Free Infidelities by Kirsty Gunn Page B

down,’ Elsa sang.
    In a second, Nicky was out of the car and running. He didn’t have a jersey on.
    ‘Wait!’ Sarah called out to him. ‘We can look at the house together!’
    ‘He doesn’t want to look at your bloody house,’ said Elsa.
    *
    Outside, the air was even colder than she’d thought. And damp. She could breathe it, that deep clammy breath of an old, old kind of cold. Sarah was shivering with it. It was in her bones, in her blood it felt like. Christ, she was freezing. So what was going on here? That she would still be holding out here, right now, standing here? Imagining herself in a house she had no intention of living in? Did she? With a man she did not want to be with? With children who looked at her the way Elsa had just looked at her. It was dead everywhere, this place. There was no relief.
    Even so, still shivering, her whole body, she walked away from the car with no intention of following her son, she walked around the side of the house and Tim was there, just standing, peering into a window. Not part of any of these thoughts of her own, he was doing nothing. Well, he was blowing his nose.
    So – ‘We all fall down …’ Sarah sang the line to herself.
    ‘Shame,’ he called out to her when he was finished, the handkerchief back in the pocket of his ugly green parka. ‘There’s been a cock up with the keys. They’re not where the agent said he’d leave them. We can’t get in to see the place after all.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Sarah was looking in a back window through to a scullery and kitchen. Clearly the house hadn’t been lived in for years. There was an old butcher’s sink in the room, nothing else. She went to the other window at the same back extension, it gave on to a little hallway. All was dark there. Overall, the house was smaller than she’d thought, than it seemed. The agent’s details had it looking quite expansive and when they’d turned into the lawn it was even grand. But not really. Not now that she was close up. It was a bit of a disaster, actually. Like the phrase Tim had just used, that sounded so strange in his American mouth, ‘cock up’. That was what this place amounted to, their visit here, her being in the car with someone she didn’t love, had never loved, with her children who were her children, her and Alastair’s children …
    ‘You’re right, there’s been a cock up,’ she said to Tim now. ‘It’s an awful house. No wonder it’s derelict. No wonder it’s so cheap.’
    ‘You call this cheap?’ Tim said. ‘Jesus. I’d like to know what you call expensive. The place is gorgeous, it’s got great atmosphere. I looked in the front, there’s a staircase goes way up to—’
    ‘Who cares?’ Sarah knew she was being mean. ‘It just has fake grandeur, that’s all. It’s not a real house, not for a real family to live in. It’s just someone’s idea of showing off.’
    ‘What?’ Poor Tim. He was all confused. All the sleeping with him, all the talking and discussions. All the letting him stay over, letting him do that more and more. Havinghim spend weekends, even, getting to know the children, letting him drive her car …
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Jesus, Sarah.’
    ‘Well, look,’ she said to him, he’d started walking away. ‘Look at this house,’ she said. ‘There is no glen to be head of, don’t you see? Just a bit of a river … It’s flat, Tim, there are no hills here, no glens.’
    She was talking to herself, really. Tim had left her to it. He was heading back to the car. ‘There’s no point in staying here,’ he called to her over his shoulder. ‘We’ll have to come back with keys.’
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ Sarah said. The words formed a frosty breath in front of her face, even though she’d spoken so quietly. They’d never be back. She went around the side of the house, still looking in windows, and then to the front. There, true, Tim had been right, the house seemed to regain itself.