Poppet

The Bracelet

THE NEXT MORNING Melanie and AJ make an unspoken pact to brush off what happened in the night. To make light of it. She cracks a bad joke about ghosts. He gives a small laugh, ricochets a joke back – something about stalkers, and about how she’s going to turn into one of the patients and wander around with dinner down her clothes and drool coming uncontrollably out of her mouth. She tickles him, and swooshes her hair over his chest. He makes play grabs for her breasts, and she curls up, squealing with laughter.

They make love with the curtains wide open. The bare branches in the forest at the bottom of the garden are frosted and motionless. Afterwards she lies on her front, her head resting on her arms, and talks.

It turns out Melanie has her own bundle of sensitivities and inadequacies. It’s not only about losing her dad, it’s more a case of the girl losing the guy from her dedication to the job. In the fallout from the Thatcher Years Melanie’s unit in Gloucester got closed and she was moved around the country. She fetched up in Rotherham, where she climbed the ranks to ward manager, then director. Five years ago the hospital closed and she and Jonathan Keay both relocated to Beechway. In those days Keay and Melanie were just friends; in fact, she was married to someone else, a tax lawyer from Oldham. The marriage lasted ten months into her time at Beechway – roughly the time AJ arrived at the unit – when her husband decided she was more dedicated to the unit than to cooking for him and filed for divorce.

‘So this was at about the time of our party encounter?’

‘Uh huh,’ she murmurs into the crook of her arm. ‘The divorce nearly killed me. That night was the first night of me trying to bounce back.’

‘Shit. Why didn’t I step up to the plate?’

‘I don’t know. Why didn’t you?’

He gives a sorrowful laugh. ‘I think you know that. We talked about it last night. You didn’t seem like the sort of woman who’d be interested in the dating world according to AJ.’

It’s difficult for AJ to accept what he’s been missing all these years, but he also understands that he was a different person back then. He wasn’t like Jonathan Keay – who was canny and confident enough to pick up the baton he’d dropped. Keay and Melanie kept the affair from anyone in the unit secret for a long time. It was almost four years before he walked away.

‘It took him that long to work out I wasn’t going to quit, I wasn’t going to give up looking after the clients and stay at home baking him cakes. Mind you,’ she says thoughtfully, ‘I might have been through hell but at least I’m losing weight for the first time in living memory. So maybe it’s not all bad – silver linings, etcetera, etcetera.’

Melanie is getting more and more human by the second – coming more and more into focus for AJ. He is amazed by how relaxed he is in her company. It’s like they’ve been doing this for ever – chit-chatting about their pasts. Admitting their flaws.

They drink coffee together and eat toast, which she has burnt. A muntjac stalks through the frosty grass in the garden, and AJ watches silently, thinking it could have been a muntjac last night. Maybe. And if it was, then isn’t it a kind of benediction? Like a little of his countryside creeping all this way into town as if to say, It’s right. It’s perfectly right. The bewildered exhaustion he’s felt all week has evaporated like Scotch mist and instead he’s wildly invigorated – as if this is the first day on Earth. The first sunshine, the first blue sky, the first bed, pillow, carpet, window known to man.

He has so much energy that he finds himself doing a few DIY jobs around the house as Melanie gets ready for work. As if he owns the place already. A broken handle in the kitchen and the panel of the bath has come loose, so now he’s fixing that – feeling like the first guy on Earth – muscled and worthy, as if he’s got those black-guy footballer’s legs he always wanted. He lies on the floor in his boxers and T-shirt, trying to make Melanie’s girlie pink-handled toolset do something useful other than look cute. Meanwhile Melanie is in the bedroom putting on make-up – also looking very cute. She’s wearing a short pink kimono in satin that would be cheap on anyone else. On her it’s stunning.

‘What?’ she says, catching him looking at her. She opens her arms and looks down at herself to check the kimono isn’t showing anything. That’s the funny thing about women – they let you do all sorts of incredible things to their bodies then they’ll suddenly, out of nowhere, get self-conscious. ‘Am I fat?’

‘Huge. I wonder how you live with yourself.’

‘What?’ she says, panicked. In fact she’s got a tiny tummy on her, just one little roll of fat which he thinks is unbelievably sexy. She spent a lot of last night worrying about that roll of flesh, putting her hands over it, pleading, ‘Don’t look at me – please don’t.’ ‘Seriously?’ she says. ‘What can you see?’

‘Melanie – it’s nothing. I’m looking at you, and if you want the truth, I’m not thinking about your thinness but about how much I’d like to fuck you again.’

She relaxes at that. Gives a giggle, a wave of the hand. ‘Oh, honestly.’

‘I’m serious.’

Her face colours, she opens her mouth – seriously considering this option – then seems to remember work. She checks her watch. ‘Awwww, AJ … ?’

‘Tonight then? After work?’

‘I can’t see why not.’

‘It’s a deal.’

He goes back to wrestling with the bath panel. It’s not that straightforward – one of the screws looks as if it’s been forcibly pulled out – ripping at the fibreglass. He wonders how it happened – it’s sort of violent, he thinks. Jonathan Keay’s face comes into his head. He’s surprised Jonathan didn’t get busy around Melanie’s house. Maybe he wasn’t much of a DIY guy.

‘That’s strange.’

He stops what he’s doing and squashes his chin down so he can see Melanie in the bedroom. She’s got her handbag open on her lap and is frowning. Puzzled.

‘What’s strange?’

She glances up at him. ‘I don’t know. My bracelet. It was in here. It’s gone.’

‘Bracelet?’

‘Yes, I …’ She rummages in the bag. ‘I put it in here yesterday morning – I took it off at work – didn’t want it to draw attention to this.’ Grimly she raises her bandaged hand. ‘Thought it would make everyone stare more.’

‘What sort of bracelet?’

‘It’s a little thing, just a little thing. Jonathan gave it to me.’

He shuffles out from the bath and props himself up on his elbows so he can see her properly. She is genuinely anxious, hurriedly pulling things out of her bag. ‘Damn,’ she says. ‘Damn.’

She catches him watching and stops. She composes herself and gives him a weak smile. ‘Oh well.’ She rubs the back of her neck wearily – as if to say this is all to be expected. ‘It wasn’t worth anything. Nothing at all.’

AJ thinks she’s lying. He thinks the bracelet wasn’t ‘nothing at all’ to her. He thinks it meant a lot. An unexpected spasm of jealousy gets him. He has to swallow it down. He shuffles back half under the bath and carries on fixing the panel.