Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered. Rosie Thomas
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by since she had seen him last in the chic greyness of his flat. They sat close together but they didn’t quite touch now, as if they were uncertain of what the other wanted or expected. For a moment, Annie wasn’t sure whether she knew him at all. Steve took her hand and she jumped, bumping awkwardly against the wicker sofa arm. They laughed then, fracturing the tension, and Steve said, ‘Come on. I’ll take you out to dinner.’
Annie bathed and changed in the little square bedroom. She took her clothes out of her bag and laid them neatly on one side of the patchwork-quilted bed. She put her hairbrush and jars of cream at one side of the chest of drawers, and then glanced at the bag that Steve had brought, still standing at the opposite side of the bed. She unfolded her clothes and put them on hangers in one half of the wardrobe, feeling the strangeness of having only her own things.
Anne picked up her empty case. It was a battered, nondescript one, veteran of numerous family holidays and weekends. Steve’s unopened bag was a soft black canvas-and-leather holdall, quite unlike anything Martin and she had ever owned. She touched it briefly with her fingertips, thinking with momentary sadness that it belied all the connubial intimacy of the room. She turned quickly and stowed her own suitcase in a cupboard.
Standing in front of the dim mirror, she made up her face as carefully as if she were going to the grandest function of her life. When she came back to Steve he was sitting on the balcony staring out to sea, but he turned at once to look at her with an odd, admiring expression, as if they had only just met.
‘You look wonderful,’ he said. He kissed her and she felt the sudden imperative beat of her response to him. He touched the corner of her mouth with his.
‘Dinner,’ he said.
The roads across the wide, flat fields were empty and he drove the big car very fast. The sun was setting, and the rays of light slanted from the west, behind them, in long, oblique bars. They swept through a dense forest of black pines, miles of it, and when they came out again the sun had gone down and the summer dark had thickened in the sky.
Annie felt that she had never been so aware of the landscape and its lightness and darkness. She thought that all the magnificent effects of it were just for Steve and herself tonight, and then she remembered their insignificance beside the Martello tower, and she laughed softly. Steve’s warm hand closed briefly over hers.
They came to another little town, this one left high and dry on its river estuary by the receding sea. There was a square enclosed by old red-brick buildings that glowed in the last of the daylight, and a little restaurant on the corner. There were paper tablecloths and bright overhead lights, and Annie and Steve’s table was crowded into a corner by other tables packed with yachtsmen and fishermen and a handful of holidaymakers.
The seafood was the freshest and sweetest that Annie had ever tasted, and after it came sea bass in a simple, buttery sauce.
The two of them ate as if they had been starved, and drank straw-pale Chablis that tasted of stone and steel. Under the influence of it Annie’s cheeks turned pink, and they talked and laughed about little things as if no world existed beyond the uncurtained velvet-black of the restaurant windows.
Much later, they drove back again to the creaking darkness of the house overlooking the sea. They blinked at each other when Steve turned on the lights, unwilling to let the precious evening slip out of their hands.
‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘I’ll light the stove, shall I?’
There was wood in the log-basket beside it, and soon the stove was glowing. The real scent of burning driftwood enfolded them. Steve brought out a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He gave a glass to Annie and she drank, feeling the heat of the spirit in her throat.
‘Listen to the sea,’ Steve whispered.
In the room’s stillness the waves seemed to break almost over their heads. He drew aside the curtain and they saw the distant beam of a lighthouse, an arm of light that swept over the sea and withdrew, and then reached out again.
The shyness of the early evening had gone. They turned to each other naturally now, not impatiently, but eagerly, knowing that the time was right. Annie felt his heart beating under her cheek as she rested against him. She tilted her head back to touch her mouth against his, and then he bent over her. He blotted out the red heat of the stove, and the lighthouse beam. Annie’s head fell back against the cushions and her mouth opened to his.
He undid the front of her shirt, touching the buttons one by one, and his hand and then his mouth touched her breast.
‘I love you,’ she said simply.
They were both conscious of the flood of words, held back.
Steve said, ‘Come to bed now.’
They climbed the narrow stairs to the upper room.
Annie had no sense of separation now, no sense of anything except that they were here, and the importance of this moment.
With clumsy hands they took off one another’s clothes, and the air was cold against their skin. They reached out and touched the healing scars with their fingertips.
‘Almost better,’ Steve whispered.
‘Almost. Not quite, yet. Not quite.’
They turned back the patchwork cover, like a couple in their own bedroom. Then Steve lifted her up and laid her on the bed. Annie felt the chilly sheets, and then he was beside her, his arms around her. They clung together and their bodies warmed each other, and they let their hands and mouths speak for them while they still could.
When her body cried out for him he leant over her for a second and they looked into each other’s eyes. Steve smiled, but Annie could see the pain beneath his eyelids.
Oh don’t be hurt, my love.
She reached up, drawing his mouth to hers. He came inside her and she cried out, inarticulate.
They made love slowly, very gently, without the urgency and desperation that had driven them in London. When Annie opened her eyes she saw in the faint changes of light over the beamed ceiling the invisible sweeps of the lighthouse lantern across the sea. And when Steve let himself go at last and called out her name, Annie, Annie, she cradled his head in her arms and kissed his eyelids, and afterwards they lay still together and the murmur of the waves broke over them all over again.
‘Today, with you, has been one of the happiest days I have ever known,’ Annie said, almost to herself. That it couldn’t repeat itself, unfolding into other days until they were old, was both its sadness and its strength. They had known this day, at least. That was what Tibby had meant. Suddenly, with certainty, Annie knew that that was the truth.
‘Remember it,’ Steve echoed.
‘Remember it,’ she echoed, sealing the pact of the day.
She lay in Steve’s arms with her mouth against the smooth warmth of his skin, and fell asleep listening to the sound of the sea.
Annie dreamed the dream again.
The blackness was not just dark, but a terrible weight on top of her. She was pinned by it, crushed and bleeding, and in a minute, in a second, the weight would collapse and she would be blotted out. She opened her eyes wider until they stung in their sockets and there was still only the acrid dark. She was utterly alone. She knew that, because she was shouting somebody’s name and he couldn’t answer her because he was gone, or dead. She was certain he was dead. Terror engulfed her as she heard the rumble beginning overhead and beneath her. Now the rocks would smash down, and the pain would destroy her. She struggled, with a last, impossible effort, and reached out into the empty darkness.
But it wasn’t empty. She was calling his name, and he answered it. His arms held her as she sat up, gasping and sobbing.
‘Annie. Annie. I’m here. It’s all right.’
‘Steve?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m here.’ His voice was low, and calm, and she felt the terror falling