Conversations with Friends

1

Bobbi and I first met Melissa at a poetry night in town, where we were performing together. Melissa took our photograph outside, with Bobbi smoking and me self-consciously holding my left wrist in my right hand, as if I was afraid the wrist was going to get away from me. Melissa used a big professional camera and kept lots of different lenses in a special camera pouch. She chatted and smoked while taking the pictures. She talked about our performance and we talked about her work, which we’d come across on the internet. Around midnight the bar closed. It was starting to rain then, and Melissa told us we were welcome to come back to her house for a drink.

We all got into the back of a taxi together and started fixing up our seat belts. Bobbi sat in the middle, with her head turned to speak to Melissa, so I could see the back of her neck and her little spoon-like ear. Melissa gave the driver an address in Monkstown and I turned to look out the window. A voice came on the radio to say the words: eighties … pop … classics. Then a jingle played. I felt excited, ready for the challenge of visiting a stranger’s home, already preparing compliments and certain facial expressions to make myself seem charming.

The house was a semi-detached red-brick, with a sycamore tree outside. Under the streetlight the leaves looked orange and artificial. I was a big fan of seeing the insides of other people’s houses, especially people who were slightly famous like Melissa. Right away I decided to remember everything about her home, so I could describe it to our other friends later and Bobbi could agree.

When Melissa let us in, a little red spaniel came racing up the hall and started barking at us. The hallway was warm and the lights were on. Next to the door was a low table where someone had left a stack of change, a hairbrush and an open tube of lipstick. There was a Modigliani print hanging over the staircase, a nude woman reclining. I thought: this is a whole house. A family could live here.

We have guests, Melissa called down the corridor.

No one appeared so we followed her into the kitchen. I remember seeing a dark wooden bowl filled with ripe fruit, and noticing the glass conservatory. Rich people, I thought. I was always thinking about rich people then. The dog had followed us to the kitchen and was snuffling around at our feet, but Melissa didn’t mention the dog so neither did we.

Wine? Melissa said. White or red?

She poured huge, bowl-sized glasses and we all sat around a low table. Melissa asked us how we’d started out performing spoken word poetry together. We had both just finished our third year of university at the time, but we’d been performing together since we were in school. Exams were over by then. It was late May.

Melissa had her camera on the table and occasionally lifted it to take a photograph, laughing self-deprecatingly about being a ‘work addict’. She lit a cigarette and tipped the ash into a kitschy-looking glass ashtray. The house didn’t smell of smoke at all and I wondered if she usually smoked in there or not.

I made some new friends, she said.

Her husband was in the kitchen doorway. He held up his hand to acknowledge us and the dog started yelping and whining and running around in circles.

This is Frances, said Melissa. And this is Bobbi. They’re poets.

He took a bottle of beer out of the fridge and opened it on the countertop.

Come and sit with us, Melissa said.

Yeah, I’d love to, he said, but I should try and get some sleep before this flight.

The dog jumped up on a kitchen chair near where he was standing and he reached out absently to touch its head. He asked Melissa if she had fed the dog, she said no. He lifted the dog into his arms and let the dog lick his neck and jaw. He said he would feed her, and he went back out the kitchen door again.

Nick’s filming tomorrow morning in Cardiff, said Melissa.

We already knew that the husband was an actor. He and Melissa were frequently photographed together at events, and we had friends of friends who had met them. He had a big, handsome face and looked like he could comfortably pick Melissa up under one arm and fend off interlopers with the other.

He’s very tall, Bobbi said.

Melissa smiled as if ‘tall’ was a euphemism for something, but not necessarily something flattering. The conversation moved on. We got into a short discussion about the government and the Catholic Church. Melissa asked us if we were religious and we said no. She said she found religious occasions, like funerals or weddings, ‘comforting in a kind of sedative way’. They’re communal, she said. There’s something nice about that for the neurotic individualist. And I went to a convent school so I still know most of the prayers.

We went to a convent school, said Bobbi. It posed issues.

Melissa grinned and said: like what?

Well, I’m gay, said Bobbi. And Frances is a communist.

I also don’t think I remember any of the prayers, I said.

We sat there talking and drinking for a long time. I remember that we talked about the poet Patricia Lockwood, who we admired, and also about what Bobbi disparagingly called ‘pay gap feminism’. I started to get tired and a little drunk. I couldn’t think of anything witty to say and it was hard to arrange my face in a way that would convey my sense of humour. I think I laughed and nodded a lot. Melissa told us she was working on a new book of essays. Bobbi had read her first one, but I hadn’t.

It’s not very good, Melissa told me. Wait till the next one comes out.

At about three o’clock, she showed us to the spare room and told us how great it was to meet us and how glad she was that we were staying. When we got into bed I stared up at the ceiling and felt very drunk. The room was spinning repetitively in short, consecutive spins. Once I adjusted my eyes to one rotation, another would begin immediately. I asked Bobbi if she was also having a problem with that but she said no.

She’s amazing, isn’t she? said Bobbi. Melissa.

I like her, I said.

We could hear her voice in the corridor and her footsteps taking her from room to room. Once when the dog barked we could hear her yell something, and then her husband’s voice. But after that we fell asleep. We didn’t hear him leave.

Bobbi and I had first met in secondary school. Back then Bobbi was very opinionated and frequently spent time in detention for a behavioural offence our school called ‘disrupting teaching and learning’. When we were sixteen she got her nose pierced and took up smoking. Nobody liked her. She got temporarily suspended once for writing ‘fuck the patriarchy’ on the wall beside a plaster cast of the crucifixion. There was no feeling of solidarity around this incident. Bobbi was considered a show-off. Even I had to admit that teaching and learning went a lot more smoothly during the week she was gone.

When we were seventeen we had to attend a fundraising dance in the school assembly hall, with a partially broken disco ball casting lights on the ceiling and the barred-up windows. Bobbi wore a flimsy summer dress and looked like she hadn’t brushed her hair. She was radiantly attractive, which meant everyone had to work hard not to pay her any attention. I told her I liked her dress. She gave me some of the vodka she was drinking from a Coke bottle and asked if the rest of the school was locked up. We checked the door up to the back staircase and found it was open. All the lights were off and no one else was up there. We could hear the music buzzing through the floorboards, like a ringtone belonging to someone else. Bobbi gave me some more of her vodka and asked me if I liked girls. It was very easy to act unfazed around her. I just said: sure.

I wasn’t betraying anyone’s loyalties by being Bobbi’s girlfriend. I didn’t have close friends and at lunchtime I read textbooks alone in the school library. I liked the other girls, I let them copy my homework, but I was lonely and felt unworthy of real friendship. I made lists of the things I had to improve about myself. After Bobbi and I started seeing each other, everything changed. No one asked for my homework any more. At lunchtime we walked along the car park holding hands and people looked away from us maliciously. It was fun, the first real fun I’d ever had.

After school we used to lie in her room listening to music and talking about why we liked each other. These were long and intense conversations, and felt so momentous to me that I secretly transcribed parts of them from memory in the evenings. When Bobbi talked about me it felt like seeing myself in a mirror for the first time. I also looked in actual mirrors more often. I started taking a close interest in my face and body, which I’d never done before. I asked Bobbi questions like: do I have long legs? Or short?

At our school graduation ceremony we performed a spoken word piece together. Some of the parents cried, but our classmates just looked out the assembly-room windows or talked quietly amongst themselves. Several months later, after more than a year together, Bobbi and I broke up.

Melissa wanted to write a profile about us. She sent us an email asking if we were interested, and attached some of the photographs she had taken outside the bar. Alone in my room, I downloaded one of the files and opened it up to fullscreen. Bobbi looked back at me, mischievous, holding a cigarette in her right hand and pulling on her fur stole with the other. Beside her, I looked bored and interesting. I tried to imagine my name appearing in a profile piece, in a serif font with thick stems. I decided I would try harder to impress Melissa next time we met.

Bobbi called me almost immediately after the email arrived.

Have you seen the photographs? she said. I think I’m in love with her.

I held my phone in one hand and zoomed in on Bobbi’s face with the other. It was a high-quality image but I zoomed until I could see the pixellation.

Maybe you’re just in love with your own face, I said.

Just because I have a beautiful face doesn’t mean I’m a narcissist.

I let that one go. I was involved in the zooming process still. I knew that Melissa wrote for several big literary websites, and her work circulated widely online. She had written a famous essay about the Oscars which everyone reposted every year during awards season. Sometimes she also wrote local profiles, about artists who sold their work on Grafton Street or buskers in London; these were always accompanied by beautiful photographs of her subjects, looking human and full of ‘character’. I zoomed back out and tried to look at my own face as if I were a stranger on the internet seeing it for the first time. It looked round and white, the eyebrows like overturned parentheses, my eyes averted from the lens, almost shut. Even I could see I had character.

We emailed her back saying we’d be delighted, and she invited us over for dinner to talk about our work and get some additional photographs. She asked me if I could forward some copies of our poetry and I sent her three or four of the best pieces. Bobbi and I discussed at length what Bobbi would wear to the dinner, under the guise of talking about what we should both wear. I lay in my room watching her look at herself in the mirror, moving pieces of her hair back and forth critically.

So when you say you’re in love with Melissa, I said.

I mean I have a crush on her.

You know she’s married.

You don’t think she likes me? said Bobbi.

She was holding up one of my white brushed-cotton shirts in front of the mirror.

What do you mean likes you? I said. Are we being serious or just joking?

I am partly being serious. I think she does like me.

In an extramarital affair kind of way?

Bobbi just laughed at that. With other people I generally had a sense of what to take seriously and what not to, but with Bobbi it was impossible. She never seemed to be either fully serious or fully joking. As a result I had learned to adopt a kind of Zen acceptance of the weird things she said. I watched her take her blouse off and pull on the white shirt. She rolled up the sleeves carefully.

Good? she said. Or terrible?

Good. It looks good.

2

It rained all day before we went for dinner at Melissa’s. I sat in bed in the morning writing poetry, hitting the return key whenever I wanted. Eventually I opened my blinds, read the news online and showered. My apartment had a door out into the courtyard of the building, which was lavish with greenery and featured a cherry blossom tree in the far corner. It was almost June now, but in April the blossoms were bright and silky like confetti. The couple next door had a little baby who cried sometimes at night. I liked living there.

Bobbi and I met in town that evening and got a bus to Monkstown. Finding our way back to the house felt like unwrapping something in a game of pass the parcel. I mentioned this to Bobbi on the way and she said: is it the prize, or just another layer of wrapping?

We’ll catch up on that after dinner, I said.

When we rang the bell, Melissa answered the door with her camera slung over one shoulder. She thanked us for coming. She had an expressive, conspiratorial smile, which I thought she probably gave to all of her subjects, as if to say: you’re no ordinary subject to me, you’re a special favourite. I knew I would enviously practise this smile later in a mirror. The spaniel yapped in the kitchen doorway while we hung up our jackets.

In the kitchen her husband was chopping vegetables. The dog was really excited by this gathering. It leapt onto a kitchen chair and barked for ten or twenty seconds before he told it to stop.

Can we get you both a glass of wine? Melissa said.

We said sure, and Nick poured the glasses. I had looked him up online since the first time we met him, partly because I didn’t know any other actors in real life. He had mainly worked in theatre, but he’d also done some TV and film. He had once, several years previously, been nominated for a major award, which he didn’t win. I’d happened on a whole selection of shirtless photographs, most of which showed him looking younger, coming out of a swimming pool or showering on a TV show that had long ago been cancelled. I sent Bobbi a link to one of these photographs with the message: trophy husband.

Melissa didn’t appear in many photographs on the internet, though her collection of essays had generated a lot of publicity. I didn’t know how long she had been married to Nick. Neither of them was famous enough for that kind of information to be online.

So you guys write everything together? Melissa said.

Oh God, no, said Bobbi. Frances writes everything. I don’t even help.

That’s not true, I said. That’s not true, you do help. She’s just saying that.

Melissa cocked her head to the side and gave a kind of laugh.

All right, so, which one of you is lying? she said.

I was lying. Except in the sense of enriching my life, Bobbi didn’t help me write the poetry. As far as I knew she had never written creatively at all. She liked to perform dramatic monologues and sing anti-war ballads. Onstage she was the superior performer and I often glanced at her anxiously to remind myself what to do.

For dinner we had spaghetti in a thick white-wine sauce, and lots of garlic bread. Mostly Nick stayed quiet while Melissa asked us questions. She made us all laugh a lot, but in the same way you might make someone eat something when they don’t fully want to eat it. I didn’t know if I liked this sort of cheery forcefulness, but it was obvious how much Bobbi was enjoying it. She was laughing even more than she really had to, I could tell.

Although I couldn’t specify why exactly, I felt certain that Melissa was less interested in our writing process now that she knew I wrote the material alone. I knew the subtlety of this change would be enough for Bobbi to deny it later, which irritated me as if it had already happened. I was starting to feel adrift from the whole set-up, like the dynamic that had eventually revealed itself didn’t interest me, or even involve me. I could have tried harder to engage myself, but I probably resented having to make an effort to be noticed.

After dinner Nick cleared all the plates up and Melissa took photographs. Bobbi sat on the windowsill looking at a lit candle, laughing and making cute faces. I sat at the dinner table without moving, finishing my third glass of wine.

I love the window thing, Melissa said. Can we do a similar one, but in the conservatory?

The conservatory opened out from the kitchen through a pair of double doors. Bobbi followed Melissa, who shut the doors behind them. I could see Bobbi sit on the windowsill, laughing, but I couldn’t hear her laughter. Nick started to fill the sink with hot water. I told him again how good the food was and he looked up and said: oh, thanks.

Through the glass I watched Bobbi remove a dab of make-up from under her eye. Her wrists were slender and she had long, elegant hands. Sometimes when I was doing something dull, like walking home from work or hanging up laundry, I liked to imagine that I looked like Bobbi. She had better posture than I did, and a memorably beautiful face. The pretence was so real to me that when I accidentally caught sight of my reflection and saw my own appearance, I felt a strange, depersonalising shock. It was harder to do it now when Bobbi was sitting right in my eyeline, but I tried it anyway. I felt like saying something provocative and stupid.

I guess I’m kind of surplus to requirements, I said.

Nick looked out at the conservatory, where Bobbi was doing something with her hair.

Do you think Melissa’s playing favourites? he said. I’ll have a word with her if you want.

It’s okay. Bobbi is everyone’s favourite.

Really? I warmed to you more, I have to say.

We looked at each other. I could see he was playing along with me so I smiled.

Yes, I felt we had a natural rapport, I said.

I’m drawn to the poetic types.

Oh, well. I have a rich inner life, believe me.

He laughed when I said that. I knew I was being a little inappropriate, but I didn’t feel too badly about it. Outside in the conservatory Melissa had lit a cigarette and put her camera down on a glass coffee table. Bobbi was nodding at something intently.

I thought tonight was going to be a nightmare, but it was actually fine, he said.

He sat back down at the table with me. I liked his sudden candour. I was conscious that I had looked at shirtless photographs of him on the internet without him knowing, and in the moment I found this knowledge very amusing and almost wanted to tell him about it.

I’m not the most dinner party person either, I said.

I think you were pretty good.

You were very good. You were great.

He smiled at me. I tried to remember everything he had said so I could play it over for Bobbi later on, but in my head it didn’t sound quite as funny.

The doors opened and Melissa came back in, carrying her camera in both hands. She took a photograph of us sitting at the table, Nick holding his glass in one hand, me staring into the lens vacantly. Then she sat down opposite us and looked at her camera screen. Bobbi came back and refilled her own wine glass without asking. She had a beatific expression on her face and I could see she was drunk. Nick watched her but didn’t say anything.

I suggested that we should head off in time for the last bus and Melissa promised to send on the photographs. Bobbi’s smile dropped a little but it was too late to suggest we should stay any longer. We were already being handed our jackets. I felt giddy, and now that Bobbi had gone quiet, I kept laughing at nothing on my own.

We had a ten-minute walk to the bus stop. Bobbi was subdued at first, so I gathered she was upset or annoyed.

Did you have a good time? I said.

I’m worried about Melissa.

You’re what?

I don’t think she’s happy, said Bobbi.

In what sense not happy? Was she talking to you about this?

I don’t think she and Nick are very happy together.

Really? I said.

It’s sad.

I didn’t point out that Bobbi had only met Melissa twice, though maybe I should have. Admittedly it didn’t seem like Nick and Melissa were crazy about each other. He had told me, apropos of nothing, that he’d expected a dinner party she’d arranged to be ‘a nightmare’.

I thought he was funny, I said.

He hardly opened his mouth.

Yeah, he had a humorous silence about him.

Bobbi didn’t laugh. I dropped it. We hardly spoke on the bus, since I could see she wasn’t going to be interested in the effortless rapport I had established with Melissa’s trophy husband, and I couldn’t think of anything else to talk about.

When I got back to my apartment I felt drunker than I had been at the house. Bobbi had gone home and I was on my own. I turned all the lights on before I went to bed. Sometimes that was something I did.

Bobbi’s parents were going through an acrimonious break-up that summer. Bobbi’s mother Eleanor had always been emotionally fragile and given to long periods of unspecified illness, which made her father Jerry the favoured parent in the split. Bobbi always called them by their first names. This had probably originated as an act of rebellion but now just seemed collegial, like their family was a small business they ran cooperatively. Bobbi’s sister Lydia was fourteen and didn’t seem to be handling the whole thing with Bobbi’s composure.

My parents had separated when I was twelve and my father had moved back to Ballina, where they’d met. I lived in Dublin with my mother until I finished school, and then she moved back to Ballina too. When college started I moved into an apartment in the Liberties belonging to my father’s brother. During term time, he let out the second bedroom to another student, and I had to keep quiet in the evenings and say hi politely when I saw my room-mate in the kitchen. But in the summer when the room-mate went home, I was allowed to live there all on my own and make coffee whenever I wanted and leave books splayed open on all the surfaces.

I had an internship in a literary agency at the time. There was one other intern, called Philip, who I knew from college. Our job was to read stacks of manuscripts and write one-page reports on their literary value. The value was almost always nil. Sometimes Philip would sardonically read bad sentences aloud to me, which made me laugh, but we didn’t do that in front of the adults who worked there. We worked three days a week and were both paid ‘a stipend’ which meant we basically weren’t paid at all. All I needed was food, and Philip lived at home, so it didn’t matter much to us.

This is how privilege gets perpetuated, Philip told me in the office one day. Rich assholes like us taking unpaid internships and getting jobs off the back of them.

Speak for yourself, I said. I’m never going to get a job.

3

Bobbi and I often performed at spoken word events and open mic nights that summer. When we were outside smoking and male performers tried to talk to us, Bobbi would always pointedly exhale and say nothing, so I had to act as our representative. This meant a lot of smiling and remembering details about their work. I enjoyed playing this kind of character, the smiling girl who remembered things. Bobbi told me she thought I didn’t have a ‘real personality’, but she said she meant it as a compliment. Mostly I agreed with her assessment. At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterwards think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am.

Melissa sent us the image files from the dinner party a few days later. I’d expected Bobbi to dominate the photo set, along with maybe one or two token photographs of me, blurry behind a lit candle, holding a forkful of spaghetti. In fact, for every picture of Bobbi, I appeared too, always lit perfectly, always beautifully framed. Nick was in the photographs also, which I hadn’t expected. He looked luminously attractive, even more so than he had in real life. I wondered if that was why he was a successful actor. It was difficult to look at the photo set and not feel that he was the primary presence in the room, which I definitely hadn’t felt at the time.

Melissa herself didn’t appear in any of the images. As a result, the dinner party depicted in the photographs bore only an oblique relationship to the one we had actually attended. In reality, all our conversation had orbited around Melissa. She had prompted our various expressions of uncertainty or admiration. She was the one whose jokes we were always laughing at. Without her in the images, the dinner seemed to take on a different character, to go spinning off in subtle and strange directions. The relationships of the people who appeared in the photographs, without Melissa, became unclear.

In my favourite picture, I was looking straight into the lens with a dreamy expression, and Nick was looking at me as if waiting for me to say something. His mouth was a little open. It looked like he hadn’t seen the camera. It was a good photograph, but of course I had really been looking up at Melissa at the time, and Nick simply hadn’t seen her come through the doorway. It captured something intimate that had never really happened, something elliptical and somehow fraught. I saved it to my Downloads folder to look at later on.

Bobbi messaged me about an hour after the photographs arrived.

Bobbi: how good do we look though?

Bobbi: i wonder if we can use these as facebook profilers.

me: no

Bobbi: she says the piece won’t be out till september apparently?

me: who says

Bobbi: melissa

Bobbi: do you want to hang out tonight?

Bobbi: and watch a film or something

Bobbi wanted me to know that she had been in touch with Melissa when I hadn’t. It did impress me, which she wanted it to, but I also felt bad. I knew Melissa liked Bobbi more than she liked me, and I didn’t know how to join in their new friendship without debasing myself for their attention. I had wanted Melissa to take an interest in me, because we were both writers, but instead she didn’t seem to like me and I wasn’t even sure I liked her. I didn’t have the option not to take her seriously, because she had published a book, which proved that lots of other people took her seriously even if I didn’t. At twenty-one, I had no achievements or possessions that proved I was a serious person.

I’d told Nick that everyone preferred Bobbi to me, but that wasn’t really true. Bobbi could be abrasive and unrestrained in a way that made people uncomfortable, while I tended to be encouragingly polite. Mothers always liked me a lot, for example. And because Bobbi mostly treated men with amusement or contempt, men usually ended up liking me better too. Of course, Bobbi made fun of me about this. She once emailed me a picture of Angela Lansbury with the subject heading: your core demographic.

Bobbi did come over that night, though she didn’t mention Melissa at all. I knew that she was being strategic, and that she wanted me to ask, so I didn’t. This sounds more passive-aggressive than it really was. Actually we had a nice evening. We stayed up talking and Bobbi went to sleep on the mattress in my room.

That night I woke up sweating underneath the duvet. At first it felt like a dream or maybe a film. I found the orientation of my room confusing, as if I was further from the window and door than I should have been. I tried to sit up and then felt a strange, wrenching pain in my pelvis, which made me gasp out loud.

Bobbi? I said.

She rolled over. I tried to reach out of the bed to shake her shoulder, but I couldn’t, and I felt exhausted by the effort. At the same time I was exhilarated by the seriousness of my pain, like it might change my life in an unforeseen way.

Bobbi, I said. Bobbi, wake up.

She didn’t wake up. I moved my legs off the bed and managed to stand. The pain was more bearable if I hunched my body over and held onto my abdomen tightly. I went around her mattress and out to the bathroom. It was raining loudly onto the glazed plastic wall vent. I sat on the side of the bath. I was bleeding. It was just period pain. I put my face in my hands. My fingers were trembling. Then I got down onto the floor and put my face onto the cool rim of the bath.

After a while Bobbi knocked on the door.

What’s up? she said from outside. Are you okay?

Just period pain.

Oh. You have painkillers in there?

No, I said.

I’ll get you some.

Her footsteps went away. I hit my forehead against the side of the bath to distract myself from the pain in my pelvis. It was a hot pain, like all my insides were contracting into one little knot. The footsteps came back and the bathroom door opened an inch. She slid through a packet of ibuprofen. I crawled over and took them, and she went away.

Eventually it got light outside. Bobbi woke up and came in to help me onto the couch in the living room. She made me a cup of peppermint tea and I sat slouched holding the cup against my T-shirt, just above my pubic bone, until it started to scald me.

You suffer, she said.

Everybody suffers.

Ah, Bobbi said. Profound.

I hadn’t been kidding with Philip about not wanting a job. I didn’t want one. I had no plans as to my future financial sustainability: I never wanted to earn money for doing anything. I’d had various minimum-wage jobs in previous summers — sending emails, making cold calls, things like that — and I expected to have more of them after I graduated. Though I knew that I would eventually have to enter full-time employment, I certainly never fantasised about a radiant future where I was paid to perform an economic role. Sometimes this felt like a failure to take an interest in my own life, which depressed me. On the other hand, I felt that my disinterest in wealth was ideologically healthy. I’d checked what the average yearly income would be if the gross world product were divided evenly among everyone, and according to Wikipedia it would be $16,100. I saw no reason, political or financial, ever to make more money than that.

Our boss at the literary agency was a woman named Sunny. Both Philip and I really liked Sunny, but Sunny preferred me. Philip was sanguine about this. He said he preferred me too. I think deep down Sunny knew that I didn’t want a job as a literary agent, and it may even have been this fact that distinguished me in her eyes. Philip was plainly pretty enthused about working for the agency, and though I didn’t judge him for making life plans, I felt like I was more discerning with my enthusiasms.

Sunny was interested in the question of my career. She was a very candid person who was always making refreshingly candid remarks, that was one of the things Philip and I liked most about her.

What about journalism? she asked me.

I was handing her back a pile of completed manuscripts.

You’re interested in the world, she said. You’re knowledgeable. You like politics.

Do I?

She laughed and shook her head.

You’re bright, she said. You’re going to have to do something.

Maybe I’ll marry for money.

She waved me away.

Go and do some work, she said.

We were performing at a reading in the centre of town that Friday. I could perform each poem for a period of about six months after I’d written it, after which point I couldn’t stand to look at it, never mind read it aloud in public. I didn’t know what caused this process, but I was glad the poems were only ever performed and never published. They floated away ethereally to the sound of applause. Real writers, and also painters, had to keep on looking at the ugly things they had done for good. I hated that everything I did was so ugly, but also that I lacked the courage to confront how ugly it was. I had explained that theory to Philip but he’d just said: don’t be down on yourself, you’re a real writer.

Bobbi and I were applying make-up in the venue bathrooms and talking about the newest poems I had written.

What I like about your male characters, Bobbi said, is they’re all horrible.

They’re not all horrible.

At best they’re very morally ambiguous.

Aren’t we all? I said.

You should write about Philip, he’s not problematic. He’s ‘nice’.

She did air quotes around the word nice, even though she did really think that about Philip. Bobbi would never describe anyone as nice without quotation marks.

Melissa had said she would come along that night, but we didn’t see her until afterwards, at maybe half ten or eleven o’clock. She and Nick were sitting together, and Nick was wearing a suit. Melissa congratulated us and told us she’d really enjoyed our performance. Bobbi looked at Nick as if waiting for him to compliment us, which made him laugh.

I didn’t see your set, he said. I just got here.

Nick’s in the Royal this month, Melissa said. He’s doing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

But I’m sure you were great, though, he said.

Let me get you both drinks, said Melissa.

Bobbi went with her to the bar, so Nick and I were left alone at the table. He didn’t have a tie on and his suit looked expensive. I felt too hot, and worried I was sweating.

How was the play? I said.

Oh, what, tonight? It was okay, thanks.

He was taking his cufflinks off. He placed them on the table, beside his glass, and I noticed they were coloured enamel, art deco-looking. I thought about admiring them aloud, but then felt unable to. Instead I pretended to look for Melissa and Bobbi over my shoulder. When I turned back he had taken out his phone.

I’d like to see it, I said. I like the play.

You should come along, I can hold tickets for you.

He didn’t look up when he spoke, so I felt certain he was being insincere or would at least forget the conversation quickly. I just said something affirmative and non-committal. Now that he wasn’t paying attention to me, I could watch him more closely. He really was exceptionally handsome. I wondered if people just got used to being so good-looking and eventually found it boring, but it was hard to imagine. I thought if I was as good-looking as Nick I would probably have fun all the time.

Sorry I’m being rude, Frances, he said. This is my mother on the phone. She texts now. I should tell her I’m talking to a poet, she’d be very impressed.

Well, you don’t know. I could be a terrible poet.

He smiled and slipped his phone back in his inside pocket. I looked at his hand and looked away.

That’s not what I’ve heard, he said. But maybe next time I’ll get to decide for myself.

Melissa and Bobbi came back with the drinks. I noticed that Nick had dropped my name into conversation, as if to show that he remembered me from last time we talked. Of course, I remembered his name too, but he was older and somewhat famous, so I found his attention very flattering. It transpired that Melissa had taken their car into town, and so Nick had been forced to join us after his show to get a lift home. This arrangement did not seem to have been drawn up with his convenience in mind, and he looked tired and bored for most of our conversation.

Melissa sent me an email the next day saying they had put two theatre tickets aside for us next Thursday but that we shouldn’t feel bad about it if we had made other plans. She included Nick’s email address and wrote: in case you need to get in touch.

4

Bobbi was going out to dinner with her father on Thursday, so we offered Philip the spare ticket to the play. Philip kept asking if we were going to have to talk to Nick afterwards, and I didn’t know. I doubted if he would come out especially to talk to us, so I said I was sure we could just leave as usual. Philip had never met Nick but had seen him on TV and considered his looks ‘intimidating’. He asked me a lot of questions about what Nick was like in real life, none of which I felt qualified to answer. When we bought the programme, Philip leafed straight to the actor bios and showed me Nick’s photograph. In the dim light it was really just an outline of a face.

Look at his jaw, he said.

Yeah, I see it.

The lights came up onstage, and the actress playing Maggie came on and started yelling in a Southern accent. It wasn’t a bad accent, but it still felt like an actor’s accent. She got out of her dress and stood there in a white slip, like Elizabeth Taylor’s white slip in the film, though this actress looked both less artificial and also somehow less convincing. I could see a care label bunched inside the seam of the slip she was wearing, which destroyed the effect of reality for me, although the slip and its care label were undoubtedly themselves real. I concluded that some kinds of reality have an unrealistic effect, which made me think of the theorist Jean Baudrillard, though I had never read his books and these were probably not the issues his writing addressed.

Finally Nick appeared, out of a door on stage left, buttoning up a shirt. I felt a sting of self-consciousness, as if the audience had all turned at this moment to observe my reaction. He looked very different onstage, and spoke in an unrecognisably different voice. His manner was cool and detached in a way that suggested sexual brutality. I breathed in and out through my mouth several times, and wet my lips repeatedly with my tongue. The production in general was not very good. The other actors had off-key accents and everything onstage looked like a prop waiting to be handled. In a way this just emphasised how spectacularly beautiful Nick was, and made his misery seem more authentic.

When we came out of the theatre it was raining again. I felt pure and tiny like a newborn baby. Philip put up his umbrella and we walked toward his bus stop while I sort of grinned manically at nothing and touched my own hair a lot.

That was interesting, Philip said.

I thought Nick was probably a lot better than the other actors.

Yeah, it was stressful, wasn’t it? But he was pretty good.

I laughed much too loudly at this remark and then stopped when I realised nothing about it was funny. A light, cool rain feathered the umbrella and I tried to think of something interesting to say about the weather.

He is handsome, I heard myself saying.

To an almost off-putting extent.

We reached Philip’s bus stop and had a short discussion about which of us should take the umbrella. In the end I took it. It was raining heavily and getting dark. I wanted to talk more about the play but I could see Philip’s bus was about to pull in. I knew he wouldn’t want to talk much more about the play anyway, but I still felt disappointed. He started counting out his fare and said he’d see me tomorrow. I walked back to my apartment on my own.

When I got inside I left the umbrella by the courtyard door and opened up my laptop to look at Nick’s email address. I felt I should send him a short thank-you message for the tickets, but I kept getting distracted by items in the room, like a Toulouse-Lautrec poster I had hanging above the fireplace and a particular smudge on the patio window. I got up and walked around for a while to think about it. I cleaned the smudge with a damp cloth and then made a cup of tea. I considered calling Bobbi to talk about whether it would be normal to send an email or not, but I remembered she was with her father. I wrote a sample message, and then deleted the draft in case I might accidentally hit send. Then I wrote the same thing over again.

I sat staring at my laptop screen until it went black. Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go. I should experiment with drugs. These thoughts were not unusual for me. I put Astral Weeks on the stereo in the living room and slumped right onto the floor to listen. Though I was trying not to dwell on the play, I found myself thinking about Nick onstage yelling: I don’t want to lean on your shoulder, I want my crutch. I wondered if Philip was similarly preoccupied, or was this more private. I need to be fun and likeable, I thought. A fun person would send a thank-you email.

I got up and typed a brief message congratulating Nick on his performance and expressing gratitude for the tickets. I moved the sentences here and there, and then seemingly at random I hit the send button. Afterwards I shut my laptop and went back to sitting on the floor.

I was expecting to hear from Bobbi about her dinner with Jerry and eventually, after the album was finished, she did call. I was still sitting slumped against the wall when I answered the phone. Bobbi’s father was a high-ranking civil servant in the Department of Health. She did not apply her otherwise rigorous anti-establishment principles to her relationship with Jerry, or at least not with any consistency. He’d taken her to a very expensive restaurant for dinner and they’d had three courses with wine.

He’s just trying to emphasise that I’m an adult member of the family now, Bobbi said. And he takes me seriously, blah blah blah.

How’s your mother holding up?

Oh, it’s migraine season again. We’re all tiptoeing around like fucking Trappist monks. How was the play?

Nick was really good, actually, I said.

Oh, that’s a relief. I felt like it might be terrible.

No, it was. Sorry, I remember your question now. The play was bad.

Bobbi hummed a kind of tuneless piece of music to herself and offered no further remark.

Remember last time we visited their house, and afterwards you said you thought they were like, unhappily married? I said. What made you say that?

I just thought Melissa seemed depressed.

But why, because of their marriage?

Well, don’t you find Nick sort of hostile toward her? said Bobbi.

No. Do you?

The first time we went over there, remember he went around scowling at us and then he yelled at her about feeding the dog? And we could hear them arguing when we went to bed?

Now that she said that, I did remember perceiving a certain animosity between them on that occasion, though I didn’t accept that he had yelled.

Was she there? Bobbi said. At the play?

No. Well, I don’t know, we didn’t see her.

She doesn’t like Tennessee Williams anyway. She finds him mannered.

I could hear that Bobbi said this with an ironic smile, because she was aware that she was showing off. I was jealous, but I also felt that because I had seen the play I was party to something Bobbi didn’t know about. She still saw Nick as a background figure, with no significance other than as Melissa’s husband. If I told her that I had just sent him an email thanking him for the tickets, she wouldn’t understand that I was showing off too, because to her Nick was just a function of Melissa’s unhappiness, and uninteresting in his own right. It seemed unlikely she would see the play now, and I couldn’t think of any other way to impress her with Nick’s personal significance. When I mentioned that he was planning to come and see us perform sometime soon, she just asked if that meant Melissa would come too.

Nick replied to my email the next afternoon in all lower case, thanking me for coming to the play and asking when Bobbi and I were next performing. He said they were running a show in the Royal every night and matinees at weekends so he would almost certainly miss our set unless it started sometime after half ten. I told him I would see what I could do, but not to worry if he couldn’t make it. He replied saying: oh well, it wouldn’t be very reciprocal then, would it?

5

Over the summer I missed the periods of intense academic concentration which helped to relax me during term time. I liked to sit in the library to write essays, allowing my sense of time and personal identity to dissolve as the light dimmed outside the windows. I would open fifteen tabs on my web browser while producing phrases like ‘epistemic rearticulation’ and ‘operant discursive practices’. I mostly forgot to eat on days like this and emerged in the evening with a fine, shrill headache. Physical sensations reintroduced themselves to me with a feeling of genuine novelty: breeze felt new, and the sound of birds outside the Long Room. Food tasted impossibly good, as did soft drinks. Afterwards I’d print the essay out without even looking over it. When I went to get my feedback, the notes in the margins always said things like ‘well argued’ and sometimes ‘brilliant’. Whenever I got a ‘brilliant’ I took a little photograph of it on my phone and sent it to Bobbi. She would send back: congrats, your ego is staggering.

My ego had always been an issue. I knew that intellectual attainment was morally neutral at best, but when bad things happened to me I made myself feel better by thinking about how smart I was. When I couldn’t make friends as a child, I fantasised that I was smarter than all my teachers, smarter than any other student who had been in the school before, a genius hidden among normal people. It made me feel like a spy. As a teenager I started using internet messageboards and developed a friendship with a twenty-six-year-old American grad student. He had very white teeth in his photographs and told me he thought I had the brain of a physicist. I sent him messages late at night confessing that I was lonely in school, that the other girls didn’t seem to understand me. I wish I had a boyfriend, I wrote. One night he sent me a picture of his genitals. It was a flash photograph, zoomed right in on the erect penis, as if for medical examination. For days afterwards I felt guilty and terrified, like I had committed a sick internet crime which other people could discover at any moment. I deleted my account and abandoned the associated email address. I told no one, I had no one to tell.

On Saturday I talked to the venue organiser and got our set pushed back until half ten. I didn’t mention to Bobbi that I had done that, or why. We had smuggled in a bottle of white wine which we shared from plastic cups in the downstairs bathrooms. We liked to have one or two glasses of wine before performing, but no more than that. We sat on the sinks refilling our cups and talking about the new stuff we were going to perform.

I didn’t want to tell Bobbi I was nervous, but I was. Even looking in the mirror made me nervous. I didn’t think I looked awful. My face was plain, but I was so extremely thin as to look interesting, and I chose my clothing to emphasise this effect. I wore a lot of dark colours and severe necklines. That night I was wearing a reddish-brown lipstick and in the weird bathroom light I looked sick and faint. Eventually the features of my face seemed to come apart from one another or at least lose their ordinary relationships to each other, like a word you read so many times it makes no sense any more. I wondered if I was having an anxiety attack. Then Bobbi told me to stop staring at myself and I stopped.

When we went upstairs we could see Melissa sitting alone with a glass of wine and her camera. The seat beside her was empty. I cast around but it was clear to me, from something about the shape or the noise of the room, that Nick was not there. I thought this would calm me down, but it didn’t. I licked my teeth several times and waited for the man to say our names into the microphone.

Onstage, Bobbi was always precise. All I had to do was try and tune in to her particular rhythm and as long as I could do that, I would be fine too. Sometimes I was good, sometimes I was just okay. But Bobbi was exact. That night she made everyone laugh and got a lot of applause. For a few moments we stood there in the light, being applauded and gesturing to each other, like: it’s all her. It was at this point I saw Nick enter from the door at the back. He looked slightly breathless, like he had taken the stairs too quickly. Instantly I looked away and pretended I hadn’t noticed him. I could see that he was trying to catch my eye and that if I returned his gaze he would give me a kind of apologetic expression. I found this idea too intense to think about, like the glare of a bare lightbulb. The audience continued to applaud and I could feel Nick watching us as we left the stage.

At the bar afterwards Philip bought us a round of drinks and said the new poem was his favourite. I had forgotten to bring his umbrella.

See, and people say I hate men, Bobbi said. But I actually really like you, Philip.

I swallowed half my glass of gin and tonic in two mouthfuls. I was thinking about leaving without saying hello to anyone. I could leave, I thought, and it felt good to think about it, as if I was in control of my own life again.

Let’s go find Melissa, Bobbi said. We can introduce you.

By then Nick was sitting beside Melissa and already drinking from a bottle of beer. I felt very awkward about approaching them. The last time I had seen him he’d had a fake accent and different clothes, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear his real accent again. But Melissa had spotted us already anyway. She asked us to sit down.

Bobbi introduced Melissa and Nick to Philip, and Philip shook their hands. Melissa said she remembered them meeting before, which delighted him. Nick said something about being sorry he’d missed our performance, though I still wasn’t looking at him. I drained the rest of my gin and tonic and then knocked the ice from side to side in the glass. Philip congratulated Nick on the play and they talked about Tennessee Williams. Melissa called him ‘mannered’ again and I pretended not to know she had made the observation before.

After we bought a new round of drinks, Melissa suggested we go out for a cigarette. The smoking area was a little walled garden downstairs and it wasn’t particularly full, since it was raining. I hadn’t seen Nick smoking before, and I took a cigarette too although I didn’t want one. Bobbi was doing an impression of one of the men who had performed before us at the reading. It was a very funny though also cruel impression. We all laughed. It was starting to rain harder then, so we gathered underneath the shallow ledge projecting from the window. We talked for a while, Bobbi mostly.

It’s cool you’re playing a gay character, Bobbi was saying to Nick.

Is Brick gay? he said. I think maybe he’s just bisexual.

Don’t say ‘just bisexual’, she said. Frances is bisexual, you know.

I didn’t know that, Melissa said.

I chose to drag on my cigarette for a long time before saying anything. I knew that everyone was waiting for me to speak.

Well, I said. Yeah, I’m kind of an omnivore.

Melissa laughed at that. Nick looked at me and gave an amused smile, which I looked away from quickly and pretended to take an interest in my glass.

Me too, Melissa said.

I could tell Bobbi was enthralled by this remark. She asked Melissa something I didn’t listen to. Philip said he was going to the bathroom and left his drink on the windowsill. I stroked the chain of my necklace, feeling the alcohol warm inside my stomach.

Sorry I was late, Nick said.

He was speaking to me. In fact it seemed that he had waited for Philip to leave us alone so he could address this sentence to me. I told him I didn’t mind. He held the cigarette between his index and middle fingers, where it looked miniature compared to the breadth of his hand. I was aware of the fact that he could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be, and I wondered if he also lacked a ‘real personality’ the same way I did.

I arrived in time for the wild applause, he said. So I can only assume good things. I’ve read your work actually, is that a terrible thing to say? Melissa forwarded it on to me, she thinks I like literature.

At this point I felt a weird lack of self-recognition, and I realised that I couldn’t visualise my own face or body at all. It was like someone had lifted the end of an invisible pencil and just gently erased my entire appearance. This was curious and actually not unpleasant, though I was also aware that I was cold and might have been shivering.

She didn’t tell me she was going to forward it to people, I said.

Not people, just me. I’ll send you an email about it. If I compliment you now you’ll think I’m just saying it, but the email will be very flattering.

Oh, that’s nice. I like getting compliments where I don’t have to make eye contact with the person.

He laughed at that, which gratified me. It had started raining harder and Philip had come back from the bathroom to shelter under the ledge with us again. My arm was touching Nick’s and I felt a pleasant sense of illicit physical closeness.

It’s weird knowing someone just casually, he said, and then later finding out they’re observing things all the time. It’s like, God, what has this person noticed about me?

We looked at one another. Nick’s face was handsome in the most generic way: clear skin, pronounced bone structure, the mouth a little soft-looking. But his expressions seemed to pass over it with a certain subtlety and intelligence, which gave his eye contact a charismatic quality. When he looked at me, I felt vulnerable to him, but I also felt strongly that he was letting himself be observed, that he had noticed how interested I was in forming an impression of him, and he was curious about what it might be.

Yeah, I said. All kinds of bad things.

And you’re what, like, twenty-four?

I’m twenty-one.

For a second he looked at me like he thought I was kidding, eyes widened, eyebrows raised, and then he shook his head. Actors learn to communicate things without feeling them, I thought. He already knew I was twenty-one. Maybe what he really wanted to communicate was an exaggerated awareness of our age difference, or a mild disapproval or disappointment about it. I knew from the internet that he was thirty-two.

But don’t let that get in the way of our natural rapport, I said.

He looked at me for a moment and then he smiled, an ambivalent smile, which I liked so much that I became very conscious of my own mouth. It was open slightly.

No, I couldn’t possibly, he said.

Philip told us he was going to get the last bus, and Melissa said she had a meeting the next morning and she was planning to head off too. Quickly after that the whole group dispersed. Bobbi got the DART back to Sandymount, and I walked back along the quays. The Liffey was swollen up and looked irritated. A school of taxis and cars swam past and a drunk man walking on the other side of the street yelled that he loved me.

While I let myself into the apartment I thought about Nick entering the room while everybody applauded. This now felt perfect to me, so perfect that I was glad he had missed the performance. Maybe having him witness how much others approved of me, without taking any of the risks necessary to earn Nick’s personal approval, made me feel capable of speaking to him again, as if I also was an important person with lots of admirers like he was, as if there was nothing inferior about me. But the acclaim also felt like part of the performance itself, the best part, and the most pure expression of what I was trying to do, which was to make myself into this kind of person: someone worthy of praise, worthy of love.

6

After that we saw Melissa sporadically and she sent us occasional email updates about the profile piece. We didn’t visit her at home again, but we ran into her now and then at literary events. I usually speculated in advance about whether she or Nick might attend a particular thing, because I liked them, and I liked having other people observe their warmth toward me. They introduced me to editors and agents who acted very charmed to meet me and who asked interested questions about my work. Nick was always friendly, and even praised me to other people sometimes, but he never seemed particularly eager to engage me in conversation again, and I got used to meeting his eye without feeling startled.

Bobbi and I went along to these events together, but for Bobbi it was really only Melissa’s attention that mattered. At a book launch on Dawson Street she told Nick she had ‘nothing against actors’, and he was like, oh thanks Bobbi, that’s so generous of you. When he attended on his own once, Bobbi said: just you? Where’s your beautiful wife?

Do I get the sense you don’t like me? said Nick.

It’s nothing personal, I said. She hates men.

If it makes you feel better, I do also personally dislike you, said Bobbi.

Nick and I had started to exchange emails after the night he missed our performance. In the message he’d promised to send about my work, he described a particular image as ‘beautiful’. It was probably true to say that I had found Nick’s performance in the play ‘beautiful’, though I wouldn’t have written that in an email. Then again his performance was related to the physicality of his existence in a way that a poem, typed in a standard font and forwarded on by someone else, was not. At a certain level of abstraction, anyone could have written the poem, but that didn’t feel true either. It seemed as though what he was really saying was: there’s something beautiful about the way you think and feel, or the way that you experience the world is beautiful in some way. This remark returned to me repeatedly for days after the email arrived. I smiled involuntarily when I thought of it, like I was remembering a private joke.

It was easy to write to Nick, but also competitive and thrilling, like a game of table tennis. We were always being flippant with each other. When he found out my parents lived in Mayo, he wrote:

we used to have a holiday home in Achill (like every other wealthy South Dublin family I’m sure).

I replied:

I’m glad my ancestral homeland could help nourish your class identity. P.S. It should be illegal to have a holiday home anywhere.

He was the first person I had met since Bobbi who made me enjoy conversation, in the same irrational and sensuous way I enjoyed coffee or loud music. He made me laugh. Once, he mentioned that he and Melissa slept in separate rooms. I didn’t tell Bobbi about that, but I thought about it a lot. I wondered if they still ‘loved’ one another, although it was hard to imagine Nick being that unironic about anything.

He never seemed to go to bed until the early morning, and we increasingly emailed one another late at night. He told me he had studied English and French at Trinity, so we had even had some of the same lecturers. He’d majored in English and had written his final-year dissertation on Caryl Churchill. Sometimes while we talked I typed his name into Google and looked at photographs of him, to remind me what he looked like. I read everything about him on the internet and often emailed him quotes from his own interviews, even after he asked me to stop. He said he found it ‘super embarrassing’. I said: stop emailing me at 3.34 a.m. then (don’t actually). He replied: me email a 21 year old in the middle of the night? i don’t know what you’re talking about. i would never do that.

One night at the launch of a new poetry anthology, Melissa and I were left alone in a conversation with a male novelist whose books I had never read. The others had gone to get drinks. We were in a bar somewhere off Dame Street and my feet hurt because I was wearing shoes that I knew were too small. The novelist asked me who I liked to read and I shrugged. I wondered if I could just remain silent until he left me alone, or if this would be a mistake, since I didn’t know how acclaimed his books were.

You have a real coolness about you, he said to me. Doesn’t she?

Melissa nodded but not enthusiastically. My coolness, if I had any, had never moved her.

Thanks, I said.

And you can take a compliment, that’s good, he said. A lot of people will try to run themselves down, you’ve got the right attitude.

Yes, I’m quite the compliment-taker, I said.

At this point I could see him try to exchange a look with Melissa, who remained disinterested. He seemed almost on the point of winking at her but he didn’t. Then he turned back to me with a smirking expression.

Well, don’t get cocky, he said.

Nick and Bobbi rejoined us then. The novelist said something to Nick, and Nick replied with the word ‘man’, like: oh, sorry about that, man. I would later make fun of this affectation in an email. Bobbi leaned her head on Melissa’s shoulder.

When the novelist left the conversation, Melissa drained her wine glass and grinned at me.

You really charmed him, she said.

Is that sarcastic? I asked.

He was trying to flirt with you. He said you were cool.

I was very aware of Nick standing at my elbow, though I couldn’t see his expression. I knew how badly I wanted to remain in control of the conversation.

Yeah, men love telling me I’m cool, I said. They just want me to act like I’ve never heard it before.

Melissa really did laugh then. I was surprised I could make her laugh like that. I felt for a moment that I’d misjudged her and, in particular, her attitude toward me. Then I realised Nick was laughing also, and I lost interest in what Melissa felt.

Cruel, he said.

Don’t think you’re exempt, said Bobbi.

Oh, I’m definitely a bad guy, Nick said. That’s not why I’m laughing.

At the end of June I went to Ballina for a couple of days to visit my parents. My mother didn’t enforce these visits, but lately when we spoke on the phone she’d started saying things like: oh you’re alive, are you? Am I going to recognise you next time you come home, or will you have to put a flower in your lapel? Eventually I booked a train ticket. I sent her a text telling her when to expect me and signed off: in the spirit of filial duty, your loyal daughter.

Bobbi and my mother got along famously. Bobbi studied History and Politics, subjects my mother considered serious. Real subjects, she would say, with an eyebrow lifted at me. My mother was a kind of social democrat, and at this time I believe Bobbi identified herself as a communitarian anarchist. When my mother visited Dublin, they took mutual enjoyment in having minor arguments about the Spanish Civil War. Sometimes Bobbi would turn to me and say: Frances, you’re a communist, back me up. And my mother would laugh and say: that one! You may as well ask the teapot. She had never taken much interest in my social or personal life, an arrangement which suited us both, but when I broke up with Bobbi she described it as ‘a real shame’.

After she picked me up from the train on Saturday, we spent the afternoon in the garden. The grass had been cut and gave off a warm, allergenic smell. The sky was soft like cloth and birds ran over it in long threads. My mother was weeding and I was pretending to weed but actually just talking. I discovered an unforeseen enthusiasm for talking about all the editors and writers I had met in Dublin. I took my gloves off to wipe my forehead at one point and didn’t put them back on. I asked my mother if she wanted tea and she ignored me. Then I sat under the fuchsia bush plucking little fuchsias off the branches and talking about famous people again. The words just flew out of my mouth deliciously. I had no idea I had so much to say, or that I would enjoy saying it so much.

Eventually my mother stripped her gloves off and sat on a lawn chair. I was sitting with my legs crossed, examining the tips of my sneakers.

You seem very impressed with this woman Melissa, she said.

Do I?

She certainly introduces you to a lot of people.

She likes Bobbi more than she likes me, I said.

But her husband likes you.

I shrugged and said I didn’t know. Then I licked my thumb and started scrubbing at a little fleck of dirt on my sneaker.

And they’re rich, are they? said my mother.

I think so. The husband is from a wealthy background. And their house is really nice.

It’s not like you to get carried away with posh houses.

This comment stung me. I continued scrubbing my shoe as if I hadn’t noticed her tone.

I’m not getting carried away, I said. I’m just reporting what their house is like.

I have to say, it all sounds very odd to me. I don’t know what this woman is doing hanging around with college students at her age.

She’s thirty-seven, not fifty. And she’s writing a profile about us, I told you that.

My mother got up from the lawn chair and wiped her hands on her linen gardening trousers.

Well, she said. It’s far from nice houses in Monkstown you were reared.

I laughed, and she offered her hand to help me up. Her hands were large and sallow, not at all like mine. They were full of the practicality I lacked, and my hand fit into them like something that needed fixing.

Will you see your father this evening? she said.

I withdrew my hand and pocketed it.

Maybe, I said.

It had been obvious to me from a young age that my parents didn’t like one another. Couples in films and on television performed household tasks together and talked fondly about their shared memories. I couldn’t remember seeing my mother and father in the same room unless they were eating. My father had ‘moods’. Sometimes during his moods my mother would take me to stay with her sister Bernie in Clontarf, and they would sit in the kitchen talking and shaking their heads while I watched my cousin Alan play Ocarina of Time. I was aware that alcohol played a role in these incidents, but its precise workings remained mysterious to me.

I enjoyed our visits to Bernie’s house. While we were there I was allowed to eat as many digestive biscuits as I wanted, and when we returned, my father was either gone out or else feeling very contrite. I liked it when he was gone out. During his periods of contrition he tried to make conversation with me about school and I had to choose between humouring and ignoring him. Humouring him made me feel dishonest and weak, a soft target. Ignoring him made my heart beat very hard and afterwards I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Also it made my mother cry.

It was hard to be specific about what my father’s moods consisted of. Sometimes he would go out for a couple of days and when he came back in we’d find him taking money out of my Bank of Ireland savings jar, or our television would be gone. Other times he would bump into a piece of furniture and then lose his temper. He hurled one of my school shoes right at my face once after he tripped on it. It missed and went in the fireplace and I watched it smouldering like it was my own face smouldering. I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish. Afterwards my mother said: why didn’t you lift it out of the fire? Can’t you at least make an effort? I shrugged. I would have let my real face burn in the fire too.

When he came home from work in the evening I used to freeze entirely still, and after a few seconds I would know with complete certainty if he was in one of the moods or not. Something about the way he closed the door or handled his keys would let me know, as clearly as if he yelled the house down. I’d say to my mother: he’s in a mood now. And she’d say: stop that. But she knew as well as I did. One day, when I was twelve, he turned up unexpectedly after school to pick me up. Instead of going home, we drove away from town, toward Blackrock. The DART went past on our left and I could see the Poolbeg towers out the car window. Your mother wants to break up our family, my father said. Instantly I replied: please let me out of the car. This remark later became evidence in my father’s theory that my mother had poisoned me against him.

After he moved to Ballina, I visited every second weekend. He was usually on good behaviour then, and we got takeaway for dinner and sometimes went to the cinema. I watched constantly for the flicker that meant his good mood was over and bad things would happen. It could be anything. But when we went to McCarthy’s in the afternoons, my father’s friends would ask: this is your little prodigy, is it, Dennis? And they asked me crossword clues from the back of the paper, or how to spell very long words. When I was right, they clapped me on the back and bought me red lemonade.

She’ll go off and work for NASA, his friend Paul said. You’ll be made up for life.

She’ll do whatever she likes, my father said.

Bobbi had only met him once, at our school graduation. He came up to Dublin for the ceremony, wearing a shirt and a purple tie. My mother had told him about Bobbi, and when he met her after the ceremony he shook her hand and said: that was a grand performance. We were in the school library eating triangular sandwiches and drinking glasses of cola. You look like Frances, Bobbi said. My father and I looked at each other and he gave a sheepish laugh. I don’t know about that, he said. Afterwards he told me she was a ‘pretty girl’ and kissed my cheek goodbye.

In college I stopped visiting so often. I went to Ballina once a month instead, and stayed with my mother when I was there. After he retired, my father’s moods became more erratic. I started to realise how much time I spent appeasing him, being falsely cheerful, and picking up things he’d knocked over. My jaw started to feel stiff, and I noticed myself flinching at small noises. Our conversations became strained, and more than once he accused me of changing my accent. You look down on me, he said during an argument. Don’t be so stupid, I replied. He laughed and said: oh, there we have it. The truth is out now.

After dinner I told my mother I would visit him. She kneaded my shoulder and told me she thought it was a good idea. It’s a great idea, she said. Good woman.

I walked through town with my hands in my jacket pockets. The sun was setting and I wondered what would be on television. I could feel a headache developing, like it was coming down from the sky directly into my brain. I tried stamping my feet as loudly as I could to distract myself from bad thoughts, but people gave me curious looks and I felt cowed. I knew that was weak of me. Bobbi was never cowed by strangers.

My father lived in a little terraced house near the petrol station. I rang the doorbell and put my hands back in my pockets. Nothing happened. I rang again and then I tried the handle, which felt greasy. The door opened up and I stepped in.

Dad? I said. Hello?

The house smelled of chip oil and vinegar. The carpet in the hallway, which had been patterned when he first moved in, was now walked flat and brown. A family photo taken on holiday in Majorca was hanging above the telephone, depicting me at age four in a yellow T-shirt. The T-shirt said BE HAPPY.

Hello? I said.

My father appeared out of the kitchen doorway.

Is it yourself, Frances? he said.

Yeah.

Come on inside, I was just eating.

The kitchen had a high mottled window onto a concrete yard. Unwashed dishes were stacked up by the sink and the bin was spilling small items over the lip of the plastic and onto the floor: receipts, potato peelings. My father walked right over them like he didn’t notice. He was eating from a brown bag propped on a small blue plate.

You’ve had dinner, have you? he said.

I have, yeah.

Tell us the news from Dublin.

Nothing much, I’m afraid, I said.

After he was finished eating I boiled a kettle and filled the sink with hot water and lemon-scented washing liquid. My father went into the other room to look at the television. The water was too hot, and I could see when I lifted my hands they had turned a glaring pink colour. I washed the glasses and cutlery first, then the dishes, then the pots and pans. When everything was clean, I emptied the sink, wiped down the kitchen surfaces and swept the peelings back into the bin. Watching the soap bubbles slide silently down the blades of the kitchen knives, I had a sudden desire to harm myself. Instead I put away the salt and pepper shakers and went into the living room.

I’m off, I said.

You’re away, are you?

That bin needs taking out.

See you again, my father said.

7

Melissa invited us to her birthday party in July. We hadn’t seen her for a while and Bobbi started worrying about what to buy her, and whether we should get her separate gifts or just one from both of us. I said I was only going to get her a bottle of wine anyway so that was the end of the discussion as far as I cared about it. When we saw one another at events Melissa and I increasingly avoided making eye contact. She and Bobbi whispered in each other’s ears and laughed, like they were in school. I didn’t have the courage to really dislike her, but I knew I wanted to.

Bobbi wore a tight cropped T-shirt and black jeans to the party. I wore a summer dress with tiny, fiddly shoulder straps. It was a warm evening, and the sky was only beginning to darken as we reached the house. The clouds were green and the stars reminded me of sugar. We could hear the dog barking in the back garden. I hadn’t seen Nick in real life for what seemed like a long time, and I felt a little nervous about it, because of how droll and indifferent I had pretended to be in all our emails.

Melissa answered the door herself. She embraced us in turn and placed a powdery kiss on my left cheekbone. She smelled of a perfume I recognised.

No gifts necessary! she said. You’re too generous! Come on in, get yourselves a drink. It’s great to see you.

We followed her into the kitchen, which was dim and full of music and people wearing long necklaces. Everything looked clean and spacious. For a few seconds I imagined that this was my house, that I had grown up here, and the things in it belonged to me.

There’s wine on the counter, and spirits are in the utility room at the back, Melissa said. Help yourselves.

Bobbi poured herself a huge glass of red wine and followed Melissa into the conservatory. I didn’t want to tag along so I pretended I wanted spirits instead.

The utility room was a cupboard-sized space through a door at the back of the kitchen. Inside were maybe five people, smoking a joint and laughing loudly about something. One of the people was Nick. When I came in someone said: oh no, it’s the cops! Then they laughed again. I stood there feeling younger than them, and thinking about how low my dress was cut at the back. Nick was sitting on the washing machine drinking from a beer bottle. He was wearing a white shirt open at the collar and I noticed that he seemed flushed. It was very hot and smoky in the room, much hotter than in the kitchen.

Melissa said the spirits were in here, I said.

Yeah, Nick said. What can I get you?

I said I would have a glass of gin while everyone stared at me in a peaceable, stoned-looking way. Other than Nick there were two women and two men. The women weren’t looking at one another. I glanced at my own fingernails to reassure myself they were clean.

Are you another actress? someone asked.

She’s a writer, Nick said.

He introduced me to the other people then, and I immediately forgot their names. He was pouring a large measure of gin into a big glass tumbler and he said there was tonic water somewhere so I waited for him to find it.

I’m not being offensive, the guy said, there are a lot of actresses.

Yeah, Nick has to be careful where he looks, said someone else.

Nick looked at me, though it was difficult to tell if he was embarrassed or just high. The remark definitely had sexual connotations, though it wasn’t clear to me precisely what they were.

No, I don’t, he said.

Melissa must have gotten pretty open-minded then, someone else said.

They all laughed at that, except Nick. I knew at this point that I was being interpreted as some kind of vaguely disruptive sexual presence for the sake of their joke. It didn’t bother me, and in fact I thought about how funny I could make it sound in an email. Nick handed me the glass of gin and tonic and I smiled without showing my teeth. I didn’t know whether he expected me to leave now that I had the drink, or if that would be rude.

How was the visit home? he said.

Oh, good, I said. Parents well. Thank you for asking.

Whereabouts are you from, Frances? said one of the men.

I’m from Dublin, but my parents live in Ballina.

So you’re a culchie, the man said. I didn’t think Nick had culchie friends.

Well, I grew up in Sandymount, I said.

Which county do you support in the All Ireland? someone asked.

I inhaled the second-hand smoke through my mouth, the sweet rancid taste of it. As a woman I have no county, I said. It felt good to belittle Nick’s friends, although they seemed harmless. Nick laughed, as if to himself at something he had just remembered.

Someone out in the kitchen yelled something about cake then and everyone left the utility room except for us two. The dog came in and Nick pushed her out with his foot and closed the door. He looked shy to me suddenly, but maybe only because he was still very flushed from the heat. That James Blake song ‘Retrograde’ was playing outside in the kitchen. Nick had mentioned in an email how much he liked the album, and I wondered if he had chosen the music for the party.

I’m sorry, he said. I’m so high I can’t really see straight.

I’m jealous.

I rested my back against the fridge and fanned my face a little with my hand. He held up his beer bottle and touched it to my cheek. The glass felt fantastically cold and wet, so much that I exhaled quickly without meaning to.

Is that good? he said.

Yeah, that’s incredible. What about here?

I shifted aside one of the shoulder straps of my dress and he rested the bottle against my collarbone. A bead of cold condensation rolled down my skin and I shivered.

That’s so good, I said.

He didn’t say anything. His ears were red, I noticed that.

Do the back of my leg, I said.

He moved the bottle to his other hand and held it against the back of my thigh. His fingertips felt cold brushing my skin.

Like that? he said.

But come closer.

Are we flirting now?

I kissed him. He let me. The inside of his mouth was hot and he put his free hand on my waist, like he wanted to touch me. I wanted him so much that I felt completely stupid, and incapable of saying or doing anything at all.

He drew away from me after a few seconds and wiped his mouth, but tenderly, as if he was trying to make sure it was still there.

We probably shouldn’t do that in here, he said.

I swallowed. I said: I should go. Then I left the utility room, pinching my bottom lip with my fingers and trying not to make any expression with my face.

Out in the conservatory Bobbi was sitting on a windowsill talking to Melissa. She waved me over and I felt I had to join them although I didn’t want to. They were eating clean little slices of cake, with two thin lines of cream and jam that looked like toothpaste. Bobbi was eating hers with her fingers, Melissa had a fork. I smiled and touched my mouth again compulsively. Even while I did it I knew it was a bad idea, but I couldn’t stop.

I’m just telling Melissa how much we idolise her, Bobbi said.

Melissa gave me a levelling glance and took out a packet of cigarettes.

I don’t think Frances idolises anyone, she said.

I shrugged, helplessly. I finished my gin and tonic and poured myself a glass of white wine. I wanted Nick to come back into the room, so I could look at him across the countertop. Instead I looked at Melissa and thought: I hate you. This idea just came from nowhere, like a joke or an exclamation. I didn’t even know if I really hated her, but the words felt and sounded right, like the lyrics to a song I had just remembered.

Hours passed and I didn’t see Nick again at all. Bobbi and I had planned to stay the night in their spare room but most of the guests didn’t leave until four or five that morning. By that time I didn’t know where Bobbi was. I went up to the spare room to look for her but it was empty. I lay on the bed in my clothes and wondered if I was going to start feeling some particular emotion, like sadness or regret. Instead I just felt a lot of things I didn’t know how to identify. In the end I fell asleep and when I woke up Bobbi wasn’t there. It was a grey morning outside and I left the house on my own, without seeing anybody, to get the bus back to town.

8

That afternoon I lay on my bed smoking with the window open, dressed in a vest and my underwear. I was hungover and still hadn’t heard from Bobbi. Through the window I could see the breeze rearranging the foliage and two children appearing and disappearing from behind a tree, one of them carrying a plastic lightsaber. I found this relaxing, or at least it distracted me from feeling terrible. I was a little chilly, but I didn’t want to break the spell by getting dressed.

Eventually, at three or four in the afternoon, I got out of bed. I didn’t feel like writing anything. In fact I felt that if I tried to write, what I produced would be ugly and pretentious. I wasn’t the kind of person I pretended to be. I thought of myself trying to be witty in front of Nick’s friends in the utility room and felt sick. I didn’t belong in rich people’s houses. I was only ever invited to places like that because of Bobbi, who belonged everywhere and had a quality about her that made me invisible by comparison.

I got an email from Nick that evening.

hi frances, i’m really sorry about what happened last night. it was fucking stupid of me and i feel awful. i don’t want to be that person and i don’t want you to think of me as that person either. i feel really bad about it. i should never have put you in that situation. i hope you’re feeling ok today.

I made myself take an hour before responding. I watched some cartoons on the internet and made a cup of coffee. Then I read his email again several times. I was relieved he had put the whole thing in lower case like he always did. It would have been dramatic to introduce capitalisation at such a moment of tension. Eventually I wrote my reply, saying that it was my fault for kissing him, and that I was sorry.

He emailed back promptly.

no, it wasn’t your fault. i’m like 11 years older than you and it was also my wife’s birthday. i behaved terribly, i really don’t want you to feel guilty about it.

It was getting dark out. I felt dizzy and restless. I thought about going for a walk but it was raining and I’d had too much coffee. My heart was beating too quickly for my body. I hit reply.

Do you often kiss girls at parties?

He responded within about twenty minutes.

since i got married, never. although i think that might make it worse.

My phone rang and I picked up, still looking at the email.

Do you want to hang out and watch Brazil? Bobbi said.

What?

Do you want to watch Brazil together? Hello? The dystopian film with the Monty Python guy. You said you wanted to see it.

What? I said. Yeah, okay. Tonight?

Are you sleeping or something? You sound weird.

I’m not sleeping. Sorry. I was looking at the internet. Sure, let’s hang out.

It took her about half an hour to get to my apartment. When she did, she asked if she could stay over. I said yes. We sat on my bed smoking and talking about the party the night before. I felt my heart beating hard in the knowledge that I was being deceitful, but outwardly I was a capable liar, even a competitive one.

Your hair is getting really long, Bobbi said.

Do you think we should cut it?

We decided to cut it. I sat on a chair in front of the living-room mirror, surrounded by old pages of newspaper. Bobbi used the same scissors I used to cut open kitchen items, but she washed them with boiled water and Fairy liquid first.

Do you still think Melissa likes you? I said.

Bobbi gave me a little indulgent smile, as if she had never actually ventured that theory.

Everyone likes me, she said.

But I mean, do you think she feels a particular connection with you, in comparison to other people. You know what I mean.

I don’t know, she’s difficult to get a read on.

I find that too, I said. Sometimes I feel like she loathes me.

No, she definitely likes you as a person. I think you remind her of her.

I felt even more dishonest then, and a sensation of heat crawled up into my ears. Maybe knowing that I’d betrayed Melissa’s trust made me feel like a liar, or maybe this imaginative connection between us suggested something else. I knew I was the one who had kissed Nick and not the other way around, but I also believed that he’d wanted me to. If I reminded Melissa of herself, was it possible I reminded Nick of Melissa also?

We could give you a fringe, said Bobbi.

No, people mix us up too much already.

It’s offensive to me how offensive that is to you.

After she cut my hair we made a pot of coffee and sat on the couch talking about the college feminist society. Bobbi had left the society the previous year, after they invited a British guest speaker who had supported the invasion of Iraq. The society president had described Bobbi’s objection to the invitation as ‘aggressive’ and ‘sectarian’ on the group’s Facebook page, which privately we all agreed was total bullshit, but because the speaker had never actually accepted the invite, Philip and I had not gone so far as to formally renounce our membership. Bobbi’s attitude toward this decision varied greatly, and tended to be an indicator of how well she and I were getting along at a given time. When things were good, she considered it a sign of my tolerance and even self-sacrifice to the cause of gender revolution. When we were having a minor dispute over something, she sometimes referred to it as an example of my disloyalty and ideological spinelessness.

Do they have a stance on sexism these days? she said. Or are there two sides to that as well?

They definitely want more women CEOs.

You know, there’s a distinct lack of female arms dealers, I’ve always thought.

We put on the film eventually, but Bobbi fell asleep while we were watching it. I wondered if she preferred sleeping in my apartment because being near to her parents caused her anxiety. She hadn’t mentioned it, and she was usually pretty free with the details of her emotional life, but family things were different. I didn’t feel like watching the film on my own so I switched it off and just read the internet instead. Eventually Bobbi woke up and then went to bed properly, on the mattress in my room. I liked having her sleeping there while I was awake, it felt reassuring.

That night while she was in bed I opened up my laptop and replied to Nick’s last email.

After that I went back and forth on the question of whether to tell Bobbi that I had kissed Nick. I had, regardless of my ultimate decision, meticulously rehearsed the way I would tell her about it, which details I would emphasise and which I would leave out.

It just kind of happened, I would say.

That’s crazy, Bobbi would reply. But I’ve always kind of thought he liked you.

I don’t know. He was really high, it was stupid.

But in the email he definitely implied it was his fault, didn’t he?

I could tell that I was using the Bobbi character mainly to reassure myself that Nick was interested in me, and I knew in real life Bobbi wouldn’t react that way at all, so I stopped. I did feel an urge to tell someone who would understand the situation, but I also didn’t want to risk Bobbi telling Melissa, which I thought she might do, not as a conscious betrayal but in an effort to weave herself further into Melissa’s life.

I decided not to tell her, which meant I couldn’t tell anyone, or no one who would understand. I mentioned to Philip that I had kissed someone I shouldn’t have kissed, but he didn’t know what I was talking about.

Is it Bobbi? he said.

No, it’s not Bobbi.

Worse or better than if you had kissed Bobbi?

Worse, I said. A lot worse. Just forget about it.

Jesus, I didn’t think anything could be worse than that.

There wasn’t any point in trying to tell him anyway.

I once kissed an ex at a party, he said. Weeks of drama. Ruined my focus.

Is that so.

She had a boyfriend, though, which complicated things.

I bet, I said.

The next day there was a book launch in Hodges Figgis and Bobbi wanted to go and get a copy of the book signed. It was a very warm afternoon in July and I sat inside for the hour before the launch pulling knots out of my hair with my fingers, pulling them so hard that little broken strands of hair tangled and snapped out. I thought: probably they won’t even be there, and I’ll have to come home and sweep up all these strands of hair and feel terrible. Probably nothing of import will happen in my life again and I’ll just have to sweep things up until I die.

I met Bobbi in the door of the bookshop and she waved at me. She had a row of bangles on her left wrist, which rattled elegantly down her arm with the waving gesture. Often I found myself believing that if I looked like Bobbi, nothing bad would happen to me. It wouldn’t be like waking up with a new, strange face: it would be like waking up with a face I already knew, the face I already imagined was mine, and so it would feel natural.

On our way up to the launch I saw Nick and Melissa through the staircase railings. They were standing next to a display of books. Melissa’s calves were bare and very pale and she was wearing flat shoes with an ankle strap. I stopped walking and touched my collarbone.

Bobbi, I said. Does my face look shiny?

Bobbi glanced back and scrunched up her eyes to inspect me.

Yeah, a little, she said.

I let the air out of my lungs quietly. There wasn’t anything I could do now anyway since I was on the stairs already. I wished I hadn’t asked.

Not in a bad way, she said. You look cute, why?

I shook my head and we continued up the stairs. The reading hadn’t started yet, so everyone was still milling around holding wine glasses expectantly. The room was very hot, though they had opened the windows out over the street, and a cool mouthful of breeze touched my left arm and made me shiver. I was sweating. Bobbi was talking about something in my ear, and I nodded and pretended to listen.

Eventually Nick looked over and I looked back. I felt a key turning hard inside my body, turning so forcefully that I could do nothing to stop it. His lips parted like he was about to say something, but he just inhaled and then seemed to swallow. Neither of us gestured or waved, we just looked at one another, as if we were already having a private conversation that couldn’t be overheard.

After a few seconds I was conscious that Bobbi had stopped talking, and when I turned to see her she was looking over at Nick too, with her bottom lip pushed out a little, like: oh, now I see who you’re staring at. I wanted a glass to hold against my face.

Well, at least he can dress himself, she said.

I didn’t pretend to be confused. He was wearing a white T-shirt and he had suede shoes on, the kind everyone wore then, desert boots. Even I wore desert boots. He only looked handsome because he was handsome, though Bobbi wasn’t sensitive to the effects of beauty like I was.

Or maybe Melissa dresses him, said Bobbi.

She was smiling to herself as if concealing a mystery, though her behaviour wasn’t in the least mysterious. I ran my hand through my hair and looked away. A white square of sunlight lay on the carpet like snow.

They don’t even sleep together, I said.

Our eyes met then and Bobbi lifted her chin just barely.

I know, she said.

During the reading we didn’t whisper in each other’s ears like we usually did. It was a book of short stories by a female writer. I glanced at Bobbi but she kept looking forward, so I knew I was being punished for something.

We saw Nick and Melissa after the reading was over. Bobbi went to meet them and I followed her, cooling my face against the back of my hand. They were standing near the refreshments table and Melissa reached over to get us both a glass of wine. White or red? she said.

White, I said. Always white.

Bobbi said: when she drinks red her mouth goes like, and she gestured to her own mouth in a little circle. Melissa handed me a glass and said: oh I get that. It’s not so bad, I think. There’s something appealingly evil about it. Bobbi agreed with her. Like you’ve been drinking blood, she said. And Melissa laughed and said: yes, sacrificing virgins.

I looked into the wine, which was clear and almost greenish-yellow, the colour of cut grass. When I glanced back at Nick he was looking at me. The light from the window felt hot on the back of my neck. I was wondering if you’d be here, he said. It’s nice to see you. And he slipped his hand into his pocket as if he was afraid of what else he might do with it. Melissa and Bobbi were talking still. No one was paying us any attention. Yeah, I said. You too.

9

Melissa was working in London the following week. It was the hottest week of the year, and Bobbi and I sat in the empty college campus together eating ice cream and trying to get a tan. One afternoon I emailed Nick asking him if I could come over so we could talk. He said sure. I didn’t tell Bobbi. I brought my toothbrush in my bag.

When I arrived at the house all the windows and doors were open. I rang the doorbell anyway and heard him saying come in from the kitchen, he didn’t even check who it was. I closed the door behind me anyway. When I got inside he was drying his hands on a tea towel, like he’d just finished washing up. He smiled and told me he’d been feeling nervous about seeing me again. The dog was lying on the sofa. I hadn’t seen her on the sofa before and wondered if maybe Melissa wouldn’t let her sleep there. I asked Nick why he was nervous and he laughed and made a little shrugging gesture, though one that seemed more relaxed than anxious. I leaned my back against the countertop while he folded the towel away.

So, you’re married, I said.

Yeah, it looks like it. Do you want a drink?

I accepted a small bottle of beer, though only because I wanted something to hold in my hand. I felt restless, the way you feel when you’ve already done the wrong thing and you’re anxious about what the outcome is going to be. I told him I didn’t want to be a homewrecker or whatever. He laughed at that.

That’s funny, he said. What does that mean?

I mean, you’ve never had an affair before. I don’t want to wreck your marriage.

Oh, well, the marriage has actually survived several affairs, I just haven’t been involved in any of them.

He said this amusingly, and it made me laugh, though it also had the effect, which I guess was intended, of making me relax about the morality side of things. I hadn’t really wanted to feel sympathetic to Melissa, and now I felt her moving outside my frame of sympathy entirely, as if she belonged to a different story with different characters.

When we went upstairs I told Nick I had never had sex with a man before. He asked if that was a big deal and I said I didn’t think it was, but it might be weird if he only found out later. While we undressed I tried to seem casual by keeping my limbs still and not trembling violently. I was afraid of undressing in front of him, but I didn’t know how to shield my body in a way that wouldn’t look awkward and unattractive. He had a very imposing upper body, like a piece of statuary. I missed the distance between us when he’d watched me being applauded, which now seemed protective, even necessary. But when he asked me if I was sure I wanted to do all this, I heard myself say: I didn’t really come over just to talk, you know.

In bed he asked me what felt good a lot. I said everything felt good. I felt very flushed and I could hear myself making a lot of noise, but only syllables, no real words. I closed my eyes. The inside of my body was hot like oil. I was possessed by an overwhelming and intense energy which seemed to threaten me. Please, I was saying. Please, please. Eventually Nick sat up to take a box of condoms from his bedside locker and I thought: I might never be able to speak again after this. But I surrendered without struggle. Nick murmured the word ‘sorry’, as if the several seconds I had been lying there waiting constituted a minor wrong on his part.

When it was over I lay on my back shivering. I had been so terribly noisy and theatrical all the way through that it was impossible now to act indifferent like I did in the emails.

That felt kind of okay, I said.

Did it?

I think I liked it more than you did.

Nick laughed and lifted his arm to place a hand behind his head.

No, he said, you really didn’t.

You were very nice to me.

Was I?

Seriously, I really do appreciate how nice you were, I said.

Wait. Hey. Are you all right?

Little tears had started slipping out of my eyes and down onto the pillow. I wasn’t sad, I didn’t know why I was crying. I’d had this problem before, with Bobbi, who believed it was an expression of my repressed feelings. I couldn’t stop the tears so I just laughed self-effacingly instead, to show that I wasn’t invested in the crying. I knew I was embarrassing myself badly, but there was nothing I could do about it.

This happens, I said. It wasn’t anything you did.

Nick touched his hand to my body then, just under my breast. I felt soothed like I was an animal, and I cried harder.

Are you sure? he said.

Yeah. You can ask Bobbi. I mean, don’t.

He smiled and said: yeah, I won’t. He was stroking me with the tips of his fingers, like the way he petted his dog. I wiped at my face roughly.

You’re really handsome, you know, I said.

He laughed then.

Is that all I get? he said. I thought you liked my personality.

Do you have one?

He turned over on his back, looking up at the ceiling with a bemused expression. I can’t believe we did this, he said. I knew then that the crying was over. I felt good about everything I could think of. I touched the inside of his wrist and said: yes, you can.

I woke up late the next morning. Nick made French toast for breakfast and I got the bus back into town. I sat at the back, near a window, where the sun bore down on my face like a drill and the cloth of the seat felt sensationally tactile against my bare skin.

That evening Bobbi said she needed somewhere to stay to get away from the ‘domestic situation’. Apparently Eleanor had thrown away some of Jerry’s possessions over the weekend, and at the height of the ensuing argument Lydia had locked herself in the bathroom and screamed that she wanted to die.

Deeply uncool, Bobbi said.

I told her she could stay with me. I didn’t know what else to say. She knew I had an empty apartment. That evening she played around with my electric piano using my laptop for sheet music and I checked my email on my phone. No one had been in touch. I picked up a book but didn’t feel like reading. I hadn’t done any writing that morning, or the morning before. I had started reading long interviews with famous writers and noticing how unlike them I was.

You’ve got a notification on your instant message thing, said Bobbi.

Don’t read it. Let me see it.

Why are you saying don’t read it?

I don’t want you to read it, I said. Give me the laptop.

She handed me the laptop, but I could see she wasn’t going back to the piano. The message was from Nick.

Nick: i know, i’m a bad person

Nick: do you want to come over again some time this week?

Who’s it from? Bobbi said.

Can you relax about it?

Why did you go ‘don’t read it’?

Because I didn’t want you to read it, I said.

She bit on her thumbnail coquettishly and then got onto the bed beside me. I shut my laptop screen, which made her laugh.

I didn’t open it, she said. But I did see who it was from.

Okay, good for you.

You really like him, don’t you?

I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.

Melissa’s husband. You have a serious thing for him.

I rolled my eyes. Bobbi lay back on the bed and grinned. I hated her then and even wanted to harm her.

Why, are you jealous? I said.

She smiled, but absently, as if she was thinking of something else. I didn’t know what else to say to her. She went back to the piano for a while and then she wanted to go to bed. When I woke up the next morning she was already gone.

I stayed with Nick most nights that week. He wasn’t working, so he went to the gym for a couple of hours in the morning and I went into the agency or just wandered around the shops. Then in the evening he made dinner and I played with the spaniel. I told Nick I didn’t think I’d eaten so much food in my life, which was true. At home my parents had never cooked with chorizo or aubergine. I had also never tasted fresh avocado before, though I didn’t tell Nick about that.

One night I asked him if he was afraid of Melissa finding out about us and he said he didn’t think she would find out.

But you found out, I said. When she had affairs.

No, she told me.

What, really? Out of the blue?

The first time, yeah, he said. It was very surreal. She was away at one of these book festivals, and she called me at like five in the morning and said she had something to tell me, that was it.

Fuck.

But it was just a one-off thing, they didn’t keep seeing each other after that. The other time was a lot more involved. I probably shouldn’t be telling you all these secrets, should I? I’m not trying to make her look bad. Or at least I don’t think I am, I don’t know.

Over dinner we exchanged some of the details about our lives. I explained that I wanted to destroy capitalism and that I considered masculinity personally oppressive. Nick told me he was ‘basically’ a Marxist, and he didn’t want me to judge him for owning a house. It’s this or paying rent forever, he said. But I acknowledge it’s troubling. It sounded to me like his family was very wealthy, but I was wary of probing the issue, since I already felt self-conscious about never paying for anything. His parents were still married and he had two siblings.

During these discussions, Nick laughed at all my jokes. I told him I was easily seduced by people who laughed at my jokes and he said he was easily seduced by people who were smarter than he was.

I guess you just don’t meet them very often, I said.

See, isn’t it nice to flatter each other?

The sex was so good that I often cried while it was happening. Nick liked me to go on top, so he could sit back against the headboard, and we could talk quietly. I could tell that he liked it when I talked to him about how good it felt. It was very easy to make him come if I talked about that too much. Sometimes I liked to do that just to feel powerful over him, and afterwards he would say: God, I’m sorry, that’s so embarrassing. I liked him saying that even more than I liked the sex itself.

I became infatuated with the house he lived in: how immaculate everything was, and the coolness of the floorboards in the morning. They had an electric coffee grinder in the kitchen and Nick bought whole-bean coffee and then put small portions in the grinder before breakfast. I wasn’t sure if this was pretentious or not, though the coffee tasted incredibly good. I told him it was pretentious anyway and he said, what do you drink? Fucking Nescafé? You’re a student, don’t act like you’ve got taste. Of course I secretly liked all the expensive utensils they had in their kitchen, the same way I liked to watch Nick press the coffee so slowly that a film of dark cream formed on its surface.

He talked to Melissa pretty much every day during the week. Usually she would call in the evenings, and he’d take the phone into another room while I lay on the couch watching TV or went outside to smoke. These conversations often took twenty minutes or more. Once I watched an entire episode of Arrested Development before he came back in the room, it was the one where they burn down the banana stand. I never heard anything Nick said on the phone. I asked once: she’s not suspicious or anything, is she? And he just shook his head and said, no, it’s okay. Nick wasn’t physically affectionate toward me outside of his room. We watched TV together the way we would have done if we were just waiting for Melissa to get home from work. He let me kiss him if I wanted to, but I always had to initiate it.

It was hard to figure out how Nick really felt. In bed he never put any pressure on me to do anything, and he was always very sensitive to what I wanted. Still, there was something blank and withholding about him. He never said anything nice about my appearance. He never touched or kissed me spontaneously. I still felt nervous whenever we undressed, and the first time I gave him head he was so quiet that I stopped to ask if I was hurting him. He said no, but when I started again, he stayed completely silent. He didn’t touch me, I didn’t even know if he was looking at me. When it was finished I felt awful, like I had made him endure something neither of us enjoyed.

After I left the agency on Thursday that week, I walked past him in town. I was with Philip, going from work to get coffee, and we saw Nick with a tall woman who was directing a pushchair with one hand and talking on the phone with the other. Nick was holding an infant. The infant was wearing a red hat. Nick waved hello as they walked by us, we even looked at one another quickly, but they didn’t stop and talk. That morning he had watched me get dressed, lying with his hands behind his head.

That’s not his baby, is it? Philip said.

I felt like I was playing a video game without knowing any of the controls. I just shrugged and said, I don’t think he has children, does he? I got a text from Nick shortly afterwards saying: my sister Laura and her daughter. Sorry for walking on, they were kind of in a rush. I texted back: cute baby. Can I come over tonight?

That night at dinner he asked me, so did you really think the baby was cute? I told him I didn’t get a good look at her, but from a distance she seemed like a cute one. Oh, she’s the best, Nick said. Rachel. I don’t love many things in life, but I really love that baby. The first time I saw her I just started crying, she was so small. This was by far the most emotion I’d ever heard Nick express, and I was jealous. I thought about making a joke of how jealous I was, but it felt creepy to be jealous of a baby, and I doubted Nick would appreciate it. That’s sweet, I said. He seemed to sense my lack of enthusiasm and said awkwardly: you’re probably too young to care about babies anyway. I felt hurt and raked my fork over the dish of risotto silently. Then I said, no, I really thought you were being sweet. Uncharacteristically.

What, like I’m usually gruff and aggressive? he said.

I shrugged. We went on eating. I knew I was starting to make him nervous, I could see him watching me across the table. He wasn’t in the least gruff or aggressive, and I saved the question in my mind for later, feeling that he had unintentionally revealed some private fear.

When we undressed that night his bedsheets felt icy against my skin, and I mentioned how cold it was. The house? he said. Do you find it cold at night?

No, I mean just now, I said.

I went to kiss him and he allowed me to, but absently, and without real feeling. Then he pulled away and said: because if you’re cold at night, I can put the heating on.

I’m not, I said. The sheets felt cold just now, that’s all.

Right.

We had sex, it was nice, and afterwards we lay there looking up at the ceiling. Air hauled itself into my lungs, I felt peaceful. Nick touched my hand and said: are you warm now? I’m warm, I said. Your concern for my temperature is quite touching. Oh well, he said. It would look bad for me if you froze to death. But he was stroking my hand when he said it. The police might have some questions, I said. He laughed. Yeah, he said. Like, what’s this beautiful corpse doing in bed with you, Nick? It was just a joke, he would never really call me beautiful. But I liked the joke anyway.

On Friday night, before Melissa came home from London, we watched North by Northwest and shared a bottle of wine. Nick was leaving the country the following week to film something in Edinburgh, so I wouldn’t see him again for a short time. I can’t remember most of what we said that night. I remember the scene on the train where Cary Grant’s character is flirting with the blonde woman, and that for some reason I repeated one of her lines out loud in a clipped American accent. I said: and I don’t particularly like the book I’ve started. This made Nick laugh a lot, for no real reason, or maybe because my accent was so bad.

Now you do Cary Grant, I said.

In a mid-Atlantic cinema voice Nick said: the moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.

Do you typically pretend for long? I said.

You tell me, Nick said in his normal voice.

I think I figured it out pretty quickly. But I was concerned I was just deluding myself.

Oh, I felt the same way about you.

He had picked up the bottle and was refilling our glasses.

So is this just sex, I said, or do you actually like me?

Frances, you’re drunk.

You can tell me, I won’t be offended.

No, I know you won’t, he said. I think you want me to say it’s just sex.

I laughed. I was happy he said that, because it was what I wanted him to think, and because I thought he really knew that and was just kidding around.

Don’t feel bad, I said. It’s terribly enjoyable. I may have mentioned that before.

Only a couple of times. But I’d like it in writing if possible. Just something permanent that I can look at on my deathbed.

He slipped his hand between my knees then. I was wearing a striped dress and my legs were bare; the moment he touched me I felt hot and passive as if I were asleep. Any strength I had seemed to leave me completely and when I tried to speak I stammered.

What happens when your wife gets home? I said.

Yeah. We’ll work something out.

10

I hadn’t spoken to Bobbi since the night she’d stayed over in the apartment. Because I was staying with Nick and not thinking about anything else, I hadn’t tried to get in touch with her or put much thought into the question of why she hadn’t called. Then after Melissa came back to Dublin, I got an email from Bobbi with the subject heading ‘jealous???’

look, i don’t care if you have a crush on nick, and i wasn’t trying to embarrass you or whatever. sorry if it came across that way. (and i’m not going to be moralistic about him being married either, i’m pretty sure melissa has affairs anyway). BUT it was really fucked up of you to accuse me of being jealous of him. it is just so stereotypically homophobic to accuse a gay woman of being secretly jealous of men, which i know you know. but even more than that it’s really devaluing to our friendship to make out like i’m competing with a man for your attention. what does that say about how you see me? do you really rank our relationship below your passing sexual interest in some middle aged married guy? it hurt my fucking feelings actually.

I was in work when I received the email, but none of the other people who worked there were around. I read the message several times. For some reason I deleted it briefly, and then went into my trash folder to retrieve it almost straight away. Then I marked it as unread and opened it to read it again as if for the first time. Of course Bobbi was right. I had called her jealous to try and hurt her. I just hadn’t known that it had actually worked, or that it was even possible to hurt her no matter how hard I tried. Realising not only that hurting Bobbi’s feelings was within my power but that I had done it practically offhandedly and without noticing, made me uncomfortable. I wandered around the office and poured some water from the cooler into a plastic cup though I wasn’t thirsty. Then eventually I sat back down.

It took me several drafts to finish writing my reply.

Hey, you’re right, it was a weird and wrong thing to say and I shouldn’t have said it. I felt defensive and I just wanted to make you angry. I feel guilty for hurting your feelings over something so stupid. I’m sorry.

I sent it and then logged out of my email for a while to get some work done.

Philip came in around eleven and we talked a little. I told him I hadn’t written anything in a week and he raised his eyebrows.

I thought you were all about discipline, he said.

I was.

Are you having a weird month? You seem like you are.

On my lunch break I logged back into my email. Bobbi had replied.

ok i forgive you. but really, nick? is that your thing now? i just feel like he probably unironically reads articles called ‘one weird trick for perfect abs’

if it absolutely had to be a man i assumed it would be someone wussy and effeminate like philip, this is so unexpected.

I didn’t reply to that. Bobbi and I had always shared a contempt for the cultish pursuit of male physical dominance. Even very recently we had been asked to leave Tesco for reading aloud inane passages from men’s magazines on the shop floor. But Bobbi was wrong about Nick. That wasn’t what he was like. Really he was the kind of person who would laugh at Bobbi’s cruel impression of him and not try to correct her. But I couldn’t explain that to her. I certainly couldn’t tell her what I found most endearing about him, which was that he was attracted to plain and emotionally cold women like me.

By the time I finished work I was tired and I had a headache, a bad one. I walked home and decided to lie in bed for a while. It was five o’clock. I didn’t wake up until midnight.

I didn’t see Nick again before he left for Scotland. Because he was on set from early in the morning, the only way we could talk was online, late at night. He was usually tired by then and seemed withdrawn, and I started writing only terse responses to his messages, or not responding at all. Online he talked about trivial things, like how much he hated his co-workers. He never said that he missed me, or thought about me at all. When I made any reference to the time we’d spent in his house together he tended to skip over it and talk about something else. In response I felt myself becoming cold and sarcastic.

Nick: the only reasonable person on set is stephanie

me: why don’t you have an affair with her then.

Nick: well i think that could only harm our working relationship

me: is that a hint

Nick: also she is at least 60

me: and you’re what like.. 63?

Nick: funny

Nick: i’ll run it by her if you want

me: oh please do

At home I watched YouTube clips of his film and TV appearances. He had once played the young father of a kidnap victim in an episode of a long-running crime drama, and in one scene he broke down and cried in the police station. That was the clip I watched most often. He cried exactly the way I imagined he would in real life: hating himself for crying, but hating himself so much that it only made him cry harder. I found that if I watched this clip before we spoke at night, I tended to be more sympathetic toward him. He had a very basic HTML fansite online that hadn’t been updated since 2011, which I looked at sometimes while we were talking.

I was sick at the time, I had cystitis. For a while the persistent discomfort and mild fever felt psychologically appropriate and I did nothing about them, but eventually I went to see the college doctor and she gave me antibiotics and a painkiller that made me drowsy. I spent the evenings looking at my own hands or trying to focus on a laptop screen. I felt disgusting, like my body was full of evil bacteria. I knew that Nick was suffering no similar after-effects. There was nothing equivalent about us. He had screwed me up in his hand like paper and tossed me away.

I tried to start writing again, but everything I produced was full of a bitterness that made me ashamed. Some of it I deleted, some I hid in folders I never looked inside. I was taking things too seriously again. I fixated on perceived wrongs Nick had done to me, callous things he had said or implied, so that I could hate him and therefore justify the intensity of my feelings for him as pure hatred. But I recognised that the only thing he had done to hurt me was to withdraw his affection, which he had every right to do. In every other way he had been courteous and thoughtful. At times I thought this was the worst misery I had experienced in my life, but it was also a very shallow misery, which at any time could have been relieved completely by a word from him and transformed into idiotic happiness.

One night online I asked him if he had sadistic tendencies.

Nick: not that i know of

Nick: why do you ask?

me: you seem like someone who does

Nick: hm

Nick: that’s worrying

Some time passed. I stared at the screen but didn’t type anything. I was one day away from finishing my antibiotics.

Nick: is there an example you’re thinking of?

me: no

Nick: ok

Nick: i think when i hurt people it tends to be through selfishness

Nick: rather than being an end in itself

Nick: have i done something to hurt you?

me: no

Nick: are you sure?

I let more time go by. With the pad of my finger I covered his name on my laptop screen.

Nick: are you still there?

me: yeah

Nick: oh

Nick: i guess you don’t feel like talking then

Nick: that’s ok, i should go to bed anyway

The next morning he sent me an email that read:

i can see you don’t really feel like keeping in touch at the moment, so i’m going to stop sending you messages, ok? i’ll see you when i’m back.

I considered writing a spiteful email in response but instead I didn’t reply at all.

The following night Bobbi suggested we watch one of Nick’s films.

That would be weird, I said.

He’s our friend, why would it be weird?

She was on my laptop, searching Netflix. I had made a pot of peppermint tea and we were waiting for it to brew.

It’s on here, she said. I saw it on here. It’s the one about the bridesmaid marrying her boss.

Why are you even looking for his films?

It’s a pretty minor part but he does take his shirt off at one point. You’re into that, right?

Genuinely, please stop, I said.

She stopped. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and she reached to pour herself a splash of tea to see if it was ready.

Do you like him as a person? she said. Or is it just like, he’s good-looking and married to someone interesting?

I could tell she was still hurt by the jealousy remark, but I had apologised already. I didn’t want to indulge her hostility toward Nick, especially since I wasn’t talking to him then. It was obvious to me that Bobbi’s feelings were not sincerely hurt anymore, if they ever had been, and that she just liked to make fun of me whenever I experienced romantic feelings. I looked at her like she was something very far away from me, a friend I used to have, or someone whose name I didn’t remember.

Melissa’s not that interesting, I said.

When Bobbi went home I looked up the film she was talking about. It had been released six years previously, when I was fifteen. Nick appeared in it as a character with whom the protagonist has a regrettable one-night stand. I found a video link and skipped ahead to the scene where he was getting out of her shower the next morning. He looked younger, and his face was different, although even in this video he was older than me. I watched the scene twice. After he left, the protagonist called her friend and they laughed hysterically about what a jerk Nick’s character was, which was a bonding moment for their friendship.

I sent him an email after I watched it. I wrote:

Sure, if that’s what you want. I hope the filming is going okay.

He replied at about 1 a.m.

i should have told you before, but i’m going to be in the north of france for most of august with melissa and various other people. it’s a huge villa type place in a village called etables. people are always coming and going, so you’re welcome to come and stay for a while if you want, though i can see why that might not appeal.

I was sitting cross-legged in bed trying to work on a spoken word thing when the email notification came through. I replied:

So are we still having an affair or is that over now?

He didn’t reply for a while. I guessed he had gone to bed, but the possibility that he hadn’t yet made me not want to work any more. I made myself a cup of instant coffee and watched some YouTube videos of other spoken word performers.

Eventually a notification came through on instant messenger.

Nick: are you awake

me: yes

Nick: so yeah look

Nick: i don’t know what you want

Nick: obviously we can’t see each other very often

Nick: and having an affair is reasonably stressful

me: haha

me: are you breaking up with me

Nick: if we never actually see one another

Nick: then the affair just consists of like

Nick: worrying about the affair

Nick: do you see what i mean

me: I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me over instant messenger

me: I thought you were going to leave your wife so we could run away together

Nick: you don’t need to be defensive

me: how do you know what I need

me: maybe I’m actually really upset

Nick: are you

Nick: i never have any idea what you feel about anything

me: well it doesn’t really matter now, does it

He had to be back on set early that morning so he went to bed. I kept thinking about the time I gave him head and he just lay there quietly letting me do it. I had never done that before, I wanted to explain. You could have told me what was so bad about it instead of just letting me carry on. It wasn’t kind. I felt so foolish. But I knew he had done nothing wrong really. I considered calling Bobbi and telling her everything, in the hope that she would tell Melissa and then Nick’s life would be ruined. But I decided it would be too humiliating a story to relate.

11

I missed work the next day because I slept in. I sent Sunny a grovelling email and she responded: we survived. It was noon by the time I showered. I put on a black T-shirt dress and went out for a walk, though it was too hot to enjoy walking. The air felt helpless and trapped on the streets. Shop windows reflected blinding flares of sunlight and my skin was damp. I sat on the campus cricket pitch on my own and smoked two cigarettes, one after another. I had a headache, I hadn’t eaten. My body felt used up and worthless to me. I didn’t want to put food or medicine into it any more.

That afternoon when I got back, I had a new email from Nick.

so i feel like our conversation last night was kind of awkward. it’s obviously hard for me to tell what you actually want and i don’t really know if you were joking about being hurt. you’re a very stressful person to talk to online. i hope you’re not upset or anything.

I wrote back:

Forget about it. See you in September, I hope the weather is good in France.

He didn’t email me again after that.

Three days later, Melissa invited Bobbi and me to come stay in the villa in Étables for a few days in August. Bobbi kept sending me links to the Ryanair website and saying we should go for just a week, or even just five days. I could afford the flights and Sunny didn’t mind me taking time off.

Eventually I said: fine. Let’s go.

Bobbi and I had been on several foreign trips together before. We always took the cheapest flights, early in the morning or late at night, and as a consequence we usually spent the first day of the trip feeling irritable and trying to find free WiFi. The only day I had ever spent in Budapest we’d sat in a coffee shop with our luggage while Bobbi drank espressos and engaged in a heated online argument about drone strikes, which she relayed to me aloud. When I told her I wasn’t particularly interested in hearing the discussion, she said: children are dying, Frances. We didn’t speak for several hours after that.

In the days preceding our trip, Bobbi sent me frequent text messages about items I should remember to pack. It was in my nature to remember what I needed, and very much in Bobbi’s nature not to. One evening she called around to the apartment with a list, and when I answered the door she was holding her phone between her shoulder and ear.

Hey, I’m just at Frances’s place now, she said. Do you mind if I put you on speakerphone?

Bobbi closed the door and followed me into the living room, where she dropped her phone unceremoniously onto the table, with the speakerphone enabled.

Hi Frances, said Melissa’s voice.

I said hello, though what I meant was: I hope you haven’t found out about me sleeping with your husband.

So whose is the house exactly? Bobbi said.

It belongs to a friend of mine called Valerie, said Melissa. I mean, I say friend, she’s in her sixties. More like a mentor. She was very helpful with getting the book published, and all that. Anyway, old old money. And she likes to have people staying in her various properties when she’s not around.

I said that she sounded interesting.

You’d like her, Melissa said. You might get to meet her, she does spend a day or two in the house sometimes. She lives in Paris usually.

Wealthy people sicken me, said Bobbi. But yeah, I’m sure she’s great.

How have you been keeping, Frances? Melissa said. It feels like an age since I’ve seen you.

I paused, and then said: I’ve been well, thank you. And you? Melissa also paused and then replied: good.

How was London? I asked. You were over there last month, were you?

Was that last month? she said. Time is so funny.

She said she had better be getting back to dinner and hung up. I didn’t think there was anything remotely funny about time, certainly not ‘so funny’.

After Bobbi left that night I wrote for an hour and a half, poetry in which I figured my own body as an item of garbage, an empty wrapper or a half-eaten and discarded piece of fruit. Putting my self-loathing to work in this way didn’t make me feel better as such, but it tired me out. Afterwards I lay on my side with A Critique of Postcolonial Reason propped half-open on the pillow beside me. Occasionally I lifted a finger to turn the page and allowed the heavy and confusing syntax to drift down through my eyes and into my brain like fluid. I’m bettering myself, I thought. I’m going to become so smart that no one will understand me.

Before we left the country, I sent Nick an email telling him we were coming to stay. I said: I’m sure Melissa told you already, I just want to assure you I’m not planning on making a scene. He replied saying: cool, it’ll be nice to see you. I stared at that message repeatedly, often reopening it to stare at it again. It was so devoid of tone or meaning that it infuriated me. It was as if, our relationship having come to an end, he had demoted me right back to my previous status as an acquaintance. The affair might be over, I thought, but something being over is not the same as something never having happened. In my anger I even began searching my emails and texts for ‘evidence’ of our affair, which consisted of a few boring logistical messages about when he would be back in the house and what time I might arrive. There were no passionate declarations of love or sexually graphic text messages. This made sense, because the affair was conducted in real life and not online, but I felt robbed of something anyway.

On the plane I shared my headphones with Bobbi, who had forgotten hers. We had to turn the volume way up to be able to hear anything over the engines. Bobbi was a nervous flyer, or she said she was, but I thought she played it up to an extent just for fun. When we flew together she made me hold hands. I wished I could ask her what she thought I should do, but I was sure if she knew what had happened she’d be appalled at the idea of me even going to Étables. In a way I was appalled too, but also fascinated. Before that summer I’d had no idea I was the kind of person who would accept an invitation like this from a woman whose husband I’d repeatedly slept with. This information was morbidly interesting to me.

Bobbi fell asleep for most of the flight and only woke up when we landed. She squeezed my hand while the other passengers got up to get their luggage, and said: flying with you is so relaxing. You have a very stoic disposition. The airport smelled of artificial air freshener, and Bobbi bought us two black coffees while I figured out which bus we had to catch. Bobbi had studied German in school and spoke no French, but wherever we went she managed to communicate effectively with her hands and face. I saw the man behind the coffee counter smiling at her like a beloved cousin, while I desperately repeated the names of towns and bus services to the woman at the ticket desk.

Bobbi had a way of belonging everywhere. Though she said she hated the rich, her family was rich, and other wealthy people recognised her as one of their own. They took her radical politics as a kind of bourgeois self-deprecation, nothing very serious, and talked to her about restaurants or where to stay in Rome. I felt out of place in these situations, ignorant and bitter, but also fearful of being discovered as a moderately poor person and a communist. Equally, I struggled to make conversation with people of my own parents’ background, afraid that my vowels sounded pretentious or my large flea-market coat made me look rich. Philip also suffered from looking rich, though in his case because he really was. We two often fell silent while Bobbi chatted effortlessly with taxi drivers about current affairs.

It was six in the morning by the time we boarded the bus to Étables. I was exhausted, and a headache had settled behind my eyes so I had to squint at the tickets to read them. The bus took us through verdant countryside, which a white mist had settled over, shot through with sunlight. On the bus radio, voices chatted lightly in French, laughing sometimes, and then there was music. We passed farmland on either side, vineyards with hand-painted signs and immaculate drive-through bakeries advertised in neat sans-serif lettering. Very few cars were on the roads, it was early.

By seven the sky had thinned out into a soft, lipless blue. Bobbi was asleep on my shoulder. I fell asleep too and dreamt that I had a problem with my teeth. My mother was sitting very far away from me, at the end of the room, and she said: it’s expensive to get those things fixed, you know. Obediently, I worked my tongue down underneath my tooth, until the tooth came loose into my mouth and I spat it into my hand. Is that it? my mother said, but I couldn’t answer because the hole in my mouth was pumping blood. The blood tasted thick, clotted and salty. I could feel it, vividly, running back down my throat. Well, spit it out, my mother said. I spat helplessly onto the floor. My blood was the colour of blackberries. When I woke up the bus driver was saying: Étables. And Bobbi was pulling gently on my hair.

12

Melissa was waiting for us at the bus stop, right by the harbour. She was wearing a red wrap dress, low-cut and gathered with a ribbon at her waist. She had large breasts, a generous figure, not at all like mine. She was leaning on the railings gazing out onto the sea, which looked flat like a sheet of plastic. She offered to help us with our bags but we said we’d carry them ourselves and she shrugged. The skin on her nose was peeling. She looked pretty.

When we got to the house, the dog ran outside and started yelping and jumping up on its back feet like a little circus animal. Melissa ignored that and opened the gate. The house had a huge stonework façade, with blue-painted shutters on the windows and white stairs running up to the front door. Inside, everything was pristinely tidy and smelled faintly of cleaning agents and suncream. The walls were papered with a pattern of sailboats, and I saw the shelves were full of French-language novels. Our rooms were downstairs, on the basement floor: Bobbi’s looked out over the yard, while mine faced the sea. We left our luggage inside and Melissa said the others were having breakfast out the back.

In the garden, they had a large white tent covering a table and chairs, with the canvas doors rolled up and tied with ribbon. The dog followed at my ankles and shrieked for my attention. Melissa introduced us to her friends, a couple called Evelyn and Derek. They looked the same age Melissa did, or maybe a little older. They were laying out cutlery on the table. The dog barked at me again and Melissa said: oh, she must like you. You know she needs a passport to travel overseas? It’s like having a toddler. I laughed at nothing, while the dog butted her head against my shins and whimpered.

Nick came out of the house, carrying plates. I felt myself swallow, hard. He looked thin and very tired. The sun was in his eyes and he squinted over at us as if he hadn’t seen that we’d arrived. Then he did see us. He said, oh hi, how was the trip? He glanced away from me and the dog howled. Uneventful, said Bobbi. Nick put the plates down and wiped his hand against his forehead as if it was wet, though it didn’t look to be.

Were you always this skinny? Bobbi said. I remembered you bigger.

He’s been sick, said Derek. He had bronchitis, he’s very sensitive about it.

It was pneumonia, Nick said.

Are you okay now? I asked.

Nick looked in the direction of my shoes and nodded. He said Yeah, sure, I’m fine. He did look different, his face was thinner and he had damp circles below his eyes. He said he’d finished the antibiotics. I pinched hard on my earlobe to distract myself.

Melissa laid the table and I sat beside Bobbi, who said funny things and laughed a lot. Everyone seemed charmed by her. There was a plastic, slightly sticky tablecloth covering the table, and lots of fresh croissants and various preserves and hot coffee. I could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t make me feel unwelcome. I stayed quiet and refilled my coffee cup three times. In a small bowl next to my elbow was a stack of glittering white sugar cubes, which I sank into my cup and stirred one by one.

At one point, Bobbi said something about Dublin airport, and Derek said: ah, Nick’s old haunt.

Do you have a particular love of the airport? Bobbi said.

He’s a jetsetter, said Evelyn. He practically lives there.

He’s even had a wild affair with a stewardess, Derek said.

My chest tightened but I didn’t look up. Though my coffee was already too sweet, I lifted another sugar cube and placed it on my saucer.

She wasn’t a stewardess, said Melissa. She worked in the Starbucks.

Stop that, Nick said. They’re going to think you’re serious.

What was her name again? said Evelyn. Lola?

Louisa, Nick said.

Finally I looked at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was smiling with one half of his mouth.

Nick went on a date with a girl he met in the airport, Evelyn said to us.

Unwittingly, said Nick.

Well, a bit wittingly, Derek said.

Nick looked at Bobbi then, with an expression of feigned exasperation, like: okay, here we go. But truly he didn’t seem to mind telling the story.

This is like three years ago, said Nick. I was in the airport constantly at the time, so I knew this girl to see, we sometimes talked while I was waiting for my order. Anyway one week she asked me to meet her for coffee in town. I thought …

At this, the others all started talking again, laughing and making remarks all at once.

I thought, Nick repeated, that she actually just wanted coffee.

What happened? said Bobbi.

Well, when I got there, I realised it was supposed to be a date, Nick said. And I completely panicked, I felt terrible.

The others started to interject again, Evelyn laughing, Derek saying he doubted Nick felt all that terrible. Without looking up from her plate, Melissa said something I couldn’t hear.

So I told her I was married, Nick said.

You must have known at some level, said Derek. What she was after.

Honestly, Nick said. People have coffee together all the time, it just didn’t occur to me.

It’s a great cover story, Evelyn said. If you did have an affair with her.

Was she attractive? said Bobbi.

Nick laughed and lifted a hand palm-up like, what do you think? Ravishingly, he said.

Melissa laughed at that and he smiled down at his lap, like he was pleased with himself for making her laugh. Under the table I stepped on my own toes with the heel of my sandal.

And she was stupidly young, wasn’t she? said Derek. Twenty-three or something.

Maybe she knew you were married, Evelyn said. Some women like married men, it’s a challenge.

I stepped on my foot so hard the pain shot up my leg and I had to bite down on my lip to stay quiet. Releasing my heel, I could feel my toes throbbing.

I don’t really believe that, said Nick. She also seemed pretty disappointed when I mentioned it.

Evelyn and Derek went down to the beach after breakfast, while Bobbi and I stayed to unpack our things. We could hear Melissa and Nick talking upstairs, but only the cadence of their voices, not the actual words. A bumblebee flew through the open window and cast a comma of shadow on the wallpaper before flying out again. When I finished unpacking I showered and changed into a sleeveless grey cotton dress, listening to Bobbi singing a Françoise Hardy song in the next room.

It was two or three o’clock when we all left the house together. The route to the beach was down a little paved hill, past two white houses, and then a zig-zag of steps set into the cliff rock. The beach was full of young families lying out on coloured towels, applying sun lotion on each other’s backs. The tide had receded out past a crust of dried green seaweed and a group of teenagers were playing volleyball down by the rocks. We could hear them shouting in foreign accents. The sun was beating onto the sand and I was starting to sweat. We saw Evelyn and Derek waving to us, Evelyn in a brown one-piece swimsuit, her thighs pocked like the texture of whipped cream.

We laid our towels out and Melissa put some sun lotion on the back of Bobbi’s neck. Derek told Nick the water was ‘refreshing’. The smell of salt stung my throat. Bobbi undressed down to her bikini. I averted my eyes from Nick and Melissa while they undressed together. She asked him something and I heard him say: no, I’m fine. Evelyn said, you’ll burn.

Aren’t you getting in the water, Frances? Derek said.

Everyone turned to look at me then. I touched the side of my sunglasses and lifted one shoulder, not even a full shrug.

I’d rather lie in the sun, I said.

The truth was that I didn’t want to change into my swimsuit in front of them. I felt I owed it to my own body not to. Nobody minded, they left me where I was. When they were gone I took off my sunglasses to make sure I didn’t get tan lines on my face. There were children playing with plastic toys nearby and yelling at one another in French, which sounded urbane and sophisticated to me because I couldn’t understand it. I was lying on my front, so I couldn’t see the children’s faces, but occasionally in my peripheral vision I caught a blur of primary colour, a spade or bucket, or a flash of ankle. A weight had settled in my joints like sand. I thought about the heat on the bus that morning.

After I turned to lie on my back, Bobbi came up from the water, shivering and looking very white. She wrapped herself in a huge beach towel, with another light blue towel draped over her head like the Virgin Mary.

It’s Baltic, she said. I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.

You should have stayed here. I’m a little too warm if anything.

She removed the towel from her head and shook her hair like a dog, until a shower of droplets hit my bare skin and I swore. You deserved it, she said. She sat down then and opened up her book, her body still swaddled in the big towel, which had a picture of Super Mario on it.

On the way down to the water everyone was talking about you, she said.

What?

Yeah, there was a little group conversation about you. Apparently you’re very impressive. It’s news to me, obviously.

Who says so? I said.

Can we smoke on the beach or not?

I told her I didn’t think we were allowed to smoke on the beach. She sighed performatively and squeezed out some remaining seawater from her hair. Because Bobbi would not tell me who had complimented me, I felt certain it had actually been Bobbi herself.

Nick didn’t really say anything, she said. About whether you’re impressive. I was watching him, though, he seemed very awkward.

Maybe because you were watching him.

Or maybe because Melissa was.

I coughed and said nothing. Bobbi took a cereal bar out of the bottom of her handbag and started chewing on it.

So how bad is this crush, from one to ten? she said. Ten being the kind of crush you had on me in school.

And one being a really serious crush?

She laughed, even though her mouth was full of cereal bar.

Whatever, she said. Is it like, you have fun talking to him online, or like, you want to tear him open and drink his blood?

I don’t want to drink his blood.

I landed a little heavily on the final word of this sentence without meaning to, which made Bobbi snort. I’m not ready to think about what else you want to drink, she said. That’s fucked up. I thought about telling her what had happened between me and Nick then, because it could be framed in the format of a joke, and anyway it was over now. For some reason though, I didn’t say anything, and she just said: sex with men, how weird.

13

The next day we were clearing up the breakfast dishes and Melissa asked Nick if he would take the car to some shopping complex outside town to get new deckchairs. She said she had planned to go the day before but she forgot about it. Nick didn’t seem wild about the suggestion, although he said he would go. He said something like: oh, that place is fucking miles away. But not with any particular conviction. He was washing up the dishes in the sink and I was drying them and handing them to Melissa to put back in the cupboard. Standing between them I felt clumsy and unwanted, and I was sure Bobbi could see I was flushed. She was sitting on the kitchen table swinging her legs and eating a piece of fruit.

Take the girls with you then, Melissa said.

Don’t call us girls, Melissa, please, said Bobbi.

Melissa gave her a look and Bobbi bit into her nectarine innocently.

Take the young women with you then, Melissa said.

What, like for my amusement? said Nick. I’m sure they’d rather go to the beach.

You could take them to the lake, Melissa said. Or you could go to Châtelaudren.

Is that place there still open? he said.

They discussed whether the place in Châtelaudren was still open. Then Nick turned to look at Bobbi. His hands and wrists were wet.

How do you feel about long car journeys? he said.

Don’t listen to him, it’s not that long, said Melissa. It’ll be fun.

She laughed when she said this, as if to signal that she knew perfectly well it would not be fun. She gave us a box of pastries and a bottle of rosé wine to take in the car in case we wanted to have a picnic. And she pressed Nick’s hand quickly when she thanked him.

The car had been sitting in the sun all morning and we had to roll the windows down before we could even get in. Inside it smelled like dust and heated plastic. I sat in the back and Bobbi leaned her little face out the passenger window like a terrier. Nick switched on the radio and Bobbi withdrew her face from the window and said, do you not have a CD player? Can we listen to music? Nick said: sure, okay. Bobbi started looking through the CDs then and saying whether she thought they were his or Melissa’s.

Who likes Animal Collective, you or Melissa? she said.

I think we both like them.

But who bought the CD?

I don’t remember, he said. You know, we share those things, I don’t remember whose is whose.

Bobbi glanced at me over the back of her seat. I ignored her.

Frances? she said. Did you know that Nick appeared on a Channel 4 documentary about gifted children in 1992?

I looked up at her then and said: what? Nick was already saying: where did you hear about that? Bobbi had taken one of the pastries out of the box, something with whipped cream on top, and she was spooning the cream into her mouth with an index finger.

Melissa told me, she said. Frances was also a gifted child so I thought she’d be interested. She wasn’t on any documentaries though. She also wasn’t alive in 1992.

I went downhill from then, he said. Why is Melissa telling you this stuff?

She looked up at him, sucking the whipped cream off her finger in a gesture that seemed more insolent than seductive.

She confides in me, she said.

I looked at Nick in the rear-view mirror, but he was watching the road.

I’m a big hit with her, said Bobbi. I’m not sure it’ll go anywhere though, I think she’s married.

Just to some actor, said Nick.

It took Bobbi three or four bites to finish the pastry. Then she put on the Animal Collective CD and turned the music up really loud. When we got to the home supplies store Bobbi and I just smoked in the car park while Nick went inside to get the deckchairs. He came back out carrying them under one arm, looking very masculine. I crushed my cigarette under the toe of my sandal while he opened the boot and said, I’m afraid this lake is going to be a major disappointment.

Twenty minutes later Nick parked the car and we all went down a little lane, surrounded by trees. The lake lay blue and flat, reflecting the sky. There wasn’t anyone else around. We sat on the grass by the water, in the shade of a willow tree, and ate cream pastries. Bobbi and I took turns drinking from the bottle of wine, which was warm and sweet.

Can you swim in it? Bobbi said. The lake.

Yeah, I think so, said Nick.

She stretched out her legs on the grass. She said she wanted to swim.

You don’t have your swimsuit, I said.

So? she said. There’s no one here anyway.

I’m here, I said.

Bobbi laughed at that. She threw back her head and laughed up into the trees. She was wearing a sleeveless cotton blouse, printed with tiny flowers, and her arms looked slender and dark in the shade. She started unbuttoning the blouse. Bobbi, I said. You’re not really.

He can take his shirt off, but I can’t? she said.

I threw up my hands. Nick coughed, like an amused little cough.

I actually wasn’t planning to take my shirt off, Nick said.

I’m going to be offended if you try to object, said Bobbi.

Frances is the one objecting, not me.

Oh, her, said Bobbi. She’ll live.

Then she left her clothes folded up on the grass and walked down to the lake. The muscles of her back moved smoothly under her skin, and in the glare of sunlight her tan lines were almost invisible, so she appeared whole and completely perfect. The only sound after that was the sound of her limbs moving through the water. It was very hot, and we had finished the pastries. The light had moved and we were no longer in the shade. I drank some more wine and looked out for Bobbi’s figure.

She’s literally shameless, I said. I wish I was more like that.

Nick and I were sitting quite close together, so that if I inclined my head I could touch it to his shoulder. The sunlight was inordinately bright. I closed my eyes and let strange patterns form behind my eyelids. The heat poured down over my hair and little insects purred in the undergrowth. I could smell the laundered scent of Nick’s clothing, and the orange-oil shower gel I had used when I stayed in his house.

That was awkward yesterday, he said. About the girl at the airport.

I tried to give a cute, impartial smile, but his tone made it hard for me to breathe evenly. It sounded like he had been waiting for an opportunity to speak to me alone, and immediately I was in his confidence again.

Some girls just like married men, I said.

He laughed, I heard him. I kept my eyes closed and let the red shapes in my eyelids unfold themselves like kaleidoscopes.

I said I didn’t think that was true, he said.

Loyal of you.

I was afraid you’d think they were being serious.

You didn’t like her? I said.

Louisa? Oh, you know. She was nice. I didn’t dream about her at night.

Nick had definitely never told me that he dreamed about me at night, or even that he especially liked me. In terms of verbal declarations, ‘I didn’t dream about her at night’ was the first thing I could remember him saying that implied I had any special status to him at all.

So are you seeing anyone at the moment? he said.

I opened my eyes then. He wasn’t looking at me, he was inspecting a dandelion between his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t seem to be joking. I held my legs together very tightly.

Well, I was for a while, I said. But I’m afraid he ended it.

He twisted the flower stem back and forth, smiling a reluctant smile.

He did? Nick said. What was he thinking?

You know, I have no idea.

He looked at me and I was afraid of what expression my face was making.

I’m very happy you’re here, he said. It’s good to see you again.

I raised an eyebrow and then turned my face away. I could see Bobbi’s head dipping and rising in the silver water like a seal.

And I am sorry, he said.

I smiled mechanically, and said: oh, for hurting my feelings? Nick sighed as if placing down something heavy. He relaxed, I could feel his posture changing. I lay back and let the blades of grass touch my shoulders.

Sure, if you have any, he said.

Have you ever said one sincere thing in your life?

I said I was sorry, that was sincere. I tried to tell you how nice it is to see you again. What do you want? I could grovel but I don’t think you’re the kind of person it would appeal to.

How well do you think you know me? I said.

He gave me a look then, like he was finally dropping some long pretence. It was a good look, but I knew that he could practise it just as well as any of the others.

Well, I’d like to get to know you better, he said.

We saw that Bobbi was coming out of the water then, but I stayed lying in Nick’s shade, and he didn’t move his arm from where it nearly brushed my cheek. Bobbi came up the bank shivering and wringing her hair out. When she put her clothes back on her blouse soaked through on her skin until it was almost sheer. We looked up at her and asked how the water was and she said: so cold, it felt incredible.

On the way back in the car I rode in the front seat and Bobbi lay with her legs stretched out in the back. When Nick and I looked at one another we looked away quickly, but not quickly enough to stop us from smiling. From the back seat Bobbi said: what’s funny? But she asked only lazily, and didn’t press for an answer. I put a Joni Mitchell album in the CD player and looked out the window to feel the cool air on my face. It was early evening by the time we got back to the house.

That night Nick and I sat together at dinner. After the food was finished Melissa opened another bottle of wine and Nick leaned over to light my cigarette. When he shook the match out he placed his arm on the back of my chair quite casually. Nobody seemed to notice, actually it probably looked perfectly normal, but I found it impossible to concentrate while he was doing it. The others were talking about refugees. Evelyn kept saying: some of these people have degrees, these are doctors and professors we’re talking about. I had noticed before this tendency of people to emphasise the qualifications of refugees. Derek said: whatever about the others, imagine turning doctors away. It’s insane.

What does that mean? said Bobbi. Don’t let them in unless they’ve got a medical degree?

Evelyn said that wasn’t what Derek meant, and Derek interrupted Evelyn to say something about Western value systems and cultural relativism. Bobbi said that the universal right to asylum was a constituent part of the ‘Western value system’ if any such thing existed. She did the air quotes.

The naive dream of multiculturalism, Derek said. Žižek is very good on this. Borders do exist for a reason, you know.

You don’t know how right you are, said Bobbi. But I bet we disagree about what the reason is.

Nick started laughing then. Melissa just looked away as if she wasn’t paying attention to the conversation. I pulled my shoulders back fractionally to feel Nick’s arm against my skin.

We’re all on the same side here, Derek said. Nick, you’re an oppressive white male, you back me up.

I actually agree with Bobbi, said Nick. Oppressive though I certainly am.

Oh, God save us, Derek said. Who needs liberal democracy? Maybe we should just burn down Government Buildings and see where that gets us.

I know you’re exaggerating, said Nick, but increasingly it’s hard to see why not.

When did you get so radical? Evelyn said. You’re spending too much time around college students, they’re putting ideas in your head.

Melissa tipped some ash off her cigarette into a tray she was holding in her left hand. She was smiling then, a comical little smile.

Yeah, Nick, you used to love the police state, Melissa said. What happened?

You invited all these college students on holiday with us, he said. I was powerless to resist.

She sat back and looked at him, through the glimmer of smoke. He lifted his arm off the back of my chair and put his cigarette out in the ashtray. The temperature seemed to drop perceptibly, and I saw everything in dimmer colours.

Did you stop by the lake earlier? she said.

On the way back, yeah, said Nick.

Frances got sunburnt, Bobbi said.

Actually I wasn’t really burnt, but my face and arms were a little pink, and warm to the touch. I shrugged.

Well, Bobbi insisted on taking her clothes off and getting into the water, I said.

You snitch, said Bobbi. I’m ashamed of you.

Melissa was still looking over at Nick. He didn’t seem at all unsettled by this; he looked back at her and smiled, a relaxed and spontaneous smile, which made him look handsome. She shook her head in a gesture of amusement or exasperation, and finally looked away.

We all went to bed late that night, at about two in the morning. For ten or twenty minutes I lay on my bed in the dark hearing the quiet complaint of floorboards above me, and doors clicking shut. No voices. Bobbi’s room next door was entirely silent. I sat up and then lay down again. I felt myself developing a plan to go upstairs for a glass of water, though I wasn’t really thirsty. I could even hear myself justifying my thirst with reference to the wine I’d had at dinner, as if I would later be subject to interview about what I was doing upstairs. I sat up again, feeling my own forehead, which was normal temperature. Quietly I crept out of bed and up the stairs, wearing my white nightdress with the pattern of tiny rosebuds. The light in the kitchen was on. My heart started to beat very hard.

Inside the kitchen Nick was putting the clean wine glasses away in the cabinet. He looked up at me and said: oh, hello. Instantly, like I was reciting something, I replied: I felt like a glass of water. He made a humorous face, like he didn’t really believe me, but he handed me a glass anyway. I poured the water and then stood against the fridge door to drink it. It was lukewarm and tasted chlorinated. Eventually Nick stood in front of me and said, there aren’t any more wine glasses, so. We were looking at each other. I told him he was a total embarrassment and he said he was ‘extremely aware’ of that. He put his hand on my waist and I felt my whole body lift toward him. I touched the buckle of his belt and said: we can sleep together if you want, but you should know I’m only doing it ironically.

Nick’s room was on the same floor as the kitchen. It was the only bedroom on that floor of the house; the others were upstairs or else down in the basement like mine. His window was open onto the sea, so he pulled the shutters over quietly and closed it while I got onto the bed. When he was inside me I pressed my face into his shoulder and said: does it feel okay?

I keep wanting to say thank you, he said. That’s weird, isn’t it?

I told him to say it and he did. Then I told him I was coming and he shut his eyes and said, oh. Afterwards I sat with my back against the wall, looking down at him, where he was lying on his back and breathing.

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, he said. I’m sorry about the thing on the internet.

I know I was being cold toward you. I didn’t realise you had pneumonia.

He smiled, he touched the soft underside of my knee with his fingers.

I thought you wanted me to leave you alone, he said. I was really sick and lonely, you know. It just seemed like you wanted nothing to do with me.

I thought about saying: no, I wanted you to tell me that you dreamt about me at night.

I was having a bad time too, I said. Let’s forget about it.

Well, that’s generous. I think I could have handled it a lot better.

But I forgive you, so it’s okay now.

He sat up on his elbows then and looked at me.

Yeah, but I mean you’ve forgiven me very quickly, he said. Considering I tried to break up with you. You could have dragged it out a lot more if you wanted.

No, I just wanted to get back into bed with you.

He laughed, as if this delighted him. He lay back down with his face turned away from the light, his eyes closed.

I didn’t think I was that good, he said.

You’re okay.

I thought I was a total embarrassment.

You are, but I take pity on you, I said. And the sex is very nice.

He said nothing. I couldn’t sleep in his room that night anyway, in case someone saw me leaving in the morning. Instead I went back down to my own bed and lay on my own, curled up as small as I could go.

14

The next day I felt warm and sleepy, like a child. I ate four slices of bread at breakfast and drank two whole bowls of coffee, with cream and sugar. Bobbi called me a little pig, though she said she meant this ‘in a cute way’. And I brushed Nick’s leg under the table and watched him trying not to laugh. I was filled with an exuberant, practically spiteful sense of joy.

Three whole days passed this way in Étables. At mealtimes out in the garden, Nick and Bobbi and I sat together at one end of the table and interrupted one another a lot. Nick and I both found Bobbi screamingly funny and we always laughed at everything she said. Once Nick cried at breakfast when Bobbi did an impersonation of a friend of theirs called David. We had only met David briefly, at literary things in Dublin, but Bobbi had his voice down perfectly. Nick also helped us to improve our language skills by speaking to us in French and repeatedly pronouncing the ‘r’ noise on request. Bobbi told him I could already speak French and that I was faking it to get his lessons. We could see it made him blush, and she flashed her eyes at me across the room.

On the beach in the afternoons, Melissa sat under a parasol reading the newspaper while we lay in the sun and drank from water bottles and reapplied sun lotion on each other’s shoulders. Nick liked to go swimming and then come back out of the water glistening wet and looking like an advertisement for cologne. Derek said he found it emasculating. I turned a page in my Robert Fisk book and pretended not to listen. Derek said: Melissa, does he spend a lot of time preening? Melissa didn’t look up from her newspaper. She said, no, he’s just naturally gorgeous, I’m afraid. That’s what you get when you marry for looks. Nick laughed. I turned another page in the book although I hadn’t read the previous one.

For two nights in a row, I went to bed on my own until I heard the house go quiet, and then I went up to Nick’s room. I didn’t feel too tired to stay up late, though during the day I often fell asleep at the beach or in the garden. We couldn’t have been getting more than four or five hours’ sleep, but he didn’t complain of feeling tired, or hurry me out of his room even when it was very late. After the first night, he stopped drinking wine with dinner. I don’t think he had anything to drink again at all. Derek pointed this out frequently, and I noticed Melissa offering him wine even after he said he didn’t want any.

Once when we were coming up from the sea together after swimming, I asked him: you don’t think they know, do you? We were waist deep in the water still. He shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand and looked at me. The others were back on the shore, with the towels, we could see them. In the sunlight my own arms looked lilac-white and dimpled with goosebumps.

No, he said. I don’t think so.

They might hear things at night.

I think we’re pretty quiet.

It seems insanely risky what we’re doing, I said.

Yeah, of course it is. Did that just occur to you now?

I dipped my hands in the water and it stung of salt. I lifted a handful and let it fall back onto the surface from my palm.

Why are you doing it then? I said.

He dropped his hand from his eyes and started to shake his head. He was all white like marble. There was something so austere about the way he looked.

Are you flirting with me? he said.

Come on. Tell me you crave me.

He slapped a handful of water at my bare skin. It splashed my face and felt so cold it almost hurt. I looked up at the spotless blue lid of sky.

Fuck off, he said.

I liked him, but he didn’t need to know that.

After dinner on the fourth night we all went for a walk into the village together. Over the harbour the sky was a pale coral colour, and the ocean looked dark like lead. Rows of yachts nodded in the dockyard and good-looking people in bare feet carried bottles of wine along the decking. Melissa had her camera on a shoulder strap and occasionally took photographs. I was wearing a navy linen dress, with buttons.

Outside the ice-cream shop my phone started to ring. It was my father calling. I turned away from the others instinctively as I picked up, as if I were shielding myself. His voice was muffled, and there seemed to be some noise in the background. I started biting on my thumbnail while he spoke, feeling the grain of it with my teeth.

Is everything okay? I said.

Oh, very nice. Am I not allowed to give my only daughter a ring now and then?

His voice wandered up and down the tonal scale when he spoke. His drunkenness made me feel unclean. I wanted to shower or eat a fresh piece of fruit. I wandered a little away from the others then, but I didn’t want to leave them behind completely. Instead I lingered near a lamp-post while everyone else discussed whether to get ice cream or not.

No, obviously you can, I said.

So how are things? How is work?

You know I’m in France, right?

What’s that? he said.

I’m in France.

I was self-conscious about repeating such a simple sentence, even though I didn’t think anyone else was listening.

Oh, you’re in France, are you? he said. That’s right, sorry. How’s it going out there?

It’s been very nice, thanks.

Great stuff. Listen, your mother is going to give you the allowance next month, okay? For college.

Okay, fine, I said. That’s fine.

Bobbi signalled to me that they were going inside the ice-cream shop and I smiled what I felt was probably a maniclooking smile and waved them away.

You’re not stuck for money, are you? said my father.

What? No.

The old saving, you know? It’s a great habit to get into.

Yeah, I said.

Through the windows of the shop I could see a long display of ice-cream flavours beneath the glass, and Evelyn’s silhouette at the counter, gesticulating.

How much do you have saved now? he said.

I don’t know. Not a lot.

A great habit, Frances. Hm? That’s it. Saving.

The phone call ended shortly after that. When the others came out of the shop, Bobbi was holding two ice-cream cones, one of which she gave to me. I felt a terrible gratitude that she had bought me an ice cream. I took the cone and thanked her, and she scanned my face and said, are you okay? Who was that on the phone? I blinked and said, just Dad. No news. She grinned and said, oh, okay. Well, you’re welcome for the ice cream. I’ll have it if you don’t want it. In the corner of my eye I could see Melissa lift her camera and I turned away irritably, as if Melissa had wronged me by lifting her camera, or by doing something else a longer time ago. I knew it was a petulant gesture, but I’m not sure Melissa noticed.

We smoked a lot that night, and Nick was still kind of high when I got to his room, after everyone else had gone to sleep. He was fully dressed, sitting on the side of his bed and reading something on his MacBook, but he was squinting like he couldn’t see the text that well, or it was just confusing. He looked good like that. He was maybe a little sunburnt. I guess I was probably high too. I sat on the floor at his feet and let my head rest against his calf.

Why are you on the floor? he said.

I like it down here.

Oh hey, who was that on the phone earlier?

I closed my eyes and leaned my head harder against him until he said, stop that.

It was my dad on the phone, I said.

He didn’t know you were here?

I got up on the bed then and sat behind Nick, with my arms around his waist. I could see what he was reading, it was a long article about the Camp David Accords. I laughed and said, is this what you do when you get high, read essays about the Middle East?

It’s interesting, he said. So hey, your dad didn’t know you were over here, or what?

I told him, he’s just not a very good listener.

I rubbed my nose slightly and then put my forehead on Nick’s back, against the white cloth of his T-shirt. He smelled clean, like soap, and also faintly of seawater.

He has some issues with alcohol, I said.

Your dad does? You never told me about that.

He closed his MacBook and looked around at me.

I’ve never told anyone about it, I said.

Nick sat back against the headboard then and said: what kind of issues?

He just seems to be drunk when he calls me a lot of the time, I said. We’ve never talked about it in depth or anything. We’re not close.

I got into Nick’s lap then, so we were facing one another, and he ran his hand over my hair automatically like he thought I was somebody else. He never touched me like that usually. But he was looking at me, so I guess he must have known who I was.

Does your mother know about it? Nick said. I mean, I know they’re not together.

I shrugged and said he had always been the same way. I’m a pretty horrible daughter, I said. I never really talk to my dad. But he gives me an allowance when I’m in college, that’s bad, isn’t it?

Is it? he said. You mean you think you’re enabling him, because you take the allowance but you don’t hassle him about the drinking.

I looked at Nick and he looked back up at me, with a slightly glassy, earnest expression. I realised he really was being earnest, and he really did mean to touch my hair like that, affectionately. Yeah, I said. I guess so.

But what are you supposed to do instead? he said. The whole financial dependency thing is so fucked up. Everything definitely improved for me when I stopped having to borrow money from my parents.

You like your parents, though. You get along with them.

He laughed and said, oh God, no I don’t. Are you kidding? Bear in mind these are the people who made me go on TV when I was ten wearing a fucking blazer and talking about Plato.

Did they make you do that? I said. I assumed it was your idea.

Oh no. I was very troubled at the time. Ask my psychiatrist.

Do you really see a psychiatrist, or is that part of the joke?

He made a noise like hmm, and he touched my hand sort of curiously. He was definitely still high.

No, I have these depressive episodes, he said. I’m on medication and everything.

Really?

Yeah, I was pretty sick for a while last year. And, uh. I had a bad week or two over in Edinburgh, with the pneumonia and all that. This is probably a very uninteresting thing to tell you about. But I’m feeling okay now anyway.

It’s not uninteresting, I said.

I knew Bobbi would know what to say in this situation, because she had a lot of opinions about mental health in public discourse. Out loud I said: Bobbi thinks depression is a humane response to the conditions of late capitalism. That made him smile. I asked him if he wanted to talk about being sick and he said no, not desperately. He had his fingers in my hair, at the back of my neck, and his touch made me want to be quiet.

For a little while we kissed and didn’t talk at all, except occasionally I would say something like: I want it so much. He was breathing hard then and saying things like hm, and oh, good, like he always did. He put his hand under my dress and stroked the inside of my thigh. I held his wrist on a sudden impulse and he looked at me. Is this what you want? I said. He looked confused, like I was posing a riddle which I might answer for him if he couldn’t. Well, yeah, he said. Is it … what you want? I could feel my mouth tightening, the grinding machinery of my own jaw.

You know, sometimes you don’t seem that enthusiastic, I said.

He laughed, which wasn’t really the sympathetic response I expected. He looked down, his face was a little flushed. Do I not? he said.

I felt hurt then, and said: I mean, I talk a lot about how much I want you and how much fun I’m having and it’s never really reciprocal. I feel like I don’t fulfil you a lot of the time.

He lifted his hand and started rubbing the back of his neck. Oh, he said. Okay. Well, I’m sorry.

I am trying, you know. If there are things I’m doing wrong I want you to tell me.

In a slightly pained voice he said: you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s me, you know, I’m just awkward.

That was all he said. I didn’t really know what to add, and anyway it seemed clear that no matter how unsubtly I fished for his reassurance he wasn’t going to provide it. We went on kissing and I tried not to think about it. He asked if I wanted to get on my hands and knees this time and I said sure. We undressed without watching each other. I put my face in the mattress and felt him touch my hair. He put his arm around my body and said: come here for a second. I knelt upright, I could feel his chest against my back, and when I turned my head his mouth touched the rim of my ear. Frances, I want you so badly, he said. I closed my eyes. The words seemed to go past my mind, like they went straight into my body and stayed there. When I spoke, my voice sounded low and sultry. Will you die if you can’t have me? I said. And he said: yes.

When he was inside me, I felt as though I had forgotten how to breathe. He had his hands around my waist. I kept asking him to do it harder, although it hurt a little when he did. He said things like, are you sure that doesn’t hurt? I told him I wanted it to hurt, but I don’t know whether I really did. And all Nick said was, okay. After a while it felt so good that I couldn’t see clearly any more, and I wasn’t sure if I could pronounce whole sentences. I kept saying, please, please, though I didn’t know what I was asking him for. He held a finger to my lips as if to tell me to be quiet and I took it into my mouth, until he touched the back of my throat. I heard him say oh, no, don’t. But it was already too late, he came. He was sweating, and he kept saying: fuck, I’m so sorry. Fuck. I was shivering badly. I felt that I had no understanding of what was happening between us.

By then it had started getting light outside and I had to leave. Nick sat up watching me put my dress back on. I didn’t know what to say to him. We looked at one another with agonised expressions and then looked away. Downstairs in my room I couldn’t sleep. I sat on my bed, holding my knees against my chest and watching the light move through the chink in the shutters. Eventually I opened up the window and looked out at the sea. It was dawn, and the sky was silvery blue and exquisite. In the room above I could hear Nick walking around. If I closed my eyes I felt that I was very close to him, close enough to hear him breathing. I sat at the window that way until I heard doors opening upstairs, and the dog barking, and the coffee machine switched on for breakfast.

15

The following night, Evelyn wanted to play a game where we split into teams and entered names of famous people into a large bowl. You drew a name out of the bowl and your teammates had to ask yes or no questions about the name until they figured out who it was. It was dark and we were sitting in the living room with the lights on and the shutters open. Occasionally a moth would fly in through the window and Nick would catch it in his hands and throw it back out again, while Derek encouraged him to kill it. Bobbi told Derek to stop and he said, don’t tell me animal rights extend to moths now, do they? Bobbi’s lips were stained dark with wine, she was drunk.

No, Bobbi said. Just kill it yourself if you want it to die.

Melissa and Derek and I were on one team together, and Nick and Bobbi and Evelyn were on the other. Melissa brought out another bottle of wine while we were writing down the names and putting them into the bowl, though we’d already had a lot of wine at dinner. Nick put his hand over his empty water glass when Melissa offered. They seemed to share a look of some kind before she went away to refill her own.

First it was the other team’s turn, and Nick was drawing out the names. He read the first one and frowned and then went oh, okay. Bobbi asked if it was a man and he said no. Is it a woman? she said. Yes, yeah. Evelyn asked if she was a politician or an actress or a sportsperson, she wasn’t any of those. Bobbi said, a musician? And Nick said, not that I know of, no.

Is this person famous? Bobbi said.

Well, define famous, he said.

Do we all know who this person is? said Evelyn.

You both definitely do, Nick said.

Oh, said Bobbi. Okay, so, is this someone we know in real life?

He said it was. Melissa and Derek and I were sitting wordlessly watching this. I became very conscious of the wine glass in my hand, holding the stem too hard against my thumb.

Is it someone you like? Bobbi said. Or don’t like?

Me personally? Yeah, I like her.

And does she like you? said Bobbi.

Is that really going to help you figure out who it is? he said.

It might, said Bobbi.

I don’t know, he said.

So you like her, but you don’t know if she likes you, said Bobbi. Do you not know her very well? Or is she mysterious?

He shook his head and laughed to himself, like he found this line of questioning extremely stupid. I sensed that Melissa and Derek and I had all become quite still. No one was talking or drinking any more.

I guess it’s a little of both, he said.

You don’t know her very well and she’s mysterious? said Evelyn.

Is she smarter than you? Bobbi said.

Yeah, though a lot of people are. These questions don’t seem very strategic.

Okay, okay, said Bobbi. Is this person more emotional, or more rational?

Oh, rational, I guess.

Like, unemotional, said Bobbi. Emotionally unintelligent.

What? No. That’s not what I said.

A dull heat rose into my face and I looked into my glass. I thought Nick seemed faintly agitated, or at least not cool and relaxed like he usually pretended to be, and then I wondered when I’d decided he was pretending.

Extrovert or introvert? said Evelyn.

Introvert I would think, Nick said.

Young or old? said Evelyn.

Young, definitely young.

This person is a child? said Bobbi.

No, no, an adult. Jesus.

An adult woman, okay, said Bobbi. And do you think you’d find her attractive in a swimsuit?

Nick looked at Bobbi for an excruciatingly long second, and then put the piece of paper down.

Bobbi already knows who it is, said Nick.

We all know who it is, Melissa said quietly.

I don’t, said Evelyn. Who is it? Is it you, Bobbi?

Bobbi grinned a little mischievous grin and said, it was Frances. I watched her, but I couldn’t figure out who this performance had been aimed at. Bobbi herself was the only person who found it amusing, but that didn’t seem to bother her; she looked like it had played out just as she intended. I realised, stupidly late, that she had almost certainly put my name into the bowl in the first place. I was reminded of her wildness, her tendency to get inside things and break them open, and I felt fearful of her, not for the first time. She wanted to expose something private about how I felt, to turn it from a secret into something else, a joke or a game.

The atmosphere in the room changed after that round ended. At first I was afraid that the others knew about us, that people had heard us at night, that even Melissa knew, but then I realised it was a different quality of tension. Derek and Evelyn seemed instead to feel awkward on Nick’s behalf, like they thought he had been trying to conceal his feelings from me; and toward me they expressed a kind of unspoken concern, maybe that I would be offended or upset. Evelyn kept glancing at me with a sympathetic expression. After Melissa correctly guessed the name Bill Clinton, I excused myself to go to the bathroom, which was across the hall. I ran cold water over my hands and dabbed it under my eyes, then dried my face with a clean towel.

Outside in the hallway, Melissa was waiting to use the bathroom. Before I could step past her she said: are you all right?

I’m fine, I said. Why?

She drew her lips together. She was wearing a blue dress that day, with a low scooped neckline and a pleated skirt. I had a pair of rolled-up jeans and a crinkled white shirt on.

He hasn’t done anything, has he? she said. I mean, he’s not bothering you.

I realised she was talking about Nick, and I felt faint.

Who? I said.

She gave me an unwelcome look then, a look that suggested she was disappointed in me.

It’s okay, she said. Forget about it.

I felt guilty, knowing that she was making an effort to care for me, an effort that was probably painful to her. Quietly I said: no, look, of course he hasn’t. I don’t know … I think it’s nothing. I’m sorry. I think it’s just Bobbi.

Well, it’s a crush or something, she said. I’m sure it’s probably harmless, I just want you to know you can tell me if anything happens to make you uncomfortable.

I appreciate that, it’s very kind of you. But really, it doesn’t … it doesn’t bother me.

She smiled at me then, like she was relieved that I was all right, and that her husband had not been doing something untoward. I smiled back gratefully and she wiped her hands on the skirt of her dress.

It’s not like him, she said. But I guess you’re his type.

I looked down at our feet, I felt dizzy.

Or am I flattering myself? she said.

I met her eye then, and I realised she was trying to make me laugh. I did laugh, out of gratitude for her kindness and her apparent trust.

I think I’m the one who should be flattered, I said.

Not by him, he’s completely useless. Great taste in women, though.

She pointed at the bathroom. I moved out of the way and she went inside. I wiped my face with my wrist and felt it was damp. I wondered what she had meant by calling Nick ‘useless’. I couldn’t tell whether she was being affectionate or vitriolic; she had a way of making them seem like the same thing.

We didn’t play for very much longer after that. I didn’t talk to Bobbi at all before she went to bed. I sat on the sofa until everyone else had gone too, and after a few minutes Nick came back. He closed the shutters and then leaned against the windowsill. I yawned and touched my hair. He said hey, that was weird, wasn’t it? With Bobbi. I agreed it was weird. Nick seemed cautious on the subject of Bobbi, as if he wasn’t sure how I felt about her.

Have you given up drinking? I said.

It just makes me tired. And I prefer being sober for all this anyway.

He sat on the arm of the sofa, as if he expected we would be getting up again shortly. I said: what do you mean all this? And he said, oh, all this stimulating late-night conversation we have.

You don’t like having sex when you’re drunk? I said.

I think it’s probably better for everyone if I’m not.

What, it’s like a performance issue? I don’t have any complaints.

No, you’re very easy to please, he said.

I didn’t like him saying that, though it was true and he probably did think so. He touched the inside of my wrist with his hand and I felt myself shudder.

Not really, I said. I just know you like it when I lie there telling you how great you are.

He grimaced and said: that’s harsh. I laughed and said, oh no, am I ruining the fantasy for you? I’ll go back to sighing over how strong and masculine you are if you prefer. He didn’t say anything then.

I should go to bed anyway, I said. I’m exhausted.

He touched his hand against my back, which felt like an uncharacteristically tender gesture. I didn’t move at all.

Why haven’t you had any affairs before? I said.

Oh. I guess because I didn’t really meet anyone.

What does that mean?

For a second I really thought he would say: I never met anyone I desired, the way I desire you. Instead he said: yeah, I don’t know. We were pretty happy together for a long time, so I never really thought about it then. You know, you’re in love, you don’t really think about these things.

When did you stop being in love?

He lifted his hand away then, so no parts of our bodies were touching any more.

I don’t think I did stop as such, he said.

So you’re saying you still love her.

Well, yeah.

I stared at the light fixture on the ceiling. It was switched off. We had put the table lamp on instead, before the game started, and it cast elongated shadows toward the window.

I’m sorry if that hurts you, he said.

No, of course not. But so, is this like a game you’re playing with her? Like you’re trying to get her to notice you by having an affair with a college student.

Wow. Okay. To get her to notice me?

Well? It’s not like she hasn’t seen you looking at me. She asked me earlier if you were making me uncomfortable.

Jesus, he said. Okay. Am I?

I didn’t feel in the mood to tell him no, so I rolled my eyes instead and got off the sofa, smoothing down my shirt.

You’re going to bed then, he said.

I said yes. I put my phone into my handbag to bring it downstairs and didn’t look up at him.

You know, that was hurtful, he said. What you said just now.

I picked up my cardigan from the floor and draped it over my bag. My sandals were lined up beside the fireplace.

You think I would do this just for attention, he said. What makes you feel that way about me?

Maybe the fact that you’re still in love with your wife even though she’s not interested in you any more.

He laughed but I didn’t look at him. I glanced in the mirror over the fireplace, and my face looked awful, so bad it shocked me. My cheeks were blotched like someone had slapped me, and my lips were dry and almost white.

You’re not jealous, Frances, are you? he said.

Do you think I have feelings for you? Don’t be embarrassing.

I went downstairs then. When I got into my own bed I felt terrible, not so much from sadness as from shock and a strange kind of exhaustion. I felt like someone had gripped my shoulders and shaken me firmly back and forth, even while I pleaded with them to stop. I knew it was my own fault: I had gone out of my way to provoke Nick into fighting with me. Now, lying on my own in the silent house, I felt I’d lost control of everything. All I could decide was whether or not to have sex with Nick; I couldn’t decide how to feel about it, or what it meant. And although I could decide to fight with him, and what we would fight about, I couldn’t decide what he would say, or how much it would hurt me. Curled up in bed with my arms folded I thought bitterly: he has all the power and I have none. This wasn’t exactly true, but that night it was clear to me for the first time how badly I’d underestimated my vulnerability. I’d lied to everyone, to Melissa, even to Bobbi, just so I could be with Nick. I had left myself no one to confide in, no one who would feel any sympathy for what I’d done. And after all that, he was in love with someone else. I screwed my eyes shut and pressed my head down hard into the pillow. I thought of the night before, when he told me that he wanted me, how it felt then. Just admit it, I thought. He doesn’t love you. That’s what hurts.

16

The next morning at breakfast, the day before Bobbi and I flew home, Melissa told us that Valerie was coming to visit. There was some discussion of which room should be made up, while I watched a metallic-looking red ladybird cross the table valiantly toward the sugar cubes. The insect looked like a miniature robot with robotic legs.

And we’ll have to get dinner things, Melissa was saying. A few of you can go to the supermarket, can’t you? I’ll make a list.

I don’t mind going, Evelyn said.

Melissa was slathering salted butter on a splayed-open croissant and then waving her knife around vaguely while she spoke.

Nick can take you in the car, she said. We’ll need to get a dessert, one of the nice fresh ones. And flowers. Take someone else in the car to help you. Take Frances. You won’t mind, will you?

The ladybird made it to the sugar bowl and started to ascend the glazed white rim. I looked up with what I hoped was a polite expression and said: of course not.

And Derek, you can set up the bigger dining table in the garden for us, Melissa said. And Bobbi and I will tidy the house.

Having arranged the itinerary, we finished breakfast and brought our plates inside. Nick went to find the car keys and Evelyn sat on the front steps with her elbows on her knees, looking adolescent behind her spectacles. Melissa was leaning on the kitchen windowsill writing the list, while Nick lifted up couch cushions and said: has anyone else seen them? I stood in the hallway with my back pressed flat against the wall, trying not to be in the way. They’re on the hook, I said, but so quietly that he didn’t hear me. Maybe I left them in a pocket or something, said Nick. Melissa was opening cupboards to see if they had some ingredient or other. Did you see them? he said, but she ignored him.

Eventually I lifted the keys off the hook silently and put them into Nick’s hand as he went past. Oh, aha, he said. Well, thank you. He was avoiding my eye, but not in a personal way. He seemed to be avoiding everyone’s eyes. Did you get them? Melissa said from the kitchen. Did you look on the hook?

Evelyn and Nick and I went down to the car then. It was a foggy morning but Melissa had said it would clear up later. Bobbi appeared in her bedroom window just as I turned around to look for her. She was opening up the shutters. That’s right, she said. Abandon me. Go have fun with your new friends in the supermarket.

Maybe I’ll never come back, I said.

Don’t, said Bobbi.

I got into the back of the car and put my seat belt on. Evelyn and Nick got in and closed the doors behind them, sealing us into a shared privacy where I felt I didn’t belong. Evelyn gave an expressively weary sigh and Nick started the engine.

Did you ever get that thing with the car sorted? Nick said to Evelyn.

No, Derek won’t let me call the dealership, she said. He’s ‘taking care of it’.

We pulled out of the driveway onto the road down toward the beach. Evelyn was rubbing her eyes behind her glasses and shaking her head. The mist was grey like a veil. I fantasised about punching myself in the stomach.

Oh, taking care of it, okay, said Nick.

You know what he’s like.

Nick made a suggestive noise like: hm. We were driving along by the harbour, where the ships implied themselves as concepts behind the fog. I touched my nose to the car window.

She’s been behaving herself quite well, Evelyn said. I thought. Until today.

Well, that’s the Valerie production, he said.

But until all that started, said Evelyn. She’s been relatively relaxed, hasn’t she?

No, you’re right. She has.

Nick hit the indicator to turn left and I said nothing. It was clear they were talking about Melissa. Evelyn had taken her glasses off and was cleaning the lenses on the soft cotton of her skirt. Then she put them back on and looked at herself in the mirror. She noticed my reflection and made a kind of wry face.

Never get married, Frances, she said.

Nick laughed and said: Frances would never lower herself to such a bourgeois institution. He was working the steering wheel around to take the car through a corner, and he didn’t look up from the road. Evelyn smiled and gazed out the window at the boats.

I didn’t realise Valerie was coming, I said.

Did I not tell you? said Nick. I meant to say last night. She’s only coming for dinner, she may not even stay. But she always gets the royal baby treatment.

Melissa has this little hang-up about her, Evelyn said.

Nick glanced over his shoulder out the back window, but he didn’t look at me. I liked that he was busy driving because it meant we could talk without the intensity of having to acknowledge each other. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned Valerie the night before because instead, he’d been telling me that he still loved his wife and that I meant nothing to him. The exchange about Valerie which he had been planning to have instead implied a kind of personal intimacy which I now felt we had lost for ever.

I’m sure it’ll all be fine, said Evelyn.

Nick said nothing, and neither did I. His silence was significant and mine was not because his opinion on whether things would be fine, unlike mine, was important.

It won’t be totally insufferable at least, she said. Frances and Bobbi will be there to defuse the tension.

Is that what they do? he said. I’ve been wondering.

Evelyn gave me another little smile in the mirror and said: well, they’re also very decorative.

Now that I object to, he said. Strenuously.

The supermarket was a large, glassy building outside town, with a lot of air conditioning. Nick took a trolley and we walked behind him, through the little one-way entry gates, into the section with the paperback books and men’s watches displayed inside security-tagged plastic cases. Nick said the only things that really needed to be carried by hand were the dessert and the flowers, everything else could go in the trolley. He and Evelyn discussed what kind of dessert would be least likely to cause an argument and decided on something expensive with a lot of glazed strawberries. She went off to the dessert aisle and Nick and I walked along on our own.

I’ll come and get the flowers with you on our way out, he said.

You don’t have to.

Well, if we end up getting the wrong ones, I’d rather say it was my fault.

We were standing in the coffee aisle and Nick had stopped to examine various kinds of ground coffee, in different-sized packages.

You needn’t be so chivalrous, I said.

No, I just think you and Melissa fighting might be more than I could handle today.

I put my hands down into the pockets of my skirt while he loaded various black-wrapped packages of coffee into the trolley.

At least we know whose side you’d be on, I said.

He looked up, with a bag of Ethiopian coffee in his left hand and a faintly humorous expression.

Who? he said. The one who isn’t interested in me any more, or the one who’s just using me for sex?

I felt my whole face wash over in a forceful blush. Nick put the bag of coffee down, but before he could say anything I had already walked away. I walked all the way to the deli counter and the tank of live crustaceans at the back of the supermarket. The crustaceans looked ancient, like mythological ruins. They batted their claws uselessly against the glass sides of the tank and stared at me with accusatory eyes. I held the cold side of my hand against my face and glared back at them malevolently.

Evelyn came back along the deli, holding a large box of thin bluish plastic with a strawberry tart inside.

Don’t tell me lobsters are on the list, she said.

Not that I know of, no.

She looked at me and gave me another encouraging smile. Encouragement seemed to be Evelyn’s primary mode of relating to me for some reason.

Everyone’s just a little highly strung today, she said.

We saw Nick exiting another aisle with the trolley, but he turned without seeing us. He had Melissa’s handwritten list in his right hand and he was directing the trolley with his left.

There was a bit of an incident last year, she said. With Valerie.

Oh.

We walked after Nick’s trolley together while I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. The supermarket had an in-house florist near the tills, with fresh potted plants and buckets of cut carnations and chrysanthemums. Nick chose two bouquets of pink roses and one mixed bouquet. The roses had huge, sensuous petals and tight, unrevealing centres, like some kind of sexual nightmare. I didn’t look at him as he handed me the bouquets. I carried them to the checkout in silence.

We left the supermarket together, not saying a great deal. Rain beaded our skin and hair and parked cars looked like dead insects. Evelyn started to tell a story about a time she and Derek had brought their car on the ferry and punctured a tyre on the way over to Étables and Nick had had to come in his car to change the tyre for them. I gathered that the story was intended, obliquely and perhaps not even consciously, to cheer Nick up by recalling nice things he had done in the past. I’ve never been so happy to see you in my life, Evelyn said. You could have changed that tyre yourself, said Nick. If you weren’t married to an autocrat.

When we parked up back at the house, Bobbi ran outside with the dog at her ankles. It was still foggy, though nearly noon by then. Bobbi was wearing linen shorts, and her legs looked long and tanned. The dog yelped twice. Let me help with the things, Bobbi said. Nick handed her a bag of groceries obligingly and she looked at him as if trying to communicate something.

Everything all right while we were gone? he said.

Tensions have been running high, said Bobbi.

Oh God, Nick said.

He handed her another bag, which she carried up against her stomach. He took the remaining groceries in his arms while Evelyn and I walked inside carefully, carrying the flowers and dessert like two sombre Edwardian servant women.

Melissa was in the kitchen, which looked empty without the chairs and table. Bobbi went upstairs to finish sweeping Valerie’s bedroom. Nick put the shopping bags on the windowsill wordlessly and started to put away the groceries, while Evelyn placed the dessert box on top of the fridge. I wasn’t sure what to do with the flowers, so I just kept holding them. They smelled fresh and suspicious. Melissa wiped her lips with the back of her hand and said: oh, you’ve decided to come back after all.

We weren’t gone that long, were we? Nick said.

Apparently it’s going to rain, said Melissa, so we’ve had to move the table and chairs into the front dining room. It looks terrible, the chairs don’t even match.

They’re Valerie’s chairs, he said. I’m sure she knows whether they match or not.

It didn’t seem to me that Nick was making the best possible effort at assuaging Melissa’s temper. I stood there gripping the flowers and waiting to say something like: did you want me to leave these somewhere? But the words didn’t arrive. Evelyn was now helping Nick to unpack the groceries, while Melissa was inspecting the fruit we had purchased.

And you remembered lemons, didn’t you? said Melissa.

No, Nick said. Were they on the list?

Melissa dropped her hand from the nectarines and then lifted it to her forehead, as if she were about to faint.

I don’t believe this, she said. I told you as you were going out the door, I specifically said don’t forget lemons.

Well, I didn’t hear you, he said.

There was a pause. I realised that the soft pad of skin at the base of my thumb was held against a thorn and beginning to turn purple. I tried to rearrange the flowers so that they weren’t injuring me but without calling attention to my continued presence in the room.

I’ll go get some in the corner shop, Nick said eventually. It’s not the end of the world.

I don’t believe this, said Melissa again.

Should I leave these somewhere? I said. I mean, can I put them in a vase, or?

Everyone in the room turned to look at me. Melissa took one bouquet out of my arms and looked into it. These stems need to be cut, she said.

I’ll do that, I said.

Fine, said Melissa. Nick will show you where we keep the vases. I’ll go and help Derek fix the dining room up. Thank you all very much for your hard work this morning.

She left the room and shut the door hard behind her. I thought: this woman? This is the woman you love? Nick took the flowers out of my arms and left them on the countertop. The vases were in a cupboard under the sink. Evelyn was watching Nick anxiously.

I’m sorry, Evelyn said.

Don’t you apologise, said Nick.

Maybe I should go and help.

Sure, you may as well.

Nick was cutting the bouquets out of their plastic with a scissors when Evelyn left. I can do all this, I said. You go get the lemons. He didn’t look at me. She likes the stems cut diagonally, he said. You know what I mean, diagonally? Like this. And he clipped one of the ends off at a slant. I didn’t hear her say anything about lemons either, I said. He smiled then, and Bobbi came into the room behind us. You’re going to take my side now, are you? he said.

I knew you were making friends without me, said Bobbi.

I thought you were tidying the bedroom, Nick said.

It’s one room, said Bobbi. It can only get so tidy. Are you trying to get rid of me?

What happened while we were gone? he said.

Bobbi hopped up on the windowsill and swung her legs to and fro while I clipped the flowers stem by stem, letting the cut ends fall into the sink.

I think your wife is a little on edge today, said Bobbi. She was not impressed with my linen-folding technique earlier. Also, she told me she didn’t want me ‘making any snide remarks about rich people’ when Valerie gets here. Quote.

Nick laughed a lot at that. Bobbi always amused and delighted him, whereas I could see I had on balance probably caused him more distress than joy.

For the rest of the afternoon Melissa sent us around to do various menial tasks. She didn’t think the glasses were quite clean, so I rewashed them in the sink. Derek brought one vase of flowers up to Valerie’s room, along with a bottle of sparkling water and a clean glass for her bedside table. Bobbi and Evelyn ironed some pillowcases together in the living room. Nick went out for lemons and went out again later for sugar cubes. Early in the evening, while Melissa was cooking and Derek was polishing silverware, Nick and Evelyn and Bobbi and I sat in Nick’s room looking around vacantly and not saying much. Like bold children, Evelyn said.

Let’s open a bottle of wine, said Nick.

Do you have a death wish? Bobbi said.

No, let’s, said Evelyn.

Nick went down to the garage and brought up some plastic cups and a bottle of Sancerre. Bobbi was lying face up on his bed, just the way I usually lay there after he made me come. Evelyn and I were sitting side by side on the floor. Nick poured the wine into cups and we listened to Derek and Melissa talking in the kitchen.

What’s Valerie like, actually? Bobbi said.

Evelyn coughed and then said nothing.

Oh, said Bobbi.

After we had all finished our first cup of wine, we heard Melissa calling Nick from the kitchen. He got up and handed me the bottle. Evelyn said: I’ll come with you. They went out together and shut the door. Bobbi and I sat in the room silently. Valerie had said she would be in town by seven. It was now half past six. I refilled Bobbi’s cup and my own, then sat down again with my back against the bed.

You know Nick has a thing for you, don’t you? Bobbi said. Everyone else has noticed. He’s always looking at you to check if you’re laughing at his jokes.

I chewed on the edge of my plastic cup until I could hear it crack. When I looked down, a vertical white line had formed from the rim. I thought of Bobbi’s performance in the game the night before.

We get along, I said eventually.

It could totally happen. He’s a failed actor and his marriage is dead, those are the perfect ingredients.

Isn’t he more like a moderately successful actor?

Well, apparently he was expected to get famous and then he didn’t, and now he’s too old or something. Having an affair with a younger woman would probably be good for his self-esteem.

He’s only thirty-two, I said.

I think his agent dropped him though. Anyway he seems like he’s embarrassed to be alive.

I felt a growing sense of dread, a thin and physical dread that began in my shoulders, as I listened. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was. It felt like dizziness, or the strange blurry sensation that precedes being violently ill. I tried to think of what might be causing it, things I had eaten, or the car journey earlier. It was only when I remembered the night before that I knew what it was. I felt guilty.

I’m pretty sure he’s still in love with Melissa, I said.

People can be in love and have affairs.

It would depress me to sleep with someone who loved someone else.

Bobbi sat up then, I could hear her. She swung her legs down off the bed, and I knew she was looking down at me, onto my scalp.

I get the sense you’ve given this some consideration, she said. Did he make a pass at you or something?

Not as such. I just don’t think I would enjoy being someone’s second choice.

Not as such?

I mean, he’s probably just trying to make her jealous, I said.

She slipped down off the bed, holding the wine bottle, which she passed to me. We were sitting on the floor together then, our upper arms pressed together. I splashed a little wine into the cracked plastic cup.

You can love more than one person, she said.

That’s arguable.

Why is it any different from having more than one friend? You’re friends with me and you also have other friends, does that mean you don’t really value me?

I don’t have other friends, I said.

She shrugged and took back the bottle of wine. I turned the cup around so nothing would spill from the crack and swallowed two warm mouthfuls.

Did he come on to you? she said.

No. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be interested if he did.

You know, I kissed Melissa once. I never told you about that, did I?

I turned around and stared at her, craning my neck to see her face. She laughed. She was wearing a funny, dreamy expression, which made her look even more attractive than usual.

What? I said. When?

I know, I know. It was at her birthday party, out in the garden. We were both drunk, you were in bed. It was stupid.

She was staring into the bottle of wine. I looked at her face in profile, the strange half-shape of it. She had one tiny cut beside her ear, maybe she’d scratched it, and it was the bright red colour of a flower.

What? she said. Are you judging me?

No, no.

I heard Valerie’s car pull into the driveway outside, and we stashed the bottle of wine under Nick’s pillow. Bobbi linked her arm under mine and gave my cheek a little kiss, which surprised me. Her skin was very soft and her hair smelled of vanilla. I was wrong about Melissa, she said. I swallowed and said: well. We’ve all been wrong about things.

17

We had duck for dinner, with roast baby potatoes and salad. The meat tasted sweet like cider and fell off the bone in dark, buttery shreds. I tried to eat slowly to be polite, but I was hungry and exhausted. The dining room was large, wood-panelled and had a window out onto the rainy street. Valerie spoke with a moneyed British accent, too rich to be comical. She and Derek talked about publishing, and the rest of us were quiet. Valerie thought a lot of people in publishing were charlatans and hacks, but she seemed to find it funny rather than depressing. At one point she removed a smudge from her wine glass with a corner of her napkin and we all watched Melissa’s face, which contracted and fell like a piece of wire spring.

Though Melissa had taken care to introduce us all at the beginning of dinner, Valerie asked which one of us was Bobbi during dessert. When Bobbi identified herself, Valerie replied: oh yes, of course. But a face like that won’t last, I’m afraid. I can tell you that because I’m an old woman now.

Fortunately Bobbi is blessed with more than just good looks, said Evelyn.

Well, marry young, that’s my advice, Valerie said. Men are very fickle.

Cool, said Bobbi. But actually I’m gay.

Melissa flushed and stared into her glass. I pressed my lips together wordlessly. Valerie raised an eyebrow and pointed her fork between Bobbi and myself.

I see, Valerie said. And are you two …?

Oh no, said Bobbi. Once, but no.

No, I suppose not, Valerie said.

Bobbi and I glanced at one another and looked away so as not to laugh or scream.

Frances is a writer, Evelyn said.

Well, kind of, I said.

Don’t say kind of, said Melissa. She’s a poet.

Is she any good? Valerie said.

She had not looked up at me during this exchange.

She is good, said Melissa.

Oh well, Valerie said. I’ve always thought poetry rather lacks a future.

As an amateur without a real opinion on the future of poetry, and because Valerie hadn’t appeared to notice my presence anyway, I said nothing. Bobbi stepped on my toe under the table and coughed. After dessert, Nick went to the kitchen to make coffee, and as soon as he left, Valerie put down her fork and peered at the closed door.

He doesn’t look very well, does he? she said. How has his health been?

I stared at her. She had not addressed a single comment or question to me directly, and I knew she would pretend not to notice I was looking.

Up and down, said Melissa. He was great for a while but I think he had a bit of an episode last month. Over in Edinburgh.

Well, he had pneumonia, Evelyn said.

It wasn’t just pneumonia, said Melissa.

It’s a shame, Valerie said. But he’s very passive really. He lets himself get overwhelmed by these things. You remember last year.

We don’t need to drag the girls through all this, do we? Evelyn said.

There’s no need to be secretive, said Valerie. We’re all friends here. Nick suffers from depression, I’m afraid.

Yes, I said. I know.

Melissa looked up at me and I ignored her. Valerie looked at the floral arrangement and distractedly moved one blossom slightly to the left.

You’re a friend of his, are you, Frances? Valerie said.

I thought we were all friends here, I said.

Finally she looked at me. She was wearing some artistic brown resin jewellery and had handsome rings on her fingers.

Well, I know he wouldn’t mind me asking after his health, said Valerie.

Then maybe you can ask after it when he’s actually in the room, I said.

Frances, Melissa said. Valerie is a very old friend of ours.

Valerie laughed and said: please, Melissa, I’m not that old, am I? My jaw was trembling. I pushed my seat back from the table and excused myself from the room. Evelyn and Bobbi watched me go, like little nodding dogs in the back window of a disappearing car. Nick was in the hallway bringing in two cups of coffee. Hello, he said. Oh, what’s happened? I shook my head and shrugged, silly gestures that meant nothing. I walked past him, down the back staircase and into the garden. I didn’t hear him follow me, I supposed he had gone into the dining room with the others.

I walked down to the bottom of the garden and opened the gate onto the back lane. It was raining and I was wearing a short-sleeved blouse but I didn’t feel the cold. I slammed the gate shut and went on walking away from the house, toward the beach. My feet were getting wet and I rubbed my face hard with the back of my hand. The headlights of cars passed by in blazes of white but there were no other pedestrians. The path to the beach wasn’t lit by streetlights and I did begin to feel cold then. I couldn’t go back to the house. I stood there shivering with my arms crossed, feeling the rain soak through my blouse, the cotton sticking to my skin.

It seemed unlikely that Nick would be distressed by what Valerie had said. He’d probably just shrug it off, even if he did find out. My anguish on his behalf seemed to be unrelated to anything he might personally feel, a phenomenon I had experienced before. In our final year of school Bobbi had run for president of the student council, and one of the boys had beaten her by thirty-four votes to twelve. Bobbi had been disappointed, I could see that, but not upset. She’d smiled and congratulated the winner and then the bell had gone and we’d collected our books. Instead of going to class I had locked myself in a cubicle in the upstairs bathrooms and cried until I heard the lunchtime bell, cried until my lungs hurt and my face was rubbed raw. I couldn’t explain what made me feel that furious, consuming misery, but sometimes even still when I thought about that election my eyes filled up stupidly with tears.

Eventually I heard the back gate open again and the clap of sandals, and Bobbi’s voice saying: you complete goose. What are you like? Come inside and have coffee. I couldn’t see her in the darkness at first and then I felt her arm slip under mine, the crackle of her raincoat. That was a nice little performance, she said. I haven’t seen you lose your temper like that in some time.

Fuck this, I said.

Don’t be upset.

She nestled her small warm head into my neck. I thought of her taking all her clothes off at the lake.

I hate that woman, I said.

I could feel Bobbi’s breath on my face, the bitter aftertaste of unsweetened coffee, and then she kissed my lips. I gripped her wrist when she pulled away, trying to stare at her, but it was too dark. She slipped out of my grasp like a thought.

We shouldn’t, she said. Obviously. But you are very lovable when you’re self-righteous.

I dropped my arm uselessly by my side and she started walking back to the house. Illuminated by passing headlights I saw she had her hands down in the pockets of her raincoat and was splashing along through the puddles. I followed, with nothing at all to say.

Inside the house, the party had broken up into the living room and kitchen, and there was music playing. I was dripping wet and in the mirror my face was a livid, unnatural pink. I went through with Bobbi to the kitchen, where Evelyn and Derek and Nick were standing around drinking their coffees. Oh, Frances, Evelyn said. You’re drenched. Nick was standing against the sink and he filled a coffee cup from the pot and handed it to me. Our eyes seemed to be having a conversation of their own. Sorry, I said. Evelyn touched my arm. I swallowed the coffee and Bobbi said: I’ll get her a towel, shall I? You people, really. She shut the door behind her.

I’m sorry, I said again. I just lost my temper.

Yeah, I’m sorry I missed it, said Nick. I didn’t know you had a temper to lose.

We kept looking at one another. Bobbi came back in the room and handed me a towel. I thought of her mouth, the strange familiar taste of it, and shivered. I seemed to have no power any longer over what was happening, or what was going to happen. It felt as if a long fever had broken and I simply had to lie there and wait for the illness to pass.

Once my hair was dry we rejoined Melissa and Valerie in the other room. Valerie acted exaggeratedly pleased to see me and expressed interest in reading my work. I gave a sickly smile and cast around for something to say or do. Sure, I said. I’ll send you some of my stuff, sure. Nick brought out some brandy, and when he poured a measure for Valerie she clasped his wrist maternally and said, ah Nick, if only my sons were as handsome as you are. He handed her the glass and said: is anyone?

After Valerie went to bed we fell into a kind of tense, resentful silence. Evelyn and Bobbi tried to talk about a film they had both seen, but it transpired they were thinking of two different films, which put a halt to the discussion. Melissa got up to bring the empty glasses to the kitchen and said: Frances, maybe you could give me a hand. I stood up. I could feel Nick watching me, like a schoolchild watching his mother step into the principal’s office.

We picked up the rest of the glasses and went to the kitchen, which was dark. Melissa didn’t switch the light on. She deposited the glasses in the sink and then stood there, holding her hands over her face. I left what I was carrying down on a countertop and asked if she was all right. She paused for so long that I thought she was about to scream or throw something. Then in one quick motion she switched the tap on and began to fill the basin.

You know I don’t like her either, said Melissa.

I just watched her. In the almost-darkness her skin looked silver and ghostly.

I don’t want you to think that I like her, Melissa said, or that I appreciate the way she talks about Nick, or that I think her behaviour is appropriate. I don’t feel that way. I’m sorry you were upset at dinner.

No, I’m sorry, I said. I’m sorry I made a scene like that. I don’t know why I did it.

Don’t apologise. It’s what I would have done if I had a spine.

I swallowed. Melissa turned off the tap and started to rinse the glasses in the basin, sloppily, with no particular care for whether they were smudged any more.

I don’t think I could have this next book published without her, Melissa said. It’s kind of mortifying to tell you that.

No, it shouldn’t be.

And I’m sorry for being so unreasonable this afternoon. I know what you must think of me. I just felt so anxious after everything that happened last year. But I want to tell you, I don’t usually speak to Nick that way. Obviously things aren’t perfect between us, but I do love him, you know. I really do.

Of course, I said.

She kept rinsing the glasses. I stood there by the fridge not knowing what to say. She lifted one wet hand and dabbed at something under her eye and then went back to the basin.

You’re not sleeping with him, are you, Frances? she said.

Oh Jesus, I said. No.

Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.

He’s your husband.

Yes, I’m aware.

I kept standing there by the fridge. I had broken out in a sweat. I could feel it trickling from the back of my neck between my shoulders. I said nothing, I bit on my tongue.

You can go back and sit with the others if you’d like, she said.

I don’t know what to say, Melissa.

Go on, it’s all right.

I went back into the living room. They all turned their faces up to look at me. I think I’ll get some sleep, I said. Everyone agreed it was a good idea.

That night when I knocked on Nick’s door he had his bedroom light off. I heard him say come in, and as I closed the door behind me, I whispered: it’s Frances. Well, I should hope it is, he said. He sat up and put the lamp on, and I stood beside his bed. I told him what Melissa had asked me and he said she had asked him the same thing, but earlier, while I was outside being rained on.

I said no, Nick said. Did you say no?

Of course I said no.

The bottle of Sancerre was on his bedside cabinet. I lifted it up and worked the cork out. Nick watched me while I drank and then accepted the bottle when I offered it. He drained what was left of it and then placed it back on the cabinet top. He looked at his fingernails, and then at the ceiling.

I’m not very good at these conversations, he said.

We don’t have to talk, I said.

Okay.

I got into bed, and he lifted my nightdress off. I put my arms around his neck and held him very closely against me. He kissed the firm upturned bowl of my stomach, he kissed the inside of my thigh. When he went down on me I bit on my hand to keep quiet. His mouth felt hard. My teeth started to draw blood from my thumb and my face was wet. When he looked up, he said, is it okay? I nodded and felt the headboard nudge the wall. He knelt upright and I let my mouth form a kind of long, murmured syllable, like an animal would make. Nick touched me and I snapped my legs shut and said no, I’m too close now. Oh, that’s good, he said.

He took the box out of the bedside drawer and I closed my eyes. I felt his body then, his heat and complex weight. I held his hand tightly between my finger and thumb, like I was trying to press it down into some absorbable size. Yes, I said. I tried not to make it end too quickly. He was so deep inside me it felt like I might die. I wrapped my legs around his back, and he said, God, I love that, I love it when you do that. We whispered one another’s names over and over. Then it was finished.

Afterwards I lay with my head on his chest and listened to his heart beat.

Melissa seems like a good person, I said. You know, I mean, deep down.

Yeah, I believe she is.

Does that make us bad people?

I hope not, he said. Not you anyway. Me, maybe.

His heart continued to beat like an excited or miserable clock. I thought about Bobbi’s dry and ideological reading of non-monogamous love, and I felt like bringing it up with Nick, as a joke maybe, not being completely serious but just floating the possibility to see what he thought.

Have you considered telling her about us? I said.

He sighed, the kind of audible sigh that’s like a word. I sat up and he looked at me with sad eyes, as if the subject weighed on him.

I know I should tell her, he said. I feel bad making you lie to people for my sake. And I’m not even good at lying. Melissa asked me the other day if I had feelings for you and I said yes.

The palm of my hand was resting on his sternum and I could still feel his blood pumping below the surface of his skin. Oh, I said.

But what happens if I do tell her? he said. I mean, what would you want to happen? I don’t get the impression that you want me to move in with you.

I laughed and so did he. Although we were laughing about the impossibility of our relationship, it still felt nice.

No, I said. But she’s had affairs and she never moved out of your house.

Yeah, but you know, circumstances were very different. Look, obviously the ideal thing is that I tell her and she says, well go ahead and live your life, what do I care. I’m not even saying that won’t happen, I’m just saying it might not.

I ran my finger along his collarbone and said: I can’t remember if I thought about this at the beginning. How it was doomed to end unhappily.

He nodded, looking at me. I did, he said. I just thought it would be worth it.

For a few seconds we were silent. What do you think now? I said. I guess it depends how unhappy it gets.

No, said Nick. In a weird way I don’t think it does. But look, I will tell her, all right? We’ll work it out.

Before I could say anything, we heard footsteps coming up the back staircase. We both went quiet, while the footsteps came to the door. There was a knock, and Bobbi’s voice said: Nick? He switched the light off and said: yeah, one second. He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. I lay on the mattress watching him. Then he answered the door. I couldn’t see Bobbi through the crease of light, I could only see the silhouette of Nick’s back and his arm leaning against the frame.

Frances isn’t in her room, Bobbi said. I don’t know where she is.

Oh.

I checked in the bathroom and outside in the garden. Do you think I should go and look for her? Should we wake up the others?

No, don’t, Nick said. She’s, um. Oh, Jesus Christ. She’s in here with me.

There was a long silence then. I couldn’t see Bobbi’s face, or his. I thought of her kissing my lips earlier and calling me self-righteous. It was terrible that Nick had told her like this. I could see how terrible it was.

I didn’t realise, said Bobbi. I’m sorry.

No, of course.

Well, sorry. Goodnight then.

He wished her goodnight and closed the door. We listened to her footsteps descending the back staircase to the basement rooms. Oh fuck, Nick said. Fuck. Expressionlessly I said: she won’t tell anyone. Nick made an irritable sighing noise and said: well yeah, I hope not. He seemed distracted, as if he no longer noticed I was in the room. I put my nightdress back on and said I would sleep downstairs. Sure, okay, he said.

Nick was still in bed when Bobbi and I left the next morning. Melissa walked us down to the station with our luggage and watched us, quietly, as we boarded the bus.