Golden Hour (48 page)

“So I suppose you can't wait to get away from me,” she says.

“I don't know,” he says.

“After my little exhibition this evening.”

She needs him to say more, so she keeps on raising the stakes, probing for the breaking point.

“I suppose you hate me,” she says.

“Not really.”

“What, then?”

He doesn't speak.

“Please,” she says.

“What is it you want from me, Maggie?”

Now at last she can hear the hurt in him, and something that was clutched tight inside her begins to let go.

“I don't want you to hate me,” she says.

“I don't hate you.”

“I know how badly I've behaved tonight. I don't really know why I did it. I think maybe I wanted to push things, you know, to the edge. Or over the edge. So that then there'd be no decision to make after all.”

“Because I'd walk away.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Oh God, I don't know. I don't know why you don't hate me.”

“Well,” he says slowly. “I was watching you this evening, and maybe I've got this wrong, but I thought, this is all an act. She's not having a good time. She's putting on an act. It's like you were saying to me, Look, I'm not a nice person at all. If you want to go on being with me, this is what you get. You think you love me, but can you love this?”

She can't speak. Such a strange muddle inside, of relief and fear.

“But it's not about can and can't,” he says, as if he reads her thoughts. “I just do.”

“Love me?” she says.

“Yes.”

“Oh, sweetheart. I don't deserve it.”

“You know what, Maggie? You have to let other people make their own mistakes. I'll decide what I want and what I don't want. And you have to do the same. If you want me to go, all you have to do is tell me, and I'll go.”

“I don't want you to go,” Maggie says.

So there it is: her decision after all.

They've stopped in the lane and he's looking at her, but it's too dark to see his face.

“At dinner this evening,” he says, “I was watching you, I felt you were just so unhappy. I wanted to put my arms round you, like you do with a child who's had a bad dream. I wanted to hug you and say, It's only a dream.”

“You should have done.”

“Should I?”

“You could do it now,” she says.

So he wraps his arms round her, as if the night is cold and he's undertaken to warm her. They stay like this for some time, silent, holding each other close.

Henry and Laura clear away the dinner party together.

“You go on up,” says Henry. “I'll turn out the lights and lock up.”

When he comes upstairs he finds Laura sitting on the top step, near the door to Carrie's room. She motions to him to stay silent and sit down beside him.

Through the closed door he hears Carrie's sweet light voice singing to herself, to the accompaniment of occasional chords on her guitar.

“You told me there's no future

Only now, now, now

But then one day you left me

And it's now, now, now . . .”

Laura takes Henry's hand in hers. She moves his fingers so that they feel her ring. Then she raises his hand to her lips and kisses it. Light falls from the half-open bathroom door across the worn landing carpet. They listen to Carrie's song.

“So now I know the future

Is the time when you have gone

And I'm living in the future

And it's lonely in the future

On my own . . .

On my own . . .”

My novels are of course fiction, but I care very much about the authenticity of the details and build my inventions as far as possible on a solid ground of fact. In this I have been greatly helped by the real people to whom I turn for details of their experiences.

I would like to thank Chris Morris and Katya Bowen, the Design and Conservation Officers for Lewes District Council; Terece Walters, Associate Chief Nurse, Clinical Operations at the Royal Sussex Hospital; Dave Gaylor; Brian Davis; Nigel Lee; Jaspal and Sukhjit Minhas, real people whom I met at a Buckingham Palace garden party in July 2010; and Alain de Botton, who is also real.