‘Are you mad with me?’ he asked in the silence that followed.
The man knew her too well. ‘I’m not mad,’ she said, carefully. ‘I’m just…’ She paused. ‘Ben, tell me honestly, all those plans we made. All those conversations about next year. Is it really a case of “right timing”, or is it that…’ She paused again. ‘Ben, are you ever going to want to come to France with me?’
He was silent for a minute. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No. I mean, well, probably. Almost definitely.’
‘That sounds horribly like a “no”.’
‘It’s… Well, I suppose, if I’m honest, sometimes I wonder whether it isn’t better to let a dream stay a dream? Careful what you wish for, and all that. We have our whole lives here…’ he said, shrugging, his palms upturned in a gesture of surrender.
‘But…’
‘Look, let’s go to bed,’ he said, putting out his hand for hers again. ‘I’m knackered, I’ve had too many Guinnesses. I’m pretty sure you’ve had a few more wines than you usually would. It’s hard to think straight.’
‘I am thinking straight.’
‘Well, maybe I need to… uh, sleep on it. You know?’
‘OK,’ she said, not meeting his eye.
‘OK?’
‘Yes. We’ll talk tomorrow. You go on. I’ll be up in just a minute.’
The minute Ben was out of sight, she opened up her laptop and touched the mouse pad. The screen lit up and she was relieved to find that she hadn’t closed down her earlier searches. Because it ended here. She wasn’t going to be someone whom things happened to. She was going to be someone who made things happen.
Before she could change her mind, she clicked ‘select’ on one of the luxury g?te rentals she’d been looking at, and committed to, if not to a lifetime of indulging her Francophilia, then at least a month trying it on for size. Ben would probably come. And if he didn’t, it wasn’t the end of the world. After all, it would only be a month apart. And a step towards the life she’d always dreamed of.
Hopefully, if nothing else, it would show Ben just how serious she was.
Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? she thought, as she closed the laptop and went upstairs to bed.
3
She gradually became conscious, her head heavy on the pillow, her eyes still firmly closed, feeling a pounding in her temples. It had been a while since she’d gone past her self-imposed two glass limit, and she’d started to forget why she’d set the limit in the first place. Yesterday, when she’d been knocking back the red and waiting for Ben to come home she’d imagined they’d be leaping out of bed to make new plans this morning; now she’d be lucky if she could stagger to the kitchen for a coffee without incident.
As the daylight poked its way through the gap in the curtains and flooded her skin with unwelcome light, she felt an additional throb. ‘Oh god,’ she moaned, turning over and covering her face with her hands.
There was a reciprocal groan by her side. ‘Oh Christ,’ she heard Ben say.
‘Hangover?’
‘Hangover.’ He half sat up, propped on his elbows, eyes screwed up against the light. ‘Bloody Baz. Always tempting me with one last pint.’
‘You could say no, you know.’
‘That is a very good point.’
‘How many did you have?’
‘I sort of lost count, I think. Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk, Miss Polished-off-a-whole-bottle-by-herself.’
‘Was it a whole bottle?’ she asked horrified. ‘All on my own?’
‘Well, almost.’
‘Bloody hell. No wonder I feel like shit.’ She tried opening one of her eyes, glimpsed the soft flesh of Ben’s belly next to her, then closed it again.
He laughed and shuffled up the bed. ‘Come on, we’ll get through it. Together. You’re only young once. Carpe diem – seize the day and all that!’ She heard him breathe heavily on his palm. ‘Christ, sorry about my breath. I smell like I’ve licked the inside of a bin or something.’
She smiled in spite of the pain. They’d been together over twenty years and still managed to make each other laugh. That had to be worth something. Then a snippet of memory returned and she was retrospectively flooded with annoyance. ‘Young though? Ben, we haven’t been young since 2011. We’re running out of days to seize.’
He laughed briefly, then realised she was serious. ‘Oh, Lily. I know. I can understand why you feel this way. But you know, we’ll find a way through all this.’