Strangers. Rosie Thomas

golden squares on the floor. She could feel Matthew’s smile curling against her neck.

      ‘My layers of dust are as effective as your net curtains.’

      ‘I don’t have net curtains.’

      ‘I expect your mother does.’

      Her dress dropped to the floor and they stepped sideways, away from it, glued together. With the tip of his tongue, Matthew drew a line from the nape of her neck to the hollow at the base of her spine. Then, with his hands on the points of her hips, he turned her round to face him. Annie thought that she could see the sunlight shining straight through the taut skin over his cheekbones. Her hands were shaking but she reached out and unbuttoned his shirt, her movements echoing his. Then she looked at the shape of him, seeing the pale skin reddened from his labouring job, the bones arching at the base of his throat and the hollows behind them. She closed her eyes, and his mouth touched hers.

      ‘You see? It doesn’t matter where,’ Matthew said. He took her hand and led her to the blanket, and they lay down together.

      It was the most perfectly erotic experience she had ever had. Matthew moved unhurriedly, almost dreamily, and he kissed the thin skin between her fingers, and each of her toes, and then the arches of her feet. He was so slow that she felt he was torturing her, but when at last he came inside her it was so quick and powerful that she heard herself cry out, as she had never done before. When at last they lay still, with Matthew’s arms around her and her head on his shoulder, she said softly, ‘I thought it only happened like that in films, and books.’

      He smiled at her. ‘I knew objectively that it could probably happen in real life. But I’ve never known it like that before, either. We do belong together, Annie, my love. Listen to me. I love you.’

      She felt real pain then, and she crouched in his arms trying to contain it. ‘Matthew, I …’

      But he put his hand up to cover her mouth. ‘Be quiet,’ he ordered her.

      Martin knew, of course. He turned to her one day, tidily putting his paintbrush down on the tin lid so that it wouldn’t drip gloss paint on to their kitchen floor.

      ‘Who is he, Annie?’

      He was trying to sound casual. Annie knew him so well that she understood exactly why. He would try to make light of the threat for as long as he could. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t hurting him.

      ‘You don’t know him. I met him a month ago, at Louise’s.’

      They were standing shoulder to shoulder now, looking out into the well of the block of flats with its smudges of pigeon droppings. She couldn’t see his face but she knew he would be frowning, the vertical lines deepening between his eyebrows.

      Carefully, he said, ‘Do I need to worry about it?’

      There was a long silence. Decide, Annie commanded herself. You must decide.

      At last, recognizing her own cowardice and with the sense of a light fading somewhere as she had been afraid it would, she whispered, ‘No.’

      Martin’s hand covered hers. There were paint splashes on his fingers. She could feel the set of his shoulders easing with relief.

      ‘I won’t worry, then.’ He squeezed her hand and let it go, and then picked up his brush to start work again.

      ‘What is it?’ he asked after a moment. ‘Pre-marital itch?’

      ‘I suppose so,’ she said dully. She despised herself for reducing Matthew to that, even for Martin’s sake.

      The time trickled by. It was the hottest summer for years, and every day that passed seemed burnt into her memory by the blistering heat of the pavements and the hard blue light of the sky. Matthew finished his carpentry work at the shop and he moved out of the grubby little room. He was staying with another friend now, unrolling his sleeping bag on yet another sofa. Annie wouldn’t let him come to her flat because Martin had a key to it too. They met when and where they could, and she was amazed by his ability to make her forget everything else that was happening. He made her feel irresponsibly happy. When she was with him, she knew that this was reality, and the other half of her life, the half that was occupied with shopping for clothes for her honeymoon and choosing flowers for her bouquet, was the dreamworld.

      Then, only a week before the wedding, Matthew asked her again.

      They were at yet another friend’s home, but the house was empty for the weekend this time and so Matthew automatically made it his own. They were in bed, and Annie was lying with her hair spread out over the pillow. She was thinking exhaustedly, This must be the last time.

      ‘Annie, will you marry me?’

      Traffic noises from the street outside, and evening birds twittering in the trees in the square. She had a taste of her future with Martin as she lay there. There would be evenings like this in a house that was really theirs. Peace, and comfort, cooking smells and simple domestic rhythms, and Martin who she knew, and understood, and loved. She closed her eyes so as not to see Matthew’s face, because what she felt for him went deeper than love.

      ‘I can’t jilt him,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t marry you.’

      ‘Those are two quite distinct and separate incapabilities,’ he told her gently. ‘Which is the real one?’

      What would it be like to be married to Matthew?

      There would be a succession of rented rooms, and Matthew would manage to make her feel that they were palaces. There would be the wild swings from penury to extravagance and back again, and no two days would ever follow each other in the same way. She was sure that they would be happy. Ever since she had known him he had made happiness blaze like fire inside her. What she didn’t know was how long that could last.

      She was afraid that a day would come when the discomforts would begin to matter, and pleasure would fade into resentment. The shortcomings were her own. She was cautious and predictable and careful, and Matthew was none of those things. She longed to be like him, to cut herself loose and sail with him, but she couldn’t do it. She would live her life with Martin and it would be tranquil, and sunny, and safe. The peaks of joy would be out of her reach, but she didn’t think that there were troughs of despair waiting for her either.

      She made herself meet Matthew’s steady grey stare.

      ‘I’m a coward,’ she said. ‘I can’t marry you.’

      He bent his head. Their fingers were locked together and the knuckles of both hands were white. Then he looked up again.

      ‘I know why you think you can’t. You believe that married men have mortgages and salaries to meet them, and prospects and some kind of security to offer you. You’re afraid that after a while you’ll begin to resent me because I haven’t. That’s true, isn’t it?’

      She nodded miserably. There was more than that, but that was the stupid, pedestrian nub of it.

      ‘Well. I went to see my father today. I asked him for a job in the company. There was a long lecture about having to start at the bottom like everyone else. Learn the business. Not expect any quarter just because I’m the boss’s son. Work hard and prove my worth.’ Matthew’s face was a picture of resigned boredom. It made her laugh in the midst of everything, and he beamed back at her. ‘I nearly threw one of his onyx inlaid executive toys at him, but I restrained myself for your sake. After the lecture he told me that he was glad I’d decided to pull myself up by my boot-straps … boot-straps, I promise you … and I could certainly have some simple tasks allotted to me within the corporate structure. So there, now.’ His smile was dazzling. ‘I’ll be so exactly like everyone else that only experts like you will be able to tell the difference. I’ll be able to buy you a diamond ring, and a three-piece suite and a Kenwood Chef, if that’s what you really want.’

      He was trying to make her laugh because he didn’t want her to guess the magnitude of what he was really offering. He was holding out everything he valued, his