‘Okaaay. Are you leaving me anything? Some chocolate? Apples?’
Ignoring my request, Kate asked, ‘When can we come back?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe in a week?’ I laughed slightly too much. ‘I’ll text you.’ Then began laughing again.
I rang work, booked time off, then took a look in my fridge. It was almost empty, so I went to the fancy grocer’s in Greystones and every ridiculous thing that caught my eye, I threw into my basket: truffled honey; small yellow tomatoes; things I thought were plums but were actually more tomatoes, purple this time. Crozier Blue cheese; abnormally big strawberries; attractively packaged mushroom soup even though mushrooms tasted to me like death; bananas, because you can’t go wrong with bananas, unless of course, they’re plantains （as three days later I discovered they were）; chocolates from the Skelligs; smoked almonds; a large bouquet of white peonies; and finally, ice-cream, lots of it, and four pizzas – probably the only practical purchases.
Returning home, I put the flowers in a jug, then changed my bedsheets, had a bath, washed my hair, covered myself in Crème de Corps, painted my toenails and scouted out my shortie satin pyjamas from the back of a drawer. An impractical gift from Claire, I’d been saving the slippery, slidey top and shorts for a special occasion. Which – unless I’d misunderstood something fundamental here – seemed to have arrived.
I was woken by a text – which meant I’d been asleep! In a taxi. Be with you by 5.30am. L x He was here, in the country, less than half an hour away. I set up sentry by the living-room window, content to do nothing but wait.
Outside, the sky was pitch black – my house was far enough from the city to escape the ever-present purple glow. After a while, a faint disturbance occurred in the darkness, a diffused yellowness, which grew into car headlights. Then came the sound of an engine. A taxi pulled up in the road – curved and humming, looking like the only car on earth.
A man got out – tall, longish hair, leather jacket. He was carrying a bag. An exchange of low voices took place with the driver. Then the man turned from the car and came towards my house.
As he reached the door, I opened it.
‘Babe.’ Luke laughed in delight. ‘Hello.’
I pulled him into the hall, patting his shoulders through his jacket, having to convince myself that he was real.
‘You’re really here,’ I told him.
‘I’m really here.’ He dropped his bag.
‘You’ve come all this way.’
‘I’ve come all this way.’ He slid his arms around my waist, his hands on my slippery pyjamas.
‘But why, Luke?’
‘Because …’ he said, ‘and I really need you to listen to this, Rachel Walsh.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Because. I. Love. You.’
‘Oh, thank God,’ I blurted in a sharp exhale of relief.
‘You’re saying this is … good news?’
I gave him a look.
‘Anything to say to me …？’
‘I love you too, Luke Costello.’
His smile was so wide, so happy. Taking my face in his hands, he moved his thumbs across the lilac circles under my eyes. ‘Have you slept?’
‘About three hours.’
‘Not enough.’ As his body stirred to life, he grimaced. ‘Rachel, ignore it. It’s got a mind of its own around you. I apologize for it. Come on, up those stairs, you need to sleep.’
‘But –’
‘Shhh. There’s gonna be plenty of time for that.’
In the bedroom, with efficient speed, he cast off his jacket, whipped his T-shirt over his head and kicked away his boots. Briefly shy, he turned from me to tug at his belt, before unbuttoning himself, removing his jeans and underwear, then he reached for me. His fingers slid and slithered around my pyjama buttonholes and still he had the top open and off with commendable speed. Then he hooked his index fingers inside the waistband, laughed softly and shook the shorts. They shivered their way to the floor where I stepped easily out of them.
Lifting me as if I were a precious object, he placed me in the centre of the bed, then climbed in himself. Already I was curling and twisting my arms and legs around him, the familiar feel of his body and the beautiful smell of his skin calming any residual anxiety. This was how we’d always gone to sleep together, night after night, when we’d lived in New York.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
‘And I love you.’ Dreamily, I admitted, ‘This was what I thought of when you asked me to remember a time I’d felt at peace. This, just going to sleep with you on a random regular night.’