong,’ I tell him.

‘I guess it’s lonely sometimes,’ he says.

‘We manage—but, yes, it can be lonely,’ I tell him.

And I see in that moment—that, yes, I’m lonely, but maybe I don’t have to be alone. That it isn’t for ever, this sense of restriction I have, of walls that press in whichever way I turn. That it could all be different.

‘I can feel that in you, that you’ve been hurt,’ he says.

He puts his hand on mine. It feels pleasant, reassuring.

‘And you?’ I say. Deliberately vague.

‘I lived with a woman for a while,’ he tells me.

He takes his hand away from me. He moves things around on the table—the salt cellar, the bottle of wine—as if he’s playing a game on an invisible board.

‘What happened?’ I ask him.

He slides one finger around the rim of his glass.

‘I travel a lot on business,’ he says. ‘And there was this weird thing. That when I was away from her, I used to long to be with her—just yearn to be back home with her. I’d get obsessed, I couldn’t think of anything else.’

‘I can understand that,’ I tell him warmly. Knowing about obsession.

‘But when I got back I used to find she wasn’t how I’d thought. It would happen so quickly. We’d row again, and everything would annoy me. There were things she did that would get right under my skin. Stupid things. Like, she used to eat lots of apples and leave the cores on the floor…’

I make empathic noises. Resolving that from now on I will always bin my apple cores immediately.

He looks down for a moment, flicking some lint from his sleeve.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Like you can only love the person when you’re miles away from them. Like it’s just a dream you have…’

We move on to easier things—our families, where we come from. He leans across the table towards me, his gaze caressing my face. Over the white chocolate pannacotta, I feel a little shimmer of arousal.

We go out to his car. It’s a frosty evening, with spiky bright stars in an indigo sky. Our breath is white. He’s parked by the river, where swans move pale and silent against the crinkled dark of the water, and there are dinghies tied up: you can hear the gentle jostling of the water against their hulls.

‘Thank you. That was a wonderful evening,’ I tell him.

‘Yes, it was,’ he says.

At his car he doesn’t immediately take out his key. He turns towards me, putting one hand quite lightly on my shoulder.

‘Grace. I’d like to kiss you.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

He presses his hands to the sides of my face and moves my face towards him. He kisses my forehead, my eyelids, moving his lips on me very slowly, smoothing his fingers over my hair. I love his slowness; I feel a surge of excitement, the thin flame moving over my skin. I have my eyes closed; I can hear the sound of the water, and his hungry, rapid breath. When his lips meet mine I am so ready for him. He tastes of claret, he has a searching tongue. We kiss for a long time. He pulls me close: I feel his erection pressing against me.

Eventually, we move apart and get into the car. He turns on a CD—Nina Simone: the music is perfect, her voice smoky, confiding. He drives back towards my flat and neither of us says anything. Most of the time he rests one hand on my thigh. I feel fluid, open.

He turns into my road in Highfields and pulls in at the kerb.

‘You could come in,’ I tell him.

‘I’d like that very much,’ he says.

He wraps his arm around my waist as we walk towards my doorway, then slips his hand up under the blouse, sliding his fingers between the silk and my skin. I think of him moving his hands all over me, easing his fingers inside me.

I unlock the outer door. And then the sound assaults us, the moment the door swings open—a thin, shrill wailing. Matt moves a little away from me. I curse myself for inviting him in, but now it’s too late to turn back.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I tell him.

I push at the door to the living room. The crying slams into us, suddenly louder as the door swings wide. I sense Matt flinching. Well, of course he would.

Sylvie is on Karen’s lap, shuddering, gasping for breath, her face stricken. She turns her head as I go in, but she doesn’t stop sobbing. Karen has a tight, harassed look. The glittery glamour of Welford Place seems a world away now.

‘This is Matt—this is Karen. And Sylvie,’ I say, above the wailing.