Strangers. Rosie Thomas

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      When there was no money, Matthew was endlessly ingenious at finding free pleasures.

      In his company Annie discovered tiny parks that she had never known existed, and she saw more pictures and sculptures and Wren churches than she had done in all her time as an art student. It didn’t even matter what they did, particularly. As long as she had an hour or two to spend with him, Matthew was happy. He seemed to want nothing more than her company and their activities, whether they were free or costly, were simply an extra, pleasurable bonus. When she was married and thought back to the benches beside the river and the faintly stuffy smell of the National Gallery, the elaborate dinners and the sudden taxis, she wondered if the times with Matthew were the last in her life when she had felt young.

      He made her feel other things, too. They made love for the first time in the room over the shop. Annie had come straight from work. It was a warm evening at the beginning of June and she was wearing a sleeveless blue cotton dress. Her hair crackled with electricity over her shoulders, and when Matthew opened the door he reached out and put his hand underneath the thickness of it, his fingers stroking her neck.

      After the first evening in St James’s Park, he had kissed her once or twice, lightly, almost jokingly. She had convinced herself that she was relieved that there was no more to it, and that she wasn’t betraying Martin in any way. But she had also known that Matthew was simply waiting, according to some system of his own, for the right time.

      He took her hand and led her across the bare floorboards to the grey blanket with a single sleeping bag spread out on top of it. Annie saw an electric kettle, the neat tin box where Matthew kept his minimal supplies of food, his spare clothes folded tidily in an open suitcase. He stood behind her, lifting her hair and bending down to kiss the nape of her neck. He undid the buttons at the back of her dress and drew her against him, his hands over her breasts.

      ‘Here?’ Annie asked. She looked at the uncurtained windows with the sun lighting up the coating of grime and throwing elongated 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?’

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