She began to feel faint. As if she was only half there. She remembered Mrs Elm talking about how disappointment in a life would bring her back to the library. It would feel, she realised, altogether too strange to climb into the same bed with a man she hadn’t seen for two years.
She noticed the time on the digital alarm clock. 12:23.
Still with the earphone in his ear, he looked at her again. ‘Right, listen, if you don’t want to make babies tonight you can just say, you know?’
‘What?’
‘I mean, I know we’ll have to wait another month until you are ovulating again . . .’
‘We’re trying for a baby? I want a baby?’
‘Nora, what’s with you? Why are you strange today?’
She took off her shoes. ‘I’m not.’
A memory came to her, related to the Jaws T-shirt.
A tune, actually. ‘Beautiful Sky’.
The day she had bought Dan the Jaws T-shirt had been the day she had played him a song she had written for The Labyrinths. ‘Beautiful Sky’. It was, she was convinced, the best song she had ever written. And – more than that – it was a happy song to reflect her optimism at that point in her life. It was a song inspired by her new life with Dan. And he had listened to it with a shruggish indifference that had hurt at the time and which she would have addressed if it hadn’t been his birthday.
‘Yeah,’ he’d said. ‘It’s okay.’
She wondered why that memory had stayed buried, only to rise up now, like the great white shark on his fading T-shirt.
There were other things coming back to her now too. His over-the-top reaction when she’d once told him about a customer – Ash, the surgeon and amateur guitar player who came into String Theory for the occasional songbook – casually asking Nora if she wanted to go for a coffee some time.
(‘Of course I said no. Stop shouting.’)
Worse, though, was when an A&R man for a major label (or rather, a boutique former indie label with Universal behind them) wanted to sign The Labyrinths. Dan had told her that it was unlikely they’d survive as a couple. He’d also heard a horror story from one of his university friends who’d been in a band that signed to a label and then the label ripped them off and they’d all become unemployed alcoholics or something.
‘I could take you with me,’ she said. ‘I’d get it in the contract. We could go everywhere together.’
‘Sorry, Nora. But that’s your dream. It’s not mine.’
Which hurt even more with hindsight, knowing how much – before the wedding – she’d tried to make his dream of a pub in the Oxfordshire countryside become her dream as well.
Dan had always said his concern was for Nora: she’d been having panic attacks while she was in the band, especially when she got anywhere near a stage. But the concern had been at least a little manipulative, now she thought about it.
‘I thought,’ he was saying now, ‘that you were starting to trust me again.’
‘Trust you? Dan, why wouldn’t I trust you?’
‘You know why.’
‘Of course I know why,’ she lied. ‘I just want to hear you say it.’
‘Well, since the stuff with Erin.’
She stared at him like he was a Rorschach inkblot in which she saw no clear image.
‘Erin? The one I was speaking to tonight?’
‘Am I going to be beaten up for ever about one stupid drunken moment?’
On the street outside, the wind was picking up, howling through trees as if attempting a language.
This was the life she had been in mourning for. This was the life she had beaten herself up for not living. This was the timeline she thought she had regretted not existing in.
‘One stupid mistake?’ she echoed.
‘Okay, two.’
It was multiplying.
‘Two?’
‘I was in a state. You know, the pressure. Of this place. And I was very drunk.’
‘You had sex with someone else and it doesn’t seem you have been seeking much . . . atonement.’
‘Seriously, why drag all this up? We’ve been through this. Remember what the counsellor said. About focusing on where we want to go rather than where we have been.’
‘Do you ever think that maybe we just aren’t right for each other?’
‘What?’
‘I love you, Dan. And you can be a very kind person. And you were great with my mum. And we used to – I mean, we have great conversations. But do you ever feel that we passed where we were meant to be? That we changed?’
She sat down on the edge of the bed. The furthest corner away from him.
‘Do you ever feel lucky to have me? Do you realise how close I was to leaving you, two days before the wedding? Do you know how messed up you would have been if I hadn’t turned up at the wedding?’
‘Wow. Really? You have yourself in quite high esteem there, Nora.’
‘Shouldn’t I? I mean, shouldn’t everyone? What’s wrong with self-esteem? And besides, it’s true. There’s another universe where you send me WhatsApp messages about how messed up you are without me. How you turn to alcohol, although it seems like you turn to alcohol with me too. You send me texts saying you miss my voice.’
He made a dismissive noise, somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. ‘Well, right now, I am most definitely not missing your voice.’
She couldn’t get beyond her shoes. She found it hard – maybe impossible – to take off another item of clothing in front of him.
‘And stop going on about my drinking.’
‘If you are using drink as an excuse for screwing someone else, I can go on about your drinking.’
‘I am a country landlord,’ scoffed Dan. ‘It’s what country landlords do. Be jovial and merry and willing to partake in the many and manifold beverages we sell. Jeez.’
Since when did he speak like this? Did he always speak like this?
‘Bloody hell, Dan. ‘
He didn’t even seem bothered. To seem grateful in any way for the universe he was in. The universe she had felt so guilty for not allowing to happen. He reached for his phone, still with his laptop on the duvet. Nora watched him as he scrolled.
‘Is this what you imagined? Is the dream working out?’
‘Nora, let’s not do this heavy shit. Just get to bloody bed.’
‘Are you happy, Dan?’
‘No one’s happy, Nora.’
‘Some people are. You used to be. You used to light up when you talked about this. You know, the pub. Before you had it. This is the life you dreamed of. You wanted me and you wanted this and yet you’ve been unfaithful and you drink like a fish and I think you only appreciate me when you don’t have me, which is not a great trait to have. What about my dreams?’
He was hardly listening. Or trying to look like he wasn’t.
‘Big fires in California,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘Well, at least we’re not there.’
He put the phone down. Folded his laptop. ‘You coming to bed