She was young, although beneath the carefully applied make-up and coy, doe-eyed poses it was hard to tell. She knew her angles, I can tell you that much. Her skin was as golden as Egyptian silk. Her nose was long and straight with a noticeable bump on the bridge that only surgery could iron out. There was a piercing in her nose, a tiny silver stud, barely there. She had a curtain of straight dark hair, glossy and slick. I touched my hand to my own messy blonde waves, half grown out from a blunt bob I’d given myself last autumn. I felt something in my chest, a singular shard of glassy pain. Envy, maybe.
I quickly flicked through the handful of photographs. She wasn’t naked, but her underwear was revealing: the hard little bumps of her nipples beneath peach-coloured lace, the soft creases of her upper thighs as she sat on the edge of a bed, toes pointed, delicate and ballerina-like, to elongate and define her calf muscles. Like I said, the girl knew her angles. In one she was bent over a dressing table, ass towards the camera, pink satin and the long road of her spine just visible where her hair fell. She was looking back at the lens with an eyebrow arched, slight smile on her glossy lips, and in her hand was a bag. I stared at it for what felt like a long time, even as outside the birds began to sing. A pink sequin shoulder bag with a chain strap, and on it, the Miu Miu logo in silver. Distantly, I heard the alarm going off in the bedroom, the grunting noise Will made as he reached for it, his voice furred with sleep.
‘Frances? Where are you, babe?’
‘I’m just here,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice straight. I hurriedly pulled the USB out and taped it back behind the screen. I’d barely had time to close everything down when I heard his feet shuffling out into the hallway, the long, elastic sound of him yawning. I was swept with a fierce chill that flushed my skin with goosebumps and rattled my teeth.
In all the years we’d been together I’d never ached for him as much as I did right then.
After that, I waited each morning for Will to leave, his bag slung crooked over his shoulder, hair still damp from the shower, and I would watch him walk up the tree-lined avenue towards the train station in the pearly morning light. I’d watch him until he was out of sight, letting my forehead lean against the glass until my breath misted my vision. Then I would take the USB from its hiding place behind the computer and look through the photographs over and over again, searching for clues in her poses, in the background of her small, messy flat, until acid burned the back of my throat. Her mirror, smudged with fingerprints; the unmade bed, the tattoo snaking up her outer thigh, the catalogue flatpack furniture – nothing gave me any idea about the type of person she was or how she knew my husband so intimately.
I studied the faces of every dark-haired woman on the street, on the train, looking for the familiar lines of her features; almond-shaped eyes heavy with kohl, narrow lips, that thin, angular chin. Since I’d first seen her photographs I’d felt there was something familiar about her, and it was only after a week or so that it came to me. Samira.
When I’d first told William about my previous relationships with women, we’d both been drunk on wine and Pernod and he’d struggled to conceal his interest.
‘Is it better or worse than with men?’ he’d asked, picking up the knife and cutting a chunk of brie from the cheeseboard on the table. The candlelight had carved shadows in his features, sharp glaciers of bone. ‘Like, is it, uh, softer?’
‘Softer?’ I’d laughed. ‘How do you mean?’
He’d shrugged awkwardly, and I’d decided to make it easier for him. ‘Do you mean hornier? Is that what you mean? You want to hear about me with women, is that it?’
‘God, yes. Fuck. I thought you’d never offer.’
We’d both laughed. Then, he’d leaned in closer. ‘Was there ever anyone serious?’
‘Sure.’
‘Who?’
‘She was beautiful. Let me just get that out the way. As you know, I’m incredibly shallow’ – we’d both laughed, because it’s true – ‘and Samira was just – you ever meet someone so good-looking you almost forget to breathe? Like that. She had long hair almost to her waist and the darkest, blackest eyes I’ve ever seen. She knew all these great bars and clubs and just dazzled everyone she met, and I can honestly say that it’s the only time I’ve been happy to be in someone else’s shadow. She had tattoos and a piercing in her nose and another in her labia and she made me feel – I don’t know – vital.’
‘You’re so pretentious.’ William had laughed, but his voice was heavy and when he kissed me I could tell by his urgency how turned on he was. It had been funny, at the time.
Samira. That was who she looked like, William’s mystery girl. The piercing, the long curtain of hair, that golden skin. At least, I thought more reasonably, she looked like my description of her: the one I’d given him all that time ago on a humid night in Avignon, our sweat glistening and scented with aniseed.
If you’d asked me any time over the last six years how I’d react to William’s infidelity, I would have laughed and told you William was no more capable of infidelity than he was of alchemy. Finding the photos had shaken me, but not in the way I would have expected. I felt energised, curious. That same feeling of elemental wrongness persisted, and I couldn’t put my finger on why, and until I could I didn’t feel like I could confront him. I felt like I needed to know more. Knowledge is power, after all.
That night I cooked tarragon chicken (a memory of Avignon still lingering, perhaps) and Will noticed as soon as he came through the door. He put his bag on the sofa slowly, telling me how good I looked. I’d tidied my hair and put on the simplest thing I owned – a mid-length black dress with spaghetti straps – because William liked things simple. Or so he’d told me. Now, though, who knew?
We ate sitting close to each other, not opposite one another but side by side on the floor, our backs against the sofa, legs stretched out in front of us. I’d lit candles, and the dreamy scent of next door’s roses washed in through the open window. The rain of the last couple of weeks had given way to a clear, bright warmth.
‘I noticed you’re not sleeping very well at the moment,’ he said, spearing a piece of chicken with his fork. ‘You having those bad dreams again?’
It’s happened before. Me, running through my dream, heavy and ugly and slow-moving as molasses, chased by a man with a hammer raised over his head. I don’t know where this image has come from. A film maybe, or a story told to me as a kid by my older sister. The finer details of the dream change from time to time; sometimes I’m a kid with scabby knees and a bowl haircut, sometimes I’m in the jungle, sometimes I’m underwater, but it’s always a hammer and it’s always the kind with two hooks on the back, a claw-head. When I have these dreams William tells me I start to twitch and then cry out, clawing at the air. I wake in a panic, close to tears. It wasn’t the dreams, though. Not this time.
‘Do you love me, Will?’
He paused, fork halfway to his mouth. I watched him carefully and sipped my wine. Waited.
‘Of course. What kind of question is that?’
‘You don’t sometimes wish things were different?’