The Persistence of Memory

Chapter Sixteen

I wake from the depths of sleep feeling slightly disorientated and achy - the deep kind of ache that only comes from too much of one thing: sex.

Just before and just after I got married I used to wake up feeling like this a lot. It feels like a long time ago now except it wasn't. It was a few short years where Oliver and I had been mainly happy.

Until I'd ruined it.

Until it became clear that I wasn't really cut out to be any sort of wife. I'm still not. I'd gotten all of the main things wrong. Surely trust, monogamy and childbearing were the fundamentals of marriage, and by failing at these so spectacularly what right did I have now to consider myself anyone's wife?

In these moments just after I come awake, and just before sleep, I always find my mind at it's most extreme. All of my thoughts and feelings magnified and loud, echoing around my quiet brain. Though since as well as having some of my darkest thoughts at these times, I also have some of my most brilliant ideas, I suppose it all balances itself out in the end.

When I see and feel that the bed is empty it makes me feel unsettled and cold. It also makes me question what time it is. How long have I been here? The sun hadn't set yet, I could see that much, but it had moved so that it was no longer visible from the large skylight above Aidan's bed. Where is he?

I slide out of his bed and gaze about the floor for my dress which had been here in a puddle. Where the hell is it? All I can see is Aidan's t-shirt, torn with aged paint stains, but which smells clean and of him. In the absence of anything else, it'll do.

I lift it and pull it on hastily, brushing a hand through my ruffled hair, before venturing out into the loft. It's eerily silent. Only the faint noises of harried vehicles and shouting pedestrians from the street below fill the empty space. A quick glance about and an ear to the bathroom door bring me to the conclusion that he must be upstairs. Completely naked under his T-shirt, climbing the staircase only intensifies my feeling exposed and vulnerable. So I press my thighs tight together as I ascend to give me a little security - between them feels sticky and well used and a little tightening moves across them at the notion.

As I near the top it becomes apparent the studio is also empty. Okay, had this whole afternoon been a figment of my imagination? Am I dreaming right now? Am I about to be faced with my entire high school English class as I get up here, who are going to point and laugh at my state of undress? Had I dreamt everything? If so it was the best sex-dream I'd ever had. It was better than any sex scene I'd ever written.

It was also the best sex I'd ever had and it wasn't with my husband. The guilt is still notable by its absence.

As I reach the top of the stairs my hand goes to my mouth to cover my gasp as I take in the sight.  My whole body begins to tremble as I move toward it. There, hanging from the wall is me. An enormous black and white abstract version of me. It's a painted landscape portrait — a headshot — with only my face, neck and shoulders visible. I'm turned away looking over my shoulder towards the audience, towards myself. I look distant, yet seductive, thoughtful yet sad. I look... beautiful.

As I get closer to it the hairs on the back of my neck and across my arms begin to raise and tingle, and my breathing shortens. He did this. This is how I look to him. This is me as seen through his eyes. It's stark, bold and loud, but with a depth to it. His depth. It wasn't like any of his other pieces but it still spoke to me of him.

Somehow he'd managed to put emotion in my eyes with just two colours. A thick impenetrable black and a stark clinical white — the background a faint just off-white grey. I see sadness in my face, yearning too, and from nowhere the tears well up behind my eyes.