Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

She decides that her holiday will last for one week exactly. She came in on a Sunday; she will leave on the following Sunday, or on Monday since Felix is, it turns out, going to Switzerland on Friday morning and won't be back till Sunday evening.

They have sex on Wednesday night, at his instigation. The experience is less weird than it was with Jason, and way less weird than it was with Toby. Felix's tastes run lazy: he invites her to do the work, twisting and licking and wiggling while he reclines fondly. This isn't her usual approach, but she appreciates the transparency of his desires, and he is older than her, after all, his chest hairs silvered, the oldest man she's slept with, probably; so she feels youthful by comparison, enjoys his laid-back aesthetic appreciation with none of the self-consciousness she might have felt perched atop a younger man. She moves and squirms and watches his reactions, his little shifts in expression, his minute changes in breathing. It's nice to give her smooth and expensively maintained skin a proper audience. She is surprised to find herself really getting into it, and suggesting a repeat on Thursday.

The rest of the time they circle in their own orbits, intersecting briefly. She makes up a mnemonic for the main entry code so that she can get in and out of the house with confidence: 635324847, count out the letters of regard the dozen men in your upstairs room, octopus (mnemonics have never been her strong point) . Felix brings her small things for approval, like the M how has five days in a mansion taken her to the point where her flat that she owns with her sister feels like a trap? She needs to get back to thinking of this as the holiday it was always meant to be. Swimming. Good food. A nice, distant husband she doesn't have to spend too much time with. And then home.

She would rather have Carter than this mansion, she reminds herself, and it takes a moment but that still feels true. She finds the pictures of him with his beautiful girlfriend again. There's a new photo; they're by a lake. She's never been to America but it seems like everyone is very invested in lakes there.

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Felix is still away for work so there's nothing she can do; it's just her, alone, wandering from room to room, watched over by the cameras. She covers one of them with a tea towel and receives a pop-up notification on her phone ten seconds later, camera obstruction.

She spends Saturday evening sitting outside in the garden, avoiding the house and its allure and its menace. Felix messages her around midnight: Hey lovely! You out having fun? Noticed you haven't been in the house tonight

Fucksake. It's bad enough that there's cameras all through the house without knowing that he's actually looking at them. She walks into the conservatory and waves. I'm here! Just been outside, enjoying the garden!

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On Sunday she tries to enjoy the end of her holiday, but once she's opened the most expensive bottle of wine she can find and swigged from it while floating in the swimming pool one more time, she finds she doesn't want to drink the rest.Maybe she could read? Go for a walk? Call her mother again, talk more about the Spanish house she's not going to buy, get the credit for that, although what's the point when it's going to be wiped clean? She goes for a drive and ends up in a farm shop, where she watches chickens in their coop and wonders if they would let her scoop them up.

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Felix is due back around eight. She tells him she'll have dinner ready. A nice last night—a pleasant few hours to wipe away all the weirdness. She finds a dhal recipe that she thinks they have all the ingredients for, although it's clearly not a kitchen where anyone regularly cooks from scratch.

"Wow," Felix says when he returns, looking at her in her apron, and at the bubbling saucepan. "This looks good."

"Tastes good too." She's been testing it throughout, and when it wasn't good she microwaved a different dhal from the freezer and stirred it in, just out of sight of the cameras. She thinks she remembered to jam the container to the bottom of the bin.

"I missed you," he says, and they kiss lightly.

"Got to keep stirring," she says, brandishing the wooden spoon.

It's almost time.

They eat at one end of the long dining-room table, since she did, after all, cook. Felix even lights a candelabra, which flickers and illuminates the tie-dye chairs stretching away to the distant dark end of the room.

"Oh," she says, idly, carefully, "I think I left some papers in the old London flat. Up in the attic. I know we brought most of my stuff over but I've had a real search and I'm pretty sure we missed at least one box. I know it's a pain but there aren't any guests staying at the moment. If you're going to be in town tomorrow could you pop in on your way home and grab it?"