The Telling

you feel that?’ I asked Mark.
    Mark was leaning thoughtfully against the breakfast bar; he watched me pluck the stalk from a tomato.
    ‘What? Is it too noisy? Shall I get her a quieter toy?’
    I shook my head. ‘It’s all right.’
    ‘So,’ he said carefully, ‘it’s not done, is it?’
    I glanced up at him. I could feel the press of the tomato flesh between my fingers. It felt uneasy, faintly unclean.
    ‘Not nearly,’ he added.
    ‘Mark –’
    He shook his head and closed his eyes. He let a breath go.
    ‘It’s not been easy,’ I said.
    ‘I don’t know why you even – no one asked you to.’
    ‘Dad, though; he’s not great –’
    ‘And you are?’
    ‘It wouldn’t have done him any good.’
    ‘But you’re in such robust psychological health.’
    ‘That’s not fair.’
    ‘We could have done this together, in a weekend. Left Cate with my mum. We could have paid someone.’
    ‘Someone had to go through it all.’
    ‘And it had to be you.’
    ‘It had to be someone .’
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘it had to be you .’
    There was a silence.
    ‘Are you going to explain that?’ I asked him.
    ‘You’ve got this attitude; it’s like this past few years, for you, they’ve been an endurance test, and you’re having the most godawful time, but you won’t let yourself give up; you have to win, you have to get through. You won’t stop and you won’t ask for help. Fuck. You won’t let anyone help.’
    Of course I couldn’t give up; how could I give up, what was the good in giving up?
    ‘I’m coping,’ I said.
    Then he said, quite simply, ‘No, you’re not.’
    The peeled man, his blue trace of arteries, his deep red veins, the grey maze of his brain. I shook my head. ‘I’m fine. I don’t need help. I just need to get this sorted.’
    ‘Right,’ Mark said, his tone ironically light. ‘I see. So. What happens now?’
    I didn’t speak. My throat was too constricted.
    ‘Nothing happens now?’
    ‘I’ll stay,’ I whispered.
    ‘Stay?’ he repeated, louder, an edge to his voice.
    ‘Just another couple of days. That’s all it’ll take. Honest.’
    His face was cold, closed. I didn’t blame him.
    ‘We did say. At first. We did say a fortnight.’
    He looked at me a moment longer, eyebrows raised, on the verge of speaking. Then he pushed himself upright, away from the breakfast bar. ‘Right. Okay. Fine.’
    He crossed the room and lifted Cate. He held her with one arm, his hand gripping around a plump thigh. Her toy car was falling out of her hands. She wailed at the loss; Mark caught the toy one-handed and gave it back to her. He grabbed a bag with his free hand. My heart tugged towards them.
    ‘Love –’
    He turned around and looked at me. It must have been a long time since I said that word, in that way, if it could make him look at me like that. If I could have gone to him then, it might have been enough. But we were stalled there, too much space between us. His expression hardened and he shook his head. He left.
    I felt sick. I walked along the grey track in the carpet to the front door. I went down the steps, and stood at the bottom; I watched Mark lean into the back of the car to strap Cate into her seat.
    I came closer, looked in through the gap between the doorframe and the car.
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    He tugged at Cate’s straps. She craned her head around to look past him, to look at me. I smiled for her. He straightened up and went around to the driver’s door. I stuffed my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, and raised my eyebrows at him, trying to smile. He gave half a nod, a slight upward movement of the chin. He didn’t kiss me goodbye and I didn’t get to kiss Cate.
    He slid into the car, slammed the door and started the engine. He swung the car around and burned off up the village street, leaving me with the smell of petrol fumes, a scattering of gravel, and a grey ache in my chest. The awfulness of it all.

 
     
     
     
    IF EVE HAD FOUND THE FRUIT NOT TO HER TASTE, AND spat it out, it would still have been too late. Long before she realized her bodily self, her poor forked and vulnerable nakedness, and could not bear to feel like that alone; long before her teeth met in the dripping sweetness of the fruit, before she listened to the serpent Satan, before she opened her new eyes to blink at the sunlight and the man that she was made for, before the moment Adam’s rib was torn from his side and formed with God’s deft thumbprints, she was already