It was only a few seconds before I heard the unmistakable sound of Astrid’s footsteps running down the stairs: light and quick. She pulled open the door. Her feet were bare and she was wearing faded jeans and a high-necked green cardigan that was short enough to show a strip of her tanned stomach. We were co-ordinated, I thought, on this day of all days. But there was something different about her and it took me a few moments to understand what it was. She was smiling at me and seemed properly pleased that I was there. Of course, she had always been perfectly friendly and approachable before, but in Maitland Road we had rarely been alone and I had always felt I was on the sidelines of her life. Today it was simply me and her. Nobody had just left and nobody was about to arrive. Her eyes were fixed on mine; her expression was attentive. She put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me, first on one cheek, then the other. ‘Hello, Davy,’ she said. ‘I’m really glad you’re here. I’ve been feeling so cast down about everything.’
She didn’t look cast down. Her face glowed with health and life. Her dark hair shone and her lips were glossy. She smelled of lemon and roses.
‘Of course you have,’ I said, stepping over the threshold and shutting the door behind me. I followed her up the stairs. The tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck were still damp; she must be fresh from a shower, I thought. Her back was slender. She led me into a room that served as kitchen and living room. It was all a bit higgledy-piggledy and cluttered. There were geraniums in the window box, and a ginger cat lay curled up and purring on the baggy corduroy sofa. It opened one yellow eye, examined me, then shut it again.
Astrid looked at me with concern. ‘Where did you spend the night?’
I mumbled something about staying at a friend’s.
‘You look terrible.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘I was wondering if you’d like a shower or something.’
‘I already had one.’
She laughed. ‘It wasn’t an accusation. Sit down. Try to ignore Saul’s mess.’ She hurled a coat and a bag off the sofa. ‘Coffee? Tea? Juice? I think there’s juice, anyway, I haven’t really examined the fridge yet.’
‘Coffee.’ I wanted to prolong the moment; watch her as she served me, watch the way her cardigan tightened over her breasts as she reached up for cups.
‘A small amount of milk and no sugar, right?’
‘You remember.’
‘Of course.’ She smiled at me and I felt my throat thicken with desire.
‘How long are you staying here for?’
‘I don’t know. A fortnight at least. I can’t see beyond that. I’ve no idea what I’ll do next. Maybe I should grow up and try to sort out my life. What do you think?’
‘Think?’
‘About what I should do next.’
I stared at her, memorizing every detail of her face. ‘I don’t think you should plan beyond the next few minutes at the moment, Astrid.’
She turned away and shovelled several spoonfuls of ground coffee into a cafetière and poured in boiling water, stirring vigorously. ‘This might be a bit strong.’
She sat down on the sofa next to me, pushing the cat to the end without waking it. Her leg brushed my leg; her shoulder was a few millimetres from mine. When she bent her head to take a sip of her coffee, I gazed at the curve of her cheek, at her long dark lashes. Steam rose into her face, moistening her skin. ‘You’re trembling,’ I said to her softly.
‘Am I?’ She held up her free hand. ‘So I am. I’m tired, Davy. Tired, scared, lonely, at a loss.’ She put the hand on my knee. ‘Do you understand that feeling?’
I put my hand over hers. ‘Do I understand it? Astrid, I’ve spent my whole life feeling like that.’ Tears welled in my eyes but I didn’t try to check them. I was done with pretending. This was my moment, my perfect day. I put down my coffee cup and picked up her hand between both my own.
‘I should have paid more attention,’ she said. She let me lift her hand to my lips and hold it there for a moment. ‘You’re the only person in the whole house to have come well out of all of this. Everyone else went to pieces or turned on other people, except you. You were always calm and kind. Especially to me. Do you think I didn’t notice?’
‘Do you know why, Astrid?’
‘I think so.’ She placed her hand against my cheek. She gazed at me, then leaned forward and, very lightly, kissed my lips. I pulled her to me. Her lips opened under mine, I felt her breasts against my chest. I pushed my hand into her hair and kissed her again, more roughly, tasting blood but that didn’t matter. My Astrid. My destiny. My ending and my beginning.
I pushed her back on the sofa. I kissed her gently, then started to do things I’d wanted to do since the first moment I’d met her. I put a hand on her breast. She smiled blurrily at me and I moved my hand under her cardigan and felt her warm, smooth stomach, then the rough fabric of her bra. I wanted her. I wanted to do everything to her at once. I moved my hand down to her jeans and started to fumble with the button. ‘Wait,’ she said dreamily. ‘We’re got time, Davy. We’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘I’ve waited so long,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’
She sat up, stroked my hair and kissed me. ‘I think I owe you,’ she said.
‘Owe me?’ I was finding it difficult to speak.
She pulled my jacket off and very delicately undid the first button on my shirt. ‘You got Miles out of the way for me, didn’t you?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘What does it matter?’
She smiled at me and kissed me again. I could taste her, wet and sweet. She undid the second button. ‘It matters to me,’ she said, kissing my lips, my face. She kissed my ear and whispered, ‘Tell me. I need to know. I want to know everything about you.’
‘It was easy,’ I said.
She undid the third button and pulled open my shirt. She put her lips against my neck. I moaned. I couldn’t stop myself.
‘So what did you do?’
She lay back on the sofa again. I bent over and kissed her lips. I kissed her hair, breathed it in. The clean soft smell was like a drug that made me feel dizzy and drunk with her. She gave a murmur.
‘It was the paperweight,’ I said.
‘Mm?’
I put my fingers on the fastening of her jeans, and this time she didn’t try to stop me. I undid the fastening, then drew down the zip. I saw her blue knickers, lacy at the top. I put my hand on them. I felt the hair through them, warm under my hand.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘The paperweight.’ I said the words to her between kisses. ‘You saw it in my room. I just put it in Miles’s room.’ I pushed my hand deeper under her knickers.
‘No,’ she said. ‘My top. Take it off first.’
I undid the first button. She lay back with her hands raised behind her head, open to me.
‘Peggy was just a mistake,’ I said, undoing the second button and the third. ‘But it was in his room, so the traces were there already.’
‘You?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Perfect, Davy,’ she said. ‘Perfect.’
And I didn’t know whether she meant me, stroking and kissing her beautiful body, or whether it was because now she finally understood it was me who knew everything and had done everything. I unfastened the last button and pulled the cardigan open and apart.
‘No, it was a mistake. Leah and Ingrid.’