Double Vision

Nine

There was silence in the car. They stared straight ahead as, more slowly and carefully now, he drove along, his headlights probing the darkness between the trees. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t apologize again, and anyway she hadn’t objected. It was just that He’d precipitated a situation he didn’t want and was trying, clumsily, to claw his way back. He could hardly repeat that he hadn’t meant it, and so he said nothing, trying to convey by silence that the incident had been trivial, but silence didn’t seem able to carry that message. With every minute the kiss seemed to acquire greater importance. They were both taking quick shallow breaths, as if afraid the other would hear deeper breathing and misinterpret it. His chest felt tight. He was aware of her thighs, slightly apart, of the way the seat belt separated her breasts.

‘This must be where Adam found the badger,’ he said.

‘Just back there. Beth doesn’t like him coming this way on his own.’

‘It’s a long way.’

‘I know I wouldn’t want him coming here if he was my kid. If animals can’t see the cars coming, how can he?’

Gradually, the trees thinned and they left the forest behind. Searching for something to talk about, he asked if any of her friends were taking a gap year, and had she ever thought of doing that herself? Yes, but she’d decided against it. Apparently medical schools weren’t keen on the idea. ‘They think you go off the boil,’ she said. ‘And they’re probably right.’ Her voice, which had been husky and constrained, became clearer and more confident as she spoke. She was having an unintended year off and she’d certainly gone off the boil. Brains turned to mush.

‘You’ve been ill, remember.’

‘Yeah, but I’m all right now.’

‘What you need is a few new experiences.’

‘Yes.’ She sounded amused.

A slight tension returned when he stopped the car on the road outside the vicarage, a tall, narrow, Georgian house with gables set back from the village green behind a copse of trees. He walked round to open the door for her.

Standing together in the sudden cold, they looked at each other directly for the first time. The moonlight caught the whites of her eyes. Something stirred in him, something nameless and irrational and a lot less healthy than lust. He smelled the stairwell in Sarajevo, and dragged cold air into his lungs. Her mouth was slightly open.

‘Yes, well,’ he said, taking a step back.

‘See you.’

She raised her hand, and walked rapidly away up the path. The front door released a sliver of golden light on to the trampled snow, and then she was gone.