‘There’s some history to it,’ she says softly, still staring into her lap. ‘When I met Fort, I was very vulnerable. I’d just come out of a long-term relationship with a guy I’d met in college. It ended badly, and Fort offered me the kind of support that I needed.’
‘Was he a rebound?’
Katharine doesn’t want to admit this either to herself or to me, but she says, ‘I guess so. Yes.’
She looks up at me, and I can only hope that my face looks receptive to what she wants to say.
‘Before I’d even really thought about it, we were married. Fort had been hitched before–kids, divorce, the usual pattern–and he really wanted to make it work this time. He hasn’t had access to his children for more than ten years. I was still kind of hung up on this guy, and Fortner knew that. He’s always known it.’
She takes a deep, possibly stagey breath.
‘I wanted to have kids, to make a family, but he was reluctant to start again. Fort’s daughters are your age, you know, and he doesn’t think it’s fair to children to become a parent when you’re close to fifty. But I didn’t agree with him. I thought he didn’t want to have kids because he didn’t really love me. That was the state my mind was in. And after my father died, I thought there was something almost reverent about being a parent, like if you had the chance to be one you shouldn’t throw that away. Maybe you felt that too after your dad passed away. But I was…I was…’
She is suddenly tripping over her thoughts, too scared to hear them come out.
‘Tell me.’
‘Alec, you can’t ever tell him that I told you this. Okay? There’s only a handful of people in the world who know about it.’
‘You can trust me.’
‘It’s just I wanted children so badly. So I did a terrible thing. I tricked Fort into getting us pregnant. I stopped using birth control, and then when I got pregnant, I told him.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He went crazy. We were living in New York. But Fort, you know, he’s totally against termination, so he agreed that I could keep her.’
There’s only one possible outcome to this story, the worst outcome of all.
‘But I lost her. Three months in, there was a miscarriage and…’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Katharine’s face is an awful picture of despair. In an attempt to appear resilient, she is struggling to bury tears.
‘Well, what can you do, huh?’ she says, with a shrug. ‘It was just one of those things. I was paying the penalty for deceiving him.’
‘Is that how you see it?’
‘It gives me a sort of comfort to see it that way. Maybe it isn’t true. I don’t know. Anyway, pretty soon after that, work brought us here to London, but it’s never been the same between us. Never. We just have the friendship.’
‘He’s Misstra Know-It-All’ comes on the stereo system, a song I like, and it distracts me. What I should properly be feeling now is a sense of honour at being made privy to the secrets of their marriage, but even as Katharine is relating the most intimate history of her relationship with Fortner, my mind is caught between the loyalty demanded of friendship and a growing desire to take advantage of her vulnerability. When she is speaking, I have tried to look solely at her eyes, at the bridge of her nose, but every time she has looked away I have stolen glimpses of her calves, her wrists, the nape of her neck.
‘You’ve repaired that?’
‘It’s a slow process. I was very honest with Fortner about how I’d gotten pregnant. I told him that it had been a deliberate act on my part. That was a mistake. It would have been better to lie, to blame the Pill or something. But somehow I wanted him to know, like an act of defiance.’
‘Sure, I can see that.’
‘It’s so good having someone who understands,’ she says. ‘I mean, you’ve had your heart broken, you’ve been through some tough times. You know how all this feels.’
‘Perhaps,’ I say, nodding. ‘But not to the extent that you’ve been through it.’
‘It’s not so bad,’ she says. She is attempting to come out of her contemplative mood into something more positive. ‘In a lot of ways, I’m lucky. Fort’s great, you know? He’s so smart and funny and laid-back and wise.’
‘Oh yeah, he’s great.’
‘Hey,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here for me when I needed you.’
‘That’s all right. Don’t mention it.’
In a single fluid movement, she stands and crosses the room to where I am sitting, crouching down low in her thick Highland socks. Before I have had time to say anything, she has wrapped her arms around my neck, whispering, ‘Thank you, you’re sweet,’ into my hair. The weight of her is so perfect. I put my hand lightly on her back.
She stops hugging first and withdraws. Now we are looking at each other. Still on her haunches, Katharine smiles and, very softly, touches the side of my face with her hand, drawing her fingers down to the line of my jaw. She lets them linger there and then slowly takes her hand away, bringing it to rest in her lap. There is a look in her eyes that promises the impossible, but something prevents me from acting on it. This is the moment, this is the time to do it, but after all the thought-dreams and the longings and the signals coding back and forth between us, I do not respond. Before I have even properly thought about it, I am saying, ‘I should get a cab.’
It was pure instinct, something defensive, an exact intimation of the correct thing to do. I could not spend the night with her without jeopardizing everything.
‘What, now?’ She leans backward and her relaxed smile disguises well any disappointment she may be feeling. ‘It’s not even eleven o’clock.’
‘But it’s late. You’ll want to–‘
‘No, it’s not.’
I don’t want to offend her, so I say, ‘You want me to stick around?’
‘Sure. Relax. I’ll fix us a whisky.’
She gives my knee a squeeze and I simply can’t believe that I have just let that happen. Just kiss her. Just give in to what is inevitable.
‘Okay, then, maybe just a quick one.’
She stands slowly, as if expecting me at any moment to pull her down onto the sofa. Just the action of her moving releases that exquisite scent as she turns and walks into the kitchen. I hear Fortner’s frozen Volvic falling into glass tumblers, then the slow glug-glug of whisky being poured onto ice. The noise of her moving quietly around on the polished wooden floor fills me with regret.
‘You take water in it, don’t you?’ she asks, coming back in with the drinks.
‘Yes.’
She hands me a glass and sits beside me on the sofa.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she says, taking a sip of her whisky straightaway. It is as if she has plucked up the courage for a big subject while she was in the kitchen.
‘Of course.’
Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she tries to make the question sound as easygoing as possible.
‘Are you happy, Alec? I mean really happy?’
The question takes me by surprise. I have to be very careful what I say here.
‘Yes and no. Why?’
‘I