.
commitments seemed to entail her spending most weekdays up north.
Elizabeth was wearying of the subterfuge. She’d initially gone along with the secrecy, had even found it exciting: slipping into his flat through the car park’s side door, leaving restaurants minutes apart, walking in opposite directions. Only her sister Vic knew about the affair – she hadn’t even told Lola. She’d been swept up in the giddiness of being adored – it had been a great solace after the break-up with Jamie. Hutch seemed fascinated by her, it was very gratifying: she felt clever and self-confident in his company. He was interested in her job, asked lots of questions, watched all her shows, minutely observing. He’d told her from the beginning that his marriage was over, they were living separate lives – he was simply waiting for the right moment. But here they were, nine months later, apparently still waiting for his right moment, and in the last few weeks Elizabeth had begun to believe that his right moment might never come. She was fed up with hiding in the shadows. She wanted a relationship that could be public, open, lasting. She wanted to be loved, enough.
That was what Jamie had said inside Marylebone Town Hall a year ago: I don’t love you, enough.
He had been waiting for her as she came through the town hall doors, standing alone and apart, unfamiliar in his grey suit, his shaggy blond hair newly washed and combed. He looked very pale and grave. Elizabeth held out her arms to show off her ridiculous apricot dress and did an apologetic mock pirouette. But Jamie didn’t smile. Instead, he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him out of the nearest door and into a municipal corridor. Portraits of former councillors, all of them men, gazed sternly down at them with their heavy chains of office.
‘Jamie… I… I’m sorry.’ Elizabeth’s heart was pounding against her ribs.
Jamie looked at her, surprised. ‘You’re sorry? What…? Oh, for being late? It doesn’t matter.’ He now looked at his feet and she noticed he had new shiny shoes. ‘Elizabeth, I…’
She suddenly felt she couldn’t breathe. She leaned against the wall. He must know! Perhaps dishonesty was like a scent; it lingered around your ears, on your neck, so that when he kissed her, he could smell her treachery? Surely, now, she had to say something? What if Vic was wrong? Perhaps it would be better to confess.
‘Elizabeth, I’m so sorry.’ His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. Unconsciously, she leaned in to hear him. ‘I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think we should do this.’ His breath came in gasps. ‘I don’t want to marry you. I’m so, so, sorry. I… I don’t think I love you. Enough.’
Elizabeth reeled back as if struck and her knees buckled; she slid slowly down the wall to the floor, still clutching the stems of her disintegrating bouquet. Enough? What did ‘enough’ mean? Jamie knelt beside her.
‘Lizzie, listen to me. I know you hate me right now. But I think, once you’ve had time, you’ll realise I’m right… We’re just doing this because the alternative seems so scary. But it’s not the right thing to do, Lizzie. We don’t love each other enough, we’ve just got used to each other. And that’s not the same thing.’
Elizabeth’s head sank to her knees. Suddenly, she felt very tired. She realised she hadn’t eaten anything. She wanted to curl up in a ball on the municipal floor and make everything disappear. But Jamie was still talking, low and urgently, in her ear. She couldn’t make it stop; this torrent of words from him, they kept on coming.
‘I know this is all my fault. I know I suggested we got married. I thought we needed to change something and that marrying would do it. But I’ve been very unhappy for a long time, Lizzie. You’ve been too busy to notice it. We’ve stopped talking. But I’ve been feeling very lonely and confused. And stupidly, I thought we’d sort things out by getting married and having kids. But as the days went by, I realised it was just a sticking plaster. And that isn’t right – that’s not what marriage should be. I kept thinking I’d say something these last few weeks, but I wasn’t brave enough, I suppose. But I can’t do it. I can’t go through with it. I’m still unhappy. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.’
Elizabeth struggled to get to her feet and Jamie tried to help her, but she pushed him away angrily. Vic came running, with her husband Mark close behind her, and as they got to her, Elizabeth was feverishly shredding the flowers, a carnage of dismembered blue and yellow petals scattered around her like confetti. Vic lifted her by the arms and it was as if she was drunk, she couldn’t stand. Her mother appeared, crying, arms outstretched as if to catch her. Then Vic and her mum were steering her back down the town hall steps, her feet tripping crazily against each other. Mark was yelling for a taxi, and Elizabeth looked around, bewildered, for Jamie. But he was nowhere to be seen.
Elizabeth pulled her coat around her, feeling shivery. She had dawdled too long – she was late for Hutch. Café Cecile, at the wrong end of Ladbroke Grove, was a faded patisserie which served tired croque monsieur and stale pastries. Madame Cecile herself had also seen better days and she was more often than not to be found sitting on the back step of the kitchen, puffing on a cigarette and rubbing her swollen ankles. But she stocked a reasonable cache of very drinkable wine and being still mostly French, she allowed Hutch to smoke the odd Gauloise inside, at the table nearest the back door. But the main attraction of Café Cecile was that no one Elizabeth and Hutch knew would ever dream of going there. In the early, heady, getting-to-know-you days, she took to wearing a French beret and once presented Hutch with a copy of James Fenton’s ‘In Paris with You’:
Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre,
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées,
And remain here in this sleazy
Old hotel room,
Doing this and that
To what and whom,
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.
Their relationship had blossomed, along with Elizabeth’s astonishment that Hutch knew not a single poem, not even a limerick, resulting in her consequent determination to introduce him to the Romantics. And so his poetic education had progressed in tune with their affair, so that in time he became used to having not only Elizabeth in his bed, but also Keats, Byron and the Liverpudlians. Hutch liked her reading aloud to him and she liked to show off, and so they’d idle away hours over the poetry, the wine, and each other. It was almost as good as a dirty weekend in a backstreet hotel in Le Marais, a weekend they often talked dreamily about, but which had so far failed to materialise. Café Cecile would have to do.
By the time she arrived, Hutch was sitting at their usual table, an empty glass of red wine beside a plate of crumbs and a half-drunk bottle. She looked at him through the glass and the raindrops that separated them. His blue eyes were narrowed against the light, but they didn’t move from her face. His face seemed fuller; Elizabeth noticed his neck was creasing into the collar of his shirt. He’d had a haircut – it was clipped close to his head, like an army buzz cut. It seemed to make his features, his nose, his chin, more obvious. His forehead was furrowed, his dark, almost black, eyebrows raised in that familiar ironic expression, his mouth suggestively half open, those full lips inviting. She stood still, hands thrust deep into her pockets, her hair clinging limply to her face. He was wearing the pink checked shirt she’d once bought him and she wondered if he’d chosen it deliberately or if it was an accident of fate. Or maybe Sue had chosen it for him? Elizabeth imagined rows of freshly laundered shirts on padded silk coat hangers, his wife running her hands over them, lifting one down, laying it carefully on the bed for him. She clenched her fists in her pockets. There was still something unreachable about Hutch, some bit of him she couldn’t penetrate. She