Diamond Earrings

Short story for a final piece on a creative writing module.

The secret beach was closed off, only accessible by a short knee-deep walk in sea water, across the stony floor. Think of it like a funnel, Daymer Bay was as busy as you would expect on a hot day in August, full of garish multi coloured windbreakers flailing in the summer breeze, and women like leather handbags flopped on the sand. But, walk further and follow the base of the red cliff, through the clear water and you are met with a stretch of almost untouched white sand. Wading through the water Jane carried their little black whippet, whose legs were tucked under her body trying not to get her paws wet. Trailing behind her Louis carried a big backpack full of beach towels and factor fifty sun cream for Jane’s pearly white skin. The couple set up camp half a mile down the beach, and undressed down to their swimming costumes. They ran down to the water, the dog jumping at their feet, excited at the ‘game’ they were playing. They swam in the freezing English waters, the dog barking at them from the shore, wanting to reach them. Jane and Louis laughed as the dog growled at the waves that kept on coming back and forth at her feet, her paws sinking into the wet sand. They threw balls for her and she kicked up sand speeding like a rocket to retrieve them. When they became tired they retreated to their place up the beach, perfectly positioned at the bottom of the grassy sand dunes, the gentle summer breeze licking at the wisps of Jane’s salty hair.

 

Louis lay face down on his towel while Jane sat hugging her knees to her chest. She placed her hand on Louis’ back feeling the heat that the sun had given him and looked out across the estuary to the little fishing village she could see in the distance with the multi coloured houses queuing down the hill.

 

“It’s been a good last day, hasn’t it Lou?” She asked him, the whole time her eyes fixated into the distance.

“Mmmmm….” He mumbled in agreement, sleepy from the afternoon sun.

“Yes” said Jane, she didn’t quite know who she was speaking for, herself or Louis. Her eyes welled up with the thought of returning to London the following morning - back to the place where this wasn’t them. She sighed as she lay back onto the sand.

 

The two of them had met when they were just seventeen, Jane remembered the words she thought when she first met him-  ‘obtainable.’ She had spent what seemed like forever, (but looking back it was no time at all,) chasing boys who were inappropriate for her. Too far out of her league, a lot of them were fantasies who would never look twice at a girl like her, her confidence shattered from bullying in her early teens. However, when she met Louis she somehow knew that they would be together. But don’t let the word ‘obtainable’ taint your view of their relationship, they were absolutely in love, Jane had never been loved by anyone the way Louis loved her. So from the age of seventeen the two of them grew up together, hand in hand through all the milestones of their lives. When Jane wanted to go to university to study History, Louis stayed at home and worked to save money so he could visit her often, running himself off his feet in Marks and Spenser by day and the local pub by night. He finally proposed to her the day after her graduation. Of course she said yes, there was nothing or nobody else she could have wanted, having never been tempted during her three years away at Birmingham University. They finally moved into a tiny house in London, by this point Louis was now an online purchasing manager in a branch of Marks and Spencer, and Jane was teaching History at The University of Westminster. They had certainly come a long way from that first day they were introduced at Hannah Lyle’s birthday.

 

 

“Janey….Jane?” Louis laughed lazily as he tried to rouse Jane from her sleep.

“Come on, we should probably get going, its getting late.”

The two of them packed up all their beach stuff, put the dog on her lead and walked along the shore. The tide had gone out by now so it was easy to walk across to the other beach, and up to the car park. In the half an hour it took to get back to the little cottage they had hired for that week the sun had gone down, and they were driving through the little country lanes, enclosed by hedgerow on either side. They had the windows down and Jane sat back in the passenger seat, eyes closed feeling the fresh country air overflow her warm face, the raspy music of the radio played in the background, all the while Louis claiming her with his hand on her bare leg.

 

On one of these country lanes their little ford fiesta met another car, obviously local, you could tell by the way they sped around the corner and wouldn’t back down. Louis slammed on the breaks and then started the difficult job of reversing into a gap in the hedge as the muddy country car forced them backwards. Jane could not stop staring at the car in fronts headlights, two lights, piercingly bright white like the diamond earrings left on the small purple plate in their en-suite bathroom at home. Jane knew the earrings weren’t hers, but she presumed Louis didn’t. They had just been left on the plate on top of the wicker draws they keep their bath towels in for about a month now. Those small diamond earrings had been so blindly apparent to Jane ever since she returned from her Lady Jane Grey research trip in Chicago. At first she had been silently hysterical, taking the following day off with ‘jet lag’ to turn the house upside down, sending the dog into a frenzy, to find any trace of the woman who had been there. There was nothing except those little diamond earrings placed neatly on the plate. ‘Why would she take her earrings off anyway?’ she thought to herself often, feeling nauseated every time she would step in the shower. She had ripped the bedding from the bed and disposed of it twisted tightly in a carrier bad in the nearest public bin as she walked to House of Fraser to pick up a new set, she didn’t care what.

‘I thought you felt unwell?’ Louis said when he got home, noticing the new bedding and winding his arms around her like thick metal thread.

‘I do’ Jane replied.

 

The pair returned to their little Cornish cottage after dark that evening, the dog retired to her bed immediately, tired after an exciting day. Jane and Louis sat in the small oak living room, both in their own arm chairs, eating the leftovers of the week: Cheese and crusty bread, salads, piccalilli, half a pork pie and a scotch egg. It was moments like this when Jane could not help but think of the other woman, the two of them were sat together in complete peace, in that sort of comfortable silence two people can enjoy without feeling obliged to find something to fill the air, and yet Jane wondered if he was thinking of her.

 

Louis got up and took Jane’s plate from her into the kitchen, tousling her hair as he did so and returning with the last dregs of the red wine. He looked at her in her hazelnut brown eyes that were gleaming with a film of tears.

 

‘I’ll put the fire out shall I Janey?’ He said as he cupped her face with his hand.

She held his hand in her own.

‘Why, it’s not that hot in here is it?’

‘No its just your eyes, they’re watering from the smoke.’ He replied.

She sniffed her nose ‘Oh yes’ she said. Wondering how he could possibly be so clueless as he moved back to his seat next to hers.

 

That night they slept as they had always slept, except she didn’t sleep, she rarely did since she discovered those earrings a month ago. She just lay awake in the heat of his body, listening to the sound of him breathing, a sound that used to be a comfort to her at night, which now seemed somehow detached from him. Her thoughts moved around in her head like the line of a buzzing bee from a children’s novel.

 

The following morning the two of them packed their bags and got ready to leave. It was another beautiful summer morning, already hot by ten, and Jane let the sun stream in through the little crisscross windows while she packed her bag tightly as if trying desperately to hold all the contents together. They left the cottage at around noon and Jane took one last look behind her as she left through the front door. A beam of sunlight bounced onto the granite work surface illuminating the iphone left on the counter top.  It was Louis’ Jane knew as she turned towards the car. He didn’t notice until they were back in London, after he had thrown the contents of his suitcase upside down, items of clothing strewn across the bedroom like debris after a crash. The dog sat watching him from the bedroom door, with an unwavering eye.

 

When Jane looked at Louis she saw almost the same man who she had met when he was just a boy. He still had that same amused look in his eyes, and the side of his mouth still curled up when he looked at her across a crowded room of people. He always towered over her, whether she was in the gold pointed Louboutins that she wore everywhere in the year 2000 when they met, or if she was in the grey suede block heels that she brought two months ago. Of course though, with age a few things had changed, his smooth baby face was now covered with the designer stubble that was so in fashion, his sense of style had changed, he now spent eighty per cent of his time in sharp suits, rather than the cargo shorts he had lived in when they were younger. In fact they had joked about those shorts as they booked their Cornwall holiday a few months ago. Sitting in bed reading the Cornish guide-book had lead to them both screaming with laugher rolling around on the duvet, guide book thrown crumpled in the corner of the room. The main difference that Jane saw now when she looked at Louis was not something specifically different about him, instead the difference was rooted in the way she herself saw him. It was like that moment when you see someone you recognise, but you don’t know who they are.

 

The following few days the two of them returned to the regular rhythms of their lives, Louis went to Marks and spencer HQ, and Jane went back to her University. There were no students to teach during the holidays so she enjoyed the leisurely pace of creating the syllabus and the reading lists for her ‘Women’s History’ module, running home during her lunch breaks to throw a ball around for the dog in Cavendish Square gardens.  Jane spent a lot of these walks trying to get her thoughts in order, trying to come up with some sort of plausible action plan about what to do. She hadn’t raised the issue of the alien earrings to Louis, they still stood on the plate in their bathroom, glaring at her every time she went in there, symbolic of her failure.

 

 

The following weekend Louis had a planned team building trip with work, he told Jane they were going to Cambridge on the Friday night after work and returning on Saturday afternoon, Jane knew this was at least true, because she had seen the receipt for the train tickets. Although in the back her mind there was an unfaltering alarm going off, constantly questioning his story. However some part of her slightly relished the idea that this weekend she could unbutton the bodice of her problems and relax without having to pretend to be something she wasn’t. She woke up early on the Saturday morning, her head still slightly hazy from the copious amounts of red wine she had drunk the night before, and decided to go for a run around the common near her house. The feeling of the air rushing past her body as she ran along the path that crossed the grassy field was therapeutic for her, the fact that she could make something move, the strength of her body to move itself for miles, helped combat the feeling of helplessness that she had.

It was just as her run-tracking app told her she had completed six miles that she saw Sarah, Louis’ personal assistant from work.

‘Jane! How are you?’ Sarah said.

Sarah and her husband Paul were vague friends of Jane and Louis, they had been out to dinner a few times together and see each other at Marks and Spenser work events, but they actually hadn’t met up for almost a year now.

Jane was out of breath ‘Sarah, hi! Sorry I’m fine, how are you?’

Sarah tousled the head of a small blonde boy next to her, Jane knew it was her son, but couldn’t remember his name.

‘Yes I’m well thanks, just playing how many ways can we keep the kids entertained this weekend.’ Sarah rolled her eyes in a jokey way.

‘That’s the same with me’ Jane replied ‘Except I’m keeping the dog occupied instead’ She laughed, pointing at the dog digging the soil a few metres away from them. ‘I thought you would be on the away weekend anyway?’

‘The away weekend?’ Sarah replied, head slightly tilted in confusion.

‘Yeah, they’ve gone to Cambridge haven’t they? Some team building exercise Louis said.’ Jane was getting slightly panicked at Sarah’s obvious misunderstanding.

‘Oh um �" maybe. It might just be the senior team, not for the little PA’s like me.’ She laughed nervously. Sarah had been Louis’ PA for over five years and Jane had to hand it to her, she was undoubtedly loyal - they both knew she was lying.

 

The two women ended up sitting on metal chairs next to a food van in the corner of the common, drinking dismal coffee in depressing white polystyrene cups that squeaked against their teeth. Sarah had admitted that there was no away weekend that she knew of, confirming Jane’s suspicions, and Jane went on to tell her about the earrings in the bathroom.

‘Listen’ Sarah said, waving a small plastic train in front of the toddler on her knee. ‘It happens to the best of us sometimes, we think we’re doing all the right things, hitting all the right notes and then we find out he’s been listening to music elsewhere. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you, I know he does. He just… You know… Doesn’t want to listen to Amy Whinehouse all the time, maybe he fancies a bit of Dolly Parton. They’re both good singers, and he prefers Amy, but he can’t listen to her on repeat. You know what I mean?’

 

Jane thought over Sarah’s crass metaphor as she wandered back to their little terraced house. What Sarah was effectively saying was ignore the fact that your husband is cheating on you for an easy life. Sarah also gave away who this other woman was, apparently her name was Frances and after one quick search on Facebook when she got home she burst into Jane’s reality. She was twenty three to Jane’s twenty nine-almost- thirty, pretty looking in an unusual way, all her features were beautiful, and yet together they seemed disjointed, as if they didn’t belong together. Her profile picture on facebook was of her standing in the rain outside The National Portrait Gallery with a large professional looking black umbrella held frivolously over her head, her bright blonde shoulder length curls were tossed back as she was laughing, perfect small white teeth blinding Jane through the computer screen. Her makeup was noticeably natural, her teeth framed by a slash of nude lip gloss. She was wearing what seemed to be a knee length tight black dress hidden underneath a typical beige Burberry trench coat.

 

Jane had always wanted one of those coats, she thought to herself as she shoved her purse and her keys into her knock off Mulberry leather handbag, stopping to swipe on some coral coloured No7 lipstick. She then hailed a cab asking for ‘Westfield please’ as she jumped in.

 

Jane thought back to Hannah Lyle’s birthday party, the day her and Louis were first introduced. She remembered exactly what she wore that night - A white denim mini skirt, with a glittery gold halter neck top and her trusty gold Louboutins.  Louis had sweet talked her saying she was the best looking girl at the party, boosting her ego dramatically, telling her he couldn’t keep his eyes off her all night, as his hand moved from the small of her back and rested on her bum. Jane just wanted him to look at her like that again.

 

‘MEET @ SUSHISAMBA @ 7’ was the text that Jane sent to Louis at about six-thirty that night.  They had always been in that restaurant when they first moved to London she thought as she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, lining her lips, and then filling them in with Mac’s ‘Unflappable’ nude lipstick. Jane turned to the plate on top of the towel draws and put the diamond studs in her ears one by one.

 

Downstairs, the dog looked sad to be left on her own for the evening, so Jane threw her a bone to cheer her up. At 6.45, she pulled her Burberry Heritage trench coat over her skin-tight black midi dress, which she thanked God she still had the figure for and hailed a taxi to take her to the restaurant.

 

Author's Note

Any feedback would be amazing!