His response? ‘Why do you always have to make it about you, Clare?’
We didn’t stay for dessert, or coffee. We headed back early, telling Joy we were tired and wanted to go to bed. She gave me a sly wink at the front door, like she was the marriage fairy, assuming we couldn’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off. And when she left, we went upstairs together, as she’d hoped – but Dan slept in the spare room, and he’d been sleeping there since.
I wonder even now if he’s ever really been in love with me. I’m the mother of his children, I play my part in his life, I fit in with his family, his commitments. I’m his wife, the accepted and appropriate daughter-in-law on the cast list of the Taylors’ drama. But is that all I am to him?
I recalled Jamie saying earlier that his heart beat faster every time he saw Ella. It made me think, had Dan’s heart ever beat faster when he saw me?
I knew I loved him, it’s why I didn’t leave when he told me he’d fallen in love with someone else. It seemed this wasn’t just a casual fling like before, this was apparently something deeper, more intense. This had been a shock, but was also painful proof to me that Dan was capable of real, passionate love. I saw by the way he looked when he talked about her that she meant more than anyone – more than me. I never told him how I felt, I found it too raw to see the faraway look in his eyes when he told me he’d finished it with her.
But I had to forgive him because I loved him, and that night in the garden of the villa I still believed that, in forgiving him, he’d finally come to love me. It’s why I took the time to understand his dilemma – he was completely torn between his mother’s wishes and my happiness. In the moonlit darkness, I saw panic in his eyes and knew only I could release him from this awful tug of war. So I reached out my hand, which he took gratefully, and murmured, ‘Okay, they can have our room, but you owe me one.’
The relief made him laugh. His whole body seemed to relax, and he instinctively hugged me. ‘Thank you. I knew you’d agree. I know how much it meant to you, to us – but I just felt bad saying no in front of Ella.’
‘I understand, your mum shouldn’t have put you in that position, but she was probably only being thoughtful,’ I sighed, catching his hand as we continued to walk through the garden, both drawn to the pool, still lit, a bright turquoise rectangle in the darkness. We stood together, by the edge, mesmerised by the blue glow and, still holding his hand, I sat on the edge. He sat down too and I slipped off my sandals, lowering both feet in. It was cool and so refreshing and, in the airless heat, I had this urge to slip into the water, fully clothed, and let the blue cold wash over me.
‘I want to get in,’ I said to Dan.
He smiled. ‘You can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… you’ll get all your clothes wet.’
‘I could take them off first?’ I suggested, and looked into his eyes. ‘We could get in together?’
For a moment, I could see he was thinking about it; he had that cautious smile I’d fallen in love with a long time ago. Was it too late to start again and get it right this time?
‘Go on,’ I muttered, waggling my toes under the water, longing to slip into the glinting turquoise, for it to swallow our heat.
He didn’t answer me, just looked out over the massive blue, contemplating the prospect. The wine from dinner was making me carefree, less inhibited, and I slowly unwrapped and removed my dress. I sat in my underwear, glad of the semi-darkness. Joy used to joke that moonlight was flattering for a woman over forty. I liked that theory. ‘Why don’t you buy some good-fitting underwear and turn down the lights?’ she’d suggested after Dan’s affair, convinced a push-up bra and a pair of lace knickers would bring him to heel. I was sure she had a checklist of ‘things a wife should do to stop her man straying’ and it seemed I hadn’t done a single one. So it was, in essence, all my fault.
I remember laughing to a friend of mine, ‘Jesus, it will take more than good underwear and bad lighting for me to look like the twenty-five-year-old he’s been sleeping with.’ And here I was, sitting in my underwear by moonlight, straight out of Joy’s ‘Ten Ways to Get Your Man Back’ series.
‘Are you coming in?’ I asked, trying to sound flirtatious and mysterious, which wasn’t easy after fifteen years of marriage and three kids. I took his silence as a sign that he was considering it and, encouraged by this, I stood up and jumped in.