‘It can’t happen.’ I moved over and sat next to him. ‘Fine, maybe she’ll get custody and you’ll have to visit and … it’s just life, Mark.’
He said, ‘But this isn’t …’ and he stopped and gasped and said finally, ‘I didn’t want this for Daisy.’
And I thought I could see what the trouble was. Mark had come to a real limit. He would not be able to buy Daisy from Nicola. There was no price. When they divorced, Mark might have to understand that someone else could limit him: like his mother or the word of God.
As if he had pulled the thought from my mind, he sniffed, blew his nose and said, ‘Fuck, my mother’s going to have a field day. My mother and Nicola, how did I not see that …’ and he muttered something half into his jersey.
I rubbed his back. ‘Love,’ I said, ‘we’ll sort it out, you’ll sort it out, it’ll be …’
But he was talking over me. ‘You’ve seen what my mother’s like, you’ve seen her. Always too close. I know Franny thinks it was Ample-forth that made me go wrong, or Catholicism, but it wasn’t. It was my mother, taking me away, wanting me so close to her. She always wanted me too close, never could let me go. And now I’ll be right back where she wants me.’ He looked at me, the broken veins in his eyes red, face swollen. ‘We got much too close, James, when I was a teenager. Much too close.’
‘Mark,’ I said, ‘do you mean that …’ but he cut me off.
‘Don’t ask me what I mean, all right? I don’t want to talk about any of it any more. That’s all.’
He laid his head on my shoulder and kissed me softly — almost pathetically — tugging at my bottom lip. I felt the warmth of his body down my side. I pulled him towards me with a strength I hadn’t intended, and our lips mashed together painfully, and I could taste salt, but I did not stop to consider this as I pulled off his shirt.
Later, we lay in bed together, he smoking and I curled up next to him, stroking his chest, his head, his shoulder. I could not help inscribing lines of kisses along his arms and up his neck, writing my worship with my lips.
‘I think I should tell her,’ he said. ‘I think I should just come clean.’
I rolled away on to my back and stared at the spider’s web of cracks frosting the ceiling.
‘Tell her what?’
He took another pull on his cigarette, exhaled the smoke slowly.
‘Tell her about us. I mean —’ he leaned up on one elbow and looked at me — ‘I don’t think she’d mind so much if she knew it was just you. It’d be containable, you know? And then we could give it another go. I think I want that. Another go. I want it for Daisy.’
An icicle of fear.
‘You’d tell her it was me? Specifically me?’
‘I think it’d make her feel better, you know? I mean, it’s only you.’
And I wondered then, with a rush of heat, whether this had always been my purpose. I was always someone Mark could give up if necessary. I could always be thrown out to confuse pursuers.
‘And what do you think’s going to happen then, Mark? She’ll tell Jess and Jess will leave, and then …’
Mark sat up in bed and watched me impassively, his cigarette held in calm fingers.
‘It’s time you two broke up anyway.’ He ground out the cigarette in the saucer by the bed and stood up. ‘You can’t really expect she’ll stay with you forever, can you? I’m sorry, James, I have to go.’
He was pulling on his jeans then, and I was sitting in bed, and a madness touched me on the inside of my skull. It was the thought of losing both of them, both at one stroke. I thought, and it is only now that I begin to understand that perhaps I was wrong in this, that in losing them I would no longer know where to find myself. There are those who can love without losing themselves: and Jess is one of these and Mark, for all his wild ecstasies, is one of these. And there are those of us who love unboundedly, giving everything, offering up their whole selves as a sacrifice of love. Nothing short of total love was ever enough for me.
I said, ‘You can’t tell her, Mark.’
He bent down, groped around under the bed for a stray sock and said quite casually, ‘I’m sorry, James, honestly. I know it’ll be an inconvenience for you, but you can’t have expected this to last forever, can you?’
He kissed me on the forehead as if I was a child and I think this was what broke the spine holding me upright. I should emphasize that I loathe myself for what I did next. But desire has very little to do with morality.
I said, ‘I’ll tell her about the music box. I’ll tell your mother.’
And he frowned and half-smiled as he pulled on his socks, because he’d almost forgotten, of course, that I knew things about him he would rather not have revealed.
I spoke slowly. I was working it out as I went.
I said, ‘If you tell Nicola about me, about you and me, I’ll call your mother in Italy and tell her it was you who smashed the music box that time in Oxford. And I’ll tell her about the time you were arrested, and I’ll tell her about the drugs, and your other friends in London. I’ll tell her you’re out of control, mad. Mad like you were before.’
And this pulled the last traces of a smile from him and left him grey, like a man who has seen the open grave before him.
He stopped, one shoe on and one shoe off, and said, with an unconvincing flick of the wrist, ‘She won’t care. She won’t … It’s all a long time ago. I’m older now.’
‘So you won’t mind if I tell her. You won’t mind if your family know all about the life you’ve been leading. If Nicola knows, you won’t mind.’ And, remembering something I had heard long ago, I said, ‘You won’t mind if they think your trouble has come back?’
He stood up suddenly and took a step back, away from the bed.
‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck you, James, and fuck your bloody threats. As if you’d even know how to do it … as if you’d even know how to make it convincing.’
‘I would,’ I said. And then, although I knew this was not likely to be true. ‘Your mother would take Nicola’s side, you know, if it came to it. She would, with all the things I could tell her about how you’ve been living. And Daisy would be brought up by Nicola and her family and your mother and they’d shut you out forever.’
Mark began to speak but did not speak. He was shaking now, an erupting storm passing through his body. I could see the anger rising up his throat, clenching his jaw, bunching his muscles at the temples, and for the first time I was a little afraid. I thought, I really don’t know what he could do.
He looked around the room and grabbed a thick glass ashtray from the bookcase. He glanced at it and then, with a fluid strength, hurled it at my head. I dodged to the side. It hit the wall behind me, shattering into several large pieces, and a shower of glass dust fell over my naked shoulders.
‘Fuck!’ I said. ‘Jesus. Jesus, Mark …’
His face was cold and still.
‘I’m leaving,’ he said. ‘I’m not staying in London. I’m going to Nic’s family to get my daughter and I’m taking her home with me. Put your clothes on and go.’
He picked up his other shoe and fitted it to his foot. He brushed his hands on his jacket and walked out of the flat, slamming the door behind him.
I sat in the bed for another twenty minutes before I levered myself out, avoiding the chunks of broken glass. I found I’d been nicked; once on the shoulder and once on the ear. I reached over for one of the packets of cigarettes he left everywhere in that flat, pulled one out and lit it. It was years since I’d last smoked; I’d never got much beyond schoolboy experimentation. But the sensation was calming. I opened the window and smoked it slowly. It was November, the day was very cold, an early snow predicted. The cool air was peaceful, bringing up delicious goosebumps over my torso.