What became of us

right, he realized. If she had not been so conscientious about staying away from them, she might have become a raw nerve in their marriage, sensitive to the touch. And the business of sharing your life with another person was complicated enough.
    In the silence, he wondered now what was going through Manon’s mind as his sifted through the years that had passed since their encounter in the Piazza Navona. There had been four people then, and now there were just the two of them. It was a terrible truth that the reasons for their anger with one another no longer existed.
    Finally, he asked her.
    ‘So where do we go from here?’

Chapter 32

    Ursula hurried past the burger van, sober enough now to regret her earlier binge. She cupped her hand over her mouth and breathed, unable to work out whether she had bad breath or whether it was simply the pervasive smell of burgers that permeated the fabric of this part of the city. They used to call them squirrel burgers, she remembered. She had read recently in one of the lifestyle supplements that came with the Sunday papers that there was a restaurant in London actually serving squirrel. Perhaps it had been an April Fool. She was always the one in the office who read out the spoof article with earnest outrage before looking up and realizing that everyone else was laughing.
    Was the same thing about to happen? Was it all a joke, designed to make her look a fool, or to test her qualities as a human being? Would Liam be there? If not, how long was she supposed to wait? Ten minutes? An hour? What if he had drastically underestimated the driving time, or got lost, or run out of petrol, or crashed? For a moment she let herself imagine his body being collected by ambulance and rushed to the hospital in Casualty. Holby City. It even sounded like the sort of town you would find halfway between Nottingham and Oxford. She envisaged Charlie the male nurse pulling a sheet up over Liam’s handsome face and shaking his head mournfully.
    ‘Rushing to his lover in the middle of the night, apparently,’ he might explain to appease the curiosity of the funny little dark-haired one with the nose ring.
    Ursula shuddered as she walked past the gates of the Radcliffe Infirmary. North Oxford was uncannily still. It was summer vacation and this part of the city was sleeping. The click of her footsteps was as loud as a hammer on an anvil. What on earth was she doing strutting along like a trollop in a borrowed dress, on her way to begin an affair? The questions beat in her brain as fast as her racing pulse. Excitement in her stomach turned to nausea. There was no way out now.
    But of course there was a way out. She could tell Liam immediately that it had all been a mistake. Apologize, shake hands. Offer to put him up in a hotel if he didn’t want to drive all the way back straight away. She would deny herself her one great love and never see him again. And she would bear it, just as Meryl Streep had in Bridges of Madison County which had been on telly a couple of months back.
    Then she saw him standing beside his metallic grey sports car outside the college. She began to run towards him. And as she launched herself into his arms and felt the insistence of his mouth on hers, she told herself that even the virtuous Meryl had allowed herself one weekend. Just one weekend away from real life.

    * * *

    ‘You got here, then,’ she said, suddenly shy when their kiss ended, not knowing how to do the small talk.
    ‘I got here.’
    ‘Good drive down?’
    He looked amused.
    ‘Reasonably good, thank you.’
    ‘Err... would you like to go for a walk or something? There might be somewhere open we could get a coffee or a drink?’ she asked.
    ‘Why don’t you show me your room?’
    She giggled nervously.
    ‘All right. I’ll show you my room. It’s not much of a room.’
    They had to wake the porter to get through the lodge. It reminded her of visiting one of her clients in prison. The porter had the same mix of servility and suspicion that all guards and janitors seemed to have. She felt she ought to offer some explanation as to why this dashing man who had not been with her before was now accompanying her, but the only acceptable word she could think of was husband, and she could not say that.
    As they walked across the quad she was suddenly terrified that one of the other women who were staying in college would see her. Was Leonora still hanging about? Was she still chatting to Roy up in the JCR?