Melissa

Melissa paces the landing waiting for Paul to emerge; she is determined to see Izzy this time. The sparkly “I” on Izzy’s door glistens in the security lights shining through the landing window. It’s getting late. Her footsteps are silent, cushioned by thick carpet. Their home was designed for quiet and she tries to quiet herself. The house won an architecture award the year it was built, but when Melissa returned from Eve’s a few hours ago and went down to the kitchen, the gray walls had closed around her like a prison. Eve’s kitchen is chaotic, her colors clash, the red of the sofa against the orange walls and the faded pinks of the Persian carpet. Cookbooks are piled on the table along with recipes torn from magazines, children’s drawings are stuck to the walls, clothes are left on chairs. The windows are flung wide; the garden was alive with the noise of children today; Ash had been laughing joyously. Strange to think she can’t remember Izzy laughing at that age, but then she hadn’t spent much time with her, at least in the day. They’d had an au pair so Melissa could work; at night she’d sneak from their bed and lie down next to her sleeping child, breathing her in.

Izzy had hurried to her room on their return to finish her weekend homework and Paul slipped in later, as usual, shutting the door. She needed his help, he’d said; he asked her not to disturb them. She paces to the window. The gravel garden looks pale and lifeless in the outdoor lighting. Eve’s lawn had shone in the sun at lunchtime; the smell of grass is still on her palms, the same scent that had been in the air the day she met Paul. He’d been sprawled like some god by the side of the grass court in the tennis club, twenty years ago. “Look at that,” her friend Julie had whispered. “Bet he’s got loads of girlfriends.” Melissa could feel him staring at her as she played; she’d felt exposed in her tennis skirt, babyish in the ridiculous socks, but she’d seemed fresh, he told her later, so innocent, so young. As the summer progressed he took her to the theater and for picnics by the sea in his sports car with the roof rolled down. She was fifteen, bowled over by the attention. When she told him about her anorexia, whispering with shame, he seemed refreshingly unperturbed. Her parents didn’t mind the age gap; her father said Paul was a man after his own heart, ruthless like him. Ambition should be rewarded, he’d said. He’d set him up in his own architecture practice. They were married after her interior design course. She spent a couple of years building her business before she was allowed a pregnancy, back to work after. Sometimes she wonders if they’d planned it all out between them from the start.

The door of Izzy’s bedroom opens after a further ten minutes and Paul emerges, but as she moves forward he shuts it quickly behind him. “She’s tired out again, poor lamb. Come with me,” he whispers, and leads her downstairs. His clasp is firm on her arm; cheated again. He pours them some wine. “She’s doing okay.” He raises the glass to her. “Those lessons were a smart move, Melly. Good thinking.”