Little Bee

“And do you see me running away? This is about us doing what’s best for you. I’m not going to stop just because it’s gone all serious. But you have to choose. I can’t help you if all your focus is on that girl.”

I felt the blood draining out of my face. I spoke as quietly and calmly as I could.

“Tell me you’re not asking me to choose between you and her.”

“I am absolutely not asking you to do that. But what I am saying is that you’re going to have to choose between your life and her life. At some point you have to start thinking about a future for you and Charlie. Charity is lovely, Sarah, but there has to be some logical point where it stops.”

I banged my damaged hand down on the table, fingers splayed out. “I cut off my finger for that girl. Will you tell me when is the logical point to stop something that started like that? Do you really want me to make a choice like that? I cut off my own bloody finger. Do you think I wouldn’t cut you off too?”

Silence. Lawrence stood up. His chair scraped.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“No. Maybe you shouldn’t.”

I sat at the kitchen table and listened to Lawrence taking his coat from the peg in the hall and picking up his travel bag. When I heard the front door opening, I stood up. Lawrence was halfway down the path by the time I got to the door.

“Lawrence?”

He turned.

“Where are you going to go? You can’t go home.”

“Oh. I didn’t really think about it.”

“You’re meant to be in Birmingham.”

He shrugged. “I’ll get a hotel. It’ll be good for me. I’ll read a book on leadership. Might actually learn something.”

“Oh Lawrence, come here.”

I held out my arms to him. I pressed my face into his neck and hugged him while he stood motionless. I breathed in the smell of him, and remembered all those hotel afternoons, high as kites on each other.

“You really are a loser,” I said.

“I just feel so bloody silly. I had it all worked out. I got the time off work, I made up the story for Linda. I even bought toys for the kids, in case I forgot on the way home. I had it all worked out. I thought it was going to be a nice surprise for you and…well. It was a surprise, at least, wasn’t it?”

I stroked his face.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I snapped at you. Thank you for coming to see me. Please don’t go to a hotel room and sit there all on your own, I can’t bear it. Please stay.”

“What? Now?”

“Yes. Please.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Sarah. Maybe I need to take a step back and think about what we mean to each other. What you said just now, about cutting me off…”

“Stop it, you cunning bastard. Stop it before I change my mind.”

Lawrence almost smiled. I linked my fingers around the back of his neck.

“What I didn’t say was that if I had to cut you off, it would hurt more than cutting off my finger.”

He stared at me for a long time and then he said, Oh Sarah. We went upstairs and it wasn’t until we’d started that I realized we were having sex on the bed I used to share with Andrew. I was concentrating on Lawrence, burying my face in the soft hair on his chest, peeling the clothes off him, and then something happened—my bra strap snagged, Lawrence’s belt buckle jammed for a second—I don’t recall but it stopped the flow, anyway, and I realized that Lawrence was lying on Andrew’s side of the bed, that his skin was pressing down where Andrew’s had pressed, that the concave of Lawrence’s back, smooth and hot with sweat, was arching proud of the depression that Andrew had made in the mattress. I hesitated—I froze up. Lawrence sensed it, I suppose, and he kept the momentum going. He rolled over onto me. I just felt so grateful to him, I think, for getting us through that moment without thinking. I let myself dissolve into the slickness of his skin, the delicacy of his movement, the lightness of him. Lawrence was tall but he was slight. There was none of the bruising compression of my pelvis, the crushing of the breath from my lungs, the overpowering gravity of sex with Andrew that left me groaning as much in resignation as in pleasure. That was what I loved about sex with Lawrence—the glorious, giddying lightness of it. But there was something wrong, tonight. Maybe it was the presence of Andrew, so strong in the room. His books and papers were everywhere still—jamming the bookshelves, scattered in the corners of the floor—and when I thought of Andrew, I thought of Little Bee. Lawrence was making love to me and part of me was thinking, Uh, while another part was thinking, In the morning I must phone the Border and Immigration Agency and start to track down her papers, and then I’ll need to find her a solicitor, and start an appeal procedure, and…and…