CRIME FICTION

Hurting Distance

To be published by Hodder & Stoughton in April 2007.

I could explain, if you were here to listen. I am breaking my promise to you, the only one you ever asked me to make. I'm sure you remember. There was nothing casual about your voice when you said, 'I want you to promise me something.'

'What?' I asked, propping myself up on one elbow, burning my skin on the yellow nylon sheet in my eagerness to be upright, attentive. I was desperate to please you. You ask for so little, and I'm always looking for small, subtle ways to give you more. 'Anything!' I said, laughing, deliberately extravagant. A promise is the same as a vow, and I wanted there to be vows between us, binding us.

My exuberance made you smile, but not for long. You're so grave when we're in bed together. You think it's a tragedy that you'll soon have to leave and that is how you always look: like a man preparing for calamity. I usually cry after you've gone (no, I've never told you, because I'm damned if I'm going to encourage your mournful streak) but while we're together in our room I'm as high as if I were on strong, mind-altering drugs. It seems impossible that we will ever be apart, that the moment will end. And in some ways it doesn't. When I go home, when I'm making pasta in my kitchen or chiselling roman numerals in my workshop, I'm not there really. I'm still in room eleven at the Traveltel, with its hard, synthetic rust-coloured carpet that feels like the bristles of a toothbrush under your feet and its pushed-together twin beds with mattresses that aren't mattresses at all but thick, orange foam mats, the sort that used to cover the floor of the gymnasium at my secondary school.

Our room. I knew for sure that I loved you, that it wasn't just infatuation or physical attraction, when I heard you say to the receptionist, 'No, it has to be room eleven, same as last time. We need the same room every time.' Need, not want. Everything is urgent for you; nothing is casual. You never sprawl on the faded, bobbly sofa, or take your shoes off and put your feet up. You sit upright, fully clothed, until we're about to get into bed.

Later, when we were alone, you said, 'I'm worried it's going to be sordid, meeting in a shitty motel. At least if we stick to one room, it'll feel more homely.' Then you spent the next fifteen minutes apologising because you couldn't afford to take me somewhere grander. Even then (how long had we known each other? Three weeks?) I knew better than to offer to share the cost.

I remember nearly everything you've said to me over the past year. Maybe if I could bring to mind the right phrase, the crucial line, it would lead me straight to you. I do not really believe this, but I keep going through it all in my mind, just in case.

'Well?' I prodded your shoulder with my finger. 'Here I am, a naked woman offering to promise you anything, and you're ignoring me?'

'This isn't a joke, Naomi.'

'I know. I'm sorry.'

You like to do everything slowly, even speaking. It makes you angry if you're rushed. I don't think I've ever made you laugh, or even seen you laugh properly, though you often talk about laughing - in the pub with Sean and Tony. 'I laughed till I cried,' you say. 'I laughed till the tears were pouring down my face.'

You turned to me and asked, 'Do you know where I live?'

I blushed. Damn, I'd been rumbled. You'd spotted that I was obsessed with you, collecting any fact or detail I could get my hands on. All week I had been chanting your address in my head, sometimes even saying it or singing it aloud while I was working.

'You saw me writing it down last time, didn't you? On that form for the receptionist. I noticed you looking.'

'Three, Chapel Lane, Spilling. Sorry. Would you rather I didn't know?'

'In a way,' you said. 'Because this has to be completely safe. I've told you that.' You sat up then too, and put on your glasses. 'I don't want it to end. I want it to last for a long time, for as long as I last. It has to be a hundred per cent safe, completely separate from the rest of my life.'

I understood at once, and nodded. 'But...now the Traveltel receptionist knows your address too,' I said. 'What if they send a bill or something?'

'Why would they? I always pay when I leave.'

Does it make it easier, having an administrative ritual to complete before you go, a small ceremony that takes place on the boundary of our life and your other life? I wish I had an equivalent task to perform before leaving. I always stay the night (though I allow you to think it's only sometimes, not every time) and march briskly out of the Traveltel the next morning, barely stopping to smile at the receptionist. It feels too informal, somehow, too quick and easy.

'There's no paperwork to send,' you said. 'Anyway, Juliet doesn't even open her own post, let alone mine.' I noticed a slight vibration in your lower jaw, a tightening around your mouth. It always happens when you mention Juliet. I am collecting details about her, too, though I wish I weren't. Many of them involve a 'let alone': she doesn't know how to turn on a computer, let alone use the internet. She never answers the phone, let alone rings anyone herself.

She sounds like a freak, I have wanted to say so often, and stopped myself. I shouldn't allow my envy of her to make me cruel.

You kissed me lightly before saying, 'You mustn't ever come to the house, or ring me there. If Juliet saw you, if she found out in that way, it'd break her.' I love the way you use words. Your speech is more poetic, grander than mine. Everything I say is heavy with mundane detail. You were staring past me, and I turned, half expecting, from your expression, to see a misty grey-and-purple mountain range wreathed in white cloud instead of a beige plastic kettle labelled 'Rawndesley East Services Traveltel', one that regularly contributes little granules of limescale to our hot drinks.

What are you staring at now? Where are you?

I wanted to ask for more details. What did you mean, about Juliet breaking? Would she collapse, sobbing, on the floor, lose her memory, become violent? People can break in a range of ways, and I have never been able to work out if you are frightened of your wife or frightened for her. But your tone was solemn and I knew you had more to say. I didn't want to interrupt you.

'It's not just that,' you muttered, scrunching up the diamond-patterned coverlet in your hands. 'It's her. I can't bear the thought of you seeing her.'

'Why?' I felt it would be tactless to tell you that you had nothing to worry about on that score. Did you imagine I was curious, desperate to know who you were married to? Even now, I have a horror of seeing Juliet. I wish I didn't know her name. I would like to keep her as unreal as possible in my mind. Ideally, I would know her only as 'she' and there would be less for my jealousy to latch on to. But I could hardly have said that, could I, when we first met? 'Don't tell me your wife's name because I think I might be in love with you and I can't stand to know anything about her.'

I doubt you could imagine the anguish I've felt, climbing into bed every night this past year and thinking 'Juliet will be lying next to Robert in their bed at this moment'. It isn't the thought of her sleeping beside you that makes my face twist in pain and my insides clench, it's the idea that she regards it as ordinary, routine. I don't torment myself with the image of the two of you kissing or making love; instead, I imagine Juliet on her side of the bed, reading a book - something boring about a member of the royal family or how to look after houseplants - and barely looking up when you come into the room. She doesn't notice you undressing, getting into bed beside her. Do you wear pyjamas? I can't picture it, somehow. Anyway, whatever you wear, Juliet is used to it, after years of marriage. This is not special for her, it's just another boring, unremarkable night at home. There is nothing she particularly wants or needs to say to you. She is perfectly able to concentrate on the details of Prince Andrew and Fergie's divorce or how to pot a cactus. When her eyelids start to droop she tosses her book down on the floor and turns on her side, away from you, without even saying goodnight.

I want the opportunity to take you for granted. Although I never would.

'Why don't you want me to see her, Robert?' I asked, because you seemed to be stuck in a thought, trapped somewhere in your head. You had that look you always get: a frown, your lower jaw jutting out. 'Is there something...wrong with her?' If I'd been someone else, I might have added, 'are you ashamed of her?' but for the past three years I have been unable to use the word 'ashamed'. You won't understand this, because of what I haven't told you. There are things I too like to keep separate.

'Juliet's not had an easy life,' you said. Your tone was defensive, as if I'd insulted her. 'I want you to think of me as I am when I'm with you, here. Not in that house, with her. I hate that fucking house! When we get married, I'll buy us somewhere new.' I remember giggling when you said this, because I'd recently seen a film in which a husband takes his new wife to see the house he has designed and built for her. It is huge and beautiful and has a big red bow wrapped round it. When he removes his hands from her eyes and says, 'Surprise!', the wife storms off in a huff; she is angry that he hasn't consulted her, has presented her with a fait accompli.

I love it when you make decisions for me. I want you to feel proprietorial towards me. I want things because you want them. Except Juliet. You say you don't want her, but you're not yet ready to leave. It's not if, it's when, you say. But not yet. I find that hard to understand.

I stroked your arm. I cannot and never have been able to touch you without feeling faint and tingly, and I felt guilty then because I was supposed to be having a serious conversation, not thinking about sex. 'I promise I'll keep my distance,' I said, knowing you need to be in control, cannot bear to feel events slipping away from you. If we are ever married - when we are married - I will call you a control freak affectionately and you will laugh. 'Don't worry.' I held up my hand. 'Scout's honour. I won't suddenly turn up at your house.'

Yet here I am, parked directly opposite. You tell me, though: what choice do I have? If you are here, I will apologise and explain how worried I've been, and I know you'll forgive me. If you are here, maybe I won't care if you forgive me or not; at least I'll know you're all right. It's been more than three days, Robert. I'm starting to go slowly crazy.

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