He leans in and kisses her. She responds. His lips are tight and firm, his tongue quick and deep inside her mouth. A new sensation floods her, a gorgeous difference, a new mouth against hers. She feels his hands move and, as a voice calls out from somewhere, perhaps inside a dream, she realizes her knickers have pooled on the ground around her feet.

‘Aurelia?’

She moves her head towards the sound, towards a blurred figure in the hallway. Familiarity sharpens her senses. The woman wrapped in an oversized robe, black hair to her shoulders and a haunted expression, is Derry. Pregnant Derry, who is married to the man whose tongue has just been in her mouth.

Aurelia staggers backwards. Clive has his hands in the air, surrendering. ‘Derry,’ he says, over and over. ‘Derry.’ No explanation or apology. Just her name.

Aurelia sinks back into a chair and watches as Derry’s eyes move from her to Clive and back to Aurelia. She is not horrified, but sobered. Clive puts his hands on Derry’s shoulders, rubs them as if she’s just come in from the cold.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ she hears him tell Derry. ‘It’s late. Please.’

When Derry doesn’t budge from the hallway, her eyes nailed to Aurelia’s knickers on the floor, he takes her hand. Aurelia doesn’t want to look, but can’t not look at the scene in front of her. What was she doing just now? How the hell did she end up kissing Clive? Shame thumps down on her in hot waves.

‘What’s going on?’ another voice says. She looks up and oh God it can’t get any worse but there is Tom, her husband, her utterly faithful husband standing in the hallway in his plaid pyjamas staring at Clive and Derry. He sees her holding her head in her hands at the table, notes the shot glasses and the bottle of gin on the table and the spillage, sees she’s off her face. He’s worried. She can see he’s worried.

‘Rough night?’ he asks, tenderly. He turns and glances at Clive and Derry, who are heading quietly upstairs. This brings Aurelia some relief.

‘Come back to bed,’ he says, cupping her face. ‘Don’t worry about getting up for the girls. I’ll take a bottle to Coco, OK? Come on.’

She starts to cry then, and even as she follows him upstairs and notices the pinkening sky, as Gaia calls out from her room and Tom races ahead to soothe her so Aurelia can rest, she knows what is done cannot be undone.

   35   

DIFFERENT STORMS

Then

‘Higher, Daddy! Higher!’

Tom gives the swing a shove, so hard that it starts to chink slightly each time Gaia swings to the apex.

‘That’s high enough,’ Aurelia tells him under her breath. He relents until the swing moves like an exhale. Gaia squirms impatiently.

‘Higher! Higher!’