Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered - Rosie Thomas - Страница 30

The February rain fell like a thin, cold veil. Julia stepped outside reluctantly with a group of other homeward-bound typists who giggled and turned up their collars and skittered away towards the bus-stop. The gutters were grey, pock-marked lakes and the traffic ploughed through them to send plumes of water over the crowded pavement. The rain immediately pasted Julia’s fringe flat to her forehead and poked intrusively into her face. She had no umbrella and she turned sharply away from the streaming, dun-coloured mess of Oxford Street and began the walk home.

The little streets along her route were already taking on the closed-up, sullen air of winter nights. As she passed the corner greengrocer’s where she sometimes bought vegetables the green wooden shutters rolled down with a clatter. The shopkeeper ducked out to lock them and the rain made dark spots on the shoulder of his overalls. He rushed back into the shop without glancing at Julia. Her shoes were filling with water and she walked faster, trying to dodge the biggest puddles.

The shop on the next corner was still open, and in the steamy neon brightness inside she bought milk and bread and cheese, and felt her spirits lifting. She thought of reaching home and putting on dry clothes, making a pot of tea and taking a cup in to Jessie. Perhaps Felix would be home, and she would lean against the kitchen cupboard to watch him prepare a meal. Julia came out with her bag of shopping and saw that the off-licence opposite was just opening for the evening. It seemed to contradict the soaking, shrinking mood of the night so positively that she marched across and bought a bottle of red wine for Felix. She chose at random from the shelves and paid over her shillings cheerfully. She hurried the length of the last streets and into the square, humming to defy the cold and the rain.

She thought of Josh as she passed under the dripping trees, but all her longings were fixed on being warm and dry and the yearning slipped away again.

On the dingy stairs she met the last office-worker on the way out. She was an anxious-looking middle-aged woman, always the last to go. Julia brushed past her, nodding, and heard her locking doors on her way down.

The black door of the flat loomed on the lauding above her. With a grateful rush she took the last stairs two at a time and reached it, panting, raindrops rolling from her hair and coat and spattering unseen on the dusty floor.

Julia unlocked the door and pushed it open.

It was dark and quiet inside. Jessie didn’t usually sleep in the early evening. Julia wasn’t afraid of disturbing her.

She called out, ‘I’m home. Hello, I’m home.’

Jessie’s room was in darkness, and the street light from the square seeped into a dull, orange glow on the cracked ceiling. As she turned in the doorway Julia heard water running. Jessie was in the bathroom. A line of light showed under the door. Julia went into the kitchen and unpacked her shopping, then crossed to her own room and stripped off her wet clothes. She turned on the electric fire and warmed her feet, then leaned forward to rub her hair dry. It steamed as she combed her fingers through it, and the brittle heat from the red bar made her cheeks smart. When she was warm all through Julia pulled on slacks and a jumper, and stuck her feet into her slippers.

The flat was still quiet except for the sound of running water.

She had almost reached the kitchen when it struck her that it had been running for a long time.

If Jessie was taking a bath, it would be full by now. Julia turned back and put her hand out to the bathroom door. She felt the grainy wood of the panels under her fingertips. The bathwater was running, but it had a peculiar double resonance. It took Julia a second to realise that it was splashing, too. Spilling over the side of something.

‘Jessie?’

The water noise seemed to have grown louder. It drowned her voice.

‘Jessie, are you all right?’

Julia thumped on the door. There was no answer, except the water.

‘Jessie.’

Julia went on shouting, but her shoulder was already against the door. Inside her head she could see the other side of it. The door was white-painted, Felix must have done that. There was a little chrome-plated bolt screwed to it. Only four tiny screws holding it in place. Nothing substantial. The door creaked under her weight, protesting, but the lock didn’t give. Why had Jessie locked it, alone in the flat? Julia rattled the knob, turning it to and fro. Then she looked down. She saw the dark finger run out beneath the door, then spread into a fist-shape. The water was reaching out to her. The sight of it gave her terrified strength. She leaned away from the door and then flung all her weight against it. There was a shudder as the screws were torn out of the wooden frame and the door collapsed inwards. Julia fell into the bathroom where the water was running from the taps, spilling over the side of the bath and washing over the floor.

Jessie was in the bath. Julia saw mountainous, veined flesh and floating sparse grey hair. Her face was grey and purple, and it was under the moving skin of water. The noise of the water was deafening, like a terrible waterfall, thundering in the wet white space.

Julia had stumbled backwards, a single step. Her eyes had clenched themselves shut and her knuckles were crammed against her teeth, stifling a scream. It was no more than a second before she opened her eyes again and Jessie was still lying there, under the water, her hair moving tranquilly around her head like seaweed fronds.

Julia began to move at last through the waves of shock. She stooped to the taps and turned them off. Water still slopped over the side of the bath, soaking her legs. She plunged her arms into the bath, locking her hands behind Jessie’s shoulders, straining to lift her up. Julia grunted and her feet slid on the slippery floor. She could hear herself whispering, ‘Come on, Jessie. Sit up, Jessie. Sit up, please, won’t you?’

The huge weight shifted a little with her efforts and the bath plug on its chain was wrenched out of the plughole. The water gurgled and drained quickly away, and Jessie was left supported in Julia’s arms. Julia heaved at her, imagining that she would lift her out of the bath and lay her on the floor so that she could tend to her. But Jessie’s wet skin only sucked against hers, and the weight of her didn’t move again.

Gasping and sobbing with fear and panic and exertion, Julia let her fall backwards again against the slope of the bath. Jessie’s face turned upwards with tendrils of hair stuck to her cheeks. Her mouth hung open a little, like a yawn.

Without looking into the eyes Julia understood that she was dead.

She knelt down helplessly in the wet and groped for Jessie’s hand. Her skin already felt cold, and Julia’s tears that ran down her face and on to Jessie’s seemed hot enough to burn.

‘Oh, Jessie. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

She knelt there, holding the cold hand and crying.

After what seemed like a long time, Julia replaced Jessie’s hand by her side and stood up stiffly.

‘I’ll have to go for some help,’ she whispered.

She turned then, and ran. The movement thawed her and made her heart thump in her chest and she cursed her own slowness, even though she was dully certain that Jessie was dead and nothing or no one could help her however fast she ran.

The floors of offices were silent, and their telephones were securely locked behind unyielding doors. Julia ran out into the rain again, her sodden clothes flapping as she ran. There were people in the square but she ran past them unseeing. She reached the scarlet rectangle of the telephone kiosk on the corner, and listened to the quiet burr of the dialling tone.

When she had given the details and she knew that the ambulance was coming, she let her head fall sideways and rest against the streaming glass. There was a pain in her chest and her breath was ragged and her legs felt as if they would dissolve beneath her.

So much running and shouting and struggling, and yet Jessie was dead. As the first dim understanding of finality touched her, Julia thought of Felix. She didn’t want him to come in and find his mother lying like that in the bath, in all her huge and painful vulnerability. Julia was running again, back across the square and up the dark, gaping flights of empty stairs. There was no one there, still, except Jessie.

Julia gathered up towels and brought them in a heap to the side of the bath. She folded one and put it behind the wet, heavy head like a pillow. She draped the others over Jessie’s body, tucking them in like a mother with a child. The tears ran down her face but she went on working without stopping to wipe them away.

Jessie’s face wasn’t like Jessie now, but Julia left it uncovered. She couldn’t hide her as though she wasn’t a part of the world any longer.

When the job was done Julia sat down to wait. She was wet to the skin and shivering, but she felt that she couldn’t leave Jessie alone, not now. She thought about the boy with a bunch of marigolds who had come looking for Jessie on a hot summer’s afternoon.

At last the doorbell rang. She stood up stiffly and went to open the door to help that was much too late. The men came up the stairs in their uniforms and Julia showed them where Jessie was lying. They bent over her and Julia turned away. She went and stood in the kitchen, still in her wet clothes, looking out at Felix’s earthenware flowerpots in the angle of the roof. He would be home soon. Julia closed her eyes and clenched her fists, thinking about him, and then she heard his light, quick footsteps on the stairs.

She met him at the door, and saw his face. ‘The ambulance?’ he asked.

Julia put out her hands and he gripped her arms, frowning at the clammy coldness of her sleeves.

‘It’s Jessie,’ she said. He was already looking past her, into the darkness of Jessie’s room. ‘Felix. She’s dead.’

There was nothing to soften that. No time for it, no words that could change anything. Julia wanted to put her arms round him, to comfort him somehow from her own meagre stock of comfort, but he put her gently aside.

The ambulance men stood awkwardly in the bathroom doorway. Felix walked past them, going in to his mother, and shut the door behind him.

Jessie had died of a heart attack in the bath. Her weight and the bottles of vodka she had come to depend on had contributed to it, of course. The doctor explained carefully to Julia and Felix when he came to sign the death certificate. They listened, without looking at each other.

Felix made the funeral arrangements. Jessie had left no instructions but she had once said to Felix, only half joking, ‘Make sure there’s a party when I go. All the old faces, if there are any left by then.’

They buried Jessie in a bleak, windswept north London cemetery. A little group of people, Mr Mogridge and a handful of others like him, came to the funeral. Mr French, the property developer, turned up and watched Felix covertly across the heap of raw earth. Felix’s face was as expressionless as if it was carved out of wood. Mattie arrived just before the brief ceremony began. John Douglas had given her one day off.

‘Do your friends and relatives die regularly?’ he had asked her.

‘I’m not asking for sympathy because Jessie’s dead,’ Mattie said quietly. It occurred to her at that moment that she was making a mistake in wanting, or needing, to love John Douglas. ‘I’m just telling you that I’m going to her funeral, whether you say I can or not.’

He had looked ashamed, just for a moment. ‘We need you here, that’s all,’ he mumbled. Mattie stood at the graveside, the black fur of her coat collar blowing around her face, holding Julia’s hand tightly.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here,’ she whispered.

‘What could you have done?’

‘Is Felix all right?’

They didn’t look at him.

‘I don’t know.’

The vicar arrived at the graveside, the wind whipping his surplice. The little knot of people bent their heads.

Afterwards they went back to the square, leaving the mound of earth in the graveyard fluttering with wet flower petals. More people came to the flat to remember Jessie. Felix had made some food and bought whisky, and Julia laid out plates and glasses in Jessie’s room. The photographs and mementoes crowding the walls already looked faded, as though they belonged to a sad past, although Julia had tidied and polished them.

It was a subdued gathering. They missed Jessie’s talk, and her lewd laugh. Too many of them were remembering the other party, the unexpected, joyous one that Mattie and Julia had given for her. Jessie had sung the old favourites, and ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’. No one tried to sing tonight, even though Freddie Bishop was sitting in the corner with his mouth-organ in the pocket of his black coat.

It was very early when people began to leave, in twos and threes, gravely shaking Felix’s hand at the door.

At last it was time for Mattie to go and catch the last train north. She hugged them both, wordlessly, and they let her go.

Alone in the flat, Felix and Julia went round picking up empty glasses and clearing dirty plates. They moved past each other considerately, in almost complete silence, as they had been doing ever since Jessie died. It was as if they didn’t know what to say to each other now, and were afraid that if they said anything it might hurt in some way.

Felix picked up an empty whisky bottle. He stared blindly at the label, and then he groaned and hurled it against the wall. It smashed and glass scattered amongst Jessie’s possessions.

Julia reached out to him, but he evaded her.

‘I couldn’t even give her the goodbye party she wanted.’

Julia heard the bitterness in his voice. ‘You can’t make people behave to order,’ she said gently. Jessie could make people want to celebrate just by telling them to have a party. That’s what she was good at, not you. We all missed her too much tonight.’

‘Do you think she knows that?’

Felix had been so controlled up to this moment, but now his loss and bewilderment was clear to Julia.

‘Of course she does,’ she whispered.

Jessie seemed very close, then, in her over-filled room.

Felix nodded, and bent down to pick up the pieces of broken glass. He found another empty bottle on the floor beside Jessie’s armchair.

‘There’s nothing left to drink,’ he said. ‘I’d have liked a drink, now.’

Julia went into the kitchen and took out the bottle of wine she had bought for him.

She carried it back into Jessie’s room and held it out, an offering.

‘Let’s drink this. We’ll make our own celebration for her.’ She saw that Felix was looking at her, a long, careful look.

‘Jessie would like that,’ he said, at last.

Wouldn’t you? Julia wanted to ask him. Wouldn’t you like it, too? She remembered how she had wanted to comfort him when he came home on that terrible evening. She had been aware then that she had few enough resources to offer him, and she thought now that she didn’t know what they needed or wanted from each other.

Julia pushed the confusion of her feelings aside and held out the bottle. ‘Open it.’

They couldn’t sit in Jessie’s room. They went into Felix’s bedroom and perched on the bed. Julia had been in there only rarely, and she was surprised to see the drawings pinned over the mantelpiece. There were the pictures of herself and Mattie that Felix had done when they first moved in and beside them was the one of the two of them, with Josh, listening to Bill Haley. Felix didn’t look at it, and after the first glance Julia kept her head turned away from Josh’s.

They both discovered, suddenly, that they were ravenously hungry. Felix went to the kitchen for a loaf of bread and some ham, and they made thick, crumbly sandwiches. The first bottle of wine emptied rapidly, and Felix produced another. The bottle was dusty.

‘This is a first-growth claret,’ he told her, ‘I was saving it.’ Then he smiled, one of his rare complete smiles that made the austere angles of his face dissolve. ‘What better occasion is there than this one?’

Julia smiled back at him. He poured the dark wine into their glasses. Copying him, Julia sniffed it. At first there was nothing, but as the glass warmed in her hand she caught the scent of blackcurrants. They drank, looking at one another.

Felix settled the pillows behind them and they leaned back, their shoulders touching.

‘I miss her,’ he said softly.

‘I know.’

They didn’t talk about Jessie after that.

Julia lay back with her head almost against Felix’s shoulder. She looked around his room, at the work-table with papers and drawings spread out under the desk-light, at the bookshelves with their art and architecture books. She was thinking how separate he had managed to keep himself, detached from herself and Mattie, even in the confined space of the flat. This sudden closeness would have alarmed her, but for the drowsy elation lent by the wine. She sighed and let her eyes close. A strand of dark hair brushed Felix’s mouth.

She seemed very warm, so close to him. He could imagine the weight of her in his arms. The warmth, the solidity of another human being. His loneliness made him feel dry and papery beside Julia’s breathing, scented warmth. He took the lock of hair in his fingers and put it between his lips.

They lay very still, then.

Until Felix turned his head, almost against his own will. He saw the dark line of her eyelashes, and the fine down on her cheekbone. He leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth. She lifted her hand, very slowly, and touched his face. The thin skin over his temple was almost the colour of violets. The colour, and the scent of the wine blurred in her head. A strand of her own hair still clung to his lip and she smoothed if carefully away. Felix was shaking.

A second later they were clinging together. He held her tightly, too tightly, and the kisses he planted all over her face were feverishly hot. Julia closed her eyes and Felix rolled awkwardly on top of her. Their faces pressed together as they searched for one another, huddling closer to obliterate their sadness. Felix saw how Julia buried her face against his shoulder, trying to shut out everything else, and he knew that she was lonely too. A little of his desperation slipped away, replaced by a kind of wondering tenderness. He wanted to hold her, and warm her, and make her happy.

Was this how to do it? He didn’t know this way, but he didn’t know any other way either. Josh would know all the ways, Felix thought. The image of Josh rose up at once to taunt him, and Felix lay still, trying to stare it down. Julia’s eyes opened at once, watching him.

Not Joshua Flood, not now.

Clumsily, he began to undo Julia’s clothes. She helped him, smiling a little, letting him examine her white skin. It was so pale that it was translucent. Over the points of her hip-bones he could see the blue net of veins. He bent his head to kiss her there, over the hard ridge of bone, and her finger knotted imperiously in his hair.

When he looked at her again he saw that her face was soft, her expression remote. She was unfathomable. Fear stirred inside him.

‘Now you,’ she whispered. Her hands with their inexpertly varnished fingernails touched the neck of his white shirt. He undid the buttons one by one as Julia watched him. The black, springy hair on his chest made the skin beneath look milky. Julia saw that his arms and shoulders were surprisingly muscular for the slightness of his build, and she smelt his clean sweat as he lifted his arms to stroke her cheek and then her breast. His wonderful colour made her feel pallid.

She whispered, ‘Felix.’

She had forgotten Josh, in that moment.

Felix knew what he must do.

He swung his legs abruptly over the side of the bed, and it struck him that it must look to Julia as if he was about to run away. He unbuckled his belt instead. He took off his trousers and socks, sitting with his back turned to her. Julia lay with her head pillowed on her hand, watching the way the bones of his spine moved smoothly under the skin.

Almost defiantly he turned to face her again, and lay down along the length of her. He pressed himself closer and the touch of her bare skin against his own, with all its sameness and difference, was utterly disconcerting.

Julia kissed him, and then with the tip of her tongue she outlined his mouth. It was a darting, mischievous flicker that he felt almost as a taunt. His hand settled uncertainly in the hollow of her waist.

‘Felix,’ she whispered again.

‘Wait,’ he murmured. He reached up and turned off the light. The darkness settled comfortingly around them. Under its protection he began to stroke her, letting his hands cover her thin shoulders and the ripple of her ribcage, her little, hard breasts and the concave space between her hip-bones. He could feel that she was perfectly beautiful, a flawless and completely contained entity, like a painting or a sculpture. The recognition excited him and he felt himself grow harder. His hands seemed clumsy now and he bent his head so that he could explore the beguiling shape of her with his mouth. She gave herself up to him, but he could hear her jagged breaths. Felix had mistrusted her knowingness, but now he was sure she was as innocent as himself. He wanted to say something loving, but he could only summon up her name, whispered over and over against her cheek.

‘It’s all right,’ she murmured, holding him in her arms. ‘It’s all, all right.’

He took her hand then and guided it, showing her how to move her fist around him. He groaned with sudden, surprising pleasure as she grasped him, as unerringly as he would have done it himself.

Julia only knew how much she wanted him. The simplicity of it amazed her.

She turned to him, offering herself. He touched her, very gently, and she lifted her hips to him. Felix felt the complicated folds, seemingly countless layers turning in on themselves, utterly foreign. The flesh was so soft and moist that it seemed to dissolve under his fingertips. Julia stirred restlessly in his arms and he felt fear renew itself. The darkness grew threatening instead of reassuring. Felix jerked himself on to all fours and knelt over her. He was certain only of the need to do it now, at once, if he was going to do it at all.

Julia drew her lip between her teeth, sensing the weight of him hanging over her. She thought briefly of what would happen if he made her pregnant, because she was sure that Felix wouldn’t take precautions in the middle of this feverish, whispered intimacy. She knew at once that she was going to risk it anyway, because she wanted to give him something simple, and because he was making her feel happy, and wanted, and perfectly desirable.

Without warning, Felix’s weight seemed to collapse on top of her. The angle of his jaw caught her lip but the pain of that was obliterated by the other pain. He jabbed at her and she bit her swelling lip and spread her legs wider, trying to help him. Felix kept his eyes tightly closed, as if even the darkness wasn’t enough.

The folds of flesh seemed impenetrable but he pressed himself into them, willing himself to be able to enter her, now, quickly, before he could think of anything else.

Julia had opened her mouth to beg him, ‘Stop, please stop,’ but suddenly their mutual struggle brought them to the right place. She felt him bury himself inside her. It was a long, deep way. A second or two ticked by before she realised that the shock it gave her was more pleasure than pain.

They lay still, fitted together, their breathing slowing a little. Julia smiled, and rolled her head so that her cheek touched his.

Slowly, experimentally, Felix began to move.

Everything was wrong, he knew that at once. This softness, the spongy, alien warmth. Even the scent of her. Coldness touched the base of his spine, spreading through his pelvis, shrivelling him. He screwed his face up and drove himself harder, willing himself to make it right for her. He could sense her puzzlement now, her hands fluttering helplessly at his back. It was too late. He was shrinking, away from her, and then slipping away entirely.

Abruptly Felix rolled on to his back and stared icily up into the darkness.

Julia swallowed, and the muscles in her throat contracted painfully. In her bewilderment she put out her hand and touched him again. There were only limp, moist pouches and whorls of flesh. She snatched her hand back as if it was burnt, and pressed the knuckles into her eye socket.

They lay in silence for a long time. Even though she pressed her hands into her eyes, Julia couldn’t stop the tears coming. They ran down her cheeks and into the pillow. Felix didn’t move, or make a sound, but she had the impression that he was crying too. Let him, she thought, with deliberate bitterness. And then, there must be something the matter with me. Some reason why they don’t want me. Josh, and then Felix. She fought to stifle a sob.

At last Felix rolled towards her and tried to pull her into his arms.

Julia held herself stiff. ‘Don’t,’ she ordered. She knew that he had been crying because his face was wet.

‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘Everything. All of that. You’re so beautiful. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

It mattered so much that she was ashamed of the words as soon as she had spoken them. After today, after everything today, at least they could try to comfort one another. She turned to Felix now, and he wrapped his arms around her.

Clinging together they cried for Jessie, and for themselves.

And then, when they couldn’t cry any more, with their wet faces still touching, they lay in the darkness and held each other.

‘What will happen?’ Julia asked childishly at last. She had meant, to everything. To all of us, because we are so fragile.

But Felix answered her carefully, deliberately. ‘To you and me? We’ll go on being friends. Will you let us?’

After the rush of grief he felt peeled bare, clear-sighted and precise. He loved Julia, and he wanted there to be no hope of anything else for them. No reopening of the murky, fetid labyrinth that had almost lost them tonight.

He felt her nod her head, slowly. There was a moment when she might have asked, ‘Why? Why is it like this?’ He sensed her turning the words over in her mind, and then delicately rejecting them.

Thank you, Felix thought.

‘Of course we will,’ she answered. She was imagining how it would be. As simple and as comfortable as before, but with a new measure of understanding, bred from tonight. They would go out to work and come home again. Felix would cook in the white kitchen and she would learn how to chop an onion with the same deft movements, how to bone and sauté and braise. What could she teach Felix, in return? Julia felt the burden of her own ignorance. But if she didn’t know anything now, then she could learn. Resolve and determination and a sudden optimism stiffened her. Mattie would come home again, and the three of them could be together. They couldn’t fill the abyss that Jessie had left, but they could remember her. The thought eased the painful memory of the raw graveyard earth and the rain-sodden flowers.

‘We’ll live here, together,’ Julia said softly. ‘Just like a family.’ Felix hesitated, but the need for precision impelled him. ‘I won’t be here for much longer. I wish I could be.’

Julia didn’t move. ‘Why won’t you be?’

‘I’ve been called up. I’ve got to attend for the medical in three weeks’ time.’

The idea of Felix as a National Serviceman was so incongruous that Julia laughed. It sounded shrill, and she swallowed it quickly.

‘But …’

‘It was deferred while I was at the art school. But I’m not, any more, am I? I notified them before Christmas and the letter came last week.’

He had set the wheels in motion gloomily, knowing that he would have to get it over with. But now the time was coming closer, the prospect almost attracted him. The army would lift him up from here and drop him down somewhere else, somewhere utterly different. And that could only help, after all, Felix thought.

‘Poor Felix,’ Julia said bleakly. She couldn’t help thinking, Poor me. Now there’s only me left. Of course there won’t be any family. Jessie’s dead, and Mattie’s gone. And now Felix will go too.

Felix heard her, as clearly as if she had spoken the words aloud. ‘I’ll survive,’ he said gently, ‘and so will you. You’re better equipped for it than any of us. Look at you. You’re clever, much cleverer than Mattie and me. You see things clearly, and you feel them more strongly. That makes it hard for you. But you’re brave, and you’re determined as well. You must be, or you wouldn’t have got even this far.’

I’d still be in Fairmile Road, Julia thought. Perhaps that would have been better. But she answered herself, No, it wouldn’t. Whatever happens is better than that. She felt Felix’s fingers brush her cheek, and then stroke her hair.

‘And you’re beautiful, you know. That always helps.’

‘Does it?’

He had told her that she was beautiful in that ugly moment afterwards. Fending her off with assurances. Once again the questions quivered between them, but neither of them spoke. Julia understood that they would never be asked now. So close, but no closer.

‘Yes, it does,’ Felix said firmly.

‘Can I stay in the flat?’

‘Of course you can. I don’t suppose old Mr Bull will pitch us out, for Jessie’s sake. You could always share with someone, if Mattie isn’t here, to help with me rent.’

‘Oh yes,’ Julia said. ‘I could always do that.’

There didn’t seem to be anything else to add. She reached up and clicked on the light. She saw Felix’s coffee skin and her own, touching it. In the light it was somehow shocking and she sat up abruptly. Looking down at the space between them she saw a thin smear of blood.

She had wanted the first time to be with Josh. She had planned it, dreamed it. Instead it had been here, on this sad night with its secrets and empty spaces. What was it Mattie had said? It was all right, that was it. Only it wasn’t all right. Julia didn’t want to cry again. She swung her legs out of bed and stood up, holding her discarded jumper against herself. Felix’s hand caught her wrist and held her. She looked down and saw his black eyes, fixed on her.

‘Stay here,’ he whispered. ‘Sleep here with me. Just for tonight.’

She smiled at him then, an awkward, crooked smile. ‘I’ll come back,’ she promised.

She went across to the bathroom. It smelt threateningly damp from where the water had washed under the floorboards and into the joists.

Julia stood in front of the mirror for a long time. She rubbed cream into her face and brushed her hair until it crackled with static. She cleaned her teeth, then took her nightdress off the hook behind the door and put it on.

She stared solemnly at her reflection in the mirror. She told herself, You will have to make your life for yourself. You can. Felix believes it, too. You can’t expect anyone else to help you, because they have to help themselves. Mattie. Felix. Josh. Betty and Vernon, even. That’s the truth, isn’t it? She had almost turned away, but she added, If what you want is Josh Flood, he won’t come to you. You will have to go to him. That’s also the truth.

She went back to Felix’s room and she was smiling properly now. He smiled back at her and lifted the covers. She lay down beside him and he fitted himself neatly against the curve of her back. It was comforting to have him there. She felt that she had reached the end of a complicated journey.

‘Thank you,’ Felix said, with his mouth against her ear. And then, ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Julia answered.

They fell asleep together, the first and last time.