They were in bed together, his thick legs heavy as floorboards on her thin legs. During the wine and the satisfactory curry, he’d alluded to moving in with her. She suspected he was going to return to the topic now under the sheets; put the question to her more directly, like a large bill you’re not sure you want to pay. They’d been dating six months, they were inching forwards perhaps, but they certainly hadn’t arrived yet.
Instead though he said, ‘Tell me about Jack. Why did you turn him down?’
Jack? With his dark straight hair resembling hers, and his similar green eyes, people had taken them for brother and sister. They were both of middle height and slender. ‘Is he an artist?’ friends asked. ‘He seems so sensitive, so delicate like precious china. Does he write poems to you, Ellie? Surely he does?’
She’d never felt such joy. They were just nineteen, and then one day Jack had opened up, told her he loved her, wanted to marry her, wanted children with her. ‘Not yet,’ she’d said, frightened, yet exhilarated, the emotion within her like a vortex she needed to understand before she gave in to its force. A week later he’d died of an undiscovered brain aneurysm.
‘Not yet.’ The words chimed about the bedroom, and she felt again that whirlpool turning her round and round. She’d meant let’s wait, we’re meant for each other, but let’s develop a little, more can we? Had Jack understood? Had she made herself clear before his brief life had been blown out? She still didn’t know. She still regretted that she might have caused him some hurt, her precious, porcelain-delicate love.
‘Jack?’ Baz was asking again, his sausage-sized fingers on her cheek.
‘I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t old enough.’
It was the truth, wasn’t it? She’d had to mention Jack to Baz, you couldn’t keep him wholly under cover. But it was like you might show a jewel to an acquaintance: carefully, keeping hold of it, not wanting them to know its value, not wanting them to touch it.
‘And are you now?’
‘I’m older, more mature. As for, am I ready? Well…’
‘I get the sense that if I asked you, you wouldn’t tell me to wait?’
Was he telling her he loved her? That he wanted to marry her? Was he just taking her for granted? He was rubbing his lumpy knee against her thigh. She felt his rough carpenter’s fingers exploring her stomach, felt like fine pottery being handled crudely.
‘Well?’ he said.
Jack, slender, beautiful Jack who’d set a match to the tinder in her heart. Jack’s slim legs that fitted so well with her own in bed, Jack’s fine slim fingers touching her, each one a perfect stanza of a perfect poem.
I’m ready now, I’m truly ready, Jack, she thought, as she heard herself whisper ‘not yet’ to Baz’s question.
He crushed his body against hers, timber on wafer-thin china, as in resistance.
