Secret Smile

CHAPTER 39

'Hello! Miranda?'

His voice boomed up the stairwell, and then I heard his footsteps, taking the steps two at a time. I applied one last precise lick of gloss paint along the skirting board then laid my brush down on the lid of the paint pot.

'The paint's still wet,' I said as he came through the door, loosening his tie as he did so. 'Don't touch anything.' I stood up and crossed the beautiful bare room.

'Except you,' he said. He put his hands on my aching shoulders and kissed me and bit by bit all my stiffness eased away. I thought: how is it possible to feel excited and safe all at the same time; to know someone so well and yet feel there's so much more to know?

'Good day?' I asked.

'This is the best bit. I've got exactly fifty minutes before I have to get back to work. I've bought us some sandwiches from the deli.'

'Shall we have those in a bit?' I said and took him by the hand. I led him up the next narrow flight of stairs, along bare boards and fresh-painted walls, into the small attic room I was using as a bedroom, where a mattress lay under the window and my clothes were stacked in wooden boxes. I took off his jacket and tie and he unbuttoned my overalls and we laughed at each other because here we were on an ordinary Wednesday lunchtime, about to make love in an empty, echoey house. Light fell through the blinds in bars across the room. I hung his suit on a hanger for him. He tossed my paint-stained gear into a corner of the room.

'I'd like to stay here the rest of the day,' I said a bit later, stretched out on the mattress while he lay propped up beside me and stroked my hair.

'Roasted vegetables with mozzarella or farmhouse Cheddar and pickle?'

'Half of each?'

'OK.'

'We can have them in the kitchen, then I can show you what I've done since you were last here.'

I had tried to move out of London, to the country. I really had. I'd burnt my bridges, leaving Bill, selling my flat in record time, putting my stuff into storage. At the same time, I'd written to all the people I knew in the trade and gone for informal talks and considered all my options, just like you're meant to. I'd thought about relocating to Wales and Lincolnshire and even, for a few days, Brittany, where apparently lots of English people were desperate for a builder-cum-interior designer to revamp their picturesque farmhouses. But, like Alice when she goes through the looking glass and finds she has to go backwards in order to advance, the result of all my labours was somehow the exact opposite of the one I'd intended. By attempting to move out of the great churning wheel of the city, I'd somehow ended up at its very hub.

I was now living in a tall, narrow house just south of King's Cross, completely renovating it while the owner was in America for nine months. When he'd offered me the job – an extravagant modernist conversion of the kind I'd dreamed of, with free accommodation thrown in – it had seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. I'd started at the bottom and moved upwards – gutting the kitchen and turning it into a laboratory for food preparation, building a minimalist conservatory into the garden, opening out the living room, turning the smallest bedroom into an en suite bathroom. Eight of the nine months had elapsed. Now only the attic room where I slept was still to be plastered and decorated and opened to the skies.

'You've done a great job,' he said, posting the last of his sandwich into his mouth and pulling on his jacket.

'It's all right, isn't it?'

'And now you're nearly finished.'

'Yes.'

'Miranda?'

'Yes.'

'After that

But then my mobile phone started bleeping from the bedroom, so we said goodbye hastily, and I pounded up the stairs to get it, while downstairs I heard the door slam shut. I caught up the vibrating phone. If I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, I could just see him from the dormer window, walking briskly along the street. He'd forgotten his tie.

We went for a bike ride in the early evening and had coffee, sitting on the pavement outside even though it was getting chilly. We'd been together nearly one year now, all the seasons. He'd seen me through the anniversaries – Troy 's death, Christmas, Laura's death. He'd met my beaten-down, bewildered parents; met Kerry and her fiancé; met my friends. He'd let me wake him up at three in the morning to talk about the things I tried not to talk about in the day. He'd trailed round builders' yards with me, trying to take an interest in grains of wood, or held ladders while paint dripped on to his hair. I looked at him as he biked beside me, and he felt my gaze, glanced up, swerved. My heart contracted like a fist.

At his flat, he made supper for us – smoked mackerel and salad with a bottle of white wine – while I sat on the church pew he'd bought at the reclamation centre and watched him. When he sat down he took a small bite, but then pushed his plate away.

'Um – what I was saying this afternoon

'Yes?'

'About your plans, you know. Well, I was thinking – you could move in with me.'

I started to speak, but he held up a hand.

'Hang on. I'm saying this all wrong. I don't mean, you could move in with me. Well, I do of course, but that's not what I'm really saying. And when I say, I was thinking you could move in – as if it had just occurred to me – well, it's what I'm thinking about all the time.'

'You're confusing me.'

'I'm nervous, that's why.' He took a breath and then said: 'I very much want you to come and live with me.' He twisted the wine glass round by its stem. 'I want you to marry me, Miranda.'

Happiness bubbled up in me like an underground stream finding the surface. Unlooked-for, undeserved happiness that had come into my parched life when I met him.

'I want to have children with you…' he continued.

'Don,' I said.

'I want to grow old with you. Only you. Nobody but you. There.'

'Oh,' I said.

'I've never said anything like this before.' He gave a grimace and rubbed his eyes. 'Now you're supposed to reply, I think.'

'Listen, Don,' I said.

'Just tell me.'

I leaned towards him and put my hands on either side of his lovely, clever, kind face; kissed him on the eyelids and then on the lips. 'I love you too,' I said. 'I love you very, very, very much. Only you.'

'That's good,' he said. 'Isn't it?'

'Can you wait a bit?'

'Wait?'

'Yes.' I held his gaze.

'Well, of course I can wait – but does that mean you're not sure? About me, I mean?'

'No. It doesn't mean that at all.'

'Why?'

'I am sure about what I feel,' I said. 'I used to wonder how you knew when it was the real thing. Not any more.'

'So why?'

'It's complicated,' I said evasively.

'Are you scared?'

'Do you mean of commitment or something?'

'Not exactly. But after everything you have been through, maybe you feel it's wrong to be happy.'

'It's not that.'

'Or maybe you feel you're not safe, and therefore anyone who's with you isn't safe either. We've talked about that – about how you felt you were the carrier. Is that it? Everyone you love dies.'

'You're the psychologist,' I said.

'Because I don't mind,' he said. 'Everything's a risk. You just have to choose the risk you want to take. I chose a long time ago. Now you have to as well.'

I put my hands over his, turned his palms upwards, kissed them both. 'I have chosen,' I said.

'You're crying,' he said. 'Into your food.'

'Sorry.'

'Of course I'll bloody wait.'

I've met a man. Don. I wish you could meet him as well. I think you'd like him. I know he'd like you. It feels – oh, I don't know, odd, unsettling, not right, to he in love with someone again. I never thought it would happen, not after everything. I thought all of that was over. And sometimes – well, a lot, really – I get this sudden rush of panic that it's wrong. Wrong to be happy, I mean, when you're not here and Laura's gone and Mum and Dad are wrecked and so many people have suffered and I feel that it was because of me. It was me who spread the terrible contagion. I can see that sardonic expression on your face when I say that, but nevertheless it's true. I'll always miss you, Troy. Every minute of every day of every week of every year that's left. So how is it possible that I can allow myself to be happy? Maybe it isn't. We'll see.