Truly Madly Guilty

After a moment Sam cleared his throat and said, 'I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I choose my marriage too.'

'Oh yes, and what does that mean?'

'I have no idea. I just wanted to make my position clear.'

'Maybe it means you don't want to sleep in the study anymore,' suggested Clementine, her eyes on the road ahead.

'Maybe it does,' said Sam.

Clementine studied his profile. 'Would you like to come back?'

'I'd like to come back,' said Sam. He looked over his shoulder to change lanes. 'From wherever the hell I've been.'

'Well,' said Clementine. 'You're very welcome to submit an application.'

'I could audition,' he said. 'I have some smooth moves.' He paused. 'You could be blindfolded. We'll make it a blind audition so there is no possibility of bias.'

She could feel a wild, raw sense of happiness growing within her. It was just silly, cheesy, flirty talk, but it was their silly, cheesy, flirty talk. She already knew how it would be tonight: the sweet familiarity and the sharp clean edges because of what they'd nearly lost. She didn't know how close their marriage had got to hitting that iceberg - close enough to feel its icy shadow - but they'd missed it.

'Yeah, I choose my marriage.' Sam swung the car to the right. 'And I also temporarily choose this illegal bus lane because I am one crazy motherfucker.'

Clementine reached into her bag, took out her banana and peeled it.

'You'll get a ticket,' she said as she took a mouthful and waited for those natural beta-blockers to take effect, and it must have been a really good season for bananas because it was the best banana she'd ever tasted.

chapter eighty-seven

At half past three they finally called for her.

She walked down the strip of carpet with her cello and bow to the lonely chair. She blinked in the bright, hot, white light. A woman coughed behind the black screen and it sounded a little like Ainsley.

Clementine sat. She embraced her cello. She nodded at her pianist. He smiled. She'd hired her own pianist to accompany her. Grant Morton was a grandfatherly man who lived alone with an adult daughter with Down syndrome. His wife had died the day after her fiftieth birthday, only last year, but he still had the sweetest smile of anyone she knew, and she'd been so glad he was available, because she wanted to start her audition with that sweet smile.

She was conscious of her heart beating rapidly as she tuned, but it wasn't racing out of control. She breathed and put her hand to the tiny metallic stickers stuck on the collar of her shirt.

'This is for good luck for your audition,' Holly had said when they were leaving today and she'd carefully put a purple butterfly sticker on her mother's shirt and then, with great, grown-up ceremony, she had kissed Clementine on the cheek.

'I want good luck too!' Ruby had yelled, as if good luck was a treat being handed out by Clementine, and she'd copied everything her sister had done, except her sticker was a yellow smiley face, and her kiss was very wet and peanut-buttery. Clementine could still feel its sticky imprint on her cheek.

She took one deep breath and looked at the music on her stand.

It was all there within her. The hours and hours of early morning practice, the listening to recordings, the dozens of tiny technical decisions she'd settled upon.

She saw her little girls running about under the fairy lights, Vid throwing back his head and laughing, the chair lying on its side, Oliver's locked hands over Ruby's chest, the black shadow of the helicopter, her mother's enraged face close to hers. She saw her sixteen-year-old self standing up and walking off the stage. She saw a boy in a badly fitting tuxedo watch her pack away her cello and say, 'I bet you wish you chose the flute.' She saw the look of disbelief on Erika's face when Clementine first sat down opposite her in the playground.

She remembered Marianne saying, 'Don't just play for them, perform.'

She remembered Hu saying, 'You have to find the balance. It's like you're walking a tightrope between technique and music.'

She remembered Ainsley saying, 'Yes, but at some point you just have to let go.'

She lifted her bow. She let go.

chapter eighty-eight

The night of the barbeque

Pam and Martin pulled up in front of Erika and Oliver's neat-looking little bungalow.