Alec Milius Spy Series Books 1 and 2: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game. Charles Cumming

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СКАЧАТЬ it? Does it feel that way? No. No it doesn’t. These things are our most private…’

      I put my hands in the air defensively, moving them up and down in a gesture of contrition.

      ‘I know, I know.’

      ‘Jesus,’ she says, a rasp in her voice. ‘I don’t wanna argue with you like this.’

      ‘Neither do I. I’m sorry.’

      Silence now, and the edge suddenly goes out of our rush of talk. We are left facing each other, quiet and spent.

      ‘Let’s just sit next door, she says, turning to pick up her coffee. ‘Let’s just forget all about it.’

      We go into the sitting room, the breath of the fight still around us. Stevie is singing–ridiculously–‘Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing.’ Katharine flops down into one of the sofas and clutches her mug in both palms. She has the most beautiful hands. Eventually she says, ‘I hate fighting with you,’ as if we have done it many times before.

      ‘Me too.’

      I sit on the sofa opposite hers.

      ‘Can we talk about it?’

      She emphasizes the word can here as if it were a test of character. I do not know how to respond except with the obvious: ‘About what?’

      ‘About Fortner.’

      His name balloons out of her as if he were sick.

      ‘Of course we can. If you want to.’

      Her voice is very quiet and steady. It is almost as if she has prepared something to say.

      ‘We–Fortner and I–haven’t shared a bed for more than a year. For longer than you’ve known us.’

      My pulse skips.

      ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

      I immediately regret saying this.

      ‘We’ll work it out,’ she says hopefully. ‘I just can’t be beside him in a bed right now. It’s not anyone’s fault.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘We’re just kind of going through this thing where we’re not attracted to each other.’

      ‘Or where you’re not attracted to him?’

      She looks up at me, acknowledging with a softened expression that this is closer to the truth.

      ‘Have you talked about it? Does he know how you feel?’

      ‘No. He thinks he’s moved into the spare room because I can’t stand his snoring. He has no idea it’s because I don’t want to sleep with him.’

      A brief quiet falls on the room, the lull after a sudden revelation. Katharine drinks her coffee and plays with a loose thread on her dressing gown.

      ‘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, СКАЧАТЬ