The Unseen(11)

‘Don’t you just long for summer?’ Leah sighed, staring out at it.

‘I like it like this, remember? I like the dark months,’ Ryan replied, pouring more red wine into her glass.

‘That’s right. I’d forgotten.’

‘Forgetting me already.’ Ryan shook his head. Leah said nothing. They both knew that would be impossible. To forget. She looked up at him, face lit by the candle on the table between them. What was it inside her that pulled her towards him? Something inexorable, like gravity. It would be so much easier to give in to it, in much the same way, she told herself firmly, as it would be easier to let go and fall off a cliff than it would be to haul oneself back onto solid ground. So much easier. The wine was warming her blood, she felt it colour her cheeks. ‘You look half cut,’ Ryan said. His smile mocked her gently, familiarity and tenderness softening his expression, blurring away the bad memories.

‘Wasn’t that your intention?’ Leah asked. Ryan shook his head.

‘You’ve always known your own mind. I’ve never relied on alcohol to change it for me.’

‘Liar.’ She smiled; and Ryan grinned.

‘It’s really good to see you, Leah. I don’t think I got around to telling you that yet.’ He put out a hand, fiddled with the wax drips on the candle shaft, frowning slightly as if gripped by deep and troubling thoughts. Oh, you were always good at this game, Leah thought. Always good at making her come forward, making her take a closer look.

‘I’m not going to sleep with you,’ she said, flatly; more abruptly than she’d intended.

Ryan snatched his hand back from the candle as if he’d been burnt. ‘I don’t remember asking you to,’ he countered, seemingly unruffled.

They talked as their plates were cleared and they ordered dessert; but the more they spoke, the more obvious it became that there were things they could not speak about, and they drifted into silence, odd and uncomfortable.

‘I wonder why he kept that letter? She says she wrote him lots, before he came over to the continent. Why that one in particular? It’s not much of a love letter after all,’ Leah said at last. The waiter brought their desserts – profiteroles, drenched in a slick of glossy Suchard sauce. He put the bowls down with a flourish, turning each one just so with the tips of his fingers, as if the exact position of them was of the utmost importance. Leah caught his eye and smiled fleetingly.

‘I think our garçon fancies you,’ Ryan said.

‘I think you’re imagining it. You always did.’

‘Except in Turkey.’

‘OK, I’ll give you Turkey. But it wasn’t me that got to them – it was the blue eyes and the yellow hair.’

‘I could have been rich. One of them offered me his house for you,’ Ryan grinned.

‘I wasn’t yours to sell,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, he was about sixteen. Probably still lived at home with his mama.’

‘That wasn’t the only one,’ Ryan said, putting a whole profiterole into his mouth, which would barely close. Leah couldn’t help but laugh.

‘You pig! You’ve got chocolate on your chin. What wasn’t the only one?’

Ryan chewed for a long time before answering. ‘That wasn’t the only letter, in our soldier’s tin. There was another one.’

‘Really? Why didn’t you bring it? What does it say?’

‘It’s a lot shorter than the one I’ve shown you. And obviously written earlier – fairly soon after whatever it was happened, would be my guess. It’s a bit confused,’ he explained.

‘Well, where is it?’ Leah asked, dipping her little finger in the hot sauce and sucking it clean. Only with Ryan would she have done something so childish. It was treacherously easy to fall back into old habits of being, old habits of feeling.

‘It’s in my room,’ Ryan said, quietly.


The Rectory,

Cold Ash Holt


Dear sir,

The child is due any day now, and I am full of fear. How can I do this? You know of what I speak – I am sure you do. I might as well be alone in this house, surrounded only by ghosts. Do you see what you have done? Half of me wishes I had never known you. More than half of me, some of the time. I find myself trying to picture you now, trying to picture what you might look like without your usual clothes, without your books and your smile. All of those little icons that made you up – your ‘divine truth’. What of that now? Is it all abandoned, as I am?

Everything is ruined. I can’t even take pleasure in teaching any more, in the children, because as I stand on the floor before them, I know what lies beneath my feet. I told you what I did, didn’t I? I can scarce remember. I’d thought it would be only temporary, a place where nobody would think to look. Trying to find what I had already found, what I picked up from the library floor that morning. I was going to destroy it all, you see. Every last thing, but then I thought perhaps you might one day have need of it to offer proof, to offer mitigation. So there it stays, beneath the floor. I can scarce think of it without such a storm of dread arising in my heart that it leaves me weak, and shivering; let alone dare to move it, to touch it.