Читать книгу Under an Amber Sky: A Gripping Emotional Page Turner You Won’t Be Able to Put Down - Rose Alexander - Страница 15

Chapter 5

The airport was heaving, despite the fact that it was late October and only 5 a.m. Sophie remembered that it was half-term and she couldn’t believe that after all her years of teaching she’d forgotten that it always fell at this time of year. Weaving her way through torrents of men, women, and children pulling suitcases with thunderous wheels or loaded down with bags dripping from every arm and shoulder, she fought back rising waves of panic.

The intermittent announcements rang out across the terminal building, shattering her nerves. Apart from the last few days at Anna’s, she had been living silently since Matt’s death, not listening to TV nor radio, not travelling on the tube, not going to work where there was constant noise and bustle.

The flight was uncomfortable, as she was crammed into the budget airline seat that was far too upright to make rest, let alone sleep, possible. The little girl seated next to her became fractious and had to be bribed with chocolate, which led to a predictable messy, sticky outcome. Sophie felt anaesthetized to it all, not caring about the child’s cries or her liberal distribution of smears of chocolate that constantly threatened Sophie’s own book and cardigan. What did it matter? What did anything matter?

Now that the denial and the desperate bargaining were over, she was starting to feel angry – searing, entrenched fury coursing corrosively through her veins. She was enraged with Matt for not taking care of his health and therefore bringing upon himself the aneurysm that had killed him. The reports on his death had come through and a massive, catastrophic bleed to the brain had been diagnosed as the cause.

But her wrath was tinged with guilt; Matt had been complaining of headaches and she had not given it much heed, advising him to take an ibuprofen and get an early night. It had seemed to Sophie that headaches were inevitable with the hours he worked and the stress he was under and she had tried to mitigate both with good, nutritious food and lots of love. But it hadn’t, in the end, been either of these things that he had needed. He should have been having proper medical treatment, MRI scans, and consultant’s appointments, not lamb tagine with couscous or something healthy with aubergine from Deliciously Ella and so, as well as her anger at him, she was incandescent at herself. She could have averted this tragedy but she hadn’t and now it was too late.

Eventually, after what seemed like days of travelling rather than hours, Sophie arrived in the village that was to be her home, and found that she could only look around and think that Matt would have loved it, too; that they should have been embarking on this new adventure together, not just her, alone, pretending she could cope. On entering the house, she found it was even stiller and more silent than when she had first seen it in the summer, its contents fossilized by age and neglect.

She meandered from room to room, picking up objects that lay on tables or shelves, and putting them back down again. Everything was covered in dust, layers of it, so thick it turned her fingers grey and made them feel gritty and sticky to the touch, setting her teeth on edge like the scratch of fingers on a blackboard. She could have been a decaying Miss Havisham, moving among the sordid remnants of her misery. It occurred to Sophie that she must be the only person she’d ever met who’d bought a house on one viewing. Her impulsion, without Matt to temper it, had really landed her in it this time.

In each hushed chamber, the shutters were closed and barred, letting in only the smallest chinks of light. She found her breath coming in great heaving sighs. Her emotions had been oscillating so wildly since Matt’s death that she had almost got used to going from normality to despair to agony in the space of a few minutes and on an hourly basis. But now the feeling of wanting him hit her so hard that she physically could not stand. She sank down onto one of the heavy, dark pieces of furniture, her head in her hands. She had underestimated what a wreck the house was, how much work would be needed to make it properly habitable.

The three rooms Mileva had used were more or less all right but everything else was in rack and ruin: filthy, floorboards soft and rotten from some previous roof leak, and riddled with woodworm. Bits of lino covered the worst areas but on her first journey up the stairs with her heavy suitcases she put her foot straight through one tread and it was clear that they all needed replacing. How could she do this without Matt? She couldn’t even deal with the washing machine filter.

She went to the window and opened it, taking deep, gulping mouthfuls of fresh air. It was this view that had captivated her in the summer, that had seemed to break the cycle of her despair, her inability to look after herself, her refusal to leave her flat. But the sunshine was pale and watery now, with none of the brilliance it had had in August. Sophie was not sorry; she had no use for brightness, for the light that exposed her so cruelly to all that she had lost.

A noise from outside alerted her to the fact that one of her neighbours was out and about. It was followed by a firm rapping at the front door. She started, feeling a cold flush of fear run through her. Quickly, she drew closed the wooden shutters, and the dust-smeared window, and bolted them firm. She could not face anyone, could not talk to anyone, did not want to have to try to engage with a single other human being. Contact frightened her just now.

Momentarily paralysed, she rested her forehead against the grimy windowpane, struggling to regain control. Then she rallied, took a deep breath, and forced herself onwards. She went to the rudimentary kitchen to make coffee, hoping the sharp, strong hit of caffeine would bolster up her heart and her will.

There was no kettle, but she found an old, battered saucepan and a chipped china mug with Crna Gora written on it. She went to the sink to fill the pan. The tap spouted with a pressure never known to Thames Water, spraying malevolently in all directions, instantly drenching her top and the waistband of her jeans.

She was soaked, and freezing. There was winter in the air and in the temperature, a winter she would face alone in this huge old stone house with no central heating – and she had absolutely no idea why she had done this and what had brought her here. Except the yearning to be free, to start over, to be that long-gone sixteen-year-old who had not yet met the love of her life, married him, and lost him, much too young and much too soon.

Shivering uncontrollably, Sophie waited for the pan to boil painstakingly slowly. She took her overfilled mug, spilling a trail of coffee along the bare-boarded corridor as she went, and made her way to the dilapidated door into the garden. Furtively glancing around her, checking for signs of anyone about, she slipped up the snaking path that led through the unkempt grass and weeds to the top terrace. Up there, she was safe from encounters with anyone.

A couple of rusted old iron chairs stood beneath a huge, sprawling pomegranate tree – who had put them there, and when, she had no idea – and beside them, an old, rotting stump made the perfect table. She sat down and looked towards the water. Though the tourist season was well and truly over, there were still a couple of boats on the water, white triangles of sails against an expanse of blue. Gradually, the small amount of warmth still remaining in the sun’s rays countered Sophie’s chill and dried her clothes.

As she grew more comfortable, Sophie began to retrace in her head the events of that summer that had brought her to be here now. It still did not feel real, was like a dream or a life that was happening to someone else. She could hardly fathom how any of it had come about, or how it would all end. She felt like someone after the apocalypse, just surviving, trying to get by, not contemplating the future because the future was too dreadful to behold.

That awful day when she had run back into the hospital, heart heaving out of her chest, bile rising in her throat and tears streaming down her cheeks, of course she had not found Matt alive and well. He had been dead, cold. She had been surprised, on viewing his body, how though it resembled him and had all of his facial features – his brown hair and hazel eyes and brown, slanting eyebrows – it had absolutely not been him. Matt had not been there, just the body of Matt, a vessel that he had used throughout his time on earth and had now cast aside, no longer needing it.

Instead, Matt was everywhere, all around her, beside her, in front and behind her. And he was in her mind and her body. Sophie had known then that, though he had gone, he would always be with her. It’s just that that wasn’t enough. She wanted him, the real him, with his caution and introspection that countered her impulsiveness, with his practical hands that could fix and mend and soothe and protect, with his searing intellect and inability to suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. She wanted him, needed him, but couldn’t have him.

Sophie stayed outside for a long time, gazing at the mountains, watching as the sun slid away behind them, the last rays melting from the highest peaks, leaving behind the heavy dusk. Reluctantly, chilled again to the bone, she got up and went back to the house. Inside, she opened the biggest of her two suitcases – she had paid for extra baggage – and pulled out first a warm jumper and next the clean, fresh white bed linen she had carefully packed.

She made up the old bed with the creaking springs and huge, dark, wooden head and end boards, placing her much-loved pure wool blanket, a gift from Matt, on top. Looking at it she could tell that it wasn’t going to be nearly enough. The nippy evening air was creeping in through the walls and it was getting steadily colder.

She got her phone out of her bag and began to make a list in the notes. She had hired a car for a week so that she could drive around and buy all the essentials that she would need in her new home, and she put an extra warm duvet, kettle, and toaster at the top of the list. Glancing around her, she added dustpan and brush, broom, mop, cleaning liquids, and large bucket.

She was hungry and thought about going to the mini-market along the bay and buying some food but she couldn’t be bothered. The konoba right next door was closed for the winter already; it wouldn’t reopen until April at the earliest. She had half a bag of cashew nuts in the bottom of her handbag and she nibbled half-heartedly on those in lieu of a proper meal.

She had not slept well for days, weeks, and the flight had been so disgustingly early that she decided to go to bed, even though it was only 7.30. In preparation, she got out her torch, pleased with herself for remembering such an essential. There was working electricity in these rooms that Mileva had used on the first floor but no bedside lights.

She laughed to herself sarcastically at the thought. Did she think she was staying in some luxury hotel as she would have been with Matt? No, those days were long gone. She wasn’t exactly poor, but she needed to watch her money. The good thing was that here, apart from what would have to go on the house, there wasn’t much to spend one’s money on.

She placed her book on the pillow beside the torch; she would read herself to sleep. She changed into her pyjamas and went to the kitchen sink – the only tap – to clean her teeth. Turning it on, forgetting the force of the water, she soaked herself again. Now she could not stop the tears coming. She took off the wet garments and got under the sheets shivering, then, realizing this was not going to work, got back up and dressed fully: leggings, long-sleeved T-shirt, polo neck jumper. She longed for Matt’s warm body, for his embrace, for his strong caress on her softness.

She needed him so badly, needed Matt and not Matt’s ghost.

It was another bad night’s sleep. Sophie was spooked by noises on the stairs, voices in the street that seemed to be loitering outside her windows, strange bangings and thumpings that she could not figure out the origin of. She had spent so few nights alone since her marriage to Matt ten years before. In the darkness, the anger coursed through her veins anew. How could he? How could he have left her; how dare he?

And then it dissipated again, immediately, in a flood of repentance for her evil thoughts, which were even more insidious than the gushing water of the broken washing machine or the overenthusiastic tap. It couldn’t be true, that he would never lie beside her again, would never hold her in his arms or make love to her, would never kiss her neck and forehead and lips as he had done so many, many times over all the years. Surely it couldn’t be true.

When she did finally sleep, as the cold light of dawn was creeping around the sides of the wooden shutters and the spectres of the night seemed finally to be vanquished, she dreamt of Matt. He was walking towards her across the lawn at her parents’ house, laughing, unable to believe that she had really thought him to be dead, asking her how she could ever have conceived of the idea that he would leave her.

She felt so relieved, even as she slumbered she could feel the tension and anxiety pour out of her, could hear herself sighing at the release of all the trauma she had been holding tight inside. Matt wasn’t dead; of course he wasn’t. In the dream, a new worry took hold – how was she going to explain away her resignation from work? The funeral? People would think she was a terrible fraud; how could she have made such a mistake as to think her husband had died?

She woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed, her hair hanging in lumpy strands across her face. She reached out across the bed, wanting to touch Matt to make sure he was really there. The covers were flat and cold. She flung herself forward, reaching out with her hands, feeling all around for his warm, muscular body. Nothing. Her eyes had adjusted to the light now. There was no one beside her. Apart from her, the bed was completely empty. The dream was a cruel illusion.

Matt’s absence, his death, was the cold, hard reality.