The bright sunshine and vivid vibrant beauty of Rio de Janeiro seemed like a different planet to Elise when she walked out of the airport and she spent the first few days awestruck by everything she saw. As she strolled through the streets taking in the sights, she wondered if Val hadn’t always had the right idea about life. The thought of going back to the UK and facing all she had left behind filled her with fear and loathing.
She walked the beaches of Guanabara Bay and she found places to set up and paint beautiful pictures that she sold to tourists, but as the days turned into weeks the rocky mountainous terrain and the calm picturesque bay began to make her feel hemmed in. She missed the vastness and the fury of the Atlantic Ocean and the horizon that was so far away.
She had hoped the idyllic corner of paradise would be a blank canvas where she could paint a new version of herself. She wanted to become someone who hadn’t experienced so much loss that she felt as if a huge part of her heart had been carved away. She had thought that being somewhere else would make her feel free and would help her forget the last couple of months.
She’d been wrong.
The nights were long and she lay in the narrow bed in her hotel room and remembered the time when things had been good between her and James. She recalled the years of loss, frustration and pent up anger at their failure to build a family and she cried for all that they had become. She longed to pick up the phone and hear his voice. She ached to tell him she knew that what had happened wasn’t his fault and that she didn’t blame him.
If she blamed anyone it was herself. She should have made them move out long before Val or Kay warned her to. She had known deep down that whatever was in the house wasn’t good for James. She had seen him changing with every day that had passed, but her own selfish need to help a sodding ghost had driven James to the point of no return. She had put her own desperate desire to feel like a mother above the health and sanity of her beloved James and she didn’t know if she could live with the weight of guilt she felt now. She had been so caught up in the notion of a lonely little ghost boy in her house that she had closed her eyes to the creeping malevolence that had burrowed into her husband.
She had been a fool who thought she could save Oliver when really she should have been trying to save James.
******
She had ignored a lot of things, but when she marked the eighth week since Val’s funeral she knew she could no longer ignore what she had suspected since she’d arrived in Rio at the end of February. How strange that a horrific act of hatred from James had resulted in something they’d never achieved in the years of trying and loss that had gone before.
Was that irony, she thought, smiling wryly.
On the simple narrow bed, with the moonlight shining through the window, Elise laid her hand on her tummy and stroked it, gently.
She had made it to three months and her baby was still growing safely in her womb.
It was time to go home and speak to James.
******
Elise flew back to the UK a couple of weeks later. She had debated calling James and asking him to meet her at the airport but in the end she couldn’t bear the thought of an awkward greeting at the airport arrival lounge, not after the last time she had seen him. She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to tell him about the baby, although she knew she should.
The thought of keeping such a huge secret from him made her feel physically sick. However, she couldn’t help wondering if it would be better for both of them to go their separate ways and never see each other again. She didn’t want to have a conversation about what had happened and she didn’t want him to apologise for it.
She recalled the conversation they’d had before Val died, when she’d told him that forgiving was easy but forgetting was not. She had forgiven him on one of those long lonely sultry nights in Rio when she had lain and stroked her stomach thinking of the life inside her, yet she could not forget the look on his face and the pain that had wracked her body when he’d forced himself inside her.
Elise didn’t think she would ever be able to forget it.
******
She knew her mother’s eagle eye spotted the small pot belly she’d developed straight away, but neither of them mentioned it. Elise had a hot shower and Sarah cooked them both some dinner, before they settled on the sofa and watched telly together. There was a peace in her mother’s flat above the shop that she had not found in Rio. There was a sense of belonging and being back home which made her feel safe and secure in a way that she hadn’t felt for a long time.
Sarah spoke, eventually. “Are you going back to Cornwall?”
Elise nodded and sipped her cup of hot chocolate.
“Are you going back to James?”
“I don’t know,” Elise said, quietly. “I was thinking I’d buy a little flat down there, maybe in Padstow, and you could come down for holidays.”
She noticed Sarah’s eyes flick to her belly, but all she said was, “That would be nice.”
“It is nice there, Mum. I missed it when I was in Rio.”
“You’re mad,” Sarah said, fondly. “No one in their right mind would prefer Cornwall to Rio.”
“Rio was exactly what I needed for a little while,” Elise replied, quietly. “I felt as if I was walking in Val’s footsteps, but it was never meant to be permanent. I’m not Val and I missed home too much.”
Brazil had given her new sights and sounds to concentrate on. It had been somewhere to hold her breath while she waited to see if her baby would live past the cursed nine week mark. It had been a place to hide whilst she put her life on hold and said goodbye to Val. But now she was home and it was time to move forward.
She phoned James when Sarah went to bed at ten-thirty. He answered on the second ring, his voice alive with hopeful anticipation that made her eyes sting with tears that she thought were over.
“You came back! How are you? Did Rio help?”
Elise closed her eyes, took a deep breath and said, “Yes, it did. How are you?”
“Oh, you know,” he laughed, mournfully. “I work and I sleep, because when I’m awake and not working I hate myself. I didn’t realise how exhausting self-loathing is.”
Maybe he hoped she would laugh or at least smile, but she did neither. Instead, she said, “Are you still living at the white house?”
“No. I cleared it out and handed the tenancy back. I didn’t get the security deposit back, of course.” He paused for a few seconds then said, “I put your stuff in storage, I didn’t think it was fair to send it to your mother. I presume you’re there now.”
“For now,” she replied, civilly. She wanted to ask him if he’d moved in with Amy Collins, but she didn’t think she’d be able to voice the question politely without sounding malicious and she didn’t want to deal with how she’d feel if he said yes.
Perhaps he sensed what she was thinking for he said, “I rented a studio flat above one of the shops in the village. It’s tiny, but there’s room to sit and have coffee…if you want to.”
She couldn’t put it off, yet despite her inner resolve to be stoic her voice still cracked when she said, “What about Amy?”
“Oh Elise,” he murmured, sadly. “I quit my job at the school. I’m working for the LEA now and my secretary is almost sixty with a husband, five children and thirteen grandchildren. I promise you I haven’t seen Amy since you left.”
“I don’t want your promises, James,” she replied, bitterly. “Do you know I’ve been carrying these three images around in my head for the last four months and I still don’t know which one I hate the most?” She laughed, harshly. “One is of you shagging Amy Collins, another is of Val smiling as she crosses a road and gets knocked sky high by a fucking great lorry and the other…” She paused and sighed. “Well, you know what the other one is, I’m sure.”
“El, if I could only…”
“I know,” she interrupted. “If you could only tell me how sorry you are. And maybe that would help you, but it’s meaningless to me. You’re sorry, I know you are. I’m sorry too, but at the end of the day what good does any of it do and how does it change anything?”
“So what do we do now?”
“I’ll come to Cornwall in a few days,” she said, quietly. “I’ll meet you and we’ll talk, face to face. I can’t decide anything until I know whether I can bear to ever look at you again.”
She hung up, threw her phone on the table and went out to her mother’s tiny roof garden. She sat on one of the patio chairs and breathed in the heavy scent of Jasmine that Sarah had cultivated in a stone pot. It reminded Elise of the two weeks she had drifted around a beautiful Greek island, hating James and the life that stretched ahead of them. Now she longed to go back to the days of envisaging any kind of future for her and James.
The road ahead suddenly seemed very long and lonely without him.
******
Elise drove into Porth Kerensa and parked near the harbour. She left her suitcase in the car and wandered down to the quayside. The sun blazed high in the azure cloudless sky and the village buzzed with tourists out enjoying the glorious weather. Gulls shrieked and soared high above them and the air was heavy with the scent of fresh fish being hauled from the boats. She sat on a bench on the wharf, watching the surfers riding the foamy white waves towards the golden sands of Keren beach, and marvelling at the vibrant bustle of the coastal village, brought to life with the change of season.
She glanced at the row of shops opposite the harbour and wondered which one James was currently renting. It was weird not knowing where her husband lived or what he did with his days. He had been a part of her life for so long, but the last few months had turned them into strangers, much more so than her breakdown ever had.
She left the harbour eventually and drove to the B&B she’d booked into. It wasn’t far from the white house, but she had no urge to go there. She signed in with the friendly landlady, Connie, who showed her up to a clean pretty bedroom at the back of the large house. After Elise had showered and unpacked she rang Sarah to let her know she’d arrived in Cornwall and she phoned James.
He was pathetically grateful that she’d driven to Porth Kerensa and he agreed to meet her at the Smuggler’s Galleon that evening after dinner. When he hung up she was surprised by the pang of heartache she felt and she curled up on the bed and stroked her burgeoning stomach. She needed to find a place to settle so she could register with a doctor and make her pregnancy official for the weeks were racing by and she still hadn’t told anyone of the life that was growing inside her.
Sarah knew, but Elise hadn’t said the words out loud. Perhaps her mother thought she was waiting to tell James first, but really Elise couldn’t help feeling that saying the words would jinx it. She still didn’t know if she would even tell James. She suspected that if she told him he would try to convince her they should try again. More than anything she feared the one thing she'd thought would save their marriage had come too late to be any use to them now.
******
He was sitting in a quiet corner of the pub when she arrived at seven-thirty that evening. To her relief he was nursing a cup of coffee and she ordered a glass of orange juice and went to join him. He stood up, perhaps hoping she would kiss him hello, but she sat down without looking at him and after a few awkward seconds he followed suit.
“You didn’t have to order a soft drink just because I’m not drinking,” he said, quietly.
She fiddled with her handbag, placed it on the floor by her feet, plucked at her baggy jumper and finally looked at him. His hair had got greyer, his face was lined with anxiety and there were dark shadows under his eyes, but his gaze was clear and there was no malice or the anger she had grown so used to seeing there. He looked like the James she had known before they moved to the white house.
He smiled, meekly, and said, “You look really well, Elise. You’ve put on a bit of weight, which suits you by the way, and you picked up a bit of a sun kissed glow in Rio.”
Elise shifted, uncomfortably and shrugged. “It took a while, but I feel much better.” She looked away from him, angry with him for being the James she had known and loved for so long, albeit worn and greyer than before.
“I stopped drinking, Elise. I changed my job and went to see a counsellor. Things are different now, I promise you. I was so angry about everything that had happened to us and I bottled it all up until I couldn’t take it anymore, but I’ve worked through a lot of things and I feel much more myself. ”
“It wasn’t you,” she said, quietly, meeting his gaze, directly. “It was the house, James. There’s something in that house, something dark and dangerous.”
“It was me, Elise. How will we ever move past it if we can’t be honest about it?” His tone was one of exasperation. “Don’t you think I’d rather hide behind fanciful excuses, but that wouldn’t do either of us any good?”
“Even now you can’t believe me,” she murmured, sadly. “Don’t you see that I can only forgive you because I know it wasn’t really you that night?”
He laughed, hollowly. “Are you saying I was possessed?”
She blushed and shook her head. “No, I’m saying that something there used your anger and made it something terrible.”
“Elise, do you have any idea how ma…”
Through gritted teeth she said, “Please, don’t say I sound mad. I think after all we’ve inflicted on each other we should try and have a conversation without resorting to the usual insults and slurs.”
“It was just a figure of speech,” he replied, dryly.
“It was always ‘just a figure of speech’,” she retorted. Sighing, she pushed her glass of orange juice away from her and bent to pick up her handbag.
“Please, Elise, don’t go,” James said, quietly.
“What’s the point in staying?”
“Because I love you,” he blurted. “I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you and that never went away. I’ve missed you so much and I can’t bear the thought of a life without you, although I know that’s all I deserve. But please, El, we’ve been through so much and survived it, can’t we get past this too?”
Elise straightened and looked at him, guilelessly. “We didn’t survive anything, James. I’ve forgiven you for raping me,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the word ‘raping’. “I’ve even forgiven you for cheating on me and I don’t blame you for the way things ended, but it’s time to accept that’s what it is, James. It’s the end.” She picked up her bag and stood up, holding it in front of her stomach. “Goodbye, James.”
When she walked away she didn’t turn back and she didn’t see the tears that fell from her husband’s eyes.