Leona smiled awkwardly and turned back to me, asking me how my next book was coming along, and I offered a few platitudes, but the conversation was ruined. I wanted to leave, to deal with whatever mood you would be in now and just get past it. I suspect Leona wanted to get out of there too for she quickly moved on to someone else and we were left alone again, the rush of our recent sex vanished now, instead replaced by the humiliation that had been rained down on you.
‘Shall we go?’ you asked, and I nodded, draining my glass and rushing to catch up with you as you led the way out of the door.
Do you remember what happened when we got home, Maurice? You’ll say that I’m exaggerating but I remember it clearly. We barely spoke in the taxi but once we were in the front door and up the stairs you pulled me to you and started kissing me again. But there was none of the romance of earlier; instead you spun me around, pulling my underwear down roughly, and before I could make any protest you were inside me again. I cried out but you forced your way deeper into my body, and I held myself up, telling myself that this was what I wanted, this kind of passion, this kind of impulsiveness, even though it seemed as if the desire we’d felt earlier had been replaced now by cruelty and spite. As if you weren’t fucking me at all, but punishing me.
‘Twice in one night,’ you said when you were finished, smiling at me. ‘Who said romance is dead?’
I turned around to face you, trying to smile, desperately wanting to look as if I’d enjoyed it so that I could convince myself that I had. And then my legs seemed to give way beneath me and I slid down to the floor, where I stayed for a few minutes while you went into the kitchen to pour yourself a beer.
4. December
When my mother broke her arm slipping on some ice, we decided to go to my family after all, instead of yours, for Christmas and I got the impression that you were relieved about that. Although I knew that your parents had never particularly liked me – your mother blamed our miscarriages on my writing, telling you time and again that you should not ‘let’ me work, while your father refused to accept that I was English, insisting that my skin colour meant I was an immigrant, regardless of the fact that I was born in Hackney – I was willing to put up with their outdated gender stereotypes and casual racism if it meant not having to be around my sister. But eventually my conscience got the better of me and I knew that I couldn’t leave my mother to cater for herself, Rebecca and the boys without some help, particularly when I had barely seen her since September.
The smell of pigeon peas, plantain, cush cush and candied yams that drifted through the air brought me instantly back to my childhood. My parents had arrived in England from the Caribbean in the early 1960s and, when we were kids, the whole family returned there once every couple of years to see the relatives they’d left behind. I felt out of place there, though, more at home in England, which was the only home I’d ever known, despite the fact that the children in school, and even some of the teachers, had no hesitation in using racial epithets against me.
We went into the living room with glasses of wine and I made my way over to the shelf by Mum’s reading chair, where she kept her library books, and as I scanned the titles I was surprised to see a copy of The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal.
‘Look,’ I said, holding up the cover, and you glanced over and smiled.
‘I wouldn’t have thought that was your sort of thing, Amoya,’ you said, turning to my mother. ‘All that boy-on-boy action.’
‘Well, I didn’t realize that it would be so full of sex when I borrowed it,’ she replied. ‘But I’m rather enjoying all the rudeness. Now that Henry’s gone, reading about sex is the closest I ever get to it. Speaking of which, you know that Rebecca is bringing Arjan with her, yes?’
‘I didn’t know it for a fact,’ I replied. ‘But I guessed she would. Have you met him yet?’
‘I have,’ she replied cautiously, for she loved Robert just as much as I did and didn’t want to appear disloyal. ‘It’s very difficult to know what to say, isn’t it? None of this is his fault, after all, and he does seem like a very nice man.’
‘Where’s he from?’ you asked, for you hadn’t come with me the day I’d visited him and Rebecca and had shown scant interest in him in the meantime. ‘India or somewhere?’
‘Eastern Europe, I think. Latvia or Estonia. One of those places.’
‘And what does he do?’
‘He’s an actor. Or trying to be. He’s younger than Rebecca, though, which should come as no surprise. And very good-looking.’
‘Well, if you’re going to cheat on your husband and then leave him,’ you said, ‘I suppose there’s no point doing it for someone old and ugly.’
Afterwards, we all tried to blame the argument on what Mum delicately referred to as Arjan’s not quite perfect grasp of English, but of course there was much more to it than that.
Rebecca, Arjan and the boys arrived laden with Christmas presents. Too many, I thought, as if she was trying to prove something through her generosity. Damien and Edward both had new phones, which seemed ridiculous, considering they were only nine and seven years old, and she had bought me one of my favourite perfumes but had forgotten to remove the Heathrow duty-free sticker from beneath the box.
‘If I’m honest,’ said my sister, sitting back in the armchair with a glass of champagne, ‘I would have preferred to stay at home this year instead of coming here.’
‘Well, you could still go back,’ I told her. ‘The roads will be quiet at this time of day and we could always do you up a doggy-bag.’
‘My schedule has been simply crazy,’ she continued, ignoring me. ‘Two weeks ago, I was actually in three different countries over three different days. Absolutely exhausting.’
‘Which countries?’ I asked. ‘England, Scotland and Wales?’
‘No,’ she snapped. ‘England, France and Italy, if you really want to know.’
‘I’m not sure England counts, dear,’ said Mum. ‘I mean, you do live here, after all.’
‘Of course it counts. It’s a country, isn’t it?’
‘So, tell us a little about yourself, Arjan,’ you said, turning to him, and I could see that you were uncertain whether to be on his side yet or not. He was ten years younger than my sister, who had only recently turned thirty-eight, and very handsome with a muscular frame and beautiful skin. Of course, that also made him six years younger than you.
‘What would you like to know?’ he asked politely.
‘You want to be an actor, is that right?’
‘Oh no,’ said Arjan, shaking his head.
‘That’s what we were told.’
‘I don’t want to be an actor,’ he said. ‘I am an actor.’
‘Right,’ you said. ‘Of course.’
‘I’ve been acting all my adult life.’
‘And are you in something at the moment?’
‘Not right now, no.’
‘Resting, I suppose,’ you said, nodding your head. ‘I hear a lot of actors do that. Well, it’s not as if you have to wait on tables, is it? Not with the money Rebecca earns.’