The warm soft kisses across his shoulders made James moan and shift slightly in his sleep. At first he thought he was dreaming about Amy, however even in slumber he recognised the small firm hand of his wife when she touched his hardening cock. He groaned and gently thrust his hips towards her. He felt her smile against his shoulder and he opened his eyes.
“I’m not dreaming, am I?”
“No,” she whispered against his skin.
He put his hand over hers, stilling her movements. “El, what are you doing?”
“What does it feel like I’m doing?” She murmured, nibbling gently across his back. “Do you want me to stop?”
James turned over to face her. Despite the murky darkness, he could see the brave smile didn’t reach her eyes and she was waiting for him to push her away as she had him so many times. There was a part of him that wanted to, if only to feel the satisfaction of inflicting the hurt she had on him so many times, but he was drunk and he’d missed her sighs and the touch of her hands on his skin.
Elise put her arms around his neck and kissed him, hard and deeply. James let go of his misgivings and tightened his arms around her. It had been a long time since they had touched one another, yet their movements were natural and familiar. It was raw and primal, as if they were punishing each other with every thrust, scratch and biting kiss. As their orgasms approached and she clung to him, whispering his name as if in prayer, she hoped that perhaps they were also forgiving one another.
******
She is lying, curled on her side clutching her stomach, as he hits her wildly with the poker he is holding, though his anger is dissipating and eventually he stops hitting her and stands, gasping for breath. For the first time he notices the blood in her red hair, on the poker and all over his hands. He straightens up and prods her with his foot, but she is deathly still and fear floods through him. He kneels beside her and, gently, he turns her over.
Elise’s beautiful face is bloodied and bruised and her green eyes are wide open and staring beyond him; lifeless and empty.
James sat up in bed, gasping as the cry died in his throat. Next to him, Elise lay sleeping on her side, curled in the foetal position she had always favoured and he sat for a few seconds, staring at her, wondering why she was there and what had woken him with such a feeling of fear. Already the dream had receded from his memory and after a couple of minutes he lay back down and fell asleep again.
******
Elise woke before James’ alarm went off, but she lay quietly next to him and stirred only when the sharp beep of the clock cut through the air. He bolted upright and glanced around the room, as if unsure of where he was. Gently, Elise stroked his back and he jumped, violently. She stopped, uncertainly, and he rubbed his face, wearily.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I had a restless night and a few nightmares; the alarm clock just about scared the shit out of me.”
“Go have a shower and I’ll make you breakfast,” Elise said, brightly. She sprung out of bed and scurried across to her room before he could say anything else.
James got out of bed and hurried downstairs to the bathroom. He switched on the light, turned on the tap and splashed his face with cold water before studying himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and there were bags underneath them. He looked haggard and exhausted. Vague memories of the nightmare he’d been caught up in nagged at the edges of his mind, but like all dreams the harder he tried to remember, the more elusive it became.
It didn’t matter anyway, he thought, crossly. Dreams meant nothing when he had to deal with the reality of what had happened last night between him and Elise.
******
“I wish you hadn’t said you’d start work before you were supposed to,” Elise said, putting his cooked breakfast in front of him. “We could have spent the day together.”
James smiled, awkwardly and picked up his cutlery. “What would we have done instead?”
She grinned and sat opposite him. “I’m sure something would have come up,” she replied chuckling. “Still, there’s always tonight.”
He frowned down at his breakfast and, quietly, said, “Elise, about that –“
She glanced around the room. It was a lovely house and there was no reason to believe that anything she’d experienced hadn’t been the work of her own imagination. She’d been prone to hallucinations whilst in the grip of her flight to madness. She couldn’t blame James for being scared and angry with her at the thought she might be taking them back down that road.
She couldn’t allow her past demons to invade their new home.
She looked at him, smiling. “This is exactly what you wanted for us. A fresh start, here in this pretty little village, in this lovely house and I’m going to do my best to make it work, James. I promise you that.”
Something from his nightmare nagged in his brain and he felt tense and coiled like a tightly wound spring. He was suddenly anxious to be out of there; away from Elise and the memories of the night before. He pushed his plate to one side and stood up. Quickly, he kissed her on the cheek, goodbye, grabbed his rucksack and left through the mudroom.
Elise cleared the breakfast things, thoughtfully. James had looked pale and anxious when he’d rushed off to work and she couldn’t help but feel guilty. She had put him through so much, thoughtlessly, and in recent days, sometimes cruelly. Was it any wonder he looked every one of his forty-five years?
She was going to be a different woman. She was not going to give a thought to the strange noises of a house she wasn’t used to and she wasn’t going to entertain the fantasies of a little boy haunting it. She was going to be sane practical Elise and she would make a contented future with James.
After she’d cleaned the house and put some dirty laundry in the washing machine she phoned Ben’s number and left a message saying she’d like to cancel the meeting with his friend, Kay. She said it had clearly just been her imagination playing tricks on her. She hoped it wouldn’t cause him any inconvenience and thanked him for the offer of help. Her tone was polite and her goodbye abrupt.
As if in response to her new pragmatic persona, the now familiar creaking noise of the rocking horse drifted down from the top floor of the house. Elise slammed the phone down and ran upstairs; however, when she reached the second floor only silence as thick as an ocean fog greeted her. She stood in the hallway, staring up at the closed attic door, waiting...
After a couple of minutes Elise went into her bedroom and gathered her art supplies. When she stepped out of her bedroom the attic door was now open, as if in invitation. She shook her head and ran downstairs without looking back. She put her coat on, retrieved her keys and went out to her car. Elise drove to Bodmin Moor and parked in a layby. She walked for a few minutes until she reached a pile of rocks she could perch on.
The sky was a light blue and a few white clouds hung low, moving quickly with the fresh winter wind. The air was crisp and clear after the storm the day before. The moor was quiet; a peaceful natural silence. Elise began to draw the scene before her. Her mind drifted as she sketched; memories of the years with James, before they got caught up in medical tests and invasive treatments, reminiscing about holidays they had taken abroad and long nights spent wrapped around one another.
James had been right to hold on to that. There were a lot of good things to fight for. It hadn’t all been bad and she was lucky that he'd stayed with her when it had been the worst it could be. She hadn’t made it easy for him. Elise knew she had made things worse with her cold and unapproachable facade. Therapy at the hospital had helped her realise it was a response she had learned from her mother. However, understanding had not helped her stop doing it.
Some days Elise had left the room wondering how she’d have screwed up Noah, if he’d lived. The therapist had suggested that Elise might find her bereavement easier to deal with if she spoke to her own mother and tried to repair their broken relationship, but Elise had spent her entire adulthood breaking free from the smothering influence of Sarah Grayson and she had no interest in letting her back into her life.
Sarah Grayson had mapped her daughter’s life out from the moment of her birth and Elise had dutifully lived it, even though it became patently obvious early on in her childhood that she would never live up to the expectations her mother set for her. When Elise was twelve, her easy-going loving father had died on his motorbike and Sarah Grayson became even more suffocating. Worse than that was the vitriol that coloured every word she ever spoke of Elise’s father after his death
She had told him not to get a motorbike for they were dangerous, but he was an irresponsible fool who obviously cared nothing for his family and it was his own damn fault he was dead. With every word she uttered and the more she tried to keep Elise close to her, the more Elise swore she would break free.
The years passed and Elise kept her head down, but when the time came she secretly applied to study a Law degree at a university far away from Sarah, as well as filling in the application for the local teachers training college, like the obedient daughter she was. She accepted the place at Edinburgh when it was offered and she packed up one day when her mother was at work and left her a letter telling her what she’d done.
She’d never gone back.
Now they were polite distant strangers who communicated with letters every few months and a dutiful visit on Sarah’s birthday and Mother’s day. Elise had never told her mother about the many miscarriages she’d suffered and she hadn’t asked her to join them at Noah’s funeral. She was indifferent to the woman who had given birth to her.
James had never understood how Elise could hold her mother at arm’s length, seemingly without any regret, but James was a child of the care system; a boy with no family and no history. His childhood had been one foster home after another, never knowing where he had come from and never feeling as if he belonged. He was envious of the people who didn’t know the pain of abandonment. He couldn’t comprehend why Elise had spent years feeling so antagonistic towards the woman who had just tried to love her.
He didn’t realise that mothers could love their children too much...until the child couldn’t take the weight of all the expectation and disappointment that was piled upon them.
She shook the thoughts out of her head. What was the use in dwelling on the past or analysing other people’s behaviour and actions? She would never know what had made Sarah the way she was, or why Bernie had died when she was twelve and still needed him to be her rock and the buffer between her and Sarah. She would never know why God had finally blessed her with Noah after years of heartbreak and suffering, only to take him before he even had a chance to draw his first breath. She would never know a lot of things and she couldn’t change most of them.
But she could change her marriage…if she really wanted to.
Elise stopped drawing and stretched her back and arms, groaning with the effort it took. She glanced down at the sketch and smiled, approvingly. It wasn’t bad, even if she did say so. She stood up, feeling stiff and sore, yet more peaceful than she had for a long time. It was time to accept that she wasn’t destined to be anyone’s mother.
Was it such a bad life if it was just her and James? They’d had fun in the old days and last night had been a significant step towards rebuilding the life they’d once shared. They could get a cat and she’d look for a job. They could go on holidays to places they’d never been and make new memories. For too long she had allowed failure, grief and pity to rule her, but they’d weathered the worst life could throw at them. Now it was time to put it behind them.
For the first time in months Elise felt a spark of hope.
******
James was in the kitchen, pouring wine, and the appetising smell of lasagne filled the ground floor when she got in. A bottle of whisky, with only a quart left in it, stood on the counter and his eyes were bloodshot when he turned to greet her, but Elise said nothing. She wrapped her arms around him, not noticing that he barely touched her, and breathed in the familiar scent of his Cardamom aftershave.
“Dinner smells lovely, James. Is there time for me to have a quick shower?”
He pulled away from her and glanced at the oven. “It will be ready in ten minutes,” he replied, quietly. She walked from the room and as soon as he heard her footsteps on the stairs he poured himself another tumbler of whisky and headed out to the porch for a cigarette. His hands were trembling when he lit it and the deep pull he took on it didn’t calm him in the slightest.
The nervous tension he’d experienced that morning was flickering in his gut again. The whisky hadn’t dulled it and the cigarette wasn’t helping either. He felt as if he was balanced on a knife edge, waiting for the moment he would have to tell her he thought last night had been a mistake. Every time he thought about uttering the words he imagined the look of rejection on her lovely face and he hated himself.
How could he find the words to tell her that he wanted a new start, but that he couldn’t pretend her strange behaviour the last week didn’t scare the crap out of him? How could he say he suspected she had only come to his room last night to deflect him from the possibility she was falling back into madness? How could he confess he was terrified that if he let her back in she would push him away again and he feared it would finally break him too?
He knew he couldn’t tell her. All he could do was walk this finely balanced tightrope and wait to see if she’d catch him when he fell. James took a few more drags of his cigarette before throwing it away and draining his drink. Accept her at face value, he told himself, sternly. This was what he’d wanted. This was what he’d hoped for. Things were getting better. Things were going to be good again.
******
James woke in the night, his sleep disturbed yet again by a violent distressing nightmare that fled from his mind as soon as he opened his eyes. Elise lay next to him, her red hair fanned across the pillow and her gentle snores calming him in the darkness. He remembered he’d drank too much and she’d helped him to bed, however he hadn’t realised she’d curled up next to him.
He should put his arms around her, nuzzle her neck and snuggle into her; like he used to, in the old days. The sight of her confused him though and vestiges of nightmares flitted through his mind, disturbing his equilibrium. He turned over, with his back to her, and closed his eyes.